Arun2009

> Being an entrepreneur and failing

Well, it's the business that failed, not the entrepreneur. There are always lessons that you take away from the experience - something that people who didn't try will ever have.

This knowledge is both rare and valuable. It can be shared with others, or it can be used to generate wealth in the future. I'd suggest you make en inventory of items that you learned from the experience. It could be something tactical (e.g., "learned how to run a proper AdWords campaign; learned how to build a professional website") or more strategic. In either case, you're going to be better at starting up the next time around.

Maybe it's because I'm in a cynical mood right now, but Steve Jobs looks like he's performing for an audience. I'd have loved to hear what people like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates really think, but whenever these guys speak, I suspect that they compensate for the fact the people will be listening to them, and that what they say will influence their lives' work.

You're left with no other choice but to reverse-engineer their real philosophies from how the respective companies behave in the market.

Man's search for meaning, by Viktor Frankel

The Republic, by Plato. It introduced me to a whole new way of thinking.

The Gita. I later came to know about the chariot allegory in the Kathopanishad (http://www.atmajyoti.org/up_katha_upanishad_17.asp), and thought that the writer's depiction of the charioteer as Krishna and the rider as Arjuna was just brilliant.

> "... which so-and-so clearly does not understand..." or "I'm surprised anyone actually pays attention to that kook."

I beg to disagree.

Such verbal slinging IMO serves the important sociological purpose of publicly provoking the other person to react and calling everyone else's attention to the issue. I'd even venture to say that we're all basically watching the discussion primarily because of the jabs.

Insults would perhaps be unbecoming if this were a clinical and professional exchange in an academic journal. But when our opinions compete to survive in the wild, a little verbal spice helps.

Speaking for myself at least, the primary value of this exchange is entertainment. Any knowledge or insight is merely a bonus.

I just keep a personal Wordpress blog hosted on my computer, and keep a link to it in my home page HTML. I've found the scheme to work pretty well.

Actually, I do - had to quickly glance through the book to confirm it though.

The book is this: http://www.amazon.com/Your-Memory-How-Works-Improve/dp/15692...

> The trouble is that I don't remember anything.

I read somewhere that our long-term memory has unlimited capacity, and there are basically three ways of measuring your memory:

- Recall: see whether you can recall the pertinent facts.

- Relearn: measure the time it takes for you to relearn the topic.

- Recognize: see if you can recognize key points in a previously learned topic when it's presented again to you.

Most people when they claim that they "don't remember anything" only refer to the recall-metric. But I bet that if you try to learn these ideas again, it'd take you much lesser time that it'd for a complete newbie => you haven't really lost everything you learned. It's just dormant.

From my personal experience, Amazon's ploy of suggesting related books has been very effective on me. I've often gone there with the intention of spending perhaps USD 40 on a specific book and ended up spending thrice that amount (happily!).

Hence a suggestion, FWIW: in addition to improving conversion rate, it might be also worthwhile to try to sell more stuff to existing customers. You know what they want and you know they're not averse to spending money online.

My suggestion: spend some quality time knowing yourself, so that you may better lead an authentic and fulfilling life.

What does happiness mean to you? What are your strengths and weaknesses? What do you value most? What are your goals? What should they be? How would you define success?

Cultivate your mind so that you may do the above better.

I am NOT a Mathematician, but FWIW, here are my antidotes to the crisis in meaning that you are facing:

1. You most likely wouldn't have had a problem solver's education. So the first thing to do would be do start understanding how problem solvers approach Mathematics. I suggest two books:

- The Art and Craft of Problem Solving by Paul Zeitz

- How to Solve It by George Polya

There are also others, e.g., http://www.amazon.com/Math-Olympiad-Resources/lm/1SWDJ5NA047...

Keep in mind that most proofs you see are highly polished for the sake of clear presentation. The route Mathematicians take to reach the proofs are almost always messy. And, unfortunately, they like to clear their tracks.

A great way to learn how to solve problems is to find a good problem solver and asking them to think out loud while they are solving problems. Also, try to find alternative proofs of any proof you learn.

2. Understand the history behind what you're studying. How did the ideas you're trying to learn (Abstract Algebra, Topology, Vector Analysis, etc.) come about? This will add an immense amount of meaning to your subjects.

I recommend the following books:

- "Men of Mathematics" by ET Bell. Also "The Development of Mathematics" by the same author.

- "A Concise History of Mathematics" by Dirk Struik,

- "A History of Mathematics" by Boyer

- And of course, the internet.

3. Read a few "big picture" books side-by-side. A few suggestions:

- "Foundations and Fundamental Concepts of Mathematics" by Howard Eves

- "Concepts of Modern Mathematics" by Ian Stewart

4. IMHO - and this is just my preference - study application of Mathematics to Physics and Engineering. Physics especially was an inspiration for a lot of Mathematics, and in addition, this will also let you solve concrete problems using the tools you learn.

5. During my undergraduate and graduate periods, I found several Schaum's and Dover books helpful. They're usually short and pretty cheap.

6. Initially, do not let rigor get in the way of understanding the content. Fourier, Newton, Euler, etc. weren't all that rigorous by modern standards.

Jacques Hadamard gives an account of a similar phenomenon (a sudden flash of an idea) in Mathematics in his Psychology of invention in the Mathematical field (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Hadamard#On_creativity).

Also, very coincidentally, I have been reading up classical works on "proper conduct" in an attempt to do a spring cleaning of personal attitudes for pretty much the same reason as PG's - it just frees up a lot of mental energy. I'm currently doing a parallel reading of The Dhammapada and the Analects of Confucius. Earlier I read the Thirukkural (English translation, alas! - http://www.scribd.com/doc/20912297/Tirukkural-of-Tiruvalluva...).

If you or I rationally considered affairs and made up quotes ("'Tis easy to achieve an aim, if it be firmly kept in mind"), they wouldn't have the moral authority and rhetorical power they do coming from the world's classics. It just feels nice to work from ready-made axioms of conduct.

Plus the fact that the upside (if any) to revealing the reason for no-fire is negligible.

While I wholeheartedly applaud all attempts at getting ANY government at all to spend more on science, technology and education, I am baffled at the constant American paranoia of its 'leadership' in science and math.

A couple of points:

1. It is OK for America to not "rule tech".

China has the most number of humans in the world. Statistically speaking, it shouldn't be surprising that they will eventually 'rule tech'.

American leadership in technology is an anomaly - it's representative of the historical advantages that the US has had and the deprivations of rest of the world. IOW, US is more like a one-eyed king in a country of the blind. As others pull themselves up, it's natural that this anomaly will be corrected somewhat.

2. America is not really lagging anyway.

The world's top universities are American (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_Ranking_of_World_Unive...), most of the Nobel laureates have been American (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_coun...), most of the high-tech companies are American (I don't even care to list), and a lot of people who are technically savvy eventually become American anyway. From outside at least, the US looks like a giant chain reaction of innovation that has spun out of control!

I guess "America is doing great!" won't make as sensational a headline as this one.

> anyone else think in pictures

I have noticed that most of my thoughts originate as 'tendencies'. These tendencies are not verbal, but often vividly embody ideas. I then have to expend some effort to verbalize them. This is easily done for most of my thoughts (such as this one!), but for some, I find that the tendencies are not vivid enough or translating them effectively into words is beyond my current abilities.

I can get rid of the verbalizing stage altogether, which is what I would do when I automatically reason about where the center of gravity of a spoon I hold in my hand is.

Maybe they're just stupid, but then again maybe the name's intentionally creepy? Now it's registered in everyone's minds that they are being watched by Perfect Citizen (which is just a 'research program' really, wink wink). This could potentially cause mischief-makers to resort to pathological behavior to cover their tracks that can be detected more easily. Or maybe there would be a scarecrow-effect: people will behave because they know someone's watching them.

> if Paul McCartney said that someone should explain Perelman's proof of the Poincare Conjecture to him, and that if they couldn't, it meant that it was bunk.

Sure, it's possible that Chomsky hasn't taken the time to truly understand Continental Philosophy or lacks the technical training to understand it even if someone were to explain it all to him.

But it's also possible that continental philosophy is just profound nonsense that thrives based on the following fallacy:

1. Profound stuff (general relativity, quantum mechanics, Poincare conjecture) is very often difficult to understand.

2. Continental philosophy is difficult to understand.

3. Hence, continental philosophy is profound stuff.

Frankly, applying the "looks like a duck, talks like a duck, walks like a duck" criteria, I feel it's more likely that continental philosophy doesn't qualify as a genuine area of human knowledge - it's all just nonsense. But it might serve some other important purpose (e.g., a form of harmless mental hashish that's genuinely pleasurable).

At any rate, pressure for greater clarity and simpler exposition is always good in any field.

Here's Chomsky on the same issue: http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/chomsky-on-postmodernis...

A quote:

"It's entirely possible that I'm simply missing something, or that I just lack the intellectual capacity to understand the profundities that have been unearthed in the past 20 years or so by Paris intellectuals and their followers. I'm perfectly open-minded about it, and have been for years, when similar charges have been made -- but without any answer to my questions. Again, they are simple and should be easy to answer, if there is an answer: if I'm missing something, then show me what it is, in terms I can understand. Of course, if it's all beyond my comprehension, which is possible, then I'm just a lost cause, and will be compelled to keep to things I do seem to be able to understand, and keep to association with the kinds of people who also seem to be interested in them and seem to understand them (which I'm perfectly happy to do, having no interest, now or ever, in the sectors of the intellectual culture that engage in these things, but apparently little else).

Since no one has succeeded in showing me what I'm missing, we're left with the second option: I'm just incapable of understanding. I'm certainly willing to grant that it may be true, though I'm afraid I'll have to remain suspicious, for what seem good reasons. There are lots of things I don't understand -- say, the latest debates over whether neutrinos have mass or the way that Fermat's last theorem was (apparently) proven recently. But from 50 years in this game, I have learned two things: (1) I can ask friends who work in these areas to explain it to me at a level that I can understand, and they can do so, without particular difficulty; (2) if I'm interested, I can proceed to learn more so that I will come to understand it. Now Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Kristeva, etc. --- even Foucault, whom I knew and liked, and who was somewhat different from the rest --- write things that I also don't understand, but (1) and (2) don't hold: no one who says they do understand can explain it to me and I haven't a clue as to how to proceed to overcome my failures. That leaves one of two possibilities: (a) some new advance in intellectual life has been made, perhaps some sudden genetic mutation, which has created a form of "theory" that is beyond quantum theory, topology, etc., in depth and profundity; or (b) ... I won't spell it out."

> I will hazard a prediction. When you are 80 years old, and in a quiet moment of reflection narrating for only yourself the most personal version of your life story, the telling that will be most compact and meaningful will be the series of choices you have made.

I keep coming across this theme again and again. "One day you will tell your grandchildren..", "When you're lying in your deathbed..", etc. As if the younger human has an obligation to work to create the perfect set of memories for the older one, which then would be enjoyed for at best a few years. Toil for 50 years of your life to create the perfect last 2 years!

It's perverse, really. We seem to enjoy imagining ourselves enjoying the memories of our present lives..

Alternatively, you could work HARD at being bloody good at what you do.

Notation is a pretty big deal in Mathematics. As software people we should be able to appreciate how evocative notation can get rid of unnecessary cognitive load when dealing with complexity.

Here is a link that talks about notation in Maths: http://www.cut-the-knot.org/language/index.shtml . Here's another link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabla_symbol . The example from calculus is also pretty famous.

Also, FWIW, I didn't downvote you.

The article drops a couple of names. E.g., Fredrik Ullen, from where I got http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100518064610.ht...

> Is it not remarkable that 6 sheep plus 7 sheep make 13 sheep; that 6 stones plus 7 stones make 13 stones?

Personally, I find it rather remarkable that a pattern observed from pebbles, sheep or apples (i.e., 6 + 7 = 13) should hold for any set of discrete objects anywhere in the universe. It could well have been that, say, 1 apple + 1 apple = 2.5 apples, but 1 kitten + 1 kitten = 1.5 kittens.

> And no, I'm not "gifted". I'm just an average student who likes to understand how things work.

The really smart thing to do would have been to both know how the formulae are derived, and also notice patterns in them that will help you remember them (symmetry, special cases, designing your own mnemonics, etc.).

Here are a few that I'd suggest:

* The purple cow

* Positioning

* 22 immutable laws of marketing

I find it TRAGIC that investment in science education is seen purely from an economic perspective. Look at the keywords Barret uses: "development, productivity improvements, and growth"! "determinant of economic growth"! "work force expertise in STEM"!

These considerations are NOT what inspired mankind's greatest scientific thinkers and philosophers to devote their lives to their pursuits. The major theme to stress instead should be "the study of reality and truth". We all hunger to know "The Truth". Just ackowledge this basic human tendency then. That's all it takes.

India especially is pissing away its advantage of having a culture that places a high regard on education. At my home we had days set apart in a year where we literally worshipped books! (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durga_Puja#Kerala)

I am from Kerala. This is after a quick googling, but by world standards, we still have some way to go.

From the article:

> It has the highest per capita consumption - over eight litres (1.76 gallons) per person a year - in the nation

Here are the figures worldwide from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol_co...

Britons, for e.g., down 11.8 litres/year/person.

Some tricks that I've used:

- Don't look at the eventual goal - it's discouraging to see the long road you have to travel to get there. Instead, focus on the little things you can do now, and make doing those things your intermediate goals.

- Work in short (30 - 45 minutes) bursts. Planning long marathons only makes starting work that much more difficult.

- I keep a small TTD text file ala GTD style to get things off my mind. I usually finish most of the things I put in there. The file contains micro-items that need to be done.

- Focus on getting to the "starting ritual". If I have to work on a website, for example, I just focus on starting the IDE first.

- Start delivering whatever portions of the project you have completed thus far. Don't worry too much about the quality of your work. Instead, simply claim that the work's in its draft or beta stage.

- Have a personal blog, and log every day the work you have put in towards your goals. If you didn't do anything on a day, log that. This is also a great place for you to play your own coach.

- Don't torment yourself over past lapses. Just resolve to start from this moment on.

- Look at your past accomplishments, and affirm yourself of your ability to deliver.

All that being said, the fundamental problem here is putting up with an immediate unpleasantness in return for a potential future reward. If you cannot see a reward clearly, then obviously there's not much point fretting over procrastinating. Just enjoy your present moment!

I also think it might be useful to have an overarching sense of mission - some grand theme - to add an element of urgency that'll keep you going.

This may not be 100% relevant to your question, but am posting this FWIW.

My last paid job (C++ and Java developer at an investment bank) required a 2:1 split between debugging and development work. I identified the following areas that could use improvement.

1. Knowledge of our code-base. I spent downtime at work reading code and documenting the system architecture. This also called for an improvement in my code-reading and debugging skills.

2. Development work flow and knowledge of tools/technolgoies (GDB, Linux kernel architecture, Perl and Bash scripting for handy scripts).

3. Domain knowledge (finance).

4. Knowledge of other technologies involved (Sybase, etc.)

I found that most situations didn't really call for expert knowledge of C++ and Java or of algorithms (as I was led to believe in the interview), but actual understanding of the code-base, the existing system architecture, and how our portions interacted with the back-end systems.

IMO, with any technology, you will hit a point beyond which there's diminishing margin of returns on gaining deeper expertise. But you should read the technology reference manual (e.g., the Sybase Reference Manual or the Bash Manual) thoroughly at least once so that you build a mental map of options available that can be used when you need them.

> If you chose to work against poverty in India, what would you do?

:-)

See, my version of your question is: What would Gandhi (or Nehru, Bose, Azad, Bhagat, Savarkar, et. al.) do?

I don't have an answer to that right now, I am afraid.

> Therefore I can't blame people, if they don't know any better.

This sounds to me as patronizing. I refuse to think that Cameroonians "don't know any better".

I was not really speaking for Cameroon anyway. My main target was India, where you'll see the most demeaning, wretched kind of poverties. I am responsible for it, and if I choose not to do anything about it, then it's my deliberate choice. That's all I am saying.

> for example not everybody has the skills to become elected as president to be able to change the laws

We are not all born with the tools required for the things we need done. We acquire them over time.

Waiting for a messiah to materialize is what I'd call the Kalki-complex. Kalkis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalki) are myths. If there's to be change, it must come from us. And that sense of responsibility is what would inspire each of us to strive to be mini-Kalkis, and with any luck, some of us might even become major-Kalkis.