jansho

How exactly?

> I started thinking about it as a sort of superpower I have, one that must be used with great care and responsibility.

Bingo. Well done you. I’ve struggled with mental/emotional problems all my life, thought that I was cursed even, and accepting that I’ll never be cured [1] is the game-changer. For readers: it forces you to think how you can >>manage<< them better, and how it can actually be >>useful<<. This can be hard at first, and will continue to be a lifelong struggle, so patience, lots of them. Eventually you’ll be able to pinpoint your ‘problems’ and their triggers, and build up the discipline to adapt via lifestyle change. You’ll also begin to understand how these can be turned into, well, ‘superpowers’ when you’re in a calmer state of mind. Like the ability to empathise is frequently overlooked when it’s actually very powerful. (But please, don’t start looking to be powerful, for sure this will cause grief sooner or later!)

Solitude imo is not necessarily a bad thing, it encourages more introspection and independence once you train yourself to embrace it. As long as you balance it with the right amount of positive socialising of course.

[1] If you feel severely affected, PLEASE sought out professional help. Or at the very least, people who you can trust to be kind

Unfortunately we’re already starting to see this.

Yes that book is one of my favourites. It really made me believe that you can build something big while maintaining a great culture for everyone. I thought the mostly awesome films were proof of this - what a fallacy. This news is very sad indeed.

What a gem! Thank you

This is a joke, right?

Go to the Daily Mail, the Sun and any other rightwing tabloid of your choice, find an ethnic minority related article (don’t worry there’ll be five of them at least) and scroll down to comments section.

Katie Hopkins actually wrote about the Final Solution.

You’ve obviously not heard of the Rochdale gang that was front page news for weeks.

I don’t know about the US, but in the U.K. it’s pretty prevalent to associate minorities with a host of problems and crimes such as grooming and vandalism. The Rochdale story is absolutely disgraceful, but the comments and newspaper columns that I read scared me too - “This is proof that Asians are born sick” and “Why are we whites a minority in our country” and “Send them back to their country” and “Multiculturalism doesn’t work” and “We need another Final Solution.”

Find out if there’s a pattern, yes, but to fix the problem, not to justify demonisation of an entire group of people. Unfortunately, it’s more fun to get the pitchforks out.

/rant I do contract work and it’s ridiculous that some clients specifically request for graphics to be done on Adobe. When there are a myriad of other options now, like Affinity as you suggested, and Inkscape which I happen to prefer over Illustrator. And sometimes ad-hoc methods like online gif generators and filters are all you need for a simple job.

I still miss the time when I didn’t have to subscribe to Adobe Creative suite...

> I just want to get really good on the mandolin

There’s something sweet about that :) But a few centuries later, you sure you’ll still enjoy it?

Myself, I’m prone to getting frustrated that I can’t learn faster, but we just have to make peace with that. Being in ignorance and pain can sometimes be what makes life so poignant. Who knows, there will never be enough years that we can be satisfied with.

I better take off my musing hat now..

But don’t forget, our brain is limited to some extent and won’t be able to hold that amount of information. You’ll live to a thousand years, but you’ll probably only vividly remember the last five decades, and some smatterings from the past. Is that really meaningful?

Actually I also desire for longevity for reasons like yours, but I’ve been thinking, perhaps it’s more important to measure the quality of experiences rather than number of years. Wisdom, basically - and from history, we know that a deep level of that is attainable irrespective of background and age.

And then, there is also the eventual apathy towards life and wonder. I’m most afraid of that.

Edit: typo

Huh, I half-agree with other commentators that the list is almost like a joke. On the other hand, it’s starting the startup conversation here again. The startup world is not exactly at its peak now; less rags-to-riches save-the-world stories, and more like scandals and housing crises and Juicero-dumbo moments. At least, it’s making me think about what AI can actually be useful for, even though I’m mostly not a fan of it and most certainly don’t see its worth in pet interactions.

OP did say it’s an experiment :x

> I'm more of the mindset "this is inevitable so i hope someone takes the moral/responsible route with it"

I might have misunderstood but you’re suggesting an actually safe, well-designed social network for kids right?

Agreed, systems aren’t open and closed in a binary sense. But social networks only thrive when the channels for self-expression are flexible, available and lots of people are using them. With kids however, safety is No.1 and as long as the channels are open, it’s impossible to safeguard against dodgy content and (worse) users. Really determined people will always find ways to get around a system, and the more ‘open’ the system is (for example private messages and chat functionalities) the higher the risks. That’s what I meant by “oxymoron.”

Club Penguin is interesting, because imo it’s an example of a fairly closed social network. Kids can only interact via the available set of responses, like emoticons and coins. (At least that’s what it was like more than five years ago when I watched my younger siblings play.) So there’s no way to type in anything, all profiles are avatar-based and they have pretty fierce moderators. It’s very well designed actually. But to use it as a way to educate kids of social media in general, maybe not, just because the major social networks like Facebook etc are designed too differently (i.e. more open.) That’s why I’m an advocate of internet safety education - because you’re right, it’s impossible to shield them!

The only way I can think of implementing a safe social network for kids is within the school itself. Okay you’re with your classmates all the time, but the social network can be more of a democratic educational platform, where kids can access content and discuss topics anytime. In the U.K., there’s a few like that already, though it’s still a bit primitive (Frog I hear is quite buggy.)

Why not effective Internet safety education and a bunch of apps that block NSFW, set time limit etc? (An AI bot that hovers in one corner and highlights and teaches not-OK content, maybe ..?)

IMO a safe children’s social network is a bit of an oxymoron. You’re never going to make something safe, unless it’s a closed system!

Hmm it’s true that we’re mostly familiar with what problems need to be solved. And yet it’s either high failure rate or too little effort to address them. So I see the key being the founding team. I know that that is repeated ad nauseum, but it’s often as an instruction and no more (”Find a great cofounder!”)

Well, in real life, it’s hard to find a truly complementary cofounder - let alone a team - even if one has a great network. It’s not just talent, it’s other things like personality traits and leadership styles. The greatest ones like Jobs/Wozniak only comes once in a while, and that’s thanks to luck. So why not frame this as an actual problem statement? For example, for problem x, what’s the ideal makeup of the team to solve it? How do we find brilliant and passionate individuals and bring them together? How do we sustain that team energy and commitment to the vision?

So maybe, that’s something for startup incubators to think about. Basically a sort of recruitment, Avengers style.

> So that's a pidly 90 hours of instruction per year. I'm going to teach you practically nothing in that time.

Well, there’s always not enough time to teach something properly :) I don’t think that teachers need to be so idealistic, just as long as they tick-box the curriculum (sadly exams do matter a lot) and plant plenty of seeds which, we hope, would set root soon if not later in their lives.

By that I mean spending significant classroom time on interaction and the “fun stuff”. For example if it’s ESL and the students are into pop music, okay let’s decipher some Beyoncé or let’s try and mimic some funky singer’s accent. Do some immersive stuff, make it real. I’m a big fan of flipped classrooms, where students study most of the formal stuff for homework - this will also help them construct the knowledge in their own way - and then present it in class and have more meaningful discussions.

But I would say that if the students are beginners, then yes you do need to organise information to make it as easy as possible. The initial learning curve is always the hardest! When they become more comfortable and confident, they can always go back and revise their mental models.

Edit: Sorry, I didn’t take into account that you might be a private tutor. If you were, then I can absolutely relate to the frustration! Parents’ (totally unrealistic) expectations also do not help at all

I think a mix of 1:1 tutoring and student collaboration is the best deal. No data, but when I worked in a primary school with high % of school meal children, the literacy rate was noticeably higher when there were more literacy specialists doing 1:1 tutoring. The sessions are often 5-10 minutes but occur daily. They also have classroom literacy where they get a chance to do lots of partner work.

I thought I had read the post before. Thank you for the insights, and I hope that you can do that follow-up!

One thing not mentioned which I think is important is the ease of paying (whether the edtech is app or web-based). It’s all very well to target those in poorer countries, but many of them (consumers) still don’t have online banking, and payment gateways are often local and clunky (I did notice in my last trip to Asia that this is improving.) I’d love to hear your thoughts on this :)

Well, there’s also the dodgy adverts that occasionally interrupt the video..

I saw how at my local primary school, kids were happily jumping up and down to a song and suddenly there’s a chocolate advert.

Imo the safest way to let kids browse is walled gardens like Netflix Kids. But that would also be unleashing an entire new addiction.

The ideal scenario is parent supervision, but most parents don’t have enough time/patience to sit with their kids everyday. In fact the iPad is meant to be the new babysitter!

It’s quite a problem, this one is.

Genuine question. Are there actual large, profitable companies which are tax responsible? I.e. companies that follow ethical accounting practices to minimise their tax and none of the dodgy off-shoring stuff

Your “if” is totally judging a civilisation as a whole ;)

Must the 21st century be characterised by paranoia/vigilance? :(

No what’s creepy is that we’ve got enough surveillance from social media and CCTV, now it’s in our workplace too. That’s most of our day. Sheesh, these people need to get a life

Edit: typo

Now that surveillance is getting cleverer, the question is, how do we know if we’re being monitored? How can we tell which companies practice surveillance?

>blame rests with Islam and Mayans for the loss of this knowledge. They restricted and locked up their scientific knowledge, to the point of not having backups, and then their point of control over that knowledge got destroyed, along with all the knowledge.

Woah there that’s harsh. You can’t judge a civilisation based on how much they back-up their knowledge - much of the survival is based on luck, like how fortunately the Rosetta Stone was written in stone and not papyrus. I would argue that the acquired knowledge did survive ... through Europe!

It’s also incorrect to say that the Muslim civilisation was closed. It flourished because it was open (with some restrictions for sure), for Muslims and non-Muslims, and there was genuine passion for knowledge in general (hence non-religious activities such as scientific endeavours and preserving Ancient Greek works.) Many of the scholars were in fact non-Muslim and non-Arab.

Thanks everyone for the high quality responses, really made my day. I’m going to attempt to systemise all the suggestions made, and try out those that suit me best.

And good luck with your learning projects! So humbling to see that many of you make learning literally lifelong :)

Since I can be compulsive, drugs are banned from my mind. Some double-edged swords are just too sharp.

(I didn’t downvote you)

Thank you for this. I have a lifetime plan (goodness knows how many years that will be) but I know for sure that I want to leave while knowing that I tried to understand. This may be why I want to learn everything, but this may also be just gluttony because I’m not a very good student. I may also not be that idealistic after all, I want to do a startup but lack the confidence, and I think it’s because I don’t have enough confidence in my knowledge and not enough discipline. By training myself to be a better learner, I hope to be more ready (some of my projects are related to the startup idea.)

I am going to try chunking by week and see how that goes. Maybe the switching costs felt too high because I was doing small chunks of everything in timeframes that are too small.

> Big Picture first, then the details through practice

> Only challenge the status quo when gained sufficient knowledge of domain

> Strunk and White etc, and don’t have to finish books

> Repeat everything, consistently

> Don’t let others discourage

Gotcha.

About data science, I’m starting from rock bottom i.e. basic stats to overcome an old prejudice, and psychology to start thinking in statistics (thanks Kahneman.) And thank you again!

Ooh this I can relate. My projects are nowhere as heavy as yours, and even when I attempt to set milestones, I find that I rebel against them in very creative ways. I’ve learnt to be ‘flexible’ instead. It’s a matter of slow-training yourself I guess. Good luck with your projects

This is interesting as I’m attempting to replicate a normal school’s curriculum. At school, we often take 4-6 subjects a day, which I now realise is the aspect I enjoyed most, and missed terribly at university. But now, it’s not so easy with other commitments, and also there is almost no mentor/peer support.

15 minutes per subject per day is a bit controversial for me though, as when I get into the swing of things, I work really hard. But I’ve never thought about this affecting momentum, perhaps my getting overwhelmed is actually a sign of burnout