yigitcakar

Literature, even though it shares some common ground, is a bit different than other art forms. We use music usually as a filler, visual arts for aesthetic fulfillment, but we read to learn something new, to transition ourselves.

Good writing is not a bunch of words on a page but it is what is not said, what is between the lines, and the word and punctuation choices of the writer. Maybe one day an AI will be able to write like a great writer does, but by then computers will be able to do all of our jobs.

I used to try to do everything myself, being a jack of all trades and I was proud of it.

Then the life stopped rewarding my jack of all tradeness and I felt the pressure to focus on one thing and one thing only.

That one thing allowed me to hire people who are good at what they do instead of half assing those things myself.

This is my story, your story, and probably the story of the humanity itself.

I think the career happiness and most success comes from when sth someone would have done if nobody would have paid that person is the thing other people need and pay for. It is hard to find that sth. but when you find it, it is gold.

For me it was art, especially concept art. You have to find yours.

Exactly!

I think it is because traditional auto manufacturers are catching up with the electric car game. No other company will bet their reputation on self driving cars, because their reputation is much more important than their electric cars' success. They can wait longer and try different variations until their electric car market grows profitable. Tesla on the other hand has to differentiate and stay ahead of the curve so it doesn't get trampled. That's why he is so obsessed with self driving.

Ex-insurance company sales manager here. I agree that the insurance premiums are a good indicator but they will stay higher than normal vehicles because of the way insurance works. Reinsurers buy the potential risks in bulk and the way it is priced is putting similar risks and assets in a basket and then comparing the data they have about event possibility of the risk. The big data usually gives a pretty good indicator of the total number of accidents, incidents that will happen.

I have been away from the insurance sector for a couple years now, but before the electric car market was evaluated as its own class. This creates a huge problem because you can't distribute the claims optimally. If I simplify it you get (electric car insurance claims/electric cars that have insurance) + operation costs + profit %. Whereas in normal cars, your premium is decided based on the drivers age, previous accidents, car's age, car's color, the horse power, where the person lives, how much they drive etc. In the company I worked for we optimized the premium with over 200 data points.

You can't use the same optimization regarding electric cars because the market is so small and the data isn't there yet. Moreover insurers increase premiums to be on the safe side.

Because magic happens two different worlds collide, and we don't know where the magic will happen. So we put everything related and then see what happens.

Of course there are applications that simplicity works well but I believe to create the simplicity we have to understand what is possible we have to deal with complexity first.

Simplicity first doesn't work, because we don't know what will be the most interesting thing for the users.

Elon has been declaring so many things that are not supported by facts, I don't think we should believe him without objective third party data.

I admire the idea of having a public currency with no ties to governments. That might create a better, more equal future. But bitcoin is failing that and it's what Taleb is talking about. I am not a working economist, but I am trained as one, and I would like to drop my two cents here.

I like the idea of having a public currency with no ties to governments because that makes our wealth safe from policies that have nothing to do with us, or our country. For example, I am Turkish and my wife is American. We are tied to the US and Turkey. Right now we earn some of our income in Turkish Liras, and some of it in US Dollars. The Turkish Lira(TRY) has been losing its value because of the incompetent financial management of the country. Basically our TRY wealth has lost half of its value in the past two years. Even though we don't feel that loss locally we feel it globally. The disturbing thing is we did nothing wrong to lose half of our wealth. A small group of people at the head of the government, with their horrendous decisions made us lose half of our wealth in just two years.

Same situation is going on with the global economy as well. We haven't felt the effects of Biden's new stimulus package yet, but as more money enter the system, all of our wealth will get a hit because of the inflation. America bets that they are going to create enough wealth with the 2b they are going to spend on infrastructure and will handle the effects of inflation. But what about rest of the world? We don't get anything, we will just lose our wealth.

When Bitcoin(BTC) was founded, the hope was to create a global currency with no ties with governments so we can preserve our wealth. But the speculative nature of Bitcoin makes it unsuitable for such a task. If BTC was stable enough, it would be preferable to gold to preserve wealth because it is easier to save and transfer. But you can't trust BTC. Anybody who understands finance will tell you it is the biggest bubble economy has ever seen. People with financial backgrounds don't trust BTC because it reminds them the previous economic bubbles that hurt global economy when the economy wasn't global. Since BTC became mainstream and started growing in an unprecedented way, I fear the effects of the burst because I know about the south sea bubble of 1720.

In BTC kind of bubbles everything looks wonderful to the public until a lot of wealth disappears in a couple of weeks. It took four weeks for the south sea bubble to burst and to lose 75% of its value. I believe when the bubble bursts and panic sets in BTC will lose most of its value in a shorter time. Moreover, in this burst there will be no government to mend the economic hurt people will suffer. That's what the economists are trying to warn people about.

When BTC people talk about BTC they usually talk from individual perspectives. They are earning a lot of money through BTC, so what's the problem with that? They say people who are against BTC doesn't get it, or are jealous because they are not earning money through BTC. Well, when the economists talk about BTC they talk about it from a global economic perspective. People can do what they deem worthy with their money, they can gamble, they can bet on BTC and try to earn more. Economists has no problem with that. Economists care about understanding the effects of the aggregate actions of people and economists don't want people to lose 75% of their wealth in a couple of weeks knowing the implications. They warn against bitcoin because when people who invest huge amounts of their money on BTC lose their wealth there will be no doors to knock to ask for help.

The BTC people almost always say that BTC is like gold. Well it's not. First, gold is tangible. You can have your gold and save it somewhere. Moreover, gold is one of the safest investments because over time gold price always increases. If you invest all of your wealth in gold, in the long term you will preserve your wealth. Can you say that with BTC? Of course not. You can't be sure that people will continue valuing BTC after the bust. You can't be sure that you will be able to sell your BTC after the bust. You can end up having some digits on some machines people are running for nostalgia. Moreover, gold is entangled in global economy and governments will interfere if the price of gold drops spectacularly. If the same happens to BTC, governments will shrug and tell that that's why people should use government backed currencies.

Another fallacy BTC people has is listening to people who are not financial experts. People might be successful experts in other areas, but economics is a different beast. I am good at marketing and sales, and people consider me as an expert in those areas. Would you accept my advice on programming a Linux kernel? That's happening with regards to BTC though. People who don't know about economics and finance, spends their days giving financial advice to people. Even people who are experts at finance would always tell that what they are telling are not financial advice whenever they talk, because it is just their opinion — and also for legal reasons. But those BTC zealots don't see a problem with suggesting people put their livelihoods and futures risk in an unstable, risky investment option.

We have to be reminded that, Newton, arguably one of the smartest human ever, and one of the most brilliant minds of his time with a great understanding of the financial events of his time, lost a huge part of his wealth when the bubble burst. You can read about it here: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsnr.2018.001...

Yet, I don't think BTC is a ponzi scheme. BTC is a risky financial instrument. NFT on the other hand is a beautiful ponzi scheme.

Thanks for the recommendations, I will definitely check Greg Egan, never heard of him. I agree with the rest :)

Sadly, publishing world is guilty of turning popular blog post series into books because the bloggers have a platform to promote. Then the bloggers turn each paragraph in their famous blog post into chapters in their book. You can understand that kind of books by reading the first few paragraphs of each chapter. As an example, Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life comes to my mind. I think he turned a Quora answer to a book for that one.

I love books that make me think along, and take me a lot of time to finish. James N. Frey's How to write a damn good novel is my example for that kind of book.

I would love to hear the books you have studied thoroughly.

I don't use a particular system. I am using Evernote to take all my notes because I take notes on many machines and when I started note taking Evernote was the only one I found with multi-device support.

Rarely, when I come across an interesting sentence structure or a great way to express an idea I write the exact words that is in the books.

Usually, I paraphrase what I have read, and jot down why I find it worthwhile. If the idea leads to new ones I follow those as well. I used to skip these thoughts because I thought reading the book was more important, but now I am focused on getting the most out of a book and following my thoughts, and thinking about the information is part of it.

Before, the title of the notes used to be the book's title and I would organize my notes based on titles. But for a couple years I have been taking notes around subjects. Since I also read around subjects, my note taking and my reading support each other nicely. If you consider starting to take notes while you are reading, I'd suggest going with subject based organization. If a note can be part of more than one subject, I copy the note to the other notebooks.

This subject based note taking also helps with understanding my interests, because some subjects grow dramatically while others grow marginally.

It also works as an early alert system when you are slacking off on areas you have to know but skip because you find them boring. This early alert system is extremely important for people with ADHD. I don't know about you, but I tend to over-focus on areas that I find interesting and don't touch areas that I don't. Then I try to make the areas that are important more interesting.

Thank you! Good job! I am so proud of you :)

The article lacked substance but I am glad that we are talking about reading with ADHD here.

I don't feel guilty about not finishing books because most of the times if I force myself to finish a book that I don't find interesting enough, I don't remember the information in the book anyway.

Over time I have learned to trust my brain, and figured that it will remember the important parts I read. If the book bores me then probably there is nothing interesting in it for me.

Most of my life I read books without taking notes, and I would go through them thinking that I understand everything, but in the end I would miss deeper connections and wouldn't connect them to the information I already possess.

Now, I read non-fiction books with taking notes and taking notes makes me stop and think about what I am reading and enables me to make deeper connections with what I already know and improves retaining. Also shifting from reading to note taking and going back helps my ADD brain. I read a couple books at a time, and when I get bored of one, I shift to another one that interests me. I choose my books around one topic, and this topical similarity makes my ADHD a boon because this way I can make those books talk to each other and improve my understanding of the subject. I used to take all my notes longhand before, but now I type really fast and writing longhand feels antiquated now. I also love to be able to search my notes and use my notes as a second-brain.

I read both from kindle and paper-books. The change from kindle to paper also helps my brain. The variety increases my concentration.

When I am reading fiction, I try to visualize everything I read because if I stop visualizing, it turns into eye training, I think other things, or just read and don't remember anything. If I figure out I am eye training instead of reading, I stop reading the book and come back later.

I hope this helps.

> What do you think? ... What else you want there? My wife.

Well, I don't think a planet with no women will survive because women and sexual desire has been the biggest motivator of humanity since forever. In a world without women, either we are going to get bored and stagnate playing games or we are going to wage wars and end the world. Men don't struggle because of women, men struggle because they settle with the first woman they seduce. Settling with the first job that would want you will also make you miserable.

Strive for the most suitable woman for you, strive for the best job for you, strive for the best lifestyle for you, then you are going to be happy.

I for one, would not to live in a world without my wife, since she is a way better companion than any man can be and I am so happy to have an amazing companion.

I always argue that identity politics is important but it is not as effective as empowering working population. Improving the lives and wages of working class allows them to invest more in themselves and become more successful. It allows them to improve the condition of the next generation.

And moreover, minorities are usually from the working class, therefore improving the working class' conditions will improve the minorities' conditions as well.

I used to think education creates prosperity, and with prosperity comes self-actualization. As I learned more about the world, I started to think that economic security and extra income lets people pursue education and with education comes self-actualization. We should improve the bottom lines lives so that we decrease the inequalities in our society.

My hypothesis is that we use substances that hurt us because we are conscious about our own mortality. Using a mind-altering substance, a.k.a. poisoning yourself, is like turning on the light to see the big monster in the dark is just a pile of clothes. It gives us a sense that death won't be that bad.

Marketing is always about going where your customers are and showing them how your product will improve their life and in what ways.

Today, marketers are using social media because that's where people spend the most time now and it is also cost effective because you can target your ad. But the marketing world has been doing business without social media for centuries now. I am 34, and even I worked as a marketer before social media.

For reaching a group that opt-out of social media, you should use golden age marketing techniques. You should understand the demographics of your target group and what they do with their lives. Maybe they go to similar events, maybe they read similar magazines, etc.

And don't forget, digital marketing is bigger than social media marketing. Those people still use google, still use other websites. If you make your ads right, they will click it knowing they are clicking an ad. And, you shouldn't base your marketing on tricking your customers anyway, so provide value, use content marketing, make a cool product and they will come.

I agree with this article 100%. In my opinion, Elon Musk is a privileged man who by luck met with some of the great technological visionaries of our time, a.k.a. paypal mafia.

Nobody talks about it, but it is easy to find under-appreciated technologies and invest in them if you are rich and well connected. The unique quality of Elon Musk is that he is willing to bet on extremely risky ventures. There is nothing visionary about electric cars or space ships in our age. As the article mentions, both ventures had investors and smart people working on the area long before Elon Musk was interested in those. Elon's action was not a gambit, it was gamble. Elon got successful thanks to the zeitgeist.

The climate change, China's consolidation of global production forced the US' hand to invest in the success of Tesla and SpaceX. Elon has a lot of friends who is well-connected within the government, and he is well-connected in the business world. His past success as PayPal's co-founder has also helped him to secure funding and gave him clout. Since the US desperately needed to show that the American dream is still alive, Elon Musk became the poster child of the new America. He wasn't sophisticated enough to fit the role, so he became a meme instead.

If that's your goal, being an entrepreneur is not the way to go. Especially start-up entrepreneurs work an obscene amount of time and most of them fail at making money.

For your purposes, you don't need business skills, you need investment skills and you have to save money. Save as much as you can, don't get into debt, reduce spending and save your money in assets that will generate regular revenue. I have trained professionally about finance. I don't know many non-academic books regarding finance and personal finance for a beginner. Maybe our friends here can share their favorites.

If you haven't read it, Tim Ferriss' four hour workweek might give you some ideas though.

I totally agree with everything Mr. Gates says.

I would like to urge you to take notes digitally though. A long time ago, I started taking notes on Evernote while I am reading and this changed how much information I retain.

Now, my notes are interlinked and organized around subjects. I can reach what I have read or what I have thought about a subject while I was reading about a book about it almost instantly.

The only downside with taking your notes digitally is that you have to tend to your notes and weed out the bad ones constantly.

The answer depends on why you want to grow a business sense. What are you trying to achieve with your business skills?

If you want to understand the business world, the management aspect of it, I suggest reading Peter Drucker's Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices.

If you want to get better at networking, I would suggest reading Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.

If you want to understand marketing, I would suggest, Marketing: An Introduction by Philip Kotler

Peter Thiels' book Zero to One might be a good starting point to understand the start-up world.

But for a general instinct about business, you have to stay curious and learn how people think and behave. Being curious about anthropology, psychology, economics, news, trends, sociology are key.

After 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt, Erdogan government doesn't trust military air-force. After the attempt, a large part of the airforce has been dismantled, and retired airforce pilots asked to return. A lot of them didn't because private companies provide a better life. So there are trust issues and also a shortage of pilots on the military side.

The article mentions that they are going to use the helicopters on the eastern side of the Turkey where Kurdish terrorist forces are active. Since the Kurdish attacks began, the military use in Turkish soil has garnered arguments. That's why police is also really active in the fight against terrorism.

Moreover, lately the political climate in Turkey has turned against the Kurdish political movement and every time this happens, the Kurdish terrorist arm gets active. I believe this is part of the preparations against possible terrorist activity. I believe there will be an insurgence of terrorist activity because every time the country is in chaos, Erdogan's grip of power strengthens and Erdogan needs to reinforce his rule.

In the last local elections ruling AKP party lost the municipalities of the big cities, and especially losing Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality hit AKP really hard. Erdogan was the mayor of the city before founding AKP, and has been using the city to fund some of AKP's operations.

The polls show that the mayor of Istanbul Ekrem Imamoglu, and the mayor of Ankara Mansur Yavas, both from the opposing party CHP, are seen as direct competition to Erdogan and in most of the polls both exceed Erdogan. In Turkey, they say, whomever gets Istanbul gets the country, and Imamoglu has been a great leader for the city.

Also, Erdogan has to have an early election to be able to be a candidate, or change the constitution before the elections. He doesn't have a candidate that can replace him in the party, and under current conditions — a disastrous pandemic, crumbling economy, skyrocketing unemployment — he couldn't win an early election.

Therefore, I expect Erdogan to strangle the politic arm of the Kurdish movement and make the military arm react with bombings and terrorist activity in the near future. It is Erdogan's hope to be on top of it, and win another election as the savior of Turkey.

> If you change, but the algorithms don't acknowledge that change and treat you the same, how much is you identity in your own hands, how fungible is it?

I don't think algorithms doesn't change my identity, but I am curious whether people I am loosely connected or the algorithms will acknowledge this change first.

> I don't think so, but I'm not sure it matters. The end result is similar, only that there's not one large conspiracy that's trying to herd you into thinking a certain way.

I think there might be though, since marketers always think about market segmentation and creating the systems that guide people into herds will be the first thing they would think. If you consider almost all the big tech companies are funded by advertising, shifting people into manageable segments might be intentional.

1. To give interfaces to developers to interact with your system. 2. Making sure those interactions doesn't harm your system. 3. Free marketing - people who use your API to create their services will also market you. 3. Fluid information delivery 4. Increased integration capabilities. I believe every major technological breakthrough reach public once they have interoperability.

I think overall, APIs increase a systems resilience by enabling them to change different parts without breaking the whole and to monitor and ensure the security of interactions.

I hope it was helpful. I wish you luck on your journey to the new role!

There will be sacrifices you will have to make to succeed, but I hope that in the end you will achieve your target. Every time I was in the middle of a career change, I feel all this effort and sacrifice aren't worth it; I can just enjoy what I have. I don't succumb to that feeling and work harder.

You are the only one who can decide if the prize at the end worth the sacrifices along the way.

The interview improved my understanding of our civilization's current situation. I was aware of Hypernormalization we have been feeling in Turkey, and thought that it is similar to Soviet Society, but I didn't understand that the reason for the static nature of the world in general was pattern analysis.

I should have suspected this. I used to spend my time painting and worked as a graphic designer. A couple months ago I changed my role in the company and have been working as a copywriter/editor. Even though for the past couple months, I have been spending all my time devouring books about writing, and understanding this new behemoth, the internet still suggest me things only about art. I have changed, but the algorithms didn't catch up yet. I wonder how long will it take until the algorithms catch up.

This was a major change in my life, and I can easily see the lag, but I wonder how does the algorithms that recommend stuff to me guides my thinking, especially on subjects smaller in scale. How does the spiral of recommendations change our perception of the world? Moreover, do the big tech companies create this systems consciously? Is there a plot dividing the individuals into manageable groups?

Definitely the machines don't look at us as a narrative, so I think as long as my searches and inventory of items related to art is bigger than the ones about writing, the world will continue treating me as an artist.

If you'd like to learn journalism style writing in English especially if English is not your mother tongue, I would recommend American English for World Media: The CUNY Journalism School Guide to Writing and Speaking for Professionals by Diane Nottle

The book gives insights into everything a foreigner might face while writing for journalism in English.

I don't know anything specific about shifting from an engineering role to product management one; but in my career I shifted from a sales job to marketing management then shifted to graphic design and lastly to writing, and found that the action I took to make the shifts are similar(except the graphic design — my second college degree), so I would like to share my two cents.

Every role requires different skills but if you have been in the job market for a while, you probably also have some of those skills already. It is important to research the role you'd like to have and objectively analyze the skills you lack and the proficiencies you have that you can lean on.

For example I know sales, marketing, and graphic design, and that makes me one hell of a copywriter. There are better writers out there for sure, but I can edit my writing a million times to make it look decent. Yet, my understanding of sales and marketing trumps the thought processes of many copywriters, and my design background makes me understand how the text I have written can be utilized. I can also help with either one of these skills in an emergency.

I don't wait for somebody to give me the job. As some likeminded individuals advised in the comments, as soon as I am sure that I want to change what I am doing as a job, I start doing the tasks related to that job. When I was a graphic designer, I started offering changes to the copy we are getting. I started working closely with the editors and made sure that they know that they can trust me to help them. I became their go to guy in the department when they need help.

I work hard to get the necessary skills for the task. I spend my private time to master the tasks that the new occupation requires.

I market myself, my desires, my loyalty and my skills. Show that you want to move towards that area and also that you are working hard to learn about it. If you want to stay at the company you are working at, make sure that you say that you love the company, but you think that the other role might be more suitable for you.

I change the work of the other department for the better in ways that only I can. Provide a lot of value in the other occupation you'd like to do for free. Do the basic tasks nobody wants to do, help them solve their bottlenecks. While doing that do your normal job perfectly as well. Do not get demotivated. Just do both jobs at the same time and show everyone that you are capable.

If you do this for some time, the management starts to see that you are working hard on improving the company and an asset. In my experience, this alone is not enough to make the change, because usually there is someone else doing the job already, and you might have to work doing part of their job for a long time before they resign or get fired and management(whom you have been showing your desire and skill) might consider you for that position. That's rare and I wouldn't depend on it.

But don't be hopeless. You are coming from another occupation and you probably have skills others lack. Find out what is your unique proposition. Mine was English. The company I work for has to communicate with a lot of expats and ambassadors and even though we have a huge translation department, nobody could write eloquently enough in English. I could communicate in English to a certain degree and I can also do all the other tasks that are required from copywriters. Voila! Matchmaking in heaven!

I agree with both of your premises. I started going to International school when I was 10 and got all my education in English. I got two college and one masters degrees. I am fairly confident in my ability to use English yet my wife is American and every day she finds something to correct in my English.

My wife have been learning Turkish using Duolingo and a Turkish learning platform for the past couple months, and she can hold her end up in basic conversation. We have many expat friends who have been learning Turkish for a year or so and they can communicate pretty well.

Turkish syntax is wildly different than English syntax, and pronunciations are throat based rather than tongue based. There are lots of synonyms and parallel meanings in everyday use. Moreover there are not many resources to learn Turkish from. Yet, people start speaking broken Turkish enough to communicate complex ideas within a year.