Oh yeah, what kind of exit did Rome get? They raised a lot of rounds, but did they ever go public? I heard they got acquihired and most folks got nothing
I'm not sure there is much worth in imitating a Roman Emperor. They were violent megalomaniacal psychopaths to a man. There is little, about Marcus as a human being, I would consider "successful". Just because he was a good Emperor doesn't mean he was a morally successful person.
To me, successful "mind hacks" help us become more success at being better people; not enabling a horrible empire.
Of course the final word on Marcus should go to Mary Beard, the best classist of her generation:
--->“I have never understood what people get out of him. It’s a bad book. It’s hard to argue about it — it’s so evidently garbage that it’s hard to sit down with somebody who doesn’t think it’s garbage and fight it out. He’s a terrible writer."
I'm definitely not a classicist, but I think it's unfair to criticize his writing abilities too much. He wasn't writing a book for others as I understand it, it was his personal diaries. EDIT: also most people are reading a translation, so there's another layer of editorial in there.
> LLM coding is like reading a math textbook without trying to solve any of the problems.
Most math textbooks provide the solutions too. So you could choose to just read those and move on and you’d have achieved much less. The same is true with coding. Just because LLMs are available doesn’t mean you have to use them for all coding, especially when the goal is to learn foundational knowledge. I still believe there’s a need for humans to learn much of the same foundational knowledge as before LLMs otherwise we’ll end up with a world of technology that is totally inscrutable. Those who choose to just vibe code everything will make themselves irrelevant quickly.
I haven't used AI yet but I definitely would love a tool that could do the drudgery for me for designs that I already understand. For instance, if I want to store my own structures in an RDBMS, I want to lay the groundwork and say "Hey Jeeves, give me the C++ syntax to commit this structure to a MySQL table using commit/rollback". I believe once I know what I want, futzing over the exact syntax for how to do it is a waste of time. I heard c++ isn't well supported but eventually I'll give it a try.
The ones I used for the first couple of years of my math PhD had solutions. That's a sufficient level of "advanced" to be applicable in this analogy. It doesn't really matter though - the point still stands that _if_ solutions are available you don't have to use them and doing so will hurt your learning of foundational knowledge.
Is it the Napeoleon Technique or Ostrich Effect to decide not to read the news? I’ve been doing this for the past ~1 year and I’m much happier for it. I’m torn whether I’m just being a bad citizen/selfish or genuinely just not paying attention to things that I have no influence over.
I basically have never actively sought out World News, and just find out "through osmosis" by talking to friends or hearing about things coincidentally. Then I go google specific events that interest me. I find that most immediate reporting is unclear anyways, and adding 2-3 months of hindsight generally results in more facts and less speculation. I think this has worked really well for me. If the world goes to shit within 3 months I think I will notice even without reading the news.
I'm not sure if this strategy can generalize to the entire population, since I am relying on my friends to mention events to me.
I guess the counter-argument is that the world is slowly going to shit and it's only by paying attention and getting involved that we can prevent that. But I don't think that justifies daily news reading.
Much news is biased towards specific political PoVs so that if you’re not aligned with those views, it can be frustrating to hear the same opinions, day after day, on matters that should be solved differently.
It takes a lot to move the needle, and I can understand anyone who simply doesn’t have the energy.
And then other folks ignore international law and simply do whatever they want, while others look on or pay the matter only lip-service.
I would argue it makes you a better citizen by not falling prey to the emotional manipulation that all of the news sources blast us with non-stop. There is enough hate and anger in the world and the constant stoking of those flames is doing us no good. And unless you're actually going to take action and do something about it (and I'd argue that posting rants on social media does not qualify), then what is the point of absorbing that anger.
I know people on both sides who have fallen prey to this and are no longer pleasant to be around.
I do not read the news either. Reading about all the shit every day just makes me feel down, and I am fully aware of what is going on in the world without actively seeking out the news. Trickle down news is enough.
One is not a bad citizen for not constantly swimming in the depressing narratives. In addition, a lot of news are spun to make you feel as bad as possible, just like social media thrives more the worse you feel.
The news, and with it politics, have largely deteriorated to the point where only a few percent of the highest quality sources are worth any attention. It's all simple narrative grievance and entertainment. NYT in particular has fallen into oblivion resorting to typo clickbait and hate reads. The attention economy has defeated the information economy, with this one weird trick...
My prediction for the New Year is that LLMs won't make it better.
I went for a while without reading any news but my grandmother told me I should always stay informed. I figured she was right so I at least keep abreast of things but don't read too deeply.
To some extent this seems like a feature, not a bug. I have many tabs open that I find myself resistant to closing but I'm pretty sure if they just got closed and I forgot they existed my life would be no worse.
This is exactly my experience. sometimes it does come handy, but most of the time it really doesn't matter. but that "risk" of potentially closing something that you'll need / want to look at later makes me just create a new window and drag that one in the background for safekeeping
I feel similarly. I am happiest and healthiest all round when I focus on the one thing I have chosen to do at any given time rather than figuring out ways to multi-task.
I do however enjoy choosing to do math/coding adjacent activities for leisure or learning sometimes when I'm away from the computer. I've found that it was a net positive in my life to add in puzzles/exercises that I can do with pen and paper in those circumstances.
The issue I find with Chinese cooking is that it often requires very high heat and so (probably due to bad technique on my part) I get a house full of smoke or at least very high VOCs. Any tips to avoid that?
An appropriate oil (canola/peanut) and having everything that's going to go in the pan prepped before you even get the heat going are the main things to minimize smoke, but if you're cooking something that really calls for max heat you'll get smoke periodically as the oil returns to that temp unless your burner can't get the pan up to the smoke point of the oil. Prep is very important since adding ingredients absorbs a lot of heat so if you're cooking something that needs smoking hot oil you can immediately add ingredients in when the oil hits temp and that will absorb energy to bring the temp back down. It also helps you get it done asap. If you have to fumble around for stuff or prep ingredient 4 on the side while the pan is already in use for ingredient 1/2/3 it's very easy to loose track of things and end up with a pan that just sits there smoking. Also add the oil just before you start cooking, don't let it heat up with the pan.
Practically speaking in a home kitchen you also don't have to cook with heat that high, even if you're using a wok. There are plenty of recipes that call for lower temps, and you can often even make things that do call for high temps on a lower one instead. If you're dedicating to cooking that way you could also look into improving your vent hood if that's an option in your housing setup.
Get a real ventilation for the stove, not just a microwave that recirculates air. Most Chinese in China have separate kitchens with doors and window ventilation, it’s harder in the way Americans design open kitchens with the living room.
You can do lots of Chinese cooking on lower heat using non stick pans, fried rice isn’t that healthy for you anyways. We might trigger the smoke detector once or twice a month, some food (like fish) has a higher chance of triggering than others even if we don’t go full boast on temp.
Use a gas wok burner out on the kitchen porch. These will get you closer to restaurant power levels anyway. They use what amounts to a broken off gas main with a foot pedal.
Mike Acton talks about deliberate practice in programming exactly this way. Every day start with a blank sheet and try to build something for an hour (his example is Astroids). Next day, start again and get a little further. Eventually you'll be able to build the whole thing in an hour.
I am not a programmer, so I did not know the name.
But I just looked him up, and I can see why he is a legend.
His philosophy—stripping away the unnecessary to focus on the reality (data/hardware)—resonates deeply with me.
The practice you described (building from scratch daily) is exactly the "Tea Ceremony" of the digital age.
It is not about the tea (the result), but about the procedure (the internalization).
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