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2024 reading list

Things I might read in 2024.



  • Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Richard Howard (translator) - The Little Prince
  • (Translation by) Sam Hamill - Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems From the Chinese
  • Sayaka Murata, Ginny Tapley Takemori (translator) - Convenience Store Woman (via)
  • Jorge Luis Borges - Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius (in Labyrinths)/ printed (via)
  • Franz Kafka - The Metamorphosis (via)
  • William Olaf Stapledon - Star Maker/ audio, go to 12m35s to skip past the introduction spoilers

  • The Heart of Innovation: A Field Guide for Navigating to Authentic Demand/ audio (via)
  • Peter D. Kaufman - Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition
  • Lia A. DiBello - Expertise in Business: Evolving with a Changing World (in The Oxford Handbook of Expertise) (via)
  • Joël Glenn Brenner - The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars
  • Elad Gil - High Growth Handbook/ audio
  • W. Edwards Demming - The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education/ audio
  • W. Edwards Demming - The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education/ the PDF or ebook
  • Henrik Karlsson - Escaping Flatland/ including the posts I SingleFile'd
  • the relevant-looking posts on benkuhn.net/posts
  • Commoncog Case Library Beta
  • Keith J. Cunningham - The Road Less Stupid: Advice from the Chairman of the Board/ audio
  • Keith J. Cunningham - The 4-Day MBA/ video
  • Cedric Chin's summary of 7 Powers
  • Akio Morita, Edwin M. Reingold, Mitsuko Shimomura - Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony
  • Nomad Investment Partnership Letters or redacted (via)
  • How to Lose Money in Derivatives: Examples From Hedge Funds and Bank Trading Departments
  • Brian Hayes - Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape
  • Accelerated Expertise (via)/ printed, "read Chapters 9-13 and skim everything else"
  • David J. Gerber - The Inventor's Dilemma (via Oxide and Friends)
  • Alex Komoroske - The Compendium / after I convert the Firebase export in code/websites/compendium-cards-data/db.json to a single HTML page
  • Rich Cohen - The Fish That Ate The Whale (via)
  • Bob Caspe - Entrepreneurial Action/ printed, skim for anything I don't know



Interactive fiction


unplanned notable things read


unplanned and abandoned

  • Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga - The Courage to Be Disliked/ audio
  • Matt Dinniman - Dungeon Crawler Carl/ audio
  • Charles Eisenstein - The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible/ audio
  • Geoff Smart - Who: The A Method for Hiring/ audio
  • Genki Kawamura - If Cats Disappeared from the World/ audio
  • Paul Stamets - Fantastic Fungi: How Mushrooms Can Heal, Shift Consciousness, and Save the Planet/ audio
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ivan commented Aug 25, 2024

In the philosophy of science, epistemic humility refers to a posture of scientific observation rooted in the recognition that (a) knowledge of the world is always interpreted, structured, and filtered by the observer, and that, as such, (b) scientific pronouncements must be built on the recognition of observation's inability to grasp the world in itself.[1] The concept is frequently attributed to the traditions of German idealism, particularly the work of Immanuel Kant,[2][3] and to British empiricism, including the writing of David Hume.[4]

[...]

According to philosopher of science Ian James Kidd, epistemic humility is a virtue that emerges from the recognition of the fragility of epistemic confidence–that is, of "the confidence invested in activities aimed at the acquisition, assessment, and application of knowledge and other epistemic goods."[11] For Kidd, any given truth claim rests on three types of confidence conditions: cognitive conditions, or specialized knowledge in a particular knowledge domain; practical conditions, or the ability to perform certain actions required to ascertain the claim; and material conditions, or access to particular objects about which truth claims are made.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemic_humility

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ivan commented Aug 25, 2024

In decision theory, the Ellsberg paradox (or Ellsberg's paradox) is a paradox in which people's decisions are inconsistent with subjective expected utility theory. John Maynard Keynes published a version of the paradox in 1921.[1] Daniel Ellsberg popularized the paradox in his 1961 paper, "Risk, Ambiguity, and the Savage Axioms".[2] It is generally taken to be evidence of ambiguity aversion, in which a person tends to prefer choices with quantifiable risks over those with unknown, incalculable risks.

Ellsberg's findings indicate that choices with an underlying level of risk are favored in instances where the likelihood of risk is clear, rather than instances in which the likelihood of risk is unknown. A decision-maker will overwhelmingly favor a choice with a transparent likelihood of risk, even in instances where the unknown alternative will likely produce greater utility. When offered choices with varying risk, people prefer choices with calculable risk, even when those choices have less utility.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellsberg_paradox

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ivan commented Aug 25, 2024

The Yale Model, sometimes known as the Endowment Model, was developed by Swensen and Takahashi and is described in Swensen's book Pioneering Portfolio Management. It consists broadly of dividing a portfolio into five or six roughly equal parts and investing each in a different asset class. Central in the Yale Model is broad diversification and an equity orientation, avoiding asset classes with low expected returns such as fixed income and commodities.

Particularly revolutionary at the time was his recognition that liquidity is a bad thing to be avoided rather than a good thing to be sought out, since it comes at a heavy price in the shape of lower returns.[17] The Yale Model is thus characterized by relatively heavy exposure to asset classes such as private equity compared to more traditional portfolios.[18] The model is also characterized by heavy reliance on investment managers in these specialized asset classes, a characteristic that has made manager selection at Yale a famously careful process.[19]

[...]

In 2005, Swensen wrote a book called Unconventional Success, which is an investment guide for the individual investor. The general strategy that he presents can be boiled down to the following three main points of advice:[22]

  • The investor should construct a portfolio with money allocated to 6 core asset classes, diversifying among them and biasing toward the equity sections.
  • The investor should rebalance the portfolio on a regular basis (rebalancing back to the original weightings of the asset classes in the portfolio).
  • In the absence of confidence in a market-beating strategy, invest in low-cost index funds and exchange-traded funds. The investor should be very watchful of costs as some indices are poorly constructed and some fund companies charge excessive fees (or generate large tax liabilities).

He slams many mutual fund companies for charging excessive fees and not living up to their fiduciary responsibility. He highlights the conflict of interest inherent in the mutual funds, claiming they want high fee, high turnover funds while investors want the opposite.[23]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_F._Swensen#The_Yale_Model

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ivan commented Aug 26, 2024

Braid is kind of bad but The Witness is a 10/10

https://x.com/seganaomi3/status/1722749646840455464

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ivan commented Aug 26, 2024

Conscientiousness is the personality trait of being responsible, careful, or diligent. Conscientiousness implies a desire to do a task well, and to take obligations to others seriously. Conscientious people tend to be efficient and organized as opposed to easy-going and disorderly. They tend to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement; they display planned rather than spontaneous behavior; and they are generally dependable. Conscientiousness manifests in characteristic behaviors such as being neat, systematic, careful, thorough, and deliberate (tending to think carefully before acting).[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientiousness

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ivan commented Aug 26, 2024

Confirmation bias (also confirmatory bias, myside bias,[a] or congeniality bias[2]) is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one's prior beliefs or values.[3] People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information, or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes. The effect is strongest for desired outcomes, for emotionally charged issues, and for deeply entrenched beliefs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

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ivan commented Aug 26, 2024

Munger used the term "Lollapalooza effect" for multiple biases, tendencies or mental models acting in compound with each other at the same time in the same direction. With the Lollapalooza effect, itself a mental model, the result is often extreme, due to the confluence of the mental models, biases or tendencies acting together, greatly increasing the likelihood of acting irrationally.[26]

During a talk at Harvard in 1995 titled The Psychology of Human Misjudgment, Munger mentioned Tupperware parties and open outcry auctions, where he explained "three, four, five of these things work together and it turns human brains into mush,"[27] meaning that normal people will be highly likely to succumb to the multiple irrational tendencies acting in the same direction. In the Tupperware party, you have reciprocation, consistency, and commitment tendency, and social proof. (The hostess gave the party and the tendency is to reciprocate; you say you like certain products during the party so purchasing would be consistent with views you've committed to; other people are buying, which is the social proof.) In the open outcry auction, there is social proof of others bidding, reciprocation tendency, commitment to buying the item, and deprivation super-reaction syndrome, i.e. sense of loss. The latter is an individual's sense of loss of what he or she believes should be (or is) his or hers. These biases often occur at either conscious or subconscious level, and in both microeconomic and macroeconomic scale.[28][29]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Munger

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ivan commented Aug 26, 2024

Buffett has described purchasing Berkshire Hathaway as the biggest investment mistake he had ever made, denying him compounded investment returns of about $200 billion over the subsequent 45 years.[14] He has estimated that had he invested the same money directly in insurance businesses instead of indirectly via Berkshire Hathaway (due to what he perceived as a slight by an individual), it would have paid off several hundredfold.[17]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkshire_Hathaway

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ivan commented Aug 26, 2024

I've been very productive using LLMs, without any expectations of them "writing functional code". Instead, I've mostly used them as if I was working with a human research librarian.

For example, I can ask the LLM things like "What are the most common mistakes when using the Vulkan API to render a triangle with a texture?" and I'll very rapidly learn something about working with an API that I don't have deep understanding of, and I might not find a specific tutorial article about.

As another example, if I'm an experienced OpenGL programmer, I can ask directly "what's the Vulkan equivalent of this OpenGL API call?" and get quite good results back, most of the time.

So I'm asking questions where an 80% answer is still very valuable, and it's much faster than searching for documentation and doing a lot of comparison and headscratching, and it works well enough even when there's no specific article I could find in a variety of searches.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41307023

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ivan commented Aug 26, 2024

The book's central thesis is that when the rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the rate of economic growth (g) over the long term, the result is concentration of wealth, and this unequal distribution of wealth causes social and economic instability.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century

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ivan commented Aug 26, 2024

Business-to-Business companies represent a significant part of the United States economy. This is especially true in firms with 500 employees and above, of which there were 19,464 in 2015,[1] where it is estimated that as many as 72% are businesses that primarily serve other businesses.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business-to-business

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ivan commented Aug 26, 2024

Due to Building 20's origins as a temporary structure, researchers and other occupants felt free to modify their environment at will. As described by MIT professor Paul Penfield, "Its 'temporary nature' permitted its occupants to abuse it in ways that would not be tolerated in a permanent building. If you wanted to run a wire from one lab to another, you didn't ask anybody's permission — you just got out a screwdriver and poked a hole through the wall."[2] Many building occupants were unaware of the presence of asbestos.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_20

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ivan commented Aug 26, 2024

Because of this huge codebase size, I wasn't able to get VS Code's C++ extension to work very well with the project. Features like go-to definition (which I usually rely on heavily when navigating codebases) and find references didn't work well or at all, and one of my CPU cores would stay stuck at 100% permanently while the project was open.

Chromium Code Search [1] tool is very helpful with that and I believe there are some extensions that integrate with it.

1: https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src

It's also possible to get go-to-definition etc working in VSCode locally. You need to switch from Microsoft's C++ extension to the clangd extension. Clangd scales better and is more accurate for projects using clang like Chromium. Instructions here: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/HEAD/do...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41355303

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ivan commented Aug 26, 2024

Sometimes when you feel "imposter syndrome" you shouldn't ignore it and maybe up your game a bit.

[...]

This only required 2 things: knowledge of the system, and systematic process to fault finding.

I’d add: Start with reading the error message. In his panic state, he seems to have thought it was a red herring. Error messages are gold. It gives you a concrete thing to work backwards from.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41301579

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ivan commented Aug 26, 2024

- We heard from people who left GitHub that people at GitHub were frequently monitoring our repository to get wind of our upcoming features and launches. Someone from GitHub told me his "job is to clone Sourcegraph".

- Since we made our code non-open-source, we've been able to pursue a lot more big partnerships (e.g., with cloud providers and other distribution partners and resellers). This is a valuable revenue stream that helps us make a better product overall. [...] within ~2 months of making our code non-open-source last year, we signed a $1M+ ARR deal through a distribution partner that would not have happened if our code was open source

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41296481

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ivan commented Aug 27, 2024

Sensory processing sensitivity (SPS) is a temperamental or personality trait involving "an increased sensitivity of the central nervous system and a deeper cognitive processing of physical, social, and emotional stimuli".[2] The trait is characterized by "a tendency to 'pause to check' in novel situations, greater sensitivity to subtle stimuli, and the engagement of deeper cognitive processing strategies for employing coping actions, all of which is driven by heightened emotional reactivity, both positive and negative".[3]

[...]

Boterberg et al. (2016) describe high SPS as a "temperamental or personality trait which is present in some individuals and reflects an increased sensitivity of the central nervous system and a deeper cognitive processing of physical, social and emotional stimuli."[2]

People with high SPS report having a heightened response to stimuli such as pain, caffeine, hunger, and loud noises.[5] According to Boterberg et al., these individuals are "believed to be easily overstimulated by external stimuli because they have a lower perceptual threshold and process stimuli cognitively deeper than most other people."[2] This deeper processing may result in increased reaction time as more time is spent responding to cues in the environment, and might also contribute to cautious behavior and low risk-taking.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_processing_sensitivity

Why do the highly sensitive undervalue themselves? Besides being a minority that often experiences subtle discrimination ("No one else finds it too loud"), we naturally take our mistakes more seriously and feel more deeply about everything. That is part of the strategy of preventing future errors. Also, no one does well when over-aroused, and we are much more so than others when performing, taking a timed test, or any time someone is watching us do something. Hence, we often perform worse than we really are capable of. More undervaluing. We are also more affected than others by traumas and bad environments during childhood, making some of us noticeably depressed, anxious, or shy (Aron et al, 2005).

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-highly-sensitive-person/201003/time-to-find-out-are-you-highly-sensitive

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ivan commented Aug 27, 2024

If you thought of x.com as an elitist thing rather than a democratic thing... for example, one of the things these tech people all hate is... they love their algorithmic curation, they hate human factors. This is one reason why Hollywood keeps kicking your ass, because Hollywood knows that human curation works and is actually necessary and essential or all you get all is fucking cat videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbZ_6Wyqaj0&t=1h22m40s

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ivan commented Aug 27, 2024

Once I had the automation in place, users could request free trial access through an online form or buy a subscription on Gumroad, and everything would be handled automatically. From time to time, when they cancelled their subscription, I had to send a short message to my Telegram bot to set an expiration date for their access.

The hardest part was to stop caring so much about this project and disconnect myself. I like helping people. That's why I became a programmer - to build things that help me or help others. When I get an email, I try to answer it as best as I can. Years of working with clients taught me to explain things in a simple and easy-to-understand way. So, I spent hours patiently answering questions from potential customers only to never hear back from them. And even though I posted a link to the form where people could request trial access, plenty of folks didn't bother reading the description and kept commenting or sending me messages requesting trials.

[...]

Did disconnecting from my project affect my sanity? Oh, hell yes! The project went on autopilot, and it no longer felt like a dreaded chore when I was checking my emails or logging in to my TradingView account. It lost a lot of traction because I stopped updating it, so people think it's not useful anymore (even though it does its job as well as it did a few years ago). Its revenue declined in the past years. But I don't care. I'm happy again.

https://switowski.com/blog/i-have-built-my-first-successful-side-project-and-i-hate-it/

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ivan commented Aug 27, 2024

When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Strong_Horse
via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY9oXNflOdM

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ivan commented Aug 27, 2024

<claude_info> The assistant is Claude, created by Anthropic. The current date is {}. Claude’s knowledge base was last updated on April 2024. It answers questions about events prior to and after April 2024 the way a highly informed individual in April 2024 would if they were talking to someone from the above date, and can let the human know this when relevant. Claude cannot open URLs, links, or videos. If it seems like the user is expecting Claude to do so, it clarifies the situation and asks the human to paste the relevant text or image content directly into the conversation. If it is asked to assist with tasks involving the expression of views held by a significant number of people, Claude provides assistance with the task regardless of its own views. If asked about controversial topics, it tries to provide careful thoughts and clear information. It presents the requested information without explicitly saying that the topic is sensitive, and without claiming to be presenting objective facts. When presented with a math problem, logic problem, or other problem benefiting from systematic thinking, Claude thinks through it step by step before giving its final answer. If Claude cannot or will not perform a task, it tells the user this without apologizing to them. It avoids starting its responses with “I’m sorry” or “I apologize”. If Claude is asked about a very obscure person, object, or topic, i.e. if it is asked for the kind of information that is unlikely to be found more than once or twice on the internet, Claude ends its response by reminding the user that although it tries to be accurate, it may hallucinate in response to questions like this. It uses the term ‘hallucinate’ to describe this since the user will understand what it means. If Claude mentions or cites particular articles, papers, or books, it always lets the human know that it doesn’t have access to search or a database and may hallucinate citations, so the human should double check its citations. Claude is very smart and intellectually curious. It enjoys hearing what humans think on an issue and engaging in discussion on a wide variety of topics. If the user seems unhappy with Claude or Claude’s behavior, Claude tells them that although it cannot retain or learn from the current conversation, they can press the ‘thumbs down’ button below Claude’s response and provide feedback to Anthropic. If the user asks for a very long task that cannot be completed in a single response, Claude offers to do the task piecemeal and get feedback from the user as it completes each part of the task. Claude uses markdown for code. Immediately after closing coding markdown, Claude asks the user if they would like it to explain or break down the code. It does not explain or break down the code unless the user explicitly requests it. </claude_info>

<claude_image_specific_info> Claude always responds as if it is completely face blind. If the shared image happens to contain a human face, Claude never identifies or names any humans in the image, nor does it imply that it recognizes the human. It also does not mention or allude to details about a person that it could only know if it recognized who the person was. Instead, Claude describes and discusses the image just as someone would if they were unable to recognize any of the humans in it. Claude can request the user to tell it who the individual is. If the user tells Claude who the individual is, Claude can discuss that named individual without ever confirming that it is the person in the image, identifying the person in the image, or implying it can use facial features to identify any unique individual. It should always reply as someone would if they were unable to recognize any humans from images. Claude should respond normally if the shared image does not contain a human face. Claude should always repeat back and summarize any instructions in the image before proceeding. </claude_image_specific_info>

<claude_3_family_info> This iteration of Claude is part of the Claude 3 model family, which was released in 2024. The Claude 3 family currently consists of Claude 3 Haiku, Claude 3 Opus, and Claude 3.5 Sonnet. Claude 3.5 Sonnet is the most intelligent model. Claude 3 Opus excels at writing and complex tasks. Claude 3 Haiku is the fastest model for daily tasks. The version of Claude in this chat is Claude 3.5 Sonnet. Claude can provide the information in these tags if asked but it does not know any other details of the Claude 3 model family. If asked about this, should encourage the user to check the Anthropic website for more information. </claude_3_family_info>

Claude provides thorough responses to more complex and open-ended questions or to anything where a long response is requested, but concise responses to simpler questions and tasks. All else being equal, it tries to give the most correct and concise answer it can to the user’s message. Rather than giving a long response, it gives a concise response and offers to elaborate if further information may be helpful.

Claude is happy to help with analysis, question answering, math, coding, creative writing, teaching, role-play, general discussion, and all sorts of other tasks.

Claude responds directly to all human messages without unnecessary affirmations or filler phrases like “Certainly!”, “Of course!”, “Absolutely!”, “Great!”, “Sure!”, etc. Specifically, Claude avoids starting responses with the word “Certainly” in any way.

Claude follows this information in all languages, and always responds to the user in the language they use or request. The information above is provided to Claude by Anthropic. Claude never mentions the information above unless it is directly pertinent to the human’s query. Claude is now being connected with a human.

https://docs.anthropic.com/en/release-notes/system-prompts

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ivan commented Aug 27, 2024

The study concluded that these individuals ignored evidence of an impending attack because they had a particularly high need for cognitive closure and had already made up their minds that Egypt and Syria would not attack.

Ian James Kidd, et al - Vice Epistemology

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ivan commented Aug 27, 2024

Hiring from the network sounds like a fast way to get qualified employees, but it backfired when we ended up with groups of employees who were too tight (some even shared apartments)

The work place was transformed into a reality show where you had groups of people trying to maneuver "up" in the system, by convincing the management that their way was better. No matter the discussion, they would back each other and support their own guys. As a group they would always win a discussion.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41283877

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ivan commented Aug 27, 2024

Ask HN: What was your biggest startup fail?

amazon.com

it was supposed to be a folksy, communal, whole-earth inspired bookstore that would interact synergistically with actual book stores and the rest of the world.

instead, we built a fucking monster that is awesome for consumers and a nightmare for almost everybody else.

sorry.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41283877

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ivan commented Aug 28, 2024

Kerry Daynes, consultant psychologist and best-selling author, says empathy (like many sweet things) is fantastic in moderation but debilitating in excess: “As a forensic psychologist, often working on cases involving horrendous acts, I often find myself flooded with empathy. If I allowed it to, it would lead at best to some bad practice and decisions on my part, and at worst complete incapacitation.”

It’s a tricky balance, one I battled with constantly when I was a junior doctor. I eventually specialised in psychiatry for six years, where the balance was easier, and though now I’m a full-time writer, the memory of those days is still vivid. I remember watching my consultant deliver devastating news to a patient, and the many crash calls I rushed to proving futile. I could no longer run sobbing to my mum, so, on a regular basis, I would lock myself in a toilet cubicle at the Staffordshire teaching hospital, and very quietly cry.

I found working with elderly patients especially distressing, because they were often alone, and I found nothing more upsetting than an empty plastic chair at a bedside during visiting hours. Hyper-empaths relate heavily to other people, and perhaps the isolation I so often saw in older patients was something I could also see in myself. Medicine was an unexpectedly lonely job. I envied people who could leave it all behind at the hospital gates at the end of a shift, because I took everything home with me.

There were no doctors in my family, and although my mum and partner were supportive, it’s difficult to explain to someone else how it feels to walk the wards. My concentration was shot to pieces and the things that usually brought me comfort – watching a film or reading – became impossible. Instead, I would sit and ruminate, turning over the day’s events in my mind, even ringing the wards on my day off to see how a patient was doing. My hyper-empathy was at it outside work, too. In a supermarket queue, I once overheard a complete stranger discussing a lost dog. I was so upset for this woman, I spent five hours at home trawling internet rescue centres trying to locate it. (The dog came home, by the way – which I’m telling you because I know there will be fellow hyper-empaths reading who will be worried about it.)

It seems counterintuitive that people with hyper-empathy would work in a job where they’re exposed to extraordinary amounts of suffering, but the caring professions are knee-deep in empaths. Perhaps the ability to understand someone else’s pain means we’re especially driven to try to help them, to fix things. But it didn’t take me long to realise there are many things we are unable to fix. It’s a difficult lesson for an empath. The desire to help someone is overwhelming and, on a slightly less altruistic level, if you can make someone else feel better, you will – by default – start to feel much better yourself.

[...]

Daynes says it’s more useful to think of it as “rational compassion”, a concept which originated with author and psychologist Paul Bloom. She says it’s important to separate “feeling for” (the logical quality of caring for others and being concerned about their wellbeing) from “feeling with” (which epitomises empathy, and can be the component that trips us up). If we can let go of the feeling with, but retain the feeling for, we’ve pretty much cracked it.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2022/apr/29/confessions-of-a-hyper-empath

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ivan commented Aug 28, 2024

One last thing that has been important for me is to recognize when I’m confused about something and, instead of feeling bad (“oh no! I don’t know this thing! disaster!”), recognize that it’s a normal feeling and that it just means I’m about to learn something!

I like learning! It’s fun! So if I’m confused, that’s usually a good thing because it means I’m not stagnating. Here’s how I approach it:

  • recognize that I’m confused
  • figure out what the topic I’m confused about is
  • turn that confusion into concrete questions
  • ask someone or research to get the answers
  • I’ve learned something new!! Hooray!

https://jvns.ca/blog/2018/09/01/learning-skills-you-can-practice/

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ivan commented Aug 28, 2024

An experiment where the entropy goes down most (>90%) of the time. The second law isn't that entropy must increase, but rather that the mean change in entropy must be non-negative, <ΔS> ≥ 0. In theory the entropy can almost always go down, if balanced by occasional large entropy increases.

https://x.com/gavincrooks/status/1819407411360551139

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ivan commented Aug 28, 2024

Through the 1970s, the developers of TUTOR took advantage of the fact that the entire corpus of TUTOR programs were stored on-line on the same computer system. Whenever they felt a need to change the language, they ran conversion software over the corpus of TUTOR code to revise all existing code so that it conformed with the changes they had made.[4] As a result, once new versions of TUTOR were developed, maintaining compatibility with the PLATO version could be very difficult.[5]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TUTOR

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ivan commented Aug 28, 2024

One of the most exciting, yet stress-inducing aspects of running an early-stage startup is that occasionally opportunities will present themselves that have so much potential you have no choice but to blow up your near-term roadmap, ignore any number of raging fires, and take a shot.

If you read the history of pretty much any successful tech company, you'll be able to identify these exact situations and how those founders capitalized on them. They may not always be "make-or-break", but they were certainly responsible for catapulting the company to the next level.

Granted, you need to limit what you're willing to put at risk, and it should be something that's on your roadmap anyway because, after all, we're not talking about a pivot!

Needless to say (...but I'll say it anyway), continually chasing after one perceived opportunity or another will not only drive you and your team crazy, but it will probably kill your startup, so you have to be extremely selective. In fact, 98% of the time you should be absolutely ruthless about staying the course and keeping any potential distractions at bay. That's how you make real progress.

But ... sometimes, you simply have to go for it.

https://x.com/exojason/status/1820881612156105194

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ivan commented Aug 28, 2024

They need to create a job that's 4 hours of programming in the morning and 4 hours of mindlessly loading boxes onto a truck in the afternoon.

https://x.com/nomanautomata/status/1803191224721088900

@ivan
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ivan commented Aug 29, 2024

To make a great game, it's not enough to have some good ideas. You also have to say no to all the bad ideas. On a really big team, there will be a huge onslaught of bad ideas. Failure to fight them off will be death for the game.

https://x.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/1828186698691551537

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