kashyapc

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by kashyapc 5y ago
I (politely) summarize this on IRC as: "Had you asked your question to start with, my response would've been your answer."
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by kashyapc 5y ago
This is also sometimes called a "naked ping"[1]: <Bob> Alice: Ping <Alice> Bob: Pong? <Bob> Alice: Can I talk to you now? I have a question. [LONG SILENCE...] <Alice> Bob: Sure. (Inside Al
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by kashyapc 5y ago
Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to imply any "ought" here at all. I should've been more explicit. I thought my opening remark of "depressingly enough" was sufficient to note that I was lamenting the "is"nes
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by kashyapc 5y ago
On studies with students: Our prefrontal cortex [which plays critical role in cognition, emotional regulation, and control of impulsive behavior] doesn't come fully online until you are about 24 (!). Given that, I take all studies don
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by kashyapc 5y ago
From Robert Sapolsky's Behave , I learnt about the notion of "displacement aggression". We know what it is intuitively, but in short: depressingly enough, the reason stress encourages aggression is that it reduces stress.
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by kashyapc 5y ago
(Reusing my comment[1] from a different thread the other day.) Many people think Socrates is "against writing" by all means. In the dialogue Phaedrus , he—well, Socrates as portrayed by Plato—does sort of say that writing is oka
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by kashyapc 5y ago
I find this much better than PG's previous essay, "write simply"[1], even if I don't agree with all of it (e.g. see jasode 's comment[2]). Meanwhile, at work I've been trying to encourage the habit of writing
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by kashyapc 5y ago
Sorry, I could've been clearer. The entire book of de Hamel is not available on Getty; you have to buy the hardcover copy to get the full deal. :-) What I meant was, some of the illuminated manuscripts reviewed (including some gorge
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by kashyapc 5y ago
If you're into this sort of calligraphy, absolutely check out these works: • The Book of Kells [1] in Dublin — this is considered to be the masterpiece of Western calligraphy. If you're ever in Dublin, don't leave without p
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by kashyapc 5y ago
Plain text. It lets us convey information in the most effective and durable way, with very high signal-to-noise ratio. (NB: I'm not dissing on other communication mediums; I see them as complementary to plain text.)
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by kashyapc 5y ago
On this topic, definitely check out the fascinating work of Michel Tomasello[1]. He's the foremost developmental and comparative psychologist. As I expected, his work is copiously cited in the papers[2][3] in the article. Tomasello
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by kashyapc 5y ago
I forgot to add: Socrates actually does sort of say that even writing is okay—as long as you're doing it in the right spirit (seeking truth) and are not deceiving your audience. In the Phaedrus , Socrates rails against the "spe
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by kashyapc 5y ago
What you cite about cooperation rings a bell from Joshua Greene's book Moral Tribes [1]. Greene is an experimental psychologist, neuroscientist, and a philosopher. He did extensive research, including fMRI brain studies of the famou
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by kashyapc 5y ago
Incidentally, this morning I finished reading the Socratic dialogue, 'Phaedrus' [1]. At the end of the dialogue (and also in a couple of other dialogues), Socrates makes his famous rebuttal against writing: You know, Phaedrus, w
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by kashyapc 5y ago
I don't want belabor the point here. But yes, we have to agree to disagree. There's nothing wrong with you sharing your difficult experience, of course. What I'm saying is that how the analogy will be "perceived"
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by kashyapc 5y ago
Hi, With all due respect, and not taking anything away from your painful experience, I don't think a "better example" needs to be found. Why? The incubator analogy works precisely because it is so relatable—even to those
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by kashyapc 5y ago
The "bad and better" mental model works well in many scenarios. Particularly where people tend to become hyperbolic and think in only absolutes. Rosling used to work in Mozambique, the poorest country in the world at that time. I
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by kashyapc 5y ago
The inimitable Hans Rosling[1] used to call himself a "possibilist": People often call me an optimist, because I show them the enormous progress they didn't know about. That makes me angry. I'm not an optimist. That mak
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by kashyapc 5y ago
Michael Polanyi[1] introduced the topic of tacit knowledge in his short book (100 pages), "The Tacit Dimension" . The blog series only mentions Polanyi in passing in its third article. And only indirectly references his book in
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by kashyapc 5y ago
> And do it right here on HN [...] And big groups do it too, apparently [...] Indeed; all this is old news for anyone who has worked in open source communities for a decent chunk of time (say, six years at least). It's the "an
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by kashyapc 5y ago
A bit of a cliché example, but it never gets old: take a leaf from Leonardo da Vinci's book, or rather his notes! — all of which are digitized here[1]; flip through them. da Vinci was famous for getting merrily lost into rabbit holes a
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by kashyapc 5y ago
Probably that can be a useful insight in some specific circumstances as you describe, but it falls flat as a generalization. Allow me a snark: maybe a group of venture capitalists (many of whom call themselves "angels") might n
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by kashyapc 5y ago
Yeah; it is 500. But it works for me with `gcalcli`[1] — a Python command-line tool that uses GCal API. [1] https://github.com/insanum/gcalcli
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by kashyapc 5y ago
On notaries (and related officials) in the middle ages, see this[1] painting by Pieter Bruegel from around 1615. Here Bruegel mocks the tax collectors that are bamboozling the farmers with paperwork. "The work was boldly socio-critical
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by kashyapc 5y ago
No direct answers, afraid, but wanted to mention a related book on this topic: I recently got Being Mortal [1], by Atul Gawande, that tackles the difficult topic of how to gracefully navigate end of life / palliative care discussions.
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by kashyapc 5y ago
There's a famous Pieter Bruegel painting from 1562 called "The Triumph of Death" that someone contrasted with a "typical scene in a US department store on Black Friday" here[1]. It might take a few seconds to tell a
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by kashyapc 5y ago
Thank you for the essay reference. You raise many excellent points. I don't have answers to all the nuanced questions you ask, but on evaluating quality: my approach is to research how involved and "invested" the author is on
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by kashyapc 5y ago
There's no more Moka pot; now he's on his own. ;-) I'm really surprised that my friend managed to melt the goddamned metal . I was wondering did the metal really melt? How long did he leave it on fire for the metal to melt?
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by kashyapc 5y ago
A few months ago I gave a sturdy, 6-cup Bialetti to a friend as a present. He recently admitted that he managed to accidentally melt (!) the damn thing down, as he forgot to switch off the fire. I was curious if he really managed to melt
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by kashyapc 5y ago
Fully agree. It's a thoroughly losing game to "try to keep up" on many fronts anyway. In general, I suggest to embrace "JOMO" (joy of missing out) — a killer feature that helps keep our resting heart-rate remarkabl

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