If you liked Nassim Taleb's books - Antifragile, Black Swan etc - then you'll love Mandelbrot's Misbehaviour of Markets. Benoit Mandelbrot is one of the greatest mathematicians of our time. Most renowned for his work on fractals (including the famous Mandelbrot set), he applies a complexity science lens to financial markets. As with most transdisciplinary [...]
Muffin or chihuahua? Poodle or fried chicken? Puppy or bagel? Shar-pei or towel? Sheepdog or mop? Shar-pei or croissant? Dog or teddy bear? You may have come across these images if you work in a technical field. These mix ups are a fun way of testing classification accuracy. But what exactly does it mean when [...]
Here's a neat trick that has served me well over the years. When confronted with a seemingly lose-lose situation, instead of opting for the second worst option, I ask: "Is this a false dichotomy?" Get into this habit of paving an 'option 3', and you'll be surprised at how often this is possible. "I don't [...]
TL;DR One cannot understand global oil geopolitics without grasping the Middle East. But understanding this region is rather difficult. "It's hot, sandy, and everyone hates each other." Despite the difficulty, one can still attempt to untangle the intricacies of the region by reviewing raw historical events and then drawing your own conclusions. Some observations from [...]
Oil geopolitics isn't a topic many would take natural interest in. Yet, I'm convinced it's one of the most effective routes to understanding how the the world works. Why? Geopolitics quickly becomes complex. The deeper you dive in, the more apparent its interconnectivity and transdisciplinarity becomes. It's easy to get stuck in the Valley of [...]
NSFW, sexually vivid, and touches on sensitive socio-political topics. You’ve been warned! If you haven't already, highly recommend reading part 1 first. TL;DR (part 2) Quickly dissolving social stigma around sex and love, including increasing openness to alternative sexual preferences, as well as technology-augmented masturbation and dating apps, lays the groundwork for the third sexual [...]
NSFW, sexually vivid, and touches on sensitive socio-political topics. You've been warned! TL;DR (part 1) If your partner has sex with an extremely realistic sex robot that's indistinguishable from a human, would you consider that cheating? The line is blurrier than you may think. The confluence of materials science, robotics, AI, and AR will likely [...]
Consider two ways of making purple. Method 1: Alternate red and blue squares. With enough squares, purple emerges. Method 2: Make square alternate between red and blue. With short enough time intervals, purple emerges. First method made changes in the space (ensemble) dimension. Second method made changes in the time (temporal) dimension. Both converged to [...]
"Knowledge of the message is not enough… ...for the message to be successful, each person must not only know about it, each person must know that each other person knows about it. In fact, each person must know that each other person knows that each other person knows about it, and so on; that is, [...]
Here I share the most useful reading tips I've tried and tested over the years, including: General reading tips Tips on reading faster Tips on retaining more Tips on increasing reading volume Tips on reading critically Other tips and thoughts Below is what we'll cover: 1. General tips # Re-write the narrative in your [...]
