Brain Ticklers, Ed. 30
Links for July 2022 with Q-rated ticklers from around of internet that carnivas thinks you SHOULD read! Enjoy (or don't).
Talofa!
Hope you had a good June. I had a pretty intense one, work wise. And expect it to continue so for a few months, and I am actively working to ensure it does not turn into an activity trap. Oh, we are hitting Edition-30 of this newsletter, by the way. Kudos to you, and me.
What I wrote
Changing the past: Can your (subconscious) feeling of a result change the result itself, even if it is already established?
Need for God: God doesn’t exist only to get something in the future. It’s also needed when you want something from the past explained.
Interesting-Perspectives
Public versus Private beliefs—Read the part about butterfly ideas and cloak beliefs
Violating benign boundaries (Reminded me of the benign boundaries based on gender, and how they may change with non-binary genders)
Why do I hate pronouns more than genocide? (I obviously don't hate it, but I do feel a little annoyed when I need to think twice about what pronoun to use, even for God, like here)
The value of going to college. (and to school also, IMO, given the rise of homeschooling). This link also has a good map of Computer Science areas that I found interesting.
The emergence of language may be associated with the reduced brain size in Homo sapiens that started about 50,000 years ago and more markedly 10,000 years ago because they couldn't process things visually. (People like me who like text content over video content, are more evolved than others, I think, haha!)
Simplification is often a precursor for a lack of focus.
Came across a framework (Cynefin) which sounds great, but I am not sure if it will be useful in any form (to me). I am still trying to put Wardley Maps to use.
Science & Technology (almost all of it is Crypto though)
Behind all the Web3 bluster is just “hollow abstraction.”
The pivot to web3 is going to get people hurt—Pretty long deep-dive that (I think) provides a balanced set of perspectives, even if the tone is full of skepticism
Many in the crypto industry worry the gold rush is akin to a “collective Theranos” that’s warping the economy to the benefit of professional investors. (On the other side, here is a good article that is in defense of crypto, specifically currency)
Five things Google’s AI bot wrote that convinced an engineer it was sentient
Where are all the crypto use cases?
Recent studies purported to demonstrate that chimpanzees, monkeys and corvids possess a basic Theory of Mind, the ability to attribute mental states like seeing to others. More than them all, ravens Corvus corax take into account the visual access of others, even when they cannot see a conspecific. Wish I had the powers of Dr. Dolittle to ask them directly (without the anthropomorphizing, though)
Perso-Dev
Prioritize tasks by rating, not sorting (of course, you sort after rate, so read it to understand what it really means)
One of those "Things I Wish I’d Known Earlier" articles. If you are 35+, you may keep nodding, irrespective of what job role you play.
How to ask good questions and Don't ask to ask, just ask
Don’t keep your eye on the ball (in a cricketing sense) but prime your intuition. Pretty neat mental model of Awareness, Fine Focus, and Fierce Focus.
History, Culture, Society
Scandinavian sleep method 😮 Don't worry, if you and your partner use separate blankets/duvets to cover yourself, you are already following it
Some languages like Spanish pay closer attention to family ties than others. It looks like they have equivalents for Tamil words like Shaddagar/Sagalai (husband of your wife's sister) and Oarpodi/Oaragathi (wife of your husband's brother). Words like Concuñado, Concuñada etc. This might be the most irrelevant piece of information you have ever read, but why not. You will soon realize this was more useful than the one on ear wax below.
The State-Sponsored doping program of East Germany
Zero-COVID and Free Speech. Articles from Stratechery usually go to my other newsletter on Product/Tech etc. But this one is more relevant here. Very neat comparison between the US (broadly Western) and China (broadly East Asian) approach to COVID, and its similarity to free speech. All this made my wonder where in this spectrum does India lie. Like society and office culture, are we "in between" in these too?
New “anti-Instagram” apps like BeReal claim to help users be more authentic online, but the distinction between real and fake isn’t quite that simple. (Related: BeReal is too real for me)
Patterns of discrimination in performance feedback, based on language analysis. (Typically, "White men" would be kept as the reference point, but this one seems to use "Asian men" instead. Interesting!)
Don't bother cleaning your ears. For most of us, the wax clears out naturally as we go about our daily lives.
Shocking drivers with road-death statistics leads to more crashes
China now expects its influencers to—can you believe it—actually have expertise in the area they influence others on.
Chronicle of a death foretold. Start by admitting, from cradle to grave, it isn't that long a stay? (Heavy read! Or I am growing old)
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