Each note is a snippet of inspiration, knowledge, or simply something intriguing I stumbled upon.
"In the cycle of life, every soul meets its end. But amidst the fading whispers of existence, words stand tall, refusing to be silenced by time."
With our touch we have the ability to soothe the woes of the wild, yet we use it to destroy.
You were born free. Then they gave you a name, a number, and a debt to pay. You were told what to believe, what to fear, and what to chase. You call it life. They take control.
Your progress doesn’t have to be seen, congratulated, validated by others for it to be real.
Words are like fairies, they only exist if we believe so
The future belongs to the risk-takers, not the comfort-seekers.
Nothing in life is free, not even advice, because you still have to pay attention.
There is too much for any one person. It’s a vast ocean. Your goal is not to absorb the ocean through a drinking straw. Your goal is to build a raft and start sailing.
If art is how we decorate space, then music is how we decorate time.
In the theater of achievement, the quiet performers play their roles in silence, while the noisy ones steal the applause.
Dont be fooled by the internet. It’s cool to get on the computer but dont let the computer get on you. There’s a war going on. The battlefields in the mind. The prize is the soul. Just be careful.
The only ways to opt-out of becoming the product for billionaires to exploit are either too technical for the average user, or to simply not go online.
Mercy to guilty is cruelty to the innocent
That one million seconds ago was last week, while 1 billion seconds ago was 1993 (31.5 years).
You can’t be everyone’s hero, but you can be the right persons villain.
You’re unable to connect so you analyze or intellectualize situations instead of taking any sort of emotional risk.
Einstein was a tech doomer
In 1939, as part of creating a time capsule, the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company requested Albert Einstein to write a message intended for the populace of the year AD 6939. Einstein responded with:
Our time is rich in inventive minds, the inventions of which could facilitate our lives considerably. We are crossing the seas by power and utilize power also in order to relieve humanity from all tiring muscular work. We have learned to fly and we are able to send messages and news without any difficulty over the entire world through electric waves.
However, the production and distribution of commodities is entirely unorganized so that everybody must live in fear of being eliminated from the economic cycle, in this way suffering for the want of everything. Furthermore, people living in different countries kill each other at irregular time intervals, so that also for this reason any one who thinks about the future must live in fear and terror. This is due to the fact that the intelligence character of the masses are incomparably lower than the intelligence and character of the few who produce some thing valuable for the community.
I trust that posterity will read these statements with a feeling of proud and justified superiority.
84 years later we’re still having the same debate
In recent years, it seems like the whole world has become more ornery. Maybe that has something to do with the pandemic, or with political disagreements. Whatever the reasons, people have become faster to attack, and slower to recognize each other’s shared humanity.
You cant support both the oppressor and the oppressed. When you stand for everything, you stand for nothing.
In theory, people use Bitcoin because they don’t want to rely on financial institutions. However, in reality, using Bitcoin requires trusting multiple parties. You need to trust the wallet provider, the crypto exchange, the mining pool, and the person who explains to you why cryptocurrency is secure because most people can’t independently verify Bitcoin’s security. They simply trust others’ explanations. The idea that Bitcoin is trustless is a myth; in practice, you have to trust many parties to use Bitcoin effectively.
Be careful not to discover a career before you’ve discovered yourself.
Connecting with people in-person is a whole different experience.
You never know when will a life changing opportunity serve you by just meeting the right person.
Some things in life are facts, objective reality. Others are just perceptions, mostly things that define who we are. If you can change your perceptions, you can become anyone you want.
If you want a project to move faster, put fewer people on it.
I have never met a user that cares about which technologies or programming languages you use.
A great quote from Steve Jobs says: “You first start with the Customer Experience and then work your way backwards to develop the required technology”.
I like this mindset.
In 2021, I thought that internet sleuths and independent investigators had done enough of the legwork and that it was time for a credible #OriginOfCovid investigation. That didn’t happen in 2021.
2022? No investigation.
2023? Still no investigation.
What exactly is the holdup?
Every 6 months the tech industry enters a brief episode of mass collective hallucination where everyone is ardently convinced that an epochal tech revolution has just begun, that a “civilizational” technology is starting to take over.
In 2001, Warren Buffett gave a talk at the University of Georgia.
He asked them the most Warren Buffett question ever:
• If you could invest in a friend and get 10% of their income for life – who would you pick?
Once the students answered the question, he then asked this:
• Why would you invest in that person? • What character traits do they have?
Now they have a list of character traits to adopt.
Shortly after this, Buffett asked:
If you could short a friend’s earnings, who would you pick and why?
Now you have a list of character traits to avoid.
1- Do not think this thought experiment is only about money.
You can use it for whatever currency you value.
E.g. Happiness coin
If you could get 10% of a friend’s happiness, who would you invest in and why?
If you could short someone’s happiness, who would you pick and why?
You can run the same thought experiment with Fitness coin, Friendship coin, Romance coin, etc`
2- This thought experiment is genius because it hacks a bug in life’s video game:
Humans are terrible at self-awareness.
But we are great at spotting things in other people.
E.g. If your friend is in the wrong relationship, you can realize in 10 minutes what may take them 10 years.
Daniel Kahneman summarised his book on cognitive biases with the following:
“The premise of this book is that it is easier to recognize other people’s mistakes than our own.” - Daniel Kahneman
3- Nuance - It has to be purely from merit.
Buffett says it can’t be because someone will inherit a large sum from their parents.
It has to be based on their behavior.
E.g. If you want 10% of someone’s fitness coin, it’s not because of incredible genetics – is because of the actions they take
we are so close to never having to think again!
Why write an essay when you can type a few words and have AI generate one for you? Why write an email when AI can auto-respond for you with all the typical pleasantries and talking points?
While AI doing these things for you is likely to happen, it’s not necessarily a good thing. Even when these tools exist, they are not a replacement for writing.
Writing is the process by which you realize that you do not understand what you are talking about. Importantly, writing is also the process by which you figure it out.
Writing about something teaches you about what you know, what you don’t know, and how to think. Writing about something is one of the best ways to learn about it. Writing is not just a vehicle to share ideas with others but also a way to understand them better yourself.
Paul Graham put it this way: “A good writer doesn’t just think, and then write down what he thought, as a sort of transcript. A good writer will almost always discover new things in the process of writing.” There is another important element to writing that often gets overlooked. Writing requires the compression of an idea. When done poorly, compression removes insights. When done well, compression keeps the insights and removes the rest. Compression requires both thinking and understanding, which is one reason writing is so important.
Great writing requires you to position your idea in a way that will resonate with the reader. Average writers start with what they want to say without considering how it will land with the reader. Great writers understand the journey starts with what the reader desires. Think of the difference as starting at the beginning or the end of a maze. When you start at the beginning, you have to convince people the path is the right one. When you start at the end, they already know you’re taking them where they want to go.
In a world of average writing available on demand, every organization will start communicating like a big one. The signal-to-noise ratio will change for the worse. If you’ve ever read a government communication, you understand how a lot of words can say nothing. Bandwidth will be filled with common ideas, verbose communication, and ambiguous jargon. In the future, information will become even more of a substitute for thought than it already is.
Many things can be done by tools that write for you, but they won’t help you learn to think or understand a problem with deep fluency. And you need deep fluency to solve hard problems.
A world of common thinking available on demand will tempt people to outsource their thinking and disproportionately reward people who don’t. In the future, clear thinking will become more valuable, not less.
What do you think is coming over the next 10 years?
Threats to democracy from misinformation; increases in productivity; paradigm shifts to make AI vastly more efficient (data and energy); reliable medical advice in some domains
Most software in the world today is the equivalent of a Coke: it’s mass-produced, and everyone gets the same thing. The software of tomorrow might be more diverse, creative, and bespoke than that. Like fashion or food, your chosen software could become a reflection of your who you are rather than a default choice everyone is required to make.
I keep thinking about the early days of the mainstream Internet, when worms caused massive data loss every few weeks. It took decades of infosec research, development, and culture change to get out of that mess.
Now we’re building an Internet of hackable, wormable LLM agents.
Why do we need another Blockchain network?
Different blockchains for different purposes. Some prioritize speed, others security. BTC was designed to function as a currency so it’s abilities are limited. Ethereum was designed for applications. Protocols allow others to build apps on top of blockchains.
This is a race. If some countries stop in the middle of the race they’ll lose. We must adapt to challenges as the race is being run, not stop.
We also must not fear progress.
Cheers to all the people who can change their minds when presented with information that contradicts their beliefs.
What true thing do you believe that few people agree with you on?
-The opposite of minimalism is simplicity.
-The best design is unisex.
-We’re living in the best era ever for human beings
-Who you work with matters more than what you work on
What is your definition of retirement?
Retirement is when you stop sacrificing today for an imaginary tomorrow. When today is complete, in and of itself, you’re retired.
How do you get there?
Well, one way is to have so much money saved that your passive income (without you lifting a finger) covers your burn rate.
A second is you just drive your burn rate down to zero you become a monk.
A third is you’re doing something you love. You enjoy it so much, it’s not about the money. So there are multiple ways to retirement.
X is a way more reliable news source now and is way faster also. People will be able to think and decide for themselves instead of choosing a side to be programmed by.
How to destroy a society,
-Make art ugly
-Make porn free
-Make God a joke
-Make food poison
-Make Dads optional
-Make politicians rich
-Make money worthless
-Make buildings oppressive
-Make men and women compete
-Make children hate their ancestors
What’d I miss?
Build what you want to use.
Write what you want to read.
Film what you want to watch.
Sell what you want to buy.
Attract people who are like you.
nation go to wars over words.
Several groups been saying “leaving Twitter for Mastodon!”, from bitcoiners to Trump supporters, to anti-Musk. But UX & available tools are so unattractive, it never managed to reach critical mass. Then Trump & co made their own, & now Jack & BTCers are building Nostr. Huge miss.
Psychedelics create a “counter culture” in the mind. People who do psychedelics or have experienced them, tend to “break free” from the false reality or veil that has placed over our eyes.
The “Drink your milk, eat your meat and join the navy” propaganda tends to get erased from the minds of those who experienced a psychedelic experience.
The “Go to college, get a job, buy a large home or get married and have lots and lots of kids.” Etc now is seen as a mechanism to enslave and entrapped your human existence for capital gain and political power.
They want you to be binge-watching Netflix, doomscrolling on TikTok, and feeling depressed on Instagram, when you should be acquiring assets, learning new skills, and spending time with family.
Trust me, it’s never ending when your goal is to pursue higher income.
If you earn RM3,000, you want RM5,000. If you earn RM5,000, you want RM10,000.
Control the “greed” by knowing your “enough”. Then you will find yourself happier than people who don’t know about this
If you’re blocked on something, one of the easiest ways to find clarity is to talk to someone about it.
No one to talk to?
Just start writing down your thoughts on the problem.
There are 7 main reasons people buy:
1.Make money
2.Save money
3.Save time
4.Save effort
5.Improve health
6.Increase pleasure
7.Eliminate pain
Learning a technology you do not need just because it is new is a waste of time.
The bottom line is: The Internet is evolving, expanding and becoming its own ecosystem, and behavioral marketing on the Internet is here to stay.
If you are happy to receive relevant advertising that may even give you new, useful information, be happy.
If you fall on the other side of the privacy coin and you don’t want your surfing habits tracked, you can employ available tools and methods to restrict the outgoing information.
If you have a bunch of ideas you want to work on, work on the idea that you can build and ship in the shortest amount of time possible.
You know when you go to a new country as a tourist and everyone is trying to scam you because they know you’re a tourist
That’s what it’s like for noobs in crypto
Listen to founders who are 10 steps ahead of you, not 1000
You are literally 1 google search away from finding out