The Power of Standing

If I had the chance, I would love to meet these folks. I'm convinced they are the secret masters of Mind Fist.

Texas Senator's 13-Hour Solo Filibuster Kills Brutal Abortion Bill

The Standing Man of Turkey

Nassim Nicholas Taleb once made a distinction between those in professions that are relatively stable ("Mediocristan") versus those that can be volatile ("Extremistan"). His point, broadly summarized, was that while a baker could expect gains proportional to the effort put into the work, someone like a Wall Street trader could find himself gaining and losing millions within a single trading day for reasons completely unrelated to his skills. 

There are many types of work out there where this applies. In the recording industry, the popularity of a song could depend on so many factors outside the artist's singing skill. In acting, consummate chameleons rub elbows with purveyors of cheap fare. Everything takes a second seat to the question of whether the audience likes you.

In Extremistan survivorship bias lives and breeds. How many people out there go follow their dreams in these professions every year, and of these how many are able to derive a good living off of it? For the winners, dreams do come true - but for the losers, they don't even register. 

I think it's the constant risk of going belly-up that prompts companies to become so restrictive with their talents. In K-pop companies for example, the contracts can be positively draconian while the training is extremely rigorous. 

Check out the video above at 4:22. The chart shows an Internet ranking of K-pop idol groups. Out of so many groups at the time of the airing of this program, only 16 can be said to have a hold in people's minds. And of those sixteen, only two are at the very top. This ranking is obviously very volatile, but the top groups are very comfortable in their position. For the others, they have to hustle because the competition is very fierce and tomorrow they could slide down from their current position. It's not a very objective example, but for illustrative purposes I think it serves the purpose.

Why should we care? Because when people are in desperate situations where they don't know what to do to get ahead, they end up willing to do anything to get ahead. Like getting minors to work in conditions that would be unacceptable in other countries. Or getting them to be of the mindset that doing stuff like this is appropriate.

Privacy

Ernest Hemingway survived war and many other privations. He thrived in adversity and conflict, that would lay other men low. And yet it seems that in the end he was unable to prevail against his own government watching him. Then again, it's very hard to fight against a shapeless, vague threat as compared to, say, a plane crash. In the latter one's priorities are clear.

Scrutiny does change how people behave - you only need to look at all of those fallen stars that litter every country's social scene. Being looked at is disconcerting - many convince themselves that it is a good thing just to escape from the unease. Ultimately, they try to dull their senses or withdraw. Anything to keep away from the eyes.

There are good arguments out there for protecting the right to be left alone. We are prone to biases; we think that such surveillance won't really be directed at us. Or even if it were, that the authorities will not find something. To that I say - the determination is not up to us. More to the point, them knowing so much about us makes it so much easier for them to use us however they like. 

But perhaps greater than all these arguments is that our privacy is fundamental and inalienable to our psychological make-up. We need that space to share only the parts of us that we want to share; and it shrinking can only bode bad things for our future as a species.

If one could have a soundtrack for one's life, I want this to be mine

Too Good Too Bad

I can't help visualizing this set to the music above.

Hacking and Writing

I'm not the only one that has noticed the overlap between coding and writing. The difference is mainly in the audience and purpose of what is written. In fact, code is categorized together with literature in terms of intellectual property. The article below riffs on a lot of concepts - definitely worth a reread... or ten.

Learn language

Boxing Wisdom

I'm a big fan of articles like these. Wisdom should always come in small, testable nuggets - nuggets hard-won through experience.

Twelve things maybe Cus d'Amato only knew

The world of martial arts that has long since passed

Get health and fitness tips at Greatist.com

Flow

Canabalt

If you've a couple minutes to spare and you were so inclined, please try out the game above. It's free and simple to operate. At first you won't be any good; the game though is addictive and you will soon last longer.

As you try again and again, you notice that your avatar goes faster and faster the longer you survive in the game. This is dangerous because it leaves you only a split second to assess the distance to the next platform, detect any traps, and press the control properly. It's much wiser to slow down by hitting the chairs and boxes that litter your path. However, every time you come back to the game the conviction that this thinking is wrong grows. You want to last. You want to be pure. So you might choose to jump over the obstacles, sort of another challenge to yourself.

As the distance of your avatar's run increases you begin to feel pride in what you're doing. You also feel, in a detached sort of way, that you won't be able to maintain this for much longer - you'll misjudge a leap, or your character will slip, or he'll hit a trap. But you haven't failed yet, and it's a thrill. You're not being bogged down, nor are you stalling. You have built, and continue to build, momentum on your run. You're soaring.

This must be a fraction of what masters feel.

On letting go

On awkwardness

This article got me to thinking not about intelligence, which was the actual intent of the piece, but rather about clumsiness. If all intelligence is situational intelligence, this means that being in a less than optimal situation is a result of not being able to shape the situation to our advantage, even with all the talents or advantages we were blessed with starting out. Shaping the situation jumps out to me because it's precisely what we do in the martial arts - we take a bad situation and somehow turn it into one that favors us. This means that shaping things to our benefit is a skill that has wider implications than was previously thought. It also means that starting out in a less-than-ideal situation is the norm as well as the consequence for failing to reverse things.

A skill is proficiency and artistry combined, that is being able to do what you want and being able to think of novel ways to apply what you know. To gain skill one starts out clumsy, but through long and intensive refinement one moves away from always being clumsy to being so less often. Skill also takes focus, and if focus wavers even the most skillful can look like amateurs.

Nothing in life is always clear-cut, and perhaps recognizing this is why we derive enjoyment from media that are vague or ambiguous. Things that don't have neat endings engage our imaginations, and things that don't go smoothly are more interesting to see. Perhaps there's an element of schadenfreude there as well. We hate awkwardness within ourselves though, and despise it in others. This is why it is so important to have one's grand achievements seem effortless in execution.

I think we tend to equate effortlessness with familiarity of something, the opposite of being clumsy. After all, back in the early days of our species' evolution a clumsy situation was more of an annoyance - do something wrong and your people could be wiped out. 

And I don't know how to render a proper ending to this train of thought, so in honor of the subject I'll be tabling this as it is right now.

The Scrappy Heap

So I've read that T-ARA is being considered to be some sort of Scrappy of K-pop groups right now because  of all the controversies they've figured in. I for one feel that it's a waste of their good talent to have them be hounded - just because they are public figures does not mean that they should be acceptable targets for backlash. 

It's the cost of free speech, I guess. When anyone can speak up, no speech is special. I consider being able to speak your mind as a safeguard for individuals so that they can create imaginative, meaningful and relevant messages. I really doubt it was for members of cliques to raise themselves up in their own eyes by dressing down targets, for instance.

Me, I believe in silence. Keeping mum isn't because I'm too slow to think of a comeback or that I'm riddled with guilt. I keep quiet because I know neither side will ever admit defeat, and to fight in such a situation is just a drain on my resources. It's better to do the job in front of me. It's better to grow in strength and expertise in all the things that are important to me. Let others do what they feel justified in doing; though they wish to exert power over me, I am myself and that is all I need.

Alas, my favorite K-pop group doesn't have that luxury. They need to go on interviews and talk to so many people. But they keep moving forward. So they truly are scrappy - as in, full of fighting spirit.

A Family-Unfriendly Aesop

Here's something to provide food for thought - turns out life is better with college and a steady 9-to-5.

Survivorship bias

An Irrefutable Data-Based Argument for Going to College

I'm putting this up largely to remind myself that in life, there are no guarantees. Even with skill and hard work and talent and luck and dirty tricks, you might still come up short. We need to take a hard look at the data - those who succeeded as well as those who didn't. What are the relative proportions between the two types? 

It seems cold, but you only get one life. If you need to sacrifice for something, it would be good if you could guarantee something for yourself and your loved ones. Yes, the loved ones as well - because whether they are agreeable to it or not, they do get roped into our shenanigans. We owe it to them to make our shots count. 

I wish I could say this to my college-age self; I was a bad student then, hung up on pipe dreams and distracted from the business of actually earning a degree. I struggled to finish my major, and up to today that still rankles. The humiliation is not only on myself, it's on all those who scraped to give me that education that majority of the world's population could only dream of. It's also on the institutions I learned under, who had great expectations for me. 

But I learned my lesson and did otherwise when I went to technical college to learn programming. This is my personal family-unfriendly aesop: your study determines your work. You work is your life. Friends are fine up until you need help paying the rent. Work hard, don't be distracted, choose your battles. Politics and fitting in don't really get you paid. Do the job in front of you, and achieve things. Save up for when you truly need it, for when your loved ones truly need it.

Always Be Coding

In my quest to be a better programmer, I came across these articles. I recommend them to anyone who wants to become a brilliant software engineer.

Four Steps to Google, Without a Degree

ABC: Always Be Coding

Rely only on your own arms

This is something I come back to several times. It's a lesson from Robert Greene's "33 Strategies of War." It's a very hard lesson. We are dependent on so many things. The key is in remembering that the things we are dependent may not necessarily be material in nature. We rely on what we've learned, what we've developed - we rely on what worked, and what we think might work. 

It's a horrible thing to doubt yourself in this way. You have to second-guess yourself, and that's when you realize the full extent of what you leave on auto-pilot every second of every day. What I've found is that there are principles to correct action. For instance, in the martial arts one strives to move with the barest minimum of effort; moves are not supposed to be excessively committed to; one must be able to change to the situation immediately. In dealing with oneself, there are a multitude of biases one's mind is subject to; considering carefully is important, but one must not let fear creep into the process of decision-making. When dealing with others, remember they have their own agenda - we all are subject to conflicts of interest. The input of others is useful as feedback, but never as a judgement of your inherent worth.

Wishing for more of something doesn't help; in many cases doing so is a waste of time as more is not forthcoming. We have to make do with what we have, and hopefully at the same time grow because if we survive the current predicament odds are good another, potentially greater, problem is on the way. Someone once told me, the problems you have today won't be the same things you worry about fifty years from now. It's not much, but I still want to reach that future. 

So I pay attention. And when the chips are down, I pay attention even more. May we never divorce ourselves from reality. Keep fluid. These things I tell myself, everyday - but what happens isn't always what we intend. 

Why We Love Psy

This probably explains part of the appeal.

Ask Ariely: On Lyrics, Joint Accounts, and Dialing Mom

Myself, I prefer songs without lyrics. Instrumental pieces tend to be more evocative to me.

Irrational notes

Dan Ariely's course has wrapped up, and here I'm posting my notes for the last three weeks. Fourth week is about labor and motivation; fifth week is about self-control; and the sixth week is about emotion. The studies are all available with a little searching.

Week 4:
Feeling Good about Giving: The Benefits (and Costs) of Self-Interested Charitable Behavior - People who feel happy give more, and those who give more are happier. Advertising the emotional rewards of giving does not reduce the tendency to give, but further research is necessary to disentangle between the costs and benefits of self-interested giving.


The “IKEA Effect”: When Labor Leads to Love - People value more the products of their labor only when they are able to complete their labor - that is, they can see the fruits of their work. The effect occurs even for those who do not have an affinity for "do-it-yourself" projects.


Large Stakes and Big Mistakes - Small incentives or incentives given where there were none before may increase performance, but past a certain threshold increased stakes increases motivation to the point where there are perverse effects on performance.

Effort for Payment - In the realm of effort and payment, one may find oneself in a monetary or social market. Monetary markets are more sensitive to the economics of compensation, while social markets are independent of the magnitude of compensation.


A Fine is a Price - At a day-care, a fine was introduced for parents who are late in picking up in their children. The parents possibly interpreted the fine as a cost in the sense of a monetary market and the number of latecomers per day shot up. The increased levels remained even after the policy regarding the fine was rescinded.


Man’s search for meaning: The case of Legos - When there is meaning to the tasks that people are assigned to do, they are happier at their jobs and are more productive



Week 5:
Procrastination, Deadlines, and Performance: Self-control by Precommitment -
People are willing to self-impose deadlines to avoid procastination, even if it is costly. However, people space deadlines suboptimally


A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safety -
Children with higher self-control ended up wealthier, healthier, and less likely to engage in crime in adulthood.


Counteractive Self-Control in Overcoming Temptation -
When the decision of undergoing an activity is threatened, counteractive self-control kicks in to increase the perceived value of the activity and ensure that motivation is maintained. This occurs when the cost of the action is moderate, tempting alternatives to the action are moderate, and before the performance of the activity. The counteractive self-control action motivates individuals to bind themselves to restrictive agreements, and delay rewards in order to ensure compliance.


The significance of self-control - Self control is a significant predictor of future welfare even after controlling for intelligence and family background; however, people struggle with wanting and in wanting to want other things.


Personal Decisions Are the Leading Cause of Death - The cause of many deaths can be said to be due to personal decisions; these deaths could have been avoided if a readily available alternative had instead been chosen. Over 80% of the deaths attributable to personal decisions in 2000 were due to smoking and being overweight. In 1900, just under 5% of deaths could be attributed to personal choices.


Rewards Separate Neural Systems Value Immediate and Delayed Monetary - Impulsive behavior is driven by limbic activation, while non-impulsive behavior is associated with the activation of regions of the brain responsible for higher level deliberation.


Save More Tomorrow: Using Behavioral Economics to Increase Employee Saving - Households that are saving too little may be because of bounded rationality, self-control, procrastination (which pro-duces inertia), and nominal loss aversion. SMART is a methodology encouraging increased savings using principles
of behavioral economics.


Week 6:
Dread Risk, September 11, and Fatal Traffic Accidents - In avoiding the risk of being caught up in an incident similar to the events of 9/11, more Americans took to driving - thus increasing the number involved in fatal vehicular accidents. The number of those killed this way even exceeded the total number of fatalities in the four flights that were hijacked.


The Peculiar Longevity of Things Not So Bad - When a stimulus reaches a threshold when it can be characterized as intense, it causes people to raise defensive measures to attenuate it. In cases of behavior this results in counteractive self-control, and in cases of hedonic states quicker abatement. This can result in situations where someone ends up hating another for a less grave offense and forgiving (or even liking) yet another for a bigger offense.


Psychic Numbing and Mass Atrocity - Crimes committed against a big number of people do not grab our attention and inspire our actions as they do crimes against an individual. This makes our moral intuitions not trustworthy in dealing with cases like genocide. We must find a way to treat cases of mass atrocity with the gravity that is commensurate to our belief that every life is equal and of great importance.


Emotions in Economic Theory and Economic Behavior - Economic models need to take into account the impact of deeply-rooted affective states (drives, emotions, passions) in individuals' decision-making process. There is a big gap between the actions of people when they are in a "hot" and "cold" state, and their ability to
predict their behavior when in a particular state while they are in the opposite one is impaired. These empathy gaps can occur for hunger, thirst, sexual arousal, anxiety, curiosity, and pain.

Learning Five Programming Languages

In these two videos we have the founders of two programming languages discuss which languages they believe every professional developer should know. I'm kind of happy that I'm familiar with most of the languages they enumerated.

Bjarne Stroustrup, of C++ fame

Larry Wall, Perl master

I've coded in C, C++, C#, and Java before. For webpage front-ends I know HTML, CSS, PHP, and Javascript - what I'm not familiar with Google generally supplements. I'm studying Scala for my functional language, and I have been exposed to Python through my own self-study. For databases, I have basic experience in MySQL and T-SQL.

Here's the thing though - in my experience knowledge in these programming languages is kind of expected for a developer gig. What really sets apart good software engineers is in the mastery of frameworks and tools for these specific languages. That means you have to know which tools are popular and get decent with them. This article helps break things down for us. Oh, and don't forget to take a look at this article as well, for a reversal of perspective.