!!! Survivorship bias alert !!!
quoteinvestigator.com/2018/05/07/overcome/
If you want to do something, but you are afraid to do it, then that is likely what you should do.
www.goodreads.com/quotes/50458-whatever-you-re-meant-to-do-do-it-now-the-conditions Doris Lessing:
Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.
For example, when Ciro Santilli was deciding what to do in university, he wanted mostly to do pure physics.
But because he was afraid he was going to die poor and unemployed because of that, he picked engineering instead.
That was a mistake.
His family was not even poor. He was young and did not have a family to support. His father even told him: "do whatever the fuck you want, we support your decision".
But he was a coward.
It was also in part because a physicist uncle which he respected suggested that as an engineer Ciro might be able to make useful contributions to tooling required by physics. When Roberto Salmeron died in 2020, Ciro's friends shared this 2013 video interview with the late professor, where he explains he first went to the University of São Paulo to study engineering (like Ciro), but then fell for his passion for physics (like Ciro?), his first task being to build a Geiger counter, thus explaining the likely origin of the uncle's theory. But who knows, maybe he was right. Maybe Ciro's OurBigBook.com will become huge and help a lot of people, and it might not have had Ciro not done engineering and learnt programming. Destiny operates in weird ways sometimes.
Furthermore, while in University, Ciro learnt about the molecular Sciences Course of the University of São Paulo, a fantastic sounding full time course that any student could transfer to called that teaches various natural sciences topics which Ciro loves (Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology) and which students from the entire university can apply to transfer to only after joining the university, with the guarantee that they can go back to their original courses if they didn't adapt to the new course.
But did Ciro do it? Nope, he remained an even larger coward.
Had he studied more sciences, he might have been happier, and might have had greater achievements later in life, in particular when he went to École Polytechnique.
Similar thoughts crossed his mind when he started his campaign for freedom of speech in China, but this time he had learnt the lesson, and went for it, and it felt very good.
If you have a day job, but also have a dream, and want to keep the day job for a reason, try to reserve the time of the day that your brain works best before or after work for your dream: do one cool thing every day.
Companies can help you grow because you see real problems from within them, but their end goal is to consume you as much as possible. Don't let that happen. Invest part of what you gain, in yourself. www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/paradox-going-outside/ The Paradox of Going Outside by James Somers (2012) puts it incredibly well:
I work, for instance, as a Web developer. It's a very good job. Our office is a block south of Union Square, a 12-minute commute from my apartment. We're served breakfast every morning. Our kitchen is stocked with "provisions" of organic beef jerky, coconut water, craft beers, chips, and two restaurant-class espresso machines. We have two ping pong tables and buckets of 3-star ping pong balls. (A new office manager bought "1-stars" once and some of the guys protested by crushing them.) We work on 4-cored Apple Mac computers with dual monitors. We have an unmolested hour for lunch, 10-minute breaks in the morning and afternoon, and a "do not disturb" policy past the working hours. We even have a specific email address where employees can ask for free things: genuine maple syrup, hot chocolate, a $900 chair, a new keyboard. Most of the programmers make six figures, and many of those have only three or four years of experience.It's impossible to say so without sounding like the spokesperson for Entitlement itself but working there is still sort of soul-crushing. It's soul-crushing in the way that any job that doesn't command your full passionate attention must be. What happens is that I will be in my chair in the early afternoon and I will accidentally step out of myself and all I'll see is time passing, nine-hour parcels of healthy consciousness forever being packed away as the user experience of clerical workers or consumers or whoever gets marginally better; and I'll end up thinking that this enterprise of mine is not so much creative but bureaucratic, that what I've gotten good at is reading the instruction manuals of other people, finding my way around their insignificant warrens. And in those moments the whole business will seem to me like kind of a tragic waste.
Other quotes:
- is a phrase Sergey Brin uses. The Google Story claims he picked that up from academia, and quotes this from a september 2003 talk in an Israeli elite high school.
Healthy Disregard For The Impossible
- quoteinvestigator.com/2014/05/29/find-love/
Find What You Love and Let It Kill You
- Cute boy things by Caroline Ellison:
if you are a boy with the confidence to advocate for unconventional ideas and take actions based on them you are valid
- How can I be as great by Justine Musk:
rock the boat
- From the 1922 poem Portuguese Sea by famous Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, which gets drilled into the head of every Brazilian high school student:He who wants to pass beyond the Bojador
Must go beyond pain.Quem quer passar além do Bojador
Tem que passar além da dor. - Translation of a poem by Muhammad Iqbal TODO date:One is reminded of As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.
- "NPC life" as a way to refer to a soul crushing job
- twitter.com/0xTenkito/status/1775167216641548732, a cryptocurrency investor says:However there is one thing to lose, if you do safer investments and don't lose everything, then you might be able to retire earlier.
- archive.ph/mlaLK
- twitter.com/0xTenkito/status/1775167216641548732, a cryptocurrency investor says:
Dilbert "A small brain irrationally puts more weight on a small loss than on a huge opportunity" cartoon (2000)
Source. 
Jake Likes Onions "Slowly" cartoon
. Source. This is what trying to reach a dream part time feels like. The cartoon reads: "The tiger pursues its prey. Slowly. The human pursues its life goals. Slowly. Very slowly.".When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it... Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.
Of course, survivorship bias alert!
What Would You Do If Money Were No Object by Alan Watts
. Source. Sample transcription: genius.com/Alan-watts-what-if-money-was-no-object-annotated:What do you desire? What makes you itch? What sort of a situation would you like?Let's suppose, I do this often in vocational guidance of students, they come to me and say, well, "we're getting out of college and we have the faintest idea what we want to do". So I always ask the question, "what would you like to do if money were no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life?"Well, it's so amazing as a result of our kind of educational system, crowds of students say well, we'd like to be painters, we'd like to be poets, we'd like to be writers, but as everybody knows you can't earn any money that way. Or another person says well, I'd like to live an out-of-doors life and ride horses. I said you want to teach in a riding school?Let's go through with it. What do you want to do? When we finally got down to something, which the individual says he really wants to do, I will say to him, you do that and forget the money, because, if you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you will spend your life completely wasting your time. You'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing things you don't like doing, which is stupid. Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way.And after all, if you do really like what you're doing, it doesn't matter what it is, you can eventually turn it - you could eventually become a master of it. It's the only way to become a master of something, to be really with it. And then you'll be able to get a good fee for whatever it is. So don't worry too much. That's everybody is - somebody is interested in everything, anything you can be interested in, you will find others will.But it's absolutely stupid to spend your time doing things you don't like, in order to go on spending things you don't like, doing things you don't like and to teach our children to follow in the same track. See what we are doing, is we're bringing up children and educating to live the same sort of lives we are living. In order that they may justify themselves and find satisfaction in life by bringing up their children to bring up their children to do the same thing, so it's all retch and no vomit. It never gets there. And so, therefore, it's so important to consider this question: What do I desire?
Keep Chargin' from a Show of Hands by Victor Wooten (1996)
. Source. That's the way I live my life, I give it my all. I think that a person should really make up his mind what he wants to do, and when did made up, he cannot fail at it. The basic rule to sucess I think, is when the going gets tough, that is a positive signal to keep chargin'.
Charles Bukowski is one of the most hardcore don't be a pussy people ever. It's almost scary. Far beyond Ciro level.
thebestamericanpoetry.typepad.com/the_best_american_poetry/2008/11/the-laughing-he.html
your life is your life
don't let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can't beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the Gods wait to delight
in you.
www.goodreads.com/quotes/39207-if-you-re-going-to-try-go-all-the-way-otherwise
If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the Gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.
I have one of two choices - stay in the post office and go crazy... or stay out here and play at writer and starve. I have decided to starve.
Bukowski kissing his typewriter.
Like Ciro Santilli and his computer!All adults are bored scene from an Edward Teller, An Early Time
. Source. Up to the time that I met Klug ([a mathematiciam]), I was sure that all grown ups were people to be pitied. They had to work, they were tired, they were bored with what they were doing. I heard both my parents often complain. Klug was the first man whom I met who most obviously enoyed what he was doing.
They mean that until you are 18, you have to study a bunch of generic crap you hate just to get into university. Rather than studying whatever it is that you truly love to become a God at it as fast as possible and have any chance of advancing the field.
And then, if you decide that you want to change, which is not unlikely since you haven't really try to study what you signed up for before then, it can be very hard and time consuming, leading to a bunch of adults with useless degress they will never use at work.
You just have to spend a few minutes with students until they complain about the courses or teachers. And you just have to spend a few hours with teachers until they complain about the students or broader system.
University is broken, and everyone knows it. The only question now is finding a viable, "political cash flow positive" path, into something better.
Bibliography:
- academeblog.org/2022/10/05/american-universities-are-going-to-implode/ American Universities Are Going to Implode (2022) by www.linkedin.com/in/jsgabin/
- theimaginativeconservative.org/2020/04/higher-education-implode-alexander-zubatov.html Higher Education Is About to Implode by Alexander Zubatov (2020)
- 2024-05-28 www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/may/28/i-see-little-point-uk-university-students-on-why-attendance-has-plummeted ‘I see little point’: UK university students on why attendance has plummetedGive it to me, baby. OurBigBook incoming.
"There’s a bit of a feeling that there is just box-ticking going on [among students], and getting a degree at the end of it."
Online and free. Pay only for exams, i.e. exam as a service. Almost perfect according to Ciro Santilli's idea.
An ultra-low-cost college degree by Shai Reshef (2014)
Source. University should focus on inspiring and not on evaluating Updated 2025-04-24 +Created 1970-01-01
As of 2020s and much earlier, Ciro Santilli believes that undergrad studies were fundamentally broken (considering the Information Age which completely changed what would be possible) because university had only two goals, with the exception of a few enlightened professors:As a result, most students, who would not go on to do a PhD essentially do a simple trade: all their time, and possibly some money, in exchange for embuing themselves with the incredible name of a respected institution so they can get better jobs later on.
- rank students from worse to best so they can get into PhD programs.For regular jobs grades didn't even matter as much compared the prestige of your university (and therefore, university entry exam grades) and your ability to stand the stress of exams to get minimal passing grade.In particular, being able to rank requires setting the difficulty level at a point where you can see a normal distribution in grades, and not have everyone at either 0 nor 100%.
- get money from the students. Of course, in countries where university is "free", this means reporting how many students you had to some government office so they can give you a corresponding budget. But you still have an incentive to enroll as many as possible.
As mentioned on the Wikipedia page en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stationary_Action_Principle&oldid=1020413171, "principle of least action" is not accurate since it could not necessarily be a minima, we could just be in a saddle-point.
There's a billion simple looking expressions which are not known to be transcendental numbers or not. It's cute simple to state but hard to prove at its best.
Open as of 2020:
Bibliography:
- www.quantamagazine.org/recounting-the-history-of-maths-transcendental-numbers-20230627/ How Math Achieved Transcendence by David S. Richeson (2023).
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