Incoming links: Idealist
These are people which Ciro never met personally, and who might not know that Ciro exists, or might never had any direct 1-2-1 online contact with Ciro, but Ciro is convinced are his brothers in some other dimension due to how many opinions or behaviours he feels they share:
- Dan Dascalescu due to articles such as:
- English as a universal language by Dan Dascalescu (2008)
- www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/9oujwf/why_archiving_old_threads_is_a_bigger_problem/ see also online forums that lock threads after some time are evil
- web.archive.org/web/20130922192354/http://wiki.dandascalescu.com/reviews/online_services/web_page_archiving see also web archiving
- random posts on OpenStreetMap, and about China: help.openstreetmap.org/questions/29300/legality-status-of-mapping-activity-in-china?page=1&focusedAnswerId=42167#42167
- kenorb see also Ciro Santilli's Stack Overflow contributions
- Gwern Branwen
Some other idealists that are a bit further out but with some similarities:
- Sylvain Poirier
- Gabriel Staples
- gabrielstaples.com/#gsc.tab=0
- github.com/ElectricRCAircraftGuy
- stackoverflow.com/users/4561887/gabriel-staplesYes, sir.
Working hard to make the Internet more complete.
At github.com/sponsors/ElectricRCAircraftGuy:I'd really like to work on open source projects more, but the need for a full-time job makes that difficult. If you can sponsor me, you help me get one step closer to my dream of not having to work a traditional "day job" anymore, so I can contribute more to the open source community, do more to educate, and do more to confront new and challenging ideas.
Ciro Santilli also things of those people as being part of his 108 Stars of Destiny troupe.
Ciro sometimes ponders why is it so hard to find people online that you truly love and admire. Maybe it is for similar reasons why it is also hard in the real world: the great variety of human interest, and the great limitation of our attention spans. But online, where we have access to "everyone", shouldn't it should be easier? Not naturally finding such people is perhaps one of the greatest failings of our education system.
Ciro Santilli feels that all really important and productive activities come spontaneously, without being internally forced upon people.
You may say that this is because Ciro is lazy and irresponsible, but Bill thinks this isn't necessarily always bad:This is yet another manifestation of YAGNI.
I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.
As another way to put it, Ciro has very little "self-discipline", and acts very heavily based on small passions that take hold of him. Related: high flying bird vs gophers.
You may also say that Ciro is an idealist, because what to do when the food will run out and you have to hunt? To which Jesus replies at Matthew 6:25-34 "Do Not Worry" (archive):Also closely related: man shall not live by bread alone.
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you - you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we drink?" or "What shall we wear?" For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Ciro is also fond of the description of the work method of Yukio Mishima presented in Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (TODO based on Mishima's self descriptions?). Ciro Santilli's father highlighted this to him, and Ciro had already watched that movie and thought it was amazing:This is perfectly complemented by him making tea, as if suggesting:
Every night I return to my desk precisely at midnight. I thoroughly analyze why I am attracted to a particular theme. I drag it into my conscious mind. I boil it into abstraction. I am constantly calculating until I sit down to write. Only then can my unconscious dreams take over.
Don't rush the work. Just let it happen. Every day at midnight, I would boil a teapot of tea. I would watch the steam rise, and with it feel my consciousness deepen. Everything was pure silence. When the hand was ready, it would, by itself, pick up the brush, and writing would start.
Another good one is Hemingway's work method:
Always stop while you are going good and don't think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.
Ciro generally feels that many major developments in his life happened "by miracle", beyond his control. So when he saw the quote by Carl Jung:Ciro tends to do major decisions in his life due to uncontrollable passion rather than logic.
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
Ciro believes that this is linked to his self perceived creative personality, Because Ciro gives in to such uncontrollable passions, this leads him to do things which are more unusual/creative, because other more logical people would write such options off as weird.
Another type of laziness Ciro is to blame for is passionately seeking Instrumental goals rather than hard end goals, in order to reach the hard goals more effectively. This is well put in the quote apocryphallyref attribute to Abraham Lincoln:For example, whenever joining a new company, Ciro would first try to improve any exceedingly shitty systems, like the build system or test system, rather than doing whatever random task the manager felt like doing that week. He was somewhat fired for that actually. But in the end, if your infrastructure sucks, your project will fail, so better be fired early and go work on something that might succeed than later when the enterprise goes bankrupt.
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe
Related:
Alan Watts' wuwei talk
. Source. During this talk, Alan quotes Jesus: Matthew 18:3 "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.".Alan Watts' "How to turn work into play" talk
. Source. Don't Try - The Philosophy of Charles Bukowski by Pursuit of Wonder (2019)
Source. www.openculture.com/2013/02/dont_try_charles_bukowskis_concise_philosophy_of_art_and_life.htmlWe work too hard. We try too hard. Don’t try. Don’t work. It’s there. It’s been looking right at us, aching to kick out of the closed womb. There’s been too much direction. It’s all free, we needn’t be told. Classes? Classes are for asses. Writing a poem is as easy as beating your meat or drinking a bottle of beer.
Charles Bukowski Scandanavian TV interviews
. Source. I think the magic moment is when you're walking around the house and you think: "Typewritter!". And I know, when I sit down, I never have any idea what I'm gonna write, there's nothing in my mind. And you walk in, you move toward it, and there it is, and things come out of it.
There are only two pre-requisites to using Haskell in 2020. You have to be an idealist. And you have to be a genius:
He participated in the development of the electrical telegraph, and he did some good modeling work that improved the foundations of the field, notably creating the telegrapher's equations.
He was one of those idealists who just want to do some cool work even if they have to starve for it, people had to get a state pension for him for his contributions. Nice guy. en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oliver_Heaviside&oldid=1230097796#Later_years_and_views:He also never married: www.nndb.com/people/627/000204015/
In 1896, FitzGerald and John Perry obtained a civil list pension of £120 per year for Heaviside, who was now living in Devon, and persuaded him to accept it, after he had rejected other charitable offers from the Royal Society.
Oliver Heaviside c. 1900
. Source. 
Lots of similar ideologies to Ciro Santilli, love it:
- sandymaguire.me/about/:
- he's an idealist
I might best be described somewhere between independent researcher and voluntarily-unemployed bum. At the ripe old age of 27 I decided to quit my highly-lucrative engineering job and decide to focus more on living than on grinding for the man. It's what you might call a work in progress.
- sandymaguire.me/blog/reaching-climbing/: don't be a pussyOne is also reminded of Gwern Branwen. Sandy is also into self-improvement stuff, so even more like Gwern. This is a point Ciro diverges on. Ciro works actively on self-worsening.
Last Friday was my final day at work. According to my facebook profile, I am now "happily retired." As of today, I don't plan to do another day of "traditional work" in my life. That's not to say that I'll be sitting idle playing tiddly winks. I want to build things, to dedicate my life to independent study, and to get really, really good with building communities. I don't have time for any of this "work" stuff that somehow pervades our entire culture, choking our inspiration and sapping our energy away from the things we'd rather be doing.
- he thinks university is useless:
- sandymaguire.me/blog/where-uni-fails/ Where University Fails (2018), mostly talking about backward design
- sandymaguire.me/blog/gatekept/ rejected from Imperial College PhD program due to grade being slightly too low for their stupid requirements, even though he had a referral already, and an amazing CV
- he likes jazz: sandymaguire.me/blog/too-smart/
Other interesting points:
- sandymaguire.me/blog/sandy-runback/ he changed his own name to Sandy because he didn't like it, he was born Alexander
- algebradriven.design/ closed source books though, ouch. At least they seem to have been made with leanpub though, could be worse.
He's a Haskell person.
Ciro Santilli feels a bit like this guy:
- he's also an idealist, even more than Ciro. So cute. Notably, he he also dumps his brain online into pages that no-one will ever read
- he also thinks that the 2010's education system is bullshit, e.g. settheory.net/learnphysics
- trust-forum.net/ some kind of change the world website. But:is a sin to Ciro. Planning a change the world thing behind closed doors? Really? Decentralized, meh.
Started with Vue.js + Node.js. Details reserved for developers willing to contribute
- antispirituality.net/ his atheism website
One big divergence: obsession with translating every page into every language.
Old French website: spoirier.lautre.net/
singlesunion.org/ so cute, he's looking for true love!!! This is something Ciro often thinks about: why it is so difficult to find love without looking people in the eye. The same applies to jobs to some extent. He has an Incel wiki page: incels.wiki/w/Sylvain_Poirier :-)
Sylvain's photo from his homepage.
Source. He's not ugly at all! Just a regular good looking French dude.Why learn Physics by yourself by Sylvain Poirier (2013)
Source.