My life as a Curious Autodidact

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work.

— Richard Bach

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
— Elephant’s Child, from Rudyard Kipling’s Just so stories.

You are my waking dream
You’re all that’s real to me
You are the magic in the world I see
You are the prayer I sing
You brought me to my knees
You are the faith that made me believe

Dreams on fire
Higher and higher
Passions burning
Right on the pyre

One spark
forever yours
Give me
All your heart
Dreams on fire
Higher and higher

You are my ocean waves
You are my thought each day
You are the laughter from childhood games
You are the spark of dawn
You are where I belong
You are the ache I feel in every song

Dreams on fire
Higher and higher
Passions burning
Right on the pyre

One spark
Forever yours
Give me
All your heart
Dreams on fire
Higher and higher

— Dream on fire (Song Lyrics), Slumdog Millionaire

…that is the whole meaning of life
To be able to look to the heavens
And scream “I have lived. I have lived” —
To have carved epic lives from ordinary moments.
— George David Miller, “Before I Read This Poem”

Scott Berkun on how to detect bullshit

Especially in business and technology, jargon and obfuscation hide huge quantities of BS. Inflated language is a technique of intimidation. The bet is that if you don’t understand what they’re talking about, you’ll feel stupid, or distracted, and give in to the appearance of their superior knowledge. This is, of course, entirely bullshit. To withstand BS you have to have an inner core of self-reliance, holding on to your doubts longer than the BS’er holds onto their charade. 

For example:
Our dynamic flow capacity matrix has unprecedented downtime resistance protocols.

If you don’t understand what the hell this means, err on your own side. Don’t assume you’re missing something: assume they are. They’re either hiding something, communicating poorly, or don’t themselves understand what they’re talking about. BS deflating responses include:

• I refuse to accept this proposal until I, or someone I trust, fully understands it.
• Explain this in simpler terms I can understand (repeat if necessary).
• Break this into pieces you can verify, prove, compare, or demonstrate for me.
• Are you trying to say “our network server has a backup power supply?” If so, can you speak plainly next time?

From the wonderful post by Scott Berkun, How to detect bullshit.
Two other books I plan to read by the same author: Making Things Happen & The Myths of Innovation

The Atiyah–Singer index theorem

Scientists describe the world by measuring quantities and forces that vary over time and space. The rules of nature are often expressed by formulas, called differential equations, involving their rates of change. Such formulas may have an “index,” the number of solutions of the formulas minus the number of restrictions that they impose on the values of the quantities being computed. The Atiyah–Singer index theorem calculated this number in terms of the geometry of the surrounding space.

A simple case is illustrated by a famous paradoxical etching of M. C. Escher, “Ascending and Descending,” where the people, going uphill all the time, still manage to circle the castle courtyard. The index theorem would have told them this was impossible.

Citation for the Abel Prize awarded to Sir Michael Francis Atiyah & Isadore M. Singer by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in 2004.

For myself, I found that I was fitted for nothing so well as for the study of truth; as having a mind nimble and versatile enough to catch the resemblances of things (which is the chief point) and at the same time steady enough to fix and distinguish their subtler differencies; as being gifted by nature with desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and as being a man that neither affects what is new nor admires what is old, and that hates every kind of imposture. So I thought my nature had a kind of familiarity and relationship with truth.

— Francis Bacon, “Of the Interpretation of Nature” 1603-4

Imitation

Imitation is often thought of as a low-level, cognitively undemanding, even childish form of behavior, but recent work across a variety of sciences argues that imitation is a rare ability that is fundamentally linked to characteristically human forms of intelligence, in particular to language, culture, and the ability to understand other minds. This burgeoning body of  work has important implications for our understanding of ourselves, both individually and socially. Imitation is not just an important factor in human development, it also has a pervasive influence throughout adulthood in ways we are just starting to understand.

From Introduction: The Importance of Imitation pg. 1, in,
Perspectives on Imitation: From Neuroscience to Social Science
Volume 1: Mechanisms of Imitation and Imitation in Animals
edited by Susan Hurley and Nick Chater

Anamnesis

Anamnesis means remembrance or reminiscence, the collection and re-
collection of what has been lost, forgotten, or effaced. It is therefore a 
matter of the very old, of what has made us who we are. But anamnesis is 
also a work that transforms its subject, always producing something new. 
To recollect the old, to produce the new: that is the task of Anamnesis.

From the re.press website.

Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren’t special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one—and preferably only one—obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you’re Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than right now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it’s a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea—let’s do more of those!
—Tim Peters, “The Zen of Python”