2024
No schedule policy - 1 month on
Just over a month ago, I wrote about how I had recently decided to stop following any kind of schedule on a daily basis. In this post I share some notes about my experience. The overview is necessarily largely subjective since consistent record-keeping such as would be needed for a more quantitative evaluation would be contrary to such a strategy.
Adopting a no schedule policy
In the “Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity”, Marc Andreessen describes his no schedule theory as the most controversial part of his productivity strategy and when I first read the 2007 essay, I too was somewhat aghast at that idea. Indeed by the time I encountered his guide, around 2020, Marc himself had declared in an interview that his life had taken a 180 degree turn and due to the nature of the work in which he was now engaged he kept to a very strict schedule. Yet for several days now I have wholeheartedly embraced the strategy of not keeping any kind of schedule.
Some consequences of commuting
Commuting changes the way you spend time in the morning and evening before and after the journey. For someone who is disorganised and has problems with attention, it can take over 2 hours in the morning to get ready and it may require an hour or more to wind down after your return.
Invisible Foreigners
A problem for an autistic person is that they can become a foreigner. If you simply look at their credentials they might appear someone of intelligence and education and you might therefore expect them to know certain things.
Brief Encounter
When I first borrowed Brief Encounter from my school library in my early teens, I ended up watching it three times, I think, before returning it. I watched it one of these times and maybe twice in the company of even younger siblings and they found it equally absorbing.
Some thoughts on the story of Amy, an autism case study
The book Solutions for Adults with Asperger’s Syndrome by Juanita Lovett features two contrasting case studies of autistic individuals, named Keith and Amy1. Whilst Keith’s special talents were identified early on and he was accordingly directed towards a fulfilling career, Amy’s life is a tragic tale of wasted potential.
A thought about art and AI
Medical Magic
For medicine to match other aspects of modern technology it must be characterised by magic and it is a crucial aspect of magic that the burden of the effort involved in creating an illusion not be borne by the observer.
2023
Modes of Travel
It occurred to me that before long there will not be many people left who remember what it is like to travel by ship. Not unlike how by the late 19th and early 20th centuries very few people would have known what it was like to travel long distances by stage coach.
On the utility of ChatGPT as a reading assistant
Expositions of the capabilities of ChatGPT and other LLMs often feature their ability to summarise or explain or otherwise help you understand challenging existing material such as research papers, articles and textbooks.
Some thoughts on Henry James
In some of the early novels of Henry James, he seems to be experimenting with removing essential elements of a quintessential Jane Austen novel like Pride and Prejudice and then seeing what happens.
When bullies change
There are a few instances in which I have seen people cease to engage bullying behaviours. These have all been children or adolescents. In most of these cases, maturity appears to be the cause and I suspect it’s because they begin to see overt bullying as too crude for their age rather than necessarily wrong.
The trouble with PDFs
A pdf is not a good format for human knowledge retrieval. This is particularly the case when it comes to technical documents such as research papers which comprise features like tables, figures and references in addition to text.
An unused playground
I saw a fox today. It climbed on top of a pile of rubble and walked around a little bit and then climbed down on the other side. It wandered around for a little while and then it ran back towards a fence and then I lost sight of it behind several mounds of earth.
ChatGPT rabbit holes – a new form of digital addiction
A while ago I spent several days compulsively chatting to ChatGPT telling it my views about books, films and history and getting it to validate them. These are the kinds of topics about which I would start reading page after Wikipedia page and fall down a rabbit hole, endlessly following links and getting a kick out of mindlessly consuming largely unimportant details. ChatGPT is much worse because you can’t run out of stuff to read even on the most obscure topic. You can simply continue requesting it to generate more junk.
An instance of the placebo effect?
This blog post describes an interesting experience of solving a mathematical problem that occurred when I was completing a quantum computing course. My goal in writing the post is not to provide a formal demonstration of the placebo effect but to reflect on the learning process and explore the curious ways in which solutions can emerge.
On first seeing the moors
The thing about moors is that there is nothing to see for miles around yet they are anything but monotonous. They invite you to walk on them for hours together without tiring. When you are on the moors you have little desire to walk anywhere else even though there are beautiful fields everywhere around.
Sleeping v Waking Up
It is generally more important to wake up on time than to sleep on time. In the sense that the short-term consequences are much more severe for oversleeping compared to staying up late. The risks are also more immediately apparent.
Pensamientos sobre la verdadera innovación
Me llamó la atención que cada vez es más difícil discerner si algo es verdaderamente innovador o no. En tiempos anteriores, esto era obvio.
The Doubt Detective
I recently read an article by Scott Alexander called “The Cowpox of Doubt”. It appeared to make an analogy between weak arguments against theories like homeopathy or the moon landing hoax, and inoculation. Like how inoculation involves using a weak pathogen such as cowpox to build immunity against a stronger pathogen like smallpox, presenting weak arguments against a position leads people to end up becoming immune to much stronger arguments against the same position.
Musings on autism and rejection
Rejection in the context of autism usually signifies social rejection. But in this blog I share some thoughts about the tendency of autistic people to reject thoughtful suggestions that might benefit them if pursued.
Thoughts on true innovation
It struck me that it is increasingly difficult to tell whether something is truly innovative or not. In earlier times this was obvious.
Lessons from learning Spanish through Netflix
During the Covid Lockdown in 2020, I started to try watching Spanish costume dramas on Netflix and in the process learned Spanish very quickly. This blog contains an account and analysis of my experience.