Jason Fried is doing something like this and since I've started writing 750 words daily thanks to 750words.com (I'm now using an Obsidian hack for this, but it all started with them), I have wanted a place to put my words.
Why write about an idea, article, and book? Because that is mostly what I write about everyday. As part of a previous post, I explained how I started to limit my inputs to learn better and be less stressed. Part of adding limits was asking myself to reflect on what I read and why.
After a few weeks of doing that, I realized my thoughts about articles and the articles I read could be interesting to others. So here I am.
Why write about an idea, article, and book? Because that is mostly what I write about everyday. As part of a previous post, I explained how I started to limit my inputs to learn better and be less stressed. Part of adding limits was asking myself to reflect on what I read and why.
After a few weeks of doing that, I realized my thoughts about articles and the articles I read could be interesting to others. So here I am.
1. An Idea
I cheated this week (my first week - off to a great start!). I can't decided between two ideas. Both feel similar, which is why I allowed both to stay:
1. Perceived Effort is not linear
2. The size of a problem and its solution are asymmetrical.
Misconceptions about both of these ideas have caused me great stress so it was nice to finally pin down the ideas I want to remember going forward. Perceived effort is not linear is comforting because it says hard things will probably get easier over time, but in a linear way. It's nice to know that when you've been applying effort for a long time without visible progress. The size of a problem and its solution are asymmetrical is comforting because it's nice to know that big problems can be solved in small ways. The converse of that is not so fun (small problems require big solutions) but I'm trying to ignore that for now.
1. Perceived Effort is not linear
2. The size of a problem and its solution are asymmetrical.
Misconceptions about both of these ideas have caused me great stress so it was nice to finally pin down the ideas I want to remember going forward. Perceived effort is not linear is comforting because it says hard things will probably get easier over time, but in a linear way. It's nice to know that when you've been applying effort for a long time without visible progress. The size of a problem and its solution are asymmetrical is comforting because it's nice to know that big problems can be solved in small ways. The converse of that is not so fun (small problems require big solutions) but I'm trying to ignore that for now.
2. An Article
This weeks article surprised me. It's called, "Why two Clockwise designers built a video game that gives humans empathy for machines". At first, I figured this article would be fluffy bull shit pumped out by some startups' marketing machine, but after reading it I couldn't have been more wrong.
There is fascinating stuff here about teaching humans to empathize with computers via games as a way to decrease the opacity of machine learning. Even the idea that you can teach empathy via games is an interesting one in and of itself.
Perhaps the most interesting thing of all was the human machine interface created by Clockwise, which operates at the limits of human capacity. Clockwise is an interesting example of helping humans make better decisions when the number of factors involved outpaces our brains.
Oh and I highly recommend you play the game they made, it's fascinating.
There is fascinating stuff here about teaching humans to empathize with computers via games as a way to decrease the opacity of machine learning. Even the idea that you can teach empathy via games is an interesting one in and of itself.
Perhaps the most interesting thing of all was the human machine interface created by Clockwise, which operates at the limits of human capacity. Clockwise is an interesting example of helping humans make better decisions when the number of factors involved outpaces our brains.
Oh and I highly recommend you play the game they made, it's fascinating.
3. A Book
This week my favorite book has been far and away Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn. The title really says it all and given the fact I haven't comprehended it yet, I'm going to leave off trying to summarize it and just urge you to read it.