Astralcodexten.substack.com

Mental Attitude While Learning

Distinguish Mere Facts From Conclusions or Opinions

Discriminate between mere statements of facts, necessary conclusions which follow therefrom, and mere opinions which they seem to render reasonable. There’s no need to perform an experiment to verify that the atomic weight of oxygen is 16. That the sum of the angles of a plane triangle equals two right angles is not a mere fact, but an inevitable truth.

Why Even Read Papers?

While tutorials and docs help you write code right now, the academic papers can help you understand where programming came from and where it’s going. You also understand the paths that foundational academic research did not take. There’s a lot of things that are old that are new again, over and over and over. The idea of Stack Overflow is that someone else has had your problem before; the idea of academic papers is that someone else has thought about this problem before.

Environmentalism

Over the last 70 years, less than 10% of plastic waste has been recycled - it’s uneconomical. Recycling shifts attention from the environmental impact of plastics and their overproduction to the consumer’s willingness to recycle. Reducing and reusing is a much better environmental strategy. #environmentalism

Betting (and Gambling)

Crime Drama

Ozark’s highlights are Ruth Langmore’s 90s’ hip hop playlist, Wendy Byrde’s sociopathic ambition, and Del Rio’s suave. The show follows the Byrde family that has to launder money for the Navarro Cartel. The writers use shortcuts as the show proceeds, and grant excessive plot armor for the Byrde family in subsequent seasons.