garry's subposthaven

We speak of three kinds of laziness. The first is simply to spend all your time eating and sleeping. The second is to tell yourself, "Someone like me will never manage to perfect themselves." In the Buddhist context, such laziness makes you feel that it's pointless even trying, you'll never attain any spiritual realization. Discouragement makes you prefer not even to begin making any effort. And the third kind... is to waste your life on tasks of secondary importance, without ever getting down to what's most essential. You spend all your time trying to resolve minor problems, one after another in an endless sequence, like ripples on the surface of a lake. You tell yourself that once you've finished this or that project you'll start giving some meaning to your life. 

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The antidote to the first kind of laziness— only wanting to eat and sleep— is to reflect on death and the impermanent nature of everything. We never know when we're going to die or what circumstances are going to lead to our death. So there isn't a moment to lose in getting down to what's really essential. The antidote to the second kind of laziness — feeling too discouraged to commit ourselves to spiritual practice—is to reflect on the benefits that such inner transformation will bring. The antidote to the third kind—attending to details rather than to the essentials—is to realize that the only way to get to the end of our endless projects is to drop them, and then turn to what gives life its meaning without waiting any longer. Life is short, and if we want to develop our inner qualities it's never too soon to start getting down to it. 

—Matthieu Ricard, Buddhist Monk and Molecular Biology PhD, in his book of conversations with his philosopher father, "The Monk and the Philosopher"

Whereas before investors actually had ideas, today they focus on managing risk. Very rarely in the hedge fund world do people ask questions about what’s going to happen in the future. It’s less, “What should we do?” and more, “How do we manage risk? Yet again, process trumps substance. Venture capital has fallen victim to this too.  Instead of being about well-formed ideas about future, the big question today is how can you get access to good deals. In theory at least, VC should have very little in common with such a statistical approach to the future.  

--Peter Thiel

From a very fascinating class notes on his CS183 lecture "You are not a lottery ticket."

ILLUSTRATION: RICCARDO VECCHIO

Wired: Peter Thiel, expressing his dissatisfaction with technology’s progress, recently noted, “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.” Do you agree with him?

Bill Gates: I feel sorry for Peter Thiel. Did he really want flying cars? Flying cars are not a very efficient way to move things from one point to another. On the other hand, 20 years ago we had the idea that information could become available at your fingertips. We got that done. Now everyone takes it for granted that you can look up movie reviews, track locations, and order stuff online. I wish there was a way we could take it away from people for a day so they could remember what it was like without it.

He was the greatest steel-plant designer of his time; the uber-10x-hacker of steel-making. When Andrew Carnegie turned his attention to steel, and raised $700,000 to build the pioneering Edgar Thompson plant, Holley stepped up immediately to handle the technical end. Charles Morris describes the event in The Tycoons:

Holley was engaged almost immediately; he had made the first contact himself as soon as heard of the new plant. His offer — $5000 for the drawings and $2500 a year for construction supervision — was one that could not be refused.

It is critical to note two things about Holley’s role. First, he negotiated a significant (for the time) but low-risk remuneration package (amounting to about 1% of the capital raised, but as cash rather than equity). Second, he made sure he wasn’t tied to Carnegie via risk-capital, and offered his services as a highly paid mercenary, within a time-bound model. He was what we would call a rent-a-CTO today.

It’s not about passion. Passion is something that we tend to overemphasize, that we certainly place too much importance on. Passion ebbs and flows. To me, it’s about desire. If you have constant, unwavering desire to be a cook, then you’ll be a great cook. If it’s only about passion, sometimes you’ll be good and sometimes you won’t. You’ve got to come in every day with a strong desire. With passion, if you see the first asparagus of the springtime and you become passionate about it, so much the better, but three weeks later, when you’ve seen that asparagus every day now, passions have subsided. What’s going to make you treat the asparagus the same? It’s the desire.

Seen on great post by Farnam Street: Untangling Skill and Luck in Business, Sports, and Investing

I guess that gives new meaning to what it means to be a BALLER

Organizational psychologist Adam Grant has a new book Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success. NY Times Magazine made it the cover story for March. I think this is a pretty useful model for thinking about the human beings around us:  

Grant’s book, incorporating several decades of social-science research on reciprocity, divides the world into three categories: givers, matchers and takers. Givers give without expectation of immediate gain; they never seem too busy to help, share credit actively and mentor generously. Matchers go through life with a master chit list in mind, giving when they can see how they will get something of equal value back and to people who they think can help them. And takers seek to come out ahead in every exchange; they manage up and are defensive about their turf. Most people surveyed fall into the matcher category — but givers, Grant says, are overrepresented at both ends of the spectrum of success: they are the doormats who go nowhere or burn out, and they are the stars whose giving motivates them or distinguishes them as leaders. Much of Grant’s book sets out to establish the difference between the givers who are exploited and those who end up as models of achievement. The most successful givers, Grant explains, are those who rate high in concern for others but also in self-interest. And they are strategic in their giving — they give to other givers and matchers, so that their work has the maximum desired effect; they are cautious about giving to takers; they give in ways that reinforce their social ties; and they consolidate their giving into chunks, so that the impact is intense enough to be gratifying. 

A student, Xiaoyang Kao, recently figured out how to make his own Olympics-style lane markers. They used CSS3 and the Chrome engine to get it done, which is really impressive. 

Can you even tell which one is which?

Looks really close to the real thing! Here's his setup at the local pool:

Amazing and very cool. I'm a huge fan of people who reverse engineer and build their own versions of things. 

You should go read about how they did it at their blog. 

I love the light in these photos. They are meticulous as they are mesmerizing.

I'm quite excited to see the upcoming documentary on his work, Brief Encounters.