Jackie’s Journaling: Day 2 of 300

I started the day listening to Tim Ferris speak with Naval Ravikant and Charles Dixon. They spoke about Web 3.0, Blockchain, Bitcoin, NFTs, and much more. Naval and Tim are two people I look up to and having their voice between my ears made for an awesome start to the day.

Here’s my favorite quote from the podcast: What the smartest people do on the weekends is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years

I came across 3 concepts (rabbit holes) that I will pursue later through the week :

- Hill Climbing Algorithm. The bit I liked most was Stochastic Hill Climbing. It has a similar feel to Random Walk Theory. The context in which it piqued my attention was using Stochastic Hill Climbing for career journeys. Exploring randomly, finding local maximas, and then stumbling upon the global maxima (where your potential is maximized) makes for a nice intersection of Computer Science and Career Planning!

- I have been a beneficiary of Power of Compounding in my Personal Finance. Monthly SIPs have been a way of life for me. What Compounding is in Finance, Computability is to Computer Science. Simply put, Computability ensures that a problem once solved, need not be solved again. The solution is present in the amazing world wide web 3.0, and the only ask is to find the solution and plug it into the problem facing you. Imagine the time and effort saves available is all solutions operated to this principle — screw you Proprietary logic / gatekeepers of information. Information was always means to be equally accessible, and I hope Web 3.0 will achieve some part of this!

- The absolute beauty and elegance of FOSS (Free and Open-Source Software). FOSS as a philosophy of life is elegant. Information Asymmetry as a source of power doesn’t agree with my belief system. All Softwares world over are large built on Open Source, with minor modifications that create walled gardens. Big Tech is built on such walled gardens, the hope is that Web 3.0 will remove intermediaries and put the creator as the centre of the equation. Online Property Rights as a concept is fascinating, the future ahead is bright (lest some silly regulatory clamp down happens under the garb of “public interest”)

As an aside, I am not sure why I am posting on Medium. If I truly believe that the creator is more important than the medium, I should head over to Substack and not rely on my current intermediary (Medium). Filing this away for a later post, the pros and cons of Substack vs Medium/Linkedin.

From Tim Ferris & Naval to Substack to Netflix, my mind is racing today. I like this space I’m in. Let’s make it more fun. Let me take myself back to the weekend that went by. It was a long one. A long weekend, these days, is defined any work break that is longer than 1 day (sigh, such terribly low standards). Given the Diwali festivities, the opportunity for down time presented itself on Thursday and Friday last week, followed by a light working Saturday, and then a Sunday. I experienced real case scenario of scarcity driving up value. The 3 days of no work allowed me to skyrocket my content consumption. A large chunk of content consumed was on Netflix. No points for guessing this — I too binged on Squid Games.

The need to jump onto this bandwagon came up during an office lunch. Conversation veered around Squid Games, and its interpretations. Bandwagon effect was at play: despite my tall claims of possessing high self-control, I experience out group because I hadn’t watched Squid Games yet. I know what it feels like to be an out-group on cult series — the entire Game of Thrones series passed me by, and several opportunities of conversation starters passed me by. The line to walk is a fine one here — to balance between not compromising on individuality / your own identity AND doing something because it helps fit into a group. I have faced several moments where this choice must be exercised, either consciously or unconsciously. Some examples: following cricket in India, being present on Facebook, having the latest mobile phone, getting married in your 20s, having kids in your 30s, buying your own house. Deliberate reflections on life allow me to see this tight rope walk as a common phenomenon. While I haven’t cracked the first principles to making this walk elegant, I don’t fret much in case I’m in the minority on some of these.

While the bandwagon effect drew me towards Squid Games, I ended up watching the entire 9 episodes completely out of choice. I was initially shocked, then shocked, which then transformed into being enthralled, and finally captivated to see episode after episode unfold. What I loved about the series was it’s layered and real depiction of human behaviour — through the lens of dystopia. While dystopia from a distance seems utterly different, a closer microscopic investigation reveals patterns that are not so uncommon. Squid Games effortless exposed these not so uncommon patterns

- While we bet on horses for leisure, we ARE the horses for someone else’s leisure

- What debt does to a man? Its crippling and debilitating

- How addictive gambling is? We posture for certainty, however yearn for mystery. The known unknowns are the sweet spot, where our explorer orientation comes into the fore

- Even the most perverse environments can be consistent on basic human principles. The Squid Game was uncompromising on equality of opportunity and a level playing field

- Human beings contain multitudes. Each of us operate in greys, and every instance of interaction is us operating somewhere in the grey

- We don’t know people’s origin story. It’s easy to judge quickly, however every action has some story or background that made the person behave in a certain way. Investigating this aspect builds empathy

Speaking about multitudes, I am excited because Amit Varma has released his 250th episode of the Seen and Unseen today. I hope to put in a nice long walk tomorrow morning, the company of Varma and Shenoy while walking on empty Mumbai roads is enticing! Thank you Amit for your newsletter today — good to see you back in action.