Danger, discomfort, and growth

Hi friends, welcome back. In the first part, we looked at the extent of painful and pleasurable sensations. We also split pain into two camps: danger and discomfort. Now, how do you know if you are in danger or are you “merely” uncomfortable? I’m in pain. Should I run or should I lean into it?…

Pain and pleasure, discomfort and danger

I want to talk about pain, pleasure, danger, discomfort, and suffering. It started when I realised how temporary some painful physical sensations are and how addicted I am to pleasurable experiences. Because this simple observation started growing heads and legs, we’ll split this into a series of more digestible posts: Sensory signals {pain|pleasure} are fleeting.…

I feel lost and bored with life

A friend was telling me about how he is “bored” with life. He goes to work, maintains his open source project as a hobby, helps out with some local tech comunities, and passively scrolls on social media. He dreams of spending time at cafes, watching movies, relaxing, doing whatever he had in mind, having no…

Religious impulse runs deep

In the previous post in this series, I explored the question is there no reason to believe in god? As I followed the thought, the second thing I realised more and more: the religious impulse runs deep and spirituality is innate. Ultimately humans have a deeply-seated urge to feel connected to something larger than ourselves.…

The magic of shared languages.

Hi friends, how are you? I was just thinking of a couple of funny stories of when my mother cutely used the wrong words that resulted in unexpected funnies, a phenomenon known as “malapropism”. But actually I want to use the stories as a jump off point to pick up where we last left off…

Jensen Huang doesn’t do 1:1s

There’s this clip going around of Jensen Huang being interviewed by Patrick Collison in a Stripe corporate event talking about how he doesn’t do 1:1s. The reason, as discussed within the scope of that segment in the interview, was essentially because he thinks 1) feedbacks (as far as I understood it, on their ideas and…

Picking a post title with the help of LLM

While writing that previous post, I needed a title for it. Asked chat GPT: I want to create a title for a blog post the post will talk about the value of engaging with a material, how cognitive effort is the key to effective learning I want to contrast it against the idea of merely…

Attention is cheap. Engagement is gold. The value of cognitive effort.

Yesterday this video showed up on my YouTube recommendation feed. Benjamin Keep, PhD, JD – What makes something memorable? https://youtu.be/UW4EMIucmHs Judging by the title, initially I thought it’s about writing techniques, but apparently it’s specifically about learning. Fortunately, learning is still one topic I’m into and I had some time during a commute, so I…