Andrej Karpathy on learning

Learning is not supposed to be fun. It doesn’t have to be actively not fun either, but the primary feeling should be that of effort. It should look a lot less like that “10 minute full body” workout from your local digital media creator and a lot more like a serious session at the gym. You want the mental equivalent of sweating. It’s not that the quickie doesn’t do anything, it’s just that it is wildly suboptimal if you actually care to learn.

Richard Swift dead at 41. Such a loss for the world. Music will live on. I know he was such a good friend to many. 😞💔

44 ain’t so bad.

Suicide is on the rise in America. When I was young a neighborhood boy that we all knew hung himself. My dad sprinted to their house and tried to revive him. Two of my best childhood friends took their own life in their 20s and a close cousin killed himself by setting himself on fire. Depression and mental illness are all around us and many of us have loved ones that are struggling. It’s important we learn how to properly care for them and for ourselves as we do so.

I don’t use AWS Lambda to delete my tweets, but I do have a utilty set up that does the same thing. I really enjoyed how Vicky explained her approach and reasoning, which matches closely why I decided to do the same thing.

It is so easy to pile on to the news of the day and provide your own knee-jerk response. I do it in my head and that’s where it stays. This shift, especially now that I’m so much more focused on writing and contirbuting positively to the Micro.blog community, has had a positive impact in my life. Feels good.

I’m taking a break from dealing with my browser tabs. It’s completely out-of-control insane. I’m making progress, but I have a lot more ot go through. Almost every time I close a tab without doing something, I command-shift-t to open the tab back up and bookmark it in Pinboard. I have over 30,000 bookmarks in Pinboard, dating back to the early aughts thanks to del.icio.us. I’m a digital packrat hoarder, but it really does come in handy for recalling information. My rule is simple - if I think there’s a chance I might want to refer back to it later, I bookmark and tag it. Tagging is essential. It’s not something one goes back to do. If you don’t tag things going in, well, good luck to you.

Worried About What You’re Not Doing

Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul.

When people are confronted with evidence that is “inconsistent with their beliefs” (ie. the odds of winning by switching doors being ⅔, instead of ½), they first respond by refuting the information, then band together with like-minded dissenters and champion their own hard-set opinion.

Being skillful and exercising your mastery is what you’re here to do. Doing anything less undermines the whole point of being alive.

We are so close to gathering every possible morsel of data about us, imagine what could be possible once you owned every bit of data gathered about you. After some thought, I decided it’s more than just seeing personal data and abstract patterns of you. It’s about what these patterns will tell us about ourselves. Data collected about us will unfold a personal narrative and story to reveal a hidden part of us we are trained to ignore, a way to know ourselves and anticipate what comes next. Perhaps seeing the abstract patterns and rhythms of your self-tracking data is a short-cut to mindfulness. A quick and dirty way to boost your immune system, the benefits of meditation and self-reflection without much effort.

When I started doing interviews, people kept saying “Well, you didn’t do anything in the 80s,” and I just want to get Elvis Presley’s gun out and shoot the television out of their soul. How could you say that? The conceit of people, to think that if they’re not reading about you in a newspaper or magazine, then you’re not doing anything.

Everything — every relationship, every person, every job — has its time in life, and then, as he noted, all of a sudden it doesn’t.

The problem with requiring people to be loud and angry to get things done is that you’re now surrounded by people who are loud and angry.

What makes you feel less bored soon makes you into an addict. What makes you feel less vulnerable can easily turn you into a dick. And the things that are meant to make you feel more connected today often turn out to be insubstantial time sinks – empty, programmatic encouragements to groom and refine your personality while sitting alone at a screen.

There’s no such thing as a niche that’s too small if the people care enough.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

A piece of music doesn’t come to an end when its purpose is accomplished. It has no purpose, strictly speaking. It is the playful unfolding of meaning.

How we prioritize our learning has implications beyond the day-to-day. Often we focus on things that change quickly. We chase the latest study, the latest findings, the most recent best-sellers. We do this to keep up-to-date with the latest-and-greatest.

Despite our intentions, learning in this way fails to account for cumulative knowledge. Instead we consume all of our time keeping up to date.

If we are prioritize learning, we should focus on things that change slowly.

Someone recorded this track of what was playing on FM radio in NYC the night John Lennon died on Dec 8, 1980. Originally from http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2005/12/nyc_radio_the_n.html

If you imagine, clearly and frequently, the worst case scenario, you can work on coming to terms with its consequences. Usually they’re far less dire than your worries would lead you to believe.

There is more than one kind of thought. There are thoughts you cannot complete within a month, or a fiscal quarter, just as there are thoughts that can occupy less than a vacation period, a weekend, or a smoke break. Like the spectrum of photonic behavior, thoughts come in a nearly infinite range of lengths and frequencies, and always move at the exact pace of human life, wherever they are in the universe. Some thoughts are long, they can take years to think, or a lifetime. Some thoughts take many lifetimes, and we hand them off to the next generation like the batons in a relay race. Some of these are the best of thoughts, even if they can be the least productive. Lifetimes along, they shift the whole world, like a secret lever built and placed by the loving imaginations of thousands of unproductive stargazers.

Start by admitting that greatness doesn’t come from the distraction and busywork that often fills up our lives.

It comes from making a difference in the world.

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nevver:

Like fat kid love cake

It’s a sequel. 

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It is time to put an end to useless products designed for people in crummy situations (via Everyone Deserves Great Design)

We opt for more instead of better. Better is better than more.

PERSONALITY IS API FOR LOYALTY

A question that avoids a ‘no’, a question that starts a conversation, a question that opens the door to emotion… those are the questions that build careers and create value.

Advice, like fruit, is best when it’s fresh. But advice quickly decays, and 15 year-old advice is bound to be radioactive. Sharing a life experience is one thing (grandparents are great at this – listen to them!), but advice is another thing. Don’t give advice about things you used to know. Just because you did something a long time ago doesn’t mean you’re qualified to talk about it today.

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I guess this is as good a time as any to let you know (if you don’t already) that last Wednesday was my (and quite a few others’) last day at Topspin. Talk about a great run… Man, nearly five years of everything I had. We did change things and I can hang my hat on that. I’ve mention elsewhere that I am tremendously proud of the work we did at Topspin. It felt like the culmination of everything I’d done previous and I’m eternally grateful for the opportunity that, at least initially, Ian, Bob and Andrew gave me. They certainly took a chance on me when it came to handing over the operations reigns. After I got over my initial bout of Impostor Syndrome, it turned into the most challenging and rewarding job of my career (so far). It pushed me to the edge of my comfort zone and beyond. I learned those are the kinds of jobs that can become The Best Jobs Ever. Perhaps some day I’ll write something a little lengthier on the subject.

Here’s the email that I sent to the company:

Topspin has been my family and home away from home for the last nearly five years. That’s a record for me. Not only have I been at Topspin longer than any company in my career, it’s been the best and most challenging job I’ve ever had with some of the best and smartest people. When I started at Topspin I used to tell people it felt like working for NASA, or at least how I imagined it felt. Topspin built software that not only changed the music business forever, but in many cases it changed artists’ lives in immeasurably positive ways. No one can take that away.

I wake up every single morning proud of the work I do. It took years to get to that place - to this place and I only regret I didn’t place more importance on getting there sooner. If you feel the same about what you do, congratulations. I salute you. If you don’t, make it a priority and figure out a path to get there. Eat better, get outside, exercise, dance, be grateful, play air guitar (or drums), love, meditate, build things, create, play. Do everything you can to become happy in your career and your life and do shit that matters. Happiness is armor for life.

While happiness lessens the blow, this hurts, but I’m eternally grateful for the opportunity I’ve had to serve this company. I leave knowing that I gave it everything I had. I will miss working with you all, but I also know that it’s quite likely we will work together again. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

If there’s anything I can do to help any of you along the way, please don’t feel weird about reaching out. I’ve been through this experience several times and am happy to offer advice or simply lend an ear. 

Sincerely,
Brad

I’m spending the next couple of weeks talking to lots of people with the idea that I’ll figure out what I’m going to do next pretty quickly. If you’re wondering what I’m looking for, it’s likely either a role focused on product or operations or a mixture of the two. It will probably be in music, but at this point I know I can apply so much of what I’ve picked up in my career to other problems in the world. You can find me on LinkedIn for a better idea of what I’ve done. If you wanna talk about solving interesting problems, send an email to brad at bradbarrish dot com. Maybe there’s something fun we can do together. 

I’m also trying to help out all of the incredibly talented people that also lost their jobs on Wednesday. I’ve set up an email address for people to email opportunities at formertopspinemployees at gmail dot com. 

(Image via nevver)

Increasingly we will go about our lives and work not actually concerned with the living and working itself, but with being known for our lives and work. Our lives and work become nothing but source material for the promotion of our personalities. Ultimately, achievement and accomplishment come to mean nothing, if they are not mechanisms for propagating our individual cult stories.

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(via A Rare Connection: My Photo Shoot with John Schneider | Jeremy Cowart)

Something in my eye…

In the crowd, even more than in the group, the individual assumes an attitude of the most complete submission and conformity.” The power of a crowd can overpower the individual: “All marginal consciousness, all deliberative or restraining factors, and all critical attitudes are inhibited.

I think it’s important to remember when we’re all trying to start something from scratch that you have to start at zero, and the first product will probably suck. It’ll be a motherboard, when what you really wanted to build was an all-aluminum Macbook Air with a Retina display.

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writerlyn:

This is, hands down with no exaggeration, one of the most inspiring and heartfelt collections of advice I have read.

Adding this to my advice trove for my almost-one-year-old daughter.

When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe. You should be able to go into a room and when you come out know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling. Try that for practice. When you’re in town stand outside the theatre and see how the people differ in the way they get out of taxis or motor cars. There are a thousand ways to practice. And always think of other people.

The Innovation of Loneliness (by Shimi Cohen)

In the past, when I’ve unfollowed someone on Twitter, I’ve found myself literally forgetting that they exist. Isn’t that fucked up? Like, if the only thing keeping them in my life was their Twitter feed, an unfollow actually gets rid of them permanently. And then one day someone on my Twitter feed will retweet them and I’ll suddenly remember that they’re still alive and tweeting. Who knew an unfollow could wipe someone out forever?

(via Fitting In Cardboard, A Touching Motivational Video About Trying to Fit In by Ze Frank)

When wandering the world, forget your business cards. Don’t look for more contacts. Instead, observe. Say hello to the people you see every day, but don’t make a fetish out of it. Stay interested in others. Be generous in your attentions but not showy. Don’t wink, snap your fingers, high-five, or shout, though laugh with those who do. It bears repeating: Look around. Remember names. Remember where people were born.

Awais Hussain - Keeping Track of Time - Boston QS (by James Zhen)

Perhaps you can quote the GTD literature chapter and verse, understand lean and MVP and the modern meeting standard. Maybe you now delete your emails with a swipe. It’s possible you’ve read not just this blog but fifty others, every day, and understand go to market strategies and even have a virtual assistant to dramatically increase your productivity.

That’s great. But the question remains, “what have you shipped?”

How much of your time is spent consuming things other people made (TV, music, video games, websites) versus making your own? Only one of those adds to your value as a human being.

To be always filled with craving and desire (also called defilement, affliction) is one of the Three Poisons of Buddhism, called kilesa, and it makes you a slave. There is true meaning in social media—real connections, real friendships, devotion, humor, sacrifice, joy, depth, love. And this is what we are looking for when we log on.

[T]he smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they’d already solved. They’re open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking.

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It was 2 years ago today…

I love my wife. I love my wife. 

Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off. You have to ask the question – you have to want to know – in order to open up the space for the answer to fit.

Formality is more than a dress code, of course. It infects how people talk, write, and interact. It eats through all the edges and the individuality, leaving only the square behind. In other words, it’s all about posture, not productivity.

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
― Mark Twain

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When you do something you love, love spreads through your work and gives it life. And work that lives and breathes is work that gets noticed. If you are not doing what you love, you should be. You can be. Even if it is not your livelihood, make doing what you love a part of your life.

Great experimenters measure their results. They probe. They fail on purpose. And when they find something that works, they hand the knowledge over to operators and executors who can scale their work.

Any man can find a twerp here and there who will go along with cheating, and it doesn’t take all that much manhood. It does take quite a man to remain attractive and to be loved by a woman who has heard him snore, seen him unshaven, tended him while he was sick and washed his dirty underwear. Do that and keep her still feeling a warm glow and you will know some very beautiful music.

if you want to be happy in showbiz (or any creative field), listen to that voice inside you. Even if it says “Fuck it” sometimes. Work with your friends. Avoid chasing fame or money. Just do what you want to do, when and how you want to do it. And if it’s not making you happy, quit. Quit hard, and quit often. Eventually you’ll end up somewhere that you never want to leave.

Two posts containing Henry Rollins in one week! He’s a smart dude and this is pretty great, even at 37. (via)

Henry Rollins’ Letter to a Young American (by bigthink)