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Week 28: Crypto and Wealth Creation
What I find appealing about the web3 / crypto space is it’s transformative vision of the future. The other week I was reading this piece about what 2040 could look like as web3 continues to grow. Before describing a possible future the author focuses on crypto’s wealth generation. They argue that crypto will continue generating wealth. This wealth will be spent on projects creating a better world. (From the piece is not clear why this future is better besides the assumption that decentralized is better than centralized).
Week 18: Writing Process Updates
This project is motivated by trying to cultivate a writing practice to help make me a sharper thinker. Setting aside time each week to write in a way that is understandable to others helps tighten my ideas. It is also motivated by a future where I have developed a body of work that I can refer back to and which can be shared with others. Four months into the year, I have published more writing about novel ideas than in any previous year.
Week 17: Motivation for working in Novel Spaces and Quantum Computation
If I am being completely honest with myself the decisions I make are often driven by wanting the approval / admiration of others. This happens both consciously and in a deeply internalized way. There are absolutely times when I am consciously aware that certain actions will improve how others perceive me. The more subtle instances are when I have crafted a story around why X is important to me. But really X is important to me because it is important to others.
Week 13: New Research Organizations
Incentives impact how we spend our time. In the work world, incentives are often what determines which projects we work on. The simplest incentive to understand is a financial one. I will spend my time working on a project because someone else is paying me to do so. In exchange for money, I am giving someone else my time and energy. I am willing to make that exchange because I believe the money will improve other aspects of my life or allow me to accomplish other things I care about.
Week 9: Research Bias and Work Incentives
During my undergraduate studies, I was frustrated by how much my economics classes focused on wealth. The success of an intervention would be measured by how it impacted someone’s wealth. While increasing someone’s wealth can have positive impacts, I felt like only looking at that metric misses a lot. There are many ways someone’s life might be improved that are not related to their monetary wealth. The argument for using wealth was that it is easier to measure.
Week 7: How Public Opinion Changes
From last week’s post on meditation, it might be clear that I spend a lot of time thinking about individual change. During my life I have changed in a number of ways and I will continue changing. When thinking about these changes I do think about them in negative and positive lights. Certain behaviors are ones I want to cultivate while others are less desirable. A large determinant of who I am is the context that I live in.
Week 6: Meditation, Skill Building and Parallel Processing
My junior year of college is when I started meditating. Growing up I was always someone who had way too much energy.I had trouble sitting still in class. In second grade my teacher would let me get up and walk around the classroom because it helped me stay focused. During the weekends my parents knew they had to take me outside and run me around if I was going to fall asleep at night.
Week 5: Career Decisions, Impact and Proximity
I was first faced with ambiguity about the macro direction of my life sophomore year of college. Until then, there was a straightforward path set out for me. I would go through my years of education and then attend the best college that wanted me. There was nothing decided about what I would do after college though. During my sophomore year I had to plan out what my summer would look like.
Week 4: My Interest in Machine Learning
One of my strongest correlations with feeling down or out of sorts is whether I have been reading a book recently. I will notice that I feel a little out of sorts for a day or two. I will then also recognize that I have not been doing any reading on my kindle of late. Its hard to disentangle whether being down is causing me not to read or whether I am down because I am not reading.
Week 3: From Here to There: Learning Chinese, Small Steps and Crypto
In the summer of 2019 I took a trip to China and Japan with Jenny and her family. During the trip I met Jenny’s extended family, her grandparents, aunts and uncles. Both of Jenny’s parents immigrated to the United States for graduate school. While we were in China I was basically unable to communicate with members of Jenny’s extended family besides acknowledging their presence. Whenever we had meals Jenny had to translate everything for me to follow the conversation.
Week 2: The Generator Process
When I travel to new places my energy level is always quite high. When I wake up in a different city, I want my day to start as soon as possible. I am pulled out of bed by all the exciting things that I want to do. This energy is not specific to activities in that place. I have more energy to work out, write or read. When I am at home, sometimes I have that same energy, but it can be hard to recreate.
Week 1: Why Repeated Generator
When Jenny (my partner) and I are in different places physically, we stay in touch through writing. This was especially the case when we were living in different cities for a year. During that year our primary mode of communication was writing emails to each other. Writing emails creates a different intimacy than talking on the phone. Writing an email can be a more reflective process than a conversation. There is no back and forth; no ability to check if the other person is comprehending what you are trying to convey.