12.22.2008

Beauty

It took me 22 years(well, not exactly) to realize that there are 2 ways of doing things.
The beautiful way of doing it and the useless way of doing it.
The beautiful way demands excrutiating effort typically, but its the only way to do things.

9.08.2008

The Response (How not to bang your head against the keyboard)

How we respond to a situation can be the whole essence of what we make of life. and code !
I find that i am naturally wired to respond with emotion, or atleast a lot of emotional content to go along with logical experimentation and deduction when faced with any challenging situation.
However, this is a sure recipe of disaster while dealing with automatons like computers. Computers can do things to drive us nuts sometimes (since i code and debug for a living), but it is really not the computers fault (the blame game so deeply ingrained in us). Feelings of disbelief, helplessness, frustration, overwhelm are common human responses to bizarre software bahaviour.
The good thing is, that it appears to me to be possible to train oneself to zap out the emotional content and have great fun experiementing with stuff and building causal models. In my limited experience, i find that it is more often than not a matter of time before the issue resolves with logical enquiry.
Skills of inspection by contrasting to known basics, pigeon holing, exclusion, understanding complex automata flows are all useful in understanding the causes of issues.

And saving oneself from tearing the hair out :)

The Response (How not to bang your head against the keyboard)

How we respond to a situation can be the whole essence of what we make of life. and code !
I find that i am naturally wired to respond with emotion, or atleast a lot of emotional content to go along with logical experimentation and deduction when faced with any challenging situation.
However, this is a sure recipe of disaster while dealing with automatons like computers. Computers can do things to drive us nuts sometimes (since i code and debug for a living), but it is really not the computers fault (the blame game so deeply ingrained in us). Feelings of disbelief, helplessness, frustration, overwhelm are common human responses to bizarre software bahaviour.
The good thing is, that it appears to me to be possible to train oneself to zap out the emotional content and have great fun experiementing with stuff and building causal models. In my limited experience, i find that it is more often than not a matter of time before the issue resolves with logical enquiry.
Skills of inspection by contrasting to known basics, pigeon holing, exclusion, understanding complex automata flows are all useful in understanding the causes of issues.

And saving oneself from tearing the hair out :)

Inspired, Motivated and Flowing ! Some stuff on software too

The last couple of weeks have been just amazing (coginitive bias maybe :) )

I am really not sure of when i last experienced this quality of flow. Not for a few years atleast.

The inflection point came from reading an interview of Terry Tao, in which he compares math to advanced piano playing, stressing upon the importance of sheer technical practice. I always thought there was something more to intellectual insight than mere overlearning of basics, and maybe there is, but overlearning of basics appears to be a necessary thing for hitting the topmost(or any non trivial) points of performance. This is one fact i am eager looking forward to applying in my own field (software for now, possibly finance at some point in time). At the very least , overlearning of basics assures of flow while trying to solve incrementally harder problems. It makes the work fun and engaging at the very least even if it may not be top notch.



As goes for the hammer and nail thing, everything in life looks like skill to me now. Every area of life looks like an art and a science. Interacting with people looks like an art to be mastered, so does conversation, so does fitness and so does bargaining and negotiation (these are my not so great points). So does pool.



This may be overgeneralizing and all these areas may require differing degrees of experiential learning and practicing rule based techniques. Some may actually involve quite a bit of luck too.



However, it can surely not harm to overlearn (and overpractice) the basics of any field. The next steps to peak performance can be contemplated after i overpractice this principle of flow.



For the time being, i notice that my work in software needs systematic and detailed thinking as a base skill. Something which is not my natural strength , but something i think is worth stretching to the limit. It requires clear and patient thought involving systems, mechanisms , causality (yes, minus the philosophical debate on it and the fuzziness causality assumes in other areas like finance). In software, its usually sufficient to trace causes to a certain mechanism, or a certain detail and there is generally no ambiguity. Designing is about building of software components with certain guidelines in mind (which can be overlearnt and overapplied). Debugging is a lot more about patient enquiry into causal mechanisms, and requires building incremental models of the underlying systems and its neighbouring and dependent systems (It is therefore a harder skill to acquire and people with natural impatience (like me ) can have a hard time with it)



I feel more clearheaded right now than in a very very long time. Hopefully, the overlearning continues :)

8.04.2008

Affect Neurobiology

Read a few articles on affect neurobiology.

Very interesting observations these articles and research papers had .
1. Positive affect (desire for things ( ??? not sure which ones)) is indicated by left prefrontal cortex activity.
2. Negative affect (aversion to things ) is indicated by right prefrontal cortex activity. High right prefrontal cortex activity is observed in patients suffering from depression.

I'll map it to my favourite concepts of sattva, rajas and tamas. A tamasic brain can easily be indicated by right prefrontal cortex activity. What would a sattvic brain look like than. I guess it should be left prefrontal dominated, but the control should rather stay with the centres of reason (meditative knowledge building and discrimination) than huge amounts of positive affect. The rajasic brain is obviously a huge amount of positive affect, be it sensual, social or pragmatic in nature.

Very interesting ideas, which make ones likes and dislikes look like jokes. This article is being written in a mix of positive affect and reason. Sattva !

6.30.2008

Kurzweil's Talks

Ray Kurzweil points out that software is one of the few areas intechnology which does not improve at an exponential pace. He is probably right and Microsoft should take direct responsibility for such a state of affairs.

Anyway, the idea spurs me on to contribute something to software and maybe in the future think about the theory and practices going around here.

Checking out the way Microsoft does software is a nice start.

6.28.2008

Execution

Now that i have been handed my project, its time to go out and practice execution.
I don't really care about the quality of the SCCM - MoAPI - RFID idea. May be it works well with the customers, maybe it doesn't

I go in with a clear focus to execute the idea well. Do proper and high quality investigations with very clear steps
1) Work with, and take stock of SCCM feature, concepts
2) Work with the API for Mobile Configuration
3) Do a 1 pager for how to take it forward

4.17.2008

Local Cognition and Volition

Human society has a cognitive bias towards the local, spatially and temporally. Everyone wants to know whats happening right now, whats happening around them, what people in their social proximity are thinking about them, what someone near them is going through etc.

The overriding focus on the local has led to a flourishing media industry, which serves to expand our "locality" and thrives on the "local" information consumption patterns of people like you and me.

As a matter of education, at no point are humans taught to distinguish between temporary blips and long term trends. It is a tremendously beneficial exercise for the human psyche to carry out this discrimination, as it leads to greater balance and effectiveness in practice. Sadly, like other finer points about thought, this exercise is never promoted in formal education.

Among a large percentage of people, there is downright disregard for abstract and non local thought and a culture of worship for "local work", work that addresses local and contingent problems, that keeps systems running and keeps the salaries pouring in too. I think that the "local" variety of work and thought has certain importance, but i think it is overrated and there are too many people practicing that kind of work.

Only non local thought can lead man to peace, to an objective treatment of things that happen to him and things that he does. It permits him to examine himself and his environment and form action plans that have lasting value.

I really wish that humans were taught to discriminate between local and non local thought and action and thereby live more intelligently and effectively.

3.14.2008

fursat

I used to hear dad sing "dil dhoondta hai, phir wahi, fursat ke raat din" and i used to wonder what the sentiment was. It was, of course when i was unbounded by time and purpose myself.
Checking up the complete lyrics of the song though, i realize that it doesn't really fit the way i feel but atleast this line does.

Today, even as the practical constraints haven't increased so as to push me into more hectic activity, i find myself to be more impatient, scheming and panging for results. I am a changed man now, treating time and purpose as given reals, with much greater attachment to desires and ambitions.

I cannot deny that the heart does yearn for a taste of that sublime surrender though. There is an ecstasy in surrender. In a surrender not brought about by hardship but a quality of deep, unconditional fulfilling satiation.

Then there is the desire for spontaneous action. I have changed so greatly that i can't do a single thing without a purpose guiding it now. This is in such stark contrast to a time where i did things just for joy and only till they were fun. Any which way, almost nothing is fun now and i have no idea what to do about this. The music of life has dried, and what is left is an arid mind with its machinations for survival and success.

I guess i need to find a middle way. To be spontaneous and planned, to be ambitious and to relax.

3.13.2008

Deconditioned

One idea that has really been driving me a lot is the idea of deconditioning.
In a rough sense, i think a deconditioned human being is one who has gained total freedom to will or not will, act or not act, despise or not despise, pour effort and to relax, to choose any of x,y,z reactions to a stimulus, to be uninhibited or to be restrained, to love or not to love, to socialize or not to socialize, .......

Most of the symptoms of deconditioning are achievable by sharpening the will by practice. By forcibly taking choices which one is "naturally" averse to , and by not taking choices one finds natural, the will can be sharpened. One example of this has been my challenging of my aversion to outdoor activity. Even though i don't prefer outdoor activity, i don't think its a very smart or productive choice in all situations. To selectively enjoy certain outdoor activity like sports / travel might add to the richness of experience in life. It certainly has a lot of health benefits.
Plus there is the satisfaction of bucking the trend itself, the deconditioning.

There is a great deal of mental comfort that i've enjoyed due to lack of emotion. I have , however come to face that unless all of my emotional energy is faced and directed properly, i can't get close to my optimal life. This would also constitute deconditioning in the sense of taking on newer and stronger emotions and guiding through them properly.

Then theres the strongest conditioning of identity. The self image of a lazy- consume much produce little - hypocrite hasn't helped me much. I am in the active process of destroying these thought processes and replacing them by newer and more effective attitudes. The pareto pricipled effort of putting in 20% effort for 80% result isn't something i want to give up, but i want the extra 20% of results too, and being lazy won't get me those results.

I find this process highly empowering. Of breaking trends and ideas, rebuilding them at will and the prospect of walking through life as a master of oneself. I hope to be able to continue this process in a steady and intense manner.