🎵U137 - Watching The Storm.
Book: Luca DellAnna's The Control Heuristic and The Power of Adaptation. Just read them. Period.
For the past winter break I watched all three seasons of The Expanse. Incredible series, thank you Bezos for supporting Season 4. The Foundation movie is also going to be released around 2020, good news.
NYTimes says that the number of people studying CS is increasing exponentially to such a point that the hardest part of CS is to get into the CS major. Of course everyone isn't stupid, graduates from CS major would usually have a promising job and the major itself is not time and money-consuming like other high profile careers such as lawyers or doctors. The need for CS majors is also increasing and it is hard not to think about taking this major. I read most of the comments and majority of them are expressing one idea -- prepared to get laid off by 40. I disagree. If you didn't even try to get close to a hotspot when you see one, chances are you're not far from freeze to death (meaning you probably wouldn't even have the chance to work until 40).
People who left this kind of comments have made a linear mistake. While I agree that people should not rush into CS major just because of a promising career, the point here is not actually about the major but the process of learning (or adapting) itself. The thing about learning is that it should never ends after one graduates. If you stop learning, improving, and deliberating practicing your skills, or you stop exploring new paths, no matter what kind of major you were graduated from, you're going to be eliminated. Developing only one path is fragile, we have to stretch our antenna into multiple dimensions. We need to invest in not only stocks but also networks/ art/ space/ TV shows. We need to learn not only technical skills but also different mental patterns/ marketing/ how control a conversation/ negotiation/ communication/ emotional stability, you name it. We need to be anti-fragile and crash those vulnerable one-dimension people with our multi-dimensionality.
One note, however, it is tiring. World is always changing and we have to keep adapting or we would die. It is very easy to lose control (or to feel in such a way) because the gap is too big. Ray Dalio has said that capitalism is simply not working for most people. True. The gap (of rich and poor, socio/economical/educational/intellectual) is increasing exponentially. The gap is big enough such that you can't even close it within several generations. Your Managing Director's daughter is studying 10th grade math while she is fourth grade, and programmed an application shortly after. She plays piano, practices martial arts, and can even say fluent Chinese. A hard truth is that if you refuse to adapt then you will be left behind and eliminated. A more depressing news is that even if you want to adapt, the required rate of change is too high such that ordinary people can hardly fly over the tremendous gap using their normal amount of efforts.
Unfinished--TBC