This Week I Learned #75
“Go to bed smarter than when you woke up”
2019-11-04
For readers based in Toronto there is an app where you can burrow free audiobooks from the Toronto Public Library. Download an app called Overdrive and proceed from there. I believe you need a library card. It seems that libraries are moving into audiobooks so it may be worth checking out your own local library.
2019-11-05
Learnings from Book: Leonardo Da Vinci (LDV) by Walter Isaacson
LDV was gay, left-handed and a child born out of wedlock. A bastard.
His status as a bastard worked to his advantage because he was born into a family of famed notaries but the notary guilds of Florence at the time did not allow bastards to become notaries. Children had to be 'legitimate heirs'.
There was an opportunity for Leonardo's father to legitimize him during a period when Leonardo's step-mother died of child birth but Leonardo showed no interest in notary work as he was always drawing as a child. This meant LDV was born into a good family but was not limited to a pre-destined occupation
His status also led to no formal education and he commonly mentions that in his notes that he was able to achieve all of his design on architecture, engineering etc... without any education. It was a belief fostered on education via experience being more valuable
Living in a house of notaries could also have led to LDV's habit of writing everything down on his notebook. all have become forms of evidence of who he is... how he thinks etc... a form of journaling/diaries that show a valuable habit one could consider incorporating in life
Despite mentioning in his notes that artists and creatives should consider disengaging themselves from the busy world of civilization to find the idle quietness of countrysides... leonardo did not follow his advice as he spend his life between Florence, Milan and Rome. All bustling cities where he was surrounded by interesting people of all disciplines and that helped his creativity he also mentions in one note how much painting while surrounded by people makes it great for him... it makes me relate to my own struggle to do anything in true loneliness and a desire to be surrounded by people... no matter if it is distracting or not... it's a different desire...
Another interesting thing of note is how Freud tried psychoanalyzing Leonardo based on his notebooks but an incorrect German translation led Freud down a rabbit hole of suggesting all kinds of Leonardo's dreams related to his inner homosexuality and relationship with parents. Freud later admitted this was an embarrassing mistake on his part and it's a clear indication to me of the mistakes many great people make throughout their careers and the dangers of hindsight bias when one tries to analyze someone from 500 years before his time to prove his own point of view.
2019-11-06
Learnings on WW2 from digging into the Japanese invasion of Asia and attack on Pearl Harbor.
Japan had played a pivotal role in helping the allied powers push Germany out of China in WW1. Japan wanted to receive recognition from the western powers for Japan's "seat at the table" by having Japanese citizens be recognized as people of a powerful nation that would allow for smoother immigration to other Western countries but were denied.
This was further pushed back when the US banned immigration of Japanese and other 'Asian' nations in what they called the 'yellow peril'. One could say that continued racism and disrespect by the Western powers angered the Japanese despite the role they played in helping the Western allies.
Japan further wanted to follow the path of the imperial countries of England, France and Dutch to expand their empire. this led to the first seizure of Chinese state of Manchuria.
This led to a slippery slope where the Western allies feared Japan taking territory that they themselves wanted (Western allies were already making efforts to cut up China for themselves) and made a push to "help" China fight Japan but Japan saw this as an act of hypocrisy as much of Asia was already owned by western imperialism.
Japan viewed that Asia should be owned by Asian empires and considered themselves superior to all
It's a perspective on how one could try to condemn Japan's action and consider them evil but on one side... one could also consider how racism, bigotry and a greed to keep power within the Western allies instead of sharing with nations they considered "inferior" for being "non-white" led to the extreme actions of the Japanese.
2019-11-07
Learnings from Book: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
Gary Kasparov lost to DeepBlue in 1997. Since then there have been annual chess competitions between programs and Stockfish 8 was the 2016 champion. It was capable of calculating 70M chess moves per second and learned from large accumulated human chess data. In 2017 it lost to Google's AlphaZero which could only calculate 80K chess moves per second. Unlike Stockfish 8, AlphaZero learned chess by playing against itself instead of being fed centuries of chess data based on human moves. It was able to reach chess genius levels within 4 hours and defeated Stockfish 28 times in 100 matches with 82 ties. AlphaZero, by playing against itself and without base programming of human knowledge for chess was able to construct strategies that looked ridiculous to people and showed a new found of creativity in moves people had not considered before. This could be one of many instances where human 'creativity' could be usurped though one could make the case that creativity inside a fixed environment (like chess) is a matter of redesigning steps given a set of information that is available and it's rather a feat of overcoming pre-programmed bias from past chess teachings... with true 'creativity' shining out in the wicked environment (i.e. life outside set game parameters).
2019-11-08
Learnings from Book: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari
In the experiment for universal basic income (UBI), 50% of ultra-orthodox Jewish men in Israel never work. Their "work" is dedicating their lives to studying the holy scriptures and performing religious rituals. Them and their families don't starve because the wives work and also because the gov't provides subsidies and frees services to meet the "basic" qualities. They are technically 'poor' and 'unemployed' but have recorded higher levels of life satisfaction than other sections of Israeli society. This is a case for arguing that the concept of UBI can't be a mere capitalistic pov with UBI or socialist pov of universal basic services (UBS... like free healthcare) but some mix in between that promotes the dedication of time to work that is fulfilling for the individual.