Issue 12

Listening to Making Sense of Free Will, was one of the highlights of my week. This episode is under the collection “The Essential Sam Harris”. I have listened to a couple of episodes and they are well worth anyone’s time. To get the full value of these episodes, one needs to explore the referenced material. It’s a lot of work and the ideas exposed are quite dense. It’s helpful to have some knowledge on the topic, but it’s not required. I shared some of my thoughts on Determinism after hearing the episode. I was quite pleased how the post came about, although I had no interest in writing on that day.

I am Sisyphus and Foundation is my boulder. I am not sure what’s happening, but I am struggling to finish the damn thing. At some point the book lost me completely. Anyway, I started Free Will and Waking Up. The former feels like a light read and it’s surprisingly short - at around 60 pages. The latter is still too early to have an opinion on. Despite these two, I am arriving at that special time of the year where I re-read The Three Body Problem saga. It’s bound to happen. It’s inevitable. It will match my most read book: Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone at four times.

I am astonished that independently of what I write every day, people keep coming to read Scaling Pains. I guess it either resonated, or people are trying to learn something from my experience. I like the long form of that post, it took me a whole week to complete it. But it reminds me of when I started doing street photography and went to a masterclass. The teacher said: as a newcomer just keep taking pictures, it doesn’t matter if they are good or bad, focus on quantity. And I guess for now I am in that mood with writing: produce a lot, even when1 everything misses the mark.

For this week:

Conversations? What conversations? - The kind of discourse happening online.

Unusual situations - A good exercise to do with your team over lunch.

Determinism - My views on Free Will.

React.js: The Documentary - Well worth your time if you are in tech.

The best candidates - A set of characteristics I have noticed in the best people I have interviewed.

Compounding Effects - Small things every day lead to big changes.

Until next time