Junk thoughts of Curious Idiot

*) Many people concentrate on what I call “ant stomping” when they should concentrate on “elephant hunting.” When you focus on stomping ants you confuse activity with accomplishment.

*) You’re going for the small insignificant tasks that are easy to do. They can be done quickly, so you give yourself the illusion that you’re really accomplishing a lot, when in actuality you’re getting further and further behind because you’re overlooking the elephant hunting.

*) Elephant hunting means to pursue significant projects that have long-term payoffs for you. If you’re busy stomping ants all day long, you might not even be aware that you’re totally ignoring some of your elephants.

*) Solving problems is “fire fighting.” You’d be better off in the long run figuring out how to prevent fires in the first place instead of constantly reacting to problems. Preventing fires puts us ahead of the game–and saves us time.

*) Break high-payoff projects into sub-tasks and devote some time each day to work on at least one of those sub-tasks. Or break it down into simple pieces so others can help you with parts of it. Each day put an elephant, or a piece of an elephant, on your To-do List and then do it. That way you make progress on something significant every day.

*) Focus on being effective rather than simply being more efficient. Being efficient is getting something done fast, while being effective is getting the right thing done. It’s better to do the right thing slowly than the wrong thing quickly.

Imagine you’re walking down the street, for example, and you had a hundred $1.00 bills and two $100 bills in your hands and a whirlwind came along and blew them out of your grasp. What would be your strategy to get the money back? If it’d be to pick up the bills closest to you and work your way toward the rest, you’d save steps–you’d be efficient. But if your strategy would be to try to get the hundreds first, you’d be effective.

http://www.smartwaystowork.com/DealingHighLowPayOff.html

*) High-payoff activities are those that will provide a valuable payoff in the long run. Dealing with high-payoff activities is often difficult, because they are frequently large, complex or time-consuming tasks. Low-payoff activities are often short, quick and easy to do, hence they crowd out the high-payoff items.

*) Here is a quick test to determine whether you have been seduced by low-priority tasks. You begin to focus on efficiency at the expense of effectiveness, and begin to speed up, attempting to cram more into your busy schedule. An efficiency focus sounds like this:

Can we speed up this process?
It's faster to do it myself, so I will.
This task needs to be perfect.
Let's call a meeting about this issue.
Meeting all deadlines is the goal.
Doing things right.

An effectiveness focus sounds like this:

Should we be doing this process at all?
Who else can I train so I don't have to keep doing it?
Is it worth the extra time and effort?
Is there an alternative to a costly meeting?
Achieving objectives.
Doing the right things.

Genius across Cultures and the “Google Brain”

2011-08-25T20:15:00.003+05:30

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/08/20/genius-across-cultures-and-the-google-brain/?WT_mc_id=SA_CAT_MB_20110824

The Elusive Big Idea

2011-08-19T11:02:00.000+05:30

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/opinion/sunday/the-elusive-big-idea.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all

Excerpts:

*) Ideas just aren’t what they used to be. Once upon a time, they could ignite fires of debate, stimulate other thoughts, incite revolutions and fundamentally change the ways we look at and think about the world.
*) If our ideas seem smaller nowadays, it’s not because we are dumber than our forebears but because we just don’t care as much about ideas as they did.
*) In effect, we are living in an increasingly post-idea world — a world in which big, thought-provoking ideas that can’t instantly be monetized.
*) There is the retreat in universities from the real world, and an encouragement of and reward for the narrowest specialization rather than for daring — for tending potted plants rather than planting forests.
*) Courtesy of the Internet, we seem to have immediate access to anything that anyone could ever want to know. We are certainly the most informed generation in history, at least quantitatively.
*) We are inundated with so much information that we wouldn’t have time to process it even if we wanted to, and most of us don’t want to.
*) We prefer knowing to thinking because knowing has more immediate value. It keeps us in the loop, keeps us connected to our friends and our cohort. Ideas are too airy, too impractical, too much work for too little reward. Few talk ideas. Everyone talks information, usually personal information. Where are you going? What are you doing? Whom are you seeing? These are today’s big questions.
*) Instead of theories, hypotheses and grand arguments, we get instant 140-character tweets about eating a sandwich or watching a TV show.
*) There is a vast difference between profit-making inventions and intellectually challenging thoughts.
*) It is thinkers who are in short supply.
*) What the future portends is more and more information — Everests of it. There won’t be anything we won’t know. But there will be no one thinking about it. Think about that.

Energy and efficiency of our world in future

2011-08-14T11:27:00.000+05:30

Galactic-Scale Energy -

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/

Can Economic Growth Last? (Based on physical growth)

http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/07/can-economic-growth-last/

Addiction: a Fault of Chemistry

2011-08-08T09:05:00.002+05:30

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/white-noise/2011/08/02/addiction-a-fault-of-chemistry/

Why Does Time Fly?

2011-07-22T10:14:00.000+05:30

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-does-time-fly

The more energy it takes to process a stimulus the longer it appears as a subjective experience of time. Something moving toward you has more relevance than the same stimulus moving away from you: You may need to prepare somehow; time seems to move more slowly.

When we experience something as “taking a long time” it is really the result of three inter-twined processes: the actual duration of the event, how we feel about the event, and whether we think the event is approaching us. There is little we can do about the first factor but there are obvious ways of modulating how we feel about an event and how we think about an event approaching us.

The Neurobiology of Bliss--Sacred and Profane

2011-07-15T14:56:00.002+05:30

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-neurobiology-of-bliss-sacred-and-profane&WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20110714

The educational value of creative disobedience

2011-07-11T18:21:00.000+05:30

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=the-educational-value-of-creative-d-2011-07-07

Driven off the Road by M.B.A.s

2011-07-11T09:32:00.000+05:30

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2081930,00.html

Rules of the Road: Using the Science of Persuasion When Buying a Car

2011-07-05T18:13:00.000+05:30

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=rules-of-the-road

Time management articles

2011-06-29T14:10:00.000+05:30

3 tips for getting more done in fewer hours -

http://gigaom.com/collaboration/7-tips-for-getting-more-done-in-fewer-hours/?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=gigaom

Increase Your Productivity By Shortening Your Work Day

http://freelancefolder.com/increase-your-productivity-by-shortening-your-work-day/

The top 5 new rules of productivity

http://positivesharing.com/2010/02/5-new-rules-of-productivity/

Change Your Work Hours to Get More Done

http://gigaom.com/collaboration/change-your-work-hours-to-get-more-done/

What Would Happen If Earth and Mars Switched Places?

2011-06-17T11:06:00.002+05:30

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=what-would-happen-if-earth-and-mars-2011-06-09&WT.mc_id=SA_WR_20110616

Faster, Smaller, Better: Does Physics Put an Upper Limit on Brain Efficiency?

2011-06-16T13:42:00.000+05:30

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=axon-animations-limits-of-intelligence&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_MB_20110615

The Limits of Intelligence

2011-06-16T13:21:00.001+05:30

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-limits-of-intelligence&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_MB_20110615

The laws of physics may well prevent the human brain from evolving into an ever more powerful thinking machine

Human intelligence may be close to its evolutionary limit. Various lines of research suggest that most of the tweaks that could make us smarter would hit limits set by the laws of physics.
Brain size, for instance, helps up to a point but carries diminishing returns: brains become energy-hungry and slow. Better “wiring” across the brain also would consume energy and take up a disproportionate amount of space.
Making wires thinner would hit thermodynamic limitations similar to those that affect transistors in computer chips: communication would get noisy.
Humans, however, might still achieve higher intelligence collectively. And technology, from writing to the Internet, enables us to expand our mind outside the confines of our body.

Reason Seen More as Weapon Than Path to Truth

2011-06-16T09:40:00.000+05:30

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/arts/people-argue-just-to-win-scholars-assert.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

Why Obstinate Humans Find It Hard To Believe Science

2011-04-25T10:43:00.000+05:30

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/4720

A long-term AAAS initiative to advance literacy in Science, Mathematics, and Technology

2011-04-18T18:43:00.000+05:30

http://www.project2061.org/

Mourning the Death of Her Baby

2011-03-31T10:08:00.001+05:30

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/4677

How Free Is Your Will?

2011-03-24T09:39:00.001+05:30

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-free-is-your-will

Understanding the Brain's "Brake Pedal" in Neural Plasticity

2011-02-24T14:14:00.000+05:30

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=understanding-the-brains

Push the pedal, and the brain is less able to rewire itself. Ease up and, perhaps, an old brain will turn young again.

Contentment

2011-02-14T17:51:00.002+05:30

http://www.happinessclub.com/FairfieldCitizen/032206.htm

"Happiness is now being defined in two ways. The first way is happiness as it relates to having good humor. The second is happiness as it relates to inner satisfaction. It is here under the second definition that contentment is properly defined."

"Contentment is happiness with one's situation in life."

"Until you make peace with who you are, you'll never be content with what you have."

" Seeking approval from other people in order to feel satisfaction, creates many problems. We have all heard about people who try to become famous so they can be happy. They are trying to feel good about themselves through the approval of others. No matter how much approval or fame you receive, it will never be enough. The more you get, the more you think you need. So satisfaction is never found out there, or by the approval you receive from other people."

"True happiness stems from a quality within ourselves, from a way of thinking of life. If the principles of contentment are not within us, no material success, no pleasures or possessions, can make us happy."

"Until you make peace with who you are, you'll never be content with what you have."

"Realize that true happiness lies within you. Waste no time and effort searching for peace and contentment and joy in the world outside. Remember that there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. Reach out. Share. Smile. Hug. Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself."

Addicted To Being Good? The Psychopathology of Heroism

2011-02-07T10:06:00.002+05:30

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/kuszewski20091117/

Sociopath:

low impulse control
high novelty-seeking (desire to experience new things, take more risks, break convention)
no remorse for their actions (lack of conscience)
inability to see beyond their own needs (lack of empathy)
willing to break rules
always acts in the interest of himself

X-altruist:

low impulse control
high novelty-seeking
little remorse for their actions (would “do it again in a heartbeat”)
inability to see past the needs of others (very high empathy)
willing to break rules
acts in the best interest of others, or for the “common good” (because it is the right thing to do)

The defining characteristic that separates the two personality types is their ability to empathize, either not at all or too much, which then drives the extreme behavior of each.

Science Through Stories: Allowing The Rediscovery Of Wonder

2011-02-07T09:47:00.001+05:30

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/4559

"The world is a rich, fantastic place, and all you have to do is scratch anywhere, and there it is—but it starts with a belief in wonder and curiosity."

"You can use plain language, you can use a conversational voice, you can use theater, you can use metaphor, you can use humor, you can use music. BUT—the best way to sell a science story each and every time, is to give the audience the experience, if you can, of actually making a discovery on their own—the ‘oh, wow’ feeling."

Empowerment: The Emperor’s New Clothes

2011-02-03T11:01:00.000+05:30

http://www.padep.org/areas/dop/documentos/09_empowerment.pdf

About Internal commitment, External commitment and empowerment.

Tablets

2010-12-02T10:01:00.001+05:30

http://paulgraham.com/tablets.html

The ethical robot

2010-11-29T11:23:00.001+05:30

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/4341

An article on this appeared in October Sciam 2010.

The scene of the robot getting from the lying position from the ground is really good.(3 minutes to 3 minutes and 10 seconds)

The Brain The "Router" in Your Head—a Bottleneck of Processing

2010-11-21T18:49:00.003+05:30

http://discovermagazine.com/2010/nov/15-the-brain-router-in-our-heads-processing-bottleneck/

Telford speculated, the brain needs time to reset itself after a pulse of thought before it can carry out another one.
If we don’t have enough time between two tasks, we slow down on the second one—a lag known as the “psychological refractory period.”

Each time we perform a task we perform it in three steps.
Step 1: Take in information from the senses.
Step 2: Figure out what to do in response.
Step 3: Carry out that plan by moving muscles.

The mental activity that takes place in Step 2 includes some of the most sophisticated forms of thought we are capable of: weighing lots of information, thinking about our short-term and long-term goals, and figuring out how to meet them.

But when we have any two simple decisions to make, we must wait for the first task to move through a bottleneck before taking on the second.
Instead of carrying out many steps simultaneously, we have to do them one at a time.

The researchers found that the psychological refractory period stopped this mental clock (pdf). If a task was stuck in a bottleneck, people did not start timing it. The brain began measuring how long a task took only after the previous task moved out of the bottleneck. Whenever a perception of a sound or a letter got stuck in the mental traffic jam, the subjects were not aware of it.

If Dehaene is correct, the brain’s inner traffic jam may actually reflect a cunning evolutionary compromise. We face new and unexpected decisions many times a day. We couldn’t possibly carry a separate network of neurons for every response to every possible situation. But we can learn rules, and we can use those rules to rearrange an all-purpose router.

One of the deepest flaws in our brains, then, might be a by-product of one of its most impressive strengths.

The Skeptic's Skeptic

2010-11-10T09:44:00.001+05:30

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-skeptics-skeptic

What does procrastination tell us about ourselves?

2010-11-08T11:32:00.000+05:30

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/10/11/101011crbo_books_surowiecki?currentPage=all

Brain's default mode network

2010-11-04T15:37:00.000+05:30

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-brains-dark-energ y

How much math do we really need?

2010-11-02T16:58:00.001+05:30

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/22/AR2010102205451.html

The problem of thinking too much

2010-10-18T18:17:00.000+05:30

http://www-stat.stanford.edu/~cgates/PERSI/papers/thinking.pdf

Focus : a simplicity manifesto in the age of distraction

2010-10-13T23:32:00.000+05:30

http://focusmanifesto.com/

Computer reads the internet

2010-10-12T21:16:00.000+05:30

http://www.techeye.net/science/computer-reads-the-internet

I am my connectome

2010-10-12T14:02:00.000+05:30

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/4262

Hawking & Mlodinow: No 'theory of everything'

2010-10-01T11:51:00.001+05:30

http://physicsbuzz.physicscentral.com/2010/09/hawking-mlodinow-no-theory-of_30.html

Type 3 Corporate Psychopaths: Micromanagers

2010-09-30T13:58:00.001+05:30

http://www.softpanorama.org/Social/Toxic_managers/micromanagers.shtml

zenhabits.net

2010-09-27T15:35:00.001+05:30

http://zenhabits.net/

Where Good Ideas Come From

2010-09-22T12:45:00.001+05:30

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/4219

People often credit their ideas to individual “Eureka!” moments. But Steven Johnson shows how history tells a different story. His fascinating tour takes us from the “liquid networks” of London’s coffee houses to Charles Darwin’s long, slow hunch to today’s high-velocity web.

Chalktalk Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NugRZGDbPFU

We Only Trust Experts If They Agree with Us

2010-09-22T10:02:00.000+05:30

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=we-only-trust-experts-if-they-agree-10-09-18&sc=WR_20100921

Never Say Die: Why We Can't Imagine Death

2010-09-11T19:48:00.001+05:30

http://postbiota.org/pipermail/tt/2008-October/003740.html

About today's world and virtual worlds

2010-09-06T09:44:00.000+05:30

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/4189

Stephen Hawking says universe not created by God

2010-09-05T15:58:00.001+05:30

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/02/stephen-hawking-big-bang-creator

Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Needed Downtime

2010-08-26T15:03:00.001+05:30

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/technology/25brain.html?pagewanted=1&_r=4

Abacus FAQ

2010-08-25T18:47:00.004+05:30

http://www.iqabacus.com/newsntips/FAQ.asp

Abacus and right brain

2010-08-25T18:47:00.001+05:30

http://www.shuzan.jp/english/brain/brain.html

The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains

2010-08-25T10:17:00.000+05:30

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/05/ff_nicholas_carr/

Deep attention and surface attention

2010-08-24T18:14:00.001+05:30

http://media08.wordpress.com/2008/01/17/my-article-on-hyper-and-deep-attention/

The emotion machine - book by Marvin Minsky

2010-08-24T12:16:00.001+05:30

http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/Introduction.html

Making brains: Reverse engineering the human brain to achieve AI

2010-08-24T11:49:00.000+05:30

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/4162

Alien hunters 'should look for artificial intelligence'

2010-08-24T11:31:00.001+05:30

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11041449

Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain

2010-08-20T12:54:00.000+05:30

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/ray_kurzweil_does_not_understa.php

Stephen Hawking's Warning: Abandon Earth—Or Face Extinction

2010-08-10T09:47:00.001+05:30

http://bigthink.com/ideas/21570

The Acceleration of Addictiveness

2010-07-31T16:36:00.001+05:30

http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html

The Top Idea in Your Mind

2010-07-31T16:11:00.002+05:30

http://paulgraham.com/top.html

"I think most people have one top idea in their mind at any given time. That's the idea their thoughts will drift toward when they're allowed to drift freely."

"Someone who does you an injury hurts you twice: first by the injury itself, and second by taking up your time afterward thinking about it."

"Turning the other cheek turns out to have selfish advantages."

"There are two types of thoughts especially worth avoiding. One is thoughts about money. Getting money is almost by definition an attention sink. The other is disputes. These too are engaging in the wrong way: they have the same velcro-like shape as genuinely interesting ideas, but without the substance. So avoid disputes if you want to get real work done."

How to Lose Time and Money

2010-07-31T16:00:00.001+05:30

http://paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html

The most dangerous way to lose time is not to spend it having fun, but to spend it doing fake work. And the worst thing is, they're not even fun.

When Ideas Have Sex

2010-07-22T10:16:00.000+05:30

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/4090/

The surprising truth about what motivates us

2010-07-06T11:47:00.000+05:30

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

The End of Education

2010-06-28T09:33:00.000+05:30

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/4039/

Patternicity and Agenticity

2010-06-21T19:09:00.001+05:30

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/4018/

Work and Play

2010-06-18T09:55:00.001+05:30

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/4016/

A Revolution in Time

2010-06-17T11:41:00.000+05:30

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/4013/

Tallest Mountain to Deepest Ocean Trench

2010-06-15T09:36:00.000+05:30

http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/infographic-tallest-mountain-to-deepest-ocean-trench-0249/

When science clashes with beliefs? Make science impotent

2010-05-31T09:57:00.001+05:30

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/05/when-science-clashes-with-belief-make-science-impotent.ars

Critical Thinking

2010-05-31T09:49:00.000+05:30

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/3973/

A Range of Reactions to Venter’s “Breakthrough”

2010-05-27T12:16:00.000+05:30

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/3969/

Miniature Quadruped Robot - Little Dog

2010-05-27T12:01:00.000+05:30

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/3967/

US researchers create artificial life with synthetic genome

2010-05-21T14:48:00.001+05:30

http://news.rediff.com/report/2010/may/21/breakthrough-us-researchers-create-artificial-life.htm

Top 10 technology mistakes

2010-04-28T19:08:00.001+05:30

http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/173067,top-10-technology-mistakes.aspx

Big questions in freewill

2010-04-15T14:29:00.000+05:30

http://www.freewillandscience.com/wp/

Scientists say free will probably doesn't exist, but urge: "Don't stop believing!"

2010-04-15T14:28:00.000+05:30

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=scientists-say-free-will-probably-d-2010-04-06&sc=WR_20100413

How to Find Crappy Programmers

2010-04-14T09:44:00.001+05:30

http://codeanthem.com/blog/?p=64

Obsolete the Dilemma!

2010-04-07T15:59:00.001+05:30

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/3867/

You Don’t Need Math Skills To Be A Good Developer But You Do Need Them To Be A Great One

2010-03-25T19:16:00.000+05:30

http://www.skorks.com/2010/03/you-dont-need-math-skills-to-be-a-good-developer-but-you-do-need-them-to-be-a-great-one/

Science, Art and writing

2010-03-16T18:55:00.002+05:30

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/3803/

"It’s just that I perceive science—the disciplined pursuit of truth—to be a higher calling than spinning imaginative tales, no matter how vivid, innovative, or even deeply moving those tales may turn out to be."

"Science gives man what he needs,
But magic gives him what he wants."

"At its core, criticism is the only antidote that human beings have discovered against error. It is the chief method that a skilled person can use to become “even better.” The key to discovering correctable errors before you commit a work to press.

But criticism hurts! A deep and pervasive flaw in human character makes all of us resistant to the one thing that can help us to do better.

The only solution? Learn to grow up. To hold your head high, develop a thick skin, and take it."