Priorities

"If there's something you can imagine that's even worse than wasting your life, if there's something you want that's more important than thirty [years], or if there are scarier things than a life of inconvenience, then you may have cause to attempt the impossible."

-Eliezer Yudkowsky

Success

A kinder, gentler philosophy of success - video from TED

The economics of suicide

The economics of suicide:

"after people attempt suicide and fail, their incomes increase by an average of 20.6 percent compared to peers who seriously contemplate suicide but never make an attempt. ...Once you attempt suicide you suddenly have access to lots of resources—medical care, psychiatric attention, familial love and concern—that were previously expensive or unavailable. ...psychological and familial resources become 'cheaper' after a suicide attempt: It is difficult to find free medical care when you are sad, but once you try to kill yourself, it's forced on you."

Hubs

Buffalo is a rust belt city. Long ago it was a hub of industry, near the Erie Canal, on the St. Lawrence Seaway and a major rail stop directly between Chicago and New York City. Buffalo hosted factories and grain elevators.

When Manufacturing left America, it left Buffalo.

Today Silicon valley is the business mecca of America, possibly of the world. There is no particular geography that lends itself to high tech business, but when one company after another starts up in an area, it becomes the easiest place to hire skilled workers, and the easiest place to find work if you have the right skills. With both employees and potential corporate partners flocking to northern California, it becomes difficult to justify starting a company anywhere else.

Any city would be challenged to turn itself into the next Silicon Valley. For Buffalo, a city challenged just to survive, it may seem impossible.

Despite this, there are advantages that our city could leverage to get a leg up in the climb out of obscurity. We have ready access to cheap hydroelectric power and we are already a world leader in the field of bioinformatics.

We still lack a diverse community of high tech workers. This is what Buffalo Hackerspaces can help remedy.

A Hackerspace is a combination of a community workshop and a social/educational venue. It allows people to pursue technical hobbies that they wouldn't have the resources to do otherwise. It gives people a place to share knowledge, collaborate on projects, and use expensive tools and equipment they would not otherwise have access to.

Besides the obvious benefit of potential advances and businesses growing directly out of the work done at the hackerspace, this is a very visible form of hi-tech community. Workers deciding where to relocate will see a place they can go to meet people with similar interests. Employers will see evidence of a pool of highly skilled workers. Recruiters will have another needed talking point for Buffalo.

This process has positive feedback. The more business is in a city, the more reasons other businesses and workers have to come here.

(friday...) Video: Charter cities

This Ted talk by Paul Romer on Charter cities is amazing. He talks about how to get damaging rules revised.

"We can't just tear down, We've got to find ways to build up as well."

Youth-led media

Youth-led media - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Youth-Led media is any effort created, planned, implemented, and reflected upon by young people in the form of media, including websites, newspapers, television shows and publications."

I occurs to me that by far the leading form of youth led media is online, but that it probably isn't normally recognized as youth-led media, even by the youth leading it.

Neuroscience and Education

What educators can learn from brain research: "As technology advances, new discoveries based on brain mapping are helping researchers understand how students learn. And those discoveries, in turn, are enriching and informing classroom practices in a growing number of schools."

Determination

There is a martial arts teaching that goes something like this:

To become a true master of a move, you must practice it 10,000 times.

• After 1,000 repetitions you have the basics.
• After 2,000 repetitions you are really good.
• After 3,000 repetitions you can perform the move perfectly.
• After 4,000 repetitions you start to get bored.
• After 5,000 repetitions you have no interest in the move anymore.
• After 6,000 repetitions you start to see the move in a different way.
• After 7,000 repetitions you expand on the move.
• After 8,000 repetitions you invent new variants.
• After 9,000 repetitions you have integrated the move into your arsenal.
• After 10,000 repetitions you no longer think of the move.

We have certainly written many more words in our lives, so if writing a word is the kata we are repeating then we have mastered it long ago. If writing a novel is the kata the I do not think any of us have a chance to master it.

But clearly there are masters of writing, even if they themselves stumble in mid novel. The kata writers are seeking to master is something in between a word and a novel.

When I was young, maybe 7 or 8, There was a patio in my back yard with basketball hoop. It was made of hexagonal patio tiles and they fascinated me. I knew that when I was grown and spectacularly wealthy, I would have a house with hexagonal patio tiles. I was a math nerd. I also had a brother two years older then me, a low growth rate and relatively little athletic skill. I was not competitive at basketball.

In fact I could barely dribble, but that was what I could do, and I wanted to prove I could do it a lot. I also knew that numbers had no limit. So I started dribbling, and counting my dribbles.

It didn't take me long to realize that I could dribble faster than I could say large numbers, so I started saying only the ones place, and only saying the value of the tens place when it changed. one two three four five six seven eight nine ninety one two three four five six seven eight nine hundred one two three....

It also didn't take me long to realize that the lower I dribbled, the faster I could go, And when you're dribbling that low to the ground, the basketball barely moves in relation to it's size, and you could slowly rotate it in any direction just by dribbling offset sightly to that side.

Even dribbling that fast I wanted a bigger record than I could get in one sitting. I had to remember my count from day to day so I tried to stop at round numbers or numbers with a pattern to them.

I still remember the last number I stopped counting at: thirteen thousand one hundred thirty one, or as the mnemonic I used at the time 1 3 1 3 1.

So I guess I know how to dribble, and I also know how to count. And that's probably the closest experience I have to learning something in the style of a repetitive kata.