
Ask YC: What have you learned that rocked your world? - ericb
My question is meant to be open-ended and not limited to programming. My examples:<p>Meta-programming, in ruby (the power of code that creates code, being released from the tyranny of typing)<p>Social psychology (Social proof, hacks for relating to people, hacks for appealing to the opposite sex, hacks for reading people)<p>Economics (Why the minimum wage is damaging, why free trade is good)
======
FleursDuMal
Social psychology was a big one for me too. Cialdini's book Influence gave me
a lot to think about.

The role that biases play in my own thinking. Charlie Munger's speech that was
on this site a while ago articulates a lot of things I was beginning to
realize (<http://vinvesting.com/docs/munger/human_misjudgement.html>)

I struggled for a long time with procrastination and low productivity. When I
realized that abandoning the parts of my life that were not deeply fulfilling
(browsing the web aimlessly, refreshing RSS feeds, wasting time in forums,
watching tv etc) would not actually be as painful as I thought it would, it
changed how I live and work in a very fundamental way.

~~~
prakash
If you guys like Munger, pick up his book, "Poor charlie's almanac"

------
bootload
_"... What have you learned that rocked your world? ..."_

Mostly about empirical observations about the natural world. One very simple
idea while in High School studying physics & chemistry that _"the iron in your
blood flowing through your arteries is composed of left over bits of exploded
starts (Iron)"_. Another is how little we really observe and notice things.
Every week I make a habit of exploring & looking for new things mostly flora
or fauna [0] in the bush. It sharpens your observation skills and keeps you
fit at the same time. It never ceases to amaze me finding a new variety of
insect. [1] Last weeks was a huge fly. [2] Never seen them before. I'm still
hunting after a huge flying insect approx: 4-5cm in diameter that I've only
seen around 500+m elevation.

[0] <http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157600203012569/> and
<http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157600195813933/>

[1] <http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157600195955778/>

[2] <http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/2294889518>

~~~
tel
To take it up a notch, _everything_ in your body is composed of left over bits
of exploded stars.

~~~
bootload
_"... everything in your body is composed of left over bits of exploded stars
..."_

Sort of.

It is Iron with Atomic #26, the 6th most commonly abundant element, that in
massive stars where stellar nucleosynthesis occurs is the point where the
energy generated through fusion. The binding energy to add a neutron or
proton, releases energy. After Iron (Fe56) the binding energy required to add
a neutron or proton requires extra energy and can result in a collapse with
_heavier than Iron_ elements being generated in a _super nova_.

While stars up to our sun convert H->He and heavier elements it is Carbon,
Nitrogen & Oxygen cycle (especially Carbon) that allows larger stars to create
energy and finally the advanced fusion stages required for elements up to
Iron. So you could probably argue that the existence of Carbon in humans is
the just as significant.

Elements heavier than Iron requires explosive nucleosynthesis or a super nova
to be created. These elements have unstable half lives. Hence the importance
of Iron. [0]

[0] I've butchered a lot of physics here. Feel free to pick me up on the finer
points.

~~~
tel
Okay, true, but I'll stand by a "nearly everything" since a very large subset
of organic molecules are composed entirely of atoms lighter than Fe. We're
probably safe to say that only small parts of your body require more exotic
cosmological phenomena for their base material.

------
iamwil
Complex and emergent systems. Certain systems can have only local interactions
but have global effects. Some effects in nature are not the result of a single
cause, but from the interactions of many local parts. One can design robust
behavior (though not necessarily optimal) in the global system through only
defining local interactions. Many biological systems have this architecture,
such as ant colonies, immune systems, and neural networks, and flocks. So do
non-biological ones, such as capitalistic economies, traffic jams, and
choosing neighbors. The Atlantic's "Seeing around corners" is a good intro to
the topic, as well as "The computational beauty of nature"

Sexual selection is the second child of Darwin that people haven't paid as
much attention to, but he spent a significant amount of time devoting study to
it. It poses interesting questions on the canonical natural selection
mechanisms, when mate selection is factored in. When you look at the mating
systems of other animals, there's a wide wide variety. From males that care
for the young, polygamy being the norm in birds, homosexuality not all that
uncommon in the animal kingdom, and factors that affect male:female size
ratio. After learning about it, you dismiss arguments people make about how
this or that aspect of nature is 'unnatural'. Chances are, they've never
looked, and think all mating systems are like human ones.

Quitting the for-loop through functional programming styles. Hello map,
inject, and each. Understanding the power of Lisp, and why it has parens
everywhere. Understanding continuations are functions that don't return, and
you merely chain them together. Still working on monads though.

~~~
Prrometheus
Emergent phenomena were a big one for me, too. One of my favorite pieces on
the topic of economics is Hayek’s:
<http://www.econlib.org/Library/Essays/hykKnw1.html>

Dawkin’s “The Ancestor’s Tale” showed me this pattern in biology, too, and
drastically rewrote the way I see the world.

Being able to follow and understand mathematical proofs for the first time was
also enlightening. I prefer the simple, clever ones, such as Cantor’s diagonal
proof of the uncountability of the real numbers:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor's_diagonal_argument>

------
ashu
Euler's equation.

That conservation laws follow from deeper symmetry principles (Noether's
theorem). Symmetry under translation corresponds to conservation of momentum,
symmetry under rotation to conservation of angular momentum, symmetry in time
to conservation of energy!

<http://mathworld.wolfram.com/NoethersSymmetryTheorem.html>

~~~
tel
This has to do with the context where I learned Euler's Equation, but I can
never separate it from Fourier and (later) Laplace transforms. Those are all
so beautiful and mind blowing.

~~~
maximilian
I'll second that Fourier transform. The idea that you could represent
basically a list of numbers with a sum of sines, or any other orthonormal set
is mindblowing to me. Nothing in math has blown my mind as much as functional
analysis.

------
CRASCH
That the hack is the architecture.

Architectures are designed to solve the known set of problems at the time of
inception. When that problem set changes people try to adapt the architecture
to solve the new problem set. Usually this is done through the path of least
resistance. The easiest to implement with the least known side effects.

My favorite example: Web browsers were never ever meant to host applications
when they were first designed. They can only passably do so today through
elaborate hacks. This is why writing a good web application is so difficult
and time consuming. These hacks are now well known established parts of what
is the accepted architecture of web browsers but they were once hacks and are
still hacks.

Similar examples exist all over the place. Design for the future and build for
today...

------
bayareaguy
"We can implant entirely false memories"[1]

I also remember being really suprised when I first learned the Central Limit
Theorem[2] a long time ago.

That said, Hofstadter's "Gödel, Escher, Bach"[3] probably had the biggest
impact on me.

[1]
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2003/dec/04/science.resear...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2003/dec/04/science.research1)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem>

[3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel,_Escher,_Bach>

~~~
tel
I don't know that I was surprised by the CLT itself. What surprised me about
it was how _nice_ it made everything else. In some sense there are whole books
full of theorems which go from tedious and complex to 12-year-old simple in
just 3 letters.

------
WilliamLP
1\. I could learn how to be attractive to women. Everything I learned when
younger was wrong, and relationships don't just happen, you must work to make
them happen. Intelligence actually can be used for sexual attraction.

2\. When I am sure I am being totally logical, something analyzing myself
shows very clearly that my motivations aren't what I think. People who deny
their irrational humanity the most often are extremely irrational humans in
many obvious ways (to someone other than themselves). A whole lot of extremely
complex things are really a form of very simple, and often counterproductive,
fear.

3\. I really don't have to be what other people want me to be.

4\. A lot of deeply held and complex human phenomena have extremely simple
explanations, which you aren't allowed to say, but which can be extremely
useful to know nonetheless. (For example, take the tapestry of specific social
and philosophical beliefs about religion, all constructed out of transparently
motivated falsehood or meaningless gibberish.)

~~~
iamwil
ditto on #1. What women sometimes view as happy coincidences in romantic fate
is actually the work of meticulous planning on part of the guy.

------
ericb
Another: Joel's law of Leaky Abstractions was forehead-slappingly good at
expressing what I had never put into words.

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.htm...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.html)

------
ephextom
Selfish Gene, social dynamics, sexual attraction, status.

It took me a few months of reading and thinking about all this stuff to
comprehend it and put any of it into action. When I did, and saw the results,
it broke my brain and forced me to re-evaluate pretty much everything I
understood about the world... not just human behaviour and relationships but
business, economics, politics, the lot.

------
mxyzptlk
Girls like sex too.

~~~
maximilian
On this tangent. I think that the moment I realized that nobody thinks as
complicated as we think they do. Basically it boiled down to this thought, "If
that girl came up to me right now, how would I feel?" "I'd feel great thats
what!". And then I get up the balls to go and talk to her. The idea of putting
myself in other's shoes really changed my attitude on a lot of things.

~~~
sabat
You know what's funny? What you said is true for pretty much everything else
in life, too. Not just sex.

Here's something I've learned that rocked my world: most things are not nearly
as complicated as I make them in my head. Apparently this comes from some kind
of childhood issue with pleasing parents. But if you're smart, chances are you
can do a lot more than you give yourself credit for.

I just wish I'd learned that earlier.

------
dfranke
* Q-BASIC, when I was in kindergarten.

* Lisp, then all over again with Haskell.

* Anarchocapitalism.

* The proof of Turing's undecidability theorem.

* Positivism (even though I'm a Platonist).

* How compilers work.

* RSA.

------
mhb
Stack three polarizers. Orient #1 and #2 parallel, orient #3 perpendicular.
See no light come through.

Rotate #2 to 45 degrees. See light come through.

Remove #2 completely. See no light come through.

------
edw519
Just about anyone can do just about anything, eventually.

Too many people prevent possibility by discounting others because they fail to
distinguish between the words "eventually" and "never".

------
michael_nielsen
Fun question. First thoughts: logo (the computer language), the proof of the
infinitude of primes, calculus and Newtonian mechanics, general relativity,
the idea that thinking is a learnable skill.

It's interesting to me what I've learnt but which didn't make my list: most
things related to programming, mathematics, and physics, including quantum
mechanics. Generally speaking, most of that knowledge was more incremental.

------
daniel-cussen
The Selfish Gene.

~~~
dcurtis
The Selfish Gene changed my life, along with Phantoms in the Brain By V.S.
Ramachandran.

------
moog
Differential equations. That the world could be described by calculus was a
revelation to me.

------
DaniFong
Godel's incompleteness theorems.

~~~
hollerith
How did that rock your world?

I'm not asking you to explain the theorems -- I understand them -- just
indicate why or how they are significant to you.

~~~
DaniFong
In brief, they're mathematical proofs that certain things are unknowable.
Mathematics rarely gets so close to theology. And religion is rarely so
certain.

~~~
hollerith
Oh, so before you learned about the theorems, you thought you could know
anything, and the theorems set you right on that point? And somehow that was a
theological or transcendental experience?

~~~
DaniFong
There's a big difference in the emotional experience of thinking you know
something, and actually having proof of it. I think most theists would be
similarly amazed by an encounter with a deity.

------
aneesh
Mathematical things: A clever geometric proof of the AM-GM inequality, the
Monty Hall problem, functional programming.

~~~
ericb
Agreed. The Monty hall problem is definitely a mind-bender in a good way. I
started with Erlang, but haven't found a project that begged for it yet,
though...

------
tjr
Differential calculus. Lisp. The circle of fifths.

~~~
SwellJoe
For sure on the Circle of Fifths, and the whole "music theory is stacks of
thirds, fourths, or fifths all the way down" thing is pretty neat.

But what blew my mind even more in music is that our 12 tone even-tempered
scale is arbitrary and only firmed up a few hundred years ago. Everything
before that (and for many years after, and in many non-western musical
cultures) was written assuming just intonation. Modern electronic instruments
have brought just intonation (and all sorts of weird stuff) back into
reasonable usage.

------
parker
I don't have any mind-blowing scientific proof to quote, though I am a trivia
and wikipedia junky.

Just the other day I was watching my dog 'dig a hole' inside my house and
attempt to bury one of his toys. The problem was that he wasn't actually
digging anything up, and was covering the toy with 'ghost' matter (there
wasn't anythying there, it was make believe dirt).

This got me to thinking that our entire universe has conspired for planet
Earth to harbour life, and for life to evolve through millions of iterations
to create the genus canus, and animal behaviour has developed to this exact
point in time, where my dog innately knows how to dig, and he has no idea
why.... and for that matter, neither do I. We're all such a fluke of
existence, and we never take a moment to realize that.

------
dreish
The thing I'm most thankful to have learned in 2007 is that there is a _lot_
more that I don't know about programming than I thought there was.

------
musiciangames
That a single photon can pass through two slits at once, and interfere with
itself.

------
Flemlord
If you create a good product, some people will take you seriously and buy it.

------
mixmax
Darwinism, Evolution and survival of the fittest. Such a simple idea that has
such broad implications.

------
mercurio
Diagonalization. Undecidability. Arrow's Theorem.

------
joeter
The most influential thing I’ve learned is that people act by their individual
set of incentives. Apply choice aspects of psychology and economics – then you
got something big. Think game theory.

Also, I'm waiting for the Human Genome Project to help elucidate more on the
placebo effect.

I think it has a major correlation with the phenotypic vs. genotypic
expression of faith - something all humans display toward an institution,
ideology, themselves, and/or another person.

This will be immensely powerful information.

------
run4yourlives
That my child puts everything I've ever done into some lame also-did-this
category.

Other parents will understand.

------
abstractwater
1\. Ludwig Wittgenstein's "Tractatus Logico Philosophicus" (the extremism of
the idea, the solemn (poetic?) tone that nevertheless emerges from the
sentences of such a rigorous work)

2\. RMS reflections about morals in software programming (I may not wholly
agree, but he taught me a whole new way of thinking about software)

3\. Prolog declarative approach (instead of describing how to solve a problem,
just describe the problem)

~~~
neilc
You actually read the Tractatus? Wow.

------
wallflower
The universe rewards boldness

------
TheTarquin
Computability and runtime efficiency. (I've productively applied this to
problems in every domain of my life.)

The importance of limits. (From testing limit cases heavily, to time being the
limit of being, to value sources being the limiting horizon of personality.
Paul DePalma, Martin Heidegger, and Charles Taylor being to thank for teaching
me those, respectively.)

------
imperator
1\. Systems Theory with Buckminster Fuller and Russell Ackoff.

2\. Recursion, not just in programming, but in other parts of nature.

3\. Memory and social size approximations, such as memory chunking in seven
plus or minus two, and Dunbar's number.

------
kryptos
Quite a long list actually and hard to put in words.... Functional programming
in general..especially its roots( halting problem, church's
thesisetc...),reading about ENIAC .... small-world problem(miligram) and
modelling such networks,beauty of primes and number theoretic
algorithms,quantum mechanics. Several books have also influenced
deeply...textbooks/sci-fi/cyberpunk...works of hofstadter,stephenson etc....

------
symptic
Discovering many of the beliefs and attributes I had grown and fostered within
myself fall within what is described as the Law of Attraction (though I can't
say I have as much stock in it as many do). There just seems to be an attitude
that people who I see as successful have, and every time I see my attitude
relating to theirs, I sit back and think, "wow."

------
jerry384
Economics. After years of studying earth science and natural processes,
economics taught me that economic drivers dominate everything, including
everything about the natural world. It also taught me that economics is
completely amoral. It doesn't look for good or bad, it just achieves results
that society wants - versus what society says it wants.

------
iamelgringo
Airway, Breathing, Circulation... Everything else is details

Carl Jung's ideas of Myth and Robert Johnson's "He"

Wealth is what people want. If you have what people want, you have wealth. You
can create what people want.

The point of working is to make enough wealth to retire. You can do that all
at once, or by selling off hours of your life in exchange for money.

The "money problem" can be solved.

Recursion.

Code == data == code

------
henning
That an interpreter or compiler is just another program.

Metaprogramming and higher-order functions.

Squeak the IDE.

That there is no magic in computers or programming.

------
gaika
Most people do not like when I'm telling them about my startup. Especially
online. Somehow talking about what you care about is taken as a self-promotion
and counts as spam in their eyes. Go figure.

------
konsl
Don't know why, but I really liked network calculus in university:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_calculus>

------
tim2
Being smart and working hard only mildly correlates with success.

------
aflag
To talk

To write

Gravity

Newtonian laws

The scientific method

Although only now I'm starting to realize how amazing all those things were.
And I took it for granted for all my school years... They were all just means
to pass a class. What a shame.

------
tel
Haskell (not just monads, though they were impressive too)

------
khill
Parenting is harder than it looks - and much more rewarding than you might
expect.

I didn't have an appreciation for how amazing my parents were until I had
children.

------
dmoney
Soloing on the guitar.

That working for a company isn't the only option.

------
brianloveswords
I second Euler's equation.

Also, two books that really rocked my world (though I guess it's not really an
answer to the question) were Dune and House of Leaves.

------
rugoso
hey ericb, can you tell us how you learned social psychology? maybe what
books, sites ... etc ?

also im checking the material that FleursDuMal mentioned ;)

~~~
ericb
Absolutely. I was a psych major. Another huge thing I learned, btw, was that
my persistence (stubbornness, if you ask my wife ;) lets me learn most
anything, which is how I came to be a developer.

Instead of how I learned it, I'll point you to some topics in social psych:

Read Cialdini, the psychology of influence.

This doubles for attracting investment and women:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_proof>

Social skills-the parens are part of the link:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirroring_>(psychology)

Halo Effect <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect>

Interesting experiments:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment>

<http://www.prisonexp.org/>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments>

If an area I listed here or in the original post is of particular interest,
let me know and I'll reply with the specifics of what I meant, or pointers to
some info on it.

~~~
rugoso
thanks!, supercool! ;)

------
aoeuid
Basically anything by Greg Egan, particularly Permutation City.

Also nanotechnology, the singularity, and friendly AI, in order of learning
about them.

------
tel
The simplicity and difficulty of Bayes' Law.

------
trevelyan
GIZA++ and statistical machine translation tools.

------
tel
Hilbert spaces.

------
tel
Lisp macros

------
vanekl
POKER IS NOT JUST A GAME

First, thanks for posting the question. I've read a lot of good info in this
thread and I'd like to reciprocate.

The most important lesson I've learned in my life is that the people who have
any influence over you are most likely playing you. And most "dirty tricks"
are not done directly, but through their proxies. If this is news to you, you
wont even be able to tell whose pulling the levers.

People may be moral on Sunday, but, come Monday, the boss can pretty much
define what's right and wrong and people will fall in line, even if it's to
conspire and betray. Most people have the morality of a squirrel: they will
steal your nuts, but only when you aren't looking.

Their justifications for screwing you:

1\. as long as they don't get caught, they think it's OK;

2\. they assume they are being played, too, so it's just the way they think
the world works;

3\. the ends justify the means;

4\. some people (salesmen / head hunters / egotistic managers) play it for the
game: playing people like a puppet on a string, what's not to like, especially
if it puts jingle in the pocket?

5\. better him than me; it's a dog eat dog world;

6\. who can afford morals when you have a mortgage payment due? Family first;

7\. the naive deserve to be played if they're this easy;

8\. bacon cheeseburgers, chocolate, and over-generous salaries go a long way
towards assuaging the guilt;

9\. some think saying a prayer every Sunday absolves them;

10\. periodically spreading graft in the form of gifts, bonuses, perks, plush
job positions, etc., is an embodiment of their good intentions and shows what
swell guys they really are. In reality, they are trying to buy you.

Here's a few clues that should draw your attention:

1\. if it seems like your manager is doing no better than flipping a coin
whenever he makes a technical decision, it's not because he's a moron when it
comes to technical matters, it's because he is factoring his decision into his
scheme of playing the maximum number of his employees to his benefit.

2\. if the boss makes totally random statements that technically don't make
any sense at all, it's because they weren't intended to make technical sense.
He's sending you a message in manager-speak, the only code he understands.
(More on this below.)

3\. if buds that used to pal around with you start avoiding you, the boss has
gotten to them in some way.

And here's one anti-pattern: don't think that being outwardly religious means
that one is less evil than the non-religious. It just means the evil is
cloaked in religious vestments.

Here's an example of how to decode a totalling random thing your boss may say.
"Put the prototype in production now." Those six words have a totally
different meaning to a manager than to a person naive enough to take this
statement literally. Translation: "What I want you to do is this: rewrite the
prototype and turn it into production code, test it, and install it before the
end of the day, or, if you prefer, you can work all night and install it first
thing tomorrow morning while I'm pounding away on my trophy wife. I know what
I said may have sounded kind of funny, because I don't understand the stupid
details that you techies masturbate over, but if I had said anything truly
insane I'm sure that you idiot techies would have either corrected me, or made
the proper translations from manager-speak to geek-speak. I mean, surely
you're smart enough to do that, aren't you? You say you can speak all these
different languages. Well, why don't you start with English? I own all of your
asses, so you will either find a way to do this or else tell me in the most
obsequious manner how my grand plan may be amended in a manner such that I
will save face and still get what I want in the quickest way. And, oh, by the
way, if this causes the database to start hemorrhaging data, it's all your
fault because I hereby give you total responsibility and zero authority to
actually get the task done. Deal with it, and get out of my face already. I
have no clue how to actually do anything that I asked you to do, but that's
not my problem, now, is it, you fooken mooches? Now I've got to get back to my
office and covertly read the email you've been sending each other. Suck it!
Uh, I mean, good luck on getting this done by my totally meaningless
deadline!" There, that wasn't so hard to decode, was it? The reason why it
becomes easier and easier to decode manager-speak is because a lot of the
words and phrases remain the same, especially the phrases "idiots," "suck it,"
and "don't bother me with details, you ass-wipes! I can't even remember the
passwords to half my accounts. How the hell do you think I can help you with
your petty problems? Now, for Christsakes, leave me alone!"

Most people are amateurs at being pure evil, however, and have tells. They
avoid looking you in the eyes, or give short, evasive or noncommittal answers.
They often don't face you while talking to you, and their voice is lower than
it is normally. They may look at their computer monitor as if it's revealing
the answer to the universe and they are too busy soaking in life's answers to
attend to your silly, silly questions that deal with boring things like
databases or how we might make their company some coin.

The Pros, on the other hand, have learned the tricks to hiding their
culpability: they have learned to control their emotions so that they can
appear charming and look you straight in the eyes while lying. Finding the
Pro's tells is much harder.

The most common way for a player to judge whether his conspiracies have been
found out is to occasionally "ping" you and judge your reactions. The simplest
form this takes is a cheery "Good Morning," except this is not a pleasantry,
your boss is using it like radar. The naive wont be able to control the bile
that starts to well up in the throat when they see somebody who is playing
them, and they will immediately give it away on their face, and this is of
course instantly readable. The ping succeeded. If you understand how the game
is played, however, you will immediately give a reciprocating cheerful "Good
morning," not because you give a rat's ass about your boss' well-being, but
because showing your hand makes it even easier for your boss to play you. The
corollary is to never let on that you know the rules of the game, which is why
you almost never see these missives in print, and they will be quickly
disavowed or shrugged off as casually as Bush shrugs off the fact he belongs
to a secret society (Skull and Bones -- look it up). Who said poker's just a
game?

Some indicators of Pro players: they pay a lot of attention to their
appearance (one exception: they think they can cover up their rolls and rolls
of fleshy fat with really expensive leather coats); they attach a huge amount
of importance on being able to tightly control their emotions (or use them to
personal gain, to wit, watch Hillary turn on the waterworks when her words are
no longer effective); they tightly control information: they only release
information that either makes them look good, is benign, or is vitally
important to getting the job done; they know how to put the best light on a
sucky situation, and, conversely, are quick to throw mud at others, even when
they are three levels down the ladder and have absolutely zero authority, they
still try to divert the responsibility onto those who are either unable to
defend themselves or are unwilling to stoop to this nonsense. Most of the
time, however, you wont even know it's happening. Most of it doesn't surface,
but some eventually bubbles up from the depths. The most insidious members of
our society are cowards, and prefer maneuvering in the shadows.

So amoral and base are these people that they will even try to play you after
you give your notice. While you desperately try to break free from the beady-
eyed little monsters, they will ask for that last pound of flesh without even
blinking. From the most evil there is absolutely no remorse; and from those
trying to buy back a piece of their souls, a generous severance. Take it --
you deserve it more than you will ever know.

Those weird things people have said to you in the past that you just write off
as unimportant or meaningless, well, they weren't. The motivations behind
those weird statements were most likely guileful, trying to get you to expose
your cards, or manipulate you.

How to know you're being played? Aside from the clues I list above, you need
to totally clear your head and let your subconscious pick it apart at night. I
literally woke up one morning and knew what had happened because my dreams had
played it out for me. Then once you know what happened, and understand these
unspoken rules I've laid out, it's not too difficult to confirm. And to be
specific about clearing your head, I mean eating like a cave man, and
exercising like a cave man. Don't even ingest caffeine if you are trying to
get to that point where your subconscious is able to tell you important things
and you are capable of listening.

However, I just may be over-sensitive. And I suck at poker. But I'm learning.

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radley
XKCD

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albertcardona
Stuart Kaufmann's "order for free" in complex systems.

His books are insightful and also a pleasure to read.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Kauffman>

------
curi
Epistemology from The Fabric of Reality (to start)

