arieskg's comments

I must’ve missed the part when China became a democracy. While I hold the same fear as China continues to aggressively pursue the Orwellian path, I seldom to see model governments that makes China second think its authoritarian decision. After all, I can’t envision other governments wanting to become US—-when excluding its resources. I hope we become better so we can emerge as the role model that we once were.

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." - Thoreau

Best of luck!

I like your clearly stated purpose that you are learning to expand the breadth of your knowledge. I had the same mindset when I began my self-learning path about a year ago, and the path gets longer as your pursue it, so I would advise changing the 3-6 months to 3-6 years, if your plans is to learn. We can both agree that we are not looking to become experts, so we can relax and go with the flow—in 30 years, who knows what will happen.

CHUNKING

My self-learning approach is chunking subject into 1-2 week blocks. Rarely less than 1-week, never more than 1-month. It’s a cyclical process that I use to give my brain time to consolidate new knowledge.

UNDERSTAND THE BIG PICTURE

When learning a new subject, I always spend my first 2 chunk sessions to understand the big picture, and in later sessions I learn the details through deliberate practice. What I mean by big picture is when you commit time to read a book, or watch a video (@1.5x), you don’t need to read in a linear order, or watch every single minute of the video. Don’t read/watch any content with “learn ABC in less than X time” in the title. The goal is to learn best practices from experts. Only challenge the status quo once you have gained the discipline.

DATA SCIENCE (2weeks)

So in your case, spend 2 weeks learning Data Science: pickup a Wes Mickiney book on Python Data Science, or find a GitHub repository with great contributors sharing their work to help you. If you get stuck on transforming your DataFrame into Matplotlib or Seaborne, stop. Go work on your art project, or in this case, let’s read.

LITERATURE (1week)

For reading - read Strunk and White or William Zinsser if you want to improve your writing. Read Walden, Gatsby, or 1984, if you want to see thoughtfulness in writing. I rarely finish an entire book because I’m more interested in the themes and proses than every details because I have limited memory and I want to ready many books. (1 week)

FOREIGN LANGUAGE (1week)

Now spend the last week writing to your foreign pen pal. Let’s say if it’s in Japanese, learn the hiragana, which is quite easy since all the sounds are romanized, and afterwards you can use the Japanese dictionary, instead of Google translate, to write your letters.

MOST IMPORTANT STEP

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. (Method: Deliberate Practice)

You'll most certainly meet some asshole who tells his nonchalant story about mastering Machine Learning in a month, right after you just told your 3-year Data Science journey. Give the guy a cookie, and call Alexa--who responds “I was born knowing Machine Learning”. The point is filter out the noises, because a few will really make you doubt, but I recommend reading what you wrote and understand that you are curious to learn and don't let other discourage you.

Instead of overthinking and assume that people don't want to upset social hierarchy, I suggest the researchers to take a step back and consider that people prefer symbiotic over the antibiotic scenario. In this "game", we may not know how A came to wealth, but we would be certain how A lost wealth. Similarly in the second scenario, while we know B is still less wealthy compared to A, at least B is wealthier than before. Value creation vs Value transfer. (Entrepreneur v. Investment Banker)

Say that the simulation time period is 1 billion years. To the post-singularity, a few thousand years is the minor details in history, like what Napolean had for breakfast the morning before the Battle of Waterloo.

Let the thoughts flow as far as you'd like, but come back to reality once in a while. After all, your ideas are conditional to your body.

I never knew moissanite existed, thank you for the unknown.

I am skeptical of the post—the argument is diamond sucks, but after reading the post, it appears to be “diamond sucks, buy moisanite instead.” 1). Why is there only one alternative? 2). Why does it matter that people will assume the ring is diamond? 3). Let’s assume all diamonds are subsidizing African warlords. How would I know if my hard-earned money isn’t subsidizing some Chinese manufacturers known to exploit human labor?

I would be getting more “bling for my buck” if it was the same commodity. You mentioned that others wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between moisanite and diamond, but if moisanite is better than diamond, then others should be able to recognize moisanite and perhaps comment “the refraction index for this ring appears to be higher than diamond, it must be a moisanite. It’s beautiful!”

Wedding is a tradition, but it’s not required for marriage likewise diamond is the symbolic instrument for proposals, but the ring does not have to be diamond.

I appreciate your post for the detail comparison breakdown between diamond and moisanite, but I am skeptical of the intent. Research the luxury handbag industry and you’ll find the same patterns, and what alternatives are there, typically, for cheaper Chanel handbags?

I respect several points you made, but there's no reason for me to rebuttal since the argument became unintelligible with your first sentence.

If you care, please read the 10-page letter. The statistics used were out of proportion backed by limited user stories, and why is UC Berkeley considering removing the content? Page 4-7 may have some clues. But I wouln't really know since I have no idea what I am talking about.

FYI, Harvard and MIT were received with the same letters few months ago. It was on the New York Times, but I could still be wrong since I have no idea what I'm talking about.

Classic lobbying. The Department of Justice is filing the complaints against the institutions offering free online courses with an illogical argument masked with virtuous intent. The DOJ is okay with the paid online courses because the levying cost on consumers provides immunity to such violations. Depriving everyone's access to the free content because it did not accommodate those with disabilities sets dangerous precedent for the future. You can't design a system that accommodate everybody from the beginning. Progress requires time and the rational reason for DOJ to begin this investigation is corporate lobbying. What businesses or markets would benefit from this?

The carefully worded letter appears reasonable, except what purpose was conveyed other than forcing the universities to incur high litigation fees? Using ADA as a weapon to purge free sharing of collective intelligence is despicable. I understand universities have limited resources and priorities for their enrolled students, but they should retaliate out of principles.

The community can help with providing captions. Charing $1 fee. Routing the money to a charity. Anything is better than removing the content because that is the complaint's end goal.