Reality+ by David J.Chalmers (2022)

The initial chapters are quite interesting and have a new awakening kind of feeling while reading it. However the topic may be too heavy, and similar ideas are repeated throughout that a person may not know that they themselves are in another stimulated world.

There is really no way to know whether one is in a stimulated world. On one end, it improves cognitive abilities and create immersive virtual worlds. On the other end, there are important considerations such as privacy, identity and nature of reality – example use of deepfake technology.

Deep learning can train networks to perform many takes – including the production of highly convincing images or videos. Often a deepfake photo or video shows someone doing something they never did or saying something they never said. Sometimes, a deepfake photo or video can depict a person who never existed. This goes for the same as fake news.

In the past, seeing is believing and a photo is proof. But in an age of deepfake, images cannot be trusted so straightforwardly. In the long run, the only way to know for sure whether an image is real or fake maybe through authentication by a reliable source.

Really very heavy book to read. But in the initial chapters, it is nice to know of authors such as Isaac Asimov and his scientific books which one can take a reference for a possible peak into the future.

Art thinking

How to Carve out creative space in a world of schedules, budgets and bosses (2016) By Amy Whitaker

It is quite an interesting book that sets up the Art thinking framework. It will be good to read this when feeling lost. This is important because change and reinvention are essential to longer-term success.

Art Thinking Framework

1. From a wide angle : Zoom out and see everything from a wide-angle view.
2. In the weeds : Change your focus from outcome to process and from comparing your work in progress to other people’s completed projects.
3. To the lighthouse : Trade outcome goals for questions that guide you forward.
4. To make a boat : Manage risk by taking a portfolio view and by owning the upside of what you create.
5. To be in the fray : Assign roles and adapt tools of conversation to set culture and manage projects.
6. To build a house : Build artistic business models working within the design constraints of capitalism itself.
7. To see the whole : Navigate the complexity of organizations and disciplines to tackle the big questions of the day.
   
   

1. From a wide angle : Zoom out and see everything from a wide-angle view.
   
   Economics assume a world of profitable products. It is a world of fish, not water. Whole-life thinking models the world as the entire system – taking into account all of life underwater.
   
   Thomas Fogarty, the cardiovascular surgeon who invented the balloon catheter, uses the idea of fly-fishing knots he learning while missing school to create the balloon catheter. This device which is still in use today – save more than 20 million lives or limbs since it was introduced – came into being not from a specialized expertise or a large pharmaceutical lab, but from a Huck Finn propensity to jump out of the windows to go fishing school.
   
   Hence time is never wasted because it is spent on learning, and because it is a practice. Whether that learning is immediately useful does not mean that it will not be vital one day.
   
   

2. In the weeds : Change your focus from outcome to process and from comparing your work in progress to other people’s completed projects.

Attentiveness is the composition of soul, and economically it is the scarcest resource that we have. Attentiveness is the engine of productivity when inhibiting the weeds. Another way is that you can reverse-engineer your perspective by taking a successful event and unfurling it over its longer arc of creation. You see the successful outcome.

3. To the lighthouse : Trade outcome goals for questions that guide you forward.

Your lighthouse question might exist best in the near future or in the future. What would you like to see happen in the next month or year? What do you think is important to think about in the next 30 years? Let your mind roam freely in a sci-fi brainstorming mode, and then ask yourself why you care. Does that translate into what you care about now too?

To navigate the space, you have the lighthouse of knowing and revisiting the question that guides you – and that artistic permission to ask a big enough question that you don’t know whether you might fail.

4. To make a boat : Manage risk by taking a portfolio view and by owning the upside of what you create.

When you accept that you are in the weeds and navigating from a question, how do you frame and manage risks – not just of failure but also success? The modern portfolio theory is useful and you can apply to your work. You have some areas of your life that are steady and low risk. You may not enjoy them as much as working on your art, but they pay for your life. The other parts of your portfolio are projects that may be successful artistically or financially, or neither or both. This structure is called cross-subsidy – one area of income that you use to cover another area of expense.

5.To be in the fray : Assign roles and adapt tools of conversation to set culture and manage projects.

In a work context, the sign of an intact holding environment is that people have the freedom to focus mainly on their work instead of spending all their energy keeping up appearances, managing difficult people or navigating politics.

6. To build a house : Build artistic business models working within the design constraints of capitalism itself.
Our work never exists in the vacuum where absolute perfection is possible. It takes shape in conversation with the constraints of the materials we are working in, and with each other. One of the strategies is called periscope move. You look at your own projects and aims. You consider what isn’t working, and then you take the time to put the periscope up and see who else has the same problem.

Ultimately the design principle that all of business comes back to is the structural attempt to make price equal to value – while being able to define value as broadly as you want. If you focus on the creation of value itself and design the risks and structures around it as well as you can, then you are building a house that can connect to the grid of a larger, thriving metropolis.

7. To see the whole : Navigate the complexity of organizations and disciplines to tackle the big questions of the day.

If we applied the art thinking framework to university education we might come up with a whole new set of questions about what it is to learn, and we might even redefine what a university is. There are massive open online courses MOOCs – which are appendages to the larger cost structure of physical-plant universities, and others are wistful tech-platform startups. Universities may decentralize into networks of freelance adjunct professors. A university education could become pixelated too, fitting into the interstitial spaces of physical occupancy and off-work hours.

The Practice

by Seth Godin (2020)

Trust your Self

1. Skill is not the same as talent.
2. A good process can lead to good outcomes, but it doesn’t guarantee them.
3. Perfectionism has nothing to do with being perfect.
4. Reassurance is futile.
5. Hubris is the opposite of trust.
6. Attitudes are skills.
7. There is no such thing as writer’s block.
8. Professionals produce with intent.
9. Creativity is an act of leadership.
10. Leaders are imposters.
11. All criticism is not the same.
12. WE become creative when we ship the work.
13. Good taste is a skill.
14. Passion is a choice.
    
    Trust is not self-confidence. Trust is a commitment to the practice, a decision to lead and make things happen, regardless of the bumps in the road, because you know that engaging in the practice is better than hiding from it.
    
    Organizations and people earn trust by coming through in difficult moments. Trust earns you patience, because once you trust yourself, you can stick with a practice that most people can’t handle.
    
    

Generous

Pythagoras and the Fifth Hammer

According to legend, Pythagoras discovered the foundation of musical tuning by listening to the sounds of 5 blacksmith’s hammers. Over the following weeks, Pythagoras weighed and measured each hammer. He wanted to understand why they didn’t make identical sounds and more importantly, why they sound so good when they all clanged at the same time. It turn out that the ratio in the weights of the first 4 hammers led to their ringing in harmony – each had a weight that a multiple of the other. The fifth hammer didn’t follow any rules of harmony. Actually the fifth hammer was the secret to the entire sound. It worked precisely because it wasn’t perfect, it added grit and resonance to a system that would have been flaccid without it.

The Professional

The lifeguard may attend the water safety instructor test and is a strong swimmer. The lifeguard whether uncertain or not, less qualified or not, you leap. Leap first, do your job. How can you be certain? And yet, how can anyone who cares hold back?

Consistency is the way forward

No one knows exactly what movie Greta Gerwig will make next. But her fans will go to see her next movie, because she directed it. She earned those fans by seeing them, understanding them, and helping them change. The promise is a significant one, and it leads to a connection between the artist and those who are served by the art.

What we seek out is someone who sees us and consistently keeps their promises to bring us the magic we are hoping for. Someone who has committed to rhyming with what they did yesterday.

No such things as writer’s block

A roundup of tips and tricks for creators
1. Build streaks. Do the work every single day. Blog daily. Write daily. Ship daily. Show up daily. Find your streak and maintain it.

2. Talk about your streaks to keep honest.

3. Seek the smallest viable audience. Make it for someone, not for everyone.

4. Avoid shortcuts. Seek the most direct path instead.

5. Find and embrace genre. (original)

6. Seek out desirable difficulty.

7. Don’t talk about your dreams with people who want to protect you from heartache.

Make assertions

Assertions are the foundation of design and creation process. You can’t design with intent unless you commit to who it’s for and what it’s for. And that leads to your assertion. The professional creative works to change the culture. Not all of the culture, but a pocket of it.

Earn your skills

Are you aware of what the reading (your reading) must include? What’s on the list? The more professional your field, the more likely it is that people know what’s on the list. The reading is what we call it when you do the difficult work of learning to think with the best, to stay caught up, to understand.

The Infinite Game

By Simon Sinek (2019)

This is one of the more interesting books that i read.
To ask “What is best for me?” is finite thinking.
To ask “What is best for us?” is infinite thinking.

A company built for the Infinite Game doesn’t think of itself alone. It considers the impact of its decision on its people, its community, the economy, the country and the world.

Any leader who wants to adopt an infinite mindset must follow 5 essential practices :
1. Advance a Just Cause
2. Build trusting teams
3. Study your worthy rivals
4. Prepare for existential flexibility
5. Demonstrate the courage to lead

A Just Cause
1) for something (affirmative, optimistic)
2) Inclusive (open to all those who like to contribute)
3) Service oriented (for primary benefit of others)
4) Resilient (able to endure political, technological, cultural change)
5) Idealistic (big, bold and ultimately unachievable)

This makes me think why i start this blog for so many years …. the reason that i want it to be free, is that in event that i am no longer around, these posts may give someone who read it some ideas, inspiration without reading the whole book.

Any new technology could render our products or cause and an entire company obsolete overnight. Example advancement in automative technology and a network of highways offered people a quicker and sometimes cheaper alternative of the train. Example to a train company, if the railways defined their need to exist in terms related to moving people and things instead of advancing the railroad, they might be the owners of major car companies or airlines today.

How I built this Part 2

By Guy Raz (2020)
The Unexpected Paths to Success from the World’s Most inspiring entrepreneurs

After finishing this book, I think this must be the best book that I have read since the start of the year. I was particularly very impressed with the last few chapters of the book. The author Guy Raz must have put in lots of effort to write this book.

Part 3 The Destination
Mission is important
Founders who approach their businesses with a “mission first” focus tend to be better equipped to handle the lure of unrestrained and manic growth that has damaged or even sunk so many companies with early potential.

Having a defined mission is even more valuable when money is scarce or growth is anemic -especially for younger companies – because it gives them a reason to keep on fighting.

Build a Culture, Not a Cult
Create a lasting culture by building a business with a shared set of values. That shared sense of purpose and values, more so than money or profitability, is what explains the longevity of a company. Write down your values. Without knowing your values, you are going to make decisions that are inconsistent, and you have to have consistency to inspire your sanity. I was thinking maybe that’s why companies like Apple can still continue without Steve Jobs as the values and culture continue to exist in the company.

Think Small to Build Big
Uber alone has raised $20billion in the 10 years since the founding, and yet for for every Uber, there are a hundred Uber competitors or “Uber for _____” companies that never made it. The possibility of succeeding in that kind of capital-intensive, winner-take-all environment has always been much lower than in finding a small niche related but adjacent to a massive boom and building a business there.

Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines used the line “Think small, act small and we’ll get bigger. Think big, and act big, and we’ll get smaller. He cautioned them not to think or act like the bigger airlines; not to enamored of what it appeared they had, not to compete with them on their terms. Instead if Southwest just stuck to what they did best, he believed, if they operated within their means and according to their founding principles, if they stayed in their lane, everything would work out, and major opportunities would present themselves.

Manage Partnership Tensions
Neglect is among the worst things that can happen to partnership or friendship. I feel for two person especially in a marriage to be involved in the business will be extremely difficult. Although the author didn’t explicitly say it, but it seem that marriage and partnership in a company don’t mix else it may lead to divorce.

Be kind
Whatever your choices as a founder, a robust set of ethics should sit at the foundation. Beyond that, only 2 things are truly necessary when it comes to building a kind, long-lasting company. One that that things you do advance your mission and match your values. And two, that you do them from the beginning, precisely because mission, values and culture are generally so hard to change.

What you do with your luck
The author ask Rod Canion, the founder of Compaq Computer, for the nature of his success and he took a long beat before responding. “If you asked me that in the late 80s, I would probably have said that it was 90% intelligence and insight and work and 10% luck. But I would say today it was the other way round. That tells you how perspective changes with time.

The Fourth Age

Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity By Byron Reese (2018)

You can gain a lot of insights from this book. It is interesting to know more of these ideas, but because it is quite a thick book, you have to spend more time slowly digesting it, which for some people can find it a little dry. I find that the author writes more emotionally and makes a greater impact at the last few chapters.

The author has said that things have only changed 3X in human history. Each time was due to technology. Not just a single technology, but groups of interrelated technologies that changed us in a fundamental and permanent, even biological, ways.

1. First Age : Language and Fire
2. Second Age : Agriculture and Cities
3. Third Age : Writing and Wheels
4. Fourth Age : Robots and AI

Once the change really gets going, it will happen rapidly.

Will Robots take all our Jobs?
The author list 3 possible outcomes :
1. Robots and AI take all the jobs
2. Robots and AI take some of the jobs
3. Robots and AI take none of the jobs

Most technological advances don’t eliminate entire jobs all at once per se, but only to certain parts of the jobs. And they create new jobs in entirely unexpected ways. When ATMs came out, most people assumed that they would eliminate the need for bank tellers. But what really happened?

Well, of course, you would always need some tellers to deal with customers wanting more than to make a deposit or a cash. So instead of a branch having 4 tellers and no machines, they could have 2 tellers and 2 ATMs. Then, seeing that branches were now cheaper to operate, banks realized they could open more of them as a competitive advantage and guess what? They needed to hire more tellers.

Are there Robot-Proof Jobs?
A good method for evaluating any job’s likelihood of being automated is what I call the “training manual test.” Think about a set of instructions needed to do your job, right down to the most specific part. How long is that document? Think about a posthole digger vs an electrician. The long the instruction manual, the more situations, special cases and exceptions exist that need to be explained. Interestingly, when surveyed, people overwhelming believe that automation will destroy a large number of jobs but also overwhelmingly believe their own job is robot-proof.

There is one example that I like from the book.
Imagine a person called Jerry who mows lawns for a living. Jerry graduated from high school but has no more education than that. Let’s say someone develops a self-driving lawn mover that sells for a low price and Jerry suddenly sees the bottom drop out of the lawn-mowing profession.

Now Jerry has to find a way to add value. Then he has a job. Jerry might, for instance, learn on the internet how to plant and maintain grape arbors. I am not saying Jerry becomes a horticulturalist. He just reads enough to learn about how to plant and grow grapes. He then goes door to door with his message about the joys of growing your own grapes.

Then 20 years later, Grape Arbor Robotics comes out with a robot that can plant vastly better arbors than Jerry can. So what does he do? He can read up on landscaping in the Victorian era. Then he goes door to door offering to plant historically accurate shrubs and flowers in his historically accurate arrangements. Someday a robot will be invented to do that, but Jerry will have retired by then.

Non obvious Mega Trends Part 2

By Rohit Bhargava (2020)

2019 Trends at a glance
1. Strategic Spectacle (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
Brands and creators intentionally use spectacles to capture attention and drive engagement.

2. Muddled Masculinity (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
Rising empowerment of women and re-evaluation of gender are causing widespread confusion and angst about what it means to be a man today.

3. Side Quirks (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
Global shift towards individualism drives people to follow their passion, start a side business and appreciate quirks in one another.

4. Artificial Influence (Trend Longevity Rating : B)
Creators, corporations and government use virtual creations to shift public perceptions, sell products and even turn fantasy into reality. People are fighting back against this and demanding more authenticity.

5. Retrotrust (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
Often unsure of whom to trust, consumers look back to organizations and experiences with brands that have a legacy as well as those with which they have a personal history.

6. B2Beyond Marketing (Trend Longevity Rating : B)
B2B brands use non traditional methods to embrace their humanity and reach decision makers along with a broader audience. Although it was well predicted and quantifiably true, it struggle to accelerate because of the resistance so many B2B bands have to different thinking.

7. Fad Fatigue (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
Consumers get weary of innovation claiming to be the next big thing and assume none will last long.

8. Extreme Uncluttering (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
To simplify their daily life, people shed their excess stuff and seek pared-down experiences and ways to unclutter their digital identities too.

9. Deliberate Downgrading (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
As tech-enabled products become overbearing, consumers opt to downgrade to simpler, cheaper or more functional versions instead.

10. Enterprise Empathy (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
Empathy becomes a driver of innovation and revenue as well as a point of differentiation for products, services, hiring and experiences.

11. Innovation Envy (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
Fear leads entrepreneurs, businesses and institutions to envy competitors and approach innovation with admiration or desperation.

12. Robot Renaissance (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
As robots adopt more human-like interfaces and micro-personalities, they are raising new questions and issues about how we relate to technology.

13. Good Speed (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
The urgency of the problems facing humanity is inspiring corporations, entrepreneurs and individuals to find ways of doing good and generating results more quickly.

14. Overwealthy (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
Growing income inequality leads to more guilt among the affluent prompting them to seek more ways to give back.

15. Passive Loyalty (Trend Longevity Rating : A)
As switching from brands becomes easier, companies re-evaluate who is loyal, who isn’t and how to inspire true loyalty.

Non obvious mega trends Part 1

By Rohit Bhargava (2020)

This is an interesting book that talk about trends. I extract a portion of the book which I personally find it interesting.

Trends might offer a signal that you should consider abandoning an existing product line or staying the course in a direction that hasn’t paid off yet. Or they could suggest that you should pivot the focus of your career to learn new skills. What gives you the power to receive these signals and reach these conclusions is intersection thinking. It is a method for connecting disparate concepts and beliefs from unrelated industries to generate new ideas or products.

There are 4 ways to engage in intersection thinking effectively :
1. Focus on similarities
2. Embrace serendipitous ideas
3. Wander into unfamiliar
4. Be persuadable

Focus on similarities

An agricultural company created so-called baby carrots – 2 inch long carrot pieces that doubled the carrot consumption in the United States. However, sales had slumped. The company turned to an advertising agency for help. The agency was struck by how much baby carrots and junk food have in common. Hence the advertising campaign “Eat them like Junk Food”. Sales immediately shot up more than 10%.

Embrace serendipitous ideas

Howard Schultz was at a trade show representing Starbucks in Milan. At that time, Starbucks was supplying high-end home brewing equipment. On the way to the convention, Schultz was struck by how many Italian espresso coffee shops he passed. These shops offered people a third place for gathering – neither their home nor work. When he returned to Seattle, he persuaded the owners of Starbucks to create a similar retail coffee shop in the city.

Wander into unfamiliar
Despite an ever-expanding universe of media options to choose from, we tend to watch the same shows, visit the same websites, and read the same magazines and newspaper because we find comfort in the familiar. But what if we didn’t? what is you didn’t?

Wandering into the unfamiliar means taking a different route to the store or walking rather than driving to a nearby restaurant. The unfamiliar opens our mind and helps us become more innovative.

Be persuadable
Some points of view seem so contradictory to our own that we find them hard to justify on any level. But it’s possible to open ourselves to considering a different point of view. By putting ourselves in other people’s shoes and imagining their back stories and reasons for behaviors, we can see the world from new angles.

The Difference

When Good Enough Isn’t Enough (2017)
By Subir Chowdhury

The danger of an indifferent mindset is not just a problem for large businesses, but also for the country. There is a need for a caring mindset :
1. Being Straightforward
2. Being Thoughtful
3. Being Accountable
4. Having Resolve

1. Being Straightforward

Our ability to be straightforward suffers when we are afraid. When we are afraid, openness and transparency decrease exponentially. We hide the truth, or fake our emotions. We strive to give a false impression to cover up the truth – about how good-looking we are, about how clever or competent we believe ourselves to be, about how much money we made.

The thing is, when you are authentic, candid, and straightforward, not only will you be more successful, but you will have more fun. People appreciate your straightforwardness and when you don’t try to show people how smart I am,I just enjoy being myself.

2. Being Thoughtful

Do you get out from behind your desk and walk the corridors and floors?
Listening is an educational process. When you don’t listen, you don’t learn. Marshall Goldsmith, executive coach, advises people who have a hard time listening to do the following : stop, take a deep breath – and let the other person speak up. Ask yourself : Do I try to empathize with other people? Being empathetic is the second step in being thoughtful.

Each of us is just a very tiny speck in the universe. That sense of my smallness in the world is what gives me energy. It causes me to question myself, and accept that I am not good enough, that I am not contributing enough. I am not making enough impact. I am not adding enough value to the world around us. My sense of humility does not come from thinking about how important I am, but from how small and insignicant I am compared to the endless expanse of the universe. And ultimately, our humility is what defines and makes us selfless.

3. Being Accountable

Do NOT wait for leaders, do it alone. – Mother Teresa
Being accountable means accepting responsibility for one’s actions or inaction, in matters for which you are obligated or answerable.

There are 5 factors involved in being accountable :
1) Being aware that something needs to be done.
2) Taking personal responsibility for it
3) Making a choice or decision to act.
4) Think deeply about the potential consequences of that choice
5) Set high expectations.

Being aware of a problem doesn’t always result in a person believing that something ought to be done about it. Example the IT department of a large company made some tweaks to its intranet site. Shortly afterward, an employee called to report that he was unable to login. An IT technician responded to help the preson. Then another person called in with same problem and another and another. But no one in the organization spoke up to say “I think we have a systemic issue. We need to address it” . This is a telling example of an indifferent mindset. Those who were charged with helping others login to the intranet provided a Band-Aid instead of a solution.

The department’s delay in solving the problem ended up by costing the company $5 million, when it could have easily been solved at little or no cost if someone had taken responsibility for the problem early on.

A friend told me about the first black senior executive in a large financial services corporation. The executive had started his career as a teenager working in the mailroom. When asked how he managed his rise through the corporate ranks, the executive said, “I based my entire career on looking around to see what needed to be done that no one else wanted to do, and took on the task”. In other words, he took responsibility for problems that he became aware of.

4. Having Resolve

Resolve means having the passion, determination and perseverance to find a solution to a problem or improve a situation. To me, resolve requires humility and a willingness to change.

Jim Collins, author of the best selling classic Good to Great, in which he researched what makes great companies great, identified the resolve of an organization’s leader as one of the key factors behind a company’s long term success.

A key part of resolve is a willingness to change and adapt. In too many organizations, middle managers and senior leaders resist anything new. But if they are not open to change, they will not be able to solve the inevitable problems that crop up.

Being Mortal

By Atul Gawande (2014)

This is a book about the modern experience or mortality and i really cried while reading it.

Even in the early chapters such as chapter 2, that i read that it is important to notice the feet of the elderly. An elderly person who may seem dapper and fit but the feet will reveal the truth. When the person couldn’t bend down to reach them and cleaned them, it already suggest neglect and real- danger.

Each year, there are a lot of people who fall and break a hip. Of those 40% ended up in a nursing home , and 20% are never able to walk again.

Reading this book make me learn a new term called “geriatrics”. Geriatrics is a medical specialty that focuses on healthcare of elderly people. The dismal finances of geriatrics and shortage of such expertise are only a symptom of deeper reality. The geriatrics teams weren’t doing lung biopsies or ack surgery or insertion of automatic defrailers. What they did was to simplify medications. They saw that arthritis was controlled. They made sure that toenails were trimmed and meals were square. They looked for worrisome signs of isolation and had a social worker check the patient’s home was safe. But all these activities don’t make money for the hospitals.

Another thing i learned is that when you get older, the lordosis of your spine tips your head forwards. So when you look straight ahead, its like looking up at the ceiling for anyone else. The problem is common in the elderly. Hence easy for them to get choked.

Maslow law argued that safety and survival remain our primary and foundation goals in life. Reality is more complex. People readily demonstrate a willingness to sacrifice their safety and survival for the sake of something beyond themselves such as family, country or justice. And this is regardless of age.

In young adulthood, people seek a life of growth and fulfillment, just as Maslow suggested. Growing up involves opening outward. We search out new experiences, wider social connections, and ways of putting our stamp on the world.

When people reach the latter half of adulthood, however their priorities change markedly. Most reduce the amount of time and effort they spend pursuing achievement and social networks. They narrow in. Given the choice, young people prefer meeting new people to spending time with say, a sibling; old people prefer the opposite. Studies show that as people grow older they interact with fewer people and concentrate more on spending time with family and established friends. They focus on being rather than doing and on the present more than the future.