Reading Notes

Waiting For BQP Fever

  • High energy physicists don’t feel the need to justify their research in the same way that quantum computing researchers do
  • You can’t always predict the benefits of pure science, so it’s dangerous to justify the benefits of pure science on the basis of practical benefits
    • Expected benefits may not materialize
    • This leads to a loss of funding for the research
    • This may lead you to miss other, unexpected benefits

The Salvation of Doug

  • Just so story describing how a geneticist and a biochemist go about investigating biology
  • Geneticist alters DNA and investigates how that affects the organism
  • Biochemist investigates pathways and tries to describe mechanisms by which genetic information is translated into action
  • Part of a two-part debate between geneticists and biochemists

Meaningness: An Appetizer: Purpose

  • People ask questions like:
    • Is there any purpose in living? Or is everything completely pointless?
    • What am I supposed to do?
    • How can I choose among the many ways to spend my life?
    • Does everyone’s life have the same purpose, or does everyone have their own purpose?
    • Where does purpose come from?
  • 5 confused attitudes towards purpose:
    • Eternalism:
      • Everything has a purpose
      • There is a grand cosmic plan
      • Problem:
        • The plan makes no sense
        • Even if the plan made sense, it’s too vague - doesn’t tell us what to do in particular situations
    • Nihilism
      • There is no purpose
      • Life is meaningless
      • Problem:
        • If life is meaningless, then what are we to do about the fact that people seem to crave purpose and meaning?
    • Materialism:
      • People have goals - those goals are their purpose
      • Family, wealth, fame, hedonism
      • Problem:
        • Rejects altruism and creative purposes
        • Purposes seem too “shallow”
        • Hedonic treadmill - there’s always higher level of enjoyment that one can pursue
    • Mission:
      • Everyone has a unique gift
      • Find your unique gift and and use it to help others [Ed: Isn’t this literally the premise of My Little Pony?]
      • Problem:
        • To quote Fight Club: “You are not special. You’re not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You’re the same decaying organic matter as everything else.”
    • Existentialism:
      • The universe does not supply purpose, we have to find or create purpose for ourselves
      • Problem:
        • Creating purpose is hard
        • Impossible to create purpose independently of social influences

Half-Assing It With Everything You’ve Got

  • Guilt/shame motivation works great right up until it stops working
  • If you want to be effective, remember your goals
  • Accomplish your goals with a minimum of wasted effort - doing something too well can be as wasteful as not doing it well enough, since it takes away time from you accomplishing the next thing
  • You don’t have enough energy or enough time to do everything perfectly - focus your energy on the things that you really care about and spend a minimum of effort on the other stuff
  • Remember what your goals are; deploy your full effort towards reaching them with a minimum of wasted motion