There’s this problem with repeating a certain reference work (even with word-by-word translation) on repeat in attempt to learn language. That is, your brain start memorizing whole sentences and their meanings instead of forming individual word by word associations. Even though, one might be able to fully understand the readings on which the language learner has done his exercise, he might not be able to extrapolate that learning, even to another passage that uses the very same vocabulary. Language learner should thus be wary of this illusion and constantly stream himself newer stuff (even though containing same level vocabulary).

A chair is an enclosing structure. A low-height table with which you are supposed to sit on ground is better than an elevated table and a chair, because on ground, your body is not enclosed in a structure and hence enjoys greater deal of flexibility while moving around.

Example of a good work setup

I just read this:
https://talhaashraf.com/show

This principle is applicable and also useful when you are asking someone a question. You can show them your thinking process that leads to the question. This gives them the relevant context for why you are asking the question, how’s that relevant for you, what parts you’ve been able to figure out and what parts you got stuck at, what you’ve got right and you haven’t, and so on.

If you don’t give your thinking to the person you’re asking a question from, you are basically delegating the task of extracting the relevant context around the question to them, which is not only too much of an ask (and hence rude), but also very inefficient and slow.

There’s exception to this principle though. You don’t need to do this when you are asking someone questions to learn more about them (instead of asking question about a specific matter or a problem). In this case, you should rather try to make your thinking less visible. Because people often subconsciously adapt their responses according to their perceptions of the inquirer’s desired response. And even if their responses are not modified and representative of their true self, they will still be restrictive to narrow specifics. When you want to learn about someone, you should rather question them in a way that allows them to be more explorative about themselves so that its beneficial for both of you.

There have been times when I was working on some problem and I was shrugging of a certain part of the problem saying I don’t have time to fix that and then proceeded with some workaround for that instance, and the problem re-occurred in a different instance and I did the same again, and it repeated quite a few times. And then, when I eventually figured out the mechanics of the thing, I was like it wasn’t that difficult actually, I should have learnt it earlier.

But there’s an underlying logic for this avoiding figuring-out-problem-from-first-principles behavior. The brain does this to avoid spending cognitive energy on very second problem you see, but only on problems that are recurring. However, the problem here, is that the internal tally for how frequently recurring a problem to figure it out should not be 10 or something; 2 is just a fine enough number, and if you’re really lazy, then 3.

If you want a convenient way to get and read all new things I post on this site, you can use an RSS reader. The URL of this site’s RSS feed is:

https://weblog.tamseel.pk/rss

These days almost all sites use email newsletter as a means of staying in touch with users. But RSS works on an inverse philosophy. The site shouldn’t keep user in touch. Rather, the user should stay in touch with the site.

Email Newsletters are a push mechanism where you give every site your email address and they send in updates any time they want in your inbox. This is the push mechanism.

RSS is a pull mechanism. Here, I give you my RSS feed url. And you can add this feed to an RSS reading app and your app will fetch new items from the feed periodically, that you can read any time from that app.

The RSS approach was more popular in old times. But the shift happened as the competition for users’ limited attention started becoming fierce. In the pull mechanism, it is up to user whether to open their RSS app or not, and whether they want to get on notifications or not, and all sorts of options like that. The intention lies upon the reader.

With emails, the email lands in your inbox whether at that time your intention to read is or isn’t. For me, often times, I get a newsletter, I don’t want to read it right away, so I swipe the notification away, and I forget, and since more stuff keep coming in, the old newsletters are pushed downwards and remain unread in the inbox. So, I thought of making a new email address just for newsletter, but boy, the number of email addresses I have is already too high. I should stop workarounds and look for proper solution and the proper solution is very old and simple, i.e. RSS. That gives me full control over what I receive, how frequently I receive it, and how I am notified of it. Of course, you can unsubscribe to email newsletters as well, and tinker with your email settings, but come on, go look at your inbox. I can’t stand having that kind of inbox. At the moment, I don’t have enough actual data to tell how the experience of shifting to RSS has been, but I will write about once I have.

Now, I know, some people might not have any problem with instant updates at any time, well they can set up their RSS reader app, to check for updates more frequently and set up notifications for it.

If you want to read a better version of this posts, and a list of some rss reading apps (I haven’t tried them yet), read this:

https://ncase.me/rss

I have seen it happen many times, and I myself have even been on the receiving end. A possible reason is that when a person is confused and you tell them, hey, X has said something good about just this kind of problem is kinda redundant and useless. If you have internalized learned wisdom well, you probably would be very well able to speak it out directly (because you had actually applied it and seen it work, (or if something not experimentable, you’d have followed a thought experiment and reached the same conclusion independently)).

This is useful to know when you’re helping other people solve their problems, because I have this instinct to point people to original source where I read/heard the concept, and it is useful in some cases, but in most cases it isn’t. Or I should say, pointing to original source is useful at the end of conversation or after the idea has made sense to the other person not before it.

I unblocked x today to export my tweets (so that I can import them here), but I wasted next half my hour scrolling through it. Earlier, when I had blocked it I had written something like “it is ironic because the content on my x feed is actually interesting”. But now, I feel like, even though the content might be interesting in itself, but for me specifically, it unarguably was having an adverse effect at least the way I was consuming it.

I have been using the word “interesting” as a catch-all for all things good or things that I think are worth pursuing further. But, it isn’t a good idea to keep pursuing things which are interesting in themselves, but have a net negative effect on you.

The primary problem with our (university) students is that they don’t want to think what reality is, they want to be told what reality is. Unless a disposition towards thinking is sustained and not killed until a student reaches higher education, the profession of professors is cursed for thinking people.

Unless I engage in serious thinking and serious reading, I cannot do serious writing, and thus, I should refrain from writing (or at least serious writing) at times when I’m not doing serious thinking.