> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://amitagarwal.gitbook.io/profile/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://amitagarwal.gitbook.io/profile/musings.md).
# Musings
* Abstractness is the price of generality [***- 3blue1brown***](https://youtu.be/TgKwz5Ikpc8?list=PLZHQObOWTQDPD3MizzM2xVFitgF8hE_ab\&t=926)
* Why are programmers reluctant to write specs ? Well, writing is hard. Writing is hard, in fact, because thinking is hard. Thinking doesn't guarantee that you won't mistakes, but *not* thinking generally guarantees that you will. ***-*** [***Leslie Lamport***](https://youtu.be/-4Yp3j_jk8Q?t=2883)
* Writing is nature's way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is ***- Guindon***
* We live on an island surrounded by a sea of ignorance. As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance. *- **John Archibald Wheeler***
* We know the past but cannot control it. We control the future but cannot know it. ***- Claude Shannon***
* With money you can buy a house but not home, With money you can buy a clock but not time, With money you can buy a bed but not sleep, With money you can buy food but not appetite, With money you buy a doctor but not good health, With money you can have insurance but not safety. And this is the problem that we all have. There are things that you cannot buy with material world, with money.
* Empty your mind! Be formless, shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend! [ **- Bruce Lee**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4A37PDduls)
* #### Luck versus Effort
* Is success in life based purely on luck or purely on effort ?
* The simple answer is that it is a combination of both - like a card game.
* In a card game (e.g. poker, bridge, rummy, etc.), there are some things under your control (e.g. the decisions you make on whether to place bets or not) and some things outside your control (e.g. which cards you get after shuffling)
* Similarly, in life, there are many things under your control (e.g. the stock investments you make, the career path you choose, the partner you choose to marry) and many things outside your control (e.g. whether your stock investment goes up or down, what the job market will look like after 10 years of the career path you have chosen, whether you and your partner will end up having a normal baby or one with some rare disorder)
* We should just focus on what is under our control and not worry about things outside our control. Like a card game, we should simply focus on playing the cards that we are dealt to the best of our abilities.
* For those working in Computer Science, here is a semi-formal way to look at life:
* Life is like an execution of randomized algorithm
* We control the design of the algorithm, but not the randomness
* the quality of final output depends on both the algorithm and randomness
* we should just focus on improving the design of the algorithm so that the expectation is centered around high quality outputs with low variance
* when we are born, we start with some inital mean and variance (depending on inheritance, etc)
* most people spend too much time thinking and discussing about randomness
* smart people try to make the distribution curve of their randomized algorithm better. This doesn't guarantee success but increases the likelihood of success in the long term
* कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन । मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भुर्मा ते संगोऽस्त्वकर्मणि ॥ [- ***Bhagawad Gita***](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhagavad_Gita)\
You have the right to perform your actions, but you are not entitled to the fruits of the actions.\
Do not let the fruit be the purpose of your actions, and therefore you won’t be attached to not doing your duty.
* #### The (un)original idea:
* Our brain is not the SOURCE of knowledge. It is the RECEIVER. **- Nikola Tesla**
* We live believing we are the creators of everything we think (e.g. new research idea, new perspective, etc). The mistake is believing that we are the transmitter, when in reality, we are the radio.
* Most of our daily thoughts are automatic receptions. They are waves we pick up from our environment. Our mind doesn't create from scratch: it receives and amplifies.
* When you have a "big idea" or a sudden intuition, you didn't create it. You downloaded it! Your vibration/frequency was right enough for your antenna to capture the information from the universe.
* Interestingly, this is also a possible reason why some of the exact same discoveries happen (almost) simultaneously by people across the globe without them even collaborating with each other. It seems almost coincidental but maybe all they did was to tune into the "right" frequency when the universe was sending a signal ?
* Moreover, we should not make the mistake of assuming that if we download a specific idea from the environment, then that becomes OUR idea. [- **Osho**](https://oshoworld.com/es-dhammo-sanantano-61) [**\[video link\]** ](https://files.gitbook.com/v0/b/gitbook-x-prod.appspot.com/o/spaces%2F-LSOx_b_ztpfWKzR3VbG%2Fuploads%2F94RSP5z17mfH78t1ZDDK%2FOsho.mp4?alt=media\&token=ef933e6d-02f3-4c22-a8b3-eb89d384dfbe)
* #### "Right" versus "Wrong" / "Good" versus "Bad":
* We create our own individual boundaries and then judge people who are standing on the other side of it.
* If you ask the grass, the zebra is the monster and the lion is the protector - it's all a matter of perspective.
* It's a fun exercise to play this simple binary choice game and seeing the boundary between "right" and "wrong" disappearing in real time! At the end of this game, you will realize the following:
* *All of us are selective sinners. We choose the sins we are comfortable with, and judge others that commit the ones we're not comfortable with. **-***** Shams Tabrizi**
* #### On the existence of "God":
* My current thinking is that the term "God" is a name that we (meaning humanity) have allocated to specific occurrences (either dynamic events or static objects) in nature for which we have no other better or more intuitive explanation. Some examples include the formation of universe, life, consciousness, etc. Some non-examples include how our car runs, how airplanes fly, how clouds form, etc.
* The name "God" is like that variable "x" in our high school math textbooks where we knew some properties about "x" (e.g. x - 2 = 5) and the goal of the problem was to "find x". The name "God" plays the same role - it is a placeholder for something unknown.
* With this viewpoint, asking "Do you believe in God ?" doesn't even make sense - it is like asking a high school student "Do you believe in x ?" in your math textbook. The right question to ask is "Are you interested in finding out x ?"
* Imagine the following hypothetical scenario: A high-school math student claims that he is a "strong believer" in all the x variables in his textbook. This student has read all the thousands of properties that x has across his textbook problems. Everyday, he spends reciting all these properties but has no interest in figuring out what the value of x is. He fights with students from other schools whose math textbook is different where the problem statements assign properties to x that is different from his textbook. Most of the current human population is like this student.
* I will end by highlighting this humorous (and really thought provoking!) meme that I came across:
* **Disclaimer:** This is my current thinking and it is subject to change as my exploration continues.
