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10. Just do it

Created Tuesday 09 February 2021

Context

  • I sometimes get scared and anxious because of stupid doomsayers - AI is our enemy, genetic crops are bad, tech makes us dumb etc. Topics may even be labeled impossible.
  • This way, my excitement is decreased. It becomes very hard for me to be happy, because I love tech. It feels like I'm doing a bad thing.
  • Also, I get fearful as to what would have happened if people just confirmed to society/peer pressure. We'd have a very bad quality of life. It is unacceptable.

Now, the simple solution is to just ignore these people, and keep learning. Because they generally don't have enough knowledge on the subject. I do this. But the nagging dampens my passion.

  • Business and innovation is not easy in its own right, so people need to be brave and ambitious, negative stuff makes it worse.
  • New inventions are generally not profitable - so the inventor(s) need to be positive about its impact. New ideas may even require new knowledge to be learnt - i.e Elon Musk learnt engineering despite being from a physics and software background. Cars and rockets are not easy things to build, and learning them requires ambition. It is not comfortable but highly rewarding.
  • Invention of airplanes was not a requirement, it was even termed "impossible". But we cannot without airtravel, now.

My itch

  • Actually I've had something similar before - concept of Apocalypse in major religions.

  • It is also very depressing.

  • I wanted to get at this problem once and for all, so that I don't have to decide if something is good/possible/useful before I study/learn it. Because it's a huge waste of time to do such analysis, because we don't have knowledge.

  • I just want to study/do what I love.

  • I want to increase my understanding and excitement for science and technology.

  • I wish to do things that make our lives easier.

Problem

  • Things can of course have risks, but I don't think risk evaluation can be done with a negative(leave it) mindset. It is is just too costly and depressing.
  • In fact, I'd consider it dishonest.
  • I'm talking about evaluation of real concepts/hypotheses/theories here, not myths and fables.

Solution

Answer: Always be ambitious. Let the knowledge(valid knowledge) we currently have be Kp(present). Kp is updated by perturbations, which happen in two ways:

  • Innovations, ambition
  • May happen accidently(e.g. discovery of tsunamis, invention of telephone).

Note: Either way, we need to be cognizant.

Now, suppose there exists some knowledge element(i.e. some topic) D, such that if we access(learn) D, we are doomed. This is the doomsayers 'event', something which we are not supposed to pursue.

Now, as we are working everyday - we are getting closer to D, and not away from it, because concepts are generally linked together. Also, we have no idea how D might be accessed from the present state(Kp). To defer D, three approaches are possible:

  1. Do nothing - never reach D. Unacceptable.
  2. Do things in a constrained manner - encroaches freedom of inquiry. Also, there's no guarantee when D will be reached.
  3. Do things in an unconstrained, fast way - this is the only option. This is exiting, and if D hits, we'll have the most amount of knowledge to avert it.

Note:

  • D may be known, or unknown.
  • D may be replaced by U, which is a useless endeavor, something which is very little or no value. This means that asking "is it useful" is a stupid question, because ideas don't come fully formed. We must maximize knowledge.
  • D may be replaced by I, meaning that it is impossible. If it doesn't go against the known laws of physics, pursue it. Also the impossibility may be evaluated for a specific scenario only, and may still be possible:we are capable of enginnering and invention.

Note

  • The early humans wouldn't have cared for such doomsayers, because there were none. All of them were trying to live, the best as they can, and curiosity is natural. So chill! So they naturally understood that knowledge and intelligence is the most important thing.
  • We need to be highly adapatable to situations that make us happy and good - this includes situations like pitching to investors(Rana not using the word emotion), doing research(Dynamic Programming as a misnomer). All this compromise is done for achieving goals, obviously in both cases people were "honest and complete", they just didn't use words that triggered bad responses. Anyways, such compromise is the last step. You should always be truthful.
  • The Super Mario Effect for life
  • There are no stupid endeavors: https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/ask-yourself-dumb-questions-and-answer-them/
  • I'll be fine, this is normal, read the "super-normal" part. Just be yourself, you're good now. Don't create obscurity: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/magazine/the-singular-mind-of-terry-tao.html. Calm and no-conceit, and no contempt(for anything - the world's a huge place, bad sources are bad. You let go of them.

What if

  • If such a strong argument were not possible, I'd still be doing what I love, because doing otherwise is boring and depressing.
  • This also highlights the importance of H principle in HRF.
  • Practically: you can't sustain doing something you don't like. Quality of your work will be poor.

Conclusion

  • Be curious, happy and innovate!
  • Do what you love.
  • Ignore the negative people.