class laddering ( alternative take )

Class ladders work roughly as follows : 

0. you are told, what to do

1. what you do, is who you are

2. who you know, is who you are

3. what you want, does not depend on who you know

how to get started, on learning to use the command-line interface

/ from a comment i left on ycomb /

Don't start in the obvious places, because you can get stuck there for a decade before figuring out what else is going on ( I did, you shouldn't ) ( quick dive ; quick dip )

1. do a quick read on how UNIX and Linux kernels were designed, particularly what "file handlers" and "sockets" are ( day 1 ; 30 minutes )

2. do a quick read on the difference between "command prompts" (1-dimensional) and "pseudo-teletype terminals" (2-dimensional) ( day 2 ; 15 minutes ) ... note that both are varieties of "shell" ; shells are opposed to kernels

3. do a quick read on what "display managers vs window managers" are ... and if possible ( now this is quite hard, as the docs are messy ) ... how the kernel, talks to the shell, which talks to a pseudo-teletype terminal, which is a display client to the display server, which talks to the display server, which talks to the window manager ( it may not be exactly like that, but this is a good assumption to make until you get a clearer view ) ( day 3 ; 2 hours )

4. then learn a shell scripting language

5. then do something like "espeak 'oh hi there'"

Alternatively, do this in reverse numerical order.

Binomial commitment modelling

- if I'm 100% committed to a hypothesis that something is going to decline in value, I should discard 100% of what I can

- if I'm 50% committed to a hypothesis that something is going to decline in value, I should discard 50% of what I can

- if I'm 100% committed to a hypothesis that [ something will devalue in the short-term ], and 100% committed to a hypothesis that [ the same will appreciate in the long-term ] then I should discard 50% of what I can, and reconsider that 50% later

- if I'm 50% committed to a hypothesis that [ something will devalue in the short-term ], and 100% committed to a hypothesis that [ the same will appreciate in the long-term ] then I should discard 25% of what I can, and reconsider that 25% later

I am still trying to wrap my head around this, but it seems like a reasonable fundamental approach to life in general.