reflection on a journey with poors

In the dreamy space before getting up today, I thought about my decisions to intentionally spend MORE time with people who were less economically privileged, from 2001 to 2023 ( ages 18 to 40 ).

I generally held the view that I did not understand them, and that it would be beneficial to live as poorly as possible ( intellectually, materially, emotionally, geopolitically, whatnot ), in order to learn about them, or at the very least to be able to say later that I had put significant time into making sure that I had tried to do so. 

Review questions :

1. Were my presumptions incorrect? What evidence is there?

2. Assuming correct presumptions, did I fail to achieve what I set out to do? What evidence is there?

3. Assuming correct presumptions, and success at what was attempted, was the project worthwhile? What evidence is there?

Discussion ( inconclusive ) :

- My presumption that I did not understand them was too risk averse - I already understood them quite well at 18. Nevertheless, it was worthwhile to check and make sure.

- Operationally, I made some costly mistakes. I would often write-off huge chunks of time, to assist specific individuals, on their whimsical directions. This would have been more valuable if I had apportioned smaller chunks of time to individuals, or the larger chunks to a larger body of stakeholders. In summary, I underdiverisified. 

- Was this chunk of two major phases, four years in academia, and 18 years in commerce, ultimately the best use of time? I really don't know. I don't ask much of life, so almost any results are welcome. 

I proceed with these thoughts in mind. 

embarassing reflections

I have some embarassing reflections to share, in my fatigued state, this week. 

1. Probably the one Malaysian value I picked up before even graduating from highschool, was laziness. I have been thinking about how to make the absolute minimum amount of money for most of my life, probably starting around the age of ten. Back then I thought maybe 500 RM/month would be enough. 

2. The people I do meet who want to make money, have disappointingly low notions of how much money to aim for. But I guess I have chosen my environment ... I began studying commerce in 2006, in Malaysia, a country whose notion of a unicorn company is one that remains 17 B USD in loss after 14 years in business.

2.1. Speaking of which, I have understandably mixed feelings about that particular unicorn. They are very nice people, and make lots of money as employees ... many yuppies I met in the 2000s, now work there. But I could never bring myself to take it seriously as a tech company - perhaps because I don't personally use such products at that price. (Male privilege and the 6 RM taxi ride to work, in 2005.) Plus it's not very high-tech, more of a service co, so off flavour for tech. Furthermore just thinking about Uber and extrapolating, I could never convince myself that the privatisation of public infrastructure would have any viable exit except back to the public sector in the very long run. Long, painful, cloudy, investment horizon. Doesn't matter much to wage-workers, I guess. Mattered a lot to me. Hm. Weird.

2.1.a. I'm not averse to lossy ventures at all. But I prefer to fail as small as possible. I think the only time I took outside money, I capped losses under 100 grand, after six years.

3. I find that I work best when I allocate large periods of time to give unwieldy projects a lot of attention. Smaller projects are not risky enough, and shorter timeframes seem too risky. Stupid personality quirk, I suppose. Pre-college was a decade. College was four years. Post-college was 20 years. Sabbatical is ten.

3.1. Corollary - I am not so practiced at dividing my attention. I can make money as a trader, but if I start studying something else at the same time, I lose money. If I'm doing well in business, I'm not learning anything, because predictability is orthogonal to learning.

4. I have been testing a restricted diet for science, for a few years. It feels efficient, but not for performance growth or hypertrophy. So I am pensive, in a bad way.

Ah well, on with the program for now. Today is day ... 1171, 32.08% in.

revision : toe and finger tip tracking

Latest run : proprioception of fingertips and toetips is always a good dataset for optimisation purposes. At the extremities, any instability is amplified. It turns out further that it sufficient to track digits 1-2-5 on each paw, reducing the number of tracked points to 12. This insight is interesting because it can be applied in moving systems of any kind, such as robots.

Proprioception of the head is a complementary concern, but not the main study today. Footstrike depends heavily on digits 1-2, while 5 is needed to check toe splay. For hands I favour digits 1-3-5, as it feels more balanced.