Entropy, Compound and Game Theory

20240505 - Foreword by Nassim Nicholas Taleb ix Never underestimate the effect of absence of feedback on the unconscious behavior and choices of people. p xii Screen and computer games give us instant gratification, which create illusion that we are growing. Most of the real progress don't give us instant feedback. Then how can we measure it? Things that are good but don't look good must have some edge. pxiii How can we tell what are good? PART ONE: WHAT COMES FIRST 1 20240508 - Chapter One: AT WAR WITH LUCK 3 You can't just diversify that risk away with groupings of things that supposedly won't experience such loss simultaneously. p9 A rising tide lifts all boats. A falling tide sinks all ships. Don't put all eggs in one basket --- this doesn't work. A safe haven isn't so much a thing or an asset. It is a payoff, one that can take many different forms. p9 How can lay investors do it cost effectively? We need to control what we can control in a way that gets...

20230915 - Prologue: muse of fire Do we have to sacrifice some virtues to make huge success? In "Selfish Gene" and game theory, the one who want to play fairly can only get slightly above average return. Asset, power and fame are like a building. No matter how high the building is, it only takes very short time to collapse. Unless the adventure itself is the main goal, unless we really enjoy the pain and happiness come with the journey, we'd like to lose ourselves in the pursue of our aim. 20230916 - Adventures Gene and home education are both critical. How about environment? Friends when we are little? If we have siblings, then friends are not that important. Errol Musk's emerald processing business are destroyed by artifical emerald from Russia?! How many Black Swans are hiding around us? 20230916 - A mind of his own: Pretoria, the 1970s Elon Musk is an unique genius.  1. In his eyes, most of people are quite dumb, and he didn't know how to hide that feeling whe...

20231216 - Preface xiii Where does Liberty come from? It comes from cooperation and balance. Divide up the work and cooperate lead to professions, which bring us high productivity. Balance (checks and balances on power) make this social cooperation sustainable. 20231219 - Chapter 1 How Does History End? 1 It should not be called "corridor". There are four stages of human society: Warre, The cage of norms (Absent), Despotic, and Shackled Leviathans. Warre is not stable. I think it would evolve into the cage of norms in dozens of years. The cage of norms is stable. Likely the countryside area of India. Despotic Leviathans represents oligarchy countries. Shackled Leviathans represents democracy countries. I believe that only Despotic Leviathans can be turned into Shackled Leviathans. One of the most important factor is serious external threat. I am curious that whether the authors would discuss political correctness in this book? I think it's one of the major challenge of de...

20240323 - Introduction 1 Scarcity reduces all these components of bandwidth - it makes us less insightful, less forward-thinking, less controlled. p13 This "bandwidth" actually means "attention". We only have limited attention. How to allocate it everyday? If we pay too much attention to get coupon tickets, then we get less attention to create more value for society. "Think hard, think ahead" is almost impossible when we are facing scarcity. I think another trap is about "pleasure". We might pay too much attention to get more pleasure, when getting addicted to something such as drugs, computer games, sex, etc. From the other side, pleasure is becoming cheaper and easier to get, anywhere and anytime. Part One: The Scarcity Mindset 20240323 - 1. Focusing and Tunneling 19 It is exceedingly difficult to fool ourselves into working harder by faking a deadline. p27 Can we turn it into a game, and make it more fun? Give it a fake score to satisfy ourse...

20240204 - Chapter 1: LOVING TO LEARN 20240204 - Chapter 2: SCIENCE IS MY PLAYGROUND Another Genius.Compare him to Elon Musk, Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman, what's the difference? Not much. They have very high IQ, broad interest, good enough luck, and all can focus on study and work for long time. They are all happy to take risk, but at the same time be careful of not taking too much risk. Surely there are many people with similar high IQ, but most of them did nothing distingushable in the end. Life is harder dozens of years ago. It's quite difficult for most of young people to afford the cost of college, or learn by themselves. These days, thanks for the social welfare system and Internet, it's not obstacles anymore. However, there are also way less distractions. Are we going to have more genius which can push human perception boundary further? 20240220 - Chapter 3: PHYSICS AND MATHEMATICS Bad luck quite often is just "a blessing in disguise". If we spend time w...

PART 1 20231223 - Chapter 1 20231223 - Chapter 2 Just like "Animal Farm", "1984" use "Time" and psychology as a powerful tool to describe the fictional world. This make it better than "The brave new world" and "Fahrenheit 451" 20231226 - Chapter 3 20231226 - Chapter 4 George Orwell didn't mention much the low productivity caused by unfair institutions. When government officials are under great pressure and have indisputable power, they would try their best to avoid mistakes, and not be so interested in creating value. The result is GDP per capita may grow very slowly or even drop. This is based on game theory. Together with compound effect, the whole country is doomed. 20231226 - Chapter 5 Comrade Ogilvy reminds me of "Lei Feng" from China. It's against our gene to sacrifice ourselves for long time to help others. So this kind of propaganda is destined to fail. 20240209 - Chapter 6 20240210 - Chapter 7 20240210 - Chapt...

20240103 - 1. Happiness revisited 1 Introduction 1 Overview 5 The Roots of Discontent 8 The Shields of Culture 10 Reclaiming Experience 16 Paths of Liberation 20 The law of entropy is the source of the challenges we meet. Happiness and pleasure come from our perception and imagination, and this is major based on our expectation. If what we got is better than expected, or if we expect things will get better, we are happy. That's why young people are more happy than people in middle age, and why senior people become happy again. If everyone in the world is Zen master, will Nuclear Power and Compuer chip ever been invented? Yes. Because these inventions help us to adapt to the environment, and increase our probability of the survival of our gene. When combined with AGI, Neuralink can help everyone to become Zen master. That could be the major benefit of Neuralink. 20240105 - 2. The Anatomy of Consciousness 23 The Limits of Consciousness 28 Attention as ...