Stever's blog

mistakes

One of the things that really pisses me off about western thinking is it’s aversion to mistakes. The word “mistake” has a negative connotation in the English language. It kinda implies that mistakes should be avoided. Most schools even penalize you for mistakes. It’s really annoying because this attitude discourages the exploration of a subject.

Socrates taught that by correcting all the wrong aspects with an argument, you will be left with something “right”. Critical thinking is therefore reductive in nature, designed to eliminate all but the truth. But this doesn’t address the design/creative aspects of thinking which is more concerned with generating new alternative and ideas.

You can eliminate all errors in your driving by leaving the car parked in the garage. But you’re also not going to get anywhere.

Another amusing video

I just love nonstampcollector’s videos:

Fat Tony

Imagine you had a coin that was tossed 100 times. The first 99 times yields heads. What is the probability of it being tails on the 100th attempt? “That’s easy”, a statistician says, “, “it’s 50% because each coin toss is independent”. So you ask the same question to “Fat Tony”, a Brooklyn bookie hell bent on making a buck. (Read this in a thick Brooklyn accent). . .

Fat Tony: “Whatta you tawkin’ about?. . . that’s easy, no more than 1%”.

“Why?”, you ask.

Fat Tony: “You’re a pure sucker to believe in that ’50% business’. That coin’s gotta be loaded. . .”.

The problem with most people’s thinking is that they place way too much emphasis on what they know and put no emphasis at all on the things they DON’T know. The statistician (as well as most academics) think entirely in the box in terms of information given to solve a problem. Fat Tony thinks almost entirely outside the box. In an IQ test, the statistician can kick Fat Tony’s ass. But in any real-world setting Fat Tony would vastly outperform the statistician.

The most common error in thinking doesn’t really happen from strict logical errors. They happen because most errors in thinking are errors of PERCEPTION. But the problem with perception errors is that it’s hard to know what we don’t know, so we naturally ignore it.

black chick

(I kinda commented on this before, but I actually experienced this in the real world, so I think I’ll write my thought out again)

There’s this black chick that keeps calling my ass. It’s really fucking annoying. She’s one of those “racially sensitive” people so you have to be really careful what you say around her. She’s very “boo-hoo. . . someone’s racist.”.

It’s really funny the way she looks at things sometimes. If something weird happens, it’s because of racism (of course. . .). There could be a friggin’ million reasons for what’s happening, but it’s irrelevant. In every case, it’s her PERCEPTION of the events that sets the tone for how everything gets intperpreted. So her belief in racism ends up reinforcing her belief in racism. It’s amazingly circular.

- Stever

PS If you are one of those people who are “offended” by anyone critical of political correctness, fuck you. Being offended is an intellectually lazy way to shut people up without having to prove them wrong.

Stever charms

I’ve always liked these:

Startup School

I am currently writing this at a Denny’s on the way to San Francisco. I am in Coalinga, specifically. There seems to be a very weak signal for wifi, so I am able to post this blog post here and now. Anyway, I’m attending Startup School, which is a kind of meetup for entrepreneurs. I just love San Francisco/Palo Alto. Here, I somehow feel like I’m in my element. Everyone you meet seems to be hacker/programmer/entrepreneur. It’s being held at Stanford so there are plenty of smart people to bounce ideas with. It’s just great.

Anyway, getting late. Motels here are cheap: $35/night so I think I’ll take advantage of it.

PS. Listening to Physical Graffiti in my car. It’s a very arty album, highly recommended:

The Social Network

I saw the movie social network last week and I love love LOVED it. Smart writing, good directing, gripping story, witty humor, it had everything. And the thing is is that it did it without the hype, the marketing, the 3d, and the special effects. The story just sold itself.

The movie worked on many levels for me. One of them (for me anyway) was the issue of perspective. The movie is kind of told from a “looking back” perspective. Each one of the characters insisted that it was THEY that invented facebook. But their actions, at the time, told a completely different story. For instance, one of the facebook founders decided to join a prestigious internship with a finance company in New York instead of moving to Palo Alto to work with facebook. There was a lot of that going on in the movie and it was interesting ot hear everyone’s selective “spin” on the situation.

Also, if that’s what parties are like at harvard, I have to tip my hat to you harvard students. Georgetown parties ain’t got nothing on you.

San Francisco

Uhhh. . .

It seems that I left a note from myself to myself to put this on my blog. It is unedited, so please excuse the grammatical errors, I was kinda under the influence. It was actually written October 3rd, 2010.

It’s Sunday afternoon and I’m in San Francisco, exploring the streets with nothing more than a book bag, some books, and my laptop computer. I also just took some ecstasy. I just needed to get out of la. I know I don’t write about my feelings too much on this blog, but let me tell you, being an entrepreneur in the early stages is worse than living in a pressure cooker sometimes. It’s low pay, stressful as hell, and you could probably lead a better life working at McDonalds to be honest with you. I sometimes walk out of my place with shaky legs at the end of the day, like I just got my ass kicked. You guys don’t even know. It’s difficult to be me sometimes. I sometimes have this fantasy of just dropping model printing altogether and leaving to some far off city with just me and my book bag. Just live off of cheap motels or on the streets even. You know, write my code on the road, in a mcdonald’s, anywhere. I have some unusual ideas I want to code and I think I can make a startup idea out of one of them.

I can’t remember where I parked my car. I think I parked it at 5th or something, but I don’t remember. How am I going to get home now?

I am currently writing this on a pier with a magnificent view of what is called “the Bay Bridge”. There are yaughts moving in the background (I think). It is pretty. The bridge is magnificently large. I just
crossed this bridge in my car, I had a totally different perspective and understanding of the bridge just a few hours ago. It’s funny how two different perspectives of the same thing can totally change the
way you fundamentally view something.

It’s getting cold. I have two long sleeved shirts on. This keeps me warm. I was able to actually afford a motel this time (usually, I just sleep in my car), so I had a good night’s sleep and am very awake.

You see, I had this “grand idea”. I pick a random word out of the dictionary, and then do something related to that. Then see what happens. This makes serendipitous events more likely to occur. I use a similar process for invention.

Oh, I saw the “Social Network” movie. It was pretty damn good. A very smart, well-written script. I think you guys will notice a few parallels with the Mark Zuckerberg character and myself. Both in the way we act and how we talk to people. One of the perspectives of the movie was “Mark Zuckerberg is an asshole” (even his own lawyer thought he was a fucking asshole).

The view is absolutely breathtaking. The city is built along the bay, so there’s lots of water all around. The city has no choice but to build around it, which I think makes it all the more pleasant. The
city just bustles with city life, a city of inhabitants just going about their daily lives. San Francisco is the New York city of the west coast. Lots of cabs. You can bump into serendipitous events a lot
easier here than in la. Downtown la has nothing on this.

I obviously can’t drive now, how will I ever get home? I can’t even remember where I parked. I will have to stop over mid-way because I don’t want to drive all night. My work kills me sometimes. I am hoping this entrepreneurship thing gets better because it’s pure hell sometimes. I don’t lead a very good life. I need to travel more, work abroad.

damn customers. . .

article actually written 9/24/2010

A customer came in today complaining that her headshots looked “grainy”. I was like “looook, noooooo”. When I took a closer look at this supposed problem (nonsense. . .), it turns out that her shitty-ass photographer was using a film camera, not a digital one. So OF COURSE she’s going to see the grain. When I patiently explained this, she retorted that she used “the best photographer in la” and I was like “looook, noooo”. I even told her she didn’t have to pay for it (even thought it was her fault. . .), but she left in a fuss, claiming I was “rude”.

hhhhhhhhhh.

Perspective

This is what perspective looks like:

Perspective A: It’s a circle!
Perspective B: It’s a square!
Reality: Examine it from all sides and conclude it’s a cylinder.

I think a lot of our problems with people’s thinking extends from the fact that people are used to viewing a situation in only one way. But sometimes if you look at the same thing in another way, you can better understand the true nature of the thing you are observing.

And I quote Alan Kaye: a change in perspective is worth 80 iq points.