Monday, October 22, 2007
Quotables Quotes
"The main reason of the lack of success for some is not because of education but his lack of an ability to apply the principles towards his own success."
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
The Right Brain vs Left Brain test
Do you use the left brain or the right brain?
Here is a test for you to find out.
Right Brain vs Left Brain
My colleague and I were having fun discussing and debating which direction the dancer is rotating.
Here is a test for you to find out.
Right Brain vs Left Brain
My colleague and I were having fun discussing and debating which direction the dancer is rotating.
Monday, October 8, 2007
You do not need more than what you have
In this age of information overload, we are bombarded by distractions every moment. Everything in the world is trying to snatch our attention away from what is really important to us. It is really time for us to sit down, clear our everything else in our mind and give undivided attention to what we really truly is involved in, cos we do not need more than what we already have.
Copied from Scott Berkun's blog:
What things in your life demand undivided attention? Whatever they are, I claim they define your life more than anything else you do. Your obituary will not list the hours you fought off boring meetings or ignored your friends by reading forgettable blurbs about forgettable things on your cell phone or laptop. Instead it’s the intimate, deep moments that refuse division that matter. The wise and happy throughout history have found ways to avoid situations that demand divided attention. They convert the fractured experience into the meaningful (and perhaps magical) by investing their attention wisely.
There isn’t a single great work in the history of civilization, no novel, symphony, film, or song that was completed as a 1/5th time-slice between e-mail, IM, cellphones and television. Despite the modern drive to consume things made by others, time will always be our most finite resource and it crumbles when split into tiny little pieces. And it’s up to us to choose how much of life is spent passively (consuming, waiting, watching) vs. actively (thinking, debating, feeling, doing, making). Whatever we choose, when we die, we have no one to blame but ourselves for where our time, and attention, went.
Free money and sex if you read this now! (Laying the attention trap)
We’re told our senses bring us the world, but the opposite is more accurate: our senses filter the world down to what we’ve needed to survive. Our eyes see only a fraction of the kinds of light around us (e.g. ultraviolet, infra-red). We can only see 140 degrees of 360 meaning we see less than 50% of what is going on at any time around our bodies. The human range of hearing is comically bad compared to most house pets and insects. In short, our senses are designed to focus our attention on what matters for our survival. Our senses ignore many times more data than they bring to our brains. It’s knowing what to ignore that makes us successful, not how many volumes of data we can consume at the same time. Ask any successful athlete, performer, or writer about how they consistently perform at high levels and they’ll tell you about focus, and the discipline of centering their attention on what they’re doing. They practice and drill so that basic tasks become so familiar that they don’t have to think about them anymore, focusing instead on the details most of us miss.
The challenge is that in the last 50 years we’ve designed things purposefully to attract attention. TV commercials, websites and advertisements of all kinds are machines that, by design, take advantage of our limited means of perception. We know that red, fast, sexy, blinking things play on our reptilian brains and few can resist granting attention to them. This is an old tactic, as flowers, fruits and plants have played similar games for eons, just not on the same scale. No flower has ever spent millions researching strategies for advertisements, training a species over time to eat when they’re not hungry, or to compulsively seek information for information sake, yet our man-made attractions do this every day. In a pre-historic age, creatures competed for survival. In an information age, we, as corporations and people, compete for each others attention. We’re supposed to be in a golden age of leisure time since most hard labor is done for us, but somehow we’ve fallen into a place where time gained from innovations falls away like sand between our hands, phones and keyboards.
The Law of lost attention
The danger of misguided attention is this: how we spend our attention changes the value of what we spend it on. If you participate in potentially intimate activities, like sports, conversation, or non-casual sex (meaning both emotionally and physically intimate), treating them with split attention, will inevitably make them non-intimate experiences. Like a flower that doesn’t get enough water, an intimate experience can only grow to the depth and quality of the time given to it. If you only spend a fast food amount of attention, you will never have a 5 star dining experience (See Slow food movement). The same applies to everything: relationships, talents, experiences. Fast food (and sex) can be fun, but they’re unlikely to be fulfilling if that’s all you have. They work best as counterpoints to deeper, slower, more wonderfully intimate things.
Law of lost attention: The value of something you spend attention on is dependent on how much attention you spend on it.
Whenever someone is lost in waves of e-mail and information, they’re often oblivious to the deepest tragedy of their time. It’s not the stress of dealing with so many requests and obligations (as real and challenging as that stress might be). It’s that somewhere in the wash of interactions and split attentions is the missed possibility they’re
looking for: Meaning. Depth of experience. Connection. To quote Pirsig, “The truth knocks on the door and we say, “Go away. I’m looking for the truth”. In the race to clean out inboxes and scratch items off the to-do list, we miss chances to find the thing we’ve created the inbox and to-do list for. Like an American tourist in Europe racing from site to site with barely a moment to take a picture or talk to someone not on their tour bus, we’re trapped in a quantity mentality, despite our quality based desires.
Reclaiming attention
We are information insecure. The compulsion for more is driven by lack of confidence in what we already have. Out of a secret kind of fear we are convinced that the next e-mail or link is better than the one we’re reading now. The result is a private rat race: what does it mean to stay on top of information that doesn’t satisfy?
The unspoken dream is to be attention rich. To have enough attention that at any time we’re comfortable digging in to something that we connect with. But if we’re always spending our attention as if it has no value, and we’re attention poor, we don’t have enough attention to spend even when we find the things we’re looking for.
It’s true that the hunt and intensity of multitasking can be fun – there are thrills in chasing things, physical or virtual, but most evidence shows we perform worse at all things multitasked. Despite how it feels, it appears our minds don’t work best when split this way. And given the law of lost attention, we may be multi-tasking over the very experiences we’re multi-tasking to find.
Reclaiming attention starts with a leap of faith in believing the following sentence: you do not need more than what you have. When you survive that leap, which you will, it’s easy to convince yourself that you need less of the attention consuming things in your life than you currently have. You’ll soon find that every important ambition for your life is best served by treating your attention with the conservation it deserves. Instead of splitting your mind to keep busy, move your body to somewhere worthy of all the attention you have.
The attention challenge
Here’s a test to help sort how your attention is working for you. Make a list of all the things you read, check, skim, or browse every day (Include every gadget or device you use once a day). Make a second list of why you’re spending your attention on them. What are you trying to achieve or feel? Rank the first list based on the second. Then cut the first list in half or by one-third and see what happens. If you survive, let me know how it went.
Copied from Scott Berkun's blog:
What things in your life demand undivided attention? Whatever they are, I claim they define your life more than anything else you do. Your obituary will not list the hours you fought off boring meetings or ignored your friends by reading forgettable blurbs about forgettable things on your cell phone or laptop. Instead it’s the intimate, deep moments that refuse division that matter. The wise and happy throughout history have found ways to avoid situations that demand divided attention. They convert the fractured experience into the meaningful (and perhaps magical) by investing their attention wisely.
There isn’t a single great work in the history of civilization, no novel, symphony, film, or song that was completed as a 1/5th time-slice between e-mail, IM, cellphones and television. Despite the modern drive to consume things made by others, time will always be our most finite resource and it crumbles when split into tiny little pieces. And it’s up to us to choose how much of life is spent passively (consuming, waiting, watching) vs. actively (thinking, debating, feeling, doing, making). Whatever we choose, when we die, we have no one to blame but ourselves for where our time, and attention, went.
Free money and sex if you read this now! (Laying the attention trap)
We’re told our senses bring us the world, but the opposite is more accurate: our senses filter the world down to what we’ve needed to survive. Our eyes see only a fraction of the kinds of light around us (e.g. ultraviolet, infra-red). We can only see 140 degrees of 360 meaning we see less than 50% of what is going on at any time around our bodies. The human range of hearing is comically bad compared to most house pets and insects. In short, our senses are designed to focus our attention on what matters for our survival. Our senses ignore many times more data than they bring to our brains. It’s knowing what to ignore that makes us successful, not how many volumes of data we can consume at the same time. Ask any successful athlete, performer, or writer about how they consistently perform at high levels and they’ll tell you about focus, and the discipline of centering their attention on what they’re doing. They practice and drill so that basic tasks become so familiar that they don’t have to think about them anymore, focusing instead on the details most of us miss.
The challenge is that in the last 50 years we’ve designed things purposefully to attract attention. TV commercials, websites and advertisements of all kinds are machines that, by design, take advantage of our limited means of perception. We know that red, fast, sexy, blinking things play on our reptilian brains and few can resist granting attention to them. This is an old tactic, as flowers, fruits and plants have played similar games for eons, just not on the same scale. No flower has ever spent millions researching strategies for advertisements, training a species over time to eat when they’re not hungry, or to compulsively seek information for information sake, yet our man-made attractions do this every day. In a pre-historic age, creatures competed for survival. In an information age, we, as corporations and people, compete for each others attention. We’re supposed to be in a golden age of leisure time since most hard labor is done for us, but somehow we’ve fallen into a place where time gained from innovations falls away like sand between our hands, phones and keyboards.
The Law of lost attention
The danger of misguided attention is this: how we spend our attention changes the value of what we spend it on. If you participate in potentially intimate activities, like sports, conversation, or non-casual sex (meaning both emotionally and physically intimate), treating them with split attention, will inevitably make them non-intimate experiences. Like a flower that doesn’t get enough water, an intimate experience can only grow to the depth and quality of the time given to it. If you only spend a fast food amount of attention, you will never have a 5 star dining experience (See Slow food movement). The same applies to everything: relationships, talents, experiences. Fast food (and sex) can be fun, but they’re unlikely to be fulfilling if that’s all you have. They work best as counterpoints to deeper, slower, more wonderfully intimate things.
Law of lost attention: The value of something you spend attention on is dependent on how much attention you spend on it.
Whenever someone is lost in waves of e-mail and information, they’re often oblivious to the deepest tragedy of their time. It’s not the stress of dealing with so many requests and obligations (as real and challenging as that stress might be). It’s that somewhere in the wash of interactions and split attentions is the missed possibility they’re
looking for: Meaning. Depth of experience. Connection. To quote Pirsig, “The truth knocks on the door and we say, “Go away. I’m looking for the truth”. In the race to clean out inboxes and scratch items off the to-do list, we miss chances to find the thing we’ve created the inbox and to-do list for. Like an American tourist in Europe racing from site to site with barely a moment to take a picture or talk to someone not on their tour bus, we’re trapped in a quantity mentality, despite our quality based desires.
Reclaiming attention
We are information insecure. The compulsion for more is driven by lack of confidence in what we already have. Out of a secret kind of fear we are convinced that the next e-mail or link is better than the one we’re reading now. The result is a private rat race: what does it mean to stay on top of information that doesn’t satisfy?
The unspoken dream is to be attention rich. To have enough attention that at any time we’re comfortable digging in to something that we connect with. But if we’re always spending our attention as if it has no value, and we’re attention poor, we don’t have enough attention to spend even when we find the things we’re looking for.
It’s true that the hunt and intensity of multitasking can be fun – there are thrills in chasing things, physical or virtual, but most evidence shows we perform worse at all things multitasked. Despite how it feels, it appears our minds don’t work best when split this way. And given the law of lost attention, we may be multi-tasking over the very experiences we’re multi-tasking to find.
Reclaiming attention starts with a leap of faith in believing the following sentence: you do not need more than what you have. When you survive that leap, which you will, it’s easy to convince yourself that you need less of the attention consuming things in your life than you currently have. You’ll soon find that every important ambition for your life is best served by treating your attention with the conservation it deserves. Instead of splitting your mind to keep busy, move your body to somewhere worthy of all the attention you have.
The attention challenge
Here’s a test to help sort how your attention is working for you. Make a list of all the things you read, check, skim, or browse every day (Include every gadget or device you use once a day). Make a second list of why you’re spending your attention on them. What are you trying to achieve or feel? Rank the first list based on the second. Then cut the first list in half or by one-third and see what happens. If you survive, let me know how it went.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Astronaut Openings: Apply now!
For those wanting to live out their childhood dreams, NASA is appealing for applicants to join their latest batch of astronauts training programme. As mentioned in the webpage, applicants are required to have a technical degree. Pay is good with a minimum of 5000 USD (S$7500)per month. However with the spate of accidents with the shuttle, the job comes with a huge amount of danger too. Fortunately or unfortunately, this current batch might just be using the Russian Soyuz craft when they graduate after 2-3 years.
Click here to apply
Forgot to mention, for US citizens only...
Click here to apply
Forgot to mention, for US citizens only...
Nintendo DS Web Browser @ Singapore
I finally bought a new accessory for my Nintendo DS: web browser add-on. Before buying it. I was searching online for any local Singapore web review on the browser. Unfortunately, there was little or none on it, with only a few statements on local gaming forums like hardwarezones and gameaxis. Hence I decided to plunge into it and buy one to test it out myself. I paid S$65 for the American version while according to the shop at Cineleisure, the Japanese version actually cost more at S$85, something which puzzled me. Logically the Japanese version is in native japanese language thus should be cheaper than the American version in English.
After slotting a memory expansion housed in a transparent into the GBA slot and the software catridge into my white DS, the first prompt is for the user to type in a password for the browser. Next comes setting the WiFi connections. I tried to connect to the Wireless@Sg WiFi at a nearby MacDonald restarurant. During the connection setup, the browser was able to picked up the signals very easily. Configurations were automated. I was immediately brought into a Qmax page to log in.
I then tried to surf the following websites:
Channel News Asia website: Page was loaded promptly although it's speed cannot be compared with a laptop. The entire page was loaded correctly at the lower screen of my DS. Using the stylus, I was able to scroll the lower screen to read the details at the upper screen.
Gmail: Able to access my mailbox with the correct formats.
Golden Village: Home page can be loaded but unortunately cannot access showtimes as it might be written as a script.
Street Directory: Browser was able to load the entire page but users have to be patient especially in waiting for the map to be loaded in a small screen.
Overall, the DS brower can be used as a mini web browser to check on some non-mission critical stuff like sports scores, looking at a map, check email, etc while outside. But it cannot and will not replace the laptop as the front line gadgent for general use. However it is always marvelous have a simple gadget that is able to surf the web whenever you need it outside but do not carry a laptop with you. The DS webbrowser is meant exactly for those situations.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Mac Product Life Cycle
An interesting and funny analysis of a typical Apple Product Life cycle from the beginning of rumours on production...
http://www.misterbg.org/AppleProductCycle/
http://www.misterbg.org/AppleProductCycle/
How will the new Ipod look like?
A good commentary on the current state of the MP3 player industry was given by Tom Krazit from Cnet News.
Any talk these days of Apple and the future of mobile computing quickly turns to the iPhone. The company is on its way to selling a million iPhones in the first three months of what Apple says is a multiyear strategy to enter the mobile phone market.
But Apple makes another mobile device. It's called the iPod. And if the persistent rumors are fulfilled Wednesday during the latest episode of The Steve Jobs Show (a product presentation at San Francisco's Moscone Center), the iPod is about to get a whole lot more powerful.
A wide-screen iPod that looks an awful lot like an iPhone seems like the most likely bet for the sixth generation of Apple's ubiquitous music and video player line. It also seems very likely that those new iPods will run the same stripped-down version of Mac OS X found on the iPhone, something even Jobs himself hinted at during a meeting with Apple employees on the eve of the iPhone launch.
You don't need a sophisticated operating system to play songs and TV shows, so at that point, the iPod stops being just a gadget. So, then, what exactly is it? Like the iPhone, it becomes something in between a gadget and a PC, which has been treacherous ground for the PC industry.
The tech industry appears to be at another one of those pesky crossroads. The PC is, well, dated. We all need one, and we all use one, but we just don't get excited about buying a new one anymore.
As a result, the PC industry has been scrambling to find the next big thing. Tablet PCs? Nope. Home media centers? Maybe, but not yet. Digital televisions? Still the domain of the consumer electronics industry.
An iPod with a more powerful operating system and a touch screen could suddenly become an intriguing little device for those who like the iPhone, but don't want to spend 600 bucks or hook up with AT&T.
Apple found its next big thing six years ago when it released the iPod. It wasn't the first company to figure out that people wanted to carry all those Napsterized songs in their pocket, but it has certainly made the most of it. More than 70 percent of people in the U.S. who want a portable digital music player buy an iPod.
But the iPod really does just one thing. It does it well--and yes, you can also store contacts, appointments and play games that would have looked lame 10 years ago--but nobody buys an iPod to make sure they remember that doctor's appointment.
After Wednesday, that might be different. An iPod with a more powerful operating system and a touch screen could suddenly become an intriguing little device for those who like the iPhone, but don't want to spend 600 bucks or hook up with AT&T.
It wouldn't be hard to imagine some of those people put off by the iPhone's price and wireless carrier would shell out $349--the current price for the 80GB iPod--for an iPod that can do far more than just play videos or music.
That is, assuming Apple doesn't overlook what's really needed in a mobile computer. There's no point in putting a sophisticated operating system in an iPod if you wall that device off from the Internet. Apple has resisted adding Wi-Fi to the iPod thus far, but it broke that barrier with the iPhone and perhaps it has figured out a way to add Wi-Fi without killing battery life.
And it would really need to be a phone-less iPhone, with applications like Safari, YouTube and Google Maps. Ideally, it needs third-party applications, such as games or GPS navigation. But it might take Apple awhile to admit that, given that its approach to application development on the iPhone was to limit developers to Web-based applications.
The entire combination could make the $349 iPod more attractive. Apple's revenue growth from iPods has stalled, even though the unit growth is still above 20 percent year over year. That implies that iPod buyers are opting for the less expensive $199 4GB Nano or the $249 30GB iPod.
Common ground for Windows LiveDoes Sony finally have an iTunes answer?
It would also finally give Apple the real wide-screen video player that iPod fans have been clamoring for since just before last year's "showtime" event. And, after all, that's still the iPod's sweet spot: mobile entertainment.
It's quite possible that Apple doesn't want to make that dramatic a leap just yet. Jobs prizes simplicity and aesthetics, and a large part of the iPod's appeal has been that it does one thing (or a couple), and does it (or them) well.
But a Mac OS X-based iPod could be a compelling device as the industry and its customers try to figure out how mobile computers should evolve. It would avoid the early mistakes of the UMPC, which runs a battery-sapping PC operating system, doesn't fit in a pocket, and at around $1,000, has been met with lukewarm--at best--interest from consumers.
There are other devices out there, like Sony's PSP and video players from Archos, that are trying to do the same thing. But with sales of more than 10 million iPods a quarter--and a whopping 21 million last holiday season--Apple has established the iPod as one of the most widely used handheld gadgets on the planet.
What if it were a computer, too?
Any talk these days of Apple and the future of mobile computing quickly turns to the iPhone. The company is on its way to selling a million iPhones in the first three months of what Apple says is a multiyear strategy to enter the mobile phone market.
But Apple makes another mobile device. It's called the iPod. And if the persistent rumors are fulfilled Wednesday during the latest episode of The Steve Jobs Show (a product presentation at San Francisco's Moscone Center), the iPod is about to get a whole lot more powerful.
A wide-screen iPod that looks an awful lot like an iPhone seems like the most likely bet for the sixth generation of Apple's ubiquitous music and video player line. It also seems very likely that those new iPods will run the same stripped-down version of Mac OS X found on the iPhone, something even Jobs himself hinted at during a meeting with Apple employees on the eve of the iPhone launch.
You don't need a sophisticated operating system to play songs and TV shows, so at that point, the iPod stops being just a gadget. So, then, what exactly is it? Like the iPhone, it becomes something in between a gadget and a PC, which has been treacherous ground for the PC industry.
The tech industry appears to be at another one of those pesky crossroads. The PC is, well, dated. We all need one, and we all use one, but we just don't get excited about buying a new one anymore.
As a result, the PC industry has been scrambling to find the next big thing. Tablet PCs? Nope. Home media centers? Maybe, but not yet. Digital televisions? Still the domain of the consumer electronics industry.
An iPod with a more powerful operating system and a touch screen could suddenly become an intriguing little device for those who like the iPhone, but don't want to spend 600 bucks or hook up with AT&T.
Apple found its next big thing six years ago when it released the iPod. It wasn't the first company to figure out that people wanted to carry all those Napsterized songs in their pocket, but it has certainly made the most of it. More than 70 percent of people in the U.S. who want a portable digital music player buy an iPod.
But the iPod really does just one thing. It does it well--and yes, you can also store contacts, appointments and play games that would have looked lame 10 years ago--but nobody buys an iPod to make sure they remember that doctor's appointment.
After Wednesday, that might be different. An iPod with a more powerful operating system and a touch screen could suddenly become an intriguing little device for those who like the iPhone, but don't want to spend 600 bucks or hook up with AT&T.
It wouldn't be hard to imagine some of those people put off by the iPhone's price and wireless carrier would shell out $349--the current price for the 80GB iPod--for an iPod that can do far more than just play videos or music.
That is, assuming Apple doesn't overlook what's really needed in a mobile computer. There's no point in putting a sophisticated operating system in an iPod if you wall that device off from the Internet. Apple has resisted adding Wi-Fi to the iPod thus far, but it broke that barrier with the iPhone and perhaps it has figured out a way to add Wi-Fi without killing battery life.
And it would really need to be a phone-less iPhone, with applications like Safari, YouTube and Google Maps. Ideally, it needs third-party applications, such as games or GPS navigation. But it might take Apple awhile to admit that, given that its approach to application development on the iPhone was to limit developers to Web-based applications.
The entire combination could make the $349 iPod more attractive. Apple's revenue growth from iPods has stalled, even though the unit growth is still above 20 percent year over year. That implies that iPod buyers are opting for the less expensive $199 4GB Nano or the $249 30GB iPod.
Common ground for Windows LiveDoes Sony finally have an iTunes answer?
It would also finally give Apple the real wide-screen video player that iPod fans have been clamoring for since just before last year's "showtime" event. And, after all, that's still the iPod's sweet spot: mobile entertainment.
It's quite possible that Apple doesn't want to make that dramatic a leap just yet. Jobs prizes simplicity and aesthetics, and a large part of the iPod's appeal has been that it does one thing (or a couple), and does it (or them) well.
But a Mac OS X-based iPod could be a compelling device as the industry and its customers try to figure out how mobile computers should evolve. It would avoid the early mistakes of the UMPC, which runs a battery-sapping PC operating system, doesn't fit in a pocket, and at around $1,000, has been met with lukewarm--at best--interest from consumers.
There are other devices out there, like Sony's PSP and video players from Archos, that are trying to do the same thing. But with sales of more than 10 million iPods a quarter--and a whopping 21 million last holiday season--Apple has established the iPod as one of the most widely used handheld gadgets on the planet.
What if it were a computer, too?
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
A fine handheld gaming system
After months of survey, I finally got my white Nintendo Dual Screen Lite (DS)! The purchase comes at a time when the sales of Nintendo DS and Wii surpasses the total sale of all other console and handhelds combined. (See: July Console Sales Shakedown) This means not only a victory for Nintendo but also brings out an imporatant point: "The latest technology might not always win."
To prove this point, we can compare the specification of DS and its only gaming rival, the Playstation Portable (PSP) from Sony. Sony PSP at the beginning decided to fight the handheld battle by designing a machine that bundles the latest chipset and graphics. With its 480×272 pixel resolution capable of 16.77 million colors, it is more than enough to satisfy every gamers needs. Comparatively, Nintendo DS consist of only 256x192 pixels resolution.
So how did the DS managed to tip over the giant?
To stay alive in a highly competitive gaming industry, Nintendo could choose to fight head on with Sony and come out with a handheld packed with processing power and brilliant graphic rendering. Else it can stop producing anymore hardware systems but strive on becoming a game design house like its japanese counterpart, Sega. Nintendo decided to fight the battle by Blue Ocean strategy, by focusing on creating a new market. Nintendo DS was not designed to attract new hardcore gamers who were already snatched by Xbox and Playstation consoles, but instead to attract a different kind of people though new interactive game play. Their machine does not pack state of the art chips as compared to PSP. However their main draw point was the use of the touch screen and dual screen. This gives another dimension to the game play experience and new design paradigm for game designers.
In addition, their games are also relatively simply to play and does not require too steep a learning curve to start enjoying them. This point certainly attracts new entrants into handheld gamings who are turned off by complicated controllers offered by Xbox.
By having a lower processing power in DS, this turns out to be an advantage as it might mean game designers require less time to push a game title out for DS as compared to PSP. This is evident by the wide variety and selection of titles available for DS.
Apart from focusing on what is inside of the DS, we must also appreciate the redesigned DS Lite. It is a machine with slick smoth curves and nice size to hold in your palm. Nothing is protroduing out of the machine. My white DS has a shinning surface which unfortunately attracts finger prints all over. The most brilliant design similar to Mac ibook is the ability to make the machine to go into sleep mode when it is closed. When this occurs, the game is halted at the point in it and a green LED light will blink. Next time when the machine is opened, it will resume the game. Perfect for those of us who are always on the go.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Why smart people defend bad ideas (A summary)
Based on reading the article by Scott Berkun:
Several points can be extracted:
1. "Proficiency in argument can easily be used to overpower others, even when you are dead wrong."
So this might mean that even if someone intimidates you with his/her arguments and you cannot rebutt them, they are not correct all the time. They simply win because they have more skils in slicing your arguments.
2. "Problem with smart people is that they like to be right and sometimes will defend ideas to the death rather than admit they’re wrong."
This is the main reason why even smart people fall into the trap of defend stupid and ideas. They are clouded by their inflated ego that might stem from their up growing as labelled as a smart people. Unfortunately, this might also be the reason for their downfall.
3. "Simple rule for defusing those who are skilled at defending bad ideas: Simply because they cannot be proven wrong, does not make them right. Most of the tricks of logic and debate refute questions and attacks, but fail to establish any true justification for a given idea."
Winning a verbal aruguments might not mean that you are correct.
4. "Diffusing bad thinking requires someone (probably you) to construct a healthier framework around the bad thinking that shows it for what it is"
5. "Just because everyone in the room is smart doesn’t mean that collectively they will arrive at smart ideas. "
This is the same main point from a previous book that I read "Delusion of Crowds"
6. "At any moment on any project there are an infinite number of levels of problem solving. Part of being a truly smart person is to know which level is the right one at a given time. "
"People worry about the wrong thing at the wrong time and apply their intelligence in ways that doesn’t serve the greater good of whatever they’re trying to achieve. Some call this difference in skill wisdom, in that the wise know what to be thinking about, where as the merely intelligent only know how to think."
This statement is probably very important to those of us dealing with research work where we encounter tons of problems everyday. We have to know which are the crucial problems that we need to solve in order to bring us ahead of the competition and which are those problems that does not bring us to the next level even after solving them.
7. "To defusing smart people who are defending bad ideas, you have to find ways to slow things down."
Now time for the defence move.
Reference:
Why smart people defend bad ideas
Several points can be extracted:
1. "Proficiency in argument can easily be used to overpower others, even when you are dead wrong."
So this might mean that even if someone intimidates you with his/her arguments and you cannot rebutt them, they are not correct all the time. They simply win because they have more skils in slicing your arguments.
2. "Problem with smart people is that they like to be right and sometimes will defend ideas to the death rather than admit they’re wrong."
This is the main reason why even smart people fall into the trap of defend stupid and ideas. They are clouded by their inflated ego that might stem from their up growing as labelled as a smart people. Unfortunately, this might also be the reason for their downfall.
3. "Simple rule for defusing those who are skilled at defending bad ideas: Simply because they cannot be proven wrong, does not make them right. Most of the tricks of logic and debate refute questions and attacks, but fail to establish any true justification for a given idea."
Winning a verbal aruguments might not mean that you are correct.
4. "Diffusing bad thinking requires someone (probably you) to construct a healthier framework around the bad thinking that shows it for what it is"
5. "Just because everyone in the room is smart doesn’t mean that collectively they will arrive at smart ideas. "
This is the same main point from a previous book that I read "Delusion of Crowds"
6. "At any moment on any project there are an infinite number of levels of problem solving. Part of being a truly smart person is to know which level is the right one at a given time. "
"People worry about the wrong thing at the wrong time and apply their intelligence in ways that doesn’t serve the greater good of whatever they’re trying to achieve. Some call this difference in skill wisdom, in that the wise know what to be thinking about, where as the merely intelligent only know how to think."
This statement is probably very important to those of us dealing with research work where we encounter tons of problems everyday. We have to know which are the crucial problems that we need to solve in order to bring us ahead of the competition and which are those problems that does not bring us to the next level even after solving them.
7. "To defusing smart people who are defending bad ideas, you have to find ways to slow things down."
Now time for the defence move.
Reference:
Why smart people defend bad ideas
How to detect Bull Shit
A good link on learning how to detect Bull Shits from others written by Scott Berkun. Often we are bombarded by bull shits as well as overloaded with information in this new age. In order to sieve thorugh the real valuable facts from the lies, it is important to learn how to detect BS.
How to detect bullshit
How to detect bullshit
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Wisdom of Crowds (James Surowiecki)
It is always interesting to understand the physics of group dynamics from a social physchology point of view, which has wide spread impact upon other areas such as economics and business marketing. I was looking at the idea of how being in a crowd can lead a person's abiliy to make good decisions and also perform in a more inferior level than they are used to being an individual. In the process, I stumped upon a book that argues elsewise. Based on the idea that collective knowledge from a crowd can lead to more superior decision making process. The book's central statement says, "The aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group". Examples to support this statement are given by the author such as the search ability of Google, the harvesting method of the bee as well as the game show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire".
However, there is a catch in order for this collective wisdom to be true. We must assume that every individual will always strive to make the best decision based on his individual judgement. All the individuals must make the decision simultaneously. If in a group, there is someone who tries to influence this process, then this argument might fail.
In my opinion, this is a good read for those who are interested in marketing as well as to further their knowledge after reading "The Tipping Point" book. This book extends the discussion in tipping point.
For a summary of this book: Wikipedia!
Monday, June 4, 2007
Managing Oneself
I got this free book with the autograph of the author at the recent dinner of the National Youth Achievement Awards 15th Anniversary. Overall it was quite a nice read peppered with quotations of leadership, character building and life management. Great for those long bus journey where you neither want a heavy book to carry nor difficult content to understand.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
