Field Notes for my Son

Sometimes making a decision is more important than the decision you make. In "The Bell Jar", Sylvia Plath discusses how she sees her life branching out before her like the fat purple figs on a fig tree, each one representing a potential future she could live. But as she lingers, deliberating on which life to pursue, the figs die and fall to her feet. 

There is an opportunity cost to indecisiveness- don't let the figs drop. For tough decisions, start by giving yourself a maximum amount of time you wish to dedicate to deciding. If the time runs out, you pick the “default option”. If you tend to be risk-averse, you can choose action to be the default option- which will result in making you more spontaneous. You can also chose to make inaction the default, i.e. fail-safe, which ensures you are deciding for the merits of an action rather than against the cost- framing your world with hope rather than fear. Once time runs out you CANNOT renege on your decision. In the absence of new information, it is absurd and illogical to change a decision you have already made.

Bravery only takes 5 seconds. Courage is bravery repeated until it becomes your default.

Never buy groceries on an empty stomach. Take six months for irreversible life decisions. The  ancient Persians' system of governance mandated voting twice, once sober and once drunk. Similarly, waiting six months will let you know how you feel about a situation across various states of mind and prevent impulsive action where it isn't warranted.

Adding an extra lane doesn’t alleviate traffic, just adds more cars to the road. City planners have long recognized the effect of Induced Traffic, but more broadly it also applies to the hedonic treadmill and human desire. In Sapiens, Yuval Harari notes that emails didn’t save us time, they just meant we got more messages and the expectation to reply quicker. Chickens and cows are evolutionarily successful but live miserable lives- is the same thing happening to us?

It seems demand always rises to meet supply, but the process is irreversible. When the supply is later decreased, the demand stays high. It's much smarter to decrease desire than to increase fulfillment. This is not some new discovery, in fact it is a recurrent aspect of the Perennial Philosophy.

Do deadlifts. Outside of being the single most effective full-body exercise, this is the best way to improve your posture. Improved posture means improved confidence. Confidence lets you act like you belong in places, and acting like you belong in places lets you belong in those places.

Create decision heuristics. There are often too many factors, and too little time, to operate properly in complex situations. When you are passing by a broken down car on the highway, you have about 5 seconds to decide whether or not to stop and help, in which time you must answer: am I running late, can I make this lane change, do I have the right supplies to help, am I going to be in danger, and several other thoughts, all while continuing to not crash. If you have a pre-existing decision heuristic of the sort "if I see a broken down car, I will stop to help" then all that remains is execution. Some other decision heuristics I like are "if you get into a fight, swing first" and "always talk to the prettiest girl".

Sincerity is doing what you can do now. We all grow up wanting to make the world better, but lets first start by making our friends and families happier, and then our local communities, and so on. I remember in undergrad meeting many students with grand visions of becoming doctors so they could "make the world better" but were often rude to those around them, ignored the homeless, and so on. If you can not make the world better now, you will never do it later either. And who knows if you will live long enough to anyways!

Do the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. In the emergency services, we had to prepare for dealing with "Mass Casualty Incidents" where the number of individual in need of aid may far outnumber how many the first responders are able to help. A system was developed to "triage" the patients into a priority order to treat them based on their likelihood of survival given immediate intervention. Unintuitively, this can involve deprioritizing patients which are expected to die in order to provide treatment to someone who can immediately be saved, for example by opening their airway or stopping a major bleed. The core philosophy here, which can be applied to all areas of life, is to maximize the integral of the curve of "net utility provided".

"If your feet hurt, you can wrap the world in burlap or you can build some shoes". Understand the roots of your problems, but don't let them be excuses. People have come from worse situations and achieved more. Have the mentality of a champion. (I believe I stole this quote from Gabor Mate)

"If you have an hour to cut down a tree, spend 50 minutes sharpening the axe". I had an old statics professor named Greg Rodin who always said this. In the context of engineering (and in fact all problem solving), this means you must spend the majority of your time making the correct system architecture trades. Like sharpening an axe, if this is done perfectly it will make executing the detailed design and launching a successful product trivially easy. Discussed further in "Engineering Design Philosophy"

You are Kilgore Trout's Parrot. One of the best pages of literature I've ever read came from Kurt Vonnegut in "Breakfast of Champions". It is reproduced below. I’ve often applied to opportunities I was unsure of and been devastated when I didn’t get them, or been unenthusiastic when I did. What we want most in life, like Bill the Parrot, is the license to dream.

Smile, please. It is an enormous blessing to be here, now, with all of you. Let's enjoy the ride, okay?