Smith presents a humorous take on why most of us fail to achieve our dreams.
Category: Notes
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Why you will fail to have a great career: Larry Smith
Why you will fail to have a great career: Larry Smith -
“Brave New Universe” by Paul Halpern and Paul Wesson
Partly an review of the history various theories physics and quantum theories and partly an exploration of the implication of those same theories.
Interesting tidbit: The solar winds leave the sun at approximately 100,000 mph. If there was air in surrounding it, there would be a perpetual sonic boom.
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Jenna McCarthy: What you don’t know about marriage
McCarthy aggregates several studies done on marriage. She presents many very interesting facts. For example, the chances of a given couple getting a divorce increase by 75% if a close friend get a divorce. -
“Everything is Obvious” by Duncan Watts
Watts makes a direct attack against the foundation of what we call ‘common sense.’ He backs his assault with a bevy of studies, done by himself and others. It was interesting to note that we are really bad at making predictions… of any kind. Yet we think we are fantastic at it because so many things seem obvious to us, especially in hindsight. This is a common theme of the book.
Interesting tidbit: experts are generally not statistically significantly better than a non-expert crowd at making predictions.
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Stephen Wolfram: Computing a theory of everything
Wolfram talks about his book, A New Kind of Science, and the development Wolfram Alpha including some of the difficulties and capabilities of the computational service.