“Duncan, have I not told you that when you think you know something, that is a most perfect barrier against learning?”― Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune
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We construct, we build our beliefs.
Since we were children, we needed to believe in a set of basic ideas to survive.
To start with, we are hungry or need milk. Those sensations and needs happen in reality — in a very embodied concept of reality.
But my response, my reaction to those sensations, it’s based on some kind of belief.
For example, I believe that eating something is going to end my…
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I’m writing this in a very unusual, exceptional, and unprecedented space. Well, if you compare it with our daily lives before the great pandemic of 2020.
Unusual because at the same time I’m typing on my computer I’m recording the session to share it with my online students and then to post it on some social network.
This means that I have a video camera pointing to my face and a screen recording app pointing to my words.
Sounds cool except because is not. To be affected by the coronavirus you have to be in physical contact with infected persons.
…
Marco Polo or the consultant as an advanced learner
Kublai Khan does not necessarily believe everything Marco Polo says when he describes the cities visited on his expeditions, but the emperor of the Tartars does continue listening to the young Venetian with greater attention and curiosity than he shows any other messenger or explorer of his.
— Ítalo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Why was a leader like Khan — with hundred of the best emissaries and consultants to his disposal — impressed not just by a stranger but a foreigner like the Venetian and choose him to be his eyes and ears?
Marco Polo was a very intelligent man for…
Or the trend to find a note-taking app that takes notes for you
The easy way
These days, it looks like we are living in the quest to design and build the ultimate frictionless experience. From boarding into an airplane to configuring an app, through shopping online or playing music, everything seems to be around getting a frictionless experience.
This trend can go to extremes. In the area of note-taking apps, for example, I see requests from users that want a simple button not only to capture all the highlights from their ebook readers but to get all the transcripts from the podcasts they listen to, previously let them select their favorite time stamps.
In other…
On writing and authoring
“A writer is whoever that writes”, I remember reading when I was a teenager.
I don’t remember exactly where that phrase came from, but I knew it was one of those phrases to get you in the doing instead of the thinking. “If you want to be a writer, write”, could be another similar.
And in some way, it was true then. But not anymore I think.
Everybody writes
I was interested in pursuing a writing career since I was very young. I was in every writing class, course, or workshop that I could participate in. …
Lessons from lucid dreaming
Consciousness is born in the pause.
In an operative mode — washing dishes, checking a budget, driving, programming, shopping, house cleaning — , the brain is just trying to resolve every little task as it comes, glance at the situation, taking little decisions. In other words, just doing.
It’s until the moment we can make a pause that the brain starts thinking about the experience itself — considering that the brain can’t stop thinking. Then, consciousness arises.
I’m not even sure if we can call experience the operative mode. In that case, it’s an unconscious experience.
Lessons on lucid dreaming
I’m thinking about my…
Hi!
How are you? I hope everything is good for you.
There are a lot of things to catch up on here.
• Articles about graph databases, writing, thinking, emotions…
• Videos explaining concepts, giving tips, in a new Youtube channel.
• 4th cohort of the Antifragile Writing course (reloaded).
• And more…
Come and check, you may like it.
On cheating, da Vinci, cognitive load, sadness…
Several articles since the last newsletter. Here are some of them. for more, you can always check here.
- I cheated on the text editor with the graph database
And I like to be open to new connections - One Thousand Mona…
As simple as asking the right question
Know your motives. Or better, get your reasoning above them.
We all want to think and reason in the best way that can help us to find the truth. For that, you need to believe and be skeptical at the same time.
You need to believe that truth is achievable. Skepticism to not believe that the first thing you found is the truth.
Motivation
I know, it’s difficult. But there is a little trick I learned from Julia Galef in her book The Scout Mindset. First, we need to understand motivation.
We all know how important motivation is to accomplish any…
Making sense of those blue days
I have the conviction—as a person and as a psychotherapist—that there are no positive or negative emotions. I’m not the only one. Nature doesn’t know about positive or negative but the utility to survive. Emotions are natural and they help us with a basic set of reactions to situations that require an immediate response.
Not even sadness.
The real problem with emotions
For the sake of simplicity, let’s take as a reference the six basic emotions proposed by Paul Ekman: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. It’s relatively easy to find the positive side of happiness, surprise, disgust, and fear. …
Goals aren’t everything
Let me guess, the first thing that comes to your mind when reading this article headline maybe, “How the heck can you have projects without goals?”.
Fair enough. Let me give you the short answer so you can skip all this article.
If all the things you do in a project are goal-oriented you are going to stop learning, having fun, and being creative.
Quick examples.
Johnny likes to cook. He loves to be in the kitchen. Some day, he finally gets a job in a restaurant. The restaurant has already a very defined menu, recipes, and processes. You always know how…
