Short and Straight

The art of asking questions

Mon, 27 May 2013 08:41:42 -0400

NYT correspondent Jodi Kantor writes:

There is no one question that works for everyone. In fact, the secret to asking great questions is avoiding generalities or broad philosophical inquiries. Hypotheticals are worst of all, because they’re going to give you the opposite of what you want, which is the person’s real, lived experience. To ask a really high-yielding question, you need to have done your homework. The most illuminating questions are simple and specific.

Master time Jedi style

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 11:00:51 -0400

…pay attention to stuff that is important. Not that which is urgent.

This is a wonderfully illustrated answer that goes in a lot more detail.

"For a writer, obsession is a good substitute for self-discipline. - Vikram Seth"

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 05:01:18 -0400

“For a writer, obsession is a good substitute for self-discipline. - Vikram Seth”

How to get creative

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 15:01:28 -0400

From the BBC Horizon programme:

Do something mundane (to turn off the frontal lobe and allow new ideas to flow more freely)
Do something unexpected (that does not need to be connected to the task you want to get creative at, to help your brain connect new ideas).

What surgeons learnt from firemen, F1 pit crew and airplane pilots

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:49:32 -0400

From Kevin Fong’s BBC Horizon programme:

Multi-tasking comes at an expense.
Use checklists to reduce human errors
In a team know who is responsible, at all times.
When in emergency, follow rule 2.

Ain't nobody got time for this?

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 11:00:49 -0400

There is an excellent paper by Tyler Cowen and Robin Hanson that discusses how to deal with self-deception. I have a longer blog post on it, but here is the most important bit:

For a truth-seeker, the key question must be how sure you can be that you, at the moment, are substantially more likely to have a truth-seeking, in-control, rational core than the people you now disagree with. This is because if either of you have some substantial degree of meta-rationality, then your relative intelligence and information are largely irrelevant except as they may indicate which of you is more likely to be self-deceived about being meta-rational.

"The core purpose of a great lecturer is not primarily to transmit information… The real purpose of a..."

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 12:53:44 -0500

“The core purpose of a great lecturer is not primarily to transmit information… The real purpose of a lecture is to show the mind and heart of the lecturer at work, and to engage the minds and hearts of learners.”

72 is the new 30

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 12:31:46 -0500

It helps to, from time to time, take a step back and realise how fortunate we find ourselves to be today.

Scientists reported today that human beings in the 1800 had lifespans that were closer to the earliest hunter-gatherer humans than they would to adult men in the rich countries today.

Put another way: Hunter-gatherers at the age of 40 would have the same odds of dying has a Japanese man at 72 today.

Human mortality, he added, has shown itself to be far more “plastic” and capable of manipulation than anyone had imagined.

Writing is about rewriting, so get something done first

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 04:49:40 -0500

Chip Scanlan’s tips on writing:

1. Lower your standards

2. Get something done

3. Swallow the bile on your first draft

4. Print out early

5. Read aloud

6. Apply critical standards

The key to modern life

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 05:28:00 -0500

It was David Foster Wallace’s birthday yesterday. He nailed it when he said:

“To be, in a word, unborable…. It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.” – The Pale King (2011)

Thumb rule for using hyperlinks

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 13:08:00 -0500

In an excellent article Robert Cottrell makes a smart point about online writing:

It helps, too, that when you’re writing online, there’s no need to introduce and source every person, place and fact you mention, and no need to fill in the backstory for those new to the subject. You can link out to the source document or the related story – or just assume your reader knows how to use Google and Wikipedia.

It is very annoying to read articles that have too many hyperlinks. I think a thumb rule for hyperlinks should be: use no more than 1 hyperlink per 200 words.

PS: In case you can’t read the linked FT article, try this.

The role of religion

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 09:19:00 -0500

Ever since I took the time to explore my own religious views, I’ve been rewarded with more and more questions about life. One that haunted me for quite sometime was: how to explain (concisely) the role of religion in our society?

So I tried. This is what I came up with: some people find it too hard to find meaning in life. Religion gives them one. And then they find meaning may be from scriptures, idols, stories, community or something else that being religious provides.

This is perhaps too simplistic an explanation. While I came to this conclusion on my own, I am not the first one to do so. Here’s Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in Flow:

As people move through life, passing from the hopeful ignorance of youth into sobering adulthood, they sooner or later face an increasingly nagging question: “Is this all there is?” ……Traditionally, the problem of existence has been most directly confronted through religion, and an increasing number of the disillusioned are turning back to it, choosing either one of the standard creeds or a more esoteric Eastern variety.

The key to happiness is...

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 08:40:00 -0500

…being in control of our life.

Of all the hundreds of claims made about how to be happy, this is the one that I can agree to the most. Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi finds that:

Such individuals lead vigorous lives, are open to a variety of experiences, keep on learning until the day they die, and have strong ties and commitments to other people and to the environment in which they live. They enjoy whatever they do, even if tedious or difficult; they are hardly ever bored, and they can take in stride anything that comes their way. Perhaps their greatest strength is that they are in control of their lives.

What one cause do you support?

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 07:42:06 -0500

I never understood the Facebook invites that I get asking me to associate myself to a “cause”. From averting catastrophic climate change to improving women’s plight, there is much to do in this world. But if you truly care about doing something, it helps to focus on a singular cause.

If that cause happens to be pouring more and more money into charity work by being an investment banker, then so be it. But I hope you stick to it.

Aristotle on persuasion

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 17:25:00 -0500

According to Aristotle the best way to persuade someone is to make an argument in a structure that balances three key areas: credibility, logical appeal and emotional appeal.

Some call it the Rhetorical Triangle.

Old is gold

Sun, 17 Feb 2013 14:39:00 -0500

We overvalue new writing, almost absurdly so, and we undervalue older writing. - Robert Cottrell in the FT

I cannot agree more with Cottrell’s observation. From now on I am not going to feel guilty about sharing articles that are old. Be it a month old or many years old.

Eugenics

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 07:24:00 -0500

Eugenics was a serious academic discipline, and not just in Facist countries. By 1930s it was being studied in universities in Switzerland, Sweden, Russia, Germany, America and Norway. Its founder, Sir Francis Galton, a British anthropologist, even became a fellow of the Royal Society. Galton felt that the average citizen was “too base for the everyday work of modern civilization”.

It took Adolf Hitler and his henchmen to expose the moral bankruptcy of these ideas.

From Frans de Waal’s The Bonobo and the Atheist

You become what you do, not what you think

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 08:23:46 -0500

According to psychologist Timothy Wilson:

People draw inferences about who they are by observing their own behavior.

Self-perception theory turns common wisdom on its head. Two powerful ideas follow from it. The first is that we are strangers to ourselves. After all, if we knew our own minds, why would we need to guess what our preferences are from our behavior? If our minds were an open book, we would know exactly how honest we are and how much we like lattes. Instead, we often need to look to our behavior to figure out who we are. Self-perception theory thus anticipated the revolution in psychology in the study of human consciousness, a revolution that revealed the limits of introspection.

But it turns out that we don’t just use our behavior to reveal our dispositions—we infer dispositions that weren’t there before. Often, our behavior is shaped by subtle pressures around us, but we fail to recognize those pressures. As a result, we mistakenly believe that our behavior emanated from some inner disposition.

The scale of our universe

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 08:50:53 -0500

Here is how John Cassidy explains the scale of our universe.

He instructs us to find a large open space and place a soccer ball in the center to represent the sun. He then directs us to walk 10 paces in a straight line, stick a common pin in the ground. The head of the pin stands for the planet Mercury. Then take another 9 paces beyond Mercury and put down a peppercorn to represent Venus. Step 7 more paces and drop another peppercorn for Earth. One inch away from Earth, another pinhead represents the Moon. Take 14 more paces and place a peppercorn for Mars, then 95 paces to Jupiter, and place a ping-pong ball. Take 112 paces further and place a marble to represent Saturn.

He then inquires, “How far would you have to walk to reach the nearest star, Proxima Centauri?” He instructs you to pick up another soccer ball to represent it and set off for a walk of 4,200 miles. As for the nearest other galaxy, Andromeda, he suggests, don’t even consider it!

Do not track me. Do get it.

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 11:51:38 -0500

I’m a Google Chrome user and there are some add-ons on the browser that should really become part of it. The first one is AdBlock Plus and the other is DoNotTrackMe.

Yes there are people who survive on online adverts. I’m a journalist, I know. But AdBlock Plus allows for non-intrusive ads. This is the future of online advertising and the add-on is only accelerating us getting there.

And DoNotTrackMe essentially does what its name suggests: it stops tracking codes from gathering information about you. There are tens of trackers that want to know various bits of information about you to “customise your online experience”. Those trackers do no good and perhaps just slow down loading pages.

DoNotTrackMe also has an added advantage: it hides all the social button figures (the buttons remain in case you want to use them). How many times do you judge an article based on how many people have liked it or tweeted it and not on your judgement? It has become a sort of unspoken currency for writers. I think that’s terrible. Apart from deciding for myself what I want to and not want to read, I read what my friends recommend. If I don’t like it then I stop taking that particular friend’s advice. I’ve been using DoNotTrackMe for over three months now, and find it really helpful.