Follow up as promised ^^ : https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SqSGsGHkWkJFXucts/refactoring-myself-4-years-later

Follow up as promised ^^ : https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SqSGsGHkWkJFXucts/refactoring-myself-4-years-later

Hello Daisuke, yes it has been 4 years something I just realized at this moment as I am enjoying a cup of coffee on this cozy evening.

I can’t believe that it took me this long to come back here, truth is I never left I was just distracted by life as I always had a book chapter to keep me company. In some ways the past 4 years feel like 4 months but so much has happened it will take a lengthy post to unpack.

I am doing well by the way, in some ways discovering LessWrong has really helped me go through a difficult period in my life and I feel very blessed to have found this place.

Without taking too much space and time, I will be writing a longer post over this week and the next as I am currently about to embark on a new chapter.

I think that "books don't work" isn't a precise enough statement.Take Thinking Fast and Slow, personally I found the book difficult to read because while the content is interesting the writing itself isn't compatible[1] . Maybe because of the genre or intended audience but the book in itself isn't a good choice to learn about it's content (Judgment under uncertainty, biases ...)

I see it this way, to learn about a specific subject I select and skim several textbooks choose the smaller one in number of pages (more on this later) and work trough it on the span of weeks (note taking, trying to understand every part and reflect on where it comes from and so on...) Books like Thinking Fast and Slow I read on a casual basis (commute/coffee/meals) my goal isn't necessarily to understand everything but more like high-lighting passages of interests, important statements etc...

Michael Nielsen text for example about Neural Networks I worked trough it in textbook fashion it has interactive mediums to give an intuitive feel but still it required a bit of thinking and reflexion.

I don't think the medium is the issue here.

[1] I'd describe it as heavy on the prose or writing I don't have the exact words :(

This was a nice introductory post, my question is as a firm and under the assumption you have large capital what is your experience on using market making strategies? from a few tests I have done last year the arbitrage opportunities are good but I could not afford bigger size so my profits were relatively smalI. My interest in market making is due to the limited need of "predictions" that I am highly skeptical of and instead focusing on spread inefficiency. Edit : I also think that having a good strategy is merely 25% of your trade especially if you trade bigger orders then you need to focus extensively on order execution and take into account fees and commissions depending on your side for example when I tried market making I found myself bleeding on fees that I didn't really account for. Fun Fact I competed on Numerai when it had just launched and found myself having better results (score) using Linear Models instead more complex ones if I have time I may jump again to try using NEAT methods to evolve linear models and see how they fare.

Spot on the last part, my entourage mostly focuses on the belonging part,especially my parents . The reason I started at looking at the text is because I went down the road of what Luke discussed in his presentation "Why the new atheist failed" I wanted to seek the strongest argument of the opposing part that can be criticized without falling in the mysterious loop of what is God or how does he exist. That's why I took my time to do this research not because of respect to the religion but because I needed to have some kind of argument that fits the usual discussions I often have with others. I haven't read the reductionism sequence in the sense that I have a technical understanding of it. My personal atheism story was really built from what the last part of the sequences discuss I.e can you start thinking about religion or god without being taught directly, to be honest I started loosing the respect of belief along reading the sequences which was the most enlightening experience I've had in my whole life. I can't praise this community works in the sequences or the posts enough, really. Thanks for the feedback, the way you formulated some questions is quite interesting.

Thank you, my bad I type horribly on my phone hence the misclick for new post

I think a major reason for this is the new stoic writings like The Daily Stoic which is packaged as a form of advice instead of being a reflexive text like Seneca's or Marcus Aurelius or Epicurus or Epicetus. Packaged advice is often taken literally by the reader unlike Seneca's letters where you have to think and reflect to understand what it is about. Stoïcism is being sold as cool no stress mindset whereas it is better defined as we don't have total control but the control we have should be put to use.

After reading lukeprog article "Build small skills in the right order" I came to understand that another reason why I am overworked is that I tackle big things without an effective plan for example a large chunk of the code I am building is built upon a peer to peer network even though I have wrote webserver code before and understand the inner workings of protocols I never built a toy p2p application. What happens then is not only my reward is delayed again because I face technical difficulties but this makes me procrastinate because the problem is just too large. I don't know if this is how it works but the last night and today were spent reading blogposts here and somehow all the explanations and advice I wanted fell into piece it's like the puzzle of the why I am lost is in front of my eyes and I wasn't even looking at it. I think this falls right under things that I need to fix. Thanks again for your reply it was very enlightening.

I am currently taking time off from my side project which was taking quite some time from me , I am going to focus on the most important things now such as university course work and independent science study . Thanks