By: Omar Ismail
Ada Lovelace, who wrote the first algorithm for the Babbage Analytical Engine, mentioned in her final "Note" that "machines could not really think." She saw poetry in mathematics and exemplified the innovator, described by Steve Jobs, who "stands at the intersection of the humanities and science."
Alan Turing, 100 years later, took the opposite position stating that if a "machine could modify its own program based on the information it processed, wouldn't that be a form of learning." He said that "a computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing...
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By: Omar Ismail
"For it is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to apply it well. The greatest souls are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues."
In 1637, Rene Descartes published his work Discourse on the Method and Searching for Truth in the Sciences. In the first part of six, he writes on "various considerations concerning the sciences."
Descartes believed in no greater faculty than reason for perfecting the mind. It is what "makes us men and distinguishes us from the beasts." His early schooling made him realize the magnitude of his ignorance, and grew fascinated...
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By: Omar Ismail
Philosophers Samuel Gorotvitz and Slasdair MacYntyre published a short essay in the 1970s on the nature of human fallibility. They sought to answer why we fail at what we set out to do. "Why would a meteorologist, say, fail to correctly predict where a hurricane was going to make landfall?" How could a team of professionally trained surgeons, nurses, anesthesiologist, and countless other specialists forget to inject a patient with antibiotics prior to surgery? They cited three reasons answer why we fail at what we set out to do: ignorance, ineptitude, and necessary fallibility. Ignorance and...
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By: Omar Ismail
Pythagorean theorem, a common knowledge today now taught to grade schoolers, used to be a secret. Pythagoras spent countless hours to uncover the relationships between a triangle's sides. What is now obvious and in plain site, used to be hidden and mysterious.
Rewind to the 18th century, and much of the physical world remained a mystery. Great explorers set out to discover the secrets that lay hidden and return to tell inspirational stories of their findings. The mystery of what remains to be discovered in the physical world had a simple solution: exploration. Enthusiasts and hobbyists still...
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By: Omar Ismail
Here are notes I took on Lecture 5 of the Startup Class taught at Stanford CS183B
If you're starting a company, you always want to aim to be a monopoly and avoid competition. Competition is for losers.
Capturing Value
A business creates X dollars of value for the world and captures Y% of X. People think X and Y are independent variables. To create a valuable company you have to both create something of value and capture some fraction of the value you just created.
Perfect competition
Pros: easy to model, efficient, and politically salable.
Cons: psychologically unhealthy, irrelevant...
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By: Omar Ismail
The ability to focus in a noisy environment can be very difficult. We have a limited amount of mental bandwidth, similar to a battery, that we rely on to focus. Every day that battery gets fully recharged. Sometimes it takes longer to recharge due to lack of rest/recovery, which usually correlates to burnout (both on a small and large scale). Focus is simply a targeted output of attention, and can involve work, reading, conversing, studying, or any number of things that require concentration.
Susan Cain, in her book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, provided...
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By: Omar Ismail
Albert Einstein stated that compound interest was "the eighth wonder of the world". He also called it the "greatest mathematical discovery of all time" or "the most powerful force in the universe." He is not necessarily referencing money, rather hinting to the power of exponential growth. His intelligence still yields him great returns till this day.
Economist Vilfredo Pareto, an economists in 1906, began noticing that 20% of the people owned 80% of the land in Italy. That 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas. This is known as the 80-20 rule. 20% of the users on Twitter...
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By: Omar Ismail
Be present. Enjoy the moment. "Live life like its your last day". I can't count the number of times I hear people say this. There is nothing wrong with the statement itself. One of my favorite books by Alan Watts is The Wisdom of Insecurity where he brilliantly discusses being present. However, I think that statement over stated, and I propose we begin living by a different standard.
"Treat everyone as if its their last day." Everyone. This means the janitor who is cleaning the mall bathroom, or the barista at Starbucks who is handing you your drink. Treat your friends and family as if it...
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By: Omar Ismail
Here are notes I took for the Startup Class taught at Stanford by the Y Combinator folks.
Last lecture covered ideas and products, this one covers teams and execution.
The cofounder
The cofounder relationship is one of the most important pieces in building a company. If there are tensions, they must be solved immediately! Cofounder blowups is one of the major causes for startup failure. Starting your startup with the right cofounder is one of the most important decisions you make early on and lives with you for the lifetime of the startup.
Don’t just pick someone randomly. “I want to start...
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By: Omar Ismail
Economics 101 taught us that perfect competition is the market ideal. Perfect competition is considered optimal because the glorified equilibrium point is reached when supply and demand intersect. We, the consumers, are perfectly positioned because we can easily substitute between various goods and services at the best possible price, leaving the companies with zero economic profit.
Now, this type of thinking is probably what turns some people off to economics. Its too theoretical, living in an ideal world where humans are just data points in an economic model. The problem is that many economic...
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