I’ve been formally delving into epistemology and relevant lateral root domains recently and have been re-encountering several ideas that I’d previously casually explored with intrinsic motivation.¹

This isn’t my first accidental implicit intersection of thoughts with core philosophical theories like constructivist epistemology and ontology.²

Given my natural inclinations towards personal interdisciplinary research, apart from my core specializations, I do deliberately maintain an extensive scaffolding around several domains that I plan to build foundations in soon. This allows me to generalize over multiple realizations of similar concepts in different epistemological clusters and identify some interesting patterns.³

I partition my days in phases of different mindsets that allow me to cater to my varying epistemological hungers. One of them is a daily ninety minute ideation hunt and feast that helps keep my skills sharp.

The laws of thermodynamics do form a formidable devil that really does mess up your ordered habits if you do not inject in the necessary energy from time to time.¹

As a way to sharpen the intellectual axe, I envision myself going on domain hunts to allot myself a new class of game to look forward to during minor breaks from my usual, comparatively conventional endeavors.

Some-days, I wonder that I’m born half a millennia too late into this world given the extent of novel societal tendencies that I’m not fond of.

Although, the notion of Batman didn’t exist then, given a choice, I’d probably consider time traveling to an intellectually simpler life when much of what the present science and engineering entails was just beginning to be discovered and invented.

Research options then weren’t thresholded by who’s packing heavier compute but rather open to all that could observe patiently and portrayed the will to ask, sceptic-ize and act according to their whims.

Two days ago I found myself scrolling mindlessly for half an hour and I decided I need to decide for real as to how I’m going to deal with this issue.

The problem with such a habit is that it is very convenient, engaging and it slices into precious time that I’d rather spend doing something more difficult and rewarding like reading.

While devising a strategy to deal with this behaviour, I concluded that videos themselves (long and short form) are the culprit to these new time sinks that I’ve been experiencing.

I’ve been building up my vimrc again because emacs’ tramp mode just wasn’t cutting it when it came to speed for my remote work environments.

I’ve been a vim user for around 4 years now and having read some books partially and sampling a lot of blogs and conference recordings over this span, I decided I should commit and formally invest into a definitive resource to get me upto speed and beyond.

I’ve decided to increase my frequency of writing on the main blog to get more reps in and converge onto my style quickly than if I continued with long form content only.

I’m also going to practice being more concise, and blogging a little more on technical aspects as well.

My usual blog post goes to around 1500-2000 words and that isn’t helpful for covering some minor writing prompts I’d like to explore.

I couldn’t have asked for a denser review of such a technical and diverse domain. It’d been more a year since I graduated (majored in computer science and minored in artificial intelligence) and so I decided to brush up on some basics and consolidate what I’d studying since the past ~4 years.

I also picked up the book to systematically populate my org-roam buffer and have my root node rooted here in the braindump.

To know thyself, is the beginning of wisdom
Socrates

On tangibility of the past

All of us create content, every moment, tuned to varying extents of influence and permanence.

It’s intent that separates us all into different leagues of producers.
Let me explain via a hierarchical build up of selected formats of content with varying intensity.
Note that the list isn’t exhaustive by any means and I’ve deliberately excluded works of larger scale (movies, video games : they have the potential to be the most influential kind of content out there).

Nootropics are cognitive enhancers, boosting brainpower and mental abilities, while ergogenic variants focus on elevating physical performance, creating a powerful combo for unleashing your potential.

I’ve got my core habits dialed down now (sleep, exercise, nutrition) and have some good routines in place to actually start converging upon a diet that suits my goal of clocking in stable, moderately high levels of physical and mental performance throughout the day.

I’m in a phase now where minor tweaks and changes won’t be held back by poor staple habits.

The Premise

I was initially reluctant on using generative AI for my writing process.

That being said, I was quite aware of the potential of large language models (generically addressed as LLMs in here henceforth) - especially true in the case of content creators and/or eccentrically curious individuals.

I, therefore, decided to clarify how I’ll be using generative AI for my ideation process.

The Promise

Before we get onto that, as promised by the title, distilling the over-arching skills needed to extract good insights from a conversation with an LLM (an el-el-em; please don’t read it as large, please..).

So, I’ve been reading a book on prompt engineering and decided to practice a little…

Here’s a conversation I had with chatGPT regarding a small essay I wrote recently and fortunately, there’s room to improve.

Here’s how it went…

Criticize my writing …

Raj: You are my writing critic for this session; do not make any intellectual changes in any text I paste; do not heavily influence my style; only analyze what I say and generate pointers as to how I can become a better writer.

Do note that this is an old post (from my last archived blog) that I’m refactoring : more on that here

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[2022-04-17 Sun 17:09] - 8021

3 hours ago, I encountered a semantic crisis. It all started with the thought that I’m not really prepared for a lot of things in life. Now, that in itself is a toxic thought - one can never be prepared for it all but I definitely have time to figure out several things with minimal extra effort. This would definitely result in a lot of uncertainty being cared for. I’ve encountered the nihilistic philosophy before: if complete certainty cannot be achieved, why try clearing away any of the uncertainty you have around you.

Do note that this is an old post (from my last archived blog) that I’m refactoring : more on that here

The Unaltered Entry

[2022-02-23 Wed 18:11] - 7968

A polymath (Greek: πολυμαθής, polymathēs, “having learned much”; Latin: homo universalis, “universal human”) is an individual whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems.

For the past 2 years, I’ve begun exploring several domains simultaneously, maintaining a generic enthusiasm and curiosity for most of them. Here are some thoughts on what I feel now, actively pursuing polymathy.

Do note that this is an old post (from my last archived blog) that I’m refactoring : more on that here

The Unaltered Entry

[2022-02-01 Tue 10:11] - 7946

I, hitherto, have been reading books as a single unit of intellectual conveyance. However, that strategy doesn’t work for all the works. Some authors have their writings crisply intertwined with their other writings.

Approaching a single book as a part of a larger intellectual conveyance is more efficient in the longer term if one intends to read all the work of a particular author. Consequently, grouping these reads together has also been somewhat interesting lately.

I’d managed to produce some fairly original essays on my last blog and I’ll soon be incorporating them into posts here. I had a habit of writing in streams in the main blog itself and there is a lot of insight stored in the chronology of some such logs.

The old blog is archived in the repository here and I could benefit from repurposing old works into the present setup.

I’ll mainly be focusing on editing the fluff out, finding what good stylistic knacks I’ve accumulated over the years, and rejecting the questionable habits that don’t serve me so well.

Books play a pivotal role in the life of any aspiring and existing intellectual. I began reading diversely and seriously when I was 19 and immediately regretted not starting sooner.

Reading sets you up for an involved existence. If you read vastly, you’ll be a force to be reckoned with.

Over the span of 3 years (2019 - 2022), I read around a 100 books ranging from the classics, biographies, auto-biographies, physics, computer science, anthropology, data science, etymology, theology, game theory, mathematics, history, how-to-books, nutrition, physiology , fitness, health, psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, business (okay, don’t judge - we all do this), economics, writing, self help (guilty as charged), spirituality, humor (guides to being funny and similar stuff), young adult (only 1 - please don’t chastise me - I could not handle the cringe), philosophy (a lot - please don’t chastise me) and meta books (speed reading, how to consume books, taking notes, etc).