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TABLE OF CONTENTS
2025.02.09-On-Overengineering
2025.02.02-On-Autocomplete
2025.01.26-On-The-Automated-Turkey-Problem
2025.01.19-On-Success-Metrics
2025.01.12-On-Being-the-Best
2025.01.05-On-2024
2024.12.29-On-Dragons-and-Lizards
2024.12.22-On-Being-a-Contrarian
2024.12.15-On-Sticky-Rules
2024.12.08-On-Scarcity-&-Abundance
2024.12.01-On-BirdDog
2024.11.24-On-Focus
2024.11.17-On-The-Curse-of-Dimensionality
2024.11.10-On-Skill-as-Efficiency
2024.11.03-On-Efficiency
2024.10.27-On-Binary-Goals
2024.10.20-On-Commitment
2024.10.13-On-Rules-Vs-Intuition
2024.10.06-On-Binding-Constraints
2024.09.29-On-Restrictive-Rules
2024.09.22-On-Conflicting-Ideas
2024.09.15-On-Vectors
2024.09.08-On-Perfection
2024.09.01-On-Signal-Density
2024.08.25-On-Yapping
2024.08.18-On-Wax-and-Feather-Assumptions
2024.08.11-On-Going-All-In
2024.08.04-On-Abstraction
2024.07.28-On-Naming-a-Company
2024.07.21-On-Coding-in-Tongues
2024.07.14-On-Sufficient-Precision
2024.07.07-On-Rewriting
2024.06.30-On-Hacker-Houses
2024.06.23-On-Knowledge-Graphs
2024.06.16-On-Authority-and-Responsibility
2024.06.09-On-Personal-Websites
2024.06.02-On-Reducing-Complexity
2024.05.26-On-Design-as-Information
2024.05.19-On-UI-UX
2024.05.12-On-Exponential-Learning
2024.05.05-On-School
2024.04.28-On-Product-Development
2024.04.21-On-Communication
2024.04.14-On-Money-Tree-Farming
2024.04.07-On-Capital-Allocation
2024.03.31-On-Optimization
2024.03.24-On-Habit-Trackers
2024.03.17-On-Push-Notifications
2024.03.10-On-Being-Yourself
2024.03.03-On-Biking
2024.02.25-On-Descoping-Uncertainty
2024.02.18-On-Surfing
2024.02.11-On-Risk-Takers
2024.02.04-On-San-Francisco
2024.01.28-On-Big-Numbers
2024.01.21-On-Envy
2024.01.14-On-Value-vs-Price
2024.01.07-On-Running
2023.12.31-On-Thriving-&-Proactivity
2023.12.24-On-Surviving-&-Reactivity
2023.12.17-On-Sacrifices
2023.12.10-On-Suffering
2023.12.03-On-Constraints
2023.11.26-On-Fear-Hope-&-Patience
2023.11.19-On-Being-Light
2023.11.12-On-Hard-work-vs-Entitlement
2023.11.05-On-Cognitive-Dissonance
2023.10.29-On-Poetry
2023.10.22-On-Gut-Instinct
2023.10.15-On-Optionality
2023.10.08-On-Walking
2023.10.01-On-Exceeding-Expectations
2023.09.24-On-Iterative-Hypothesis-Testing
2023.09.17-On-Knowledge-&-Understanding
2023.09.10-On-Selfishness
2023.09.03-On-Friendship
2023.08.27-On-Craftsmanship
2023.08.20-On-Discipline-&-Deep-Work
2023.08.13-On-Community-Building
2023.08.05-On-Decentralized-Bottom-Up-Leadership
2023.07.29-On-Frame-Breaks
2023.07.22-On-Shared-Struggle
2023.07.16-On-Self-Similarity
2023.07.05-On-Experts
2023.07.02-The-Beginning

WRITING

"if you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait patiently."

- Charles Bukowski

Writing is one of my oldest skills; I started when I was very young, and have not stopped since. 

Age 13-16 - My first recorded journal entry was at 13 | Continued journaling, on and off.

Ages 17-18 - Started writing a bit more poetry, influenced heavily by Charles Bukwoski | Shockingly, some of my rather lewd poetry was featured at a county wide youth arts type event | Self published my first poetry book .

Age 19 - Self published another poetry book | Self published a short story collection with a narrative woven through it | Wrote a novel in one month; after considerable edits, it was long listed for the DCI Novel Prize, although that’s not that big of a deal, I think that contest was discontinued.

Age 20 - Published the GameStop book I mention on the investing page | Self published an original poetry collection that was dynamically generated based on reader preferences | Also created a collection of public domain poems with some friend’s and I’s mixed in, was also going to publish it with the dynamic generation, but never did.

Age 21 - Started writing letters to our hedge fund investors, see investing.

Age 22 - Started a weekly personal blog | Letters to company Investors, unpublished. 

Age 23 - Coming up on one year anniversary of consecutive weekly blog publications  | Letters to investors, unpublished.

You can use the table of contents to the left or click here to check out my blog posts.

Last Updated 2024.06.10

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On Walking

2023.10.08

Lindy Expectancy: 30 Weeks

I like walking. I prefer walking in nature, but a suburban area with ample vegetation will do. Modern urban areas are my least favorite place to walk, but some walking is still better than no walking.

This post is less about the walking and more about where the walking happens… the closer to nature, the better.

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Why Walking

Going on a walk is almost never a bad idea. It’s relaxing, it’s calming, and it’s cathartic.

I like taking meetings walking when I can, both when they’re calls and when they’re in person. Why would I not? I already spend enough time seated when I’m writing/coding/emailing/messaging/eating/attending class. Of course, if it’s been a while and the meeting has to be virtual, a video call can be nice. Still, making an effort to get more walking in never hurts.

Other than the concentration of very bright, passionate, and driven people, that’s one of the principal reasons I like Ann Arbor so much–it’s very, very walkable. As a matter of fact, those two things pair very nicely together… there is no shortage of awesome people to go on nice walks with.

Ann Arbor has a lot of trees and not many very big buildings; it feels like a good place to walk. What makes a place good to walk, though?

Nature Walks vs City Walks

On more than a few backpacking trips, I remember the feeling of meandering through an unending, slowly undulating path; something that looked like it had no curve greater than 30° and would always correct back to moving in roughly the same direction.



Caption: Not a photo of a “Jacob’s Ladder” trail, but a vista at the end of one…

It was strange in the sense that we couldn’t see the end of it most of the time… it felt like a Jacob’s Ladder of a trail. If anything, it was almost hypnotic. Just walking and talking and living. No destination mattered.

On the other hand, I’ve always found something quite stressful about walking through Manhattan or any other large urban sprawl; the experience feels cold, almost alien and, sometimes, even stress inducing. All these straight lines telling you where to go, and these massive hunks of steel and aluminum ripping down the streets.

There’s a slew of studies suggesting that going for walks in nature can be cathartic–they can help you destress and focus more, putting you in a much more zen state. A lot of these studies are encapsulated in this meta study about walking and geometry: it’s called What Happens in Your Brain When You Walk Down the Street? Implications of Architectural Proportions, Biophilia, and Fractal Geometry for Urban Science… for our purpose, I’m just going to refer to it as Fractal Geometry for Urban Science.

So, what’s up? I like walking in nature, I like walking in modern cities (but no where near as much as the woods), and I do like walking in Ann Arbor (but certainly not as much as nature)… I also like walking in Paris, but I like walking in Lisbon more than that, both of which I like more than Manhattan. Chicago, it’s been a while, but I think you’re just one below NYC, pretty close to LA.

Looks like we have some sort of scale now:



Caption: Don’t get me wrong—the worst walk is still far better than no walk.

Intuitively, I might postulate that the places I like better are more “natural.” Am I maybe just more biased to the woods? Is this a product of my upbringing? Maybe I haven’t spent enough time anywhere but in the midwest, who knows.

Regardless, the paper Fractal Geometry for Urban Science attempts to biologically justify my preferences.

Fractals

A line is 1 dimensional.

A square is 2 dimensional.

A fractal is something in between dimensions. Samples:



Caption: Image by Branka Spehar



Caption: Frederick D Provenza

I’m relatively new to this, too, but you can build intuition here pretty quickly by looking at enough labeled pictures. Just google “fractals with dimensions” and doom scroll for hours. It’s like machine learning, but for humans.

Fractal Geometry for Urban Science points out that fractals that the human brain has evolved with and perceives as beautiful are between 1.3 to 1.5 dimensions. This result comes from other studies of nature and art–the paper’s contribution to science is the postulation that this preference can be scaled up to urban design.

Scary Cities

Calculating the fractals of cities sounds terrifically difficult, but it’s not quite as hard as you’d think; there are a lot of out of the box solutions for it. When I actually get some free time, I’ll maybe revisit this post with the dimensions of pictures I’ve taken of places I’ve liked and disliked.

Thankfully, this paper already did the analysis over time for a few different cities, and found that the dimension has been increasing towards 2 and away from 1; as of now, the highest value in Manhattan found in the study was 1.846.



Caption: A sample from their test set; they found that modern city scapes are trending towards 2 DA sample from their test set; they found that modern city scapes are trending towards 2

For context, Fractal Geometry for Urban Science computed the dimension of this hellish prison scape to be 1.9:



Caption: Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Carceri d’Invenzione (Imaginary Prisons); I’d hate for anyone to give this guy a budget to start building…

Blocky might be a good way to describe this. Overwhelming. And, from a biological perspective, that matters. For contrast, mountain scapes are mid 1 dimensional; aren’t these nicer to look at than a block?



Caption: Mountains and trees closers to 1.5 dimensions

Beauty as Objective

What are the implications of having cities that are geometrically close to visually presenting the citizens with a square? Fractal Geometry for Urban Science claims that it makes the walk much less pleasurable and oftentimes anxiety inducing.

Visually, we use fractals to help us navigate space; when you start to distort them and take away their character, our brains have a harder time knowing where to go. That can be stressful.

Nature doesn’t necessarily have everything right, but our species grew up with it, so our bodies and minds adapted to it. Beauty is not entirely objective, but from a biological perspectives, we’re more used to some things than others.

This paper calls for unambiguously using the “beautiful” in terms of neuroaesthetic biological responses rather than through aesthetic preference or art-historical terms. Its purpose is to help reclaim the appropriate and practical design toolkits that past generations possessed.

  -Fractal Geometry for Urban Science

So where’s your actionable takeaway?

Again, I love walking! Alone, with friends, while on the phone, whatever. It feels great. And, if I find myself in major city, I’ll still walk, but I’ll make an effort to walk in the most natural place possible.

Like most things, it’s pretty intuitive; you don't need the math or science, because you already know it internally. Before I read any of these papers, if I couldn’t get to a truly natural place, I would go on walks on side streets with more trees and less traffic. Simple as that.

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Sometimes, there is a certain feeling you get when you’re walking–experience is spacious, and time is irrelevant; you’re existing in this state of bliss, meandering through the world as it slowly ages.

It feels good. It feels “luxurious,” in a strange way.

Luxurious walks are nice.

So go for one, with a friend or by yourself. Preferably as close to nature as possible, but anything will do.

Live Deeply,