Extracts from a Diary

Traditionally, I wasn’t much of a New Year’s resolutions guy. Nor much of a “how has this year been” reflecting-type either. January 1st is an arbitrary date chosen to start a calendar year. One could just as well introspect about the past 365 days or initiate a resolution on, say, 29th Aug, and it shouldn’t make a difference. But, it does. And 31st Dec/1st Jan works great, at least in terms of neatly bookending events occurring in a given year. Last year, inspired by a practice that The Missus has been a regular with, I wrote a letter to my future self. You can write to yourself from here ( https://www.futureme.org/ ). It allows for different durations, or you can choose a custom date, and it’ll come to your inbox at the end of it. Consider. I also had second thoughts and some mild reservations about ‘publicly’ introspecting on the year that was, or the plans/hopes for the year that would be. Mostly because I am still finding my voice and am not sure if it is a good idea to write abou...

Most persuasion fails not for lack of facts but because the starting beliefs are different. As a result, the facts don’t move them as much as we think or hope they would. Persuasion is an important skill across domains. And despite all the changes the rise of AI will lead to, it will remain a vital skill to cultivate. Along with storytelling. Persuasion works across fields — sales, fundraising, motivating a team towards a given objective, or gathering people around a cause. Or posting an article about how Bayesian reasoning is a key reason why we fail at persuasion and talk past each other. Persuasion is not a standalone skill and requires supporting structures. Humour helps. Storytelling helps. The ability to discern facts and a certain level of critical thinking helps. But it’s all towards the same objective: persuading another human (or a set of humans) to adopt a certain view. It should be a simple matter of presenting a certain set of facts. That should be sufficient to persuade t...

Introduction: How an AC Explains More Than You Think It’s peak summer. The temperature outside is 37°C. You’ve just switched on the AC and set it to cool to 24°C. A sensor detects the external temperature and notes it to be above the target temperature. The controller receives observes this gap and commands the system (in this case the cooling fan) to start the cooling effect. The fan begins cooling, initially with greater intensity due to the high error signal. A sensor constantly checks the room temperature. Gradually, the error signal shrinks, the fan slows, and eventually runs at the speed needed to maintain the target temperature. This post isn’t about how ACs cool a room; it’s about how most complex systems — teams, habits, cravings, cultures, and many other things — behave. We often think the world runs on linear relations and straight causal links. Instead, it runs on loops. This generalised flow: Goal → Sensing → Action → Feedback → Adjustment → Sensing → Repeat governs not j...