Life is full of surprises: Rammstein meets Meta meets Gauss
An actual selfie I just took:
I'm deep into my unpopular take period now. People wonder why I write, well it is mainly for myself. In essence, we are all born alone and we'll leave this world alone as well. So, in essence, we have to accept human nature. Soit.
Thanks to a post this week about how the true nature of an ASIC verification engineer reflects itself in real life in real interactions, I realized that any engineer with an eye for detail, that wants to continuously measure and be "paranoid" is such by nature. Of course this is exactly what HR is NOT assessing. But that is another article in the future, who knows. Again, soit.
I don't like surprises. When I did career guidance in the early 2000s, I was telling the career coach that I was expecting zero pension form any government. And that I needed to build a pension myself outside the obligatory tax-to-death and contributions to social security (incl. state sponsored repartition pension system contributions). So, I don't like surprises, I planned 3 decades ahead at least.
Face My Book
I talk a lot about this, the media (first experience was the Belgium silo coz Belgian) seems to have a weird way of portraying things. Fortis went down around 2008, media were saying all is ok with Fortis (just repeating the top mgmt statements). Then the whole thing collapsed. In the sector, they knew. For various reasons nobody was reporting on it, the top allegedly lied. Nobody went to jail of course. The profits were private but the losses were for the tax payers. If you are interested in the details, here is a book written by the lawyer that sued Fortis.
If you are an EU fan, this is also interesting: Didier Reynders, Belgian minister, handing Fortis to the French. The Legion of Honor is the highest order of merit one can receive in France for services to the motherland. Not for Belgium, hahah, no, for France! A nice way to practice Meditations from Marcus Aurelius.
The Facebook story was different but in a way the same. Short story, Facebook is just an empty vessel, sharing pictures with friends and family is crazy, it will crash and burn. Worst thing is I believed the media and the airheads (incl. me) that repeated it. Facebook still exists. Meta now runs a measly $40bn a quarter. I would have liked to have been explained that this was not a social platform as such but a sales platform that targets into detail your preferences and features. If you like surprises, the media is your answer. Tesla is a hot pro and con-fest, could say the same about that. Didn't understand it, now I do but too late. I wish I understood it earlier.
Rammstein
Full disclosure, I use their music for energy purposes. I like their spectacles but cannot say too much about their lyrics. When I first started listening (after Lost Highway from the magnificent David Lynch), I just liked the metal and the flow of the German which matches the song vibe.
Lesson eins
But at a certain moment in time, I looked up the lyrics of "Heirate mich". And then the cover of some of the albums was shocking as well for a simpleton like me. I refused to listen to Heirate Mich for years. Until I could separate the band from the music and lyrics. It might be they are awful people, but liking the music isn't the same as liking the people. Which is a flaw we see with fans all the time. Punk was frowned upon. Metal was frowned upon. People haven't lived through this, but they fans of those genres were outcast. I never outed myself as liking Madonna and Michael Jackson (1980s) because the good puritans in school were considering this pop thing as beneath them. So, that is one important lesson, go in hiding and watch the bubble clean itself of any dissent. Everyone looked in sync but that was an illusion of course. Very important when you don't understand or cannot explain what just happened. Cognitive dissonance will try to frame what has happened with various very negative words, even absurd hallucinations to explain why their frame wasn't correct. Once you notice it, you'll see it often. Once you are the majority opinion and you exert force in trying to unify viewpoint, other opinions will disappear into the backroom. 98% of experts say that ...
Lesson zwei
Second, even if the band Rammstein would be full of racists (what often is told to me by experts) is that me liking their music is not the same as endorsing them. Nobody knows them personally (generalization) so we can't really know. I did have people explain me how the song and video Deutschland was white supremacy. Because they heard the song play. Video shows the history of Germany and Ruby Commey is not exactly white. Also they touch a very touchy subject, the nazi's, the band members depict themselves as jews about to be executed.
领英推荐
In music, it is very difficult to understand the real intentions behind anything. They could pretend to be something they are not. they could do something for likes, sales, or whatever. People jump to conclusions too often. Mindreading is not a thing. That is lessen number two from Rammstein.
Lesson drei
Heirate Mich is about love but in a very disturbing way. Fear of death froze me, didn't want to hear avout it, certainly not in songs. But a weakness like that will be used against you. You have to understand true human nature, that is the good, the bad and the ugly. Rammsetin could let me face my fears of death and luckily I turned around and started listening to it again. The naive youngster grows up and accepts death, not as an end stage necessarily but a normal part of life. The 5 stages of grief: denial (I was), anger (refused to listen to the song), bargaining (nah, this is just to list my 5 favorite stages), depression (yeah, death is not fun I hear) and acceptance. I accepted reality. What we see today of extreme behavior with likes and block and unfollows is crazy self-inflicting. You remove all sources that can influence your opinion and you cement your vision as the only right one. Again, when I am surprised by Fortis, Facebook and many more, I decided I didn't want to restrict myself to one view only. If we consider left and right as both sides of the spectrum, both create a wall around their narrative with "anything else is disinfomation or misinformation". What are they afraid of? Words? Lol. I like to read both sides even I strongly disagree. Which makes it hard, and I fail often too. But there is only one way to triangulate from both sides to come to an understanding. That doesn't cover what both want to hide, but at least it is a step up from "one side info only". This is not flat earth, where a small percentage entertains a vision most do not agree on. This is usually large numbers vs large numbers, it is very important to understand each other, can only do it if you read both sides.
Gauss
Statistics is again HOT thanks to AI. But most people are not that good in statistics.
For example, the birthday paradox requires only 23 random people to get the probability of at least two people actually sharing the same birthday higher than 50%.
Most forget that polls and anything like it are always biased and more wrong than right. Looking back there are outliers that were right but most were dead wrong. Why? Because for a sample to represent the whole population you need:
Most pollsters are looking for low cost, easy shortcuts, violating one or sometimes all necessary statistical requirements. And some are just there to set the table. Fraudsters are everywhere if a buck is to be made.
Hence I chose Gauss because of GELU and -of course where he is most known for- memes. The point here is that everything in life is not black nor white. Sure, there is 99.9% and 0.1% but most of the time you have to judge in ballpark percentages. Low probability, high probability. But be vigilant, bias creeps up and can make you miss important signals. If your group is dominant, you know a lot of people are chameleons or just go into hiding. That looks like you have a 100% coverage and alignment until the surprise hits you right into your face. Nothing more dangerous than that from a surprise perspective.
Hyp Hyp Hypnotist
If you ever get the chance to talk to a seasoned hypnotist, take that chance. They understand human psyche deeply, sometimes not theoretically but intuitively. If you can ask them only one question, ask them about what forms people's opinions: reasoning or are opinions assigned? The answer is not a surprise. We all suffer from it, nobody is immune. Extremely smart people with unbelievable high IQs suffer from this effect. Which is exacerbated by the echo chamber mindset we all have (like and get more of the same, block, report, unfollow get more of the opposite). The result is that people are in a constant roller coaster of surprises. I don't like surprises.
ASIC
This has obviously nothing to do with ASIC design. You play with multi-million (upto 1/2 billion dollars) projects, where the weakest link will kill your project potentially. There is no budget to get 100% exhaustive verification, to get 0% IR drop, or 0% chance to avoid ECO's after tape-out. You need to be paranoid, you need to foresee surprises, you need to know everything from every member of the team because people lie or under/overvalue problems, sometimes not intentionally. Like bitcoin, you need to get to a consensus view that is tells you the truth no matter how ugly it is. And many don't have it yet or will never get there. But it doesn't mean you don't have it or you can't acquire it. Lifelong learning with no fear of reading, hearing and discussing things nobody wants to hear. That is why I don't mind venting unpopular opinions at all. There is always someone or something interesting when I post. Can be an outreach, can be a comment, can be a drop in views, whatever, it is my very egocentric learning process.