I read the 10,000 hour part of Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers and learnt few things that I would love to share.

• Once you are above the threshold of talent as a parameter, the only thing that matters is how hard effective work you put in,i.e. the number of hours you practice your art. For example; if you reach the best film school of the world, the only thing that separates you from the person next to you is how how many hours have you trained.
• 10,000 hours is golden number in the scientific community to measure expertise. He mentions that people only start performing at expert level once they have crossed the 10,000 hour mark. Malcolm gives an example of Mozart. He mentions that studies have shown that Mozart wasn’t a child prodigy, in fact until the age of 21 he didn’t create any original piece of work and instead used previous work modified to some extent. Studies call mozart as a late expert turner. He started showing expert level performance only later in life, specifically once he crossed his 10,000 hours threshold.
• Lastly, he gives examples of chess prodigies. He mentions that historically all the grand masters title holder in chess have become grandmasters only after 10 years of playing chess, roughly the time it requires for 10,000 hours of training. The only exception being Bobby, who got his title only after 9 years.

• Some math
  I solved a problem today based on set theory. One thing that I loved about solving the problem set that I am currently working on is that I am on the edge of knowing everything that is a pre-requisite and also confronting such a set of problem for the first time in my life. What is good about this position is that if I just keep spending time solving the problem, even if I am completely lost or have no idea where to go next, I eventually reach a breakthrough. It has now become a habit of mine to just keep waiting and not give up because that breakthrough moment will arrive sooner or later. The key thing that I learned while solving these problems, apart from math itself, is that if you just keep parallel with a problem and just stick around it for long enough, the breakthrough usually comes.
• P.S.: And if the breakthrough doesn’t come then get some help or tutor.

I was part of the International Press at the SLMUN (Sunbeam Lahartara MUN). The event was a success and I was able to practice skills to their best. The following is one of the press release I documented.

blog 17

Why Starting Early Is So Important

Today, I attended a TEDx talk hosted by my school, Sunbeam School Lahartara. I was part of the Organizing Committee (OC) and was left inspired by the talks and ideas shared during the event. I would like to emphasize one of the many learnings I took away from the event: the importance of starting young.

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Fail Fast, Grow Fast

In his talk, Tejas Jain, founder of MU20 School of Opportunities, mentioned that the people we get inspired by are not inherently exceptions or outliers. He believes that the characteristics society labels as “outlier” are, to a large extent, dedicated to how early they started in their field or domain. This primarily has to do with the science spectrum of it, specifically: a) Neuroplasticity and b) Pattern Recognition.

The earlier we start, the more time we have to fail and learn from those failures. This practice leads to recognizing patterns in the way they approach their life. People who start young don’t dwell on setbacks; rather, they have learned the hard way that a setback is exactly an opportunity to grow. One of the quotes put up during his talk was:

Talent is universal, opportunity is not.

And for the people reading this blog, the biggest opportunity you have in your hands right now is time.

With that, I will end this blog by mentioning one thing. Remember we discussed Imposter Syndrome in one of our previous blogs? This is the exact entity that will stop you from executing all that you have read above. Your “monkey brain” will come up with thousands of excuses, some of them being, “I am already 25, and I see 15-year-olds building their startup; maybe I am too late,” or “What will people think of me if I start too young? Will they see me as a trivial kid trying to act like an adult? Am I missing out on my childhood?”

These thoughts are very common, but they are devastating. Try to remove them from your mind as soon as you can.

If you are interested in knowing more about Imposter Syndrome, check out this blog that I wrote a few days back.

Beyond AI

Beyond AI is a program for high schoolers and undergrad students from all around the world, which builds foundations of Artificial Intelligence from absolute zero. The participants are asked to prepare for a one-month-long period, where they learn from various domains such as programming, linear algebra, calculus, LaTeX, et cetera. This preparatory phase is followed by six weeks of a learning phase (which ends next week at the end of the consolidation week) and lastly, the research phase, where we research on one of the many provided research topics.

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Reflection:

The program has been really rigorous, yet very profound in the way the things are approached. The coursework starts from the very basics and takes your level up gradually. I really like the way Dr. Filip Bar engages with us in live classes and breaks down complex ideas into manageable tasks (mind maps are one of the strategies he has sharpened us on). The program cut through all of the buzzwords initially and began with exactly what the foundations of learning Artificial Intelligence are. I express my deepest gratitude to be chosen for such a prestigious and rigorous program, and for the fact that I learned so much. I am excited to work on my research topic during the research phase. Some of the blogs in the coming months will focus on my research and what I have been working on there. Stay tuned for that.

As of now, I am not able to figure out how I can optimize my blogs nicely so that the viewers can engage with comments without internet bots spamming my comment section. One more thing which I am thinking to work on is a weekly newsletter subscription, where I will try to provide some things which I find profound, interesting, and useful. Stay tuned for whenever that happens (probably sometime in the future).

Whenever I study math or physics, I like how people from centuries back could think of profound ideas. This really strikes me when I realize that there wasn’t proper documentation of much of the past work in their field of study. Even if there was any, it wasn’t accessible to all. Collaborating was a novel thing back then. You don’t know which great mathematician had already proved a conjecture somewhere during the Bubonic plague, just waiting for his death to arrive and for the proof to get lost amidst all that was happening.

There was no proper notation for an entity, no proper definitions to work upon, and limited resources to develop something meaningful. One narrative that a string theory student shared with me was that he believes people back then discovered so many things because most of them were as intelligent as we are, and the problems they worked on were very fundamental. His stance was very firm that the work we are doing is much harder than what people 600-700 years ago did, and it is also so complicated that we are not able to acknowledge most of the breakthroughs that take place, and hence feel that the progress is not very foundational or rapid.

Let us conclude by working on an example. Consider Artificial Intelligence, how much of a technological advancement it is, and how much it will impact humanity at large. Some people think that it is equivalent to “discovering the wheel,” whereas there are equally contrasting opinions that say this is all a “bubble” soon to burst. I think of it as another once-in-a-century technological invention but not a reinvention of the wheel. I am definitely sure that AI will have a huge impact on how human civilization develops in the coming centuries, but is that all? Probably not. Think about when calculators were developed; they were one of the most fascinating pieces of technology someone could get their hands on, and people also started thinking it was the end of mathematics or computation as a career. The same was true for computers; people thought they would take over jobs. But what happened? They created significantly more jobs than they replaced. I also have such an opinion about Artificial Intelligence. It is definitely not something to think of as a “bubble,” but rather a tool to learn and use in your workflow as efficiently as possible.

this blog is made so that the admin’s blog streak doesn’t break.

For taking away value from this blog. Here are some educational videos that the admin suggests (may/ may not have watched it himself)

Lately, I have started waling explicitly for thinking. I discovered it myself that whenever there is some problem that I want to solve or a issue that is not being resolved, walking is one of those activity which always leaves me with a net positive. I used to walk in evening for 30 – 60 mins before my exams and realised that it was actually beneficial as compared to 6-8 hr stretch of studying. This time was prlimariy used to think how the current task in hand can be resolved better, what could be a better strategy, and so on. Later, I discovered that on internet there is a well known community of thinkers who walk voluntarily in search of profound ideas and mental clearance. The benefits of this are immediate. You find yourself in a better condition both mentally and physically. Primarily it resets your productivity bar so that you can work with the same intensity, with a better plan and strategy. Apart from the productivity aspect, it somehow allow us to think in a completely different way as compared to when we are on our desk, office, or bed. This is why people online often report that walking is a crucial part of someone’s scientific carrer.