What are the 5 most important things you’ve learnt in life?

Okay, so I asked 10 people to tell me the 5 most important things they have learnt in life in no particular order. Here are the replies in no particular order:

Individual A:

• Not to limit my beliefs and abilities to merely what I consider logical and possible.
• How important good friends are.
• To take time each day to slow right down and just enjoy creation.
• That it’s okay to need things and want to feel secure, significant and accepted.
• Not to try to find absolute fulfilment in a person, a job or a hobby.

Individual B:

• When you recognize Truth, you will be overwhelmed and joyous, and then you will be accepting. After this, if you allow it to, it will encompass you wherever you may be.
• At most, you can only try your best. You do not control the outcome. Accepting this makes those difficult moments easier, if only a little bit.
• Inner peace will get you through just about anything. The journey towards inner peace begins by forgiving people, overlooking their faults and having a genuine concern for them.
• Maths is difficult but maths is oh so cool.
• If you don’t stand for something you really will fall for anything. Alongside this also learn to take on board advice and criticism and realize that everyone gets it wrong sometimes.

Individual C:

• Everyone is really weird and messed up in private. I have learnt this through accidentally discovering horrible ridiculously weird things that my immediate family do in private, and also through grouphug.us and things that I do. and maybe it could be just that I have a weird family and everyone on that website is weird, but I think it’s more likely that everyone has disgusting weird habits and thoughts that they’d never tell anyone. That’s probably not a very important thing to learn though, because everyone just ignores it and can talk to people properly and formally, ignoring that they’ve just been doing unusual things with vegetables or having imaginary conversations with the mirror.
• For everything I am good at, there is someone who can do it better. and likewise there are people worse off than me in every respect of my life.. i.e. I am pretty average and most probably won’t make any impact on mankind.
• Quite a lot of people apart from me also think they are the subject of The Truman Show and everyone else isn’t real.. so it can’t be true.
• Life is a bit mean. of all the human emotions only one of them is positive (joy) and all the others are either negative or neutral. I’m not sure what my point is by that.. maybe that i have learnt it’s a bit tricky to be in a constant state of joy (i.e. impossible).
• and maybe my most important thing I have learnt is that the world is really, really tiny. there’s this picture taken from 8 billion miles away or something (I’ll find a link) that shows the earth as a tiny weeny dot and it’s so amazing. to think that everything that seems really important happens in such a tiny place.. here’s the link.. which is a bit scary I think because there is no possible way that I will ever be able to understand everything but also quite comforting when you’re sad, makes you realise there’s no point being sad.

Individual D:

• Health and taking care of your body (as you only get one!) is kinda a prerequisite (unless you can’t help it) for enabling you to do mental and physical activities to the fullest, so basically: eat and drink well, exercise, meditate, stretch.. blablabla – being unhealthy can limit your potential.
• There’s never enough time to do everything you could possibly want to try out in life, so think about what types of things you enjoy doing best, and MAKE the time for them! – prioritize.
• Don’t waste time worrying about little things but train yourself to have positive thoughts (because happiness is a STATE of mind after all, not something that you achieve once and for all, but that happens in moments). – Live in and savour the present.
• Don’t compare yourself with other people too much, although it is a bit inevitable, but try and discover what path will suit you the most, and put things into perspective. – Zoom out into the bigger picture.
• Your aim is to, at the end of your life, looking back, feel as little regret as possible, have as many heart-warming and fun memories as possible, and to be proud of your life story and the decisions you made, with the circumstances outside your control you were in. – Choice Circumstances.

Individual E:

• Your family and friends are the most important thing you will ever have in this world, even more than the things you really really really like, such as football, or cars.
• Your brain is immensely complicated, and it takes very little for everything to go tits-up, and it’s really harsh if it happens.
• Being satisfied with your everyday life is pretty important. If you find it boring or monotonous then do something else (exceptions to this rule include your spouse and your kids).
• Being in relationships is really nice, and makes you feel good about yourself.
• Being in a relationships totally sucks.

Individual F:

• Anything is subject to change. (I don’t know, in a way I learned that from my failings. I think that to a certain degree I’m in control of the change itself but on a level where I can’t directly waiver the exact direction of where things should go. Actually it’s more like I do choose the direction, but I can not be aware of the situation enough to actually pick and choose. I use to make plans, long term plans, but every single one of them I’ve given up at some point, and even if I later went back to some of my old goals it was in a totally different pattern from the one I had hoped for. I’m in control of my paucity of control… not to mention how other people manage to alter your life without you even asking them for the favour.)
• My mom will die one day, and that’s okay. It’s the scariest thought ever but yea, it was important that I realized that for myself and try to make use of time.
• God is an Artist.
• Being honest is beautiful. Use it wisely… not for your benefit but more so for that of others.
  So hard… but feels so nice when you done.
• I’m beautiful and exceptional and it’s okay to know that. You must love yourself to be able to give love.

Individual G:

• Don’t hold grudges. The only person you damage is yourself.
• Friends are far more important than boyfriends. Friends are forever, boyfriends never are.
• The best thing for anger, sadness or feeling blue is to cook.
• Travelling really does broaden your mind and blow away the cobwebs like nothing else.
• Don’t beat yourself up when you’ve done the best you could possible do.

Individual H:

• Your parents aren’t always right.
• Being alone is sometimes actually really important.
• Even if you think you love someone…if it ends if probably wasn’t really love.
• Trusting people is really hard – even if it supposed to be the most important thing in any relationship – it’s pretty much impossible to completely trust anyone.
• Go with your gut instinct – it’s usually right.

Individual I:

• Always back up files on your computer. I mean actually do it. I should do it again now… maybe even twice. Though it might not happen very much, if you’ve not backed up, and something goes wrong, you really are screwed.
• It’s cliché, but, nothing is impossible. Seriously… don’t stop trying to do something you want to do because you think there’s no chance you can do it. There are MANY times in my life I’ve surprised myself and done things I didn’t think I would.
• Compliment people.
• After a drinking a lot of alcohol, drink loads of water before you go to sleep. I don’t just mean a couple of glasses of water either. Drink so much you feel like you’ll puke, then go to sleep, and you’ll feel a lot better in the morning.
• If you’re a student, take advantage of the McDonald’s student offer. Not many people know about it, but you get a free cheeseburger with any standard meal if you show your card.

Individual J:

• You can never really truly 100% trust anybody. Probably the hardest lesson to learn.
• Nobody is perfect.
• If it doesn’t kill you, even if it’s awful at the time, it makes you stronger.
• Make the most of the opportunities that come your way.
• You should never be too proud to ask for help.

The Drunkard’s Walk

Below is the link to a talk on randomness by physicist Leonard Mlodinow, which mainly focuses on the contents of his book of the same name:

“The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives” (runtime 56:57)  (T3)

(For some reason the talk didn’t seem to work for me in firefox, so I had to switch to IE, (well, an IE tab), so if you are having issues getting the video to play this might be one possible solution.) The talk is interesting, and includes many real life examples. It concludes with some discussion of the Monty Hall problem and a seemingly paradoxical ‘two children’ puzzle.

The talk is accompanied by slides, which can be synced with the video.

Kolmogorov complexity and Irrationality

Two cool things for today:

First of all, check this 19 minute video on irrationality:

Dan Ariely: Tendencies of Irrational Behaviour

Now note 2 things:

1. That video was really cool.

2. I linked to a blog that had a post containing this video, rather than the video itself. This might seem foolish, but in fact, it’s a two birds with one stone scenario. Firstly, you can now go check out FORA.TV, where the video lives,  a site I just found that seems to be full up to the back teeth with interesting videos, and secondly, you can check out Max F Dama’s blogs (of which he has TWO), both of which seem really interesting: his personal and opinion blog, and his Automated Trading blog.

Secondly, here’s a really interesting  wikipedia page:

Kolmogorov complexity

So I totally advise you read it, or book mark it under ‘really interesting’.