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More on flow and photography

I noticed some time ago that photography, which started for me as a hobby, rapidly lost it’s appeal when I began treating it as a business. This phenomenon is not unique to me, of course. Many photographers say that becoming a pro is a sure way to kill a perfectly fine hobby. It is not surprising either, since any job, no matter how fun it is, has some dreadful elements, buy definition of a job. These are things like deadlines and, more generally, the obligation to meet external expectations.

Lately, I’ve been listening to an audiobook called “Flow: living at the peak of your abilities” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, which is a collection of audio recordings of his lectures or seminars. It is not to be confused with the earlier-released book called “Flow: the psychology of optimal performance“. This earlier book, by the way, is one of my all-time favourites in the non-fiction genre. In the book am listening to now, I’ve come across another plausible explanation of why photography loses its appeal when it becomes a business. According to the “flow” theory, from an amateur’s standpoint, photography is an autotelic pursuit. That is, the activity itself constitutes its own reward and meaning. An amateur photographer takes pictures simply because it’s fun to do. It is exciting to learn new techniques and play with new gear. Even the process of transitioning to becoming a pro is initially fun, because it presents new challenges to overcome and things to learn. However, professional photography immediately introduces an additional set of goals , namely, making money and increasing the efficiency of the workflow. These business-related goals conflict with the original, creative goals of the photographer. The conflict can be subtle. For example, as I post-process a particular image and decide to learn some technique that I haven’t tried before, I might have a thought on the back on my mind: “Is this the best use of my time at this time? My processing workflow is good enough. Maybe, it would be better to plow though the rest of the images in this photoshoot., rather than fiddling with this one picture.” This is precisely the flow-breaking point. Instead of being fully concentrating on the creative task, which is learning new technique and increasing the complexity of my activity, my attention becomes split between what I am doing right now and what I could have been doing instead. I also become self-conscious, in the sense of starting to consider how what I do affects my image as a photographer.

The good news is that, according to Csikszentmihalyi, it is totally in my power to maintain flow, or at least maximize the amount of time spent in the flow state. After all, the attention split between the conflicting objectives happens entirely in my head. The trick, for the lack of a better word, is to convince myself to take interest in what needs to be done and to apply mental energy in order to increase the complexity of the activity at hand. For example, if a business-related task requires attention, it would be wise to make that the focus of the activity and strive to become really good at it. Conversely, it helps to recognize that the necessary attribute of an autotelic activity is that it needs to be done without any expectation of an external reward or future utility. It is certainly easier said than done, at least for me personally, but it does help to be reminded that “wasting time” on fun things is, upon consideration, not wasteful at all. In fact, it is often the best possible thing I can do.

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My 2022 reading list

Couple of years ago, I decided to keep a list of books I read outside of work as a way of keeping notes on the personal takeaways. Since the beginning of the New Year is as good point of reference as any, I’ve been organizing my reading log by year. Here is the 2022 list, grouped into three categories: children’s literature, fiction and non-fiction.

Note: The links below are affiliate links, so if you follow them to Amazon and buy something, I might get paid some money.

Children’s literature:
These are books we read aloud with my wife and daughter, usually in the evening. When we started this tradition a few years ago, all the books we read were in hard copy format, but lately we read a few e-books, which are very convenient for traveling.

1. “Chronicles of Narnia” by C.S. Lewis.
After finishing the “Harry Potter” series last year, this was our choice of a huge epic book. It did not disappoint, either in volume or in the content. Certainly, it’s a classic for a reason.

2. “The way of the Warrior kid” by Jocko Willink.
I am a fan of Jocko Willink’s podcast and non-fiction writing for adults, but I was skeptical about his foray into the children’s literature. I was definitely wrong – his simple language and super-straightforward way of presenting and demonstrating ideas were both fun and super-inspirational. It inspired my 10-year-old daughter to start a pull-up training program.

3. “The way of the Warrior kid: Marc’s mission” by Jocko Willink.
A sequel to the “Warrior kid”, this book once again surprised me with how efficiently Jocko handles complex issues that kids face like personal responsibility, compassion and bullying.

4. “The Three Musketeers” by Alexandre Dumas.
This summer we went to France, so we thought it would be good to read a classic adventure novel with strong ties to the location. This book has been my all-time favourite since childhood – certainly one of my most formative reads. With my daughter, though, we found that traction was elusive. Perhaps, at 10 years of age and in 2022, powering through a rather long introduction written is a somewhat archaic style and peppered with references to Huguenots “making a second La Rochelle” of some obscure Trent town was asking a bit too much. On a positive side, on the very first page, the book referred to another classic – “Don Quixote”, which my daughter was unaware of. So we had a chance to introduce that story to her. Maybe, she’ll decide to read it some day? There is hope, at least.

5. “The illustrated Longitude” by Dava Sobel.
This book was given to me as a present many years ago, and I heard only good things about it, but somehow I never got to reading it. It is definitely very nice – a casual, lay person’s-level insight into the development of applied science in Europe from the perspective of the specific problem of determining the longitude of a ship at sea. I’ve certainly enjoyed it, although I think my daughter is probably experiencing the story very differently, since she lacks the understanding of some physical concepts that are discussed there. Still, perhaps simply being exposed to them could spark some curiosity.

Fiction:

Most of my fiction books in the past year, not counting “The Chronicles of Narnia” and “The Three Musketeers” that I mentioned above and “The paper menagerie” (see below), have been written by Boris Akunin. I read them in their original Russian and really enjoyed the fast pace, the variety of styles (they are parts of a series of detective novels set in late 19th – early 20th century, featuring a common protagonist, Erast Fandorin, and written in different classic styles of the genre) and detailed, but liberal, interpretation of historical events. Pure entertainment!

6. “Левиафан” (“Murder on the Leviathan“) by Boris Akunin

7. “Особые поручения” (“Special assignments“) by Boris Akunin

8. “Статский советник” (“The state counsellor“) by Boris Akunin

9. “Турецкий гамбит” (“The Turkish gambit“) by Boris Akunin

10. “Коронация” (“The coronation“) by Boris Akunin

11. “Сокол и Ласточка” (“The Hawk and The Swallow”) by Boris Akunin

12. “The paper menagerie” by Ken Liu (audio)
This is a collection of short stories, whch is shockingly good. I was getting a bit tired of Akunin’s historical detective novels, so picked up this audiobook to listen to on the plane. It is easily the best new book I’ve read in the year, or maybe even of all time (I am saying “new” to avoid pitting against the classics like “The Three Musketeers“, “The Chronicles of Narnia” and the “Harry Potter” series, which would be a meaningless and an impossible comparison).

Non-fiction:

13. “Conscious” by Annaka Harris (audio)
This was the most thought-provoking read (or rather, listen) for me during 2022. It introduced me to the “hard problem of consciousness” (how consciousness comes into existence) and panpsychism. At he time of reading, I wrote down my impressions in this post (“Curiouser and curiouser!”).

13. “Is God a mathematician?” by Mario Livio (audio)
I think I heard about this book in Krista Tippet’s “On being” podcast. I wrote about my impressions of this book in this post (“Invention vs discovery”), but the main personal takeaway was to enjoy mathematical problems without worrying too much whether they are immediately relevant to my current research projects.

14. “The Art of Memoir” by Mary Karr (audio).
Although I am not planning to write a memoir (come to think of it, why not?), I found this academic dissection of what makes a good memoir, or generally a non-fiction piece of literature, quite useful in framing my thoughts on capturing ideas in writing.

15. “Speak, Memory” by Vladimir Nabokov
I started reading this after listening to “The Art of Memoir” by Mary Karr, because she uses Nabokov’s book as an example of a masterful memoir. It is definitely fascinating, and I enjoyed the historical references to the pre-revolution Russia, but with all the tremendous prose, it is not an easy read. I still haven’t finished it, and now that I’ve got an idea of what it’s like, I don’t think I am willing to invest more time in this story.

16. “The subtle art of not giving a f*ck” by Mark Manson
Another book that I started and haven’t finished. It is is pretty good though, and I might come back to it. I wish that I’ve started it in audio, because my actual reading time is to scarce and I prefer to spend it on something more entertaining.

17. “Barking up the wrong tree” by Eric Barker (audio)
This book is based on a blog, but unlike Steven Pressfield’s “Do the work”, which I very much disliked, not on a single article. It recaps main takeaways from other authors, but does it quite effectively and with the author’s own interpretation and humour. Main takeaways for me personally were:
a) Gamifying work by referring to the WNGF (Why Neutered Goats Fly) mnemonic: incorporate these aspects into your work – Winnable, Novel, Goals, Feedback. Also, don’t worry about being constantly productive: adding fun is opposite of productivity by definition, and that’s Ok.
b) Using mental contrasting: WOOP (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan) – think about if-then scenarios.
c) Necessity to prune the list of activities. Aim for one “highlight” activity per day.
d) Fixed schedule productivity (from Cal Newport) – schedule the work, not the interruptions.

18. “Rethinking positive thinking” by Gabriele Oettinger (audio).
This is a deeper dive into the concept of mental contrasting process (see WOOP mnemonic definition from the “Barking up the wrong tree above”). This concept was originally introduced and popularized by Oettingger. The main idea is that wishful thinking alone is detrimental for success, but it is conducive to constructive planning if done correctly.

19. “Wild problems” by Russ Roberts (audio).
It was an enjoyable read/listen, but I don’t seem to have many constructive takeaways. The main thesis of the book is to not always be data-driven in our decisions. This advice mostly applies to the problems that are outliers in terms of their complexity (due to dependance on incomparable variables) or significance of the consequences of the decision. Examples would be deciding whether or not to get married, to have children, to move to another country, to switch careers, etc. The difficulty with this type of problems is that making one decision or the other changes who you are, this making pros and cons analysis from the perspective of you before having made the decision is fundamentally flawed.

20. “Awareness: Conversations with the masters” by Anthony De Mello (audio).
This one of the few books that I found truly disappointing. It came highly recommended by Tim Ferriss, whom I’ve been following because of his excellent podcast, but the book itself is a slapped-together recording of live lectures/seminars by De Mello, who is quite condescending in his attitude to the audience. Most frustratingly, he doesn’t add much insight to the field of spiritual development. Overall, the book leaves an impression of a money grab. I do regret the time spent on it, but the lesson to take away is, perhaps, not to hesitate to drop the books without completing them.

21. “Homo Deus” by Yuval Noah Harari (audio).
A fascinating insight into long-term possibilities for the humans.

22. “Talking to Strangers” by Malcolm Gladwell (audio).
This book shows that it might never be possible to decipher strangers without resorting to evolutionary-dictated mental shortcuts. But this is Ok, because the price of being always vigilant would be too high in terms of poor social fit.

23. “Indistractable” by Nir Eyal and Julie Li (audio).
I really liked this book. It has many practical strategies for maintaining focus. The emphasis on internal triggers is particularly insightful. This book also pointed me towards the rabbit holes of multi-modal perception and self-determination theory. it is bit ironic, though, that I listened to it in audio, so that I’d be able to do other things at the same time.

24. “Drive” by Daniel Pink (audio).
For me, this is a deeper dive into Self-Determination Theory, inspired by Nir Eyal’s “Indistractable”. The idea of the “third drive”, beyond the carrot-and-stick motivation (motivation 2.0), is central here. Also, I agree with the statement that a flow state is relatively easy to achieve, but mastery is asymptotic, and it requires years of painful practice.

25. “Quiet” by Susan Cain (audio).
The main takeaway is that it is not always better to work in groups. The society expects everyone to conform to being an extravert, but almost half of people are introverts. True mastery strongly correlates with working alone, because only you can determine what you should be working on, which is the necessary component of deliberate practice. This book also changed how I look at my daughter and her interactions with friends and other people (at least I’d like to think so).

26. “The one thing” by Gary Keller (audio).
I first came across the idea of identifying one thing, completion of which would make other tasks easier or unnecessary, and focussing on this one thing until it’s done in Tim Ferriss’ podcast, so it wasn’t particularly new to me. This probably remains the main takeaway from the book, but I also like the tactical advice of going small, which, according to the author, applies to everything.

27. “Free to Focus” by Michael Hyatt (audio).
The main ideas in the book are not new, but the tactics are surprisingly fresh and useful. Stop (to identify the “zone of desire” – things you are good at and that you like to do), Cut (things in your “dread zone” and most of other things), Delegate (three levels of delegation, using specific language to define boundaries), Execute (I particularly like the “on-stage/backstage/off-stage” analogy. Plan on weekly and daily scales).

28. “Range” by David Epstein (audio).
The idea of early specialization is profitable for organizations like junior sports leagues and music teachers.
Short-term success and before-your-eye progress does not correlate with long-term learning.
Desirable difficulties – space the testing in time, use interleaving – make learning more challenging in the short term.
Overall – an excellent read. I’d like to re-visit it some time in the future, probably.

29. “7 habits of highly effective people” by Stephen R. Covey (audio).
I came across this book several times, but always hesitated to pick it up, being turned off by a click-baity title. It was a pleasant surprise – a good combination of depth and tactical advice. I also liked the historical reference to a paradigm shift from character ethic to personality ethic in the self-development literature. Here is a summary:
Habit 1: Agency. Be “response-able”. This closely parallels the “extreme ownership” idea of Jocko Willink.
Habit 2: Starting with a destination in mind. The idea that everything is created twice – once as a plan and once as an implementation.
Habit 3: Prioritize the important over the urgent.
Habit 4: Aim for a win-win. Seek mutual benefits.
Habit 5: Prioritize listening to understand the others.
Habit 6: Collaborate to create new possibilities.
Habit 7: Practice self-renewal.

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The art and science of the Eiffel Tower

When I was first learning about travel stock photography, the Eiffel Tower was given as an example of a universally-recognized landmark that is both most-photographed and most demanded for editorial purposes. This is a bit surprising, because with so many images of it available, one would think that the demand would be satisfied many times over.

Still, there is something more to photographing the Eiffel Tower than simply chalking up another must-take image on the itinerary, at least for me personally. Just being there reaffirms that I am, in fact, in Paris. This is why it this one of the first sites I like to visit when I am in the city. Also, it somehow represents the synergy between the art and engineering, which I find fascinating.

For example, I found out recently that one of the first wind tunnels for fluid mechanics experiments was designed by Gustave Eiffel and installed in the aerodynamics laboratory at the foot of the tower in 1909. It was later moved to its present location in Auteuil in 1912, where it’s still operational, in principle. It is also curious that around that time, Eiffel was involved in a scientific argument about equivalency between testing the aerodynamic properties of objects in a wind tunnel and towing them through air on railroad tracks. Apparently, he appealed for mediation to Henri Poincaré, who declared that the tests would be equivalent, provided that there would be sufficient room in the wind tunnel to from around the tested object without obstruction (what we now refer to as low blockage).

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Fiction


I write quite a lot as part of my job as a university professor – journal papers, reports, research proposals, etc. All of this is squarely in the non-fiction category. Recently, I came across a suggestion that writing fictional stories could a fun creative exercise and a way of cultivating observation and communication skills. I decided to jump on it, taking advantage of my sabbatical. Frankly, at this time I’d jump on any idea to mix things up in terms of the workflow and study techniques – that is what a study leave is all about, I think.
Writing fiction is a completely new thing for me, though. So, as any good student, I turned to YouTube.  I decided to try this exercise, described by Abbie Emmons as a “story smoothie” (the point being that all stories are, in-fact, re-told old stories that are “blended” into something new):
  1. Take your four favourite scenes from fictional literature (or even movies, Abbie suggested, but I was happy to be able to recall four books that I liked).
  2. Take one of the four components from each of the four books/scenes – genre, theme, plot and character(s) – and mix them up into your own story.
  3. For a bonus point, change the genders and social positions, etc. of the main characters. Et voilà, c’est fait – the blended “story smoothie” idea is ready.
I do realize that there is much more to writing than generating a story idea, but it has always been the difficult part for me. I really liked this, somewhat algorithmic, way of tackling at least this first creative aspect of writing. Because I am on sabbatical in Paris, I decided to base the story here.
Can you guess where I (mostly) took the main character and the plot from? Hint: It’s an opening of a famous novel, which was made into movies many times, and the action of which mostly takes place in Paris too.
If it doesn’t ring a bell (yes, I am aware that cliché is not our friend – it’s on my list of things to work on), then I blended the ideas sufficiently well to at least avoid blatant plagiarism.
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The Résumé

Artania could sense the stares stabbing her from all directions. She pretended not to notice them, looking directly forward, even though people could not see her eyes. She switched off the transparency of her augmented-reality glasses, so all the others could see was the black, curved glass hugging the upper half of her face. She stayed straight, perhaps a bit too tense, on the grippy surface of her electric hoverboard, commanding it to move forward by a deliberate tilt of her feet.

The hoverboard was the reason people were staring at her. It was a relic of the past – one of the early versions of the electric mobility devices that exploded in popularity about a decade ago and that were hopelessly obsolete now, in 2034. Here, on a cobbled street of Montmartre, among a dense crowd filled with the most advanced personal transportation contraptions imaginable, Artania’s board was as out-of-place as a horse carriage in a showroom full of luxury concept cars.

Paris was the point of convergence of the new avant-gardists, who were extremely attuned to the latest developments in technology and art. The history has come full circle in Montmartre, which once again, as in the end of the XIX century, has become home to the revolutionaries of the art world.
Coming here took all the courage Artania could muster. Her dream, and the reason for coming to Paris, was to join the famously secretive Bureau for Art and Technology Affairs – an arm of the INTERPOL that dealt with art-related crimes. She didn’t really have a plan of how to do it. As everyone else, she knew that the Bureau’s headquarters were in Paris, and that she couldn’t apply on her own initiative. Hopefully, they would approach her if they thought that she had what it took to work for them. It was also a common perception, perhaps cultivated by the Bureau itself, that what they demanded of their recruits was a rare blend of analytical and artistic skills, some would even say, talent. One had to assume that all the Bureau’s agents also had above-average athletic abilities, but that was an easily satisfied requirement – there were many young men and women, who could hit hard and run fast. Presumably, the Bureau would teach them to shoot straight too. Such was the image of an elite warrior of the New Renaissance era, and to become one was what Artania wanted most of all.

Getting recruited by the Bureau was Artania’s all-consuming goal. She dedicated the last decade of her twenty-two years to forging herself into the image of the Bureau’s agent, which she created in her imagination. The bar that she set for herself was high. Considering that she didn’t know where the real bar was, aiming high was a reasonable idea. She decided that she would have to establish herself as a leading force in both the art and the tech worlds. In fact, she would have to be so undeniably strong in these spheres that nobody, including the Bureau, would be able to ignore her.

The tech part was relatively easy. Artania always knew that any mathematical puzzle or a piece of code would eventually unravel if she kept patiently turning it in her mind and poking at it from different directions, never releasing from the firm grip of logic.

Art was trickier. She did have true passion for it from the earliest years, and through countless hours of doodling, painting, taking photos with various cameras and experimenting with graphics software, she developed some formidable skills. But who was to say if she had real talent? Sure, parents, friends and teachers always praised her as an artist, but she mostly dismissed their praise, attributing it to kindness. In order to be noticed by the Bureau, she would need to truly embody the artistic power. She needed to have style. And style wasn’t possible to acquire by hours of hacking, as one would do with a piece of computer code or a golf swing. It was even less possible to fake it.

And Artania did feel like a fake right now. She was obviously failing the test. She was not fitting in with this techno-artistic elite.

*

The crowd was filled with the latest tech, mostly gadgets for creating images, holograms and for interacting with virtual reality. There was also abundance of electric skateboards, motorized footwear and scooters. The reason that the contemptuous glances at Artania’s hoverboard did not escalate into open mockery was the impressively large and tough-looking backpack on her back. Purpose-built for carrying video gear, the bag was clearly state-of-the-art, and one could reasonably assume that it contained state-of-the-art equipment. Artania’s clothes, backpack, as well as her virtual ID that was visible to anyone with an augmented-reality eyewear (probably everyone in the crowd) did not contain any indication that she was affiliated with a large design firm. While she certainly didn’t look like a high-flying Parisian artist or agent, that didn’t mean that she couldn’t turn out to be a pro.

“You see, these provincial dilettantes, who come to concur the big city – they are hardly better than amateurs. It’s a pity, really. They watch a few clickbait videos on the Net and think they are the new van Gogh. The truth is, they don’t have resources even to buy decent gear. And the gear is practically all that matters these days.”

There was a pause.

“See this girl, for example,” continued the calm women’s voice. “One look at the contraption she is riding on, and you can figure her entire résumé.”

“This device would be even curios if it wouldn’t be so sad,” added the woman. “I’d offer to buy it from her to display with other antiques in my studio, but this would probably deprive her of her only means of transport.”

Artania heard this monologue in crystal-clear, digitally-enhanced sound through her active headphones, which were barely visible in her ears and could be mistaken for minimalistic jewelry. She blushed, but continued staring forward. The woman’s words echoed her fear: she was a fake, she had no business being here. She heard her pulse in her ears.

Gradually, on the back of Artania’s mind, another thought began to stir. It was something her mother told her after a long hug, before Artania boarded a supersonic flight to Paris: “Don’t let anyone tell you what you are worth as a person. You’ve worked very hard. You have great skills and a great heart. Nobody can take that away from you.”

An orange arrow in the corner of her head-up display indicated the direction, from which the women’s remark came from. There was no pretending that she didn’t hear it.

Artania pressed on her right heel, simultaneously pushing her left toes down, abruptly spinning her hoverboard towards the woman’s voice and flicking the transparency of her glasses on with a wrist gesture. She found herself staring, point-blank, at a tall, brown-haired woman in her thirties. The lady was casually resting her elbow on the handlebars of the latest-model German self-balancing scooter. Besides the beautiful machine, Artania noticed that she had only a single piece of tech. It was a thin, transparent tablet computer, which the lady carried on a metallic chord slung over one shoulder, like a handbag. The tablet looked understated. It had several tiny camera lenses located along the edges, and its screen was displaying a slowly-rotating abstract 3D model that matched the colour of the woman’s eyes and that of her long, floating jacket. The tablet was a truly impressive device, which Artania immediately noticed – an organically grown computer, likely with enormous computational power for its size.

Artania’s sudden pirouette and piercing stare apparently had no effect on the woman, who continued talking to her companion, a slim young man in a leather outfit, straddling an electric motorbike. The man had his helmet on, and the upper half of his face was covered by a black visor.

“This kind of board was all the rage years ago, before the AI. I am surprised the battery is still working,” – the lady pointed on Artania’s board with her eyes.

“Excuse me, I couldn’t help overhearing that you were making fun of me behind my back,” – Artania’s voice was slightly high with indignation.

“Curious, isn’t it, that people don’t get what it takes to compete in the tech world these days,” continued the lady.

Artania’s head-up display showed that her heart rate increased. She felt insulted, but strangely, the self-doubt that was consuming her moments ago was gone. She was confident that the woman was wrong. Artania did know the importance of high-tech tools in her trade. And she was confident that the gear she had in her backpack could give the woman’s fancy tablet a run for its money. She inched even closer on her board.

“Madame, why do you think you can make fun of me and make assumptions of my tech literacy?”

The woman turned to look directly at Artania and said, after a pause: “I wasn’t making fun of you, young lady. I was making fun of the board you are riding on.” She released Artania from her gaze and turned again to her companion.

Artania stepped off the board, pulled one arm from the strap and swung the backpack to the front of her body. Holding it horizontally across her chest, she touched the quick-access panel. It flashed her monogram, “A”, as an indication that her biometrics were recognized. The zipper illuminated around the perimeter and opened with a muted beep. She pulled out a thin rectangular box made of chitin, which immediately transformed in her hands. The organic exo-skeleton retracted, revealing a sensor of a lensless camera. Artania’s fingers reflexively found the shutter button.

“Would you like me to take your friend’s portrait? You can compare it with the pictures you take with your tablet and decide if it might be overdue for an upgrade.”

The woman’s eyes scanned Artania’s camera, slightly worried look momentarily flashing across her face.

The thin man leaned slightly toward her and said in a low tone: “Madame, I will take my leave now, before people start taking photos of us.” With that, he put his hands on the handlebars of the bike, which came to life with a low hum of the powerful electric motor.

The woman nodded and turned to Artania.

“I can see that you’ve just arrived here and are eager to make a name for yourself. But because you apparently don’t know who I am, I’ll give you a piece of advice: spend some time studying the field you are planning to enter before barging in.”

The woman stepped onto her scooter, which immediately whisked her away through the crowd, leaning nimbly into the turns.

*

Artania remained there for moment. She felt good for standing up for herself, but her self-doubt was starting to flood back. “She is probably right,” Artania thought. “What was I thinking – coming here to joint the Bureau, without knowing even whom to talk to and what to say? Besides, it all might be coming down to having the latest gadgets and computing power after all. With the AIs capable of writing code and generating art, who really needs humans anymore?”

She slowly folded the camera back into its shell and stowed it into the backpack, closing it with a touch of her finger. The bag beeped, flashed her initial again, and Artania swung it back over her shoulders.

She didn’t notice that a sheet of paper slid out of the backpack and landed on the cobbled sidewalk.

Artania picked up her heavy, nearly-discharged hoverboard under her arm and started walking down the hill. She wasn’t going to give up that easily. Tomorrow will be another day that might bring better luck.

*

As Artania was rounding the corner of the narrow street, a middle-aged man with closely-cropped gray hair and rimless AR glasses stepped out of the crowed and picked up the sheet dropped by Artania.

It was a pen-and-ink sketch of Parisian rooftops that Artania made on the first evening of her arrival as a part of her daily practice to hone her observation and drafting skills.

The man looked at the sketch for a long time. The pattern of the ink lines led his eyes into the page. Subtle details in the treatment of perspective – deliberate deviations from the strict rules of nature – made him subconsciously aware that it was not an AI-generated image. The composition reminded him of the compressed perspective effect of old-school telephoto lenses. Despite the startling boldness of the composition and the roughness of the penwork, the image was incredibly balanced. It was imbued with the inner strength that difficult to define, but which was undeniable. It was the same kind of boldness that he just witnessed in the girl, who confronted the leader of the largest international art crime organization – the woman he has been tracking.

The man turned the paper over and back, looking for the signature, and finally found the initials concealed among the pen strokes at the bottom of the image: “AO”. Not much, but not a problem – he will find her. The man smiled. It turned out to be a good day after all. This young lady couldn’t have left him with a better résumé even if she wanted to. She was just the right type that he was looking for: good eye, sharp technique, knowledge of the craft,.. and something else that was difficult to put into words, but that was shouting from the paper he held in his hand. Talent.

The man pulled a thin folder from his leather shoulder bag and carefully slipped the sketch into it. He sealed the folder with a gesture of his index finger. It beeped, indicating the lock activation, and its cover briefly flashed a logo consisting of a globe, scales, olive branches and a sword, with the text below in pale blue letters: “Bureau for Art and Technology Affairs”.

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On getting old(er)

Lately, I’ve found myself thinking about getting old more and more often. Probably, this is related to my Mom’s recent birthday, but likely also to my own transitioning through the somewhat arbitrarily-defined middle age. I certainly notice more discussions of the coming-to-terms-with-your-own-approaching-death – kind of musings in what I read (outside of work, naturally; my work-related reading could indeed bore an unprepared reader to death, but that would be just an unfortunate side effect of my research area).

I’ve just finished listening to an audiobook called “Happy” by Derren Brown. It is another modern take on the Stoic philosophy, and has an insightful section related to our (human’s, in general) relationship with the older generation throughout our lives. At any point in our lives, we generally view the old people as un-cool and implicitly think and act as if we would not be like them in a similar situation. More generally, we think in terms of “us vs. them” towards the old, even though, ironically, we will almost definitely be old ourselves (that is, if we a lucky and healthy enough to live to the old age, of course).

A line of thought that I found helpful in that regard goes like this: consider that we’ve been aging since the day of our birth and that, generally speaking, in the majority of cases, it has been a positive experience – we gradually became more capable intellectually and also developed individual character. So it probably wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume, that we will continue refining our individuality and intellectual capacity, at least up to a certain point.

Here is another neat mental exercise that I consider a worthwhile takeaway from the book. It is generally easy to imaging telling ourselves: “If I had a chance to talk to my younger self, I’d give them this advice:..” It should be possible, therefore, to a forward-projecting version of this thought experiment: “If my older self would have a chance to talk to me right now, what advice would they gave me?” Granted the hindsight is clearer than forward-seeing, but some insight could still be gained.

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Character vs personality

Esse Quam Videri (To be rather than to seem)
— state motto of North Carolina

For the second time in a little while, I came across a reference to a paradigm shift in the literature and culture of personal development from the “character ethic” to the “personality ethic” that occurred in the early XX century. I’ve been listening to Stephen R. Covey’s “7 habits of highly successful people” book, which holds this shift as the defining thesis. The character ethic has been the prevalent paradigm in the old days, being popularized by Ben Franklin’s autobiography, among other works. The main premise is that a person needs to develop one’s own character in order to become successful in life. For example, Franklin identified 13 virtues to develop: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity and humility. From a practical standpoint, he would pick a single virtue at a time and work on it for a fixed period of time (about a week) before moving to the next one. He would repeat the cycle every 13 weeks.

The personality ethic is exemplified by Dale Carnegie’s 1936 book “How to win friends and influence people“. The main difference with the character-centered mindset is that the objective is to improve the way one interacts with other people in order to create the most favourable impression on them. For example, you would be advised cultivate an interest is hobbies of people whom you’d like to influence, employ mnemonics to remember the names of new acquaintances, etc.

The argument in the “7 habits” book is that the principles of the character ethic are more fundamental, and that the social success would naturally follow as a by-product of character improvement. I certainly like this idea, but would probably not dismiss the personality-centered approach either. Maybe, consistently acting the way a person with a strong character would eventually leads to an underlying character transformation, in a way becoming a self-fulfilled prophecy. Still, this “faking until you make it” approach seems to be a roundabout way to personal development for at least two reasons. First, at some level, you would always have to convince yourself that the personality traits that you are trying to develop are, in fact, ethical and not purely manipulative. Second, people are generally quite good at seeing through a personality if it is not genuine, which can interfere with communication. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in 1875 and quoted in the “7 habits” book in a slightly streamlined form for the modern audience: “What you are shouts so loudly in my ears that I cannot hear what you say.”

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Desirable difficulties

While listening to an audiobook called “Range” by David Epstein, I’ve come across the concept related to learning called desirable difficulties. These are features of the learning process that, as the name implies, create difficulties for the student but improve the long-term learning outcome.  There is compelling evidence that increasing the difficulty of tasks is beneficial in the long-term, even though it slows down the initial progress.

This is counter-intuitive, and it creates a conundrum, both for the student and for the teacher: one needs to trust the process to continue viewing the difficulties as desirable even in the face of decreased performance, e.g. relatively poor test results. There is some consensus, though, on how desirable difficulties can be created by the teacher or by the students themselves (the key assumption here is that everyone agrees that the difficulties are, in fact, desirable).

One tactic is retrieval practice, which is, basically, testing. Again, it’s been shown that spending some learning time on testing, including self-testing, is beneficial. It sounds like a truism, but exerting effort in retrieving the information that needs to be learned helps with the learning. Flashcards is a typical example of a retrieval practice tool, and progressively increasing the size of the stack of flashcards is a desirable difficulty.

Not surprisingly, feedback is important for learning, i.e. the student needs to receive correct information about their performance. Surprisingly, though, delaying the feedback, or the test itself, is a desirable difficulty. This idea clashes somewhat with the huge body of research that shows that immediate feedback is beneficial for building skills, being a key characteristic of so-called “kind learning domains,” e.g., classical music, golf, chess, etc. I think there is no logical problem here, though. Kind learning domains facilitate reliable immediate progress, while “wicked domains”, where feedback is delayed, are conducive to better long-term learning. I should note, that delayed feedback can be intentionally used in a kind domain, and that wicked domains are sometimes characterized by misleading feedback, which is definitely not conducive to learning and what makes these fields “wicked” in the first place.

Another neat technique for introducing a desirable difficulty is interleaving. Here is an example from the “Range” book. Suppose that you are studying painting styles of van Gogh, Picasso, Monet and Kandinsky with the goal of being able to identify the author of a painting by their style during an upcoming visit to a museum. If you are using flashcards with reproductions of various paintings on one side and the painter’s name on the back to self-test your knowledge, it would be more difficult, but beneficial in the long-term, to make a deck of flashcards containing the works of all these painters, rather than studying them one-by-one.

When I was a graduate student, one of the professors in our department used to joke that one qualifies for a post-graduate degree not so much on the basis of acquired knowledge or on the level of contribution to the field, but on the certain amount of suffering one accumulates during the studies, e.g., suffer for two years – get a Master’s degree, suffer for four more years – get a PhD. It appears that there is some truth in this joke – the amount of struggling along the way correlates with slower initial progress, but also with deeper knowledge down the road.

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Playing a role

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.”
— William Shakespeare

I’ve just finished listening to an audiobook by Michael Hyatt called “Free to focus“. Reading personal productivity guides has become a bit of a hobby for me, so they often seem like a blur. After all, there are only so many ways one can spin the same idea. I began listening to this book expecting as much, but was pleasantly surprised by the fresh take on the day-to-day tactics of grappling with the (not really new) underlying concept of prioritization and execution of multiple tasks that compete for ones attention. I particularly liked the framework of viewing your life as consisting of separate roles (e.g., professional, family, etc.) Hyatt side-steps perhaps the most challenging issue of prioritizing these roles (perhaps, the Shakespeare’s quote above gives an approach that is not so bad – your primary role is related to your age, i.e. your stage in life). Within a given role, however, he suggests classifying your activities into three categories: on-stage (the primary activities defining your role), backstage (development of skills and setting up the conditions for performing the on-stage work) and off-stage (activities that are deliberately not related to your primary role, but that are necessary for recharging and avoiding burnout). He then suggests to plan on the weekly time scale, allocating about two days for the “on-stage” activities, two days for unplugging from work (being “off-stage”) and the rest – for “backstage” development work. The key advice is to be mindful about not slipping into backstage work during your primarily on-stage days.

For me personally, this model is a bit too rigid, because the academic work is notoriously unstructured, with all the benefits and disadvantages that it entails. Still, it is comforting to have this theatrical framework as a conceptual guide as I roll through the weeks of a typical academic term. To throw in another quote, this one by Dwight Eisenhower, “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”

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Invention vs. discovery

Mathematics has been a big part of my life since middle school, when, out of curiosity and with encouragement of my teacher, I became interested in solving mathematical puzzles and participating in inter-school competitions. Subsequently, it led me to studying applied math in the university and later doing research and teaching fluid mechanics as an engineering professor. Ironically, ever since research became my career, I somehow stopped being particularly curious about the mathematics itself, and started treating it as tool for doing my work.

About a year ago, I read book called “Is God a mathematician?“ by Mario Livio. It prompted me to think about math from less utilitarian and more philosophical perspective. A curious feature of math is that it can be considered both as a human creation (e.g., a language that is useful for performing calculations and expressing laws of physics) and as something existing on it’s own and what humans only discover (e.g., like the natural laws themselves). It seems that the latter aspect is definitely present, despite Albert Einstein’s belief that math is, essentially, a set of human-made tools. In 1960, Eugene Wigner, a Nobel laureate physicist, even wrote a paper in Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics entitled “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences,” which discussed precisely that – how it is possible that exercises in “pure” mathematics prompt post-factum discoveries of natural phenomena.

As a personal takeaway from reading Livio’s book, I feel a bit better about spending time thinking about mathematics per se without worrying whether it is particularly relevant for my field of research or whether a particular research question has already been answered. It is also kind of amusing to learn that even intellectual giants like Richard Feinmann went through a variation of this thinking process with surprising results, e.g. when he consciously decided to apply himself to re-tracing the steps of a well-known solution describing spinning plates that eventually lead to a Nobel-prize-level breakthrough.