Life v3.0

I started a new life in the US and moved my blog onto another server. Check it out on http://blog.kacper.me! I may keep the blogspot version for a while.

Extra Travel Tips

Greetings from France! I'm stuck at the Marseille airport as my flight is delayed for two hours. You got it, there is a strike of air traffic controllers. At least, I've got two hours to be productive and to write something interesting. I've already given tips for traveling in the three previous posts. Here, I'd like to add some more useful stuff.

1. Smell good without carrying perfumes. If you travel light, there is one major downside of carrying your own perfumes; they are typically in heavy bottles which add to the mass of your hand luggage. So, how to deal with that? At any airport you can find a duty-free store that carries perfumes. Go there, spray yourself, and ask for free samples. That way you can smell good for free. If you stay in the city, you can use the same tactic. Find some Sephora or any other store with perfumes. It's guaranteed that you'll find one in the shopping mall. Also, if you sweat a lot, get baking soda from any grocery store or pharmacy, and use it as an antiperspirant. Just apply the powder on your skin, for example, under armpits. Baking soda is very effective in fighting bacteria, cheap, non-toxic, light, doesn't leave yellow stains, and can be carried in hand luggage.



2. Smartphone. I've travelled with a laptop, tablet, and smartphone. From my experience, the only device that you'll need while traveling is a good smartphone, such as Google Nexus 4 or Apple iPhone.
3. Say toilet. At least in Europe, don't use the words washroom, restroom,  or bathroom. Many people don't seem to get them. Toilet is universally understandable.
4. CouchSurfing got worse. The whole CouchSurfing project has changed; at least in three aspects. First, CS became a for-profit project which, I believe, has had an impact on the website and the users. Second, the CS website has a new layout which is very counterintuitive. Third, the most important, CS is no longer a community of like-minded travelers. In the past, you could send few requests and get answers promptly. People wanted to travel and to host travelers. These days, many people join CS just for free accommodation. Whereas they like to CouchSurf (because it's free), few of them host people at their place.
   



5. Pick a cool hostel. I've been to dozens of different hostels. Choosing a great hostel is not an easy task. For me, a great hostel is one that: 1) attracts young cool people, 2) is about partying, 3) is clean, 4) is cheap, and 5) is safe. There are multiple websites to search for hostels, such as HostelWorld. When searching, I sort the results by price and rating. Further, the opinions will give you a clue about the points 1-4. Additionally, the hostel description will tell you if the hostel offers lockers (important for safety) and free WiFi. The latter is pretty standard, though, WiFi may not work in all the rooms. Finally, I don't care if the hostel offers any breakfast. Typically, I come back too late to wake up for the breakfast. Also, in the past, hostels offered more varied breakfasts. Nowadays, they offer mostly milk, cornflakes, crappy wheat bread, and fake jam. Pure carbs. It's neither healthy, nor filling, and not very tasty when eaten daily. I'm off that.
6. Hotel is an option. I'm not a big fan of hotels. Typically, they are more expensive than hostels and you don't get to meet many new people. Sometimes, however, there may be no hostels at your destination. What do you do then? Consider Airbnb or book a hotel room. Recently, I found great hotel deals on Cyprus through Booking.com (which was recommended to me by hotel stuff). They don't charge booking fees.
   



7. If got a student card, ALWAYS ask for student discounts. Sure, this tip doesn't work too often, but when it does, you pay half of the price. For example, recently I scored a ticket from Paphos to Larnaca for 2e.

Be Smarter than the State

I never understood the economy. All the obfuscated mumbo-jumbo lingo that you hear in the media is extremely confusing and explains nothing. At some point I thought that maybe I'm too dumb? But wait. After all, I was able to understand the formalities of Quantum Physics, Electrical Engineering, and much of Psychology. So why not the economy? The key to understanding is accurate and precise explanation. What I learned is mind-boggling: modern economy is based on a giant fraud scheme. It's sad, but it explains what the hell is going on. I think you should understand it as well if you care about your well-being, wealth, and future.

Within the last six months I took the time to educate myself about the basics of Macroeconomics. I found these fantastic online lectures by Prof. K. Petrov. Here I would like to describe my understanding of one fundamental concept of modern banking system: inflation. Don't worry. Actually it's all extremely simple. It is also extremely evil.

Inflation. It simply means price increase across the entire economy. When you hear the news, you think that inflation is natural and that's the way things are meant to be. But hey, do prices increase themselves??? Of course not. One of the ways to increase inflation is to increase money supply, the infamous money printing. This is not how things are meant to be! Please, do yourself a favor and watch a short episode of Duck Tales (that I absolutely loved as a kid):

So what is the lesson here? It's the following: if you print money (and others don't), you are the one who primarily benefits from it. Imagine yourself printing extra money. Got it? You can buy a new car, travel more, and get more financial freedom. What are the consequences? After a while the money supply on the market increases and prices go up. In other words: the money loses its value. Let's say you've got $100 today, but someone doubles the money supply within one day. What happens? Tomorrow the actual value of your savings is only $50. You lost half of the hard-earned money. The entity that printed the money, however, already spent it and benefited from it.

Who prints money? In the real world central banks print money. They can print as much as they like. For example US Federal Reserve printed several TRILLIONS of $$$ in the last several years. If they print, it is called quantitative easing. If you print, you go to jail. Unfair, isn't it? I'd say more. It's immoral.

Why do they print money? Have you noticed that governments always spend more money than they have? Consequently, they need to somehow borrow more money. When you borrow money, however, you have to pay it back. But wait, how can you pay the loan back if you have no money? You can either take another loan or you can print more money! So this is what happens in practice. The government prints money. The government is the one who benefits from printing. Citizens, on the other hand, lose money. Are you cool with that?

How come they are allowed to print money? It is possible because modern currencies are fiat currencies. Their value comes from the law; they are not backed by any tangible commodity. Several decades ago currencies were backed by gold and silver. For example, you could always exchange US dollar for a fixed amount of gold ($1 = 1.505g of gold), and British pound for silver. That prevented the government from printing money, because they could not replicate precious metals. Fast forward to the year 2013; due to inflation dollar dramatically lost its value. If you had $100 at the beginning of the 20th century, now it would be worth only $4. If you have savings, what's their value in 50 years when you retire?

Is there some way to defend yourself from getting ripped off by the government? Yes, there is. You can be smarter then the state. Get rid of all the paper money. If you have savings, invest them in something tangible, experience, or of real value. For example, you can invest in own education, traveling, a startup, stock market, precious metals, etc. In fact, for the last several thousands of years silver and gold were good stores of value. Unlike any kind of paper money issued by governments/central banks/banksters. If at the beginning of the 20th century you exchanged $100 for gold, you would get 150.5 grams of gold. Do you know how much it is worth these days? $5896. That's a slightly better business than the $4. Isn't it?

Disclaimer: although the article talked about US dollar, all the above applies to pretty much any other currency: British Pound, European Euro, Swiss Frank, Canadian Dollar, Swedish Krona, Polish Zloty, Japanese Yen, etc. Throughout the history the governments have been making the same mistakes over and over again. The future is predictable. In the end the paper currency is worth nothing.

Which Trait Would You Rather Have: Confidence or Accuracy?

Would you rather be confident but, perhaps, incorrect, or accurate but insecure? Would others appreciate you more as a confident person or an accurate one? It all depends on the situation, for sure. Let's talk about day-to-day life situations and communication through mass media (including Twitter, Facebook, etc.).

A recent study of Twitter investigated how professional pundits and amateurs predicted the results of baseball games. The study shows that people who are confident about predicting the results have more followers and are in more demand, regardless of accuracy of the predictions. In other words, if you are confident, you get more popularity. It does not matter whether you are right or wrong.

What are the implications of that study? The results can, perhaps, be generalized. They may explain some of the examples where confidence brings significant benefits to an individual despite of low accuracy:

• Hitler moved unparalleled crowds. He had a vision and was confident about it. His accuracy was very low. For sure. His racist claims were not backed by any scientific evidence.
• Recently I was told a story how you can travel by bus in Copenhagen with an invalid ticket. How do you do that? Be confident that your ticket is valid, smile to the driver, and show only a part of the ticket so that the expiry date is hidden. Perfect confidence and no accuracy. It is confirmed that the story works for blond girls. If they can pull it off, then you can do that as well :-)

It's easy to say be confident, but how do you gain confidence if you are not confident? Confidence comes from experience and familiarity with various situations. Getting into unexpected situations gives you new experience. Getting out of your comfort zone makes you uncomfortable and exposes your fragility to others. That's how confidence is built. What is a natural setting where you can exercise both? Traveling!

Allow the Job to Find You

Want to increase the odds of getting an interesting job offer? I found a very effective way that requires minimal effort. Does it work for anyone? I cannot claim that but I am sure it works well if you have a unique skill-set. Does it work right away? No, it may take several months before you start getting interview invitations. Still interested in the idea of allowing the job to find you? Read on and learn how to set up a honey pot!

Let's do a quick experiment. Imagine that you are a head hunter or a hiring manager. You are looking for a person with specific combination of education and software engineering skills  For example, you're looking for someone with PhD education, who can program in the language Haskell, and has experience in software modeling (whatever all of that means). Below are two sets of keywords that you could type.

1. phd, haskell, metaprogramming, modeling
2. phd, haskell, software modeling

Let's use two popular search engines to search for the keywords. Check out the two queries:

1. Google, Bing
2. Google, Bing

Wow, Kacper is on the very top in both search engines! What do you do as a hiring manager? You go to his professional homepage and drop him an email with job interview invitation. Pretty simple, eh?

What's going on there? Kacper has a googlable webpage that attracts head hunters and hiring managers. If you want to start getting job offers, create a good personal webpage! The key idea is to set up a honey pot that allows head hunters to find you. Here are some tips:

• Figure out what specific skills you have, what kind of job you'd like to get, and how these skills relate to the job. Add a short paragraph that summarizes what you're doing and what you've done.
• Present a vision of the world and the job. Be honest.
• Think about different types of visitors and tailor information accordingly. This is very important. On my webpage you can see that I've got separate paragraphs for students who want to work with me, people who want to hire me, and entrepreneurs who look for hackers. I assume that students would be looking for projects in my lab and research. People who want to hire me would like to see my resume, the projects I worked on, and awards. Entrepreneurs would be looking for the startup spirit and source code to judge my programming skills.
• Include important keywords that describe your skills, completed projects, awards, and anything else that may convince someone that you are qualified. A good way of doing it is to write a resume directly on the website. Attaching resume as a file won't help much, because the information is not directly visible.
• If possible associate your website with a professional institution. For example, my website is associated with the website of my research lab.

How effective are these tips? I believe they are very effective. I redesigned my website last year according to the guidelines above. I didn't apply for any job. I've never had a Linked In account, yet I'm receiving very solid job inquiries every month. I also ask recruiters how they found me, and they say that through the website.

Now, what do I mean by very solid job inquiries? First, they are tailored to my specific skills. There is no bullshit and I know that the company or the head-hunter is serious about me. Second, they came from Google, MathWorks, multiple Wall Street financial institutions and head hunters, and a Silicon Valley startup. Some of them even wanted me to cancel PhD and start working for them as soon as possible. Finally, I actually signed a contract with MathWorks and I'm going to start working this year after finishing PhD. I think that's enough evidence that this method works and brings benefits in the long run. Convinced?

So what are you waiting for? Want to get a great job? Allow the job to find you!

Traveling Is a State of Mind

Why is it that for most people traveling is something they crave for, yet they do very little? Why do people associate traveling with something expensive? And even if they have money, why do they complain about lack of time to travel? Why do they think that traveling is a 2-3 week break during the year? Let's challenge these ideas! I think that to travel you have to want to travel. It's really about your state of mind.

First of all, I think that the above ideas are imposed on you by: 1) the travel industry, 2) the society, and 3) own laziness. Let's be honest. Think about it: what holds you back right now from taking a break and going somewhere for a week? And I mean right now. If you could travel anywhere without any consequences, would you do that? Do you have what it takes to leave your house for a week? Or even for 2 days?

Time. Let's say your life-span is 80 years. That equals 4160 weeks. What happens if you decide to spend one of these weeks traveling? Think about the reasons for doing that now, instead of the reasons for not doing it. Do you really want to travel?

Money. You need to buy food. But you have to do that anyways, regardless of where you are.

Accommodation. Check out CouchSurfing. You can stay at someone's place for a week. Or better, find 2-3 people who can host you. You pay $0.

Transport. Depending on where you wanna go, the cost may vary. Let's say you're broke as fuck. Perfect, check our hitch-hiking or car pooling. I met people who traveled all around Europe, America, and Asia that way. How much they paid? $0.

That's all you need to start the journey. Well, almost. What you really need is a strong desire to make things happen.

Now, the key thing is that traveling is not so much about the location, but more about the state of mind. It doesn't mean going to some remote island. You can go to a nearby town and enjoy traveling. I routinely do that when I visit Mississauga or Toronto. Set your mind into the travel mode. Stop for a while and think: how is your mindset different when you travel from your current state of mind? Take your time.

For me the key difference is that when you travel you are in the absorb mindset. It's a state of mind where you absorb incoming sounds, pictures, smells, feelings without prematurely judging them. You are just as curious as a small child for whom everything is new. For me the joy of traveling comes from: meeting new people, appreciating the architecture, learning the culture, getting into unexpected situations, and stepping out of my comfort zone. You can certainly have all of that in the nearby town. It's the matter of paying attention to the details. Think about what you enjoy about traveling.

You can even become a tourist in your own town. Why not to apply the same mindset to daily situations. Start looking at the things around you, change the usual route to school/work, talk to people about whatever comes to your mind. Isn't the world more interesting then? Several months ago I even heard about a girl who was CouchSurfing in her own town!

Now, go to a nearby city and see what's cool there! OK, honestly, I'm almost sure that you will find excuses and will not do that. But remember, if you keep doing what you're doing, you'll keep getting what you're getting. Are you happy about it?

How to Explain Things?

Being PhD student is a great thing. On the one hand, you have to specialize in single topic so that when you graduate you become an expert in that topic. On the other hand, you have to know the related work that may be surprisingly broad at times. For example, I'm doing research in software engineering. My goal is to help software developers to be more productive and to produce software of higher quality. Cool. Recently, however, I needed to check out publications from cognitive psychology! Why would I do that? We were interested in how people learn new things and how brains of experts differ from brains of novices. I learned a lot and want to share some of the findings. You can use these findings to be more effective at explaining things to others. This blog post is based on our recent publication.

Base Your Explanations on Examples

Let's say you want to explain your younger cousin Newton's law of gravity. Certainly, it's not enough to give just a bunch of equations and expect the cousin to understand the topic. Why not? Because learning is about building mental models. Mental models represent our intuitive understanding of the world in the form of generalized information, such as rules. So how to build the intuition? You're right, through examples! Examples capture intuition. You need to see multiple examples of a single thing or phenomenon. For instance, to start understanding gravity you need to see an apple falling from the tree, a sandwich falling on the floor, or you can even jump out of the window. Only then will then brain start noticing commonalities, will generalize information, and will come up with a rule. Of course, these examples do not fully explain the law of gravity, but provide right intuitions.

Present both Examples and Abstractions

OK, we agreed that presenting just examples is not enough. In fact, the best knowledge transfer occurs when learning comprises both examples and abstractions (such as rules). So to fully explain gravity, you'd have to show both examples and the mathematical equations. Then your cousin should be able to relate examples (that represent intuition) to the equations (that represent general rules). Why do we need to present examples and abstractions simultaneously? First, examples typically capture just a small part of a general phenomenon. In many cases you would need a huge number of examples to appropriately model the general rule. Of course working with a huge number of examples is incomprehensible. Second, abstractions capture the knowledge more completely than examples, but are equally difficult to comprehend on their own.

Novices Need Examples, Experts Prefer Abstractions

Your younger cousin is clearly a novice and knows very little about gravity and physics. In his case examples are useful to build intuition before presenting the general rule. Would you use the same approach when talking to a professor of physics? Quite likely they'd get bored with your examples and would consider them trivial. Why? Because the professor is an expert and has all the required intuitions and knowledge. A better approach is to first present a general rule and then use examples only for clarifications. In that case examples compensate for the missing knowledge. In short, novices need examples right-away, while experts need them only for clarification.

Show a Variety of Examples

Now we know that examples are useful. But, think about it. Are all examples equally useful? No! If examples are too similar (such as showing two apples falling from the same tree), they provide little information. If they are too different (such as showing and apple and a solar system), you cannot easily find commonalities and generalize the information. Effective learning requires a specific variety of examples. The most effective are near-miss contrasting examples. Such examples emphasize critical differences and facilitate building flexible abstractions (mental models). We can distinguish positive and negative examples. Positive examples represent something that is correct (for instance, an apple falling from the tree). Negative examples represent something that is incorrect (for instance, an apple attaching itself to the tree). They explicitly show things and phenomena that are disallowed.