Steve Jobs the Alchemist

According to this article, How to use the concept of Alchemy to improve your writing (or any creative action), alchemy relies on

-- reducing base metal to its materia prima prior to it being transmuted into gold.

-- reducing a writing idea to its essence

-- dissolving impurities


In another example, we have  1,500 types of stretches or 60+ Yoga poses or 120+ Tai Chi moves

versus

the following 12-move exercise.

Wherever there is complexity, there is underlying deep simplicity.

Steve Jobs made his name with kicking out the fluff and the chaff from his products.

See alchemic principles in action at CANDOPI.com.

Simple Answers: Globalization

Read the title or heading. Then answer the question, or solve the issue yourself first. Then you will see where you stand.

For me, I was thrilled that my simpleton answers were right on target.





Let the winners make some reasonable compensation for losers.

Simple enough to be a villager's answer?

Simple Answers: Productivity

Read the title or heading. Then answer the question, or solve the issue yourself first. Then you will see where you stand.

For me, I was thrilled that my simpleton answers were right on target.




Zombie banks and zombie businesses caused by corruption or incompetence destroy productivity most.

Funny, a villager's answer.

Buddha Kept No Secrets

Many Ways to Your Heart's Desire: The Alchemist

There are more than one way to do anything. Follow your heart's desires.

Caveman Hardcore Inventing

"Hardcore Inventing" written by Robert Yonover, the inventor of RescueStreamer now deployed in all navies and air forces of the world, contains extremely inspiring ideas for entrepreneurial innovators.

After Peter Drucker's "Innovation and Entrepreneurship," we all know entrepreneurial innovation must be "simple".

How simple?

According to the authors, it should be ape-level, caveman-level simple.

In their primitive conditions, our primitive ancestors innovated "quickly" as their survival depended on it. They used only "materials at hand" and scavenge these resources by "carefully observ[ing] [their] surroundings".

My Parting Gift to the English Department

(1) When Chomsky and Halliday show up, ask them to build a working model or a prototype. If they refuse or if they can't, laugh in their faces or roll your eyes.

(2) When Sylvia Plath and co show up, ask them to write without a formula, If they refuse or if they can't, laugh in their faces.

(3) When fake ESP(English for specific purposes), EAP(English for academic purposes), EPP(English for professional purposes) experts show up, ask them how many hotel staffs, business people, geologists, chemical engineers, doctors, nurses, sailors, insurance people, software engineers have found their stuffs useful. If they don't have a specific number/figure, laugh in their faces.

As this lovely book illustrates, keep this in mind: Sophisticated elaborate ruses can be easily countered with very simple moves. Be simple, be even stupid.

Simplicity : Be Stupid --- 3

Even the book title is arresting: "Piercing the Fog of War: Recognizing Change on the Battlefield: Lessons from Military History, 216 BC Through Today."

Full of case studies. Comprehensive analyses.

As usual, I retain only the key points truly relevant for me.

The book says, the battle field is full of black swans, surprises, what he calls "extraordinary," "aberrations," the unknown-unknowns, etc.

I am nervous about even the known-unknowns. I am so more worried about the unknown-unknowns. What to do amidst these abnormal, totally unexpected aberrations?

The answer echoes my last two posts: Be simple, be stupid.

Aberrational actions do not necessarily aberrational re-actions. We can simply answer them with responses from our personal repertoire, personal experience.

Isn't that delightful?

Simplicity : Be Stupid --- 2

For years, I didn't dare to read Sylvia Plath, thinking she is too deep, arty, subtle for me.

This morning I read this book in my morning commute. Reading it from back to front, I first met Maya Angelo's "Still I Rise," brave, bold and inspiring, and simple and to the point.

Then I met Plath's "Daddy." No big deal.

Next came Anne Sexton's "Wanting to Die."  No big deal either.

To my shock, these 2 suicidal poetesses wrote to a formula! "The phone is off the hook" in both poems. So much for authenticity, sincerity and originality.  They both seemed to be paraphrasing Freud and bogus psychoanalysis.

They are far too simpler than simple poets like Frost, Wordsworth or Maya Angelo.


Don't be intimidated by complexity, so-called sophistication  and airs. Just look at it calmly. Just keep your cool. Fake art can never stand that kind of gaze or stare or even wink.

Simplicity : Be Stupid

A section of the book is titled "Be Stupid."

The author insists that the more the investment schemes or products look complex, the more stupid you should remain.

Don't be intimidated by the complexity. Untangle and expose it just by asking  very simple,  basic questions one after another.

Isn't it encouraging?

Courage of Simplicity and Big Data Science

General Patton may be the first to initiate this trend of Speed, Simplicity and Boldness.

Jack Welch later customized this to business world as Speed, Simplicity and Self-Confidence. In that HBR interview, he ridiculed people with 4-inch thick books, full of what every 5th grader knows.


Now Philipp K. Janert talks about his experience in data analysis field, in the book Data Analysis with Open Source Tools.

Once he noted a team trying to solve a case by running a neural network on a computer cluster. Yet, a working solution would take a mere 1-line calculation of some very simple techniques. He saw "an excess of sophistication" everywhere.

Before he recommends his cure, he diagnoses the cause as discomfort arising from unfamiliarity and uncertainty. In a new domain or problem space, people become unsure as to how to proceed and thus begin looking for silver bullets and miracle cures. The more impressive, the more expensive, the more hyped, the more complicated, the better for them.

His recommendat‭ions:

1. Methods you know for sure, methods you understand fully
2. Simple, transparent approaches and methods, because they are cheaper, less error-prone, and more revealing of insights.
3. Stay with the simple methods until they prove insufficient

He then goes on to say :

1. "Big Data" is often small, small enough to reside in Excel of the Finance Departments.
2. "Big Data" is not always better since the classical statistics's concept of sampling obviates "the need to examine every single member of a population ..."

Big data, and therefore "Big Guns"?

You decide.