I finally settled in at my new place. It’s been a mad 3 weeks. That’s all I want to say. What’s the point of blogging then? I don’t know. I will continue to blog once my desk is in place. Until then, read me later.
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This is from an Eric Lee (who’s a completely awesome guy):
In my experimental economics class 2 years ago (wow, it’s been that long?) we studied something called the Winner’s Curse. Essentially, what happens is when the winner of an auction (of a common value type) typically overpays for the auction. In some sense it’s a phyrric victory. Of course, the extreme form is by overpaying. Some other forms of the Winner’s Curse, feeling as if one has overpaid is also included (only if you consider independent value auctions as a form common value auctions). I was involved in one such auction today. So, as you may have known, I’m moving houses again, to a different state (and I complained about the design problems of the Rock Band guitar). Today I was involved in house inspections for rentals in the new state that I am going to be living and working in. Back in the Old state, looking for houses was a simple thing – there was very little competition. But over in New state1 was the first time I saw 30 people rock up to a tiny apartment and having half of them picking out the forms from the real estate agent. In all my years of finding places to rent, never had I encountered such competition. Continue reading Winner’s Curse
I’m moving houses again. This time, to a different state. So, as you can guess, I’m packing stuff up. And because this time round I cannot just put everything into the car and go (Australia is testament to failure of human cognition of large distances – one simply cannot visualize the distance from city to city) – I actually have to use a removalist. And so I started packing. Then this is what I found: Yes, you would have noticed that the guitar is larger than the box. No worries, you say, because the guitar headstock snaps off and it will go into the box, right (afterall, when it came, the headstock had to be manually snapped onto the neck)? So I flip to the back and looked at the place when I first snapped the headstock onto the neck, when I first bought the game: Continue reading Rock Band Guitar Design Failure Oh look, I have a blog. A couple of nights ago, I had a wonderful dinner with a good firend and the topic of reading came up many times. I mentioned that I have stopped reading fiction, and instead, I’m concentrating on non-fiction instead. Maybe some day I’ll pick up fiction again, who knows. In my opinion, there are really, only two ways of reading things. And these two ways can easily be approximated by the classes of books out there. There are generally only 2 superclasses of books – fiction and non-fiction, and you’d only read books with roughly these two mindsets. Let’s say, for now, that I am correct, and there are only two ways of reading a book (or article) – you can read it like reading a non-fiction, or you can read it like fiction. The actual genre or class of the book doesn’t really matter. Reading fiction is quite different from reading non-fiction. Ask yourself what the difference is when the last time you switched between reading non-fiction and fiction (the last time for me was in October, when I stopped reading Sala-i-Martin et al.’s Determinant of Long Term Growth; and picked up Terry Pratchett’s Unseen Academicals (apparently I got the limited edition cover too!)). My mindset sort of switched gears. I thoroughly enjoyed reading both, but I was also very aware that my approach to them both were very different. When reading fiction, the mind is less preoccupied with external logic and correctness. This is because the mind is aware of the construct of the fiction – that it is entirely fictional. The mind is less analytical (perhaps not when reading Agatha Christie’s books – but that’s the effect of a good author) when reading fiction, where as when reading non-fiction, even when it’s light reading like Superfreakonomics Now, I am not saying that there is a discrete barrier between reading fiction and non-fiction. Both give utility when reading (which is why I prefer to read epics and comedies instead of tragedies1 – in that I like to come out from reading fiction feeling happy and not depressed) – fiction feeds the imagination, and non-fiction feeds knowledge. Both fiction and non-fiction also evokes emotion, though arguably less in the latter (it’s quite hard to get any emotion from seeing a difference in GDP values, now can it). However, I am arguing that meta-awareness in the classes of books being read – fiction or non-fiction – will impose upon a mindset that affects the understanding of the subject being read. Simply put, we treat fictions and non-fictions differently. Continue reading Two Ways of Reading
First off, Happy New Year. I’ve had a fantastic 2009. Comparatively to countless many other people, I have had a relatively very good year. There were many things I wanted, but didn’t get; but there were many good turn of events that I have never thought possible either. I notice I have changed quite a bit in the past one year. And this change is quite evident in this blog. Once upon a time, I used to talk a lot about everything – everything I have knowledge in, I’d blab them out. Heck, there is even a category called Articles in this blog, where I would devote a lot of time writing what I know about issues I care about. Lately however, I have not done any long articles. It’s not that I have ran out of topics to write about – there are so many topics I can think about and write bloody long articles of, but I have not. This year, I think, I have to write more. I spent most of 2009 thinking and formulating ideas, and 2010 is a good year to get all these ideas out as fast as possible. I believe I have finally read enough to consider myself fairly qualified (as opposed to my younger, very unqualified, random blabbings off mouth self) to comment on more issues that I care about. Whilst 2009 was a year of introspection, let 2010 be the year of exposition for me. Here’s to a fantastic 2010.
Yes, I’m betraying yet another nerdy secret of mine. And if you’ve watched The End of Time, change your Facebook profile photo to The Master’s! |
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