Author: Halgir

APIs explained for humans

You are a human. This makes you rather slow and dim witted. Unlike computers, which are fast and smart.

Imagine a website whose only functionality is to give you a random number. Because you are squishy, the website has to give you a User Interface (UI). This consists of a button. Once you press the button, the website displays your number.

Now imagine you are a computer. You have no need for silly buttons. Instead, the website can give you an Application Programming Interface (API). When you send a message to an endpoint (computer language for button), that endpoint messages you back with your number. Much more efficient than buttons.

We can make the API do everything that we can make the UI do. For example, if you want to specify a range of numbers, the human would enter these in input fields. The computer would give them to the endpoint. If we want to add a button that gives you a random color, we can add an endpoint that gives you a random color.

APIs are better than UIs in every way except one: they are hard to use for humans. This is why we make UIs for tasks that have to be done by humans, and APIs for tasks that can be done exclusively by computers.

2 Goats 1 Car

Introduction

The Monty Hall problem is a classic brain teaser based on a television quiz show.
The puzzle involves three doors; behind one of them is a car. The other two doors conceal goats.
The aim of the puzzle is to maximize your chances of selecting the door leading to the car.

Scenario

  1. You select one of three doors, which remains closed for now.
  2. The quiz host opens one of the other two doors, revealing a goat.
  3. You are now given the choice to switch your selection to the other closed door.
  • PROBLEM: Statistically, should you stay or switch; or does it even matter?

Solution

Contrary to what most people logically expect, you are more likely to reveal the car if you switch.
Most people initally believe that the choice does not matter. Since there are two doors left, one would expect the odds of the car being behind any of the two doors to be 50/50.
In fact, switching your choice to the other door gives you a 2/3 chance to select the car, effectively doubling your odds.

Explanation

A good way to understand the solution is to consider the two original unchosen doors as one single choice. The first choice results in one of the other possibilities being outed as revealing a goat. Thus the player effectively has the opportunity to choose the entire contents of two doors, if one switches from the first choice. This is illustrated below.

Responsibility as a parent

The most important thing to remember as a parent is that your child did not ask to be brought into this world. They were perfectly not-miserable before you came along and made them.

Being a parent does not automatically qualify you for respect or obedience from your child. They have no inherent reason to do either.

Making a person is an ultimately selfish act. It incurs an enormous responsibility to make up for it. Your child owes you nothing, and they never will.

Desired net vector

What follows is an oversimplification, but that doesn’t make it entirely invalid.

All models are wrong, but some are useful. // George Box

The output of any team in an organization can be represented by a vector. It is comprised of:

  • The quantity and quality of work produced (distance).
  • The degree to which that work contributes to the organization’s larger strategy (direction).

Too often an organization’s leadership will assign teams conflicting vectors. This may result in each team producing stellar individual vectors, which unfortunately contribute nothing to or even detract from the organization’s larger strategy. The vectors cancel out.

 

 

The organization’s leadership should instead work to define and communicate the larger strategy, mathematically represented by its desired net vector. Only then are teams empowered to produce work that contributes to that strategy by making sure the direction of their vector contributes to the organization’s desired net vector.

 

 

When forced to choose, teams should prioritize directional alignment over total distance.

Fucks are finite

Life is a resource management game. Your most precious resource by far is fucks, and it is unfortunately a finite resource.

You naturally possess a certain amount of fucks, which is different for each person. You expend fucks through any activity, such as working, socializing or learning.

Some of those activities reward you with fucks in return, such as working a meaningful job, cultivating relationships you care about or mastering a skill. If they reward you with more fucks than you expend doing them, they are fuck-positive activities.

Other activities do not provide you with any fucks in return, and may even expend an unproportionate amount of fucks compared to similar activities. These include working a meaningless or directly harmful job, hanging on to toxic relationships or attending classes you fundamentally don’t care for. These are fuck-negative activities.

Doing fuck-negative activities is not inherently bad. For example, most of us legitimately need to earn currency to sustain ourselves. But a happy life is one in which your holdings of fucks increase over time.

As much as possible, work to identify and pursue your fuck-positive activities.

Curiously, fucks are a depreciating asset. If you avoid expending them altogether, your fucks will decrease over time.