Anusha Narasimhan > Recent Status Updates

"Should've gone to bed early last night, not stayed up reading Paradise Lost for the fiftieth time."

Yay! A bibliophile MC!

Gross information warning!

This book is very informative and all, but I shouldn't have read a chapter on mites and microbes while having coffee. Just learned that Demodex mites mate on the surface of our face at night and lay eggs in our pores.

Don't be like me. Don't read stuff like this while eating if you are squeamish. Also, you probably may not want to look up images of Demodex mites. You're welcome.

"The more technology becomes embedded in all aspects of life, the more it matters whether that technology is biased, alienating, or harmful"

I cannot agree more!

“That you do not know it for a certainty may reflect only your own ignorance." - I'm gonna say this to all the non-intuitive people who frown upon my intuitive methods.

"Clever kids in Ravenclaw, evil kids in Slytherin,
wannabe heroes in Gryffindor, and everyone who does the actual work
in Hufflepuff." - That's what I thought. And I don't belive in the Pottermore sorting, FYI.

"I’ve read The Feynman Lectures (or volume 1 anyway) and Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases and Language in Thought and Action and Influence: Science and Practice and Rational Choice in an Uncertain World and Godel, Escher, Bach and A Step Farther Out and—”

Yay! I've got a couple of books to add to Mt. TBR. Don't you love it when you get book recommendations from a book?

And the sine curve dips again. Desensitisation therapy? My foot!

Why am I upset that Harry is smarter than Hermione? I did predict that, but it's still a bummer. Although, learning about "positive bias" was nice.

The funny thing about this book is that my opinion of Harry wavers like a sine curve. Now I like him again because he hasn't lost his moral sense.

"Giving someone a straight gift of two Sickles was found to be twice
as effective as offering them twenty Sickles in getting them to do what
you want…”

That sly little devil... definitely a Slytherin!

"scientifically illiterate was not at all the same thing as stupid." - Agreed!

"I know about the concept of child abuse, I know about inappropriate touching and all of that and if anything like that happened I would call the police! And report it to the head teacher! And look up social services in the phone book! And tell Grandpa and Grandma and Mrs. Figg!" - Attaboy, Harry!

So Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky proposed the planning fallacy phenomenon... I really must read "Thinking, Fast and Slow" once I finish this book.

“You must learn to think before you speak, Mr. Potter, or else go through life without many friends. That has been the fate of many a Ravenclaw" - The down side of being an outspoken rational.

“World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation.” - He's probably going to end up in Slytherin, isn't he?

"There were probably a thousand people as intelligent as Einstein for every actual Einstein in history. Because those other geniuses hadn’t gotten their hands on the one thing you absolutely needed to achieve greatness. They’d never found an important problem." - This is very inspiring!

"Technology isn’t the same thing as science at all. And trying lots of different ways to do something isn’t the same as experimenting to figure out the rules." - Well said, Harry!

When Harry met Draco...

Fundamental attribution error, huh? Certainly did not expect to get a psychology/philosophy lesson. This book rocks!