Original artwork by Geordanna Cordero on Unsplash — cropped to 1200x630 pixels.
Introduction
thoughts. is a compilation of… well… my thoughts and their manifestations. It can be liken to a blog site minus content related to my personal life and plus a simple linkage page for noteable projects I have or am working on.
To be frank, I was vehemently opposed to creating a “blog” site, even at the time of writing this article I am reluctant to proceed. Maybe these reservations are a result of my own personal biases on what constitutes a blog or the desire to not be reduced to the caricature of the “blogger”—someone dismissed as a self-obsessed failed writer? Regardless, traversing through the internet age has raised concerns about privacy and well-being. For example, in the court of law, what one says or does will be used against them, but in the court of public opinion, everything in one’s documented history will be used against them—even if one has grown or changed. Is this conducive to well-being, particulary on mental health?
As an aside, our minds have not evolved to handle information permanence. For nearly all of human history, information was transient, but the privilege of indefiniteness was only available to the astute or powerful, but the reach was confined and access was limited.
So why am I following through with this “blog”? For the sake of brevity, it is for my own edification. One of the hallmarks of mental maturity is the ability to distinguish signal from noise. However, to achieve this state requires me to be the target of unreasonable and malicious attacks. The decision ultimately came down to on what I value more—growth or self-preservation?
Definition (Signal and Noise)
I have borrowed the terms signal and noise that are used in the physical and mathematical sciences to refer to true underlying pattern of a phenomena and randomness (false patterns), respectively. The sentiment in the utilization of such terms is retained, but the exact definitions are modified as follows:
Signal: Refers to information that provides crucial insights or is perceived to be valuable.
Noise: Refers to information that is devoid of constructive utlity.
Regardless of my rationale, I hope others, whom I may never come in contract with, can benefit. It is rare for an action to be an isolated event. We are a cumulation of philosophies derived from life experiences, which are a consequence of actions taken by ourselves and others.
As a recommendation when you venture through Thoughts, keep the following quote from Bruce Lee in mind.
“Absorb what is useful, discard what is not.” — Bruce Lee [1]
Purposes
As addressed, the purpose is for personal growth. I will address one aspect as it pertains to you. If you have not noticed already, my writing ability is quite lackluster and some of my thoughts are unclear or in need of further refinement. I want this to change. If you follow my posts chronologically, I hope you see improvements in the quality of writing and clarity of communication.
What better way to uncover knowledge gaps and test beliefs than to write about it? I would wager than everyone has experienced the “that sounded better in my head” or “hindsight is 20/20”. These sayings are a result of the unknown unknowns dilemma. For how can we know we are wrong if we believe that we are right? As Mark Twain (or assumed to be him) put famously,
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” — Anonymous (famously associated with Mark Twain)
Important (Exclusions and Refrainments)
I want to be clear that the objective of this site is not to share personal updates or to present personally identificable information beyond what is necessary. Hence, life updates will be avoided. I do not believe those who are not in my inner circle would care to know about my personal life. Further, those whom I am not well acquainted with should not be involved in my personal matters. You are free to disagree with my decision, but here is a useful bromide—seek out knowledge for the sake of edification for what benefit does unapplicable understanding confer?
Organization
The design of the organization system is inspired by both semantic versioning and MIT’s course numbering system.
My design operates based on the principle that too much organization leads to chaos. After careful thought, I have chosen to use four distinct themes. I will do my best to keep the content within the confines of the theme, but realistically it is not completely possible. Further, one can argue any content can fall into more than one of these themes. For the sake of simplicity, the assigned theme for the content is the “main” theme.
To help faciliate searching, the Labels are created for general classification. For example, if I write Learnings about math, the math label will be added as a tag along with the x.4.x.
If by any reason the core themes needed to be added upon (hopefully not edited), then I must provide an article defending the addition that will be classified under the x.1.x section. This condition is implemented to avoid falling into the temptation of overclassification, for too much classification is equivalent to no classification.
The Classification System
At the time of writing this article the classification system follows this format: [x1].[1-4].[x2]
Note
x1 and x2 are in place for x for this section to avoid confusion when defining what each means.
Definition
x1: the article/content number—the nth article for this site.
1-4: theme numeric classification range (inclusive). where for where is the theme index and is a sequence of integers that are defined by the bound (infinum and supremum) of 1-4.
x2: the article/content number of the theme—the nth article for that theme for this site.
Remark
x2 x1 x1,x2
Each classification will be integrated into the tagging system, but in the x.[1-4].x format.
x.1.x: “thoughts.” Reference
Content classified under this category will be related to the site in general and not to specific ideas.
This classification was created to faciliate searching for documents that pertains to this site. These articles should be treated as README files.
x.2.x: Critical Thought
Articles under this class observe no opinion (hopefully), but rather attempts to present and steelman all reasonable sides to a position adequately or engage in a thought experiment of multiple avenues. The objective is to allow the reader to decide which position makes sense to them regardless of my personal beliefs or stances.
x.3.x: Opinions and Evaluations
This theme serves as a “catch-all” class, and is assigned last in the theme decision chain. It is possible to argue that everything can fall under this category, however that is besides the point.
Writings focused on giving a perspective, arguing only for a set of positions or position, and presenting insights will be classified under this theme.
x.4.x: Learnings
“See one, do one, teach one” — William Stewart Halsted [2]
Content falling under this category focuses on helping reinforce knowledge by presenting my learnings in a didactic manner. What better way is there to learn than to teach?
It is important to distinguish between Opinions and Evaluations and this theme. With this theme, there must be a third party work as the basis for the content of the article and I must have learned something from the work, otherwise it will fall under Opinions and Evaluations. For example, suppose I am writing about my realizations during COVID19. This would not fall under Learnings for there is no third party work as the basis. However, if it is an informative article about how COVID19 distrupted entire ecosystems, then it would depend on whether I have learned something.
Note
Generally works that are considered highly reputable should fall under this category.
In fact, I doubt I would address any non-respected works unless it is highly controversal or infamous.
Labels
This classifer is used in conjunction with the classification system for tagging. There is no specific set of predefined labels as it is more reasonable to dynamically add labels. The principle that governs the defining of labels is specific but general.
Acknowledgements
The fundamental design of this site is without question — elegant. It would be shameful of me to not acknowledge the individual who created this magnificent template, jktrn@github. The name of the template is called astro-erudite that, as the name suggests, uses astro.js as the base framework. Besides the aesthetics, the design is highly modularized that even assets can be incorporated in the content/blog directory. Thus, adding content to this site and migrations to newer versions of the template would not be cumbersome. I highly recommend to anyone interested in blogging or developing a website to use his template, if they have development experience.
If you intend to contact me, you will see that any email links will be directed to me@thisdomainname.com or some variation of it, which means: me at [this_domain_name] dot com
References
- Lee, Bruce. Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee’s Wisdom for Daily Living. Ed. Little, John. McGraw-Hill. ISBN: 978-0804834711. p. 176. Part VII: “The Process of Becoming – Self-Expression”, 2002.
- Reznick, Richard K; MacRae, Helen. Teaching Surgical Skills—Changes in the Wind. New England Journal of Medicine 355(25). ISSN: 0028-4793. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMra054785. pp. 2664-2669, 2006.