5 quarters ago, on the 1st of June 2015, I decided to start quarterly reports on the progress of my goals. I have picked up many goals since and dropped many as well. It perfectly shows how life is and up and down and it is really all about taking your chances at right time. Put yourself into the position to be lucky. Anyways, I will move to a more structured way of reporting, i.e. I will categories for my goals e.g. smaller projects for things that are not heavily on my list. Also, I will introduce the means, i.e. how I want to get there e.g. through books, courses, interviews etc.) Here we go:


General project: 
Uncertainty/Probability (as the core issue of decision making)
As an overarching goal I have set myself the inquiry into what exactly uncertainty is. There is plenty, and by that I mean tons, of ways to go into this inquiry, namely the goals see below.


Main project of the year: 
Quantum computing (including complexity and more)
Last year, I set myself the goal of trying to understand the fuzz about artificial intelligence and the actual “technology” (really: the math) behind it. I am perfectly on track for understanding AI (it is really just machine learning, at least from the technical perspective).


Recently, I have been reading into the issues of quantum computing, mainly inspired by https://www.edge.org/memberbio/seth_lloyd. He mentions also machine learning as potential application of quantum computing and I took him by heart i.e. I want to understand what he exactly means by that and for that I am reading into the background and the basics of quantum computing. 


Smaller projects: 
Bachelor's thesis: the role of probability in or in ethics
Rowing
Web crawlers and text analysis (this has been already been working well over the last year)
China: study the language (via courses), culture, politics and economics/business (via books and conversations with nationals)
additional modules: History of Mathematics, Computability and Complexity (both via courses at the University)


Coming up:
These are things that are on my bucket list, but that have not made it onto my daily schedule due to being not important enough as the others. They include (without any order):

• Learning the French language and African history (which is highly influenced by the French)
• Learning the Russian language and study the history of the Soviet Union and its global political role in the 20th century (which is incredibly important for today’s international relations).
• Learning the Arabic language and the history of the Middle East

Finally, the general theme for all these goals is to UNDERSTAND them and not just RUSHING through them. There is no use in rushing through something, almost always. So, I will take my time and the time which is necessary.

While reading Konrad Seitz’s book on China, I also looked up the one or other reference. One pointed towards work from Henry Kissinger, which also included a debate from 2011 on the question: “Will the 21st Century Belong to China?”.


I ordered the transcript and the talk is available online here: http://www.munkdebates.com/debates/china


About the munk debates:
“The semi-annual Debates were established in 2008 as a charitable initiative of the Aurea Foundation co-founders Peter and Melanie Munk. The Debates take place in Toronto in the evening in front of an audience of 3,000 people at Roy Thomson Hall. The Debates last approximately an hour and a half. Two panelists argue for a debate style motion and two against. The format is short opening statements followed by a civil and substantive moderated panel discussion, followed by short closing statements. Past participants include Henry Kissinger, Glenn Greenwald, Paul Krugman, Fareed Zakaria, Tony Blair, Christopher Hitchens and Larry Summers, among others. The Debates are broadcast throughout Canada by the CBC and across the continental United States on C-SPAN. The transcript of each debate is published as a book in Canada by House of Anansi Press and internationally.”


Overall, the debate gives a unique insight into how a diverse set of four “China shapers” think about it China and its future. These people give opinions politics and economy and their opinions are highly valued. It’s incredibly interesting to see opinions of well received individuals clash. The debate is only about two hours, so there is only an exchange on issues on the surface, but, still, it offers information available nowhere else.

It just strikes me as unresponsible to build a nation's future on statements such as "China's tank is still not empty" and "The Chinese people will at least double their efforts and have lots of things up their sleeves". It is just pure emotional speculation. I do not understand, yet, where David Li, one of the speakers, wants to go with this. I really don't know.

After keeping this book on my reading list for way too long, I have finally come around to read it.
Overall, it is an objection of the Gaussian normal distribution as the SOLE natural probability distribution. The fractal by Mandelbrot is one suggested alternative. Nothing to see here people, move along. (Or I might have misread the book. There are plenty of interesting statements in there, but I think this one is the main message)

It is also a philosophy book with popular tendencies which also became quite popular. A bit odd in that sense I guess. Nassim  draws on a lot of philosophies and philosophers to make his point which is a good thing if you believe in method of building your own work on other people’s literature (which makes you prone to group thing, but you have to start somewhere).


I could hardly detect any “hate” or “shouting voice” while reading the book. His arguments seemed overall valid to me, but I can see how quite a number of people might be offended by his painful but true statements. I personally thought it to be rather entertaining, having a good laugh every 20 pages or so.

It is about 300 pages and reads relatively well if you are interested in philosophy and the venture of trying to understand uncertainty.

If I was to use his argument in my adventure of explaining the world, I definitely would have to read the book at least one more time. With such a peculiar matter as uncertainty and the stringing together of quite a number of arguments it is easy to make mistakes and misinterpret the matter.


10/10, would read again.