I am just befuddled by how much of this violence is directly motivated by religious concerns, both on the side of Iran and on the side of Israel and USA.

I have been reading on the topic of shunyata or emptiness in Mahayana Buddhism, and have been uncomfortably observing just how much of the artifacts we take to be real and substantial in the world are just "made up". They don't have an inherent reality of their own except what we attribute to them. And yet, made up stories can have very real consequences in terms human suffering.

It ought to be possible to cut through the layers of reifications and simply defuse much of the strife in the world. And yet, we continue to inflict misery on each other unnecessarily.

Just wondering - do you include information on interviewing, salary negotiation, communication with management, leading teams, and maybe topics on career progression?

These would have been very useful to me back when I was in the university.

"Metaproject" doesn't capture the idea that I think the author is trying to convey.

An example: suppose you want to improve your French and also build your knowledge of Physics. So in order to target both projects, you attend Physics lectures in French, and also read French Physics books. Thus you progress in both your projects simultaneously.

I would call this kind of thing, "Poly-projects" or maybe "Project complexes". "Meta" would imply one extra level of indirection away from actually doing the project. E.g., thinking about what kind of projects you want to do would be a metaproject.

A key meta-requirement is to want to think critically about issues.

If there is no desire to discover the truth of a matter and evaluate it against supporting evidence and opposing claims, then all efforts at inculcating critical thinking are dead in the water. On the other hand, if there is a genuine desire to assess arguments and claims critically, there are plenty of resources today that can teach you how.

This is a never-ending process. But the desire to think critically has to be in place before it can even begin. Critical thinking cannot occur without a strong commitment to epistemic hygiene.

In India, the problem is that many people do not even want to think critically. We tend to gravitate toward beliefs that buttress our tribal affiliations. Our tribes are defined by our worldviews, and our tribes must prevail. Hence our worldviews must be proven true, regardless of whether they are in fact true.

There is a striking indifference toward truth as a value - ironic for a country whose national motto is "Truth alone triumphs." Many people have yet to realize that truth - satya - is not something you place on a pedestal and worship, but something you actively pursue, overturning long-held beliefs where necessary.

> I lived in SF for a few years and found the tech community's disinterest in art to border on allergy. It was as if expressing an aesthetic preference weren't an optimal way to spend one's time or money.

Art takes many forms, and not everyone need be interested in the same kind of art.

There's plenty of aesthetic consideration that goes into scientific and technological projects. Consider the huge stack of technologies starting with silicon to massive computing clusters and code-bases with hundreds of millions of lines of code running on them. It's an impressive feat of science and technology, but the many pieces that go into making them also have an austere beauty of their own, often constrained by the need to be actually useful in an unforgiving world.