Tag Archives: dailyprompt

PROMPT: Instincts

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Do you trust your instincts?

With regards to some types of questions, I trust my instincts implicitly. This is NOT because I think I have infallible instincts or a gift, but rather because reasoning and conscious cognitive processes are often demonstrably and systematically wrong in some domains. For example, the science shows people who think they can detect lies by observing and employing their reasoning to what they observe are wrong far more often than people who go with their gut, sans analysis. There are many areas like this, where being overly cerebral offers bad outcomes.

Of course, there are cases like the Monty Hall problem, in which being more deeply analytic and reasoned yields a better outcome. And, so, the trick is to know when to go with your gut and when to systematically think things through.

PROMPT: City Favorite

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What is your favorite place to go in your city?

In Bangalore [a.k.a. Bengaluru,] where I’ve been living for the past decade, I’m fond of Cubbon Park [a.k.a. Sri Chamarajendra Udyanavana.]

PROMPT: First Impression

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What’s the first impression you want to give people?

There is no first impression I’d like to give everyone. For most people I’m good with “seems decent enough,” but there are people I’d be quite happy to think me a lunatic. I guess the most useful first impression would be to be seen as one who can spot someone who is manipulative, a friendship “level jumper,” or of nefarious intent so as to minimize the approach of such people in the first place. [The problem is that most such people see themselves as charismatic and gregarious rather than as manipulative. They don’t realize their stank shows through.]

PROMPT: Currently Reading

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What book are you reading right now?

I’m reading The Man with the Compound Eyes by Wu Ming-Yi because I try to read some literature from every place to which I travel, and this one is with respect to Taiwan.

As I’m never reading just one book, there’s also Geoffrey West’s Scale, Lukianoff & Schlott’s The Cancelling of the American Mind, Stephen Wolfram’s The Second Law, and others.

PROMPT: Live Anywhere

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If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?

First of all, I’d say that I probably could live most places in the world, and the few I couldn’t (e.g. North Korea) have no appeal to me as a place of residence. Having lived several places in the US, a couple years in England, and now over ten years in India, I’m under no illusions that there is a Shangri-la out there, a perfect utopia. Most places are fine places to live if one is flexible-minded and can adapt to that place’s rhythms and peculiarities. There may be a honeymoon period during which some place seems better than the rest, but even the most seemingly idyllic place will lose its luster in time.

That’s why I recommend travel. Everyplace offers beauty and life lessons when taken in bite-size pieces.

PROMPT: Finders Keepers

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What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever found (and kept?)

I once found a $100 bill by the curb on a rundown street that was about half abandoned buildings. I assumed it had been dropped by a drug dealer because not a lot of other people in that neighborhood had $100 bills in quantities such that they could cascade out of their pockets without notice. And there weren’t a lot of people hanging out in that particular area that weren’t up to something. But I didn’t keep it so much as spend it. I’m not much of a stuff collector, and I early learned that cool rocks and shells and such belong where they are and I take pictures, not souvenirs.

My father was a farmer. He, on rare occasion over decades of farming, turned up something interesting in the act of turning the soil (e.g. a mastodon tooth and some decomposing metal antiques.)

PROMPT: Podcasts

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What podcasts are you listening to?

I don’t really, though I do catch YouTube rebroadcasts of Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman, and some standup comics.

PROMPT: Pet

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What is good about having a pet?

More time with animals and less time humans makes one more likely to retain sanity.

PROMPT: Time

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Do you need time?

I believe I prefer the order of a sequenced life rather than a life of “everything, everywhere, all at once.” But having never ventured off my worldline, I don’t have sound basis for comparison. If you know of how I could experience atemporal existence, I would be happy to give it a try and get back with you.

PROMPT: Favorite Subject

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What was your favorite subject in school?

Depends on the year. In twelfth grade, I remember enjoying Physics the most. In Eleventh, Psychology was the best class I attended. There was a year when I got the most out of an English class that focused on Creative Writing. I guess my most longstanding preference was for classes like Geography and Social Studies, wherein we learned about the world outside our world.