Learning About Mental Models As A Teenager 🧠
In my past newsletters, I’ve talked about reading The Great Mental Models series by Farnam Street, which is a collection of books (so far they’ve published 2 books, but they aim to have 4 total) talking about different mental models from various disciplines. In May, I wrote an article detailing what my introduction to mental models was like, and I even threw in some of the favorite ones I’ve learned about so far!
“While reading about mental models is one thing, applying them in the real world is a whole other story. While I currently don’t find myself making important decisions on a daily basis, that is likely to change in the future as I grow older. By thinking, reflecting, as well as using them to make relatively smaller but still important decisions now, I hope to have a good repertoire of mental models to pull from in times of need and apply to various problems.”
Urban Canopy: Using Artificial Photosynthesis to Sustainably Produce Butanol & Hexanol 🌱
In April, I spent a lot of time working on a moonshot project. A moonshot project is a project which aims to solve a big world problem by improving the situation by 10x, instead of 10%. These projects typically use groundbreaking technology/technologies to do so. My team and I (shoutout to Kai Kim-Suzuki, Imran Iftikar, and Henry Huang!), looked into how we can sustainably produce Butanol and Hexanol, two important biofuels, which could help reverse climate change since it would involve direct air carbon capture.
Making A Personal Assistant/Chatbot Using Pytorch & NLTK 🤖
In April I wrapped up the project I was working on regarding making an AI-powered chatbot (I also named it Nova)! I wrote an article detailing how I made it, and how it works.
“The aim of the new version of Nova was that I would be able to give it an input, one it had never seen before, and it would be able to figure out what I’m saying and return a pre-programmed response.
This new type of chatbot is more complex and intelligent than the previous version we were using (which was really just a few if/else statements), but simpler than a generative/conversational chatbot with which one can have a conversation.”
Books I’m Reading 📚
Benjamin Franklin by Walter Isaacson
The story of Benjamin Franklin has been told for years, and the lessons he has taught us are timeless. In renowned author Walter Isaacson’s biography of him, Isaacson highlights Franklin’s industry, virtue, curiosity, and playfulness. The most interesting aspect of the book was how it described the ways in which Franklin went about developing his character, accumulating wisdom, and honing his various skills. Franklin was somewhat of a polymath, being a writer, publisher, inventor, and politician, to name a few. Franklin also surrounded himself with like-minded people. He started Junto, a club for “mutual improvement”, in 1727 followed by the American Philosophical Society in 1743, which is still around today (it has had many notable members including George Washington, Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton, and Albert Einstein!)
Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark
Life 3.0 may just be the most important book I’ve read so far this entire year. There are very few authors who can take the way you look at the world and turn it upside down, yet that is exactly what Max Tegmark, a professor at MIT and a co-founder of the Future of Life Institute, did. This book discussed the basics of how AI works, the possibility of creating a conscious superintelligence using AI, and different scenarios regarding what our future may look like. This book also encourages readers to join the discussion on AI, and be proactive about creating the world they want to live in. This book grapples with many complex questions such as, what is consciousness? Tegmark also describes his thoughts on how he believes that consciousness is what gives the universe meaning since without conscious beings there isn’t anyone who can experience this beautiful universe we so often take for granted. He says that asking: what the meaning of the universe is, isn’t a good question. It isn’t the universe’s job to bestow meaning upon itself, instead, it is up to us to give meaning to the universe.