I’m not God, but after enough time on this planet, I have some conception of life. Life as it is, was, and should be. If asked to squeeze the sponge of life and distill it, here’s what I would answer.

6 Strategic Principles

Principle 1: Life is all about strategy. Everything is in accordance with and can be analyzed by the Triplex Mindset. As mathematics is the language of the universe, what we experience and struggle with can be analyzed thereunder as well.

Principle 2: You cannot improve that which is not measured. I observed this phenomenon in my stock trading article, explored in point 4 "Run with your decision and never hesitate." Better to have a plan, stick to it, and lose, than to disregard the plan while trading and win, because in the former case, you know how to improve, while in the latter, you don’t.

Principle 3: Read books often, for they are pure, powerful strategy. This is encapsulated in my article "For the Strategy of the World".

Principle 4: Converse with elders, for they are reassurance. Similar to the power of books to inspire confidence, elders have a similar effect. Being in the presence and hearing their adventures immediately boosts companionship and, as a consequence, confidence.

Principle 5: What is difficult may not be effective; what is effective may not be difficult. The P vs NP problem may be excruciatingly challenging, yet it does not immediately lead to tangible and practical results¹. A website is not particularly hard to code, and yet it can serve as a large archive of information and thoughts, encapsulate one’s worldview, and lead to strategic advancement; see my article "Underrated Strategy: Personal Website".

Principle 6: Competition organizers have more power than even their best contestant. Those who lead and create have the grand vision of how a certain entity—football, mathematics—should be run. Players are followers, beholden to the plans of the organizers. They may excel within the field, but ultimately, they are still only a pawn in the game of the owners.

2 Bravery Principles

Principle 7: If you want success, do what successful people do. An obvious principle, as there is no argument to the contrary. And yet, in practice, this one slips—including for me sometimes. We love heroes, and we idolize them, but we don’t always behave in similar fashion. Perhaps the worship process implicitly causes us to internalize our own deficiencies, so that we no longer strive to be great, as we identify with some level of inability. Or perhaps we’re jealous and want to bring them down, in so doing bringing ourselves down. Or, worst of all, we believe that someone else is going to save the day, that we just have to be a good follower—if we follow the virtuous leaders at all—and it will all be sunshine and lollipops.

But let’s ask: Where did we get inspiration from? Alexander the Great fought in all his battles and Hans Christian Anderson wrote his tales despite immense ridicule. If we are inspired by the fire of past generations and applaud their bravery, we stare at those flames without creating our own at our own peril, the peril of darkness in the next generation, for there is no present fire. Eventually, the greatest reward of learning from valorous ancestors is not cozily admiring and analyzing them, distanced from their struggles, but carrying their torch ourselves with valor.

Principle 8: Be brave now, rather than later. In other words, a stitch in time saves nine. In principle this is mathematically obvious and undisputed, but in practice, it is difficult, since in dire circumstances it is difficult to muster up the will and courage to declare "Let’s get rid of evil now, because it will only get worse if we don’t". We would rather wait for someone else to save us, or for circumstances to regress to the mean, except sometimes—most times—things will only get worse. A way to avoid such hopeless despair is to become philosophically strong and act with the support of an uplifting community.

2 October '21 Findings

Principle 9: Let the internal guide the external. This is described in "Dichotomy of Self". If we master control over ourselves, we can shape the surroundings in our favor. We might not be able to unrig the game of life², but we can bend it to benefit us. Ultimately, this is the optimal expenditure of our energy: to work on ourselves and make us individually powerful. This is not to say we should create impact in the external—synergy is real—but to say we need to get the cause and effect correct, and the cause is always the internal.

Principle 10: Maintain positive base momentum. You’ve seen in video games when your enemy, despite a current troop advantage, eventually gets overcome by your superior troop production. If we keep ourselves in the green³, we will overtake the sleepers. It’s the Tortoise and the Hare all over again, it’s also simple physics: velocity over position. Personally, I wake up early (~7:30am) relative to other MIT students. This gives me the advantage of having experienced ~1.5 hours more than the typical student at any given moment during the day. It may not seem like much, but add this over a semester and the difference in experience is clear⁴.

Footnotes

¹ If we now know that certain problems are solvable in polynomial time, how does that help us find a solution in polynomial time?

² and whether we’d want to do that is also up for debate

³ in east Asia, stock price increase is red, and decrease is green. I’m using the American convention.

⁴ It might not work as cleanly as this, for they also experience more night than I do, but I think the early bird advantage is there.