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tarted reading Alexander Hamilton after finishing the 10/10 biography of John Adams. And through reading alone, I can not keep up with the energy of Hamilton. At 19, he thought he was late and wanted to finish college in 2 years, but Princeton didn't accede to his demands, so he had to apply to king's college, and he soon proved himself a prodigious writer, publishing an article a week while pursuing his studies. When he first engaged in the revolutionary war, he made an impression on military generals by his encyclopedic knowledge of military history and tactics, and he even instinctually predicted how the continental army will win through repeated skirmishes as opposed to facing them in the open.

Currently( page 83), he is realizing that, while books were useful, real life and heading an army to victory is trickier and there are so many real life dimensions he has to account for... But why was John Adams crucial to the independence?

John Adams was probably the wisest of all the founders.

Exhibit A: In first voyage overseas, he gets sent to France in hopes of signing a treaty with the French and, unlike Jefferson and Franklin who was living in France at the time as king and a darling of the french, he didn't feel that kind of fealty to the French and couldn't bring himself to be the yes man to all their demands. Instead, he realizes, that if we rely in our independence on the goodwill of the French alone, it is not really independence, so he engages his high agency gears and forges on to Holland without congress's directions ( a decision that proved crucial in later years) and spend time there to get loans from Holland where the spirit of liberty was alive.

Exhibit B: John Adams is back home, and the presidency is afoot, Jefferson and Hamilton are tête-a-tête. Jefferson is the apostle of republicanism: we don't want a monarchy, states shoukd retain their power, government should not have full discretion; Hamilton is head8ng the federalists and preaching the need of a powerful government. Meanwhile, John Adams picks no side, eventhough he is first choice for presidency against Jefferson.

Exhibit C. The wife of John Adams, Abigail, is probably the reason behind his successes and wisdom: she has this timeless wisdom as evidenced by the content of correspondence between them while he was away with John Quincy, which totaled 10 yrs. But even then, when she for example, wants him multiple times against Hamilton( " beware of that second Bonaparte") or by trying to reveal the enmity Jefferson has against him, he doesnt take her seriosuly, and chooses to maintain his composure.

Exhibit D. At the end of their lives, after having a lot of acrimony between them, a third party intervene between them and tell John Adams I saw in a dream that Jefferson and Adams has resumed their correspondance and posterity deemed it the event of the millennium. He immediately thank him and starts writing letters to Jefferson which made the final period of the two men's lives the most intimate where they talked about everything from science, religion, art, literature, and Shakespeare... etc. In one letter Jefferson says: I am so glad I got a friend whom I can talk with about different subjects and he doesnt think I just landed from the moon.

And then they both died within hours on the 50th anniversary? Incroyable

Ron Chernow's 'Washington: A Life' is an excellent biography!

-Washington had a very troublesome relationship with his mother, and he strived all his life to divorce himself from her teachings.

-Washington didn’t have any kids, so it was through Providence that he was destined to be the father of America.

-Washington's discerning insight as evidenced by his recognizing the exact time for an outright rebellion against the British.

-Wasghinton's mode of thinking was deliberate, he took time to make decisions, but when he made a decision, it was always vindicated in retrospect.

Washington's special mentoring of up and coming generals like Marquis de Lafayette and Hamilton is inspiring; he elevated them, admired their conduct and intellect, and always sought their advice on a variety of essential matters.

Washington had to reconcile his owning of slaves with the libertarian values trumpeted in the american revolution; it kept nagging at him until the end of his life, but he kept his thoughts low key so as not to trigger any brouhaha in the states.

When the federalists got their constitution ratified with the compromise of bill of rights, a new faction was born: the republicans who wanted to limit the federal discretion in light of the constitution vs Hamilton-led federalists who emphasized the importance of a strong federal government. The ongoing battles in letters between Thomas Jefferson and Hamiltom shows the formidable literary prowess of the two.

Washington served two terms, and despite his education that pales in comparison to that of the other founders, he valued education deeply, and didn't shrink from mingling with people of high intellect and learning from them. He had a special kind of wisdom that was forged by years of battles and experience, he thought in systems, understood what nations are motivated by, and did everything with futurity in mind( the neutrality act, for exanple). He also encouraged American manufacturing and supported Hamilton's establishment of the first bank a national mint.

One scene that really stuck with me through all this is when Marquis de Lafayette's son George Washington de Lafayette was sent to America for safety while Marquis was in prison, and Washington was torn between disturbing his relationship with the new French government and his deep relationship with Marquis de Lafayette; he chose to honor laffayette and supply the son with place to get educated and thrive; Lafayette the son proved quick at learning English and different subjects, that he even surpassed his tutors.

Throughout the book, some incredibly influential characters would pop up in passing and I am like who is Patrick Henry? How did I never hear of John Marshall, How did Hamilton have time to write everything on Washington's behalf AND as anon in different gazetes...

Two questions: Should we blame washington for owning slaves in a time where it was the norm to do so? Should we give him the benefit of the doublt bc he recognized how discordant that was with the American revolution values? ( the founders had this inclination to shift the blame to future generations to make the right choice in regards to slaves)

What does the preponderance of eloquently written letters exchanged between the founders say about the quality of their thinking at the time?

..Among the many things to which he gave thought and care, none was more important to him than the work he hoped would be accomplished by the Vanderbilt University.

Vanderbilt, towards the end of his life, was still lamenting his lack of education and his involvement in the war against the south through his mightiest ship "Vanderbilt" and wanted to redeem that by building something of value for the South. And Nahsville, TN became the beneficiary of this attempt at atonement to his former enemies. In the early days of his career, people always described him as "boorish, uncultured" even after he made it to riches and built his dynasty. But how did he get there in the first place? What kind of legacy did he leave behind?

Cornelius Vanderbilt started operating ships and later building them with a Jacksonian spirit that embodied 3 tenets: Laissez-faire( mind my own business), limited government intervention, and anti-monopilizing sentiment( let the market decide). His first achievement was in the famous supreme court case 'Gibbons v. Ogden' where he advocated free trade between states and unencumbered sail. Next, in a fortuitous turn of events, he turns to steamships, and caught the California gold rush craze, and became the preeminent enabler of transfer of goods between San fransisco and the rest of the nation, through his Nicaragua line, but it wasn't just luck, he used to say that if I can not provide better experience with cheaper costs, I'd rather go out of business; he was ruthless on cutting prices.

He doesn't stop, NYC becomes a major economic hub thanks to his steamships and dominance at sea and his visible hand in shaping wall street and incurring structural monetary seismic shifts in how society understood money by switching from gold coins to greenbacks backed by gold and then to legal tenders. Despite a lot of near death experiences fighting the wiles of the sea, and the loss of family memebers, he still soldiered on, and was now bracing himself and his ships to get involved in the civil war, where his Jacksonian ideals would be put to the test. It was time the government got stronger to fight the rebellion and, later, counter the weight of his capitalistic might. After the civil war ended, Vanderbilt turned to the lake shore line and thereafter to a series of consolidations of various transit line companies, Vanderbilt becomes the singular man to command the transit lines(and the sea) and thus centralize everything into one entity he owned and controled. The richest man in America had now been born, and with him the 'Corporation' concept had come to life. Business will never be the same:

If he had been able to liquidate his $100 million estate to American purchasers at full market value (an impossible task, of course), he would have received about one-tenth of the total demand deposits at banks and 2.8 percent of the nation’s entire money supply. If he had taken possession of $1 out of every $38 circulating in the American economy.

From a Jacksonian to a monopolist, After conquering enemies of all kinds, Vanderbilt has transformed himself and America, thanks to the help of his in-laws mostly and his children and left behind a dynasty that brought about the gilded age and the extrvagance of the 19th century America.

I am left wondering about the role of fortuitous timing in Vanderbilt's life. Surely, a lot of people coulda taken advantage of these opportunities, but there seems to be a combination of timing and mammoth determination and street smarts that's needed to identify opportunities before anybody else and keep going non-stop. I also wonder How his death ended that spirit of building and expanding of his empire; his sons couldn't match his pace and ended up in courts fighting over his wealth and squandering most of it on fancy homes and stuff that Vanderbilt would scoff at. Is the great man theory valid, after all?

1. Life can not be just about solving problems. There has to be something that inspires us to get up in the morning; the spirit of exploration and adventure, humanity exploring the stars!
2. The advancement of civilization is not inevitable. Egyptians, for instance, forgot how to build the pyramids, Skills/technologies can get lost. Human agency is what advances civilization!
3. answering questions is not what we bedevils humanity. It is asking the right questions what matters more, and one way to ensure that is to expand consciousness.
4. always question "the requirements" go all the way to the original source: who made this requirement? Why? did they make a mistake, is it really necessary? when it comes to engineering, laws made by humans are suggestions. The only laws that matter are the laws of physics!
5. Building anything meaningful requires a) a maniacal sense of urgency, b) a constant moving of the goalposts, and the willingness to take risks, fail, make decisions fast, and then change course accordingly.
6. on How to hire: hire people with the right attitudes( have a drive to learn everything and work hard as opposed to having a polished resume)
7. Learn from all disciplines, let successes in one discipline( or failures), inform how you do things in other fields, and be multidisciplinary.
8. best part is no part. Delete everything that's not needed, simplify as much as possible
9. always think of cheaper solutions. There are always cheaper solutions!
10. everyone should be an engineer on the team, architects, engineers, mechanics; they all should be next to each other so the pain is felt by all

Vagabonding is the art of leaving everything behind and traveling for an extended period of time in a faraway land.

There are distinct differences between vacationing for a few days in the Bahamas and living in some remote exotic place as far from what you're accustomed to as possible and experiencing it fully, both the bad parts and the good parts. Taking on such quests shouldn’t be a privilege only the rich could afford.

When you shift your perspective, you actually realize that everyone is equal in terms of how they choose to breathe life into their limited time; the real richness is not in accumulating wealth, holding on to it, and confining yourself to a box of severe constraints imposed on you by your job duties, societal expectations, and presumptions as to how one is supposed to spend their time. You get rich by adding life to an otherwise monotonous existence whose main aim is the seeking of more. And that, my friends, is totally affordable to do. Any job in the western world can afford you the privilege of adding richness to your life. Richness with different perspectives, with different ways of seeing the world, and with novel experiences that stay with you.

So first, you just have to be a person with certain qualities: enjoys working and earning, not prone to getting sucked into vacuous spending on material things, and have penchant to save their money for those vagabonding adventures that will enrich their lives.

Second, traveling is not meant to follow a predetermined plan and sticking by it. That is tourism. This thing is not about checking boxes on a bucket list. The ideal would be to research enough to know about safety, culture, and the places that people go to (maybe to avoid), and then let your instincts decide what to do while there. You're not there for a cursory look at things you could watch a video about or see on Google maps, you're there to experience the thrill of the unknown, the thrill of uncertainty, of what’s next. While there, you walk aimlessly but with an open mind (you're a flaneur); a mind unencumbered of what you’ve been told to believe is the right way of doing things back home. You’re open-minded but you're not gullible; You’re aware of your surroundings, able to distinguish between scams and politeness, and armed with a mind freed from all the prejudices instilled in you over the years by the narrow lens of the media, or what others told you.

Vagabonding becomes a mindset. You’re free from all the day-to-day doldrums, and, once again, you’re experiencing the world with the curiosity of a child. You're there, you're taking it all in by totally surrendering and allowing yourself to experience things viscerally, untainted by whatever conceit or cynicism you have of how things are supposed to be in this part of the world, or how you imagined they'd be. You look at people neighbors who have things to teach you. You're not just inserting yourself in cliques of people you’re comfortable with and who share your views, might as well have stayed home.

Vagabonding becomes this special experience you wanna go back to again and again, because it changed something in you, something you wouldn't be able to put into words.

We learned in LiftOff, the first book about the early days of SpaceX that it takes an intense amount of hours and focus and finding the right people for the job who align with the mission, to just get off the ground. Falcon 1 was the culmination of those efforts that almost went nowhere. The risk of failure was looming large, but the slim chance of success made it all worth it.

In book 2, 'Reentry' David becomes Goliath, the rockets get bigger, the failure costlier, the competition with the incumbent(ULA) intensifies, and the plans for the future become crazier. The contracts had to be won, the cashflow had to be positive. There needed to be a way to finance a sustainable city on Mars. Starlink had to be born.

Reentry looks at the technical challenges and innovations necessary on the way to Starship, the ship that will take people to Mars. The ingredients are obvious, in hindsight: A players willing to sacrifice everything for the mission, a boss whose mentality seeps into the culture--constantly scraping bureaucratic soot that accretes by default, owning the risk of trying new(dangerous)things like densification or propulsive landing of Dragon, moving the goalposts the moment they're hit, going the extra mile to keep costs low, marshaling all the companies' resources to get any data from Debris that might be useful for future launches, and never getting complacent, even after making history.

How do we explain how United launch Alliance fell behind in launch cadence and was relegated to a footnote in history, despite all its might and resources? Is Blue Origin what we get when the mission and the people who believe in it are there, but the culture is that of making sure everything works perfectly? Is the only way to innovate like SpaceX is to have a unrelenting founder whose demands are impossible and whose standards keep escalating? Or can we find a way around that so that the culture of innovating in such a way doesn't fade with its founder and things slowly disintegrate into managerial layers of friction?

..Continuing the thread of making decisions under uncertainty (how judges think), we now look at the role of randomness in life.

How do you assess outcomes in life, based on what? Track records? Wealth? position in the corporate hierarchy? The reason one asks themselves these questions is because they'd wanna hedge their bets against illusions of success and skill (medium, short-term) and maximize their long-term success.

So given that frame, when we look at outcomes, we gotta think of the unrealized outcomes and the initial sample size we started with. Thinking about the unrealized outcomes gives us an idea of how probable this outcome we see is, and whether it is due to skill or luck. we can’t take someone who is worth 10 million dollars as a role model if their wealth came from winning a game of Russian roulette.

Now, that's a good analogy, how about we think of life as a revolver with infinite chambers, now the importance of hedging against complete ruin becomes paramount, because ergodicity (time's effects on outcomes) will catch up with you sooner or later(risk ruin).

Skewness is another factor to think of, where winning ≠ losing and outcomes in life are not equal. You can win by a steady amount but the loss can be far larger than the win. So what makes outcomes less random? Repetition over time. A dentist or a pianist might get their job right once due to chance but not repeatedly over time otherwise they'd be doing something else like gambling.

Nonlinearity adds another layer of complexity, effort does not equal result(not linear) and that applies to all areas of life, you can expend an incredible amount of effort doing something and think this is not going anywhere but in fact you were one step away from striking it big. that applies in network effects, compounding effects and all. One more grain of sand can topple the sand castle you've been building since dawn.

In my life, I should recognize that randomness plays a large role in consequences, and it’s always best to be lucky than not. Since people are not rational, it pays to acknowledge that when you make decisions, and think of the non-obvious,the abstract: I should choose a process that minimizes the role of chance and puts on display everything that’s pending. How do you know how much a manager is responsible for outcomes if the process is hidden, but you only focus on his results? how do you know that he's making the right decisions and that the results are sustainable and won't lead to ruin eventually? I should ask myself: do I wanna win long-term or short-term? Do I wanna give the illusion of success to others, while my chance of going to ruin is bound to catch up with me?

Do I wanna be an optimizer or a satisficer? (satisfied enough) There are ways to get very rich but that would cost me my freedom and increases my chances of going back to zero.

Or, do I wanna live comfortably enough and retain my freedom to roam the world and explore on my own terms?

It is a fact of life that judges hold immense power in influencing policy, public opinion, and the law of the land. The power of the judge depends on their court’s position in the hierarchy, the lower the court the more adherent to legalistic standards/rules and precedent it is. So the question becomes: is the judge a state court judge, subject to the whims of higher courts' decisions; or an appellate court judge, who’s making legislative decisions with deference to the precedents and legislative bodies but with more leeway, or are we talking about the nines of the supreme court which is the most independent and has the highest degree of discretion in deciding cases?

The world inside the courts is arcane and mysterious to the average person or the laity. We only hear of major overruling of cases or an enactment of a new ruling that happens to have an immense consequences on our society. But how do these decisions get made? how do judges think?

First and foremost, we need to understand how a judge becomes one in the first place.

Judges don’t become judges until they’ve lived a life and garnered enough experience, tacit knowledge that is, and only then do they aspire to become judges.

Let's focus on the nines: Supreme court judges get appointed by the president and get approved by the senate.

Now, you might think, wait, if that’s the case, then they’re definitely politicians in robes. But hold on, If the employer is the government, what would the employee do, please the employer? make sure they hit the performance metrics so they get a promotion, or a salary raise? That would be true in a standard labor market, but this is a monopsony, and the carrots and sticks (incentives) are absent here.

The role of a judge is more symbolic and poetic than a mere fancy job. The pay is not attractive and wanna-be judges, with their legal experience, can easily land any other job and make 10x what they make as judges, but judges believe that they’re taking the job to wanna do good by their country; they care more about making a dent and their place in society, more than any monetary benefits could confer. There is only one incentive their employer had promised them, and that is independence. "It is true that the president appointed me, but once I’m appointed, it’s for life(unless impeached of course, which defies my wanting to be a judge cause reputation is everything for me) and I make my own decisions in a way that sanctify the law and advance society."

There is no quantitative measure to assess judges’ job. That’s why no one can point out to a judge’s decision and say with certainty that they messed up. Law professors, legal philosophers and law review articles can criticize the work of judges, but you have to realize that there has been an widening bridge between the bar and the bench. Judges are in the arena. Law professors live in their theory land which is why their criticism is usually met with insouciance.

okay, so if judges want us to believe that they’re good and not politically motivated (attitudinal theory), than how do they make their decisions?

Enter legalism, which, in simple terms, means upholding the law to the letter, if it applies to facts of case at hand, or open a tiny room for interpretation and adaptability (distinguishing precedents, overruling precedents, or enacting new rules). Now, the problem with legalists' theory is that legalism is limited in its scope and adaptability, The American legal system is one of case law, it can work on cases(mostly civil) in lower courts that can be adapted to statutes and precedents, but when cases get to the highest court, that means that the issue is more complicated than a legalist way of thinking can solve; it has religious, economic, constitutional interpretation implications, and that's when things become more complicated owing to an ancient constitution that was distributed among loose constructionist, strict constructionists, originalists, textualists, and living constitution advocates; a precedent that doesn't apply anymore, and a dearth of relevant statutory body of law.

You're probably thinking if legalism fails, and judges say they don’t make political decisions, where do they direct their focus then? this is where things get interesting. It is that time again where Judges find themselves in what's called the open area, an area full of uncertainty, and limited knowledge about policies and social consequences. It is where judges decide to put their legislators hat on.

Time is limited and national interest is at stake, what happens in the mind of judges then?

Allow me to put myself in the judge's shoes for a second:

Ok, 1 min mediation; inhale, exhale, phew. what do we have here? let's see: I am a generalist so I need to think about everything super fast and to the best of my knowledge. Where does public opinion stand on this, what does my experience tell me? Should I lean into that? does my gender has any say here? Man, I probably have deep seated biases and beliefs That I am not aware of that are bound to influence my decision, but I wanna do good. I truly do. It’s true that a republican appointed me; or was it a democrat? exactly, that has nothing to do with my decision, right? right? I feel like I already have an intuition about how we should adjudicate this, I need to weigh everything we have here against that and see. But, what if that’s the wrong way to go about it and my intuition succeeds because it was stronger than the facts, policy implications, and future of law. Sorry Bayes, but I can't put all my eggs in your basket. Besides, I want the other judges to respect me, so if the issue doesn’t absolutely warrant dissent, I won’t dissent. Should I dissent, the case will become more popular than ever. Do I want that? It’s really crucial that I show deference to the continuation of the institution of law too. okay, I guess I am ready to make a semblance of a decision now. hey-- my talented law clerk who writes all of my opinions so I have some leisure to think-- show me what you wrote.

Inescapably, there are more factors at play here, but this roughly how judges think under pressure. In short, you cannot say that judges are politicians or absolute legalists, they are more like pragmatist, real pragmatists; they think about the consequences of their decisions in terms of social consequences and ensuring the continuing respect for the law. since they’re still limited humans, they’re prone to be influenced by bias, personality traits, life experience, and yes, sometime political bent.

Lawyers can help judges in lower courts particularly, by bringing to bear legislative data that goes beyond facts of the case and dive into second order implications on real world events.

Respect of statutes, precedent, and a constitution open to interpretations, goes only so far. Fortunately we have an indirect mechanisms to lessen, albeit minimally, the effect of unbound discretion, through congress and the public opinion. The process might not be 100% democratic, But it is democratic nonetheless.

I guess what I've taken from 'how judges think' is that no matter how much your decisions matter in real world consequences, the human element of it all can not be taken out of the decision, there is something not rational about making a decision that can not be put into words. It is just there. Don't try to explain it, even.

There is a man stuck in a traffic jam. There are people. It looks like the faces are familiar. No wait, the man is now floating up in the air viewing everything from above. Someone suddenly drags his feet and he falls all the way down to the ground. Our protagonist is having a nightmare! Fellini’s 8½ follows a filmmaker(Fellini?) who’s having an existential crisis of the intense kind; What movie to make next? he wants to tell his story but he’s afraid he doesn’t have anything to say.He casts several ladies to represent the object of his desire but none is hitting the mark; he can’t seem to choose. All the people around him are demanding answers and opinions to all sorts of questions. At one point in the film, he visits the church and tells the priest that he’s not happy, the priest replies: “oh, you’re not here to be happy.” his “girlfriends” who embody ladies with different quirks, attitudes, and ages are feeding him mixed opinions about himself; he's utterly confused.

Undaunted by all of this tremendous input from the world around him, he still wants to go ahead and make his film and share the "nothing" that he feels he is; the story has to be told.

What do you do when you feel an intense desire to say something, but all you got is nothing to say? what is the point of saying anything, and is everyone entitled to tell their stories? Our filmmaker concludes that sometimes you just have to forget about the weight of what you’re trying to say and how that will land and just, for once, celebrate life.

Before engaging in any negotiation, it's important to determine first if it's even worth the time and effort. If so, then engage, armed with the knowledge that there are three dimensions to consider in any negotiation:

Power

Who has the power in this setting? is this power perceived? real? can I exert authority and power myself in this situation? am I speaking with someone who can make changes or should I go up? Where does the claimed authority come from, anyways? Is authority itself negotiable or is it set in stone(a sign? a rule of law?).

Time

When should you begin negotiating? at the start? or should you treat negotiation as a process where you get the other party increasingly invested in you, and only after you've secured their involvement do you make the actual request? That's right!

Information

What do you know about the other party? What do they know about you? What kind of information do they know that will give them advantage over you and what are you going to wanna to know about them to gain advantage over them?

Conceivably, when we play along the three axes: time, power, and information, and treat the negotiation as a process, the outcome favors us more, and we're able to disarm any perceived power or negotiation tricks(take a negotiation trick to the extreme or mock it if someone else uses it on you, like won't you look at this guy!, he's really good at his job, see what he did here, motioning to his colleague: "amazing". Now, say, salesman, back to our situation here, if I..)

But hold on a second, are we missing something here? you bet your bottom dollar we are! We also need to be someone the other party identifies with. A flesh-and-blood human being with needs to be satisfied just like their own.

In essence, you have the highest probability of winning a negotiation when you play the time, information, and power cards, and sprinkle the air with some of your own humanity(as opposed to presenting yourself as a statistic, or fighting on behalf of an abstract concept like a big corp, which the human mind can not identify with.) Your goal is to play a win-win game that satisfies both party's needs and avoid making visceral opponents along the way, and thus embody a collaborative spirit that wins at any negotiation.