Knowledge Base

This is my second brain.

The objective here is to ease the reader (including myself) into the database via well-purposed directions instead of a large flat archive. This makes knowledge collection more meaningful.

A good place to start reading is my Knowledge Organization Philosophy. To see how I realize this philosophy, read the Elements of the Knowledge Base. From then on, the overview pages of each area linked below are the place to go.

Areas

Everything is categorized into a few primary “areas”. Wikipedia has already done a great job of organizing knowledge. I’m taking a page off their book, appropriate some of those areas.

🎭 Culture

This area includes everything that the human activity has produced in terms of arts, media, food, literature, etc. In the performing arts, take a look at my Movies & TV and Music. I listen to a fair bit of Podcasts and try to read some Books. I do have some medium to long term goals on Books I want to write. I hate cooking, maybe because I suck. Nevertheless, I have some quick Recipes for the desperate times.

🧮 Mathematics

Mathematics is the language of nature. Or at least the best thing that humans have at disposal to understand nature. This is a collection of posts around computer science, machine learning, reinforcement learning and other research-y topics I am involved in.

⚙ Meta

Posts in this area are meant to explain the system behind the system. It includes this page and the about page. Visit The Stack to get a summary of all the tools used to build the website.

🧬 Natural sciences

This is the home to topics in physics, chemistry, biology, geology among other natural sciences. The more formal sciences with some semblance of laid out rules go under Mathematics. For instance, take a look at some Chronological dating techniques.

🧑 People

This area hosts content that starts at individual personalities and their legacies. I’ve collected a few personalities at the People Overview page. These are websites I occasionally drop by on a sunny day. On a sad day, I usually procrastinate by watching movies; or revisit some adages.

♾ Philosophy

Topics like metaphysics find their place under the Philosophy area. Here’s a collection of Existential Risks humanity faces. It also hosts Psychology. See this collection on concepts in Cognitive and Experimental Psychology. I’ve also collected a Big Fat list of Mental Models.

📚 Reference

This area is dedicated to collecting reference materials. Take a look at Textbooks on various subjects for a comprehensive list of reference texts on topics that have achieved critical mass. For now, this is dominated by texts in machine learning. I’ll expand this as I read more.

I’m collecting a set of Common Yardsticks to address quantities that we encounter daily. This is my effort towards numerical literacy and a back-of-the-envelope temperament. Further, I am trying to map the modern World material flows qualitatively. This will help me map the value chain and understand societies better. Data Sources should come in handy for this.

🏛 Society

Everything that humans do collectively as a “society” goes in here. This involves topics in economics, journalism, business etc. It also includes my general rants and observations.

I’m particularly interested in collecting Real Life Decision Making Systems. This is a humbling excercise. Some decisions are reversible. Irreversible decisions with large ripple effects may turn out to be deadly. We’ve already seen this with COVID-19 and government responses, circa 2020. We cannot do without uncertainty quantification and this is a page to remind myself of that.

🚀 Technology

This area involves collecting knowledge about the “process” of driving value from raw materials. I note a few Products I like. This is usually the area where I write about software engineering and related ideas.

I am really interested in this question: Are ideas becoming harder to find?