When you don't know when to quite

When you look at a casino you don't see all the people losing their money, fighting with their spouse, selling their car or house to pay their debts or much worse

Even if you are not a gambler, you have probably seen movies with people losing all their money just because they didn't know when to quite. Sometimes they even earned nice amount of money somewhere along the way, but they kept on gambling, and lost it all and more. Why is it?

Well, because the person that losses the money (hopefully not you) is playing a different game than the casino. You see casino is a smart business - it might be bad for those who spend all their money, but it is very good for the casino owners. That's because the house always win. But when you look at a casino you don't see all the people losing their money, fighting with their spouse, selling their car or house to pay their debts or 

much worse. You see bright lights, people well dressed, pretty women, free staff, and you hear those happy sounds everywhere. All these tell your subconscious one thing - Winning.

But the casino is not there to make you win, its a business. And what it really sells people is the feeling they have a chance to win, and it is a nice feeling, as long as you don't confuse it with actually wining. Not in the long run any way. The casino is smart, the casino is not trying to win against every player, on every game on every turn. the bottom line is what is really important. Even if someone wins a million dollar,  and more people win prizes that go up to another million, the casino wouldn't care, because at the same time in average it would make 10M, 20M , maybe more. And part of the fun in the casino is that everybody wins sometimes, but in the long run, when people count their losses. most people lose money and a lot. 

We should take our loses and go hide in some corner

Now you probably think, I'm here to tell you not to gamble, and keep your money, or at least know when to quite. But actually I'm not... Or at least this is not my point. What I'm really here to teach you today, is about the difference between knowing when to quite, and quitting too soon.

My favorite example is learning to drive. What happens if you took the test and you failed?

Well, one time is not so bad, but what if you failed 3 times. That's imberresing. 

After 3 times would you try again? how about 5 times, or 6 times? 

Our culture teaches us many times, that failing is bad, that if we fail we should take our loses and go hide in some corner. But life is actually more like a video game, you can try as many times and you like, and there is no law that tells you, you have to quite after failing. 

They say that it took Edison 10000 tries before he invented the light bowl. And there are two lies in that sentence. He didn't invent the idea, he just found a better way to do it, and though he tried a lot of times (I think it was bout 2000), it was not anywhere near 10000. What important that he tried again and again till he found something that worked.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison

Taking a test, whether its a driving test, or other test, might not have all this cool lights and winning sound a casino has, but usually when you take a test, succeeding it can improve your life

That's the thing. Like a baby trying to walk (took this example from Tony Robbins), you should keep trying until you succeed. Actually - in the same way people in the casino are trying to win, till they can't play anymore because they lost all their money. 

Maybe its a bad example. But think of it this way, taking a test, whether its a driving test, or other test, might not have all this cool lights and winning sound a casino has, but usually when you take a test, succeeding it can improve your life. Whether it will give you a driver licence, a certificate of some sort, or a new job, usually tests has pretty cool prizes. And the coolest thing is, you usually can take the test as many times as you like. 

Like this woman 

The real prize is knowing that you can do this with anything

Now the best prize about trying something again and again till you get it, like lets say, important purpose, such  as learning to create your own beer at home, is not just the beer. Its not even knowing that from now on, you will always know how to make beer. The real prize is knowing that you can do this with anything. Anything in life can be like driving a bicycle.  You put the time, you put the effort, till you succeed. And once its done it done, you can always do it.

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Are there any other unwritten rules / laws that your following?

So this longer than I attended post, hopefully thought you why simply trying again and again is the one of the best strategies to confront difficulties. Taking this idea in and implementing it can change you life.
And just think for a second and ask your self - Are there any other unwritten rules / laws that your following, that are holding you back, and are actually not rules at all.

Oranges and Apples

On my last post we talked about getting interesting information from even site like IMDB.

This showed us a bit on how easy it is to learn thing when they are easy interesting and fun.

"You become better at it and it becomes more fun..."

Now you probably all know the saying "Use it or Lose it". 

Personally I don't like when someone is trying to move me to action by scarring me. But there is a point here.

If we have some ability but we don't practice it, with time we would lose this ability. But the good thing is, that the more you do things, they become easier to do, you become better at it and it becomes more fun.

Driving or riding bikes is a good example, but same thing is true even for using math.

So I want you to feel good about yourself, so lets start with some easy math questions.

For example, you have 2 oranges and I give you 2 more. How many oranges do you now have?

What if you had 2 apples and I gave you 2 more, how many apples would you have?

2 Bananas + 2?

"Ones you know how to add numbers you can add anything..."

You get the idea, so continuing with this question will make you board. But what is important is that ones you know how to add numbers you can add anything, fruits, cars, people, at the end of the day adding is numbers.

So now that you know everything you can learn from these 2+2 questions, I have another question, and this is a logic question, and again - its about fruits.

You have 3 closed boxes of fruits, one has oranges, one has apples, and one has oranges and apples. You don't know what is in each box, and to make the matters even worst, though each box has a label that is suppose to say what it has inside, you know that the person who  put those labels is a pathological liar who always lies, so you can't trust any of the labels.

But you know what, since I'm such a nice guy, I will let you select one of the boxes, and pull out one fruit.

But after doing that, I expect you know what fruits are in each of the boxes.

So - thinking time...

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"Words can be confusing..."

This is an easy one, and you probably solved it, but don't beat your self if you didn't. This is not a test, and we are not here to get everything right and pump our ego. We are here to learn something interesting.

The first thing you should know, that a lot of times in life, words can be confusing. For example I said 

"and to make the matters even worst, though each box has a label that is suppose to say what it has inside"

It's not really worst. Actually if we didn't have labels, we wouldn't know where to start.

Next I say "the person who  put those labels is a pathological liar" 

Usually we think of lying as a bad thing, and a pathological liar is someone you can't ever trust. But actually someone who always lies, is better for us than someone that lie part of the time. If someone always lies you can ask him true or false questions, and what ever he answered you you know that the opposite answer is the right answer.

In our case, if a label says that there are oranges in the box, we know that this box does not contains only oranges. It either has apples, or apples and oranges. And because we know all the labels are false it is true for any box.

So the box that has label that says apples, has either oranges or apples and oranges. 

Now what about the one that says oranges and apples? Well - we know for a fact that it has either apples or oranges. So... if we pick a fruit from this box we know what insides, it would be either oranges or apples. 

Lets say we found an apple, then we have to more boxes. one has oranges and one oranges and apples. But the oranges labeled box can't really hold oranges, because if that was the case then the label on that box was not false, and  we know it has to be false. So the box that says apples would have oranges and the box that would say oranges would have both apples and oranges.

Almost the same happens if we found orange in the box labeled apples and oranges.

So - this is all nice. We learned that when we know something is a lie it tells us about what is true, but what else? 

"If you are looking for additional interesting data, many time it is best to look at what is different, what is exceptional"

We also might notice that as in the 2+2 exercises, we could change the question to have pineapples and bananas , or baseballs and tennis balls and the solution would still be the same. But what else?

Well, after solving this question you might have noticed another thing. Not all boxes are the same. 

What do I mean? Well - in a way the box labeled oranges and the box labeled apples are the same. Both gives us the same type of information. But the box labeled oranges and apples is different, it has other information type. So if you think about it, it makes sense to check the box labeled oranges and apples first, because we can expect that the other two would give us somewhat different information. 

This is an important observation, if you are looking for additional interesting data, many time it is best to look at what is different, what is exceptional. 

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Are you feeling smarter already? I do.

We took a look on some important ideas on how to learn from a question, even if we don't solve it. 

In one of the next posts we would take closer look on how our perception on question and challenges can change our learning skill dramatically. And make learning even more fun.

My Last First Post

I'm all about giving you the best ways to learn.

Learn what?  you ask...

Well, just about anything. 

As long as it is fun, as long as it is interesting, you should learn it 

- If you want to.

This is just a blog, it is not high school or collage, there would be no mid term papers.

I'm not your teacher or professor or mentor, I'm just a fellow human being, with some 

great knowledge on how to learn things.

I believe that our greatest asset is not our ass. I believe our greatest asset is right up there between our ears. If it was a computer it would have been the most expensive desired computer in the world, and you have it - for free.

But even the greatest computer in the world doesn't worth a thing if it doesn't have a bunch of good softwares inside.

Have you ever seen someone buy a really good and strong new computer, and then use it for Facebook, writing word documents, and playing solitaire?  If you did you probably thought to yourself  "What a waste..."

If you are that person, then you are in the right place. Because here I am going to tell you on all the best ways to learn through your computer which is the best way to install good softwares in your brain, and even in your computer.

So were do we start? There are so many things you can learn, in so many places. So - where do we start?

Lets start with something really fun - IMDB - see you on the next post.

I am DB? - IMDB

So IMDB.

What is IMDB?

Well it is not I am DB - because i'm not, I am not a database, I am a human bring damn it!

Now that we made it clear, IMDB stands for Internet Movie Database, here is the link to the site.

IMDb Site

You can find here any information you want on any movie, actor, director etc.

If you don't know it, that's  a nice piece of information, but you probably do know this site, and what the hell does it have to do with learning?!

Well the best way to learn anything, is to find it interesting, useful and fun. And if you like films, and specific actors or directors, there is a ton of interesting and fun information that can be found in IMDB.

But is it useful? 

Here is the best thing you should know, if something is interesting and fun than it can always be useful. When things are easy and fun you remember them better, you make the right connections in your brain, and you can use them much faster. 

I'll show you how it works, I will give you some fun facts from IMDB, and connect them to a piece of information that is useful as knowledge. Ready - lets start.

You probably know there is a Batman vs Superman movie coming up (already useful information), but did Batman ever had a quarrel with this guy on a movie?

Did Batman and Wolverine ever fought one another. Or even being friend at a movie?

They actually been both, maybe they had different custom but they sure did meet on the big screen.

If you look for Wolverine on Google you will see many images of this guy.

Hugh Jackman. But if this is our Wolverine, than who is Batman? (If only the Joker knew about IMDB)

Well  - it is not  Ben Affleck just yet. And if we don't count the Lego Batman, or the animated Batman, the last batman was Christian Bale. 

So we have Christian Bale VS Hugh Jackman - do you know what movie I'm thinking of?

If you haven't guest already, just go to this page in IMDB - and look for yourself

http://www.imdb.com/search/common

And there you have it:

http://www.imdb.com/search/title?roles=nm0000288,nm0413168&title_type=feature,tv_episode,video,tv_movie,tv_special,mini_series,documentary,game,short

The Prestige - a great movie. If you haven't seen it yet - now is a very good time.

But we are not stopping yet. Because recently we had a great lose on the music industry,  we lost the great David Bowie. You might say - what does Bowie have to do with anything?

Bowie was not only a talented musician, but he was also a great actor. And one of his smaller parts was int the movie The Prestige as Nikola Tesla

Tesla has worked with Edison before going on his own, and he was actually the first to invent radio transmission. He is one of the people that enabled delivering electric power to private houses, and he actually succeeded in transmitting electricity wirelessly. You can learn even more through this wiki page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

So we started with Batman and Wolverine, and got to Bowie and Tesla. And that is what learning is making connections between thing. And if it is interesting and fun - even better. 

And - I just made you learn a thing or two about Tesla. In other words you just learned on Electricity and Physics