Martin Vrbovčan

I'm a student at FER, Croatia. Interested in maths, biology, and AI. It's fascinating how optimising over combinations of shape production (proteins) led to intelligence which we are still figuring out.

Currently: reading my favourite writers Henrik Karlsson, Sasha Chapin, Celeste, Scott Alexander. Working on a quasi-startup. Trying to wrap intuitions around RNA folding.

Beliefs

• The world is power-lawy. Skills and experience compound, so over time the difference can be orders of magnitude. This applies to money, love, friends, knowledge, et cetera.
  • This is also why focusing on a handful of things is better than spreading yourself out.
  • Discipline is reduction of choice.
• Modern life is centrally about fighting superstimuli and perverse mimetic adversaries. This applies to small things we may not think of as addiction, as well as your social circle, as they influence your state of mind.
• Mathematics is the knowledge of abstract structures. Crucially, it explains combinatorial explosions (responsible for understanding proteins), self-amplifying processes (exponential), and the broader limits on what is logically impossible (can't have quantum mechanics without a Hilbert space).
  • Math is Platonic, outside our universe, and necessarily holds for nearly all conceivable universes.*
• Tutoring is much more effective than schooling. Many potentials are undercut because of the modern group nature of education.
  • Related: mentorship is extremely underrated.
• Tacit knowledge is the true moat, and holds entire companies together (TSMC).
  • Some tacit skills, like charisma or being truly relaxed, can only be learned through social osmosis, i.e. being in proximity to successful peers.
  • This is mostly internalised knowledge, derived from lived experience. Zooming in on reality fractally reveals details.
• Most of the differences in "intelligence" are in mental behaviour and mental routines when interacting with the world.
  • Over time, the differences drift drastically because of wrong worldview building. That is why there exists a large gap.
• You forget 95-99% of what you input. Spaced repetition is one way to not forget.
  • You only really internalise very few pieces of advice or texts.
• The world has many asymmetric opportunities and edge cases you can use to your benefit. The trading concept of "alpha" is immensely powerful.