#38 Ali Almossawi: Thinking in Algorithms

The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish

Farnam Street

Business, Investing, Entrepreneurship

4.7 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2018

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

My guest for this short episode of The Knowledge Project is a man who wears many hats.

Ali Almossawi is a San Francisco-based author of books on critical thinking and computer science education, and the creator of An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments. He is also a principal engineer at Apple and was formerly employed as a data visualization engineer by Mozilla.

His books have been read by 3 million readers, translated into 20 languages, and have sold over a quarter million copies in print.

This interview is only 20 minutes along, but there was a lot I wanted to cover, so we move pretty fast. Specifically, we cover:

The unique format Ali chooses when writing a book to help people understand the concepts more deeply
The place for empathy in algorithmic thinking and how we can be more empathetic in our daily interactions with each other
Ali’s note taking process and how he tracks the ideas and topics he’d like to explore
Ali’s daily routine and the “algorithms” he uses to make the most of his day
The single habit that has the most profound impact on Ali’s day to day
The cost/benefit of sharing on social media and the impact it has on society as a whole

And more.

If you’ve ever wanted to improve the way you process information, think more clearly and make better decisions, you won’t want to miss this interview.

Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member-only episodes, and more. Sign up at: https://fs.blog/membership/

Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/

Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello and welcome, I'm Shane Parrish and this is the Knowledge Project.
0:12.1	This show that explores the ideas, methods and mental models that help you expand your
0:16.2	mind, discover your curiosity, and master the best of what other people have already figured
0:21.2	out.
0:22.2	Today's episode is a bit different than what we normally do.
0:24.4	We're in the middle of summer so I thought it experimented with a short version of our
0:28.4	podcast.
0:29.4	Our podcast ranges from anywhere 45 minutes all the way up into two hours.
0:35.0	Today's show is going to be a bit different.
0:36.5	We're going to cut it down to 15 minutes.
0:38.1	A full, unaddeded version is available for members of our learning community.
0:41.9	If you're not a member, you can sign up at fs.blogslashtrib.
0:45.9	Today's guest is Ali Amosai, the San Francisco-based author of an Illustrated Guide to Bad Arguments
0:51.5	and Bad Choices.
0:53.1	He's going to help us better understand our logical fallacies.
0:56.2	Okay, let's dive in.
0:59.4	What ideas would you say you've changed your mind on in the last few years that you maybe
1:14.9	used to believe and you've updated or you've significantly changed your algorithm for how
1:19.5	you approach them?
1:21.2	When I first got into publishing, I fell into it because I'd put together this website
1:29.4	and we talked about how it might work as a book.
1:35.0	I went ahead and printed it as a book.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Farnam Street, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Farnam Street and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.