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2024

I used to hate rich people.

This entire piece of writing is dedicated to a recent response on Hacker News. I hope you can see, as a member of reality, that I write this sincerely.

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Preamble

Also, I wrote this as a speech-to-text conversion. As I mentioned in my advice post about writing more, my measure for writing more is simply putting more words on a page. If you're wondering how I can be so vulnerable, it's the same as what I mentioned about confidence. If you think this comment hurt me remember that you're just a mirror.

I've also learned that writing is a exorcism of your own thoughts. The more I write, the less these thoughts stick around in my head.

Learning to Learn

After writing my post advice for young people, a couple of people asked about my learning process. I could discuss overcoming plateaus or developing mastery, learning for the joy of learning. I could also talk about how to avoid feeling overwhelmed by new topics and break them down into smaller pieces. However, I think that has been done before.

Instead, I'm going to explore a new style. I'm just going to go through a chronological telling of my life and what I learned from just trying new things. I'm going to talk about the tactics and strategies and see how this pans out.

  • in RAG
  • 6 min read

How to build a terrible RAG system

RAG Course

I'm building a RAG Course right now, if you're interested in the course please fill out this form

If you've seen any of my work, you know that the main message I have for anyone building a RAG system is to think of it primarily as a recommendation system. Today, I want to introduce the concept of inverted thinking to address how we should approach the challenge of creating an exceptional system.

What is inverted thinking?

Inversion is the practice of thinking through problems in reverse. It's the practice of “inverting” a problem - turning it upside down - to see it from a different perspective. In its most powerful form, inversion is asking how an endeavor could fail, and then being careful to avoid those pitfalls. [1]

Who am I?

In the next year, this blog will be painted with a mix of technical machine learning content and personal notes. I've spent more of my 20s thinking about my life than machine learning. I'm not good at either, but I enjoy both.

Life story

I was born in a village in China. My parents were the children of rural farmers who grew up during the Cultural Revolution. They were the first generation of their family to read and write, and also the first generation to leave the village.