Questions To Better Understand Your Needs: Fill & Download for Free

Define “rich” and what money means for you.Allocate an amount for saving first, then, spend the rest.Understand the differences between your needs and wants.Understand the real definition of assets and liabilities.Buy experiences first before things.Invest in yourself.Detach your emotions with money.Budgeting.Be open about money with people who are close to you.Contribute for a bigger cause than yourself.Practice low sugar and low refined carbohydrate diet.Eat more raw fruits and vegetable as a replacement for sugar and carbs.Consume enough protein and water.Sleep at least 7 hours a day, and before 11pm.Train with heavy weights.Train with your bodyweight and understand your body movement.Never ignore cardio.Do check-up regularly.Meditate for mental health.Breathe deeply.Spend time to understand what you put into your mouth.Switch to a standing desk.Walk more, take stair instead of escalator.Make green juices.Take cold shower/ice bath.Intermittent fasting.Read, fuel your brain.Ask yourself the right questions.Priming.Spend time to relax and reflect.Give a definition for your feelings.Changing your vocabulary to change how you feel.Surround yourself with positive people.Understand how belief systems work.Tell yourself the right story.Avoid learn helplessness.Use movement to generate desired emotions.Be happy for no reason.Fake a smile.Celebrate every small win, often!Define you identity.Focus on the present.Prepare your day ahead. Keep your to-do list small.Set goalsBreak big goals to small action steps.Never go for meeting without an agenda.Set automation for mundane tasks.Focus on important things and eliminate urgent task.Never multitask, go single-tasking.Take tiny actions to achieve huge goals.Listen before speaking.Understand your strength and amplify it.Reduce your wardrobe choices.Take good care of your image.Take challenges as opportunityTrust your guts.Give credit to where it’s due.Build a personal brandTake good care with your reputation.Make clear priorities.Learn to scarify.Embrace failures and learn from it.Get comfortable with discomforts.Always put yourself in other’s shoes.Spend time to understand someone else rules.Perfect handshake.Spend time to deliver surprise.Under promise, over delivery.Be impeccable with your words.Appreciate everyone.Judge others by intention, evaluate yourself by results.Stay humble.Jab jab jab jab jab, and jab.Say hell yeah! Or no.Keep daily journal.Get up early.Stop comparing.Start doing the ONE thing in front of you.Forgive others and forgive yourself.Stop complaining._ _ _I share tips, techniques, and critical thoughts on how we can live a better life on DeanYeong.com

This is a fun question to try to answer, since the answer ends up generating more questions! But, it may surprise some of you to learn that all of science works this way. Every scientific discovery, whether it be the discovery of the Big Bang or the discovery of DNA or the development of quantum mechanics, only leads to more questions. The greater the discovery, the more profound the questions it generates (e.g., what happened “before” the Big Bang?).I don’t like to peg questions to years, since to me, a question that is worth asking may be something that takes years to pin down (scientists have been trying to understand Big Bang physics for decades now!).So, here are 5 questions about ML and AI, and how it may shed light on the brain. These are of course generated by me on the spur of the moment, but as a 35 year veteran of ML and AI , I would like to get some answers to these questions.The great English mathematician G.H. Hardy kept around a notebook of questions that he wanted to ask his Maker whenever he got the opportunity. First among his questions was whether the Riemann hypothesis was true (Riemann hypothesis - Wikipedia). It might sound like a quirky question to you, but to any mathematician of note, this question might really be at the top of their lists too.So, in that spirit, when I get to meet my Maker, what questions would I ask? To keep this brief, I’ll limit myself to 5 questions.Deep learning without gradient descent: Stochastic gradient descent (SGD) is the most popular method for training neural networks. It is easy to implement, but painfully slow to learn, and despite what you read in the popular press, it is NOT how the brain works. The idea that 100 billion neurons in our brains are getting tuned at each time step with some chemical version of gradient descent seems awfully far fetched. Besides, we can easily learn complex concepts from one or two examples (how many examples of the dollar or Euro symbol do you need to see to recognize it henceforth?). So, SGD is not the solution we are looking for. What other approach could be used, other than SGD, which would give us similar sample efficiency that the brain exhibits? The late Nobel prize winning biologist, Gerard Edelman, who won the prize for elucidating the structure of the immune system, spent the remainder of his life trying to explore the structure of the brain. He came up with an intriguing hypothesis called “neural Darwinism” (Darwin's neuroscientist: Gerald M. Edelman, 1929–2014), wherein groups of interacting neurons compete with each other. Is this how the brain works? If it’s not SGD running the “machine”, what is it? I can’t think of a more important question to ask my Maker.Modularity of the brain: it is by now an established fact that the brain is modular, in a very specific way that was beautifully elucidated in a book by Gerry Fodor (see The Modularity of Mind). There are many ways to illustrate this concept. Consider some simple optical illusions. For example, in the below picture, why does it appear that the dots are always moving, when they are not (one reason is that tiny eye movements generate this illusion).Consider the two central dots below. They are of the same size in reality, but appear to be of very different sizes.Or consider the “cafe illusion”, first discovered by Richard Gregory from a wall in a cafe. The gray lines appear to be slanted, but they are actually straight.If visual cognition is indeed the result of some “deep learning” process, why do we all suffer from the same optical illusions? Furthermore, why can’t we “teach” our brains (or our visual cortex) to undo the illusion? This is because the brain is modular. Your visual cortex is not under your direct conscious control.Similar examples can be given for other modalities (e.g., if you can speak English, or some other language, then speech in that language will always be interpreted by your brain as utterances in that language, and not puffs of air or sound, so there is no way to “turn off” your speech recognizer). This leads to the question: how much structure is built in to the brain at birth? How do we generate similarly structured deep networks, so that the mind of a robot is modular, and far more efficient to train than current highly sample inefficient approaches?3. Correlation to causation: much of modern machine learning focuses on correlation, which is a simple measure of association between random variables. However, causal knowledge is far more useful in the world, particularly in reasoning about change. If I change this variable X, would it change Y (even if X and Y are correlated, that would not necessarily indicate causation). How does causal knowledge emerge from a cluster of deep learning networks, if that is what underlies our brain?4. Developmental learning: Jean Piaget, the foremost developmental psychologist of the 20th century showed that children all over the world develop their mental capabilities in a number of broad phases. These have been experimentally confirmed with numerous experiments. Why does the child’s brain develop in this way, and what does it suggest for the way lifelong learning in machines should progress? In particular, how can we move deep learning from its current limited abilities to learn one specific task at a time, towards a more flexible framework where multiple tasks can be learned in parallel over years of experience?5. OK, last question, so I better make it something interesting! Animal cognition researchers divide species into two categories based on something called the “mirror test”: does an animal shown its reflection in a mirror recognize itself and become conscious of its own self, or is it unable to understand that it is looking at a reflection of itself in the mirror? This test is taken as a proxy for whether animals are conscious of their own selves. What would it take for a machine to become self-aware?Hope you can spend some time pondering about what questions you would like answered, when you get to meet your Maker! Wouldn’t this be the ultimate Quora system? Any question you ask can of course be answered by the Maker.

Yes, I would rollover the old 401(k). No, I wouldn’t put it with Betterment. I’ll expand on each of these points separately.Why I would rollover…Reasons: Higher control, lower fees.Did you know that the average 401(k) plans can charge 1% and up to 1.5% in management and hidden fees per year? What’s more, many 401(k) plan providers hide fees in administrative charges known as 12-b1, and other opaque terms.To put this in perspective, if you had invested $25,000 for 35 years, the additional hidden fees would eat approximately $65,000 of your returns!Beyond fees, 401K plans can be problematic because they offer limited investment options. The options they do offer are typically expensive and not fully diversified. Plus, the rules for 401(k)s vary as they are administered by employers. This makes it difficult for you to understand your 401(k), and can become a nightmare when you move companies.IRAs, on the other hand, can have single stocks, mutual funds, Exchange Traded Funds, and even options. They follow standardized rules that are easy to understand. You have more control over when you pay taxes, and more flexibility with payout options. Plus, rolling over your 401(k) doesn’t cost anything. In fact, most brokers will waive trading and other costs in order to get your business.Why I wouldn’t rollover to Betterment…Betterment doesn’t have a long-standing history as a broker. There are many, safer options possible. It’s a world fraught with fraud, often not intentional but the result of mathematical errors caused by members of the back-end team. This is why you want to choose a broker with a longer history, like Vanguard or Interactive Brokers or TD. These guys have been around for decades and have proven themselves as reliable custodians, whereas Betterment has only been around for a few years.Second, you also want good advice on how to invest the funds. For that, you want an independent advisor who has the skill to manage different market seasons and ability to explain it to you in simple terms. There are many advisors in the market. Choose wisely!The bottom line:I’d rollover…to IRA (or even Roth IRA, if eligible and if it applies).When taking the 401(k) from my old employer:I’d make sure they don’t write me a check, or 20% of my balance would get withheld until tax time.I wouldn’t take out your 401(k) in cash. The obvious risk with that is the 401(k) might end up as the new car or swanky gadgets. The harsher risk is the humongous tax penalties you might incur.A good advisor, robo or otherwise, should have the following capabilities:A broad range of strategies, capable of taking advantage of all market opportunitiesAsset allocation plans that change over time based on your needs and changing market conditionsThe ability to target a truly constant level of risk in your portfolio so you have a plan for market downturns.Hope this helps. Feel free to message me with any questions.Resources:How have firms like Betterment, Wealthfront, qplum, and Personal Capital done in 2016 with a moderate-aggressive portfolio?Is Betterment trustworthy, and how will they do in a bear market?Is it safe to keep money invested with Betterment?6 features of a great Robo-AdvisorChoosing The Right Robo-Advisor In 10 Easy StepsDisclaimer: All investments carry risk. This is not a solicitation to buy/sell securities. This is not an offer of personal financial advice or legal advice. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.