Standing by the stairs of the Oskar Frederik’s Church in Gothenburg, I overheard someone say “He was striving to be someone like Feynman. He wanted to come up with the simplest explanations of the most complex ideas”. I can confirm that he was not just trying but was always successful in doing this. While I do not know what it took Richard Feynman to come up with those simplified explanations, I have been a witness to the passion, technique, effort, and the genius of Lennart Svensson in extracting the essence of the most complex ideas into teachable concepts. It is from him that I learned how to learn, how to really understand, and how to teach. My first baby flights within academia are thanks to the 15 months I spent under Lennart’s wings. ...
The Radius of Empathy
Empathy, in my view, is the most human trait. It is probably a form of emotional and cognitive intelligence that is not found in other species to the same extent as us. That we can feel the pain and suffering of another person without going through the same journey as them is marvelous. And I marvel at it each time, I see one of us feel for another individual. What I have come to observe though is that we feel and show our empathy differently depending on who we are relating to. This, of course, makes sense. I would feel strongly if one of my family members is in pain compared to a distant relative or even a stranger. I like to think of this as the Radius of Empathy. Each of us has a different capability and capacity to feel empathy, and with a small or large radius. ...
Hello World!
Well, hello world! Again. I have been writing previously on my other blog since 2008. I will leave it as an archive for now. I haven’t written there in more than three years even though I have had many things to say. However, I do find a slight distance between my writings there and what I now want to say. So, giving it another go; on a clean slate. And also as a rebuke to the pervasive use of LLMs in writing on the internet. ...