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2024

Advice to Young People, The Lies I Tell Myself

I'm really not qualified to give advice. But enough people DM'd me on Twitter, so here it is. I don't have to answer the same question over and over again. After some more editing I realised that I am actually writing this for my younger Katherine.

If you want to know who I am, check out blog/whoami or my Twitter.

Don't read this if you're seeking a nuanced perspective

These are simply the lies I tell myself to keep on living my life in good faith. I'm not saying this is the right way to do things. I'm just saying this is how I did things. I will do my best to color my advice with my own experiences, but I'm not going to pretend that the suffering and the privilege I've experienced is universal.

How to build a terrible RAG system

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.