Mustafo Irgashev
03.04.202518:39
SO What’s the Problem?
We are cognitively lazy. We prefer the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. We hang on to old beliefs because grappling with new ones is hard.
We laugh at people who still use Windows 95, yet we cling to opinions we formed in 1995.
We listen to views that make us feel good, rather than ideas that make us think hard.
But growth isn’t about defending what we already know—it’s about questioning what we think we do.
We are cognitively lazy. We prefer the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. We hang on to old beliefs because grappling with new ones is hard.
We laugh at people who still use Windows 95, yet we cling to opinions we formed in 1995.
We listen to views that make us feel good, rather than ideas that make us think hard.
But growth isn’t about defending what we already know—it’s about questioning what we think we do.
01.02.202518:26
24.10.202423:55
PREPARING TO WRITE ( critical thinking ) PART 3
Critical thinking is not the same as negative thinking. Assessing a piece of writing critically does not mean you deliberately set out to try to find some faults with it or prove it to be worthless. A good literary critic recognizes the work and praises it and at the same time, censures anything that is inaccurate and carelessly thought out.
Critical thinking - is making distinctions. Distinguishing good from bad, useful from useless, accurate from inaccurate.
The first distinction we need to make is between a fact and an opinion. Fact is something that is objectively and demonstrably true. An opinion is what someone believes to be the case. There is nothing wrong with having opinions, but what one person believes, another might dispute, as the proverb says: One man’s meat is another’s poison. Opinions are always debatable.
For example the statement : Charles Dickens was born in 1812, is a fact. No normal person would want to go to the bother of checking through the official records to verify a date given in thousands of reliable sources. That is something we can take on trust.
The statement “Charles Dickens was a great writer” is not a statement of fact, however. Even though many people see him as great, even a small minority who disputes his greatness will change it from fact to opinion.
When writing a work, the safest rule is to treat everything that you do not know for certain to be fact as opinion.
Critical thinking is not the same as negative thinking. Assessing a piece of writing critically does not mean you deliberately set out to try to find some faults with it or prove it to be worthless. A good literary critic recognizes the work and praises it and at the same time, censures anything that is inaccurate and carelessly thought out.
Critical thinking - is making distinctions. Distinguishing good from bad, useful from useless, accurate from inaccurate.
The first distinction we need to make is between a fact and an opinion. Fact is something that is objectively and demonstrably true. An opinion is what someone believes to be the case. There is nothing wrong with having opinions, but what one person believes, another might dispute, as the proverb says: One man’s meat is another’s poison. Opinions are always debatable.
For example the statement : Charles Dickens was born in 1812, is a fact. No normal person would want to go to the bother of checking through the official records to verify a date given in thousands of reliable sources. That is something we can take on trust.
The statement “Charles Dickens was a great writer” is not a statement of fact, however. Even though many people see him as great, even a small minority who disputes his greatness will change it from fact to opinion.
When writing a work, the safest rule is to treat everything that you do not know for certain to be fact as opinion.
08.02.202514:34
I am Mustafo, recently accepted to the world's 17th-ranked university: Hong Kong University. I didn’t just get in—I won a full scholarship. The main factor behind my acceptance and scholarship comes down to three big letters: SAT.
I started my SAT journey three years ago and have taken 8 tests so far. My score is 1520, with 750 in SAT English. I have been teaching SAT English for the last two years, and my students' scores range from 600 to 750.
In the past two months, after analyzing my students’ results—especially those who scored over 700—I finally found the answer to a question I had from the moment I first opened an SAT book: Is there a fixed plan to score 700+ in SAT English and achieve 1500+ overall?
After discussing my plan with friends—some with high SAT scores and others studying at top universities—and after working at YALE SAT for half a year, we decided to launch our guaranteed SAT English course.
📌 Our Guarantee:
Complete our program, and if you don’t score 700+ in SAT English, We will fully refund your money!
For more information, contact: https://t.me/Mustafo_Ergashev
I started my SAT journey three years ago and have taken 8 tests so far. My score is 1520, with 750 in SAT English. I have been teaching SAT English for the last two years, and my students' scores range from 600 to 750.
In the past two months, after analyzing my students’ results—especially those who scored over 700—I finally found the answer to a question I had from the moment I first opened an SAT book: Is there a fixed plan to score 700+ in SAT English and achieve 1500+ overall?
After discussing my plan with friends—some with high SAT scores and others studying at top universities—and after working at YALE SAT for half a year, we decided to launch our guaranteed SAT English course.
📌 Our Guarantee:
Complete our program, and if you don’t score 700+ in SAT English, We will fully refund your money!
For more information, contact: https://t.me/Mustafo_Ergashev
30.01.202512:33
Proteins
She would hollow out a turnip, fill its cavity with honey, place it near the hearth, as the honey slowly melted into turnip’s flesh, I would drink it, and sleep smelling the smell of a sacred herb, isiriq , which she used to protect my brothers from catching my illness. That's how my mom cured any illness I caught using traditional methods. I even remember how I got better eating ,during Covid-19, just by eating hot jizza - rendered fat from the ship’s back - with raw onions.
Surprised, I would ask my mom how she learnt these treatments, I would be referred from my grandma, to my grandma's grandma, and probably all the way back to godfathers of medicine, Ibn Sina and Albucasis.
Now, 19-year old me, started to understand how and why those traditional medicines really worked, and how do we really catch an illness? There are tiny molecules in our bodies, if one changes, or breaks or even 'misbehaves', it will cause an illness. Those tiny molecules are called Proteins.
Think of them as microscopic puzzle pieces that must fold perfectly to create the masterpiece. These molecular origami molecules are made up of amino acids like a string of beads that need to fold into exact shapes to work properly. Just as a paper airplane won't fly if folded incorrectly, a misfolded protein can't do its job in our body. A single mistake in this intricate folding can lead to the protein misbehaving, causing various illnesses.
To prevent these protein misfoldings, scientists have been trying for decades to predict how these chains fold because the folded shape determines what the protein can do. Recently, Google's DeepMind won a Nobel for its 'AlphaFold 2,' an AI model that can predict how proteins take on their unique shapes, this might be the revolution in medicine, and find ultimate cures for some life-threatening illnesses like Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, and Mad Cow Disease.
Do you want me to write about how AlphaFold 2 made it?
She would hollow out a turnip, fill its cavity with honey, place it near the hearth, as the honey slowly melted into turnip’s flesh, I would drink it, and sleep smelling the smell of a sacred herb, isiriq , which she used to protect my brothers from catching my illness. That's how my mom cured any illness I caught using traditional methods. I even remember how I got better eating ,during Covid-19, just by eating hot jizza - rendered fat from the ship’s back - with raw onions.
Surprised, I would ask my mom how she learnt these treatments, I would be referred from my grandma, to my grandma's grandma, and probably all the way back to godfathers of medicine, Ibn Sina and Albucasis.
Now, 19-year old me, started to understand how and why those traditional medicines really worked, and how do we really catch an illness? There are tiny molecules in our bodies, if one changes, or breaks or even 'misbehaves', it will cause an illness. Those tiny molecules are called Proteins.
Think of them as microscopic puzzle pieces that must fold perfectly to create the masterpiece. These molecular origami molecules are made up of amino acids like a string of beads that need to fold into exact shapes to work properly. Just as a paper airplane won't fly if folded incorrectly, a misfolded protein can't do its job in our body. A single mistake in this intricate folding can lead to the protein misbehaving, causing various illnesses.
To prevent these protein misfoldings, scientists have been trying for decades to predict how these chains fold because the folded shape determines what the protein can do. Recently, Google's DeepMind won a Nobel for its 'AlphaFold 2,' an AI model that can predict how proteins take on their unique shapes, this might be the revolution in medicine, and find ultimate cures for some life-threatening illnesses like Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, and Mad Cow Disease.
Do you want me to write about how AlphaFold 2 made it?
24.10.202423:50
PREPARING TO WRITE ( researching) PART 2
Research materials writers and scholars use are delved into primary and secondary sources. If you were writing about winemaking in California, your primary sources would be any material published by actual winemakers, statistics compiled by the wine-making industry or the federal or state government, and so on. Your secondary sources would be books or articles by enologists (people who study wine making scientifically), economists, or journalists about the Californian wine trade.
How do you know if your work is a primary or secondary source? If you write something that discusses a topic rather than describing something that you have actually experienced, your book, article, or report has the potential to be a secondary source for somebody else.
Primary sources are more valuable than secondary sources. and any academic work that does not show evidence of consultation of primary sources is likely to be criticized for that very reason.
This does not mean that secondary sources have no value, however—far from it. You might equally be criticized for knowing nothing at all of what secondary sources have had to say on the subject in question.
The important thing at any level of writing is to resist the temptation to let secondary sources do your work for you. Nobody wants to read somebody else’s ideas copied out or warmed up by you. Have confidence that your own ideas are worthwhile. Use secondary sources as a stimulus, not as a crutch.
Research materials writers and scholars use are delved into primary and secondary sources. If you were writing about winemaking in California, your primary sources would be any material published by actual winemakers, statistics compiled by the wine-making industry or the federal or state government, and so on. Your secondary sources would be books or articles by enologists (people who study wine making scientifically), economists, or journalists about the Californian wine trade.
How do you know if your work is a primary or secondary source? If you write something that discusses a topic rather than describing something that you have actually experienced, your book, article, or report has the potential to be a secondary source for somebody else.
Primary sources are more valuable than secondary sources. and any academic work that does not show evidence of consultation of primary sources is likely to be criticized for that very reason.
This does not mean that secondary sources have no value, however—far from it. You might equally be criticized for knowing nothing at all of what secondary sources have had to say on the subject in question.
The important thing at any level of writing is to resist the temptation to let secondary sources do your work for you. Nobody wants to read somebody else’s ideas copied out or warmed up by you. Have confidence that your own ideas are worthwhile. Use secondary sources as a stimulus, not as a crutch.
08.02.202508:38
Self improvement
... is the distinction between men and brutes. This ability of improving oneself, learning, growing is unique to humans with no dispute. However, this capacity might also lead not only to progress but also to decline.
A brute remains the same, it will be the same during its whole life and at the end of the thousand years will be what it was in the first year of that thousand.
In contrast, humans, with their potential for improvement, also risk losing much of what they gain, whether due to accidents or other causes. Rousseau suggests that while animals retain their natural instincts, humans may fall below the level of animals when they lose what they have gained, despite having the potential for perfectibility. This means that although humans can achieve great things, they are also vulnerable to greater declines than animals, who have nothing to lose because they acquire nothing.
The idea that any field of learning has attained its full maternity is just a presumption for those just wants to acquire the reputation of perfection for their own art. When such beliefs prevail, learning stops. By far the greatest obstacle to the advancement of science is to be found in men’s despair and the idea of impossibility.
... is the distinction between men and brutes. This ability of improving oneself, learning, growing is unique to humans with no dispute. However, this capacity might also lead not only to progress but also to decline.
A brute remains the same, it will be the same during its whole life and at the end of the thousand years will be what it was in the first year of that thousand.
In contrast, humans, with their potential for improvement, also risk losing much of what they gain, whether due to accidents or other causes. Rousseau suggests that while animals retain their natural instincts, humans may fall below the level of animals when they lose what they have gained, despite having the potential for perfectibility. This means that although humans can achieve great things, they are also vulnerable to greater declines than animals, who have nothing to lose because they acquire nothing.
The idea that any field of learning has attained its full maternity is just a presumption for those just wants to acquire the reputation of perfection for their own art. When such beliefs prevail, learning stops. By far the greatest obstacle to the advancement of science is to be found in men’s despair and the idea of impossibility.
27.01.202513:16
Alhamdulillah!
Full tuition scholarship from the world's 17th-ranked university, the University of Hong Kong.
InshaAllah, there's a lot more to come soon!
Full tuition scholarship from the world's 17th-ranked university, the University of Hong Kong.
InshaAllah, there's a lot more to come soon!
01.02.202518:35
Above, you watched the stunning beauty of the campus, surrounded by the greenery of Belcher’s Peak. Tall, green trees fill the landscape, and when you look out your window, the blue sea stretches out from the city (fantastic view)
Below, I wrote 5 fascinating academic and social facts about the University of Hong Kong that will make you say, “Wow!”
1) HKU’s Worldwide Exchange Program lets students study abroad at over 360 universities across 44 countries—including Ivy League institutions like Yale, Stanford, and Oxford.
2) At HKU, students can spend their summers working with the world’s top academics through the HKU Summer Research Fellowship. Students collaborate with researchers at MIT, Oxford, the University of Tokyo, and other leading universities.
3) The HKU Department of Computer Science collaborates with IBM and Microsoft Quantum Lab, giving students real-world experience in quantum computing. Undergraduates get to write and test quantum algorithms using IBM’s Quantum Experience platform. Many students land internships at Google AI, DeepMind, and Alibaba DAMO Academy, working on next-gen AI and quantum applications.
4) Through the Shadow a CEO program at HKU, undergraduates get to spend a day with top executives from global giants like JP Morgan, HSBC, Google, and Cathay Pacific. Some students have even secured internships and job offers through this rare, insider experience.
5) HKU’s Common Core Curriculum is unlike any traditional general education program. Instead of standard “Gen Ed” courses, students take quirky classes like ‘’The Science of Harry Potter” –learning physics, chemistry, and biology behind the magic of Hogwarts.
Below, I wrote 5 fascinating academic and social facts about the University of Hong Kong that will make you say, “Wow!”
1) HKU’s Worldwide Exchange Program lets students study abroad at over 360 universities across 44 countries—including Ivy League institutions like Yale, Stanford, and Oxford.
2) At HKU, students can spend their summers working with the world’s top academics through the HKU Summer Research Fellowship. Students collaborate with researchers at MIT, Oxford, the University of Tokyo, and other leading universities.
3) The HKU Department of Computer Science collaborates with IBM and Microsoft Quantum Lab, giving students real-world experience in quantum computing. Undergraduates get to write and test quantum algorithms using IBM’s Quantum Experience platform. Many students land internships at Google AI, DeepMind, and Alibaba DAMO Academy, working on next-gen AI and quantum applications.
4) Through the Shadow a CEO program at HKU, undergraduates get to spend a day with top executives from global giants like JP Morgan, HSBC, Google, and Cathay Pacific. Some students have even secured internships and job offers through this rare, insider experience.
5) HKU’s Common Core Curriculum is unlike any traditional general education program. Instead of standard “Gen Ed” courses, students take quirky classes like ‘’The Science of Harry Potter” –learning physics, chemistry, and biology behind the magic of Hogwarts.
25.11.202415:20
The reason so many people have trouble writing is that it's fundamentally difficult. To write well you have to think clearly, and thinking clearly is hard
And yet writing pervades many jobs, and the more prestigious the job, the more writing it tends to require
AI has blown this world open. Almost all pressure to write has dissipated. You can have AI do it for you, both in school and at work. Is that so bad?
Yes, it's bad. The reason is something I mentioned earlier: writing is thinking. In fact there's a kind of thinking that can only be done by writing. You can't make this point better than Leslie Lamport did:
If you're thinking without writing, you only think you're thinking.
And yet writing pervades many jobs, and the more prestigious the job, the more writing it tends to require
AI has blown this world open. Almost all pressure to write has dissipated. You can have AI do it for you, both in school and at work. Is that so bad?
Yes, it's bad. The reason is something I mentioned earlier: writing is thinking. In fact there's a kind of thinking that can only be done by writing. You can't make this point better than Leslie Lamport did:
If you're thinking without writing, you only think you're thinking.
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