Beyond the Present Podcast

Your choice of career will probably have more impact on your life than any other important decision that you ever make in your lifetime simply because we spend the biggest portion of our time at work and a bad decision can doom us to a life of unhappiness and underachievement. 

In this episode Daniel will discuss the most critical factors that should be considered in choosing the best career for you, one that makes the most of your interest as well as strengths so that you can be engaged and growing while at work and avoid unfulfilling career paths suggested to you by parents and the society which are often jobs that bring more security often at the cost of taking into consideration the natural inclination of the individual. 

There is a huge difference between wanting something and needing something and the root of that difference is the inherent detachment in the pursuit of a goal. When you are attached to an outcome you are much more likely to do something that prevents you from attaining it; on the other hand when you are detached from the outcome you almost never get in your own way nor send out negative vibes and therefore are much more likely to attain it.

In this episode you will learn to think like Zen masters and keep your mind detached from the outcome of the goals that you pursue so that not only you enjoy the journey towards your ideals but also achieve more in the process!

It is said that everything we strive to accomplish is for the ultimate purpose of becoming happier yet most of us are not fully capable of defining and understanding the notion of happiness and are looking for easy fixes to make ourselves happier often in vain. In this episode you will be able to thoroughly understand what happiness actually is and will be able to plan to manifest all its three types in your life! 

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, creating, expectations, idea, conversation, risk, means, fail, entrepreneurship, product, optic, agree, investors, science, deep learning, market, lose, discuss, questions, company

SPEAKERS

Pouya LJ, Tugrul

Pouya LJ  00:00

Hello and welcome back to yet another episode of the b2b podcast as always here with Tulou. continuing our conversation from last last week or so I think it was exactly last week, same time ish.

Tugrul  00:29

Hi, Sue. How are you doing? I'm good. How about you?

Pouya LJ  00:33

Oh, good doing well. As always, we are joining forces to have some conversations, some fun conversations. There's a lot of things a lot of topics we won't talk about for the next few episodes. But today, we're going to stick with a continuation of our last conversation, we started last conversation with immigration, we talked a little bit we pivoted towards the end to talk about some experiences you had personally in entrepreneurship, but very briefly, so now we would like to expand on that. So first of all, we are in a country that has good, pretty good opportunities to be an entrepreneur supports you in terms of the regulation in terms of the support system, incubators and such, of course, nobody does that one of the top countries would be United States, but we are also in a not so bad of a country in that department. So and you have done some basic studies on your own reading free readings and such in the space. So I would like to, you know, for you to give some like general background to our audience, and what do you think of? First of all, let's start with actually defining entrepreneurship. I'm not sure most people know, probably everybody knows what it means. But let's get our definition straight. So what does it mean to be an entrepreneur? What is an entrepreneur? Oh, that's

Tugrul  02:01

a good question. And it is really like kind of depends from person to person. But what I like about the definition of it is like, if you're creating something of benefit for society, or benefit for humanity, or something like that people can use people can benefit of it. You're an entrepreneur, when it doesn't necessarily mean that you have millions of dollars of company like startup, like your own company, but actually, whoever, even nonprofit, even like, they call it like an internal, or like maybe something else. But even if you didn't a company, if you're creating a value, creating a project, creating something you're like, internal intrapreneurs to, or if you're working for a nonprofit, organization, if you're creating something, if you're like creating a value, you're still an intrapreneur, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to make a profit out of it. intrapreneur is something that you're creating a value out of it, let me

Pouya LJ  03:11

write it as you say, value doesn't have to be monetary, although it can be but it doesn't have to be monetary. Okay. Okay. So that's the definition. You go with it. I agree with you. But like, you can define a different, many different ways, I guess. Yeah, that's right. And that's why I wanted to I mean, the definitions will be related, even if different, but I wanted to get that out of the way. Okay, so, so a personal or group of people who venture to do something that generates value to to others or potentially themselves, okay, and the value doesn't have to be monetary. All right. So so what was your so what was your the first time you became, you know, interested in this concept, and started thinking about it?

Tugrul  04:00

As far as I mean, as far as I know, I always like, had this spirit. I'm like this feeling that I want to create something, I still consider myself an intrapreneur even though I don't have a company yet. I never like I tried to start a company one or two years ago, that because of this immigration issues, I couldn't do that. But I try. But in the sense of like creating values, I always consider myself an intrapreneur. It started when I was like probably in bachelor. Like I always wanted to like, since I love tech, I always wanted to be part of it. First I wanted to be part of a scientifically that's the reason why I did my PhD then postdocs, but then I realized that maybe in the sense that Okay, so if you're a professor, you're creating values, like publications, etc. But it doesn't necessarily mean that The things that you're doing are gonna be like practical soon or ever? I don't know, it depends if you're if you're a theoretical physics, I mean, so it is going to be hard to create a value from, like a practical value like a business kind of value from a wormhole studies. But maybe why not maybe like 100 1000s of years later, it depends like, how is the human humanities going to evolve in tech? Yeah, I had this feeling of, apart from my physics or scientific interest, I always want to create a value. So it started that I had some attempts in back in Turkey. So like, I wanted to create a company focusing on solar cells, renewable energies, but I couldn't get any funding from anywhere. So yeah, I think as long as you feel you want to create something from scratch, it means that you have not 100% all the suffering for Spirit for the intrapreneurship. But you have it at some point, like, at some level, you have it partially. Or if you're, if you want to do this for Horrell whole of your life, like professionally, of course, you have the 100%. Ownership spread, because it requires risk taking skill. So, for example, okay, of course, you maybe you want to create values, but you're kinda like, okay, but if I lose my savings, what if I fail? What if I do this, there's something wrong, and I lost, like some something. So if you are not like a risk taker, if you don't like taking risks, you can consider yourself still intrapreneur? What partially, I mean, you have to take risk, you have to be courage. I mean, you have to this is kind of, I don't like to say it like a gamble, because it's not exactly a gamble. It's not something totally random. There are things that can be random niche, based on what, for example, you have an idea, and it has to be the right time. Right? This is kinda like, you can't control it, you it is what it is like, I mean, you have to be there at the right time at the right place. So this kind of stuff like this being lucky is still like not, you cannot ignore it. But I mean, if you have this creativity, skills, and also you like to take risks, you're okay with that, then you have to go for it properly. Right?

Pouya LJ  07:43

Yeah, no, that makes sense. I think I agree with you too, because there is there's risk taking, there's loss of your control. But there's also lots of out of your control as true probably with anything in life. But this this area, specifically more because inherently you're trying to venture in an area that has not existed. Or if you're replicating somebody else, then you're not you're just competing against them, okay, at least it's an industry that is tested, but then you the barrier to entry might be high in that. Others have set their foot straight, like imagine if you want to be now in new Google. Good luck, you have to offer something new, or we're probably not going to happen, right? So for that reason, I think there's so many forces working against you, or out of your control, if not against you. So, so yeah, I agree with you. There's definitely inherently some risks. So you have to have some appetite for risk, you have to be a little bit. Actually, this is why this is why this became an extension of our previous conversation on immigration, because we basically said the same things about immigration, because you're stepping into the unknown, you're giving up a lot of things, a lot of comfort, a lot of support structure that is there, right? And same thing with the being an employee, okay? It's not, it's not terrible. You have a support structure, you have benefits, you have salary, you know, where your next bill come, meal comes from, where it's going to be paid from. Now, you can do that, partially with entrepreneurship, of course, but that inherently means that you're trying to build something and convince others this is something that generates value for them to get them to adopt. Now typically for monetary gains for you. It doesn't have to be as we said, but typically it is right. So so yeah, I agree with you. I think there's there's there's there's that there's the speaking aptitude but then I want to ask you, what else do you think it takes for one to be an entrepreneur? Trying to stay excellent, except for risk taking?

Tugrul  09:46

Yeah, of course, like courage. First of all, like apart from the stigma, they're all parallel, like I mean, if you're a risk taker, you're you've means that you also can be courageous but You have to be patient, but at the same time you have to, it is not exactly the patient because you have to really understand and feel when you have to change the strategy, or you have to keep going. That is really a hard problem. I mean, for example, you have an idea. You, you think that this is going to be something important for people. But something happened and people started to not respond it I mean, when you when you release it to the market, like a first product, like proof of concept, well, you can say that minimum viable product, when you ask people to click and use this, and can you give me please feedback, and you can face something like, people don't like it, or people are not willing to give a feedback. And you can think that, okay, this is a moment that should either I should like, change my idea or my strategy, or I should keep going. So you have to understand that patience in the sense that if you're really be sure, and if you really feel that it's gonna work, it has to work in some way, you have to be patient. But if you're patient for something, there's not gonna be anything in future. So it's not gonna be worth anything, people are not gonna use it, whatever you do, then being patient doesn't mean anything, because you're on the wrong path already. So I mean, it does who nobody is going to care how much distance you like, to be on the path, because you're going in the wrong direction. But in the right path, for sure, you have to be patient. And you have to mean also you have to, like, be able to act quickly. So when I was taking this training from this incubator for three months, I didn't learn this directly there. But people were keep saying, if you're gonna fail, fail fast. This is it comes from, I think it was from Zuckerberg speech, or something like that. Maybe I'm just combining some irrelevant stuff together. But somebody said that, from the top, like a well known figure, I guess, because it was like, I remember, it's coming from somewhere like that. But they were in the Silicon Valley, they were saying that if you're going to fail, fail fast, because you have to be really fast if you're going to fail. But you still have need time to like, find the correct path. Other than that, if you're like, like, just keep chasing this wrong path. It's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen. So it has to be fast. That's what they mean. Also, like, um, the way that I started to learn the details about the intrapreneurship, of course, I was an academic iPhones in academia when I was taking this training, so most of the things were so new to me, still, I'm here. Not saying that I'm an expert of intrapreneurship. I'm not an expert, also not an expert. intrapreneur I'm here just feeling some stuff about intrapreneurship I have some feelings, I'm just expressing them and not just like saying, please, what I'm saying is take it through about intrapreneurs now, I'm just just just giving my opinion about it. But yeah, whatever I understood about it is like this Lean thingy, this Lean Startup i Oh, I'm also reading right now the book and it is kinda like argues about, you know, the, I don't know, you remember that back in the day, like, like 15 years ago, like a starting a business was all about like having the perfect product, almost. If you're going to the market, you have to have it, you have to have the product that is not going to fail, like frequently it's going to fail. So in so rare cases, so everybody's going to have the product and it's going to work like a flawlessly I mean, everybody's gonna be happy today, it's about the change with this concept. With this people are saying is release the product, but it released it in a in such a way that it should teach you something if they're not saying that because they some people are criticizing this idea, then in the market, they're like a garbage products a lot. Of course, if you're doing it like just to release anything doesn't make sense to you, then they're gonna be like garbage products all around. You don't need to really create the perfect product even you don't need to maybe spend lots of times on it. Even like just some brick, stone and wood if you're able to like give the idea with them. have a basic idea, then you can measure the response of people on board. And they can be like, Oh my god, yeah, I like it. I like to have it. Or they can be like, This is good. Let me use it. Two days later, they're like, yeah, it was good. But this feature was, I didn't use it at all. I don't think it's necessarily, although I voted in, you know what, I use this, but I really needed this feature for this. These are the things. And you really have to approach this problem kind of scientifically, you have to have this viable pro minimum viable product, like a Bridgestones woods, for example. But when you're providing this, you have to have correct questions in your mind, you have to design it in that way. Because you're going to focus on not profit at first, you're going to focus on what you can learn from market from because you, your product is not going to be shaped by you, is going to be shaped by the customer. Whatever the idea you have, you can think that this is the perfect idea. You know what, everybody's gonna love it. No bullshit, no, maybe the problem is not gonna work. Probably nobody's going to care most probably, of course, there are some rare cases proven that just worked at the beginning. But most of the time, what I heard from the story is even the people were like, what we thought was this, at the end after those feedbacks, etc, it was it evolved in such a different way. We didn't even like, imagine that, of course, because it's kind of shaped by customer is, you don't know their need. Exactly. I mean, the we're talking about these people, like lots of people, everybody has different needs. But what do you need to do statistically? They need not micro needs, of course, you need to figure out the macro need at the end. And that's what is it is actually like, I mean, of course, I probably oversimplify it. But this, this is kind of like evolutionary approach for business. You're, you're loving your product to evolve with the customer need, your environment is deciding who is going to live who is going to die in I mean, it is going to be customer so customer is going to decide what is going to die. What is going to survive.

Pouya LJ  17:33

Can you so so the name of the book is lean startup? Yes, lean startup. Okay. And do you remember the political the author's name by it?

Tugrul  17:46

Sure. Okay, so let's click New

Pouya LJ  17:50

for sure. Yeah, please, just for whatever might be interested to, you know, maybe?

Tugrul  17:55

Oh, yeah. Yep. Every price. regrets. Okay.

Pouya LJ  17:59

All right. Okay, so Lean Startup by Eric Ries. You guys heard it here. First. No, it doesn't matter. Anyways. Okay. So. So the idea of Lean is that you don't you don't sweat. Okay. So that's, that's another thing. Like I've seen people get bogged down by the details. Right.

Tugrul  18:18

So yeah, you can lost loads of time for that. Yeah.

Pouya LJ  18:22

Yeah, exactly. Let me get the perfect office, let me know. Yeah. Find the best curtain, or the best laptop I want to use.

Tugrul  18:31

Yeah, but you know what, because there's stories that people have verb like, months years for the product. And at the end, they realize that this product, people are not going to use it. Imagine that they were they were like, oh my god, he did it wrong, we have to ask first, then we have to build this product based on the feedback. But the good feedback, of course, there will be some garbage feedbacks, you have to be able to like filter and filter them out. Like you have to be careful about that. But at the end you're going to spend your time on something you you know that people are going to use because you have their feedback. So other than that, like you can these like these guys, they six months for nothing. I mean, time is important. Time is precious. And we have to

Pouya LJ  19:24

Yeah. And then you don't get you don't want to get on the right idea too late either. You might have a generally right idea, but then narrowed down what as you said, what the features are, if somebody beats you to it, when you're too late, it's not like you have infinite amount of time in a competitive market. Right. So that's fair. So so that's that's where I guess the Lean comes from, of course, for you to fully understand the Lean part. You need to read the whole book, which is simplifying. I haven't even read the book you at least have are reading I'm not sure we're still here and you're still reading right anyway, so you're still ahead of me but anyways, okay, so So we talked about what it takes to be an entrepreneur at a general level, we talked about some concepts in entrepreneurship. And of course, there is different markets that you, you know, participate in, and different regulatory structures, different financial structures. Like a lot of times, in North America, in general, you end up raising capital through venture capitals, investors and such. Sometimes you fund through smaller means sometimes you raise you take loan from banks, for example. That's generally the pathways for raising money that goes on. And in North America. Of course, different parts of the world might be differently, but more or less will have similar structure. Now, so of course, you have to have the idea, right? Is there a way that you can be in a start something without an idea? I can't, I can't imagine them. But okay, so you have the idea. Now, so the first question is, do I have the right idea at the Grand level? Or don't I? Right? How would you able to answer How would you? How do you think you would be able to answer that, of course, you can ask close family and friends, but they're really probably not the best advisors because they don't want to be your cheerleaders. Typically, we give you not so objective. So how do you evaluate the general idea? Or should you spend too much time evaluating it in the first place?

Tugrul  21:42

Oh, yeah, sure, definitely. Why? Because you're going to put some times put some effort on it, if if you decide that like, Okay, I, this idea is going to work. So it means that you're going to take some risks, you're going to spend time on it, etc, etc. So the first thing you have to do is go out there to the market, find the the companies, startups that are close to what you have as an idea, like maybe not exactly the same, but at least there are some similarities, that they're close in the same industry. Or you can think of potential customers, potential companies that can be customers or something like that. I mean, you have to find make some make some market research, you have to contact people, CEOs, I don't know, like HR, maybe not HR sales, maybe if you're planning to sell them something, you have to first before pitching anything, you have to talk to them like oh, like oh, how are you? The I was thinking this? Do you think? Do you need something like this? Or I? I am thinking this? And do you think in future this kind of service or this kind of product tenure help with you? This? Is this is important to be specific, if it's possible, because maybe they don't know it, maybe you figure that out. But you have to show it, I mean, okay, this, do you think you may need this like, in this process, for example, this can make your life easier because of this, this this? For example, it was what how much time it take for you? They can say like five hours? Oh, yeah, this can reduce it to for example, two hours. Either you can first ask questions to find the data need to show them they need it, or the need is already there. And you can discuss about it, but not in a teaching level. Not you're not there at first, during the market research to sell something, of course, you're gonna you need to sell something. But first, you need to contact as much as possible, like people as much as possible. Ask questions like, like a record like this like a podcast like you have, they're going to ask you, you're going to ask them because at the end, if you not make them bored, if you're interested in the conversation, this is going to be Vin Vin it goes into the correct letter in the correct path. Because they are going to if they understand that they are going to use it and this is going to be beneficial for them. It is going to be something good because then you're going to have some feedback maybe maybe you can see the first you thought the need was this but then they they can say something that you need to you may need to change a bit modified. I mean, what I'm trying to say here is you have to go out there first. Go ask as much as possible when I had this idea of microscope like make the microscopy autonomous, just automatic microscopies I even found a cut pool of people from India using microscopies. So we just chat. I mean, on LinkedIn, for example, I send the messages they send me back. My we chat maybe became not exactly very, like close friends, of course. But I mean, we had a conversation a couple of times. So they tried to help me, for example, I had a company in Canada. So they showed some interest on this because they needed something like that. It didn't go well, because we couldn't even start the business. But, I mean, we had two or three meetings with CEO CTO, this service people that they like, really presented what they have there. So they even ask some questions. We need this, we need that. The questions they asked are totally different than the idea that we were like, contacted them. But you know what, that that is more valuable? Because they need it. It is a need my idea? I don't know if there's a need. Now I know that there's a need of from them, right? I mean, this is you have to go first. I mean, this is free. I mean, of course not everybody is going to respond you like maybe on 100, like 1015, I don't know, it depends on your connection that your network. But even one it's going to be can be very important for you. So yeah, you have to go out there and you have to ask, I mean, even though you don't have any idea, like but you you think that for example, I didn't have a specific idea on creating optical computation, accelerators. I was working in optics laboratory. Two years ago in university. I knew it, there is now a big startup in United States called Light matter they are using optic to accelerate deep learning calculations. Deep learning process, really, this they designed it specifically for of course, severely, like a kind of niche for like a deep learning purpose. But you know what? It is a need, actually. Right? If you're increasing the time that it takes for the training for some models within deep learning more than GPU. Mining God ECU has something. And these guys are also like, what they're using is not electronics is optics. So it means that energy efficient, also, you're not creating heat. It was hybrid, of course, you're creating feet. So because your hybrid system, but not totally electronic system, you're still gaining something out of it, reducing the at least the energy consumption, electricity consumption and energy release. So that's yeah, I mean, this kind of stuff, of course. Can change. But yeah, the the answer is you have to go out there first, of course.

Pouya LJ  28:06

Yeah, I mean, think. So the second, you go out there, and you see that you have the right idea more or less. Now, I think the second step is to kind of like, maybe it's even before this, maybe it's I think this is a continuous thing at every step, you have to adjust for it. But I think you kind of also have to have certain, like, manage expectations. Okay, what do you expect to achieve? In what sort of time horizon? And what is your, your fault tolerance? How much are you like, Okay, this is this is the expectation I have this is the hopeful expectation, I haven't this is the minimum expectation I have. And if I'm falling below the minimum consistently, then that's an issue. I cannot afford it for whatever reason, or it doesn't work for me or that. That's where I'm going to call it quits, essentially. So I think those think those conversations to have with yourself and with your co founders, teammates, team members, investors, everybody, I think it's very, also paramount, because a lot of times people just have the wrong expectations. Just that doesn't mean that they're failing, per se, it just means that they're not, they're not, you know, on par with a certain expectation that they created for themselves. Or there's a miscommunication at some potential, you know, people have different expectations. Let's say you got some investment. And then your investment, investors have high expectations. And your expectations to yourself internally is slightly different, then that miscommunication can cause problems when you're not able to deliver to the expectations of your investors. So I think expectation management's and communications, of course, are paramount. And I think this is us. That's why I'm saying it's continuous because I did sees this thing may change, because your idea may get modified to a degree by going out there talking to people. Maybe it gets trimmed, maybe it gets argumented And therefore you have to continuously re evaluate and recalibrate. Okay, so we're coming to the end of the the this episode, I wanted to see if there is anything. So of course, one more thing before we come to the end, of course, the next natural step is execution. And I think you do your market research, you decide that this is viable, you set expectations. Now it's time to execute. And I think this is the part that you don't want to you want to go, you got to go lean, right? You want to go after the main thing, you don't want to get bogged down again, by the details even in execution. So is there anything you want to say to that to the execution stage of this thing?

Tugrul  30:52

Ah, I mean, exactly. Oh, yeah. This tricky? It is tricky. Because I, maybe that's, since I don't have much experience it is. I can say, some like, things clearly. But execution step is probably the hardest part of it. I mean, so we we have ideas all the time, right? I mean, you we can think this list, we can go for this, we can go for the What about this idea, whatever that idea, but we are not doing anything because first, we don't have that much experience. Second, we still like we still are living for to pay our bills and our rent. As long as we are able to do that paying our bills or rent I mean, to be able to live. Yeah, then the rest is okay. I mean, you can fail, you can just lose something, you can just start again, you can fail, you can start again. But the barrier is the point is, you cannot go below it. I mean, you cannot go become like, Okay, I can't pay my rent this month. No, it is not. It's unacceptable. So you how are you going to do it? How are you going to survive? You need to eat you need to be able to pay your bills, you at least for your for example, internet to be able to communicate with people on like, for example, social media, right? Yes. I mean, these are like the basics, your as long as you're okay with that, okay, whatever happens, we are not going to go below this, we are going to be able to pay our rent, bills, etc. Then you can like try something you can fail. Because you're not gonna lose by the end, you're gonna be able to eat and survive, and you're gonna find a shelter. Like home, to be able to live sleep. I think that's that's the that's the basic like a base level, like, you can't go below. Right? That's, for example, why I can't be like a more brave than that. Because I can lose I can tolerate to lose my current job, for example, or my current conditions. So because we don't know, of course, like, let's say that you started the business, you raised a couple of millions, 10 million, let's say that you an investor came and just or a company acquired you and you just earn 10 million. Yeah, then I can start to that's what my dream. I mean, I really want to go there and invest money on tech. First of all my ideas, together with other people's ideas, I want to invest all of them. The ones that I think I like and I see potential for future. I think we can also like for the next episode, we can continue on discussing that because there are like, also things that we can discuss probably like, what kind of market or what kind of like, areas that you would like to go and invest on both time and money. So that's my like, that's what I think it like, if you start something and if we like, earn something out of it, then the rest can be the risk. And of course, you're going to fail some of them, but but at the end, you are going to make some contribution to the technology, sometimes science because these some companies, for example, the one that I gave you an example like light metals, like optic computation, they're basically doing science. They're also Xanadu, for example, the court computers like they are developing optic quantum computers that they're doing also science they're publishing continuously. So did today. I mean, the things are not the science and tech are not like just coming up from the universities anymore. Companies are doing that, too. That's why I really changed my idea from being an professor to become an entrepreneur or to dive into the industry. Right? But there are lots of things to invest on still, I mean, invest with not only time time is we have it, I mean, that's what we have right now. But, but in future like, we were gonna, as like, this generation, as like, technology lovers, like a scientific minded people, or like, I don't know, like, whoever loves it to increase or improve people improve humanity in in this path. We're going to do it, we have to do it. Because we are living on a planet and we are planning to go other planets. And one day, we are not going to see that of course, but the sun is going to explode. And this even this, this system, the solar system is not going to be habitable. I mean, so we have to go somewhere else. You never know. I mean, you have to do this. Now you have to invest on this. I mean, for sure.

Pouya LJ  36:34

No, no, I am with you. And actually, one of the next episodes, we wanted to talk about space travel. And so so maybe we'll discuss about that. Yep, no, I guess the time is now. It's always now. For sure, I agree with you. There's a lot of areas of interest in investments, which we also can talk about in the future episodes, as well. Anything that maybe you wanted to talk about? We didn't get to? As of now?

Tugrul  37:05

No, no, everything is I think everything is? Okay. Of course, if there are like questions. If if someone is listening to this and have questions can always like comment on the podcast and ask questions that we can discuss. I'm not saying that we are going to answer it, because we are we are right now. This is these are the questions that everybody is as long as they're not convicted, like convinced. Everybody's right. Yeah, it means that you're right. It's your idea, because I can't convince you. So we can discuss, of course, what I don't know. Like, there are lots of things to discuss, of course, some, some can criticize me, by the way. They can say that instead of like thinking about going to space we can focus on like, people in Africa, for example, people are like, they they it is so hard for them to find food. They sometimes like most of the time, maybe they starve they sometimes like they can't find water, clean water to drink, of course, but science and tech, if we boosted it can resolve everything we can find the like a solution for everything for everybody. Not only to go to space, I'm not telling you that even the Clean Water Genie like having a clean water is science. Yeah, we will have to eliminate it. As long as you figure that out like food. You can create food, like farming, it is also science. Okay, it is something old, but we know it's technology. If you if you know how to do it, you can go there. And you can do it. Maybe you can do it free. Why not?

Pouya LJ  38:55

Yeah, this is this is the thing like a two to many main it seems sounds ridiculous. But actually yeah, farming is a is an was is a technology. Same with writing, language, technology, with technology, all of these that we take for granted nowadays. They were all technologies, very advanced technologies at their own time. For sure. Okay. Yeah, no, I agree. And I really like the point you made about comments. Yeah, for sure. If there is something you want us to discuss further on this topic or any topic for that matter? please do leave your comments. And as Stuart said, it doesn't mean that we are right and we have answered, but it means that we can spark a conversation and you can take that thought, go discuss it with your friends and family or in your own podcast. And and yeah, let us know either way. We will welcome your suggestions, criticisms, thoughts into the comment section for sure. Okay. Thank you through for today's conversation too. It was very interesting. I really enjoy Was it? And, yeah, so we'll talk more. We'll talk more on future episodes. But until that time, thanks again.

Tugrul  40:12

Thank you get ready. Have a great weekend.

Pouya LJ  40:15

And thank you. We're recording as a Friday when this episode might not be Friday for you guys, but I'm sorry if it's Monday through Monday. Thank you, everybody. Thanks for tuning in and I hope to see you on the next episode. Take care

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, immigrating, bureaucracy, courage, permanent residency, talent, immigration, canada, focus, country, entrepreneurship, build, challenges, life, permit, lots, emigrate, mentioned, apply, agree

SPEAKERS

Pouya LJ, Tugrul

Pouya LJ  00:00

Well hello, and welcome back yet again to yet another episode of The BTP podcast, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you're doing fabulous. We're back with total as per our previous episode. And we're going to talk about some cool stuff today, next few days and so forth and so on. It's going to be a few days of few episodes of lots of goodies around. So welcome back to rule out doing

Tugrul  00:44

good and good. Now in better,

Pouya LJ  00:47

whatever. That's great to hear. Not bad. It was a good day. Very productive. Lots of work to do, though. And now whether it was nice, so it for walk that was that was also good.

Tugrul  01:00

It's a bit dark, though. Yeah, it's getting dark again.

Pouya LJ  01:04

We're recording this at 9pm, which is good. Yeah. So so how are you doing? Overall, life is good. Life is treating you well.

Tugrul  01:13

Here are some work, work work with the Friday. So we are celebrating Happy Friday. Yay. But not today. Of course, unfortunately. Looking forward. Yeah. Yes, exactly. So then we look forward to Monday. Yes. And so to celebrate Happy Monday.

Pouya LJ  01:34

That's right. All right. So today, we're going to talk about a little bit about tooth topics, which kind of go I guess, hand in hand, at least in your story. And that is about initially about immigration as a whole. I mean, of course, you can share your personal story, but then immigration as a whole, what are the Will you will you advise it on others? Will you tell others to emigrate? Let's start there. So what are your thoughts on immigration? I then to break the ice a little bit to give the audience a little bit of a background. So the reason we're talking about immigration is because the way I personally looked at immigration is immigration is basically an uprooting of your life. So you have to, first of all have the courage to leave so many things behind in and I kind of look at it the Vikings way, if you will, I look at it as going after something different, something more something better, something different, I think the different borders the key. And for the upper. Hello, of course. Exactly, exactly. So that's how I look at immigration, I feel like it's because you're just seeking more opportunities, a different opportunity. The broad level, but what are your thoughts as a whole? And will you suggest it to others? Should they be in a position to be debating it?

Tugrul  03:07

Yeah, of course, I agree. I mean, it depends on where you're where you're immigrating to. Right. So so when you're living so many stuff behind the like, your parents, your I mean, whatever, like you, you're just leaving your friends. Not only like a friends and friends may maybe you're living some thing that you love, I mean, your books, I mean, your car, you never know. I mean, who knows? Right? So you're leaving them for to build a better feature. Right? Other than that, like, there is no point or, or, or you somebody or something like somehow you should be forced to do that. I'm not considering that this. That's a whole another story. So I mean, I don't I can't say anything about it. If you're forced to emigrate, this something is not an option for you, but is an option. If you're immigrating. The whole idea is to go somewhere, that you think that you're gonna You can live better, with a better life, better conditions, anything like for example, in our side, like, we don't have kids, but if you want to have kids, we want our kids to live in a place that they can be happy. They can live like they supposed to. Not like like I mean, not should they shouldn't work on the like heart conditions or they they should they like they can work and work and work but at the end if they can't get anything, and they're still like at the level of being poor and starving. So that was the point that mean so so many countries are on there, like people day and night are working. But at the end of the day, they can just live serving for not to die to survive. They're just surviving. I mean, this is unacceptable because I mean, we are living this life once and just surviving it, we are not Indonesia, we are just not just trying to build something for our kids, because we have the complexity we have that civilization, the the, like, we evolved, we, we have this complexity. And so I agree with you at that point. So we just with K, we came to Canada for the purpose to like to live a better life to, to, like, make our dreams come true. Like I have lots of dreams, and I want to make them real here. And I know that this country allows me to do so. As long as I have like, like a vote permit permanent residency or like, of course, the citizenship. Something. authorization of this. Yeah. Oh, yeah. But it is hard. It is hard. Not this this. Not everybody can do it. I mean, I know I am thinking in my parents shoes, like, they complain all the time. But they don't have that courage to leave everything and go somewhere else. Especially like, because of the language barrier, of course. Right, right. Yeah, but I'm not sure if my parents know how to speak English, for example, I'm still not sure they can leave everything behind and go somewhere to speak English. But this is the first step. This is the first thing the language barrier.

Pouya LJ  06:45

And this provides an excuse,

Tugrul  06:47

yes, oh, who is gonna like who's gonna learn at this age? I mean, people are, some people can graduate from university. Sure. 70 years old. But it depends from person to person, of course, is called a comfort zone, of course, your book for your parents, they happy. So anyway, so. But it's also full of challenges immigrating to somewhere like, okay, let's say that you already can speak a language of the country that you're immigrating. Let's keep that part. Let's say that we all know that language, for example, hear English. Then the next thing, the next challenge is the culture, of course. So you're coming from a culture, mostly a different culture, some common things, of course, but some different things, it can sometimes get hard to use it. Learn it, of course. I mean, you should find a way to learn it, you should find a way to have some friends. It is also a challenge to like to meet people, because I'm not talking about being young. I'm talking about like me that I emigrated here, like around 30 years old. So you know that right? Like, if you get older, it is becomes harder to find friends or like, have close friends. I mean, you you become picky.

Pouya LJ  08:17

And you don't you don't get those opportunities. As often. For example, if you come at the university level or high school level or even earlier, then you get to, you know, build those relationships in school and university and so forth. So, so that would be different. You're right, yeah. Okay.

Tugrul  08:33

Yeah, I mean, also, you need yours. They came as a postdoc here, like I had a, like, we have people in the group like PhDs, master's students, okay, at the school, you're called, like having, like a nice conversations with you, you're enjoying the talk, etc. But when the day is over, or everybody goes to home, and you don't go out, even on like weekends, I don't remember that I call or somebody called me to Let's go here. Like, just happened. Rarely. Yeah, I mean, I don't know maybe I didn't call or they didn't call because we all like we are picky or we already have some other friends. Or we are just lazy like laying down at home and let's let's go live. Watch this. Let's go watch that. Like, of course, going out something you don't prefer if you don't have a hobby outside. So that, like I, I was lucky. Of course, I came here with my wife. So I wasn't alone. And I know that I had friends who were like, alone. They were like, struggling with that they were like sometimes depressing. This is this is something challenging for people, especially who like rating by themselves. This can be challenging after like language barrier because having Frances bit hard. Um, next thing is of course, paperwork, some governmental issues, for example, right? Yeah. Oh, amazing. I mean, like, pull off, like being anxious about being anxious, like pulling nerves like I mean, what's going to happen full, you're just getting stressed. You're applying, for example, I came with a work permit. So it was like a one year or two years for at first. The first year was okay, because I have one year more, but when like, I'm given a deadline. Oh, yes. I mean, it's full of like anxiety, let's have we have to apply and you're waiting sometimes months? And you never know, maybe maybe you always have been back of your mind labor? What if they reject? What if I had to go back home after one year this even in one year, even imagined, like, yesterday, because you're trying to build something here, you're trying to do something you want to like, instead of thinking about this stuff, you want to focus on things about what you can do next? What is the next step? What should I do? Well, but this, you do this at some point, but then when you are approaching the deadlines, you just stopped doing that? And okay, what should I do? Like we have to apply this and we have to wait in response of my hope we can, we will get rejected. Yeah, that kind of stuff. This, this is something challenging also, like, mental mentally challenging. It can, it doesn't help you with that. So. So then you're you're looking for people who sponsored you to extend your contract, or look for another job that they can sponsor you to continue living here. Unfortunate ly my contract was extended by my employer. But it was one year, so that was full of challenges. And also, if you want to vote for work permit, there are two stories like one is open work permits. For example, one is closer permit, I had the close work permit, so I can't legally work for someone else. I wasn't, I wasn't able to vote for someone else. Of course. That's also like something problematic. I mean, I pro like the Pro. There are lots of reasons to do that, of course, but I mean, for a person who was having close work permit, it's hard to find a job like I mean, I was like, interested in going to industry at that time. So not all the companies are able to provide you the necessary paperwork to sponsor you. They are like, okay, so we are done. Not that big, we are still started up, or we are this and we can't Sorry, sorry. Yeah, whatever. This is how the system is. So you survived somehow, if you're if you want to, like stay or if you really want to, like, do something. And if you just focused, you know, will you find your way? Of course. Yeah, I like for example, I came to Ottawa, in my in my business for my second postdoc last year, and I got another contract to open but then I applied for permanent residency, and now I have a permanent residency, which, which is good now, I don't have issues. Like I don't have concerns about these kinds of permits, etc. But

Pouya LJ  13:51

yes, free of the bureaucracy.

Tugrul  13:55

Even like I when I was in my first post to get my chair like, at, like, two incubated with a project, which is accelerator called Suntec. I was good. I got accepted for the project. And I like me and my professor X professor was like, we were cofounders the ideal I always liked it. The name of the project microscope bought I mean, it was an amazing name, I still like it. It was a kind of idea that tries to automate microscopy with the AI I was so involved in the even though I didn't have any expertise like I didn't study I didn't have that much expense all personal hobby and but I was like, I was using microscope electron microscope so I was like, why not? I mean, not electron microscope me because they are expensive toys but why not for the like regular traditional Microsoft optical ones. Maybe I can design a system the If you can just put your samples and leave for the coffee and the whole system goes back for Drive left focus, then deal with everything by itself automatically collected data after like a couple of hours. So you have 1000s of images. Wow, amazing. You were just drinking your coffee. And you know, after one hour, you have 1000s of images. So yeah, I pitched the idea I took like, the train by them, like three months, it was like an intensive three months program from this intrapreneurship level, they were teaching you that

Pouya LJ  15:35

the what were they teaching, if they were teaching you only the entrepreneurship intrapreneur technical stuff to

Tugrul  15:42

networking, how to build network and how to prepare your minimum viable product MVP is what you should have to do how you can deal with the business plan, they mostly were using lean startup idea, like, don't try to get the perfect product, just start with something that you can show potential customers potential investors, that my idea is this how this is a demonstration, no limit, it can be even, you don't need to pay, like it can be cost free that you can just some build something or you can just create a software like or like a file, what I did was like, for example, I applied object detection with the for a video that I created from microscopy. I just applied object detection over it. And I showed that how the objects are like a tracked with the algorithm and how was it moving left, right? And how was it detecting the focus and the system if not focused on aligned? Axis, etc. Like that? It took me like, five hours, six hours. Yeah, but the problem was, then everything went well, like there were like lots of brilliant ideas around. So you will also be able to connect with them. You can also I don't know, like, if there's a good connection between you and someone else, you can just that guy or you can join him or her they can join you. So very dynamic environment. But the next step was you have to build your startup really officially have to start it to be able to go to the next step. But I couldn't do that because I had a work permit. And there was no way there was no way to start the company, you have to find someone who has a residency or citizenship, that needs to be at least I don't know, I just gonna, I don't remember exactly the number is 20 25% or something like that, to have that share in the company to be able to like a build it. So that was the time that I'm like, oh, okay, so I'm not gonna be able to do anything, unless I received my permanent residency. Just hold me back for some time, to be honest. These are all challenges. I mean, cultural, going immigrating to somewhere else, language barriers, then this kind of stuff. I mean,

Pouya LJ  18:21

the bureaucracy. Yeah. So I do want to go a little bit back first, and then come back to this. So you mentioned a while back, you mentioned courage. And I think that's a key key word in immigration. Because anybody who's like, had gone through immigration will tell you more or less, it's not an easy endeavor. Even so some people have it worse, some people have it better. Some people have a better experience, easier experience, some people have a more difficult experience. But ultimately, even the ones who have a relatively easy experience is generally difficult, because first of all, you have to move on from something, as you mentioned, you have to put some stuff behind. Either they're actually you know, literally stuff like inanimate objects or books and you know, whatever. Or, for example, job maybe, or there are people that you have to move, move away from and it doesn't mean that you don't keep contact with them. But it means that while you're not going to be seeing them every day, and then the second fold of that is that there are going to be lots of challenges. As you mentioned, there's many faults, cultural language barriers, cultural barriers, experiential barriers, sometimes it's not easy to find the right job in the same industry because you don't have the right experience in that country. Now, you may have experiences in other countries, but sometimes they don't translate all that well depending on the field of course. So it takes a lot of courage to leave what you have behind and as you mentioned, some people are forced to move and just go somewhere else because of wars or refugees, so maybe it's a different story there. But for those who choose to emigrate, then it does take courage because it means that you have to uproot your life. Whether it's good or bad, however good or bad it is. Nevertheless, you have to destruct your environment. And I think it takes courage. But with everything, if you have the ratio, if you wisely choose and you're courageous, odds are that you're going to get something out of it either a good result ultimately, or a good lesson, even if you fail. So I just wanted to point that out and see if there's anything you want to add on that courage point, to the whole story of immigration before we move on to bureaucracy.

Tugrul  20:47

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Like, if it's courage, in my case, I was planning to, like, move somewhere like Europe or United States or Canada. When even when I was like, in bachelor, that was kinda like my plan already. Because I really wanted to have a portunity to build something big. Yeah. I mean, you can do it in your own country. Yes, maybe. But the effort? Okay. They're not saying, Oh, that's it, the dynamics are very different. For example, my country. First of all, there are not much technology companies around like not, it's like, consider Silicon Valley. I mean, come on. Like, if you go to Silicon Valley, somehow, if you started to be become an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, the network the people, like, what we're talking about here is environment, you need that you need that. I mean, for example, Canada. In Ottawa, I'm not in my mantra that there was an environment for sure. But wherever you are, doesn't matter. Like a country wise, you feel that there are opportunities here. If you have the idea, if you have the motivation, if you have this, like, Okay, I'm going to do it, if you have this motivation here, you know, that nothing can stop you. But this is not the case for all the countries. You have to either be really lucky or you have to be like, you know, people, really, you have to have this kind of network. Yeah, there are people of course, there succeed in these countries. Of course, I cannot say that. You can't you can. This is no way. No, I'm not saying of course you can. But I mean, having an idea and to become a giant is more possible here.

Pouya LJ  22:58

Yeah, there's definitely more opportunities more different. No, I agree. So I guess there is another element to the courage that you're basically mentioning, and that is, well, first of all, you need ambition, you need a reason to move. Now, in your case is ambition. Sometimes it's something else. But in your case, it seems to be the ambition, and I think it's the same in my case. And then you need also to be slightly adventurous, if not extremely adventurous, you need to be at least slightly adventurous to step into the unknown and be comfortable with that. So you take you take a courage, you take a reason to have to move to uproot your life. Otherwise, why would you? Well, it was you seem to be an idiot. And you need to be adventurous to a degree. Would you say that's, that's probably the base criteria for somebody to emigrate?

Tugrul  23:46

I mean, you're right, definitely encourages and being adventurous, I think they all combine the single point, which is, I think, not being scared of failing. If you if you're not scared of failing, I mean, if you're like, Okay, I can fail first time, second time, third time. Now, no worries, this life goes on. As long as I'm alive. And as long as I'm capable of doing stuff, my brain works or I can do something as long as I can do that. Nothing can stop you. You can fail. Of course, you're gonna fail you're gonna fail because you're trying something new. If you're not failing, you're it means that you're not learning not trying something new. It that means that you are following successful people because they pass this road and they like design. Now you cannot fail on this road. You're just following it that you're not learning. You're just like, clot and like I was called, like, you're just doing exactly the same. They did but in a way that when they became successful, you're not taking the part that they failed, but for sure you should be able to accept that you're going to fail. And you're not going to scale of that. If you're scared of failing, this is not the correct way you for your life that then you shouldn't maybe emigrate, I mean, you can still, you know, that can I

Pouya LJ  25:22

don't think I don't think you can really emigrate without failure, like it will be there, you're gonna make mistakes because you don't know them. As you mentioned, you have the culture shock, you have all these problems that you just don't know a lot of things. Honestly, even if in your perfect environment, it's impossible to not make mistakes and fail, but the odds will be multiplied 10 times 100 times 1000 times as much, because that's just the nature of things, you're stepping into the unknown. And when there's lots of uncertainty, the chances of making a mistake goes higher. But then that's okay. That should be okay. So that's where the, as you mentioned, the courage and adventures converge, essentially, and then you need the reason. Now, for some people, it's just ambition, or, you know, curiosity, or both. For some people, it's just, you know, what I want to give my children children a better life, potentially, or I want this or that. And for some people, unfortunately, it's not a choice. They're forced, as forced upon them. Okay, so let's just move on a little bit before we come to the close of this episode. So next episode, we'll talk about a little bit more about the entrepreneurship aspect of it. But I just wanted to address because we mentioned the bureaucracy. So as with all governments, when you deal with them, they tend to be a bit bureaucratic. And that obviously creates a lot of hurdles. Now, one of the advantages of I guess, specifically United States, and I guess in recent years, Canada has been that actually to try to remove lots of these bureaucracy to a high degree or reduce them, at least, when it comes to talent when it comes to entrepreneurs, when it comes to investors. So that you can tap into a pool of talent, and capital all over the world, not only within your own confined borders. And I guess that's one of the success stories of America that actually, United States specifically, I mean, America is a continent, the United States of America has been that the one of the stories has been the fact that they were able to attract the best of the best talents all around the world. And they've done that by trying to, specifically the past, but maybe less so presently, but then cannabis taking place a little bit. They have been trying to do that by reducing those beers, because they basically gave people a chance to, you know, focus on your own thing. Focus on things that you're actually good at. And of course, there's going to be some bureaucracy, that's just impossible, as you deal with governments that want to make sure that who you are, that their borders are made safe, that you're not misrepresenting yourself in one way or another. So there is going to be a little bit of that. And governments being the huge entities that they are not really good at producing these bureaucracies actually add to it. That's just the nature of things. So what do you think can be done in the case of entrepreneurial entrepreneurship or generally speaking, talent acquisition, from the standpoint of a country, let's say, like Canada, or any country, for that matter, that wants to accept immigrants and wants to accept talents? Or, you know, specific kinds of work workforce in different industries doesn't matter? What can be done in your personal experience? Now, you had the experience of Canada and had a very specific experience. Of course, I had a slightly different experience, but similar in terms of being theocratic. So what are the Do you have any thoughts? Have you thought about it? What can be done to or Not? Not? Specifically? I'm not talking about specific things, but directionally is there general ideas that you think can help with reducing this tension and allowing talent to just flourish?

Tugrul  29:17

Yeah, I mean, it kinda is doing actually good when I was like, like in this intrapreneurship program, the last day they mentioned me this intrapreneurship immigration program, I didn't know that before like it you had to apply it. Like, we just I was in Montreal. So the problem was, I couldn't speak French so I couldn't apply for the permanent residency, but I didn't know you can apply for intrapreneurship program even within within Montreal in Quebec. So if I knew it before, but the thing is, like you have three months, but usually it like takes one one and a half year. So in any As I won't be able to, like I couldn't probably get my permanent residency, even that case to build my startup. But this is tricky. To be honest. There are lots of talents around the world, of course, the country's companies, are they fighting to get this talent? But while you're like if you make things so easy for people to emigrate the country with talent, of course, is something good. But you have to care about the society also, like who you are like, like a given residency, these guys are, okay talented. But who are they? I mean, maybe they are not. Some of them. They are not like, they can be rude. They can make things harder for other people. You never know. I mean, just because they are mine doesn't mean that they are just struggling with other people.

Pouya LJ  31:04

Yeah. In my experience, criminals are very talented, especially the successful ones, but you don't Oh, yeah. Okay, so yeah, that's a good example. Yeah. You want to make sure that you're letting in the right kind of people and not international criminals, for example. Oh, yeah. Maybe very talented. But nevertheless, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I know. It's a level. Yeah. Yeah.

Tugrul  31:27

I mean, the software level, maybe hackers, they mean they are just stealing people's information, credit nerds, etc. They are so extremely talented. But then you're saying, okay, so you're talented. Come to my country. Still people here

Pouya LJ  31:40

like, no, it is. It is a tricky business. I understand that. Yeah, yeah. I agree with you. I think overall, Canada is not the worst for by any stretch of the imagination is doing pretty. Okay. Pretty good overall. Still, I think there are some aspects of bureaucracy that can be trimmed. If not, yeah, they're doing pretty good. But yeah. So

Tugrul  32:02

leaving times alone, for example, can be reduced this processing times? That can be much better. Of course,

Pouya LJ  32:09

people have options. Yes. You don't have to stress about it. If, for example, you get a rejection of some sort, and you have the time to respond to it in a timely manner. Yeah, I agree. I think I think that would be probably the best place to start to actually reduce this processing times. All right, we'll continue this discussion, of course, specifically, more on the entrepreneurship side. But before we close, though, is there anything you want to mention that we missed? Or you wanted to talk about that? We haven't?

Tugrul  32:43

No, not so far. I mean, yeah, I mean, it's tricky. Yeah, I agree. This everything is tricky. This is tricky for government. This is tricky for immigrant. I mean, this is not easy for anybody. Everybody is just trying to make things better. Immigrants, they are trying to make their lives better, or they're, like me, them and they have some they have ambition, and they also want to provide a better life for their kids for like, their belongings. And so you can do this here. And you just You need courage. So as long as you have courage, okay, that you can fail. I mean, there are things that are tricky, of course, you can hold you back for some time, you can just get mad, but you have to focus on the feature, not the problems, you always have to you should always have to focus on the solution, not the problem. Problem is there focusing on the problem is not going to solve the problem by itself. Focusing on the solution is going to help you to solve that problem. Most of the people or they miss this, but they just focus on the problem. Okay, I have this problem mine. I hate this. I hate that. Yeah, I am complaining also like, everybody complains because it's a good way of releasing energy, they have tension. But at the end of the day, the seriously you take this focusing on the solution part more serious. Complaining is something else. But focusing on problem is another thing, not that you shouldn't focus on that so you don't need to scared of immigrating. Just think about what you can achieve afterwards. But if Okay, let's say that if I immigrate to Canada, I want to immigrate to Canada. I want to move there. And I believe there are these are going to be problem this is going to be problem. Okay? But think about what you can do here. You can start a business you can find a good job. You can do something in quantum computation. You can do something good in AI. You can Go to a very high ranking university, you can study neuroscience, I mean, of course, there are like lots of opportunities, you have to focus on that you have to focus on what you're going to do next. Yeah, but meanwhile, governments are also struggling have to make have to pick talent and correct people, for the society to make the society better, of course. Yeah, because everybody wants to have a society that everybody gets along well, everybody shows respect to each other, like, everybody's happy, they can focus only on the things they they love, like, for example, you ai me a quantum computation, to, to move this technology move the science forward, let's let's move everything in a better way, like, like, let's focus on how we can make this work better in terms of how we can live better how we can make the technology better science and how we can make more discoveries, how we can go to other galaxies or the planets, how we can colonize them how we can mine the streets, we should focus on this because at the end of the day, we were just polluting our, like our home with mining, we need those chemicals, of course, because of many things. But if we focus all together, on the future, and on the things that we can achieve all together, like on the space, even like in the science, tech and anything art, I mean, everything just focus on improving things. It is the way how it evolves. I mean, it's the way how we should go instead of like fighting each other.

Pouya LJ  36:54

Yeah, has always been agreed. That makes a lot of sense.

Tugrul  36:57

No, I can't at this point. But

Pouya LJ  37:00

that's good. Actually, this is this is something we're going to continue talking about, the more the you know, the entrepreneurship aspect, the you know, the the innovation and improvements aspect. For sure it will start next episode, we'll continue that this conversation basically. From will we'll move on a little bit from immigration side, but we'll maneuver more on entrepreneurship and the Lean Startup philosophy that you were telling me about so we'll be could delve into that a little bit. All right. So I'm not going to say goodbye because we already said that we're going to have that next episode very soon. About Yeah, about the entrepreneurship aspect. But I do want to say goodbye to our audience. And I as always, I'm really glad that you guys tune in, listen to us. I hope you enjoyed it. And I hope you will join in next month. Thank you all for joining and until next episode.

Tugrul  38:01

Yep. Thank you very much. See you everybody. Take care.

The Polyglot Guidebook written by Daniel Molgan is now available in paperback and kindle on Amazon. In this episode Daniel reads the introduction of this book for you so that you can understand whether you should get yourself a copy to become fluent in speaking any foreign language! 

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

quantum optics, arrogance, imaging, materials, physics, degree, confidence, observe, kinda, people, agree, thinking, science, human, quantum mechanics, postdoc position, field, evolved, point, question

SPEAKERS

Pouya LJ, Tugrul

Pouya LJ  00:00

Well hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to yet another episode of the b2b podcast. We've been away for a while I have for sure. But I am back with a very great friend of mine, tool gunner, and I am happy to introduce him to you what a legendary man he is. He has okay. Oh, you know what? I'm not gonna give you the introduction. I'll let him introduce himself the way he he sees fit. Hey, Joe, how are you doing?

Tugrul  00:43

I'm good, by the way, are legendary?

Pouya LJ  00:48

No, no, I know you well enough to give you that, you know, give you that adjective. So that's all well deserved? For sure. All right, turtle. So why don't you give us a very brief but comprehensive background about yourself, the way you see yourself from your academic background personally. Yeah, go ahead.

Tugrul  01:10

Yeah, sure. Sure. I will start with when everything changed in my life. I was like, I was not cared about anything before, like last year of my high school. So I was like, playing video games going out like playing soccer. And the classes were like, I wasn't. I had zero interest at all. But I wonder I was reading a lot. I was like, I was kind of reading lots of different books, different types of books, mostly like fantasy books, like Dragon land series, forgotten mediums. It all started with a lot of things by the way. Yeah, anyway, but that was also another story. My father, like, gave that present to me like a lot of drinks book. But the second book, he just grabbed a random book from there probably, like, just grab the second book. And then I Oh, what's this looks let me read the first one. Then I started with the Lord of the Rings. Okay. But back then I was reading this Dan Brown's book called demons and angels, or whatever. Demons.

Pouya LJ  02:22

Read the book, but I've watched the movie. Okay.

Tugrul  02:24

Yeah, I also watched the movie, but I don't know. Like, it was a good book. I'm not sure. But the thing that just like was interesting to me when they were talking about like, antimatter. So I just, like stuck at that point, like, Oh, my God, what is this? Like, I never heard of this before antimatter. Like, I wasn't even interested in physics. Okay. No, no, no, no, but antimatter was like, something changed. What? I never heard of this before. And I realized that I mean, we have lots of things we don't know. That was the, like, a break point in my life. Okay. We're, we're just pretending that we are we know stuff that based on our observations, these are like a micro sis macro systems that we are observing daily, like mostly, like, wearing like an eternal outdoors, we all know, so we just ever have that. Like, I mean, if you drop something, it just falls down. Like it's a gravity, I mean, this kind of stuff. But I that was something different. You can observe it you need to be in that field to know what is antimatter. So that was a some kind of like, a break point in my life. Okay, then, I started to read a couple of things about it, then I noticed that oh my god, this is something else. There's another world inside of this like, like quantum mechanics, even though I had no idea what quantum mechanics is, but I was like reading uncertainty principles, something is not clear. But something sounds are like, interesting, like, Oh my God, what's happening here, like the universe is not really like, observed something more and more. I mean, then, last year, in my high school, I develop interest in the physics as you expect, like, then I was like, for the my bachelor degree, I have to study physics. And I have to I have to become a theoretical physics physicist. I mean, because I really wanted to understand everything. That didn't happen, of course, but I'm gonna mention that I'm going to talk about it. So So I in in my country, for bachelor's degree, you have to take an exam and after the exam, you need to write the university and discipline like this university physics. This university for example, electrical engineering

Pouya LJ  05:00

to give his background so when you're originally from Turkey, so you do your Bachelor's there. Yes. Okay. Go ahead.

Tugrul  05:10

Yeah, yeah, my masters and PhD there too, but Right, so, so you have limits, of course. So you can just write 20 University and 20 different subnets. So I wrote physics for all of them. Because I was like, obsessed. So, yeah, I just got into physics. But it was kind of disappointing. Like, okay, I was kind of, I mostly like, thinking about this ideas, thinking about how universe should work. And this kind of like a philosophical way of Lego discussions, I've kind of mostly like that way of it. But mathematics. When it starts to become complicated, you start to lose control of your thoughts. Also, sometimes, like, if it gets too complicated, you start to focus mostly on the mathematics to solve that problem. You're getting away from your first idea, and you can find yourself with into different concepts, different mathematical tools. Of course, it can guide you different discoveries, of course, but you need to, you need to have that skill to have fun with this mathematics. I didn't have that one. So still, I was like, kinda stubborn. So I wanted to do my master's degree also in physics, which did the quantum mechanics from from the fundamentals, which was focusing on the foundations of it like, main things like fundamental things. So we published a paper about quantum tunneling. Because there was a problem about estimating time in quantum mechanics. And tunneling is a phenomenon that happens in time, even though there were people that researchers like arguing about maybe instantaneous, maybe it's not time dependent, but we found the time for that, which we published. It was a nice journey for me, but then I changed my topic, like, very like a, like a 100 watt, like 180 degrees, like, just back with like, a different direction. Which I started doing my like a PhD in material science and engineering, talking about the relevant components.

Pouya LJ  07:35

The way you say. It was 180 degrees deviation. One would think this is a you went to art since fallen artists. No, I'm kidding. Within the realm of physics, you didn't want it okay. Yeah,

Tugrul  07:51

I mean, like, change my direction, like, I mean, it all you can also call it 90 degrees to I mean, I was just like I did, I was like, spanning somewhere else. Yeah, I started to work on some applications. I was kinda materials, material scientist, I was working on polymers, polymer composites, emissive materials, like I was mostly working on alternative materials for the white LEDs, because in LEDs, especially white LEDs, you were using phosphorus, which they contain, like rare earth elements. So I was trying to develop new materials or trying to increase the efficiency of the this phosphor materials inside the tube. It was nice, it was a efficient pH like I published like kinda 20 papers, because it's an application is not a theoretical physicist. So it was kinda like it's highly liked, like you can publish papers, as long as you develop something and you showed us an increase those improvement, it works. Or you even you can come up with a new material, which we were there was like a sample. One kind of material was very popular back then we even published a couple of papers awarded called halide perovskites. Yeah, so I was kinda like optimistic about my postdoc. Because like, 20 papers, so I was like, okay, I can find a good postdoc position around the world, but it didn't go that way. I applied like 600 700 positions with a detailed applications. I didn't get a response from most of it. Probably some I didn't even send the second secondary email to them, but probably they went and noticed, like one of them just, he's a Turkish professor. Also, he's a professor in Montreal,

Pouya LJ  09:59

Montreal. Canada, yes,

Tugrul  10:00

that's Montreal in Canada. So that's he sent me like the position and offered me the postdoc position, which was an amazing subject. It's called water fast electron transmission electron microscopy, which transmission electron microscope by itself is a characterization tool that can image materials at nano scale, which is like 10 to the minus nine is like, how much like 1000 Lower magnitudes higher magnitudes than the human hair, right in 1000, it was micron, so, probably around 1000. Similar things from the human hair. Even more, I don't know, like, probably some that kind of scale. So we were basically imaging nanomaterials at the Nano scale, like we were characterizing them trying to understand the shape some of the properties, but this is regular transmission electron microscopy, ultra fast transmission electron microscopy is where you are integrating your microscopy with laser. Now, you don't only have this imaging, you also have this laser, which you can also send it to your material and observe what's happening when your metal or nanoparticles are interacting with the laser. Which brings, we call it the time dependency for your observations, which is from imaging, a now you start to record movies, and you can visualize what they're doing and understand the interaction of places in time. So, by the way, my professors professor in Caltech, his name was like Zewail, he, like, got the Nobel Prize for this invention, mostly, you got the Nobel Prize for them to chemistry, but this was the part of the invention. So yeah, that that, in today in the world, there are only four or five facilities that can do this. ultra fast transmission electron microscopy is an expensive tool. After that, like I studied two and a half years in Montreal, Canada for as a postdoc, and my second postdoc, I came to Ottawa in Canada again. This time, it is a completely different lab, it is a quantum optics lab, because I also like I am enjoying it. I know I love quantum mechanics. So I came also like to learn quantum optics. And I was planning to apply some of my AI skills. Of course, I don't have any professional skills because I didn't study AI. I didn't study machine learning in any of my degrees. But I, since I love AI and coding, I always like, during my free time as a hobby. I also I tried to improve myself a lot. So then I started to combine quantum optics with deep learning because in quantum optics, you have noisy like results and etc. So you can combine them with the deep learning etc, we

Pouya LJ  13:27

can we take a step back, so can you tell tell me like what is actually quantum optics? Like, can you delve into it? What does that mean? Okay, optics is? Oh, yes, in the quantum, but how do they go together?

Tugrul  13:38

Yeah, of course, I cannot explain that like an expert of it because I work from the burning. But

Pouya LJ  13:43

even if you did, I wouldn't understand.

Tugrul  13:47

In Visual optic isn't just that it's the light. So you don't have to you don't need to have a like coherency, which means that like some kind of like, coherent motion or coherent interaction of your light. Like as a, like a physicist standpoint is like, How can I select it's not random, the photons in the light, if they're not acting random, they are acting in a coherent way. So they have some kind of correlation between them. So regular light is you don't have this year. They're just like, moving. They're just moving like in spacetime. But when you're talking about quantum optics, you need to use some kind of generator of this coherent light because light itself is not generating it with regular light sources. For example, we were using different crystals. You're sending your laser to these crystals. And these crystals are so special that they create coherent light, which they are correlated in the momentum. degrees of freedom. And I mean, they go into two different paths read up, I mean, when you hit them with the laser, out of the crystal, you have two life paths. One goes one direction, or the goals pregnant, the perpendicular direction. The main property of this two beam is their entangled, momentum entangled. So

Pouya LJ  15:25

this one, so the past crystal,

Tugrul  15:28

yeah, after they passed, the crystal crystal generates, of course, what was the efficiency of this generation like 8% 10%, maybe, I mean, it's a lot less not that high,

Pouya LJ  15:41

so you get better you preserve. So the light that comes up at the end of it is less than 50% of what you actually put into it.

Tugrul  15:49

Of course, yes, of course. So you have less light now, but you see that they are momentum in the momentum, degree of freedom, they are correlated, I mean, entangled. One is plus one is exactly the same moment with the negative value. What we can do is that, so if you observe the two beams, so imagine that you have two cameras, one is observing the, one of the beams or the other one is observing the other view. So you have triggers for these cameras. So one photon, when one photon hits one camera, it checks exactly the same time, the other one grabs any photon signal. So if the two photon hits the camera at the same time, you're saying that, okay, two entangled photons, alright. Other than that, you're not capturing anything. These cameras are own only when two photons are era, photons arrive these two different cameras at the same time. Because they, of course, you're designing your optical path in such a way that they like they travel the same distances. Yeah. Okay, because its speed of light is constant. So they have to travel the same distance. So they're like interesting applications of this, if you put an object in one of these beams, if you try to collect the other beam, it gives you the image of the object without touching it. What I mean is that, for example, you have two beams. And in one of the path of one of the beams, if you put an object, you know that right, so some of light is going to pass some of them not because they're gonna be absorbed or reflected by the object. Yeah, so other beam says they're correlated and entangled. So when you get the camera when these photons get the camera, so they are going to be triggered only with the other photons that are passed and reach to the camera. So you're going to have a kind of image of the object with other beam, which has nothing on this path. I mean, this kind of the this is called Ghost imaging. Maybe I just was so bad.

Pouya LJ  18:12

No, no, I think I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Not good boy. Yeah.

Tugrul  18:16

Let's go. Yeah, it's I mean, it was like I was kind of trying to develop a deep learning algorithm to make the resulting images better increase the resolution of it, because you can guess that there's a noisy array. So they're very noisy. Yeah, no, that was a nice thing. Also, I was enjoying working with the group and professional. But so like, last year? Yes, this year right. Now, this year, this is not last year. So I just got an offer. This is really hard to keep track of time. Yeah, exactly. Thanks to COVID. I received an offer from a company, which is not related to my research background, I started to work as a machine learning operations engineer, which are used my skills that I developed during my free time, which I recall, was considering them as my hobbies. Yeah. Yeah, that's a kind of Sir. I mean, I am kinda like, also, like, not because only that was just happened in that way. Not because of that, but also kinda like jumping from subject to subject. Because, I mean, there are lots of things to learn. And I know I'm not gonna be able to learn everything that I want to learn, but still, I'm trying to do my best to learn there's

Pouya LJ  19:47

a there's a huge degree of attention people give to, you know, specializing in something which is like, of course important. I'm not debating the significance of that but I think I Sometimes it gets missed how, how good it is to actually do these jumps between in between topics in that, it gives you a broader sense of understanding because sometimes some knowledge that you gain in one field, although it's not necessarily you're not a specialized, you're not an expert in that field per se. But then it can that knowledge can be analogous in a different field. So it gives you some sort of perspective, I feel. At least that's my personal I had a similar experience, I have a similar experience. And I even for my academic background, I had a similar experience. I didn't know really what I wanted. So I really liked physics. I really like computer science programming, software engineering. I don't know I liked philosophy. I liked psychology I liked, you know, I even liked cinema, like I still do. Photography, cinematography. So it took me a long while to land on where I landed, ultimately. But so yeah, I did jump around quite a bit, too. And I think it is important not to discount it. I'll do a specialization is very important. Again, I'm not doubting that. But I think sometimes when we focus Oh, yeah, you have to specialize. It's what do they say? There's a good thing. Yeah, I don't remember the same but something something and then master of none. Anywhere. Yeah. So it means like, you're you're, you know, so many things, but then you're not a master in any of them. And they see that in it in a in a in a negative direction. Not that either. But there's in a negative way with a negative connotation, meaning it's a bad thing. And I understand they're saying, okay, mastery is important. Of course it is. But one of the things you can master is how to learn different things. And I think that is also important. Anyways, sorry to cut you off, but I just wanted to Yeah, but

Tugrul  21:59

you're right. I think I learned how to learn during all of this time. Yeah,

Pouya LJ  22:03

that's right. That's right. And, and how to think how to think because, again, when you, when you become a master in one very narrow, specific field, then you're very comfortable learning things in that field, but not necessarily in other fields. And you'll get used to and accustomed to thinking a certain way, but not another. If you will, your neural pathways are very much aligned with a certain thing. And I guess in in AI, you're saying you're kind of like memorizing that, that the training set, right. You're overfitting in a way. So that's, that's, that's that's the danger with with over mastering in a very narrow field. I think it's, it's my, from from a personal perspective, of course, it's not going to harm anybody, per se, but it can harm you mentally, not physically.

Tugrul  22:57

But also the other side of it is like, okay, but other than that, like he was, you also, can there's also risk that you can be like, underfitting, I mean, like, he is like, you can have some generalization issue. So, I mean, you can stay like it's not overfitting sense, but I'm kinda you can stay like a generalized way. How can I describe like, you don't have for example, for myself, I have some confidence issues too. So I never I in my life, I never think I am 100% sure of anything. Maybe that's the issue. If you are if I got an expert on some kind of special if I have some kind of specialty if I study or work on something that 20 years, maybe I can build that confidence that level, but

Pouya LJ  23:53

it's tricky. Yeah. Yeah, no, I know. i It's very tricky. I think I agree with you. I don't I don't think I know. I can be 100% Like, I will never give the number 100 I'm 100% sure I'm even if I'm really 100% Sure. I'm 99.999% Sure. Yeah, and okay, but maybe that's part of it. But it's a tricky line though. There's a very fine line between between confidence and arrogance, I think and and that's another issue that arises like you know, when you're too much of an expert in something you're one of the very few in the world who knows something about something then then the ego plays a role and then sometimes it seems it may seem like confidence, but it is actually arrogance. And we see that like I mean the academia that there's plenty of it of course in industry there's plenty of it. There's everywhere like there's plenty of it right? So yeah, I know I confidence aside, you need to like Grow your confidence and all that of course you know you personally but like the rhetorical you any individual needs to go to come Because, of course, but then there's also another aspect of it that I think, you know, I like the fact that I am I remain not 100% Sure on things because I always give myself room to self correct to admit that I was wrong too. Because like, for example, otherwise you become like this politicians like didn't do clearly they're not even sure like, they're not even like if you talk to them in person in a backroom, with nobody listening, no microphones, no nothing with their buddies, for example, they're gonna be like, Yeah, and I don't know, maybe. But then but then they come out and, you know, say with such confidence, because that's how they have to play the game of politics. Right. But then again, you but then that makes them not able to self sorry, course correct. You know, acknowledge mistakes. So I think the fact that you're, you, myself included, like we are, you know, not? How do we say is not? I'm not saying they're not sure, but we leave room for error, or mistake. Because it's how I look at it. It's, even if I am very much comfortable in the field, let's put the word expert or master aside, even if I'm very comfortable in the field, and I have sufficient knowledge i i feel uncomfortable saying that I am 100% sure that something is true or not, or I think that's me leaving myself room that, you know, maybe when I may even caveat that did saying that the current knowledge. And with my current understanding, yes, I'm 100% Sure. But okay, there might be something that I don't know about that, but certainly something that I don't know about and a lot of different ways, maybe in that particular field too. And maybe there's error in the way I think about the world because if history is any indication. Most people most of the time have made mistake, I don't know any famous or infamous individual in the history that you can name that did everything perfectly. Yes. Just outright impossible. And if they if the written record, say that, which I have never heard of any individual, but let's say even if the hidden rows are written record, say that you don't know if they're hidden lives. And anyway, so that's what I think. I don't know. My point is that I think that's not necessarily a bad thing. Although it can have some downfalls in sometimes you seem, may may not even be because I know you'd like your to your humble individual. And sometimes you you know, you're not comfortable. being super confident in your but then, like, I know you like I know that the grasp of your knowledge is high enough that you if you were an arrogant prick, you would be like, Yeah, I'm 100% Sure, get get lost. Right. So, but then you're not that's that's the whole

Tugrul  28:01

thing. No, I mean, I don't understand how you can be like that. How you can be 100% Sure for something doesn't make sense. I mean, today we don't we have so many questions, even Newton dynamics, you can question them, even people came up with like a modification or to Newton dynamics, you can't be 100% Sure, even your observations are like, sinful to fit. With the models you have no, I mean, you can miss something your brain evolved some millions of years as a result of like, trillions of different paths, like a survival tricks, like some extinction, etc, etc. But you're still evolving, your brain is still evolving Darla, so you don't know how much room left for your brain that can evolve, which can be huge, which I think can be huge, because we are probably far from being like reaching the optimal optimum point. I don't even know if there is an optimum point. I don't think so even though we have here like we have full of weaknesses, flaws. And we are not even sure that our brain is really a good tool, even like a perfect tool. Even understanding nature. Maybe this is our problem. Maybe we are not going to be able to solve the universe because our brain is not capable enough of understanding it.

Pouya LJ  29:23

Yeah, no. No, I don't I honestly don't know how you can do that. I think it's not that being too short is a byproduct of arrogance. That's my guess. Like, because the more humble people I've seen, the less sure they seem people who tend to be more humbled who tend to not be arrogant or egotistical. They seem that, you know, they don't seem like that they lack confidence. They're fairly confident, but they're very comfortable admitting that I don't know everything. And I can't possibly know everything. And I may be wrong from time to time. I may I may be wrong a lot of the times, I think that is, again, this is my observation. I don't have empirical evidence to back this hypothesis. But this is my personal observation, the more you know, grounded people I've seen the more humble people I've seen, the less they have that ability to be like, No, this is done. This is settled. And, and let's, let's take a point recently, something from a very recent history, and that was like during COVID, the COVID science, there was plenty of arrogance from very established either scientists or officials in the authorities of science, quote, unquote, that they were like, saying things that you know, this is established science, you should believe it. This is no, this is true. The lab leak is no, I'm not saying that. The you know, COVID leaks from the lab, but they were not even they were they were treating you as a either stupid or racist if you even questioned it. And I was like, How can you be so sure it leaks from not leaked from the lab, and it came from nature, when you don't even know the source of sort of like the origin of species of this thing? How can you be so arrogant about it? And then I gave myself the answer. I was really thinking that and I gave myself the answer. I was like, yeah, that's arrogant. That's why like, there should be no room for arrogance, the human arrogance and, or any kind of arrogance as matter of fact, but we only know one kind. And that's the human arrogance. There should be no room for arrogance in science, but unfortunately, there is. So I think that's that. I think I'd rather being too sure. Is a symptom of arrogance is or is a byproduct of arrogance, I don't know. But they go together. I think that's what that's where he I see it.

Tugrul  31:56

I think this guy, this is kinda like a defense mechanism like this kind of people. I think, probably I'm not sure, of course. They think that they think that maybe, if they're if people start to think that there is a room of questioning their knowledge, they think, in this case, they think they're weak. So that's why they are pretending that they know 100 person, should they become like arrogant? No, you cannot question my knowledge. Yeah. Because they don't want to be seen weak, or maybe they have a higher position in somewhere. If they, maybe they think that if they seem weak, they can lose their status, they lose their position, whatever. I think that's the opposite.

Pouya LJ  32:45

Yeah, so okay, I completely agree. But I also disagree that is completely opposite. I think it's kind of the opposite, depending on how you depending on the area, I think, so for, for, for somebody who's claiming that they are the authority, like a king, or an emperor, or a queen, or whatever, right. So that person needs to maintain that authority. So they need to be listened to and accepted. Right. Okay. So that's that. But that's why I'm saying this should be. So that's, of course, the end. And they lose the grasp if they don't, or they feel that way. Again, it's not necessarily true, I agree with you, if, if a Emperor King was humble, and was like, you know, I'll do my best or even a political leader, I do my best to the best of my abilities to lead, but I'm a human, I'll make mistakes, if they admitted that they probably win a lot of votes. But that's aside, when you're talking about science and technology, you know, specifically science because it's in my mind need to present it should represent something very pure, and remove the elements of human human nature, but rather be a method to evaluate to think essentially. That's why we call it the scientific method, right? It has to leave the interpersonal inter, to like within the human character, human species, ugliness out of it. Of course, it's not going to happen because it's just humans. So I think that's exactly that's the specific area that I agree with you it actually is not. If if you're wrong, and you admitted it, that's the sign of strength. And, and I think people do, maybe not consciously understand that themselves, or or think about it that way. But they really appreciate when you admit a mistake, because then they can rely on your words. Be like, you know what, this guy is not full of shit. This guy admits when he's wrong. If somebody constantly when they when they caught in a lie, or when they caught in a mistake, they still insist, then how can I trust them? So I think I agree with you They just feel that they lose. It's a defense mechanism, they feel like they're losing the grasp on of authority, which is not really true. They're they're losing it when they enforce it too harshly. There was a quote, I don't remember where I heard it or who I heard it from. But basically, it was saying power is like sand in your fist, the more you try to hold on to it, the easier it will spill out of your fist. And if you doubt that just go on a beach someday, not you, anybody who's listening and go grab a because I thought that I thought about I tried to go grab a handful of fist so sad. and strengthen the tighten your wrist fist, rather, and squeeze, the sand will spill out at some point you will not but then the more you squeezed, the more it spills out of your your fist. So that's what they're doing. They feel like they have to, like hold on to this sand tight and make sure it doesn't spill out of their fist, but then doing that they're actually squeezing it out of their, their fists, because by tightening their fist, actually, they're occupying the room that the sand should ergo the sand will spill out because their fingers will not get you know, break the nylon screws that tight. Anyways, so So I agree with you. But the issue is that the thinking is wrong, I think.

Tugrul  36:30

Yeah, but I think yeah, I think the root of this behavior is probably we can investigate, like we can discuss in evolutionary evolutionary way. Probably because of the past like, not too long, like like, if you go to check the history even go like ancestors. Being sure is probably this is above, like a, like a living or death issue, life or death issue. Basically, he has to be shared for a couple of things, really. Because otherwise you can die me somebody can write Okay, so maybe it is rooted somewhere there this kind of behavior? Because you instinctively you want to think that you will surely you have to show us your data, you have to strong you have to seem strong.

Pouya LJ  37:20

Because if you're not so sure you remain indecisive. And that's

Tugrul  37:25

it worse than being so sure in the past, like any evolutionary point of view, probably so, but so sorry, sorry, interrupting you. But sorry, what I was thinking is that, like, when I was saying the opposite is better, like not being sure, I was just thinking in the future. So we already evolved, we already have some complex understanding we already not in the part of nature anymore, we don't we're not scared of like, hunted by like a tiger on the way but so we are even like, not natural about like artificially selected. Because we have our system, everybody surviving. So feature, because we don't have these issues in more which is good, which means that we have a long way to go ahead of us that can focus only on humans feature like including science, technology, etc. So we are also like, complex enough to think about our thoughts. We are in a machine that can question itself. And so we are at this level, and so we can start acting like in a mental like in it, we have to start thinking that we have lots of rules that we can improve ourselves and we can learn a lot with no need to be so sure for everything we are not going to die.

Pouya LJ  38:48

Yeah, yeah. So this is where I classify actually I have this because I've thought about this and I wasn't thinking about it right now but I've thought about this in the past, I actually have I call it I mean I don't have a literal definition out there, but I have internal definition I call it these are two different things though. One is how short I am in theory versus how sure I am theory sorry, practically. So how sure I am in theory okay in theory nobody's chasing me. I have all the time in the world to doubt myself. In practice, in real life, when you're facing life or death or or matters of extreme importance, that can be very costly, either monetary or, or, you know, matter of life and literally metal of life and death then then then it becomes important. So then when it's in practice, then I think you should basically act on the best information you have. Like the highest confidence degree you have about anything, you just act on it. That's it. You're done. You don't need to think, think twice or three times. My point is that you can I agree with you, it's probably something evolved in us. But you can still even in that environment in a chaotic West West world, or or even, you know, rules of the jungle kind of thing, you can still have this element of I'm not so sure about everything and still survive. So long as you're like, I'm not 100% Sure, but I'm 90%. Sure. And that 90% is above everything else I'm sure about. So I'm going to act on that knowledge. That's fine. that'll that'll get you out of it and actually, actually probably get you out of it the best. Because you're not acting on a random information, you're acting on the information that you have the highest confidence. You're most shorter, but basically, but you don't have to say I'm 100% sure about that. You just have to be like, I'm sure enough, but I'm going to act on it. And then the question comes, okay, now I'm sure about something 90% on your shirt about something, some what number of a percent, and we have to do one or the other. And then we get into a fight about who's more sure. So it becomes messy. I understand. That's what I'm trying to say. But But anyway, so that's a theoretical, doubting of yourself. And then the practical being sure of yourself. It's Yes, I agree, sometimes being indecisive because when you don't choose, that's a choice. Sometimes people don't choose because they're terrified of their choice. And then that's the choice itself. They don't choose because if they feel if they don't choose they are they can make a mistake. But then that's the mistake itself, because by not choosing, you're choosing. Anyway, it's not to get too philosophical. But I agree. I think it's it's evolved to be in us because if we weren't so sure, then we were indecisive and would be would be eaten by bears and tigers and such.

Tugrul  42:02

So more. And also, I think we just recently learned what is what does that mean that being sure, I think it's it just came with it like a science and technology or understanding about how we can share about something this came with the some physical philosophical questions, because other than that, we can question about being sure because you don't know what, what is it? I mean, being chill. What does that mean? before?

Pouya LJ  42:30

I think there is a meaning before science in the like, Okay, if we take it to before, 2000 years before,

Tugrul  42:37

like, first of all, let's go down to a Greek oak, but the

Pouya LJ  42:41

Greeks will do the same thing. They would disprove each other. Right? They would but but that's but they were doing science. So I grant that. But let's go even further back, let's go 10,000 years ago, I think there was a degree of being sure and unsure. And I think that was linked to discovery because let's say a caveman that went out of the cave, and they were debating is like, No, I'm sure there's something beyond this hill, I gotta go see it. And the other guy was like, How can you be so sure? I don't know. Like, there is nothing beyond that he'll under you're gonna die and we're gonna starve in the cave because you're the hunter. So

Tugrul  43:11

sorry, I don't agree. I think that okay. Mice kind of my story is like, a guy who is like a strongest one on this, like a society that they had just decides instinctively, everybody follows. There was no debate probably.

Pouya LJ  43:27

Right. But but then he can personally be shown that he his confidence was false. For example, He's sure that there's a, you know, there's nothing beyond the hill. But then to prove himself, he goes, and then he realizes, oh, there's something down the hill. So I was wrong.

Tugrul  43:43

Yeah, I agree. I agree. Probably, like a personal, like, initial level of being sure. Very minor. They didn't question the list.

Pouya LJ  43:51

No, I don't I think you may be right. I think it's it started from the ancient Greeks when they started philosophizing and thinking semi scientifically, yes, I think I think

Tugrul  44:02

because you have different information to be understanding, okay, for the same concept, we have two ideas. Okay, which one is correct? Then you can think about, okay, how we can be so sure about which one is more correct. And compare? Yeah, maybe you need the comparison for ideas, at least. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Like,

Pouya LJ  44:20

I mean, I think, I think for that, as far as we know, at least, as far as I personally know, I think for that you have to, we can only go as far as the ancient Greeks probably. I mean, I think you may be right if we can, or maybe we just don't know about it, because it wasn't well documented. Who knows? Yeah, again, I'm not sure.

Tugrul  44:40

You never know. I mean, you know, you have to go there and observe it.

Pouya LJ  44:43

Even then, you know,

Tugrul  44:46

because we are we're creating stories based on our findings from like for sales, etc, etc. Like his drawings on the cave. They're all good models, but their stories still, like backed by evidences but that everything can be can still satisfy a like all these findings, but in a different way. So you never know you have to go there and observe it with a time machine, which is not possible. But there was that's what all I got all we got.

Pouya LJ  45:17

Yeah, and, you know, these are very interesting questions, and I think we should explore them more. And I'm very happy that we're going to do this. Okay. So for the audience who are wondering, we will be doing more of these kinds of episodes. Now, this was introductory for us to, you know, discuss with turtle get to know Him and who he is where he came from academically. Because not that not in the sense that academic academia is very important, but because first of all, you spend a lot of your life there. And second of all, because I think that kind of tells you what your interests are, where you're coming from where your perspective is at so. So this was the, you know, introductory episode, but we'll continue this discussions, probably from maybe a little bit more narrowed and talk about specific things into future episodes. But for now, before we come to a close, is there something you want to talk about, whether about yourself or about what we talked about or about anything, really, before we close for this episode?

Tugrul  46:22

No, no, I enjoyed this a lot. So I'm just looking forward to other episodes like we can discuss, but I wasn't expecting to talk about cavemen.

Pouya LJ  46:34

That's the beauty of it. I think. I do like some structure in the in the podcasts, but I don't. And I know everybody has a different, you know, style. And I like those who are super structured and those who are completely unstructured. But for myself, I like to be surprised in my conversations in a way that as you said, I didn't expect so. So anyhow. Yeah, there's a degree of chaos and too much control me ruin it. A little bit, just just as ordered enough that it makes sense. Okay, so with that. Thank you all for listening. And thank you all for joining us with the promise of many more of

Tugrul  47:18

these kinds. Of course, of course, I'm looking forward. Thank you.

Pouya LJ  47:22

Fantastic. And thank you all for tuning in. Tune in for more episodes in the weeks and months to come.

Planning our lives is often done by us merely thinking about the situation and our plans yet numerous studies have proven that doing so is not only ineffective but even harmful to our mental health.

In this short program you learn why you should think on paper, or a smart device, instead of merely thinking about it and offered a tip on how to actually begin writing down your plan in a written format by first beginning in a macro way and then ending it in a micro manner! 

Bloomberg recently reported that the majority of millennials are living pay check to pay check and are thus at the imminent danger of bankruptcy. Living from paycheck to paycheck makes one dependent on the income and prevents him or her from being able to increase one’s income or build the capital necessary for investments.

In this episode you will be introduced to the basics of personal finance to avoid this trap common among millennials and generation Z and instead take the steps necessary to become financially independent. 

The world has been shocked by the atrocities done in Ukraine and we all call an end to Putin’s war. In this special program we show our solidarity with the people of Ukraine and discuss the importance of promoting liberal and democratic values in order to prevent such political and humanitarian disasters from occurring in the future.