This November was my sixth 10 day Vipassana course (first was 12 years ago). I achieved momentary clarity on the 8th day which helped me get rid of some of unnecessary but deep rooted complexes of my mind. I believe that it was possible only because of the continued practice and focus of the past 7 days. If it were two courses of 4 days each with some gap in between, I do not think I would be able to experience what I did. In other words, I feel that my brain needed the 10 consecutive days.

> I achieved momentary clarity on the 8th day which helped me get rid of some of unnecessary but deep rooted complexes of my mind.

Can someone with experience in meditation explain what this actually means?

For me it means that I was able to look objectively at some of my ways of thinking and feeling and realize that I didn't have to do it that way. I was able to let go of the attachment to doing so and change my own reaction to things.

In the tradition I follow this is called "finding the listener".

During meditation, one can experience moments of such clarity of mind, that the answers to difficult or deep rooted issues suddenly show up in front of you. Usually it turns out the solution is so simple, that they wonder why they've never seen it before, and now they cannot unsee it.

Like an epiphany.

I did a 10 day workshop with Jelle Bode last February and found the same thing. The combination of active and passive meditation, silence except for answering the question "Tell me who you are.", no alcohol or caffeine, and no outside contact really works if you give it the time. My personal clarity occurred in the afternoon of the seventh day. I wonder if that timing is similar for everyone.

I will be a happy user of the beta

Knewton has done a good job of curating!

What do you guys think of Knewton (The gorilla in adaptive learning)? They claim to be super adaptive but it is hard to tell. I used their product and was not super impressed with the adaptivity.

Don't have strong opinions one way or the other on Knewton. That being said, I generally feel that enterprise software where you sell to institutions and publishers is fundamentally disconnected from software that's targeted at the users directly.

I would greatly prefer to hear students raving about a learning product rather than their instructors. In your case you seem to be a bit underwhelmed by what they offer.

Very good work. I am extremely happy for you! I have no clue why some people expect this all to be either open source or free. I have personally invested a lot of money on building an adaptive learning tool (and two years of salary losses). We are not yet live, but when we are, I hope to have some revenue model as well.

Thank you, it really means a lot since we've been working on this for over 3 years now (finally hiring employees this past month!). I wish the best of success to you too.

In reference to people wanting freebies - that's just human behavior. If they see sufficient value in a product (e.g. iPhones), then they will happily pay for it.

It's just a damn editor, try it.

Which problem is more important a) Make simple algorithms more accessible to the masses who do not get it even after reading a book. OR b) Make more complex algorithms and programming patters/styles more accessible to the good programmers who want to become excellent programmers ? I would like your opinion and how you define "importance" ( it could be market size, or economic impact in the world, or as some people have argued -- reduces gender inequality in tech)

Hi Jim, What do you think of the role of adaptive learning technology, like that developed by Knewton ?

I believe lots of vendors offer versions of adaptive learning and testing, but I'm not sure who invented it. It seems like a useful tool, to my inexpert sense. My school has a well known program in teaching people to teach English as a second language, and my friends there speak highly of it.

But again, I am not saying the tech in the article is bad (if that's what you meant by a "well, what about this?" question), quite the opposite. I don't claim to know anything about Minerva's tech, I just don't believe the case is yet proved for its effectiveness when used with students who are at the fiftieth percentile.

Let's not forget the commercial aspect. For SaaS business with a subscription model, you end up paying 30% to Apple/Google.

I have always wanted to create a Data Science training course which finds the right dataset to expose the power of the technique in question. I think this dataset will give me a good start. Thank you!

I would be way interested in your course!