The Idealistic Man

In-depth conversations with leading South African thinkers


The Idealistic Man

Do you want to see more episodes excavating the graveyard of failed South African engineering projects? #Joule

9 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 7

The Idealistic Man

What did you learn or find interesting from our episode with Prof. Glenda Gray?

1 year ago | [YT] | 1

The Idealistic Man

What do you think about the audio quality in our latest video (with Prof. Tshilidzi Marwala)?

1 year ago | [YT] | 2

The Idealistic Man

New interview/discussion I am excited about coming within three weeks!

Hint hint: he is an AI expert. :)

1 year ago | [YT] | 1

The Idealistic Man

Subscribe. Turn on Notifications (click the bell icon). See you next week!

2 years ago | [YT] | 6

The Idealistic Man

We celebrate 1200 subscribers today. Thank YOU!

New video coming up in the next 3 weeks. Stay tuned. Cheers :)!

2 years ago | [YT] | 10

The Idealistic Man

We have finally reached 1000 subscribers! Thank you for your support. I am looking forward to delivering more high quality content going forward. Much love to you all! <3

2 years ago | [YT] | 5

The Idealistic Man

"The father of South African Supermarkets" - Raymond Ackerman - has sadly passed on. Ackerman was the founder of the popular South African supermarket, Pick n Pay. He founded PnP after a fallout with the management at Checkers where he had been the driving force behind its expansion throughout the country.

If you want to learn more about Ray - check out this video I made on him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5m1r...

RIP Raymond Ackerman (10 March 1931 - 06 September 2023)

2 years ago | [YT] | 3

The Idealistic Man

What is decision making?

I just looked this question up online. The website of McKinsey & Company provides the following answer: Decision making is simply the process of making a choice. And if you think about it, making a choice is simply taking one road instead of another road (or other roads). But making one choice over the other depends on something, right? There is a condition that must be met for me to decide to take the umbrella with me. Decision making (or making choices) is the thing that computers are spectacularly good at.

In one of my previous posts here, I stated, "A sensor converts a physical quantity in the world into an electrical signal. That electrical signal can then be used to make decisions in the electronic (think transistors) ... realms." Here, I want to draw attention to the last sentence. These things called transistors are the reason computers are the spectacular decision-makers that they are.

You will often hear electronics experts say transistors are switches. That always confused me. What do you mean switches? It just means decision-makers. Making choices. They make one choice or another based on what some condition currently is. In computers, this condition is what the value of some voltage is. If the value of this voltage is more than some value, some choice is taken. If instead, it is less, some other choice is taken. This is the power of transistors. This is why they are indispensable for computers.

A typical transistor today looks like this:

2 years ago | [YT] | 2

The Idealistic Man

The mealworms did develop into Adult Darkling Beetles eventually!

2 years ago | [YT] | 2