AcademicalNerd @academicalnerd@qoto.org
People are more important than wires.
Joined Jan 2021
2021-06-15 #blog
The exam never happened. Professor decided to grade our work during the semester. Ones that disagree go to the exam, but I am fine with 5 (out of five). A can of dry Strongbow for celebration and tomorrow preparation for the next one starts. This time - solid state physics, interesting but complicated.
2021-06-14 #blog
The exam is tomorrow. It will happen online because Moscow went into a five days long quarantine. This helps, but not that much; at least I won’t have to commute to University.
I am more or less on track with my recovery plan, except for limiting sugar consumption. Carbohydrates are addictive and kickstart brain activity fairly well, despite the price one pays later.
2021-06-12 #blog
I give up; I choose to protect my mental stability, exchanging it for worse performance on the exam. Because the exam is a one-time occasion and my brain should last as long as possible.
2021-06-12 #blog
I am walking on a thin line between mental breakdown and full on apathy. Successfully, for now.
2021-06-11 #blog
Yesterday I passed another exam. The one on continuous medium mechanics; I got an “A”. The next one is on the 15th of June, on crystal chemistry. That one is a lot harder and I am studying a lot.
The recovery plan is going fine for the most part. I still tend to consume too much carbs. It should be easier to cope with now, since I have a 4 days break between stressful exams. I even got back to writing on a somewhat regular basis, that’s something.
Surprisingly, I have a decent social life for a nerdy person (it’s literally in the name, lmao). These people are the only reason I managed to get through some of the events in my life. So yeah, this is a good idea.
And I am allergic to pets, unfortunately :(
20211-06-10_2 #blog
At the moment I have cut excess coffee (3 days ago) and all alcohol (5 days). This solved the majority of immideate problems, but I still operate on like 70% of my average capacity. Today is the first day of fixing sleep schedule, woke up at 7 am. This is reasonable by my standards. Hopefully I’ll stop waking up in the middle of the night once the cyrcadian rhythm stabilizes.
2021-06-10 #blog
The premise I wrote yesterday but lost due to unfortunate circumstances.
I sometimes have to give up healthy habits and rituals in order to get work done for a tight deadline. I did it a few weeks ago to deal with intense finals. Now the annoying ones are done and I can’t afford this lifestyle any longer. Excess of caffeine, carbohydrates and disrupted sleep schedule are taking a toll on my body, along with high levels of anxiety.
To offset a consequence of unhealthy behaviour one generally needs at least as much time as was spent engaging in an unhealthy behaviour, or longer. I estimate a month long recovery after roughly two weeks of questionable choices.
Of course I have a plan. It includes:
- limiting coffee by one cup a day
- having a break on Saturdays
- moderate physical activity (I tend to exercise more during stressful periods, and it’s not always healthy)
- decent food with high protein/carbs ratio
- no alcohol (which is default for me)
- fixing a sleep schedule
- writing rituals
This is more or less default “get back on track” sequence I have to do every once in a while.
2021-06-09 #blog
A wandering mind always comes up with ideas. And if you have a good idea and don’t start working on it within the first 24 hours - it’s unlikely that you ever going to do it.
So whenever a good idea comes to your wandering mind - hold tight onto it and start working, even if the time is annoyingly unsuitable for it.
So I’m now in a weird position where there is a lot to do for all the finals and not much resources left to actually make progress. I’ll post here on how it’s going.
Currently it’s 13:30, Tuesday, I’m more or less done with lab work and starting exam prep, there is a bunch of stuff I need to read and take notes on for tensor analysis and mechanics exam.
This may work for some cases, indeed, but trying to figure out, say, divergence theorem using top-down approach... I wouldn't do that, honestly.
There is a more important detail to me than just the convenience. The text on phone is just text, you don't get sketches, diagonal or even vertical text on margins and all the various ways to mess the entire thing up. This is what makes paper unique tool, as powerful as silicon processor.
Yeeeah, I’m not into pure math for the most part. It’s interesting, but I need to ba practical, or rather my major requires me to. And studying extra stuff is resourse-intensive, I can’t have this luxury as of now.
And the best example for how arbitrary the entire math is would be Godel’s theorem, I suppose. There was a video on it recently by Veritasium, I remember you liked the guy.
@namark
My point is precisely the opposite: everyone can do math, given the incremental learning and some patience. Probably a miscommunication on my part.
misinterpret that quote
Yeah, I may have butchered Mr. Feynman a bit there, my bad. As for fluency in math - it is a methaphore and I don’t mean it to be absolute truth.
It’s the universal language, not by coincidence, but by definition
I’d argue with you on mathematics being the universal language: there are a few things mathematics fails at. The more complex systems that are called “chaotic”, if I recall.
mathematics that is somehow inherently inaccessible to anyone honestly willing to learn is failed mathematics
I am not by any means talking about failed mathematics or mathematicians. The concepts that are far away from what you already know are usually inaccessible, not inherently, but because one lacks prerequisites.
Donn’t take this too seriously, anyways. I’m a random stem student ranting on the web.
I’m a polymath, in a bad way. There are a lot of things I know and some things I’m decent at, but there is nothing I’m obsessed with and nothing I could say I’m a specialist in, and this upsets me. Because choosing something to focus long-term on becomes a pain in the ass, and staying focused is even harder.
Fluency in math
Fluency in language is relatively easy to measure: you can give a talk, keep up in a coversation and write jarry, more or less gramatically coherent texts. Math is trickier: most people struggle with it, some people seem to be better at it naturally. I have no idea why is that the case, but there is an interesting observation.
Math is language we describe universe with, because words aren’t suited well for this purpose. There are a few major concepts that are tough to describe in plain language, like limits in calculus and tensors in algebra. And math is a weird language, mistakes are punished way more than ever, infact, one wrong symbol renders the entire “text” meaningless. This breeds frustration.
Fluency in math, in a particular parts of it, consists of two things. Firstly, the ability to derive new relations and transform existing ones effortlessly and without mistakes. No, there is no “I know this, I’m just so inattentive” when you skipped a minus sign. Mistakes show gaps in either knowledge or skill, they are a signal for you to get some more practice.
Secondly, the internalization of concepts. It boils down to the Feynman rule: you only understand it if you can explain it. The only way to internalize a concept is to link it to existing knowledge: think of the knowledge as a map, and your competence grows in a tree-like shape all over it, creating nodes and lines. As long as there are enough nodes near something new, you can learn it. If you struggle - roll back and explore the area around, maybe go slightly sideways or practice what you already know.
@FailForward
Thorough analysis, as always. Thanks for feedback, I appreciate it. Digital pragmatism may be a better term, indeed.
I don’t hesitate to use multiple apps and accounts if I need to, even momentarily. The majority of my data will leak anyway, and there is not much to leak, honestly. And most of sensitive stuff is now on paper.
Bank apps are, indeed, great… Except they are way more vulnerable and buggy than, say, facebook. At least Russian ones. I use one, because it’s easy and I don’t have a lot of money most of the time, but if I ever do - a paper with password and incognito tab on linux laptop are a way to go. My dad does this, except for linux part.
Digital nihilism
Intro
A term I have just came up with to quickly describe my idea. It is not the next logical step after “digital minimalism”, rather a diffirent approach: not limiting and controlling device usage, but using a computer strictly as a tool and not using it when there are more effective tools. Setups matter little in this context, as long as you have bare minimum of programs and shortcuts the work can be done.
There is an app for everything
Do you really need an app for that? I’ll start with the basic premise of digital minimalism. There are a lot of apps for almost everything out there, and not all of them are good or even useful, let alone optimized and functional.
Your phone and computer can do everything
They can’t. More importantly, there are a lot of things they suck at and relatively few things they are good at. Actually, let’s list some stuff.
What a PC or a laptop can do really well
- Computations and programming, any kind of it
- Typing and, more importantly, editing text and documents
- Processing and visualising formatted data
- Editing images, audio, etc.
- Storing data on drives
- Research
What a phone can do really well
- Keeping you in touch with people
- Looking stuff up
- Taking photos, videos, recording audio
Here is a new feature for tagging your tasks
So, here is my point: any computer, being a fancy physical representations of mathematical algorithm enclosed in shiny box, is terrible at processing loosely-organized data. And your life, personal notes and planning are loosely organized and won’t fit a nice layout of that app, no matter how hard you try. The entropy will take over, partly because these devices were not designed for it. If you can’t do it with spreadsheet and a barebones txt file, you are probably better off with pen and paper.
Ditch notion, todoist and whatever it is you use. The only real application for them is to organize work tasks, with well-known workflow and a need for shared access. Ditch habit-building and note-taking apps on your phone and throw a small A6 notebook in your pocket or backpack. It will nicely replace all of them and do a better job at it. You need backup? Photocopy the necessary pages and throw them into the cloud. This is faster and more convenient than all the popups, tables and pages you could neatly organize on your screen.
Only use your device when it’s the best tool for the bank. Forget about using your phone to learn or read, you will end up on tiktok or other time sink of choice anyway. People who designed this get paid to make sure you do, your “willpower” is no match for the team of engineers. Buy e-book reader or get paperback in the library. Get a mobile, lightweight laptop and use it to learn stuff on the go if you have to.
But how about all my friends on social media?
Messaging apps are great for keeping in touch. Social media are terrible at virtually everything, especially at supplying you information. Use them if you have to, but do keep in mind that what you read is an algorithm maximising the profit and not the depiction of real world.
Outro
This is, for the most part, a rant. Maybe it will prove useful for someone, who knows. The majority of it is inspired by Luke Smith and George Hotz and the linux laptop I am typing on.
Dixi.
