05/03/23 16:20:59
I missed last weeks retro because I broke my arm.
Summary
- On the actions from the last retro, I was starting to do well with the whole balance thing.
- Stoicism and generally thinking about my reaction to things has helped with that.
- I’m a small bit disorientated this week though just from the arm break.
- The main emotion would be self pity. I’m just gutted after focusing on training and being the fittest I’ve ever been that it turned out the way it did. It really wasn’t the plan. I was really looking forward to being finished with the competition and then just enjoying my jiu-jitsu again. Ah fuck, I don’t want to keep talking about it.
- My notion was that just the same way software engineers love building products, maybe my niche is building models, for understanding things I suppose.
* This is largely still true. In the last week I've been interested in probability theory and decided to start an ocw
on it. Just to have some structure to my thinking on it. Probability models comprise a sample space and probability
laws assigned to events (subsets of sample space) that follow the probability axioms. It's fascinating how arbitrary
and powerful this can be. I'd be interested in discovering where this particular form of it comes from. Kolmogorov?
- Not really too sure what to do with this yet on the energy front, I’ve been thinking of looking into open source energy models and seeing what they’re used for, how they work etc.
* It looks like I'll be working with Dooley. I'm more optimistic about this in the sense that I think I can focus on
whatever I want really (within reason) but just don't feel I've the scientific limitations from before.
- I’ve been reading a lot about ethics and morality starting the book “Fundamentals of Ethics” which has had quite an influence on me in the sense of presenting arguments that have premises that are what are debated rather than looking at a philosophical argument as an abstract thing, impossible to pin down.
- Particularly, in the past week I’ve looked at Singer’s arguments about the immorality we all live with and I’m very
much convinced by it.
- I think this falls into the philosophy as an art of living theme. I’m interested in the sentiment of determining a good way to live your life and this definitely leads to Singer’s arguments.
- One thing touched on in the fundamentals book is the notion that morality questions can never be resolved. I would say that’s a major thing I want to write and think about in the coming week.
- I’m generally trying to circle around what I’m reading these days. A lot of classics and I could do with getting notes on Stoicism out of my head, particularly from the ‘Art of Living’.
Evolutionary Psychology
- I’m still reading “Elephant in The Brain” and generally inspired by Hanson. I’ve started compiling some summary notes to funnel into Anki. There’s some questions to be asked about the validity of some aspects of the argument I think and I mainly look at it through the lens of explaining it to other people.
- It has a lot of explanatory power and it intersects with morality which I’m interested in at the moment and what objective morality might be. The counter to having some natural theory of morality as I’ve learned is that it doesn’t offer a holistic view of what’s good. Need to research this a bit more. Fundamentally, and this is kind of from Singer on the Rationally Speaking podcast humans have another faculty of ‘rationality’ beyond the ‘evolutionary’ although at times this can be built up as well.
Prediction Markets
Although I don’t really understand it intuitively I’m interested by them. And it does make sense that you would just look to an opinion market on things you’re unsure about. It seems it would help things a lot and is very much down the line of ‘decentralisation of information’ which I don’t really know what I mean but just that things in college I was looking to design some ‘app’ for.
Actions
- Try and get good sleep 7/8 hours.
- Get some notes in for stoicism.
- Start notes on ethics and my open questions.
- Keep using Anki every day.
- Finish unit 1 of the ocw probability.
Excerpts
From this kid who studied all undergraduate Physics in 2 years!
https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2023/02/21/diego-vera-mit-challenge-math-physics/
One of the things I found quite useful was to gather resources that spoon-fed me insight in the shortest/most compressed time possible. Although this seems obvious in hindsight, one of the things I found over and over again with the challenge was how I could spend several hours trying to learn something based off of one resource, then turn to a different resource and understand it within minutes. Spending time collecting compressed yet insightful resources, I think, can have a huge impact.
One of the things I found useful here was to get immediate practice once I knew just enough. I think this is one of the reasons project-based learning can be so powerful: you have a problem and research your way into it versus researching your way into it and then seeing what to apply. In this way, the relevance of the necessary ideas or techniques becomes apparent.
22/02/23 16:43:55
Discomfort this week
@daily It occurred to me today that, at times, I subtly set myself up for failure.
The most stark example I see is my fixation on the food I eat. Like, today, I assume I’m going to snack around what I eat, which is what I feel I shouldn’t be doing. I’ve already assumed what I’m going to eat won’t fill me, so then I just default into the notion of snacking around.
I think it applies to what I’m learning too. I set up a day as a set of obstacles, I suppose, without fully engaging with what I’m learning. My day is fixations on things that aren’t entirely relevant, like food, or how many hours I’ve studied. As Aurelius would say, all we have is the moment, no future, no past, which gives me slight comfort and makes me realise that I really don’t focus on the moment, no matter what it is I’m doing.
I wrote this morning, that purposefully doing things, not being pulled back and forth by the current of your mind is a way to go about living. I failed at that, at times today. But also, I need to stop self sabotaging myself. In thinking that, it’s catastrophic if I fail to meet my standards every day. What is something I can control is trying. Trying also includes being kind to myself, knowing myself, acknowledging that I am not perfect and struggle at certain things. The carrot and the stick to get through things, not just bludgeoning myself to death with the stick.
My life is a bit aimless at the moment, but not as aimless as I make it at times. College is aimless, yes, but jiu-jitsu is not.
”Defining yourself by your suffering is an effective way to keep suffering forever.”
Who do you want to be? What does that person look like?
I’m not far off it, I don’t think… listening to Maggie Rodgers, tearing up in the library. Just thinking about, ah, it doesn’t matter.