10/05/23 13:25:44
Summary
- it’s been a couple of weeks
- I’ve started a doc on my career.
- It’s helped to clarify the sources of my thoughts and just see the general consistency to them.
- I generally want to get more familiar with computer related things (specifically, my own) again.
- More interested in electronics.
- I’ve started ‘bulking’ or at least just trying to have three meals a day.
- I’d also like to have some sort of quote list or reminders of core ideas, like an aesthetics board. I often find that these help you get out of small holes in thinking throughout the day.
- I’ve used spaced repetition a bit and generally felt a lot more comfort in taking in information knowing it was there.
- I should get used to doing things for the sake of doing them. For instance, the notion that I might spend my whole evening looking for the solution to a bug in my latex setup or some shit shouldn’t come with this impending guilt. Generally, time is valuable but not being stressed in also valuable, so setting aside free time to do ‘non-productive’ stuff.
- It’s kind of like the ‘uncategorized’ section of my life, where it may or may not have some usefulness in some broad category of interest.
Goals for summer
- research project hoping to leverage it mainly to learn about numerical analysis and statistics.
- Tidy up current reports and/or do one on the electric grid, just out of interest but also as a work sample.
- I had notions of trying to learn classical mechanics
- Learn more related to electronics
- Become knowledgable on Irish history, or at least have some thoughts on it’s suffocating ideology.
Following on from the year review some of the things I want to get better at were:
- Cohesive place for my thoughts and easy workflow for gathering and publishing them.
- A more concrete foundation for the things I believe.
- Making time to review nutrition and exercise knowledge.
Excerpts
29/04/23 07:55:28
It’s kind of crazy that moving electrons can create power. When you think about it all power is done this way, by potential differences, seeking lower energy states. I’ve been meaning to try and think about fields and all that.
The stoics talk about the soul has being in a state of tension, that stoic sage’s had the least amount of tension in their soul and that was what was desirable. That intuitive notion of releasing tension is present in how we think about fields too.
Louis rossman has a video about this where we basically torture electrons, they really just want to reduce their potential but we guide them where we want them to go using this ‘carrot’ of potential. It’s like arcing, the is such a high potential that electrons eventually just jump the gap.
@daily @rationality
- Belief systems and peoples rationality in them. Listening to the skeptics guide podcast, they talked about a new Dartmouth study that looked at how people can act rational in their belief systems. In this case, referring to faulty voting. The idea being that to have discourse, we need to understand peoples priors.
- Having action when learning something seems vital, electronics is a classic example, just do, whatever you need to know, pick up along the way. It’s not really totally general a learning approach but just an observation.
- The scientific method would tell you, it’s not about what you want to be the case but what is the case. This seems applicable to economics and general financial climates. You might dispute the way actors in our economic system act but it’s crucial to be aware that they do act this way. It’s like how Studwell talks about good industrial policy being conscious of this and redirecting it towards the countries developmental needs.
@daily 07/05/23 15:58:50 I’ve struggled in the last couple days with just keeping un wanted thoughts out of my head. Just in terms of it feels the frequency of just ignoring thoughts has gone up.
I also feel that this can emerge as exaggerating things like if I eat a slice of toast I’m worried about carbs etc.
Just not feeling great the last few days to be honest.