Real Estate Agent, 5 Minutes Into The Meeting With A Topologist: So, When You Were Talking About "contracting"

gonna list my general goals, not necessarily what theorems i want to learn but rather some global "fix your life" things. gonna post about it every week to keep myself accountable

(1) wake up at 9 instead of 12. go to sleep at 1 instead of 4. if my current circadian rythm is here to stay, it's gonna be a fucking nightmare in november. first goal is to start going to sleep between 2 and 3

(2) concentrate on lectures. my focus is really bad when it comes to listening to someone. i have some interesting lectures downloaded and want to use them as training. first goal is to be able to actively listen to one for 30 minutes, then I can have a break for a zone-out

(3) get used to not checking my phone every damn 20 minutes. first goal is to have two 1-hour intervals daily of not checking it

probably will add some more soon

i'm conducting an experiment on how to study the theory effectively

there are i guess two main ways:

(1) read and take notes simultaneously

(2) read first, then take notes

so for the first one, there is the risk of going passive with the note-taking, writing down the symbols without focusing on their meaning. for the second one there is the risk of zoning out and just reading the symbols, again, losing their meaning

the problem seems to be that the processing of sheer symbols and processing their meanings might be disjoint and their natural tendency seems to be so

from my recent actions i noticed that (1) doesn't work for me as effectively as (2)

it might be that when i don't plan to write something down right away, i am more inclined to remember these things short-term as "i won't be able to check it later so remember it now in order to understand what comes next", and when i'm taking notes simultaneously it's "i have it written down anyway so i can take a peek anytime"

so now i'm testing the strategy of

read → try to understand the idea and memorize the elements → why all the elements are important → understand the construction in more detail and write it down

this is how i imagine my mind working:

it means that at first i start to remember the elements as points of its own but simultaneously my brain builds its idea on how they interact and then i notice the inner structure of how the elements are connected with each other in less obvious ways

this idea is cool to visualize how i imagine my thinking, because it shows how learning the topic reduces possible permutations and paths. i have this problem that when i start learning something new i see so many possibilities of what can happen to the elements that i can't discern between crucial and additional stuff. in order to use the knowledge i need to provide some structure

thus the main goal of optimized learning is to take the leap from "i memorized the elements" to "i understand their structure" as fast as possible

and so the strategy (2) might be more effective as it forces the memorization of the elements first and then it is easier to provide structure for them, where i would be defining order on something that's already in my mind. whereas (1) strikes at memorization and structuring simultaneously, it is too difficult for me to see at first in which direction the topic is going, i must know the next point

in a few days i will focus on how "the point" can be defined in this and how to characterize the connections

honestly tho this is some sorta pseudo graph theory and pseudo topology and i don't believe this could be as straightforward. otherwise nobody would ever post any study tips and we would have a field of study called "learning optimazation", this would be too big to go unnoticed. i wish it was so easy to just know how brain works and be able to build such an algorithm that would optimize the desired processes lmao

i wish i was a σ-field or something

side not is, i love this kind of thinking and i love to analyze how the thinking works, especially when it can me algorithmized or structured in some ways. the moment i see something is structured or algorithmic it becomes interesting to me

you know girls can tell when you look at their boobs

i don’t care how quickly you glance, 1 second is like 5 seconds in boob time

so, for relativistic boobtime, where t is the observer, and t’ is the time measured at the boob. t=t’/sqrt(1-(v/c)^2) solving for t=1, and t’=5, we get that the boobspeed, v, is represented by v=+/- (6*10^8)sqrt(6)i m/s

boobs travel at 1.5 gigametres per second in the complex direction.

that's an interesting perspective

recently I've been thinking about it in an opposite way. it started during a conversation about brains, in particular how stupid and flawed they are, I realized that I enjoy math because it gives me a break from being human. there is no place for emotion and cognitive bias, only formal reasoning and proofs. it feels so safe and so distant from the day-to-day life filled with problems caused by the human nature, it feels so clean. it's a place for me to enjoy only the best qualities of my existence. it's an acceptable way to separate myself from everyone, and simultaneously stay connected

I love how different this is from what is described above, as if math offered a place for everyone to find something that they will like

Im trying to find a really long Tumblr post that talked about how sad it was that people are so happy to complain about how much they hated math and how math can be a way to connect with your fundamental humanity and...

Yeah, I've been studying a little bit of it on my own, ten years after I dropped out of college, I've been going back to seeing some basics of calculus, and I've been really feeling some of that.

There is this sense that math is this alien thing, separate from the true concerns of humanity. This external topic, strange and inhumane that only those few weirdos with a eccentric and atypical cast of mind, who are themselves separate by a few degrees from human nature, can grasp.

But it's not that, We, messy warm emotional dumb humans came up with it, we silly atavistic creatures dedicated so much time and effort to develop it and explore it, this silly, quirky, wet, ape-like species is the only living creature on this planet that concerns itself with doing math in any serious capacity. It didn't come from aliens or the gods or from dolphins, math came from humans and humans are the only ones that use them. There could be nothing more human, more fundamentally ours, more intrinsic to our nature than math.

And it's not just a tool! Is not just this thing to be celebrated because its useful in a purely base pragmatical, prosaic way. Is not this thing we have to dissapasionatly conceed credit to because I guess it does useful things like bridges and rockets and computers and taxes. Math is not just the civilizational equivalent of going to the dentist or eating your vegetables.

i hesitate to call it a philosophy or an art, it is a way of human thinking, it is a way of thinking like a human, of thinking in a way that only humans can think. its is one of our oldest and proudest traditions, it is a way to feel greater than onself, it is a way of growing. it is a song with a prosody all its own. There is such a profound sense of meaning and beauty and truth and purpose to be found in math, and the best of all is that it works, when it says something it means something, its telling you a thing that is meaningful, that represents something true, that couldnt be any other way, that has consequences and uses and can be relied upon, that it representes something which carries weight and its ours, its truly a part of our nature, of what we are.

remember if you ever want to read an article for free and the subscription ad prevents you from reading the entire article DO NOT

Reload it and immediately turn off your Internet access (data/WiFi if you are using a phone)

Reload it and click the 'X' next to the return icon on the top left of your window (if you are on desktop)

Reload the page, type 'Ctrl+ A' and 'Ctrl+ C' and paste everything onto an open document

this has worked for me 97ish % everytime hope this works for u too

in my country having a diagnosis is highly confidential, too. there is no such thing as "the government knowing about your diagnoses" unless you get evaluated for disability documentation (I have no idea how to translate this to english), which is your choice. besides, who knows when the diagnosis will be useful? waiting for a diagnostic appointment takes several months and is very expensive, so taking an opportunity to sort this thing out when it's possible is good. depending on where someone lives, it can be very harmful to say that having a diagnosis somehow creates disadvantages

at my university the support program for people with asd has been introduced two years ago. it took me almost a year to get everything done, a year of unnecessary suffering. treatment for depression with or wihout adhd can be completely different and having it on paper that in your personal circumstances ssri might not work can save so much time. when someone suspects adhd and the situation calls for introducing medication, it's nice to be able to try right away, not wait several months for a diagnosis. those are just some practical examples of how you never know when diagnosis might be useful

and the validation reason, yeah, that too, it's beneficial to have someone work with you through that stuff. moreover, with professional support there comes someone suggesting solutions and forms of help that one might not even thought of. there are shitty doctors, but there are good ones too, and I think we should talk more about how to find the right ones instead of demonizing getting help

By the way. Before you rush to get a professional diagnosis for a Brain Thing you should really weigh your options. Like do you just want to "prove it" or will this actually give you access to treatment you can't have otherwise? Are the treatment options available worth having the government know you're neurodivergent? Because sometimes it's better to keep things off the record because unfortunately we still live in a very deeply ableist society and you might not want to have more real material oppression stacked against you than you have to

thank you @dressedsalad @bsdndprplplld and @rooksacrifice for nominations. the last two were my additions (to provide more variety in the choices, not bc I dislike them)

10-12 VIII 2021

finished the basics of the measure theory and god am i in love

sleep: ok

concentration: good

phone time: good

yeah so now i know what a measurable set and a measurable function is, i'm on my way to lebesgue integration. however, i don't have the intuition for measurable functions yet, just the basics. there are those two theorems that i merely vaguely understand and idk barely can touch them. one of them is lusin, the other one is frechet. they seem very important as they deal with continuity of a function in the context of measurability. and do we love continuous functions my dude yes we do

tomorrow i plan to solve some problems concerning measurable functions and then do topo. i must admit, measure theory devoured me entirely recently and i had a break from topo. gotta fix that. and possibly do some coding

The chili plant made a deal with their God to only be consumed by things that could spread its seeds and fly. The chili received capsaicin, making itself painful to eat for mammals, but not birds, and all was well for the chili.

Then the human shows up, tastes it, and likes the pain. So now there's this flightless fucking mammal eating the chili. Like not even a fruit bat or anything, a flightless fucking mammal chomping on the chili.

What the fucking shit, God, cried the chili, I specifically requested the opposite of this.

Now hold on, wait a moment, replied the God who talks to plants but has no idea what the fuck these apes are going to do next. It might be something cool.

And in a flash of a second, in barely fraction of the time that chili took to develop capsaicin, the humans went from walking across land bridges and rowing little boats across small waters, into building ships that could cross oceans. More humans tasted the chili, and liked the pain. They took the seeds with them, and planted it elsewhere.

See? They spread the seeds.

They're still not flying, said the chili, still feeling insulted and betrayed.

But before the conversation was over, the humans were still not done fucking around and nowhere close to finding out. The ships became machines, and another machine was invented, capable of flight. Now, not only were the humans farming chili on continents far too far away for any of the birds that originally ate it could dream of flying, but the chili flew with them to lands where it could possibly not grow, so that humans over there could also eat it and enjoy the pain.

You see? They spread your seeds and fly.

It doesn't count as keeping a promise if you only manage it by a fucking accident, said the chili, still somewhat insulted. But nonetheless, the chili thrived.

did that to me

We need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like being banished into forests far from everyone. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.

Franz Kafka