some analysis

i don’t even know what this post is about, but i think it has more potential for disagreement than anything else i’ve written recently so uhh have fun i guess

so people convinced me to look into buying stocks and bitcoin. i downloaded robinhood and bought some things but it’s been a bit underwhelming and it seems like actually getting good returns requires a large investment of both time and attention, so i’m probably not going to do much, though maybe i’ll hold some stuff for a while or buy more bitcoin if it crashes soon or something. this might be the wrong move entirely – i care a lot about preserving brain space for the immediate future but it’s possible i could make a lot of money now and free up lots of future brain space? i haven’t figured out how to really assess this sentiment yet. anyway hahn convinced me to download some weird blockchain app run by stanford grads so uhh i am going to pass along the message, download the pi network app and input tastymath as your invite code to get free crypto which may or may not someday be valuable 😛 

last weekend i filled out the light load petition and it got approved, so i’m officially taking 12 units (1 class) next semester! not sure what it’ll be yet, possibly biochemistry (7.05) or some humanities class, but i’ll be spending most of my time at asimov.io, probably working on some combination of software, math, genomics models

i discovered the youtube channel sideways and like it a lot 🙂 they have lots of analysis of music performance and structure that i hadn’t considered before. it’s interesting because eg. i generally enjoyed the les mis 2012 movie so listening to a 30 minute video of all the ways the music was handled improperly was very eye-opening. but i’ve also been on youtube a bit too much over the past few weeks and will probably limit myself to music and educational videos for a while

winter sparc is ongoing and it’s basically a giant discord server where people from various years of sparc hang out. not too much has happened though there are events on weekends and weekday evenings and i’ll be running a few events soon as well. apparently i’m allowed to invite guests though so if you a) have the bandwidth to actually participate in stuff for the next ~2 weeks b) know me reasonably well c) have real reasons for wanting to join (beyond “ooh new discord server i like being in servers”) dm me and we can talk about it 🙂 

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i watched the matrix and some scenes from the sequels (since everyone told me not to watch the entirety of the sequels for some reason — based on the scenes i saw they actually seem decent tbh). the ost is great and the ~10 seconds where neo finally sees the world as code for the first time are just so satisfying, more so than any of the action sequences or special effects imo. the general writing is also incredibly rich and makes me want to read more about hinduism since i think there are a lot of allusions that went over my head. everyone seems to like the quotes about living in a simulation and being the one or whatever but my favorite pieces of dialogue are probably the following two: 

I.

The Oracle: Candy?
Neo: Do you already know if I’m going to take it?
The Oracle: Wouldn’t be much of an Oracle if I didn’t.
Neo: But if you already know, how can I make a choice?
The Oracle: Because you didn’t come here to make the choice, you’ve already made it. You’re here to try to understand why you made it. 

(the oracle is an entity that sees the future. also, wow that is an interesting way to think about choice and free will, similar to later when smith asks “why do you persist?” and neo responds “because i choose to”. which is weird because at first glance it seems like neo isn’t even answering the question but i guess one of the main ideas in the trilogy is that maybe this is the only answer)

II.

Ram-Kendra: I love my daughter very much. I find her to be the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. But, where we are from, that is not enough.  Every program that is created must have a purpose. If it does not, it is deleted. I went to the Frenchman to save my daughter. You do not understand.
Neo: I just have never…
Ram-Kendra: …Heard a program speak of love.
Neo: It is a human emotion.
Ram-Kendra: No, it is a word. What matters is the connection the word implies.
⋮
Rama-Kandra: That is our karma.
Neo: You believe in karma?
Rama-Kandra: Karma’s a word. Like ‘love.’ A way of saying ‘what I am here to do.’

(ram-kendra and his daughter are computer programs. i guess there are a lot of ways to interpret this but i think it’s a deeply humanist statement)

so yeah, i get the sequels have lots of flaws and messy plots but movies where the writers put this much thought into the dialogue make me really happy 🙂 dialogue often feels like just an afterthought for getting characters wherever the plot dictates they have to go

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lately i’ve been spending the majority of my time reading. aside from stats and ml stuff for drp, i’m reading the paper physical principles for scalable neural recording and related brain texts with some friends, as well as the book difficult conversations: how to discuss what matters most with some other reading group. the brain papers are pretty interesting and relatively accessible despite me having minimal neuro background, though there is quite a bit of overlap with the waitbutwhy post about neuralink that i read a few months ago. the difficult conversations book is great and i’m only halfway done but it’s already one of my favorite nonfiction books ever; the book basically frames every difficult conversation as having 3 components — what happened, feelings, identity — and discusses how to approach each component in a way which fosters healthier interactions. it’s definitely something i wish i read a year ago but i’m probably getting a lot more out of it now that i’ve made many of the mistakes the book discusses. there’s never a better time than the present i guess

it’s been 2-3 years since i read zero to one but i’ve started thinking about the optimist/pessimist and definite/indefinite spectrums again. (if you’re not familiar, the optimist/pessimist spectrum is about whether you think your life will get better or worse, and the definite/indefinite spectrum is about whether or not you see concrete ways in which your life will change. i think it is still one of the most useful frameworks i’ve found for thinking about dreams.) and i guess i’ve noticed a personal shift towards definite pessimism — like, i have many sources of motivation but a primary one over the past year has been an overwhelming fear of ending up as a swe at faang+ after graduation. which is fine in the sense that this fear has motivated me to do things like explore biotech and live in truchas, but how long can i actually keep burning dirty fuel for without it seriously compromising my mental health or sense of identity? 

one thing i’m confused about is the extent to which people i know are definite optimists. if i had to guess i’d say most of my friends are predominantly indefinite optimists in the sense that they think the future will be fine and are mostly going with the flow for now? and in the past i struggled to balance the desire to be in friendships or relationships with the idea that they were generally unproductive time sinks, but i’m now realizing that last statement is wrong for reasons that go beyond “being happy isn’t a waste of time”. specifically, relationships where people make each other better are completely feasible and a primary factor (aside from things like basic compatibility and communication) which determines the extent to which this happens is probably how definitely optimistic both of you are about the things the two of you want to be better at. definite pessimism probably works too for some people, but i imagine it has a tendency to turn toxic in the long run

i don’t really know the extent to which any of this is actually correct, but it is the only model i currently have which matches both past experiences and things i’m reading. i guess i would be open to exploring (romantic or not) relationships which are explicitly more definite-optimist in nature as it feels like one of the biggest things i’m missing

(a few things that are probably worth clarifying — a) i’m not suggesting people exist as binary values on these spectrums b) you can be eg. a pessimist when it comes to climate change and an optimist for everything else. i don’t think the classification is something that holds uniformly over your entire life, though i imagine if you list all the things you care about you will notice trends like “i default towards definite pessimism” c) i think these attributes are highly dynamic over time, though i’m not really sure how you’d go about changing them if you wanted to)