spring break

i am trying to decide how to write posts like these, so please tell me (in dms or comments) if this post is a) boring / not boring b) contains too much info / an acceptable amount of info c) whatever else you want to

tuesday

i took the amtrak from boston to philly. it’s a six-hour ride, so on the way i read half of the unbearable lightness of being. the book is divided into seven sections and i made it through three; the first one was very good and the other two were not bad but a bit slow in my opinion. but also, wow this is such an ambitious opening to a novel and i love it: 

The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?
Putting it negatively, the myth of eternal return states that a life which disappears once and for all, which does not return, is like a shadow, without weight, dead in advance, and whether it was horrible, beautiful, or sublime, its horror, sublimity, and beauty mean nothing. We need take no more note of it than of a war between two African kingdoms in the fourteenth century, a war that altered nothing in the destiny of the world, even if a hundred thousand blacks perished in excruciating torment.
Will the war between two African kingdoms in the fourteenth century itself be altered if it recurs again and again, in eternal return?
It will: it will become a solid mass, permanently protuberant, its inanity irreparable.
If the French Revolution were to recur eternally, French historians would be less proud of Robespierre. But because they deal with something that will not return, the bloody years of the Revolution have turned into mere words, theories, and discussions, have become lighter than feathers, frightening no one. There is an infinite difference between a Robespierre who occurs only once in history and a Robespierre who eternally returns, chopping off French heads.
Let us therefore agree that the idea of eternal return implies a perspective from which things appear other than as we know them: they appear without the mitigating circumstance of their transitory nature. This mitigating circumstance prevents us from coming to a verdict. For how can we condemn something that is ephemeral, in transit? In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.
Not long ago, I caught myself experiencing a most incredible sensation. Leafing through a book on Hitler, I was touched by some of his portraits: they reminded me of my childhood. I grew up during the war; several members of my family perished in Hitler’s concentration camps; but what were their deaths compared with the memories of a lost period in my life, a period that would never return?
This reconciliation with Hitler reveals the profound moral perversity of a world that rests essentially on the nonexistence of return, for in this world everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything cynically permitted.
If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross. It is a terrifying prospect. In the world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. That is why Nietzsche called the idea of eternal return the heaviest of burdens (das schwerste Gewicht).
If eternal return is the heaviest of burdens, then our lives can stand out against it in all their splendid lightness.
But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?
The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man’s body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.
Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant.
What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness? 

the book talks a lot about love, power, and this idea of lightness vs weight, so it’s probably not a surprise that i liked it a lot. anyway, i arrived at penn, talked to a friend from high school and moved into their room, and worked on research for a while

wednesday

weather forecasts said it’d rain on wednesday afternoon and thursday, so i spent wednesday morning walking to as many attractive-looking parks as possible while i had the chance. the final route ended up being around twelve miles and was approximately this: 

i think the walk went pretty well. i was able to fairly quickly identify my favorite part of the city (the east bank of the schuylkill river, which has nice views and a nice mix of urban + river sounds, making it a very good thinking spot). afterwards i met some friends who were in philly for a writing conference and we spent some time in a barnes and noble, where i read siddhartha. it’s a pretty short book that documents a character’s journey through studying, asceticism, hedonism, and retirement

and reading siddhartha was an incredibly spiritual experience. i finished it in one sitting and don’t think i’ve ever been immersed by a book to that degree before. i don’t expect most people to like it (the book uses boring language and the plot is relatively uneventful), but for me the book was a very opportune synthesis of life stories my older friends had told me, various articles i’d read on stoicism and accelerationism and the bhagavad gita, and thoughts i’ve been having about words and learning and mentorship that i’ll probably write about in a separate post

afterwards i met a cs phd student at penn. they were probably one of the sharpest conversationalists i’ve ever talked to, and getting verbally demolished repeatedly was very fun. it helped that we had a lot of common context – we both read tech twitter, have interests in biology and neuroscience, share similar thoughts about careers and doubts about effective altruism, etc. anyway, the person tried to convince me to work on either neuroscience or the network science elements of computational neuro after college; i am not particularly convinced but agree that i should think harder about my options

thursday

in the morning i did some work on my zero-knowledge project while waiting for my host to wake up. afterwards we met one of their undergrad friends and went to a penn dining hall. it had significantly more options than mit dining halls but the food was also less appealing 😦 we talked for a bit and i visited their apartment and petted their cat for a while. then i walked around campus and ran into penn masala (ie. the penn version of the a cappella group i’m in). the encounter was a pleasant surprise and i talked to them a bit about south asian a cappella

then i went on another walk around philly. this one was less intense than the one from wednesday (i think around eight miles). i visited chinatown and bought some snacks for my high school friend, wandered around some more parks and squares, and eventually ended up back at barnes and nobles, where i decided to revisit the second half of siddhartha because i felt like i’d rushed it the day before; the reread was very enjoyable

after that i walked back to penn and on the way i visited my last park in philly. while there i had the long-overdue realization that my favorite parts of philly (and every other city) did not emerge by accident – they were for the most part created and preserved by urban planners who cared about making beautiful living spaces that would last, and i am very grateful for their work and passion. i think this kind of thing is easy to overlook, but there is so much to be grateful to other people for when you realize how much of the world around you was designed

friday

after staying up until 2:30 talking to my high school friend, i woke up at 5:30 to catch the amtrak from philly to nyc, during which i continued reading the unbearable lightness of being. after arriving i walked to madison square park and met someone i’d lived with in new mexico. we hadn’t seen each other since then (fall 2020), and this person had been my main inspiration for learning about urban design and interactive music systems, so catching up was nice

i didn’t have anything else planned in nyc, so i texted a friend asking if they remembered where to get peanut punch (a rare peanut-based caribbean drink that i got with said friend in ny last year and liked a lot). coincidentally, said friend was also visiting nyc on that day so we hung out and ate lunch. while doing so i also ran into someone i’d lived with in alaska this summer (i don’t have enough data to be confident about this but it seems that, even in large cities, it’s not that hard to find specific people if you’re paying attention, because similar people tend to frequent similar spots over and over)

anyway, after hanging out i concluded the peanut punch store was too inconvenient to visit, but i still had five hours before the nyc -> boston amtrak, so i read some articles about the best public restrooms in nyc and used that as a guide for which places to visit. this led me to some uncharacteristic behaviors like spending an hour walking through a high-end shopping mall because i knew i’d soon need to use the bathroom, but overall i think it was a good decision because it led me to parts of the city that i otherwise would never have known about. (also, the best public restrooms were as good as advertised)

then it was time to take the amtrak back to boston. there were a lot of mit students on the train; i recognized a few and could tell some strangers were from mit based on the psets they had open on their ipads or the assignments they had open in coding editors, which was amusing

i finished the unbearable lightness of being during the train ride. the ending was pretty good and has some interesting discussion about the creation of man and the relationship between humans and pets; i’d say it was my favorite part of the book other than the opening pages. after finishing i worked on research for a bit, and then got off at back bay station at around midnight and walked to my room