May 2021 newsletter

I've been working on things that aren't writing for like a month now and my brain is getting withdrawal symptoms from not typing inane bullshit into my text editor. For too long the working Tim has focused on logical math and programming skills, and for too long has he neglected his softer desires like writing. Seriously, though, I need to work on something less rigerous than what I have been, and writing is that outlet. So this newsletter is gonna be a little bit different than usual. I need this out of my system like you need that tapeworm out of yours.

Let's begin.

So what have I been up to? First off, I mentioned in my previous newsletter that I was going to start studying mathematics and AI, and that's been happening on and off for a bit.

But I'm not here to tell you all the cool math things that I've learned about, or my confusion about "different sized of infinity" like that's something that actually makes sense, or how AI is way more complex than you might first have thought. No, I'm here to rant. And the subject of my ranting -- my subjective victim, you might say -- is mathematical notation.

Mathematical notation is horrible. Horrible horrible horrible. It makes me sad. It makes me angry. It makes me want to convert all math notation into programming code so that I can actually understand it without wanting to throw myself into the lake never to be seen again by moral eyes until the third full moon of the lasy year of the world where I rise out of it as a bloated corpse with my other corpse brothers and sisters to haunt the ancestors of those who wronged us before we went into the lake. I'll also be handing out lake swords just for the irony of it, because Bloated Lake Corpse Tim will still have a sense of humor and history.

Let me make myself clear as a sponge here: I learned programming before I learned math. I suppose you can say that I started learning how to do math before I learned how to do programming, but that's kind of a stretch. The truth of the matter is that I've been programming since I was 9 or 10 years old, and the math I learned before that isn't even worth remembering. And since I was solving actual problems with my programming, in comparison to trying to guess what answer the teacher wanted with math, my logical thinking skills became inextricably intertangled with the interesting interspersments of programming.

Now that I'm actually trying to get a grasp on math that is more useful than memorizing the steps to solve for b in a polynomial so that I don't flunk out of highschool, I realized that the notation of math is horriendously alien to me. I'm used to the step-by-step line-by-line loop-based declaration-based real-world-restricted world of programming code, and mathematical notation isn't that. Oh sure, you can map most any math notation into programming in one way or another, but my god it still takes a lot of getting used to.

Not to mention that most everything about math seems to think that the implications of things are totally obvious. Oh sure yeah I totally get why that works. Thanks for not explaining it in detail for me. Fucker.

Not to mention that searching for mathematical notation is sad. "What is the weird E thing in math?"

Not to mention that mathematicians rely on paragraphs and paragraphs of text and preamble before presenting their equations, since mathematical notation isn't self descriptive.

Not to mention that mathematicians have a fetish of using single letters for all their variables, just in case you were worried about it being too clear without your eyes starting to bleed.

Not to mention that mathematicians are crazy in general.

God damn fucking mathematical notation god damn.

Seriously though, programming and math are way different from writing. The weird thing about my brain is that I crave both kinds of... asthetic? Thought patterns? Whatever. Call it madness if you want, but it's what I've seen.

For example, I've gone nearly a month without writing anything. In that time I've focused pretty hard on math and programming. I also focused on learning a bit of music thory on the side, because I'm just not busy enough, but that hasn't yet dug into my brain hard enough to capture my attention like math and programming have.

The thing about math and programming (and related skills, like learning why the hell music theory is so shit, even though it seems to help me make things that don't sound like a cow being thrown into a wood chipper) is that the're rigerous. You can't just have a spelling mistake in your program or it won't compile. Or you're using JavaScript and a spelling mistake means that you have an impossible-to-debug bug, but whatever. We're not talking about JavaScript, we're talking about real programming languages that you use to make actual serious software.

But yeah, rigerous. With math you have to have the proof steps (which are suspiciously similar to the statements you lay out in a program, just less verbose) and with programming you have to, you know, have it run in the real world. And sometimes I desperetly crave that kind of mental experience. The experience of tyring to wriggle around in a strongly defined formal system to produce a result that I want, or to just explore said system in general.

Then you have writing. Writing has rules, hell that comma I just write is one of them. There's spelling and grammar and sentence structure and paragraphs and yada yada yada. But they aren't rigerous. You aren't at risk of going to math hell if you get the proof steps of the inane sentence you're writing wrong. You're not going to get screamed at by a compiler because you spelled "struct" strucrt" for the dozenth time.

And just like I sometimes crave the expereince of masochisticly conforming my poor poor brain to imagine esoteric logic puzzles I also crave just how fucking easy it is in comparison to just write. I know that a lot of people who write things are constantly on the verge of mental collapse because they have the mythical "writer's block", but that doesn't really bother me that much. The experience of typing these words into my editor is easy in comparison to literally any programming task that I've done in the last month. Maybe my brain has some genetic predisposition towards finding writing easy. Whatever. I just know that I need to do it sometimes or I'll start feeling weirdly guilty; like I'm going against my nature or something.

Just to bring the meta scale back to 11 I thought I should mention that this whole section is here so that I could just write stream of conciousness stuff about writing stream of conciousness stuff because I wanted to write stream of conciousness stuff, so I though that writing about wanting to write to help fill that desire, which it has. What?

This is starting to look like an episode of "Tim just writes whatever is on his mind". Good thing I have a lot of experience with that kind of writing. Only one person out there really knows the depth of my experience, but just trust me on it.

I have some other hobbies, besides writing and programming (and I guess math now? Still kinda early to call it a hobby... Music? Kind of early too...). One of those hobbies is runnning. I'm not a star athelete or anything like that, in fact the most I usually run on any given day is like 3 miles. I don't really even have intentions on going further than that. But I do like to run.

In fact, I would say there's a part of me that almost needs to run. Sometimes I'll go a couple weeks without it. Maybe I'm distracted by a programming problem that's stumped me, or maybe I've just dipped into a small depression. Whatever it is, I forget or neglect to run for a while. And then when I finally do it again I get this jolt of, "Oh my god of course!" like I'd forgotten that running was part of the backbone of things that keep me sane. And I always make a resolution to remember to run more, and I always forget it.

And I'm realizing that this forgetfulness about things that I enjoy actually contributes a lot of misery to my life. I forget that I enjoy writing and I start to feel depressed and guilty until I type into my text editor a lot. I forget that I like to read physical books until I visit the library again. I forget that I like to take naps until I take one again. Forget that I like a certain kind of food a lot. You get the idea.

And in some sence it's fine. If I had the best foods I like every singe day I would get sick of pizza after a while. There's a case to be made for purposely neglecting your pleasures so that the hedonic treadmill has time to move you away from them. But at the same time I feel like this is effusive in my life. It's really crazy, actually.

I'm saying this because I went on a jog right before typing out this section and the previous one, and I've got this on my brain. Might as well get it down before I forget again ;)

Before blogs became what they are today, they used to be actual, ya know, webb logs. People would just record what they did on some day, share their half-assed thoughts about it, and that would be it. This newsletter post is more blog than anything on my actual blog.

Now-a-days the expectation is that you blog is... more focused? Less focused? I don't really know how to describe it. Well, I have a cynical explination, but those aren't ever useful beyond making people thing that you're trying to sound smart. Wait. That was cynical too. Meta meta meta.

But yeah. Blogs seem to have evolved, with most rest of the internet, into a sounding board that the author uses to signal how smart/cool/funny/world-wise/whatever they are. Even the things that are web logs of someone's life turn into "look at how wealthy I am because I'm eating at X resturant!" or some other shit.

And you can tell when a blogger runs out of ideas to fill their niche with. Some bloggers can pivot to new things to talk about, but others double down into their bullshit until what comes out the other side are blog posts that don't even resemble anything useful, but still signal their involvment (and maybe leadership) to the group that the blog caters to. It's depressing. In fact, the same thing kind of happens to youtube channels now that I think about it. Either that or the content creators burn out and go insane.

And something like this? This newsletter? It doesn't appeal to anyone. It hardly appeals to me and I'm in the moment of writing it right now! It's not high status enough. You can't link this to your friend on discord with an :O face to show just how good you are at finding intriguing underground content. You're not going to be impressed by anything I say here. So the only reason that this exists to to satisfy an urge I have to write it. The kind of people who can run off sketchy incentives like that aren't always the kinds of peopel who will also happen to have those incentives align with things that get noticed on the internet. So nearly everything you see on the internet has an asthetic of desperate attention grabbing and self-promotion, and things like this only come around once and a while.

Not that this is worth while in the first place. And I don't hate people for wanting high-status attention-grabbing things. There are certain thinsg that people like, and they deserve to have what they like because humans deserve to be happy. I'm just sad that my own values seem to not align with things that get me status easily.

Oh yeah. Links. Uh.... Check out The Pac-Man Dossier to see more examples of people being super into a specific thing and sharing it with the world. I love this kind of stuff. Hell yea.

The problem of programming and math being too "rigerous" seems to apply to computer things in a general way.

Like this typing thing I'm doing here. It's pretty sweet to be able to input words into my computer screen and whatnot, but it's still... restricted. There's less physicality to the process in comparison to simply writing something by hand. I'm restricted to the text that the computer allows, instead of the less rigerous definition of "proper input" that a pen and paper allows.

It's the same for games, too. Games on a computer have to be rigerously defined by the programmer before you can play them, oterwise the computer wouldn't be able to run them. In comparison, you can come up with a fun little ball game to play at any time without having to define the strict vector that the ball will fly at if you throw it using X mussel groups in Y way.

The difference between the less rigrously defined rules of interacting with the "real world" and the hardcore rules of interacting with computers is stark. I'm aware that the universe has rules that it follows at the low level, but that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about the human conception of freedom of movement within a system. There are simply more options, more fuzzy generalizations to be made, when you're interacting with things outside of computers.

My generation made fun of the previous generations for not understanding computers. For making the most absurd assumptions about how they operated. But what I didn't realize at the time is that computers are alien. They are hard to think about. I was so young when I was exposed to ideas about how computers operate that I can hardly even remember a time when I didn't know the bare basics about how they worked. But imagine going your whole life in the "fuzzy generalization" real world and then being asked to understand something as rigerous as computers. Unless you've had lots of training in abstract thought and formal systems (a rare skill), you're going to obviously have a hard time.

You can type something into the computer, and you can't find the symbol for a smily face. The way your grandson showed you was even more confusing, and the smily face looks different from what you would have drawn in a hand written letter. And the handwriting on the screen is so weird too. All you want is to write a letter!

This is my main objection to computers. Yeah software is terrible, hardware is unreliable, and the internet is a bloated whale corpse ready to explode on the beach, but this is the fundemental reason why computers make me feel gross. I'm no fool (at least I like to think so), I understand that computers are important. But sometimes I wonder what it would be like to just not have to think the way a computer thinks...

Does this make me a luddite?

I mean, obviously not. In fact, the vast majority of things I do in my life tie into computers in one way or another.

In fact, I imagine that this is a problem that people have with nearly any system once they get to know it well enough. They can see where the system is elegant and pure, and then they see the warts of it through expereience.

So don't get me wrong. I like that computers exist. They've shaped my life in ways that are, if not good, at least interesting. Not to mention that there's a ton of benefits and power in conforming to the rigid system of a computer.

Programming is magic. Not in the "sufficently advanced technology" sense, but in the "manipulate the fundemental rules of the universe to your whims" sense. The universe runs off math, abstractable to a turing machine, and through the mighty force of a computer we can steer those fundemental rules towards solving problems that humans care about. It's not as flashy as waving your wand and catching the forest on fire, but it's still pretty damn cool.

Still, though, I think of a certain quote a lot. Usually when I'm doing something physical and I remember that I'm a human being made to exist in the wild:

"I win, and I'm happy, but there's no wind on my face."

-Eliezer Yudkowsky

That post is actually what started this line of thought in my head many years ago. Things that stick around in my head for so long like that are usually worth thinking about more in-depth, at least for my own personal development. But I seem to always hit a dead-end when I imagine how to fix the problem, beyond high-level things like having a superintelligent AI fix it for me or something.

Like... I guess I could write things by hand using a tablet? But that's really annoying? Ugh. See what I mean?

Imagine you have a task in front of you to do. Doesn't matter what it is, just that the task is slightly difficult. For this example I'll use my own problem of trying not to drink more chocolate milk.

I fuckin' love chocolate milk. But my body doesn't love it. Maintaining my weight loss from years ago is a constant ongoing process that can slip if I don't give it a small background hum of attention and effort. Chocolate milk has a bunch of calories in it, and if I drink too much of it in a day then I am almost certantly going to go over my "maintain my weight" daily calorie limit. This is a problem, considering just how tempting it is for me to pour myself another glass of chocolate milk.

How would you solve this issue? Seriously. How?

Was your solution: rely on your sheer willpower to convince yourself to not pour a glass of chocolate milk every time you open the fridge?

I would bet a lot of money that whatever solution you came up with, it wasn't that one. I bet you said something like "remove the chocolate milk from the fridge" or "take a sip of water every time you crave chocolate milk to train a new habit" or "get rid of all the large cups so that any glass of chocolate milk you pour will be small".

And yet! My brain instinctually tries to implement the willpower solution.

There's a pattern here, one that generalizes to a lot of different problems. You could even call it an asthetic way to think about solving problems.

The difference is this: the strategy that my brain sticks on is one that I can plausably claim that I tried to use to succede, without actually expecting success with a high probability. The strategy that you almost certantly came up with is one that you actually expected to succede.

There is a strong asthetic difference between strategies where you "try" and strategies where you actually expect success. Even if your expectation for success turns out to be wrong, I highly doubt that the "actually expect" strategies are even in the same ballpark as the "try" strategies.

Do you actually expect your efforts of study to produce the skills you desire? Do you actually expect your diet to produce the body you want? Do you actually expect X action to produce Y result? Or are you just "trying"?

The real world is less black and white, obviously. You must always operate under uncertanty. But then, given the uncertanty of the real world, are you trying or do you actually expect that your chosen strategies are taking you in the general direction of your goal?

The chocolate milk example is good to illistrate this point. Because the "trying" strategy is just "try not to drink chocolate milk so much", while the "acutally expect" strategy is to remove the milk from the fridge so that I don't even need to make the choice. If I can't drink chocolate milk then I can reasonably expect that I won't, you know, be drinking a lot of chocolate milk.

I don't have much conclusions from this line of thought. At least, no conclusions that I actually expect will be useful for anyone except myself. Not that I actually expect this newsletter to reach an audiece larger than maybe 2 people.

And that's it for today. Not a lot of links or anything substantial to say. Just venting out a desire to write literally anything at all please help me.

Thanks!