There is one cardinal rule when it comes to teaching (and most other areas of life): simpler is always better. Smart people don’t make simple things complex. They make complex things simple.
Simpler is always better
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Category Archives: Philosophy
How I Try to Live
A life is a heroic thing,
to never throw away.
To cherish always, and to keep,
with meaning in each day.
To count the seconds as the years,
both always in your grip,
to know the price of time is dear,
and never let it slip.
To bring creation into being,
and move from mind to sight,
ideas to grapple with the dark,
and from it extract light.
To eschew the path that most would take,
as easy as it seems,
instead to forge your own new way,
on the power of your dreams.
To lift the burdens of another,
but not become his thrall,
nor seek to be his master,
to be a friend; that’s all.
To always keep an open mind,
but sometimes ask for proof,
not accepting or rejecting,
just seeking out the truth.
A life is a heroic thing,
it’s yours to use or give,
so treat it with respect,
so that we all may live.
Imagination
Mankind could do so much
if only we would let
our imagination
soar.
Personal Reflections on Self-Sufficiency
I just realized that every paper I had accepted so far in grad. school was written entirely by myself. Sure, others’ ideas are involved, and I sometimes base my code on theirs (although I invariably end up rewriting a good deal of it because it tends to be thrown together rather haphazardly), but I’m always the one reviewing the literature, putting the papers together, setting up and performing the experiments, and describing the results and some of their likely implications (I’ve become a very bold hypothesizer when trying to explain particular patterns in data; I think this is probably an important aspect of any sort of science). I’ve even had to explain the biological aspects of the research, which is quite silly, as we have actual biologists on the team.
But it works. Publication after publication. I was wondering when I would get research training, but I guess I have it already.
Being a common researcher isn’t enough, though. I need to figure out how to do great research with similar success. I can contribute more, but I need to figure out how – once again, on my own.
I wonder if my penchant for self-sufficiency is an aspect of my personality, or whether it is a consequence of my circumstances. I can’t really remember any time during my life when I had a significant degree of aid beyond the basic support that a family provides. I wonder what it would have done to my personality if I had? I’d probably be more compassionate, more willing to shield people from the relation between action and consequence (since I’ve borne the full brunt of that link, I view those who can’t grasp it as fundamentally immature). What situation would I be in? Would I shoot for the moon, requiring realization of my vision in an absolute sense?
Would it limit me? Could I still exceed the abilities of others if I had always relied upon them for help? Would I even have goals at all?
The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that my self-sufficiency is proper; that, in a sense, this is how to live an effective and rewarding life, whatever the hardships.
And that means that every time society forces me to rely upon myself, I grow stronger. If this is to be the theme of my life, I welcome it.
Potential is not enough
I still occasionally stop –
and think,
“what if I could study algorithms?”
But that has passed.
My mathematical talent
What if it found
a trainer to match?
But that too has passed.
Could I render music,
imagined, inchoate, flawless,
upon the canvas of reality?
I suppose I’ll never know.
Why is biology
so natural and intuitive,
even though I’ve never studied?
The biologists won’t tell me.
Society, for all its quirks,
follows a set of rules,
intuitively, I know some,
but how to write them up?
“It shows promise, it shows promise, it shows promise.”
And yet you leave it to wither!
Do you have any idea of the agony
of talent left untrained!?
Of vision divorced from realization?
Cut off, to goad, to promise,
and to crumble before reality –
over and over, illimitable!
This is the result
of forcing men to specialize –
we have unlimited potential,
but potential is not enough.
A Knowledge Aphorism
This one just popped into my head during my usual morning pondering of what I was going to do with the day:
“The frontiers of knowledge lie not at the edges of our thought, but at the edges of our imagination.”
Anomalies
Watch the people who never fit in, for they are the ones who are going to stand out.
People think being an anomaly is a precursor to things like school shootings and other violent behavior. It probably is, but that’s a very small minority of anomalous individuals (and sometimes you get normal people doing that too). More common are the ones who emerge as society’s next generation of leaders.
I think the reason is simple: if you never fit in, the only person you can depend on is yourself. No group is going to come to your aid, no one is going to catch you if you fall, and thus you feel keenly the full brunt of either success or failure. You might give aid freely, but you’ll never learn to expect it in return.
Furthermore, when one is fully exposed to the laws of action and consequence, reality is an excellent teacher; one either learns quickly or perishes.
Finally, standing apart cultivates individualism. With no allies, there is no choice: you have to stand on your own. You must see where you want yourself to be, and you must figure out a way to get there. This also requires a self-derived hierarchical value system that praises greatness. This runs into a distinct clash against the indifference of the masses, and after a while, you begin to see this indifference as a disease: it stands for everything opposite of what a self-starter believes in, and thus dichotomizes the population into apathetics and movers.
Now, what happens when two movers meet is rather interesting, because it’s likely to first happen rather late – the apathetics greatly outnumber the movers. There is an almost immediate sense of respect, something that screams “this person is different; this person is competent.” These are the moments that erase the built-up cynicism that anyone observing society from the outside would necessarily acquire; the existence of such individuals – and the principles they stand for – justifies all of humanity.
These are the people I am trying to find to start my university. They are the root cause of every meaningful social construct that exists.
Self-made
Self-made people take something that isn’t valuable and, through their own efforts, make it so.
It’s a poignant differentiator: it takes no effort to make much out of much, but a great deal to make much out of little.
Contingencies upon contingencies!
It’s really the only way to live life successfully – knowing that any 5 things you’re anticipating could fail and you’re still set. This is important because people can fail – states can change – events can fall through. And since they can, Murphy’s Law says they will :).
Some options aren’t as good as others – but the important thing is to always have options.
Defiant: Free-verse
I think I may have just came up with the very distilled essence of secondary integration in the process of sorting my own feelings out:
Defiant
I swim against a prodigious current,
and I know that I must falter.
It draws me towards the fall,
the inexorable fatal plunge.
But each stroke I take,
I count a small victory,
a stand.
For my right to exist.
For the betterment of the world.
For those who came before me.
And for everyone,
who has ever screamed,
defiantly at the heavens:
“No! There is a better way!”
For them,
For us,
I swim against the current,
because I am right.