We're one week into the new semester and I'm still on top of everything. For the most part. I could have done a bit more of the optional reading for thermo and I need to write a few paragraphs about humanism for my English class, but aside from that I've at least finished all the assignments so far.
This week, my primary goal is simply to retain and consolidate my success. The longer I go before faltering, the better. The material will likely become more challenging this week, in which case attending office hours may become necessary. If that's the case, I'll just go. I've waited too long too many times before.
My secondary goal is to begin the process of finding an apartment to live in this summer and into the next school year. Where I live currently is not at all conducive to my academics success, and it's only going to get harder from here. It's going to be warmer next week, so heading back and forth to the library will thankfully be more practical.
My habit for this week is to simply avoid procrastinating, and do work as soon as I can.
24 January 2016
02 January 2016
Problem with Classics
Many literary pieces become "classics" in part because they were better than whatever else was in print at the time. This was a perfectly honest and reasonable criteria, but after decades of continuous use it has broken down quite terribly. By now, so many books are in print, and so many "classics" now declared, that we can't escape the fact that some "classics" are better than others, and moreover, that some are more enjoyable to read.
People like me, who were raised in a world overflowing with "classics", where the entire English curriculum was devoted to "classics", have no basis for comparison. They aren't "classics" to me so much as they are books, and respecting them simply because they're old is quite difficult when so many are so painful to read. I can't see these books in relation to their time, nor do I usually view them against modern literature, in part because I don't read all that much of it.
Furthermore, themes which may have been profound when a book was first published are by now part of the general cultural background, and so the notion that they're worth spending time on is a bit of a challenge. This is especially true of ideas which I reject but everyone accepts.
Here's Scott Alexander on a similar topic:
People like me, who were raised in a world overflowing with "classics", where the entire English curriculum was devoted to "classics", have no basis for comparison. They aren't "classics" to me so much as they are books, and respecting them simply because they're old is quite difficult when so many are so painful to read. I can't see these books in relation to their time, nor do I usually view them against modern literature, in part because I don't read all that much of it.
Furthermore, themes which may have been profound when a book was first published are by now part of the general cultural background, and so the notion that they're worth spending time on is a bit of a challenge. This is especially true of ideas which I reject but everyone accepts.
Here's Scott Alexander on a similar topic:
In a recent essay, Against Bravery Debates, I think I underestimated an important reason why some debates have to be bravery debates.
Suppose there are two sides to an issue. Be more or less selfish. Post more or less offensive atheist memes. Be more or less willing to blame and criticize yourself.
There are some people who need to hear both sides of the issue. Some people really need to hear the advice “It’s okay to be selfish sometimes!” Other people really need to hear the advice “You are being way too selfish and it’s not okay.”
It’s really hard to target advice at exactly the people who need it. You can’t go around giving everyone surveys to see how selfish they are, and give half of them Atlas Shrugged and half of them the collected works of Peter Singer. You can’t even write really complicated books on how to tell whether you need more or less selfishness in your life – they’re not going to be as buyable, as readable, or as memorable as Atlas Shrugged. To a first approximation, all you can do is saturate society with pro-selfishness or anti-selfishness messages, and realize you’ll be hurting a select few people while helping the majority.For the most part, I find a lot of the themes in older literature to be obvious and universal to the point that criticizing them seems like a duty. But perhaps that wasn't the case at the time. Maybe when these books were written such messages were actually useful. But how would I know, without actually taking a representative survey of what was being written at the time. Not the best works--the works that were so dull or bad that they were forgotten with a year.
Alternatively, it would be helpful to show how schools of literary thought react to one another. A certain mode of thought is in vogue, and then people get fed up with it and try something else, until people get fed up with that and try yet another thing. Sometimes this can be collapsed onto a simple one-dimensional axis, but usually the space is much larger than that.
In my English education there was a touch of this, but for the most part we glossed over the differences and relationships between different schools. I can't really blame my teachers for this--they were working within quite limited restraints--but the broader book culture would be well-advised to take this into account when demanding genuflection to the "classics".
01 January 2016
New Year New Blog
As promised, my new blog has been launched. This will be for more interesting, longform posts, while shorter but less-thought-out posts will reside here. This will, finally, be a personal blogs about the gripes of Routh, finally freed from the burden of being a repository for my serious ideas as well. A more detailed explanation can be found in the introduction post.
Happy New Year and may the Probability Gods look favorably upon you.
Happy New Year and may the Probability Gods look favorably upon you.
28 December 2015
December Daily Journal 28
If everything goes according to plan, this time tomorrow I'll be at my girlfriend's apartment in the Twin Cities. I don't know whether I'll be posting tomorrow night or very much through the duration of my stay. We don't get to spend much time together.
24 December 2015
December Daily Journal 24
So we finally got the Christmas tree put up today. Also attended two church services. Second one was distastefully political, so I hope my parents don't choose to go there. Hopefully Mom and Dad will lay off a bit tomorrow.
All I want to do right now is play KSP. I had a sudden bout of ideas for building a base last night just before bed.
All I want to do right now is play KSP. I had a sudden bout of ideas for building a base last night just before bed.
23 December 2015
Three Years and A Hundred Posts
It's been almost three years since I began this blog, and tonight I'm publishing this, my 100th post here. I'd hoped to do something special for this, but alas my life has not changed substantially since yesterday. I'm still at my parents' house, sleeping at strange hours and wishing I knew what the hell they had planned for the day so at least I could plan around it. As it is, I'm spending a lot of day wasting my time with online prolefeed which is meaningless, but which can be interrupted with little or no cost.
Now obviously I should be more appreciative of my loving parents and help them with their endless stream of unsolvable problems. But it doesn't work like that. And after taking Diff EQ, I know that cleaning a house definitely doesn't work like that.
So let's talk about projects. And let's talk about growing up.
Last night, I watched a video by Derek Muller talking about the concept of Self Efficacy. He does a good job explaining it and undoubtedly knows more about it than me, but basically self efficacy has to do with your belief that you can accomplish a thing. This is usually collapsed under self-esteem, but separating the two concepts gives a clearer picture of both of them.
One point that Derek makes in the video is that people frequently pursue the careers their parents or older friends pursue, not necessarily because of connections or inherent ability (though those certainly contribute), but also because they see it being done and realize that it's something which they can do, too. Theoretically physics doesn't seem impossible if your parents are theoretical physicists, genetic engineering doesn't seem impossible if your parents are bioscientists, and becoming a stage actor doesn't seem an impossible dream if your parents are on Broadway. You see people going through the various tasks of that career, doing that various things that need to be done, and earning a living.
My parents were government employees, doing the sort of boring jobs necessary to keep the federal bureaucracy running smoothly. I can only describe abstractly what my Dad does for a living. Even after her retirement, I can only gesture and point at some of the things Mom was doing at work. It's not that they're classified or anything--it's just technical paper-pushing that is meaningless without an enormous amount of background knowledge.
That's what I was raised around. The very definition of bland, stable office jobs. They're both French majors, too.
Now, I have friends who are engineering students and the like, but I have to wonder if this relative distance is a contributing factor to my past academic struggles. (I still haven't checked my grades from this semester; there's a decent chance they're still continuing.) Note that my parents were the closest people to me, intellectually, conversationally, etc until last year, and remain in the top five in most categories through today. I don't have a whole lot of role models for academic and social success in engineering that are in at all the same niche as me. I'm making this up as I go along are honestly amn't confident I can do it.
There's projects I want to pursue. I want to clean my room, permanently. I want to design an interplanetary mission in Kerbal Space Program. I want to learn some programming skills that aren't married to Matlab. I want to get good grades. I want to write quality blog posts. I want to read more books. But I'm not particularly confident in my ability to do any of them, in large part because they depend on lots of things outside my control. Specifically, I need time. And time is the one thing my parents adamantly refuse to give me.
Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. We'll be trying to cram our tree into the living room and attending not one but two different church services, and I would honestly be surprised if television isn't watched. There will not be time to do my own projects, which is the actual dream I have for holidays. I spend the whole year with my time use dictated by someone else. I just want a few glorious weeks when I'm left to my own devices.
I haven't had a term off school since summer of 2013, I'll remind you. Winter break is the best thing I get. Why not let me enjoy myself for a few goddamn weeks? Why am I stuck trying and failing to recreate the Christmases of Dad's youth? It's okay to try that, I suppose, but why do I have to work so hard to recreate something I never experienced? I'd like to have Christmases of my own for a change.
There's more going on here, of course. The generational differences are quite significant. For one thing, television was the epitome of recreation when they were growing up. For me, it's not. I enjoy certain shows, but it's not a fundamentally enjoyable activity for me. I'd rather play a board game or just enjoy one another's company while doing our own things, but that's not allowed, apparently. I have to sit and watch whatever goddamn movie or show they want to force upon me, when I would rather do something other than sit uncomfortably on the couch while experiencing no agency.
Agency is the main difference here, I think. As adults with jobs and all that, my parents exercise a certain degree of agency on a daily basis. I don't exercise nearly as much because I'm either a college student, a retail drone, or a 21-year-old living with my parents. Watching television with my parents only enforces that feeling of no control. Getting upset at me when I don't want to watch reruns of a show that aired when one could count your age in a single digit does not help the matter.
Scott Alexander said, in 2008, that he didn't blame his parents for the sensation of being stifled. But I've tried to explain this to them, and they apparently don't understand or don't care, so to some extend I do blame them. I keep trying to help them hack my behavior and they keep doing things the hard way. It's doubly frustrating to know why I'm reacting a certain way, and knowing how we all could mitigate these animosities entirely if you would just fucking cooperate. But I suppose that's what they say about me, too.
This really hasn't been terribly coherent, but that's the story of this blog. As mentioned previously, starting next year I will attempt to do longer, more serious posts at another blog, located here. There's nothing there now, but future readers are welcome to peruse it. I'll keep you updated as we get closer to New Year's Eve.
I don't know if I'll be writing a post tomorrow night, but I will try.
Now obviously I should be more appreciative of my loving parents and help them with their endless stream of unsolvable problems. But it doesn't work like that. And after taking Diff EQ, I know that cleaning a house definitely doesn't work like that.
So let's talk about projects. And let's talk about growing up.
Last night, I watched a video by Derek Muller talking about the concept of Self Efficacy. He does a good job explaining it and undoubtedly knows more about it than me, but basically self efficacy has to do with your belief that you can accomplish a thing. This is usually collapsed under self-esteem, but separating the two concepts gives a clearer picture of both of them.
One point that Derek makes in the video is that people frequently pursue the careers their parents or older friends pursue, not necessarily because of connections or inherent ability (though those certainly contribute), but also because they see it being done and realize that it's something which they can do, too. Theoretically physics doesn't seem impossible if your parents are theoretical physicists, genetic engineering doesn't seem impossible if your parents are bioscientists, and becoming a stage actor doesn't seem an impossible dream if your parents are on Broadway. You see people going through the various tasks of that career, doing that various things that need to be done, and earning a living.
My parents were government employees, doing the sort of boring jobs necessary to keep the federal bureaucracy running smoothly. I can only describe abstractly what my Dad does for a living. Even after her retirement, I can only gesture and point at some of the things Mom was doing at work. It's not that they're classified or anything--it's just technical paper-pushing that is meaningless without an enormous amount of background knowledge.
That's what I was raised around. The very definition of bland, stable office jobs. They're both French majors, too.
Now, I have friends who are engineering students and the like, but I have to wonder if this relative distance is a contributing factor to my past academic struggles. (I still haven't checked my grades from this semester; there's a decent chance they're still continuing.) Note that my parents were the closest people to me, intellectually, conversationally, etc until last year, and remain in the top five in most categories through today. I don't have a whole lot of role models for academic and social success in engineering that are in at all the same niche as me. I'm making this up as I go along are honestly amn't confident I can do it.
There's projects I want to pursue. I want to clean my room, permanently. I want to design an interplanetary mission in Kerbal Space Program. I want to learn some programming skills that aren't married to Matlab. I want to get good grades. I want to write quality blog posts. I want to read more books. But I'm not particularly confident in my ability to do any of them, in large part because they depend on lots of things outside my control. Specifically, I need time. And time is the one thing my parents adamantly refuse to give me.
Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. We'll be trying to cram our tree into the living room and attending not one but two different church services, and I would honestly be surprised if television isn't watched. There will not be time to do my own projects, which is the actual dream I have for holidays. I spend the whole year with my time use dictated by someone else. I just want a few glorious weeks when I'm left to my own devices.
I haven't had a term off school since summer of 2013, I'll remind you. Winter break is the best thing I get. Why not let me enjoy myself for a few goddamn weeks? Why am I stuck trying and failing to recreate the Christmases of Dad's youth? It's okay to try that, I suppose, but why do I have to work so hard to recreate something I never experienced? I'd like to have Christmases of my own for a change.
There's more going on here, of course. The generational differences are quite significant. For one thing, television was the epitome of recreation when they were growing up. For me, it's not. I enjoy certain shows, but it's not a fundamentally enjoyable activity for me. I'd rather play a board game or just enjoy one another's company while doing our own things, but that's not allowed, apparently. I have to sit and watch whatever goddamn movie or show they want to force upon me, when I would rather do something other than sit uncomfortably on the couch while experiencing no agency.
Agency is the main difference here, I think. As adults with jobs and all that, my parents exercise a certain degree of agency on a daily basis. I don't exercise nearly as much because I'm either a college student, a retail drone, or a 21-year-old living with my parents. Watching television with my parents only enforces that feeling of no control. Getting upset at me when I don't want to watch reruns of a show that aired when one could count your age in a single digit does not help the matter.
Scott Alexander said, in 2008, that he didn't blame his parents for the sensation of being stifled. But I've tried to explain this to them, and they apparently don't understand or don't care, so to some extend I do blame them. I keep trying to help them hack my behavior and they keep doing things the hard way. It's doubly frustrating to know why I'm reacting a certain way, and knowing how we all could mitigate these animosities entirely if you would just fucking cooperate. But I suppose that's what they say about me, too.
This really hasn't been terribly coherent, but that's the story of this blog. As mentioned previously, starting next year I will attempt to do longer, more serious posts at another blog, located here. There's nothing there now, but future readers are welcome to peruse it. I'll keep you updated as we get closer to New Year's Eve.
I don't know if I'll be writing a post tomorrow night, but I will try.
22 December 2015
December Daily Journal 22
Got up in the morning, found out Scott Manley added a new Realism Overhaul video without telling anyone, went over to a friend's house to play board games, went grocery shopping with my Mom, came home to overall chaos as Dad embarks on his Sisyphean project of making room for a Christmas Tree (because what are priorities?), went to an uninspired fast food dinner, came back to watch an old episode of Doctor Who and a two-hour documentary on Scientology. Not my ideal day and a lot of different things happened, though I am approaching the level of willpower and patience required to live with my parents.
21 December 2015
Solstice and Nihilism
I fell and scraped my back today, so that's probably affecting my mood along with everything else. Additionally, telephones are the least efficient means of communication in mass use and it horrifies me that they're still considered the default.
So immediately after my fall, we piled (painfully) into the family car and drove to a different outlet of the same protestantoid church that my parents belong to for a hilariously small Solstice congregation. The service was predictably uninspired, just your usual trust-in-God stuff which I'd forgotten within five minutes of leaving because SpaceX was literally landing a rocket on its tail at that very moment.
Then we ate dinner and went home to finish watching the Childhood's End miniseries. And without giving anything away, I finished feeling an overwhelming sense of nihilism, that all of man's joy and suffering, all our trial and triumph, are so easily forgotten, so fleeting, so quick to pass into the infinite vacuum. That our existence is entirely temporary and, for centuries to come, we'll continue at the whim of probability.
A few of us are working on it. Tonight's launch and landing was a tremendous feat in our conquest of the solar system. And that accomplishment is entirely our own.
So immediately after my fall, we piled (painfully) into the family car and drove to a different outlet of the same protestantoid church that my parents belong to for a hilariously small Solstice congregation. The service was predictably uninspired, just your usual trust-in-God stuff which I'd forgotten within five minutes of leaving because SpaceX was literally landing a rocket on its tail at that very moment.
Then we ate dinner and went home to finish watching the Childhood's End miniseries. And without giving anything away, I finished feeling an overwhelming sense of nihilism, that all of man's joy and suffering, all our trial and triumph, are so easily forgotten, so fleeting, so quick to pass into the infinite vacuum. That our existence is entirely temporary and, for centuries to come, we'll continue at the whim of probability.
A few of us are working on it. Tonight's launch and landing was a tremendous feat in our conquest of the solar system. And that accomplishment is entirely our own.
20 December 2015
December Daily Journal 20
The day began about seven a.m., with Dad waking me up to ask if I was going to church. I told him no and was barely waking up by the time they got back.
Today we added more lights to the house, and prepared the Christmas cards. Mom made them, but we had to address the envelops, fold the letter that goes inside, and stuff them. Personally I find it a lot of work so we can tell people I barely know all about our lives. Then again, Dad doesn't use his Facebook so I suppose he has to exercise his vanity somehow.
Then we piled into the car to buy more lights at the hardware store ( w h y ), mail the cards, and use a coupon. Because that's totally how thrift works. And you wonder why our house is packed. On the plus side I got them to buy me books I wanted, which is an independent goal but if I can exploit Christmas to make it happen so be it. Knowledge is a higher value than tradition.
On the subject of values, we spent the evening watching television because of course we did. Watching television seems to be a terminal goal of Mom and Dad's, but it's not one of mine. Sitting in front of the TV is not a fundamentally enjoyable experience for me, so their constant insistence that I devote several solid hours to it every day that I'm at home is less than appreciated.
I suspect the issue here is agency. Watching television is not an agenty experience. You watch characters who aren't terribly likable make bad decisions for an hour. Then you watch the next episode. While I enjoy certain programs, the experience does not generalize for me, not the way that, say, reading does, or YouTube. In both cases, I have greater control over the subject matter (I have little say in what ends up on the perpetually-full TiVo), and at all times I have the option to stop and do something else.
At this point in my life, I have extremely little agency, considerably less than my parents. I can understand why they might enjoy watching someone else do stupid things. I, on the other hand, spend enough time struggling against other people's bad decisions which I can't control in my day to day life, without injecting it into my consciousness. If I were to make a family activity of it, board games would be a much more enjoyable option. (It also allows for conversation, which watching television does not.) But our tables are all to messy for that.
Speaking of which, I wonder if anyone ever picked up the avalanche of papers that happened during our television watching session. I already did it once today; it's someone else's turn.
Today we added more lights to the house, and prepared the Christmas cards. Mom made them, but we had to address the envelops, fold the letter that goes inside, and stuff them. Personally I find it a lot of work so we can tell people I barely know all about our lives. Then again, Dad doesn't use his Facebook so I suppose he has to exercise his vanity somehow.
Then we piled into the car to buy more lights at the hardware store ( w h y ), mail the cards, and use a coupon. Because that's totally how thrift works. And you wonder why our house is packed. On the plus side I got them to buy me books I wanted, which is an independent goal but if I can exploit Christmas to make it happen so be it. Knowledge is a higher value than tradition.
On the subject of values, we spent the evening watching television because of course we did. Watching television seems to be a terminal goal of Mom and Dad's, but it's not one of mine. Sitting in front of the TV is not a fundamentally enjoyable experience for me, so their constant insistence that I devote several solid hours to it every day that I'm at home is less than appreciated.
I suspect the issue here is agency. Watching television is not an agenty experience. You watch characters who aren't terribly likable make bad decisions for an hour. Then you watch the next episode. While I enjoy certain programs, the experience does not generalize for me, not the way that, say, reading does, or YouTube. In both cases, I have greater control over the subject matter (I have little say in what ends up on the perpetually-full TiVo), and at all times I have the option to stop and do something else.
At this point in my life, I have extremely little agency, considerably less than my parents. I can understand why they might enjoy watching someone else do stupid things. I, on the other hand, spend enough time struggling against other people's bad decisions which I can't control in my day to day life, without injecting it into my consciousness. If I were to make a family activity of it, board games would be a much more enjoyable option. (It also allows for conversation, which watching television does not.) But our tables are all to messy for that.
Speaking of which, I wonder if anyone ever picked up the avalanche of papers that happened during our television watching session. I already did it once today; it's someone else's turn.
December Daily Journal 19
Midnight still creeps up on me, especially since my parents would have me monopolized till nearly that hour if they had their way. I think quite a few of the problems in their lives can be attributed to an inability to say "no". "No" to new things, "no" to new obligations, "no" to new television shows. I keep telling them the problem is inputs, not outputs, but they continue to focus on trying to get rid of things while adding to the pile faster and faster.
It's annoying, to say the least. Doesn't make getting around the house any easier, either.
Speaking of the house, we put up some lights today. Fortunately it didn't take very long, but there will be more later. It's all about keeping up appearances, reality be damned. It doesn't matter what labels other people put on their map of you, because that doesn't affect the underlying reality.
I wonder what they'll get up to tomorrow.
It's annoying, to say the least. Doesn't make getting around the house any easier, either.
Speaking of the house, we put up some lights today. Fortunately it didn't take very long, but there will be more later. It's all about keeping up appearances, reality be damned. It doesn't matter what labels other people put on their map of you, because that doesn't affect the underlying reality.
I wonder what they'll get up to tomorrow.
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