solitude as a kind of training ground, a crucible where things happen

i guess i’m not your usual decision scientist, because instead of reading about A/B testing i read things more like

i've become some kind of mathematical monk, i.e., i have a spartan life filled with exercise, maths, and latin. turkish get-ups, discrete differential geometry, veni vidi... aequivalentiam solvi?

I drew this figure inside my copy of The Feynman Lectures. Past me leaves notes for future me like in that movie Memento…

The comprehensible input model for language learning applies to learning other things too and, just like used to be the case in Latin pedagogy, it's often assumed that learning just can't work like that, particularly in areas like math. But I did learn math and physics pretty much that way.

Some things I've learned about learning that seem worth sharing. They seem so simple, but it took me a long time to apply these ideas to myself:

(1) Some people thrive on competition and threat of failure, while others (like me) are traumatized by it and need patient, scaffolded exposure instead.

to read mathematics as the language of all possible worlds, of the multiverse; every theorem as a wider lesson

i feel the heaviness of the world so much; i want to find sanctuary in maths and physics and latinity, even though they’re products of an even crueler past

my chalkboard, in a room in my house that’s just for mathematical physics