Updates 4/10/22

Today hasn't been very productive, although that has been this entire weekend. For instance, I woke up at about 2 pm from 2 am, so I've slept for about half of this entire day. The rest of the day wasn't much better.

Yesterday was the digital SAT practice. I thought it was pretty different from paper. Although, a lot of my friends have received the survey we're supposed to do afterwards, but I haven't. This would be pretty troubling by itself, but after I finished the SAT it said it couldn't send my scores and asked if I wanted to retry. I, of course, picked yes and it said success after retying. I found this pretty troubling since what could prompt it to fail but then succeed later? The possibility of a software bug is a possible explanation. I'd be pretty disappointed if it didn't go through as I would have just wasted 4ish hours on nothing.

I also did the purple comet contest yesterday. I think this was a really good option of competitions for people newer to competition math, like much of my Mu Alpha Theta chapter, because of the wide range in problem difficulty. When I began the contest, I was expecting it to be mildly challenging based on a quick sample of past problems. But, I was surprised at the difficulty of some of the problems. I was also surprised at how much computers helped. Unfortunately I really don't think we're going to place.

I'm now on chapter 6 of Crime and Punishment. I think the story is really starting to get interesting. The whole of chapter 5 was pretty exciting as it showed a sort of battle between Porfiry and Raskolnikov. Porfiry's persistent suggesting of Rodya as the criminal really make the reader wonder how much they already know and suspect Roday. Furthermore, why have they not already arrested him if they suspect him so much? The entire exchange was reminiscent of Death Note with the dueling characters, battle of wits, and characters - Rodya's arrogance parallels Light's. Although, this relation should probably be reversed. The tirade about the psychology of a criminal was also very interesting, and I think it demonstrates the difference between ethics and morality: ethics is about absolute right and wrong, whereas morals deals with individual beliefs on right and wrong. The "extraordinary" may have to do morally wrong behavior in order to do ethically good deeds for humanity. I partially agree with Rodya. I think his differentiation between "extraordinary" and "ordinary" is far too harsh/binary. The existence of a political spectrum of progressivism and conservatism suggest that not everyone is conservative as Rodya claimed. Also, progress isn't just made by a few select individuals. As I've dug deeper into my mathematical inquisition, I'm struck by how many different people are making contributions to what I'm looking at. Thus, progress can still be made even in absence of "extraordinary" people, albeit perhaps slower. However, I do agree with his assessment of the dynamic between conservatives and "extraordinary" people.