Hi everyone, it's been awhile. I've been too lazy to write a first year reflection post, so I probably just won't. Overall the REU was alright. I had massive FOMO from seeing my PROMYS (summer math camp I did) friends return as counselors. The REU wasn't bad by any means—just harder to meet people and learn math. The REU was very independently driven: from finding a mentor to the few lectures we had, the mathematical activities were pretty self-driven. I still had a decently fun time—I got to ...

I just finished my Humanities class, fresh off discussing Thinking and Moral Considerations: A Lecture by Arendt and was feeling very moved by it. So I'm just sitting in the empty classroom, typing away. The catalysis for this text is Eichmann, a Nazi bureaucrat, who's trial she reported on. She is disturbed by not just his incrediblely efficient role he played in the Nazi regime, but, most critically, his automation in doing it. Eichmann does not think much of his actions; he doesn't necessari...

This isn't just going to be a book review, since I have Library Thing now. Instead, this is my interpretation of his philosophy and how it relates to my own philosophy. Still though, it is eloquent, profound, and enlightening. I would strongly recommend reading it—my writing style won't be close to emulating his. Be prepared to have your vocabulary tested though. Ontology The first key idea in how Nietzsche thinks is how he thinks of actions. To him, there is no such thing as an "independent" ...

I read an article defending the BSD license for open-source software and it got me thinking about the relation between optimism and idealism. Basically, the BSD and GPL are copyright licenses for open-source code that differ in that BSD allows for anyone to share new programs using that code without releasing the changes, while GPL legally requires you to share the changes, i.e. if I made some modifications to Wordpress (GPL) and release it publicly, I'm legally obliged to share the changes I ma...

There are a lot of math majors here! Honors analysis has been alright. Prof Wilkinson is a great professor, but the class is organized a bit weirdly. First off, she isn't using Rudin, which is the classic and canonical text for learning undergrad real analysis from. Instead, she is using Pugh's book, who was her thesis advisor. The book is a bit unconventional in that it treats topology as very subservant to the analysis. Instead of learning things in the typical perspective towards topology (i....

Day 5 W day. I slept in, although in doing so, I missed a hike through Chicago (idk if I could even walk that much anyways so...). At ~11, I went to a bookstore with the English-Math major, who I'll call E, and one of her friends. The book store was nice in that they sold used books for quite cheap. I couldn't find the books on the reading list for my class, but I bought a different book. It was an anthropological look at creativity. I was wowed by how passionate E was for reading. She reads so...

Day 1 My move in was kinda disappointing. At around 10, I wanted my family to go to Millenium Park for them to see the famous bean thing. But my dad kept resisting going, claiming that we had to go to campus to move in. My move in appointment was at 2. We ended up not going. Then we went to some suburban asian supermarket, where I got the wonderful experience of hearing my parents profess their love for suburbia /s (I hate the suburbs—they're so devoid of life and are so selfish). My mom also s...

What is RSS and why should I use it? RSS is a software protocal used to retrieve news/updates. So think Apple News or the Google News Feed. The primary difference is that you add your own feeds and getting news is pretty much all it does. So while it is a little bit more work to manage your feed, this allows for you to create a less biased feed. Any corporation wants to keep you on their app for as long as possible. So they will tend to collect data and personalize feeds. To quote the Apple New...

I got back from another summer at PROMYS last week. A really quick summary of my experience was that it was a lot of fun, maybe even too much. Let me explain: I had a ton of fun this year hanging out with friends and meeting new people, but the math was honestly underwhelming. This year the advanced seminars were on Modular Forms, Primes and Zeta Functions, and Algebra. I didn't do Algebra, since I figured I already knew a lot of the material (it also happened to be low-quality, in the sense of...

★★.5☆☆ (the half-star unicode symbol isn't working for me 😭) This book is pretty mid. The writing style is strangely homogeneous considering there's dialogue between different characters. The themes of the book seem pretty overt and explicit to me, but it is integrated cleanly into the story. The plot is about 4 pretty depressed people finding romance and the "beautiful world" that has been absent in their lives up to that point. But this theme isn't a super big focus of the novel as interperso...

It probably won't sink in until I'm in Chicago, but I don't feel like I'm a high school graduate. My year's been a lot of fun. I got into my top college through early decision, so I was just done after the first semester. This plus easy classes just made life so chill. One of my recently had the good idea of doing circle times with our friends to get closer with them before leaving for college. Personally I feel like a lot of my friendships are pretty surface level, so these were a good oppor...

Here's a text copy of my speech (and a video is here: https://www.youtube.com/@hebcenteratcedarpark) As raiders, we’re no strangers to love: the love for our community, friends, and family. But you know the rules and so do I: you can’t put the community too far above yourself. This balance between serving the community and serving yourself is important to keep in mind as y’all move forward into your careers. Sure, the CEO of Exxon may make a lot of money for themself, but is it really worth it?...

I am using librarything.com to track my books/read list/reviews. Here's my profile: https://www.librarything.com/profile/vincenttran ...

Incredible. I choose this book expecting a dive into ideas about intellectual beauty, but was pleasantly surprised. The characters are so, so interesting, the plot is unique and well-executed, and the writing is fantastic. I don't know how it happened, but Wilde somehow makes hedonism beautiful and intellectual. For context, I hate hedonism, so this is really impressive. The characters are perfect for the story: Henry is the immoral "devil" while Basil is the moral "angel" on Dorian's shoulder. ...

I really liked Cat's Cradle. The book works well on two levels: as a book and as a message. The plot and story are interesting in its own right. But there is also a deep message behind it all. Balancing the two is a difficult task 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘕𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘢 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩. It's a satire, but I don't think it's a "haha" satire. It mostly uses irony to convey the message. To be honest, on my first read through it, I felt that there was a very deep message that I simply wasn't getting. I used Spark Notes to ...

(obviously not complete as of yet) The Great Gatsby Ender's Game Exhalation (the collection of short stories) The Hunger Artist The Picture of Dorian Gray big difference Cat's Cradle Stories of Your Life and Others Recursion Crime and Punishment The Martian The Dark Forest World War Z Brave New World Sapiens Guns Germs and Steel Nausea (first half really holds this book back) Siddhartha Fahrenheit 451 Beautiful World Where Are You 1984 ...

This book was pretty mediocre. It was very repetitive: it simply seemed like Siddhartha "learned" something, then realized it was bad, then "learned" more stuff constantly. Admittedly, this parallels most plots, but in this book it felt particularly pronounced in that Siddhartha's speech repeats itself a lot after each "enlightenment", an especially obvious one is the spamming of asyndetons (i.e. excluding the last and in a list). I think the best way to describe it was that it did too much tel...

Just a random thought I had the other day: the contrast between organized religion and unorganized is similar to Kohlberg's stages of moral development. I've used this psychology concept/theory before, so I guess I'm a believer in it, but it basically says that as we develop, our moral reasoning moves from looking at the direct external consequences of it (1-2); to looking at what society will think of it (3-4); to an abstract, more universal sense of goodness (5-6). People are obliged to belie...

I thought this anime was pretty good, definitely above average. I'll keep this spoiler free. I think that the non-Denji characters are pretty interesting. I like how we are kept in secret of Makima's powers and how she keeps control of her power even within the organization (she blindfolds even devil hunters): very in line with her controlling personality. Power is also just very funny—the way she talks cracks me up so much. It's also wholesome to see her bond with Denji form so well (even desp...

OK so I watched Death Note quite a while ago, but I'm reviewing it for a friend. I'm going to keep it spoiler free for him. I thought it was very good. The story was very uniformly tense—it feels like Light is just constantly one slip-up away from getting caught. A good example of this (and one of my favorite episodes) is when another character starts to solve the mystery. They were intelligent, but not just intelligent but had their own backstory demonstrating it. She was also just in her caus...

I figured I'd share my thoughts on aspects of UChicago: Things I really like -free speech emphasis -intellectual culture -core, hum/sosc classes based on Great Books program -Unique, school-defining traditions replacing sports as a source of school spirit and pride (Scav, HvZ, Kuvia, bagpipe procession etc. etc.) [Less about school defining and more about no sports] -lots and lots of grad students around -basically no engineering -Theoretical, rather than professional, oriented academics -Very ...

Since I got in, I figured I'd upload the essays I used. Prompt: How does the University of Chicago, as you know it now, satisfy your desire for a particular kind of learning, community, and future? Please address with some specificity your own wishes and how they relate to UChicago. I’m a person who really dislikes closed-mindedness. My parents, as immigrants, were inexperienced with the nuances of English, creating a struggle for me to communicate particularly complex and thorny ideas to them...

I got into my top choice (UChicago)!!🎉🎉🎉🎉 I applied ED, so I'm done with college apps now!🎉 What a relief. ...

So this is extremely late, but I wanted to make a post talking about my time this summer at the math camp PROMYS. For a bit of context, this was my second year doing this camp, but it was my first time in-person as last year was virtual. Overall, it was a lot of fun and I learned a lot of interesting math. PROMYS gives a lot of freedom to the campers, so it was a lot of fun to get to hang out with friends that I made virtually irl. NGL I wish I did a daily post instead of trying to remember it a...

I really liked OPM. Its writing is so well executed, despite it being traditional in structure: exposition to a climax. The struggle of the weak (relative to Saitama) characters keep us on our toes and wondering what will actually happen. They execute this struggle really well, which makes Saitama one-punching the enemy that much more anti-climatic and revealing of his power. For example, one of the scenes with Mumen rider nearly made me cry (for context I really rarely cry at movies; I don't ev...

I try not to spoil anything here: This anime is very cute. The animation, the scenarios, it's all very heart-warming. Tadano is such a perfect match for Komi. Most of the other characters are pretty annoying though. Literally the vast, vast majority of interactions between Komi and classmates are just the classmates simping hard for Komi. But ig it makes sense in universe, since the students of the high school are selected to be abnormal. Although Yamai is abnormally abnormal. Like she literally...

I recently watched the first season of Science Fell in Love, So I Tried to Prove It. I think the science of the show was pretty dumb. For instance, a fourth year undergrad in science and grad students should definitely know what a control group and complex/prime numbers is/are. They should also know about unnecessary precision. This also might be too philosophical, but the goal of the first few episodes is also dubious. They measure things, but don't doubt that it actually corresponds to "love"....

I don't dream very often, but today while I was in the library for my off period, I took a nap and dreamt. It was unusual in that it was a complex one too. This will make sense later, but the Standard Notes app recently released a new update that makes the UX really bad, so I uninstalled it. So the first thing that happened in the dream was that I headed out of the library to office aid, my flex period for that day. But in the cafeteria, there was a science fair, and apparently I needed to help...

I've taken a bunch of ap classes/tests, so ig my opinion has some weight. Here is my tier list for least meritocratic (A to the left is very productive to study for): https://drive.google.com/file/d/10KdGdi4B0NszdbNSLFSnkFZBPAUfHaw0/view?usp=sharing notes: I equated all the ap arts, ap languages, most of the social studies (except macro is very straightforward/regurgitation-y, and I assume micro is too) in the same category. If you want to know about the amount of homework, leave a comment in t...

Push, Push, Puuush, I'm born TAG, skipping classes, AP credits, summer classes I zooom through education Proud - a degree in math To quant I go I work; 6 figs from the get go I die. More concretely, I can imagine something being born, joining TAG (a program at my school that (if placed in TAG math) you up 2 grades in math and groups together other TAG kids—it's kinda like an "honors" program). Then they could skip a grade in elementary or middle school (ik someone who did this) and then farm s...

I have recently learned about Jean Paul Sartre's idea of "The Look", and it kinda bothered me. Sartre's thought experiment was to imagine a person who was just stuck to a door - looking through the peep hole and listening in. They're just watching, expecting something to happen, but then they hear a creaking noise behind them. They suddenly realize that other people exist. In general, imagine you were some being with no interaction (real or imagined) with other people. Thus you wouldn't use word...

Blackouting a poem is when you take a piece of existing text, and blackout text from it to create your own text. Here is one I tried to imbue with meaning and made in English a few days ago (grammar slightly edited), as best I can recall it. It had begun with Christmas Mother wanted me great pleasure It resisted my flesh. I had only one desire to find Beauty "Here" they said, this is beauty: love it was dying rusty sawdust Grown people frowned What's the matter with you?...

Today we landed in Boston. Our plane was delayed by an hour, so we got 30 minutes more of sleep (my dads policy for some reason). I forgot how loud a plane ride was, so I wasn't able to read much. I had downloaded some of Camus' work, but I disliked his writing style. When we got here, we lost a lot of time getting our car rental and in the mall. We had a scare earlier when my mom thought my sister was with me and my dad, and we thought she was with my mom. It turns out, my mom just left the are...

Today felt pretty productive. I did some work on college apps (although I didn't finish a first draft like I wanted) nor did I finish applying for the Swarthmore fly-in program. For the latter, I'm having trouble thinking of a start, although I have an idea of what to write about. For the former, I'm having trouble conveying what I'm trying to say. Today my uncle came over, so I lost a lot of productivity in preparing for his arrival and working in a different environment. Our flight is tomorrow...

Today felt pretty good. I got a lot of things done. Although, my dad made me wipe our window blinds - which is such a waste -, which kicked up a lot of dust. I think thats why I've been having a runny nose for most of today. I really should fix my sleep schedule though. I got up at 1 today. I also finished packing (minus masks) and planning for the vacation today. ...

Today was mediocre. I didn't really waste a lot of time, but I didn't spend a lot of today working on my goals. I was talking with my sister about vacation planning, helping her kill a fly (it was stuck in the window blinds and kept flying up), and her future. After that I talked with my parents about college. Before, they were sus towards UChicago because they'd never heard of it before, but I think they're ok with it now. I also did some vacation packing. I also sent some long overdue emails. ...

Today was a pretty bad day. I woke up at like 8 in a cold sweat for some reason. Then I wasted a bunch of time on YouTube. I was watching the Minecraft series Double Life. Then I got a headache. I haven't written anything for the Swarthmore thing and only got a couple of sentences on my personal statement. Oof. I got my debit card today, which probably arrived on like Monday but we just haven't checked the mail in a week. ...

Today I spent a lot of time planning for my upcoming family vacation to Boston. I wasn't very efficient while doing it though - I was rewatching the Office with my sister. I also did spend some time working on math, and I saw that my past idea for a proof didn't pan out. Then I went to pickup my new glasses. The frame has pretty big lens, but I didn't have that many options at the glasses store, and I wanted bigger lens this time around. I wanted less area of my vision that wasn't covered by my ...

Wittgenstein's idea of private language (as I have interpreted/learned it from [1]) is that language must rely on a shared basis for it to be useable, but that it is possible that we share no fundamental thing that all language is based upon. I saw this report on a different approach to math education, during the New Math era (an era of education that focused more on self-discovery of math, and less on rote memorization), [2]. I didn't realize it at the time, but it really seems to support Wittg...

I had planned on finishing the project today. I had planned out a way of organizing the user interaction part, and a way of using the NCES data. But, for some reason my code keeps giving me errors that don't make sense. I keep telling it to get the n-th entry of a list, and n is like 200, but then it says I can't access the 39th entry. I printed the size too, and it checked out. At this point, I feel like it might be some sort of memory problem. I think I'm just goiong to giv eup this project an...

Today I really didn't accomplish much. I thought that pulling out all of the colleges from the College Express lists would take me an hour, but it ended up taking almost all day. Part of the reason why was that I didn't realize the lists in html form took so many different forms. Some of them had colleges and their names as links, others had numbers, others had colleges and no links. It took quite a bit of work to realize and fix these cases. Maybe I even missed some. After all, there is no guar...

Recently I found this site [1] with lists of colleges and attributes. I found some lists for attributes that I wanted in the colleges I apply too, but I didn't want to waste a bunch of time manually tagging schools with their attribute and ranking them. So I decided to make some code to automate that stuff. I figured it would be a real quick and easy project. I wasn't able to get it done in the couple of hours that was the rest of the night (that was yesterday). I then spent all of today working...

Just thought I'd share some ideas that show how math isn't strictly the truth (I know I said I planned on posting updates, but my life isn't very exciting and I'd seems bad to email the subscribers of this blog just mundane updates considering my precedent). It seems quite intuitive that if something is not false, then it must be true. However, some mathematicians don't think this is true. There are compelling examples supporting their view, like the liar paradox [1] (e.g. statements like "this...

It's been a decent while since my last update, I've been feeling a little tired of the time constraints of posting philosophy daily, and I've got a family vacation to Boston coming up (6/28), so I think I'm just going to post updates from here forward until day 100. I checked with a number of days between calculator, and it turns out I've missed a day in my counter. Today I went to select my new glasses' frame. We could've chosen it yesterday, but my dad didn't like my choice and wanted to delay...

Honestly, I don't think Dr. Stone was that good. The science was probably very accurate, but that alone doesn't make for an interesting story or plot. The first few episodes also felt very cringy as Senku was just flexing his knowledge on Taiju, which I don't believe science is about. Furthermore, he kept using science and technology interchangeably, when they aren't. For instance, he didn't have to use any scientific theories or the scientific method to make things like the hand-crank, he only ...

I really hate edutainment. The main reason is that edutainment is very deceptive in that it creates a false sense of learning and authority. Ultimately, the main purpose of edutainment is to entertain people, not educate them. This is the fundamental flaw in edutainment. If you delude people by presenting the content in a more entertaining way, then they aren't learning the subject out of a desire or necessity (with this case, it is just news, which shouldn't be entertaining because if learning...

In my opinion, the slippery slope fallacy, or as I will refer to it going forward, the slippery slope "fallacy", is not a valid fallacy to point out. Based on Wikipedia, there are two basic types of slippery slopes: a casual chain and a decision-making chain [1]. The "fallacy" in the causal chain is that it is either improbable that the chain of reasoning will actually occur, and/or that one of the implications/causation links is false. The in the former case, that shouldn't immediately invalid...

I think that to evaluate teachers, we need a mixed system of evaluation from above and below (like from bosses and from students). It seems like a lot of my friends (out of a sample) hold the view that end of year student surveys of teachers would be effective in determining their teaching ability. However, by surveying students for how effectively they learned, one assumes that all students want to learn and that they know themself/the topic enough to evaluate their proficiency in that topic. F...

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.” - Elie Wiesel "You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain" - Harvey Dent (The Dark Knight) First, why I believe the two quotes are true. Two follows pretty easily from my argument in [1] that given a philosophically perfect system of good ...

I didn't really have any ideas I felt like I do do well right now, and I think I will be able to sleep a bit early, so I'm just going to make an update. I've been looking at my goals this summer, and I'm going to remove reading Don Quixote. I think I'm just going to be too busy, unfortunate. Today I finished a goal long-coming (like a whole year late): installing Arch linux. I'm on my drive with Arch right now in fact! It took like all day though, so I'm not sure if it was worth it. The install ...

Today was a pretty unproductive day. I woke up at 8 to check up on this HAS [1] thing, then went back to sleep. Then I woke up at 10 to go to an optometrist appointment, then went to check out lenses. It turns out that the place we went to was out-of-network, so we didn't get any frames. Then we ate lunch at a fast-food place, which is pretty rare for us. Then we went to the Bank of America to make a debit card for me and my sister. We got home at about 5, then I watched YouTube/Death Note (I'm ...

Pacifism, like my stance on virtue signalling, depends on one's philosophical system. If one believes that every person has enough intellect to control themself and their emotions like anger, as an optimist would, then it is reasonable to conclude that pacifism is a viable dream. However, the pessimist will believe that mankind still resorts to many primal instincts and prioritizes emotion. Hence intellectual discourse and compromise would be an option. Seeing as my philosophy posits that there ...

A friend recently shared with me this argument for why virtue signalling is a good thing [1]. I personally believe it to be a bad thing, but I think whether it is good or bad depends on your optimism on mankind's ability. We can generalize this question to whether the ends justify the means, as promoting people to virtue signal is immoral (lying), but can enable net good (as outlined in the link). The issue with this view is that it is very theoretical: corruption in executing bad things for net...

Who doesn't know the phrase "absolute power corrupts absolutely"? What a simple indictment against concentrated power right? I'll let you be the judge. For one, the quote originates with Lord Acton in 1887 in Britain [1]. How could he have experienced the "absolute corruption" he describes? Britain is a fairly liberal country, with a parliament at that time and various first-of-its-kind power restrictions such as the Magna Carta. Thus he couldn't have observed any of this corruption he speaks o...

Today was kinda hectic. The NASA HAS summer experience thing began today, but I totally forgot about it until after I missed like 2 meetings. It ended up ok though, the game moderator was pretty loose on attendance policies and I caught up pretty quickly. The creators of it used a bunch of third-parties though, so it was pretty frustrating to get everything to work. Padlet was very frustrating, but it got worse with GooseChase. I really hate this app now. It literally offered no extra value over...

You can take math classes at ACC, either for college credit or college and high school credit. In the latter case, for most classes the college credit isn't really worth anything. There are exceptions, like with the calculus sequence. This also means that you can skip math classes. For instance, I took precalc at ACC over the summer my freshmen year, allowing me to go from algebra 2 to calc AB. You do have to take and score well enough on a placement test though (the ALEKS). For another possibil...

Dang, it's been a week since my last update and a few days past a week since summer began. Today is my birthday! I didn't do anything special though. This is also going to be my 75th post! Today I didn't do much. I spent a lot of time working on a little note for my LOR teacher for when I ask them, but I mostly just wasted time sitting around. I also cleaned and reorganized the white board in my room. Yesterday, I finished Dr. Stone. This week I decided to give the show a second chance (I found ...

This is probably what my college list is going to be: Reaches: UChicago - ED1 MIT Caltech Harvard Rice Princeton Williams Harvey Mudd Pomona Target: Safeties: UT Austin (auto accept) UMN OU U Rochestor? Ohio state? Purdue? I'll add my personal reasons why each college below: Harvard - their high value placed on truth, passion, and knowledge for the sake of knowledge culture appea...

Just a little PSA for younger CRHS kids: you can do IB at Stony Point, you just have to arrange your own transportation. I found this in the course catalog under International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme under Earning College Credit While in High School. This is a pretty cool program - it is similar to the ACC cohorts program but more comprehensive. The program is sort of like an associate's degree and high school degree program. I believe the structure is to take 6 classes junior and senior...

A friend of mine recently told me about some MIT advertising that stated that collaboration on PSETs was encouraged. He was frustrated that high school wasn't like this, especially considering how in actual career settings, collaboration is needed. I disagree. The main three advantages I see from collaboration is increased idea diversity, work reduction, and soft-skill building (i.e. non-technical skills, contrasts with hard-skills). I think that high school classes take a different approach to...

The ideas in this post aren't mine, but I thought it was interesting, so I'm sharing it. Suppose we consider Napoleon a person, which is pretty reasonable. Then couldn't a character like Harry Potter also be a person? The only way any of us, the living, know of Napoleon as a person is through historical artifacts, but these aren't necessarily accurate. Perhaps Napoleon is just a widespread tale, much like Harry Potter in this modern day. One might raise the point of the evidence of his existence...

I recently noticed that bipedalism seems to consistently be a part of the definition for what a human is, such as in entry 2 of [1] and [2]. I thought this was a bit interesting if one considers those born without the use of their legs, amputees, or how we have to 𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑛 how to walk. For the first consideration, this suggests that it is possible for one to be a different species from one's parents, but then have your child be the previous species. Disability at birth from bipedal parents is proba...

Something a lot of people don't realize is that science assumes quite a lot of philosophy as well. For one, science assumes a shared, constant reality, i.e. we have to presume that each person are observing the same thing (reality). So if this wasn't true, aliens could and could not exist, just depending on the person and we also have to presume that reality isn't changing as we observe it. There is somewhat of a counter-example in quantum physics and the idea of superposition as the particle is...

I'm doing a series of posts on a rejection of rationality. It probably won't be very long or have very long posts as the ideas are pretty simple. I don't even think of it as nonsense, but just alternative sense Henry Cohn The reason why I think this series is needed is because people don't really consider why we accept rationality. The premise of rationality is that everything has a reason, yet there doesn't seem to be a particular reason as to why we use rationality. One can't even presume...

Today was pretty productive. I spent a lot of productive time working on a math competition (OMMC). It wasn't perfect; I wasted some time on YouTube, but it was probably <1 hour. I wanted to install Arch on a different SSD I had to make it my new main PC, but I wanted to make some backups of my current stuff and got sidelined by git and backing stuff up. I also spent a few hours doing college app stuff. I totally forgot to ask my teachers for LORs before school ended. I am torn between which ...

To you readers, you should try your hand at blogging. If you decide to post about philosophy like me, you can help realize bad ideas like I have in [1]. Typing the ideas out also helped me develop them to make them more cogent and expansive in the idea's reach. You also get the chance to help someone develop their own philosophy. Maybe you had an idea someone else needed to change their philosophy. You never know. If you decide to blog about your school experiences, you might be able to help out...

I think that my popularity has increased quite a bit this year. There's the obvious factor of just more interactions with people as online meant I didn't talk to my classmates much, which was worsened by my lack of social media. I also seemed to be more charismatic this year. I quite dislike this development as I think that charisma is a negative as the royalty it creates intrudes on critical thinking. This is clearly bad, especially for public figures like politicians. But I don't know how to j...

I really hate to be making so many updates, but it's pretty late right now, so I'm just going to. Today I asked my psyc teacher if I could go to CS, and so I spent some time there playing some card games. My friends there went home early, so I just hung around and worked on some math. I didn't get much work done as I started playing some Minesweeper, Yahtzee, and Solitaire. Lunch was somewhat unusual in that the lunch people started handing normally paid stuff for free (at least I think) and gav...

Title: Why "humans" Content: I originally used quotation marks around references to mankind as a collective species in order to highlight that humanity isn't very homogeneous and that ideas of unity behind us as a species wouldn't pan out. But then I realized there is a rigorous definition of humans: taxonomy. Furthermore, the intraspecies differences wasn't being compared to another species' internal differences. Although, other species aren't unified nor really seem to have a chance at unity. ...

Personal identity is pretty stupid. Here I will use the definition of identity as "the relation established by psychological identification" [1], where psychological identification is the "psychological orientation of the self in regard to something (such as a person or group) with a resulting feeling of close emotional association" [1]. It follows easily that identity is irrational, as it is has "close emotional association" and emotions aren't rational (emotions evolved in the physical world, ...

As I predicted, I didn't start the posts early. Since its somewhat late, I thought I'd just post about some software I use, but I felt that it was kinda cheap as a daily post, hence this. Today was pretty productive. I woke up around 11, and worked on some math proofs for a while. Eventually I found a theorem that made the math problem I was working on very easy. I also found this interesting website: https://www.oblique-strategies.com/. My and my sister's phones were being cumbersome to use tod...

Almost everything here is open-source. I tried to put them in top:bottom as easy:hard Signal, https://www.signal.org - a messenger app, secure, quite feature rich Bitwarden - a password manager, well-respected in terms of security uBlock Origin - an adblocker, very powerful (any visual element blocker, block connections to certain sites, many filters) CleanURLs - an extension to remove parts of urls that connect you to the normal website but with trackers SimpleLogin - a service to manage e...

I've got some ideas for philosophical posts, but they are pretty complicated and nuanced positions, and it's too late for my mind to be functioning enough to develop those ideas so I'm just gonna do an update. I plan on starting them tomorrow in the noon (although I've thought that before and failed so...). Today was very unproductive. I woke up at around 2 and then watched YouTube for about 3.5 hours. I then worked on my driver's license course for about 2 unproductive hours (as in I played som...

Today was the last day of school for our seniors, so a lot of seniors skipped and we had the senior prank day. The prank was just trashing the school. What a crass prank. It just put a bunch of strain on the cleaning staff and not that many people even saw it in person as people came in to help clean it up at 7 (school starts at about 9 for us). Although, I heard that a TV was destroyed, which is literally just property damage. There was literally no humor to this prank. Today was also the elect...

So among the sort of GPA "bourgeois" (see [1] for some of my related thoughts on this), it's come up a couple times whether "female" should be an acceptable term for a female (in the gender sense) teen. Personally, I think that "female" should become an accepted term, but I do think there is a possible middle path to resolution. Note that I use female and male in the context of gender, not sex. The obvious point of contention is "female" just sounding wrong to say in casual conversation. It is ...

I'm starting to run out of ideas, so I'll be making updates in the meanwhile. Last update, I forgot to mention some things. Last Friday, I volunteered at an elementary school's spring carnival, so I had a late post on that day. Also, my driver's permit came in the mail that day. I did have some potential ideas for posts: more reflections. I might do a reflection on my personal development, but I think past posts already encapsulate this pretty well. I might also do a reflection on my social life...

Being selfless is good. As I've discussed in [1], the inevitability of death makes any selfishness worthless as all the work will be pointless after you die. However, there are some nuances to being selfless. For one, the idea of selflessness is to act without regard for yourself. Thus one can't be selfless towards one's friends and family, as any benefit they receive benefits you. This is true as the contrapositive is that you don't receive benefits from helping family/friends, and thus your f...

I think that people generally misunderstand creativity. There's the obvious forms of creativity like with art and music, but not a lot of people realize that academics¹ requires a lot of creativity as well. In academics there is a lot of need for creativity as easy/obvious stuff is generally guaranteed to be thought up of and done before. The system of academic publishing, research, education, and peer review makes fields like math and engineering able to make progress, and the long history of t...

This is going to be a short post as I've been trying to fix my sleep schedule. Yesterday I went to a birthday party, and so I didn't get home until around 11 pm, hence the very late post. It didn't help that it was a long post. I also worked on adding stuff for my personal experiences/advice/resources for school, which you can see as a tab in the header. I didn't have the normal high school GPA calculator made until today, and adjusting it to have an extra semester was quite annoying. It was als...

Physics C with Mr. Holland - This class is normally following a presentation and then Mr. Holland showing us some derivations of formulas. I think that Mr. Holland gives a decent amount of leeway (i.e. free blocks), especially considering the amount of content he covers. I think that a working intuitive understanding of calculus is definitely needed as the class relies on infinitesimals quite a bit. We started the beginning of the year with a calculus review, so don't worry if you forgot anythin...

This year, I took Computer Science III, AP Chem, AP Stats, AP Eng Lang, AP Physics C, AP Psyc, AP Calc BC, and APUSH (in period order). This is basically going to be a review of my classes and advice as I'm basically done now, so I'm just going to leak my school; I go to Cedar Ridge High School. This is going to be two parts because I didn't realize how much I had to say on my classes. CSIII with Mr. Prado - This class was pretty chill. The projects were relatively simple and directly accessed ...

I know that if we look at our history, our future as a "species" can seem rather bleak. However, all is not lost. Consider our origins. Life began as simple cells who's sole purpose was to accumulate resources to reproduce. Naturally, there were finite resources, leading to competition. Thus the ideas of Moloch [1] and "my" thoughts on competition [2] are in play. Yet that same chaotic, selfish, net-negative life led to creatures with societies in which ideas of a greater good (such as in ants a...

My last AP test was yesterday, and it feels quite strange to think that junior year is basically over for me now as I'm in 7 AP classes and my other non-AP class is already very easy. I wanna try fixing my sleep schedule though, so I'm going to make an update today. Today I didn't really do much, in school or at home as I felt pretty tired. Today I also relearned how to play Super Smash Bros. I'm not really an avid fan of it; the last time I played was like 3 years ago and it was only a couple o...

In the process of applying for the Atlas Fellowship, they had us read this article [1] and provide a counterargument to the author's claim. In my response I tried to point out a mistake in their reasoning, but I've got my own thoughts about it. The gist of the article is that the development of the "singularity", or digitizing people's minds, will revolutionize the intellectual economy, social sciences, and the ability of "mankind". Instead, I think that digital people will most revolutionize c...

Seeing as I recently finished Crime and Punishment, I'm looking for my next book to read. I was planning on reading Don Quixote in Spanish to try and appreciate the nuance of another language and practice my Spanish, but I couldn't find a physical copy at my school's library, and I want to read it physically (for reduced eyestrain and the feel/formatting). I'm thinking of The Enchiridion by Epictetus, but it's quite short and has no physical copies at my school's library. I think Plato's Republi...

I wanna build Something that's gonna Outlive me Alexander Hamilton (musical) We're all going to die someday. And that's a good thing. Imagine if we didn't age. Then humanity would be severely crippled under the constant fear of death by accident, something that is fairly easy to prevent. Imagine you're happy: whether it be with family, your wife, kids, siblings, friends, or whatever. Then suddenly one of them dies from a car accident. Just like that those happy days are over, all of it just ...

Yay! 50 consecutive daily blog posts! I'm halfway to my goal now. ...

I was going to make that philosophical post today, but I didn't realize how much work I had. I had an English essay, and I have to study for calc tomorrow. I forgot there were so many things to memorize like theorems and integrals. Today was pretty unproductive, especially in the afternoon. I woke up at around 1 pm and then watched YouTube for like 4 hours. After that I tried to get an ad-blocker on the school Chromebook. My approach was to change the DNS server, but that didn't work because the...

I had a philosophical post planned, but I feel like my head isn't clear enough to make it of sufficient quality, so I'll do it tomorrow. Today the for interviewees for the Atlas fellowship were notified. I didn't get an interview, sad. Today was mildly productive. I woke at about 12 pm, then watched YouTube for about 4 hours. I was then pretty concentrated and got some good progress done on my math proofs I haven't touched in a while, so that's progress. For me, I do find math interesting but it...

Today was the APUSH AP exam. I thought the MCQ and SAQ were about as expected in difficulty, but on the FRQ I feel like I really botched it. Especially unfortunate considering that the APUSH credit is one of the more useful ones. Today was also UIL State, so as an alternate I went up to UT Austin to see if there was anyone I could compete in place of. There wasn't anyone :( We also ate out for lunch, and I got to try out sashimi for the first time. I thought it was pretty good, although I though...

I recently read this article [1] and thought it really exemplified my position on the question "Would the world be better if people had more logic or more empathy?". My position on this is that we need more empathy. In the article we see several anecdotes showing what seems to be a double standard - females¹ getting abortions and then, or even during the abortion, complain or articulate a disliking of abortion. An initial look at this may make it seem as though these females are being illogical...

Today's going to be another quick post as I want to make sure I am well-rested for the AP Stats test tomorrow. Today I did the US History STAAR test since it was originally planned for tomorrow, but had to be rescheduled to today since I have an AP test tomorrow. I ended up switching Mastodon hosts to the scholar.social; I thought the private server thing might've made the usage of one account less robust, but it turned out to integrate itself into the network very nicely. Recently I told my par...

Even thought I think Collegeboard is a net positive, there are still very valid criticisms of Collegeboard. I found this article [1] on Collegeboard's flaws, and I think they and the points they brought up are very valid. Admittedly, I haven't read the referenced article, but I have verified the tax haven part of this article. I concede that this is extremely sus and really has no conceivable (to me) explanation. I do find it odd that there seems to be very little news about this. I also find i...

Ahh this is quite a late reaction but if anyone is interested in a Twitter alternative given the Elon Musk purchase of Twitter, I'd recommend Mastodon. TBH, I haven't looked at a whole lot of Twitter alternatives, but Mastodon seems quite solid. I also have signed up if that'll encourage anyone else to join as well. Here is my profile: https://scholar.social/@vincenttran mastodon.green seems quite good given their climate-friendly orientation, but scholar.social also seems quite interesting. I'...

I'm pretty close to finishing the book; I am now in chapter 7 of part 6. After reading the last chapter, I got the idea that Crime and Punishment is a criticism and reaction to Nietzsche's ideas and more generally the idea of a more fluid/liberal/progressive society. The whole dynamic of Rodya to his family really presents itself as a representation of the progressive society in which traditional nuclear family ties are broken. Instead, the value of family is just for development, and we see thi...

Today's gonna be a short post because I need to sleep for the AP Chemistry test tomorrow. Today I went out with some friends to study for the AP test. We weren't really that productive - I finished one frq practice (1.75 hours) in about 4 hours. Unfortunately it was my first studying for any AP test. I generally dislike to study the day before or day of a major test because of the Yerkes-Dodson Law, but I think my arousal is too low, so I shouldn't be slacking off anyways. It feels so surreal th...

I got my learner's permit last Friday morning. in doing so, I missed a Mu Alpha Theta meeting. Unfortunately this was a pretty important one as it was elections day and a day where a presentation that I made was being given. Luckily I ran unopposed for president, so I won. Also, the student council and NHS officer elections have been going on recently. Thus I was thinking about why we even have democracy in things like school club positions. Ultimately, these positions aren't even going to have ...

I remember a classmate was arguing against capitalism on the basis of exploitation of workers. This isn't a very strong argument. I believe the premise of their argument is that under private employment, it is necessary that in pursuit of profit that value is created. Thus if labor creates value and somehow value is being created, the labor must be receiving less value. This is flawed reasoning because it assumes that the end-product is equal in value to the sum of its parts, i.e. labor. Thus th...

I really dislike how purposelessly people approach school. So, I'll itemize my views on the purpose of school. For about up to 5th grade, I simply did well in school because that is the habit my parents had instilled in me early on. They also told me the justification for their desire for me to do well in school: get a high-paying job. As I didn't really think all that much back then, I simply accepted this. This actually corresponds pretty well with the conformity to adults' expectations stage...

I was working on a philosophical post, but then my dad came to tell me to, for future reference, not to share personal income. I then challenged him on this (my position was that we should have open-salary systems), and then we had an argument for about an hour. Thus I don't think I'm going to have the time to finish the post's draft, so I'm going to instead do an update and dissect the argument. In essence, my dad's argument was that having open salaries makes people unhappy, spiteful, and di...

OK, so I've concocted an idea on how the universe, and more generally reality, could've began. The seeds of this theory were sown when I was thinking about how reality seems so inaccessible to the mind (the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, failure of hidden variable theories, omnipresent uncertainty in measurements [measurements must obviously be a finite process and thus can never capture in entirety irrational "real" properties], and I'm sure there's more). But then I thought, what if we swap...

Unfortunately I am doing another update on my life because my dad is pressuring me to sleep. I still have this, a shower, and flossing my teeth though. I am up late because I finally finished the AP Calc BC mock. I messed up scheduling this as I originally thought it was only an hour 45 minutes because I only saw the mcq. After adjusting for the full length, I planned on finishing by 8. I ended up finishing at about 11 :~(. It was a very long 3 hours. It also took an extra long time because I wa...

I woke up at about 2 pm today. I woke with a headache, so I decided to try and do some light homework for about an hour but I wasn't able to do much, so I decided to relax and watch YouTube for about an hour. My headache was mostly gone after that. The rest of the day was me trying to catch up on homework. I feel like I didn't really do that much as I still have quite a lot to do. I eventually got my stats mcq and frq grading done, and I was surprised by how bad I did. I've also been falling beh...

Today was the competition. Before the number sense competition I played a couple of card games with some other competitors; I was trying to ensure moderate arousal for optimal performance as per psychology. After the test for number sense, I was feeling good as I got to question 71, which is further than normal. I did have to skip quite a few, but I was feeling good overall. Then I went into calculator (for some reason it took almost an hour to do number sense, a 10 minutes test). I thought it w...

Today was the trip to San Antonio for regionals. Normally I don't get carsick, but for some reason I had a headache for most of the trip. Once I got there I went to the boardwalk and then had dinner at big Lou's. The pizza was insanely large and greasier than I would've liked. It wasn't just slice size; there were 16 slices. Then we someone got the wrong hotel twice. Then I played cards against humanity. NGL I thought it wouldn't take this long. ...

I don't think that living a long life is a good thing. My reasoning behind this is life being suffering, intellectual decline, and the contribution to the formation of a gerontocracy. In my opinion, life is suffering. I'll make a post on this later, but in summary if we value life based on intellectualism, then emotions are the opposite of that. It is obvious that being emotional is always easier than being intellectual, as the latter requires critical thinking at all times and requires diverge...

In my philosophical system, AI is nearly only a positive. I will simply address the risks of AI from [1]. I believe that technological unemployment from AI isn't going to be a negative. The general fear here is that AI will automate many jobs. Under my past philosophy with binary free-will, I feared AI for a similar reason: AI posed a threat to human intellectual life, thus threatening humanity with obsolescence. This is problematic if humans are the only ones with free-will. However, under my ...

I'd like to dispel the notion that there is some sort of "applied" linkage between areas of study. It is very easy to believe that "oh, math is just applied philosophy, physics is just applied math, chemistry is just applied physics, and biology is just applied chemistry". This seems to suggest a sort of hierarchy of theoreticalness, with philosophy being at the bottom and most abstract and biology as least. I used to believe this too. But this is quite false. Philosophy is quite different from ...

OK I promise I've got an idea for a philosophy post, it's just getting rather late and I don't want to spend a bunch of time of it. Today was mildly productive once again. Unfortunately I didn't meet my goal of finishing homework by 6, but I got pretty close (6:30). I got have to concede that I am procrastinating some work off to tomorrow though. I keep forgetting that I have an entire AP stats mock exam to do. The reason for the lack of productivity was me spending such a long time on pushing f...

Today was a mildly productive day. I woke up at 2 pm, so there wasn't much day to begin with, so idk. The realization that UIL regionals is this Friday, only 6 days away really put some energy in me. I think I'm going to start doing three practice sessions everyday up til Friday. I'm not sure how much practice I'll do on Friday as a decent amount of the time will be spent traveling and probably doing something in San Antonio. The plan is to do a timed practice in the morning, flashcards in the n...

Today was a rather hectic day. First I had SMT's SUMO for about 8 hours (which was pretty fun, I thought the individual general problems were well made/difficult, but the power round really threw me off. It had a huge amount of context like definitions and theorems before each problem. The whole thing felt more like a college math class' semester PSET than competition math problems). Then I had a party, which was interesting. We played ping pong, Caprisun pong with dares (which I was involved i...

I've seen a lot of hate towards Collegeboard, but I don't think they are justified. One common complaint is the pricing. I think this is unfair to Collegeboard considering they have a lot of expenses per test: designing/developing the test, testing the questions, producing the tests, shipping the tests, processing, grading, and analyzing the results, etc. There are also maintenance expenses such as with training, the website, servers, etc. I do concede that some prices they make us pay are unf...

Yet again today wasn't very productive. At least I got some homework done. I spent most of today rewatching the Battle of Shiganshina. Originally I had plans to go to a nature preserve with my family tomorrow, but we rescheduled it. I originally wanted to do it as a way of increasing my mathematical creativity through nature, but I haven't been pushing my brain very hard recently with math, so it likely wouldn't even have been successful. It was planned for tomorrow since we have no school tomor...

25 day streak! ...

Today wasn't very productive. I ate dinner at 6 and then just got extremely lethargic and did nothing for 2 hours. I'm making this post quickly as my dad is pressuring me to sleep early (I appreciate it, but I wish he did it earlier). Before the lethargy though, I was feeling productive. I got a lot of work done in English as my teacher was just running interventions and the line was too long for me to enter. I think my stats test today went pretty smoothly. There were some interesting problems ...

Yesterday during lunch, a friend brought out an idea he liked, for the second time. The idea was that NHS should raise their GPA requirements at my school. For a bit of context, the GPA requirement for NHS is set at 4.0, but our school is heavily inflated - pre-AP classes are worth 6.0 if you get a 100, and regular level classes are worth 5.0 if you get a 100. Thus one would have to be not getting all A's in REGULAR level classes, or equivalently worse than ALL B's in AP/pre-AP classes. His main...

I think that non-personal information should be freer than it currently is. So much information is simply locked away of inaccessible out of fear or greed. Consider businesses and copyright law as a whole. Businesses generally like to keep their information a secret, as giving information about their success to competitors gives competitors an advantage and decreases their advantage. This also applies to copyright law except it is more focused on possible profit and less on competitors. Howev...

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 se...

Just to reduce confusion, I'm defining daily by my wake-sleep cycle. ...

I don't really think there are many spoilers here, but here's your warning. I recently finished AOT season 4 part 2. TBH, I think the first and second season were not very good. It seems like in these first two seasons, character development only happens post-action or as necessary for the plot. This leads to the effect of making a simpler story, as characters are less rich and serve the plot more. I think this flaw runs throughout the show, but feels especially forced in the first two seasons....

A couple of weeks ago, I finished reading The Catcher in The Rye. To be honest, I don't think it was that good. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but after reading the story's synopsis I thought the book would provide a very deep insight to me about what's it like to be depressed and flounder socially as I don't really think that describes me. Instead, I found the book to play on certain motifs very repetitively and uncreatively - he is in a social situation, he thinks others are acting pho...

I was planning to advertise for people to join AP Physics II next year, but today was the DECA vs HOSA social, and one of my friends got pied. However, this sparked some out of pocket jokes and now I feel like it's too late and badly timed to advertise it. Even still, I'm not sure I would get enough. I think I could orient it towards medical-oriented people, but I think "Physics II" is just a scary name. I hopefully have cemented plans for the purple comet math contest, but for a different conte...

I highly doubt that reading this essay will have the same impact that I felt when I was writing it, but I came to reject meritocracy during an essay for AP English Lang. The prompt as to argue whether or not America was a meritocracy. I think me writing and seeing my argument against meritocracy in paragraph 2 really cemented in me how unfeasible my previous system of binary free-will and egalitarianism was. Welp, here it is: The American Dream for many is an integral part of their American ide...

My English teacher quit teaching after Spring Break, but before he left, he mentioned how he disliked the political compass as liberal or leftist (I don't remember which) propaganda (I think the context was he newfound ability to initiate political conversations with impunity). I disagree with this. TBH, we didn't really talk about it that much, he typically likes to say criticisms of society as humor. Thus I can't really dissect his argument/reasoning for his position, so I'll simple explain mi...

I've come across some very profound ideas from what can be implied using logic, and I figured I'd itemized them here: super-determinism linguistic epistemological Super-Determinism The Bell Test experiments in the late 1900s seemed to show the world that determinism was incompatible with reality as quantum states were unpredictable and thus undetermined. However, in determinism's place super-determinism arose. This theory postulated that if everything is deterministic, then our thoughts wer...

I'm going to be honest, I really wanted to make a philosophy post today. I even began it and types out some ideas, but when I showered I rubbed my eyes a lot, so I feel like I need to focus on my eye health rn. It has been pretty bad these past couple of weeks. Whenever I moves my eyes around a lot, I see black squiggly lines and I'm starting to see some black spots. Today I think I was mildly productive. I didn't have a lot of homework, but I wasted a bunch of time til 7. I did cement out some ...

Yesterday was the CHMMC (http://chmmc.caltech.edu). It was pretty fun, especially the team rounds and getting to work together with some friends from PROMYS. Before the competition began, we played fish (https://cfish.herokuapp.com), which was also fun. Unfortunately we didn't place. To be honest, there wasn't really a chance. individual scores were a factor in placement, and 4 of our 6 member team didn't do individuals, and 2 of our members couldn't do the entire team round. Afterwards, I spen...

For those unfamiliar with my free-will philosophy, read this: https://listed.to/@vt/33768/free-will I am sure that I'll think of more criticisms as I begin to get used to my new philosophy, so this will be an updating list. Moral Alignment Application Problem of the Criterion I think that my ideas on free-will as an ethical system don't align very well with our morals. For instance, murder seems to have little intrinsic issues in this system, which is obviously against moral code (I know I ...

Today I volunteered at an elementary school's spring carnival. I got assigned to help walk ponies. It was interesting to see how the horses behave, especially in response to human desires. It also made me further realize that my morals are different from my ethics - me pulling around the horses made me feel immoral, but I knew that ethically there was no issue. Afterwards it was pretty fun to meet with friends as a lot of them signed up as well (although they got assigned elsewhere). Unfortunate...

Thus far, as I've claimed previously, my philosophy on free-will as a spectrum leaves open a justification for mass murder (https://listed.to/@vt/33768/free-will). However, here I will rectify this problem. It is obvious to everyone that murder is immoral (I use morality to indicate the personal feelings to right and wrong). However, here I'll assert that murder is also unethical. My argument consists of two parts: why genocide would be ineffective, epistemologically, and probability. First I'l...

I try to always for one number sense test everyday early in the morning - just as a rise so that I get used to Number Sense being such an early competition. Sometimes I just do all the problems with no timer, sometimes I do. I make sure to always do all the problems up to my goals, and to go back to mistakes and redo them. I also try to practice the same test over and over many times, per Larry White's advice. I also use practice tests that are at the level I'm aiming for, i.e. if one is aimin...

Today's gonna be another personal blog: I think I need to take a break after the 8 straight days of philosophy. I had a stats test today, and between her first two AP periods I was the only one with a raw 100. As another indication of the difficulty of this test, our teacher said that if I was the only one with a 100 she would raise the curve for everyone else. The chem test I took today I thought was pretty typical in difficulty. Normally I'd go study with some friends, but I wanted to try stud...

We had districts last Saturday. I got first in number sense, fourth in calculator, third in science overall, 2nd in chemistry, and fourth in math. I am confirmed advancing to regionals for math and calculator because someone wasn't able to go. This year, regionals are in San Antonio, so we're going to be driving there the night before and staying at a hotel. It should be interesting: my first time overnight without my parents. I think I'll be competing all day with little in between time. I als...

Today one of my friends brought up cancel culture, and we did have a conversation about it. I thought I'd share my opinions on it. I think that cancel culture is not intrinsically bad, but given my belief system it is bad because of the imperfectibility of mankind, belief homogeneity enforcement, and polarization.* By my beliefs on free-will(https://listed.to/@vt/33768/free-will), mankind is limited in their ability. I see the goal of cancel culture as to correct false/bad beliefs by punishing...

I truly despise marketing. The very goal of marketing is to manipulate people. The existence of this is antithetical to my construction of reality through free-will (see https://listed.to/@vt/33768/free-will). For a business to engage in marketing is for them to act against the free-market. The core premise of a free-market is that consumers as individuals will be selfish and always seek to purchase the best product. This is turn drives businesses to provide the best product, leading to innovat...

I think that a lot of human behavior is driven by the desire to simplify continuous (or very close to continuous) values into a binary system. Let's call it the tendency to binarize. Let's start with an evolutionary perspective. First note that the ability to make decisions is a very advantageous one as there are essentially always two basic two decisions that result in varying in usefulness outcomes - do nothing and conserve energy, move to obtain energy. Thus with this view intelligence and i...

Tomorrow I am competing in UIL districts for number sense (mental math), math, science, and calculator applications. UIL is quite fun, so for any prospective mathematicians in Texas (unfortunately it is only in Texas, but maybe for out of staters you could try emailing UIL and starting it where you are?) I highly recommend it. I especially like number sense. Anyways, wish me luck! ...

I believe that software should be designed very carefully. I imagine that many modern programmers believe that Moor's law will save their inefficient code, but I think that this shouldn't be the case. I also believe that code should be designed to be simple, extensible, and open-source. In essence, code should be efficient and free (as in freedom) Efficient code is code that runs quickly and has few lines of code. Thus efficient code should be thoughtful. This fits into my idea of entropy, as u...

This may just be unique to my experience, but there seems to be a lot of similarities between school society and the overall society. Thus I have to concede all this to be conjecture/theory/case study. Capitalism: It seems to me that capitalism and GPA are fairly similar. There is GPA inflation and deflation, the idea of meritocracy (we solely own our mental faculties, the means of production per say), the free-market of rankings, and the ability to leverage "capital" (academic prowess/mental ...

I suppose I should provide a chronological context for my philosophies, so here we go. birth to elementary school: I did not think much about philosophy. This aligns surprisingly well with Piaget's concrete operational period of logical development but little abstract reasoning. I mostly played with my sister, did academic work (math "textbooks"), or played video games. There was one exception though. In second grade, my friends and I took ice from the milk carton cooler. We were inevitably cau...

I know that the school system is frequently hated on for the "toxic" competition between students that it fosters, but I believe that the competition isn't intrinsically flawed. I do have to concede that as competition grows/lasts, Moloch [1] will enter the system more and corrupt it. That is what should be critiqued in modern society, not competition. A common critique of competition is the stress it creates. However, what does it matter? Stress, no stress, upon death it won't matter. But what...

Just thought I'd post something about the tornado that passed by today (I live in Texas). My family and I were quite fortunate to not experience anything too bad from it. It lasted perhaps 20-30 minutes (severe wind near my home that is). To be honest, I'm surprized tornados don't happen more often. Texas is in the public mind a flat desert, seemingly perfect tornado conditions (this is the first actual tornado I've experience). ...

This is a very important article for me, as I see free will and responsibility as big parts of my philosophy, especially concerning morality/ethics. First, I define free will as the ability to "act" against physical laws' prediction. Thus it seems that quantum particles have some aspect of free will, as quantum physics in its current state tells us that it is impossible to predict the next state of a quantum bit after we observe it (decoherence from superposition). Furthermore, the Bell test (...

Ughhh, blogging? That is soOȫốòó 2015 right? Wrong. Blogs are better for Privacy Control over content An "Afterlife" First off, with this blogging platform there are much stronger privacy standards, such as no collection of data for marketing. The main business model of contemporary social media is to (1) collect data and (2) use that data to engage in marketing (my hatred of this is a big theme for me). In contrast, blogs are self-hostable, much more open-source (both allowing fede...