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polymathwannabe — LessWrong

polymathwannabe

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polymathwannabe

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Journalism dropout turned philosophy dropout, and that does a better job at defining me than the business degree I do have. I'm an amateur science fiction writer.

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polymathwannabe

Journalism dropout turned philosophy dropout, and that does a better job at defining me than the business degree I do have. I'm an amateur science fiction writer.

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My third-of-life crisis

I've been wanting to post this for a while, but it always felt too embarrassing. I've contributed next to nothing to this community, and I'm sure you have better problems to work on than my third-of-life crisis. However, the kind of problems I'm facing may require more brainpower than my meatspace friends can muster. Here I go. I live in Colombia, where your connections have more weight than your talent. But I'm not sure about my talent anymore. Until I finished high school I had always been a stellar student and everyone told me I was headed for a great future. Then I represented my province in a national spelling contest and had my first contact with an actual city and with other students who were as smart as me. After the contest ended, I tried to maneuver my parents into letting me stay at the city, but they would have none of it. After an unabashedly overextended stay with my aunts, I eventually was sent back to the small pond. My parents and I disagreed seriously about my choice of career, primarily in that they took for granted that the choice wasn't even mine. Because my older brother appeared to have happily accepted his assigned path in business management, I was forced to do the same, even though it held absolutely no interest for me. But I wasn't very sure myself about what exactly I wanted, so I wasn't able to effectively defend my opposition. Another factor was that in the late 1990s the Colombian army was still allowed to recruit minors, and it's a compulsory draft, and the only legal way to avoid it was to be studying something---anything. My brother did spend one year at the army, but at least the entire family agreed that I would break if sent there. No other options were explored. With my school scores I might have obtained a scholarship, but I didn't know how to do it, whom to ask. My parents held complete control over my life. So began the worst eight years of my life. Eight because the only university my parents could afford was terribly mis

How do you survive in the humanities?

A Muggle Studies course

How to teach to magical thinkers?

How do you survive in the humanities?

Two years ago, I fulfilled a huge part of my dream of doing what I love and started studying creative writing full time. This program is run by a humanities department, so I knew I'd have to stomach epistemic nonsense from time to time, which most of the time I...

Feb 20, 2020•29

Mosquito killing begins

Nov 8, 2017•7

Physicists say simulation hypothesis is impossible in principle

https://cosmosmagazine.com/physics/physicists-find-we-re-not-living-in-a-computer-simulation If these results are right, our universe being a simulation would require an impossibly big computer. They conclude the simulation hypothesis is impossible in principle.

Oct 2, 2017•-4

Nick Bostrom says Google is winning the AI arms race

Oct 5, 2016•8

Open Thread, Aug. 22 - 28, 2016

Notes for future OT posters: 1. Please add the 'open_thread' tag. 2. Check if there is an active Open Thread before posting a new one. (Immediately before; refresh the list-of-threads page before posting.) 3. Open Threads should start on Monday, and end on Sunday. 4. Unflag the two options "Notify...

Aug 22, 2016•6

LINK: New clinical trial will try to restore dead brains

"... in an effort to revive the brains of those being kept alive solely through life support. Stem cells will be injected directly into the brain..." More at: http://news.discovery.com/tech/biotechnology/dead-could-be-brought-back-to-life-in-medical-trial-160503.htm

May 4, 2016•7

LINK: Videogame with a very detailed simulated universe

"In one sense, because of the game’s procedural design, the entire universe exists at the moment of its creation. In another sense, because the game only renders a player’s immediate surroundings, nothing exists unless there is a human there to witness it." "Through the use of procedural generation, No Man’s...

Feb 19, 2016•6

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