Resolution of 366
“但我坦然，欣然。我将大笑，我将歌唱。” —《野草》鲁迅
366
2024 has 366 days, providing one extra day to be wasted. Though I don’t think it will make up for the 28 days I’ve wasted so far.
In that wasted time, I read for fun, which is something new that I thought I’d try.
Surely You Must Be Joking, Mr. Feynman!
is a biography from the perspective of Richard Feynman, an artist and bongoist from Long Island, New York. His most noted works are his diagrams, which many in the physics community have created copies of.
Emotional Content
The general perception of Feynman is that he is an insensitive hedonist, probably because it is a digestible narrative, but there are moments where things affect him emotionally that I think showcase a very different facet of his personality.
I was walking past a department store with dresses in the window, and I thought Arlene would like one of them. That was too much for me.
His wife passed away due to tuberculosis while he was working at Los Alamos and he didn’t cry until months later because he knew he had to stay focused on the project at hand.
This moment definitely shows that insensitive gets mixed up with unemotional.
Conundrums of Philosophy
Questions like “What is beauty?” that fall under the purview of conundrums of philosophy1 can also be answered by scientists:
I understood at last what art is really for, at least in certain respects. It gives somebody, individually, pleasure. You can make something that somebody likes so much that they’re depressed, or they’re happy, on account of that damn thing you made!
After I learned to sing in 2018, I would sometimes write and record birthday songs for my friends, which they appreciated a lot. So, in some sense, I sing mostly because other people enjoy it.
Would it be better if the act of singing itself could be fulfilling? I would sing more, but I don’t think it would have as much value.
Hypnosis
I’ve never believed in ESP, telekinesis, or hypnosis, I just kind of grouped them in the category of superstition/sham. However, Feynman gives a very reasonable explanation of hypnosis.
So I found hypnosis to be a very interesting experience. All the time you’re saying to yourself, “I could do that, but I won’t”—which is just another way of saying that you can’t.
I think, “I could do that, but I won’t” all the time, so it was a very good reminder. It’s probably most people’s rationale for not answering questions in lecture.
In CS 2, Prof Blank asks questions with a variety of difficulty and most people don’t raise their hands because of either fear, hypnosis, or actually don’t know the answer.
At some point, the entranced also don’t know the answer because they were actually lost long ago.
That’s when the prof makes us discuss!
Self-Unfulfilling Prophecy
I haven’t been writing as much because I ran out of ideas, which is why I just did a class review as the other post. However, writing that post was monotonous and exhausting, so I just stopped writing.
Actually, I almost quit the blog because I kept having this idea of “I’m just going to come back to it later” but it’s like the idea of hypnosis. It’s a kind of inductive inaction, so JUST DO IT!
I should probably only write when I get a really good idea that I enjoy writing about.
Music Production
I am trying to learn music production, so I downloaded Waveform, which is a free digital audio interface. By the way, I wasn’t sure what DAW stood for until I just looked it up, I just know it’s that kind of software that lets you make music.
Slapaphone
I learned to play the slapaphone in XXXXXXX Hovse courtyard and while annoying some people at 22:00 who were probably trying to work.
However, it wasn’t too egregious because the XXXXX2 don’t sleep anyway.
Burning
“The cure for boredom is curiosity, there is no cure for curiosity” — Dorothy Parker.
Something I noticed from reading about Feynman is that he is truly curious to the core. He’s always excited to learn new things and needs to get to the bottom of how it all works.
I think that’s a trait necessary in science because otherwise, you end up not really learning much even when the opportunity arises.
For example, sometimes when I read an article, I read a new phrase like “epitope” and I won’t know what it means but I won’t look it up either. The problem with this is that it creates uncertainty which will only mess up my understanding down the line.
Ma 1c
One of the things concerning me about Ma 1c analytical is that it includes topology and differential geometry and is “very hard” according to math major upperclassman J.
If I take practical, it might be too easy, but analytical might be too hard. I suppose I could use the first few weeks to decide.
However, I think that it would be against the principle of curiosity to not take the course because it’s hard to learn.
Po
While I was volunteering for the Caltech Math Meet, I was running to deliver a pizza from Red Door to Bechtel Dining Hall so that a very hard-working organizer, S, could eat for the first time that day.
Coincidentally, I saw a guy sitting outside who kind of looked like Po-Shen Loh. So, I asked him, “Are you Po-Shen Loh?”3
The Asian man with glasses replied with “Yes!” and a big smile.
Well now I was sure.
So, we exchanged greetings and I asked him if he knew A, who did some online tutoring for his program, which was very interesting because she mentioned that she had to take improv classes in preparation for it.
He said that his wife, Debbie, is actually the one who organizes that program, which I thought was very fun because it’s like the whole family does math stuff.
I asked if I could get a picture after I delivered the pizza, and he gave me a thumbs up.
After delivering the pizza…
I came back and there was a math postdoc there who was talking to Po, visibly shaking.
He was explaining that he had taken one of his classes in college, but when Po asked what year it was, the postdoc stuttered so hard he couldn’t speak for a while, “T-t-…-t… t-t-…-two thousand n-nine.”
It was very understandable that he would be nervous to meet such a great mathematician, but maybe not that much.
Anyway, I got a selfie with him and I noticed later that my bottom row of teeth were showing in my smile, which is my tell for being nervous.
LGT Seminar
Later that night, Po crashed LGT4 and mostly frosh started piling in because I guess the upperclassmen have already seen him a lot.
Po was imparting many pieces of wisdom that I heard from my friends who were there because I was doing math homework in Annenberg.
I actually considered going to ask him how to do the homework, but that seemed bothersome for him.
Anyway, he said a few interesting things:
Roommate
His mechanical engineer roommate in Blacker Hovse had the complete opposite sleep schedule, sleeping at 7 AM and waking up at 4 PM, while he would sleep at 10 PM and wake up at 7 AM.
That roommate would go around campus at night and modify elevators and stuff like that.
Will Heltsley later became the Vice-President of Propulsion at SpaceX.
CS Major
Back in the early 2000s, the default major at Caltech was actually physics instead of CS. I wonder why that change occurred and what the next big major will be?
Anyway, he thinks that the popularity of CS is related to software engineering (SWE) jobs paying very well, but that SWE job security will be greatly reduced by the advancement of machine learning models that can write code.
Happiness
He asked why everyone looks so happy and then realized that they were all frosh. He then mentioned that back then, Caltech was not a very happy place, which I can kind of visualize.
According to R’s testimony, Po was insinuating “you guys should be sadder.”5
That’s why no one is allowed to go to the roof of Caltech Hall without executive permission from the top brass—or any buildings as a matter of fact!
Konstantin
I was lucky enough to be selected randomly to participate in a student faculty lunch where I was able to talk to Prof Konstantin Batygin of the PMA department. I first saw him in a Veritasium video about Planet 9, but also saw him a lot in Avery since school started because his family lives in Avery House.
He is actually part of a rock band, The Seventh Season, that performs at clubs and has concerts on campus. According to him, the professor gig is just a way to build his fanbase.
It was very interesting to talk to him because he has a lot of fun stories about the band and is a very friendly person overall.
Musical Encounters
We ran into each other a lot in the Avery Music Room and the SAC Jam Room around the time of the second Ricketts Open Mic Night because I was practicing with my band and he was practicing with his band for some performance at a club.
Balance of Modes
Another student asked him how he keeps a balance between being a professor and musician. He explained that what’s important is devoting full attention to one thing at a time. If he is thinking about planets, he will just not think about the band at all.
He mentioned that Feynman played the bongos a lot, but if he just only did physics, he would probably be a worse physicist because he would likely be less creative.
The ability to jump between multiple tasks without conscious effort is very valuable because it enables more productivity than “multitasking” which just means not getting anything done well.
If you think of it like going through a maze, multitasking is like if you could see a little bit down each path, but switching modes is like being able to see down some amount for each path and the breadth comes from the ability to switch paths.
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