-## College Is Not That Terrible Now That I'm Not That Crazy??
+## College Was Not That Terrible Now That I'm Not That Crazy
-Previously, [I wrote about how I was considering going back to San Francisco State University for two semesters](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2024/05/should-i-finish-my-bachelors-degree/) to finish up my math B.A. Having completed the first semester, going back is looking like a great decision; I'm getting more out of it than I expected.
+Previously, [I wrote about how I was considering going back to San Francisco State University for two semesters](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2024/05/should-i-finish-my-bachelors-degree/) to finish up my math B.A.
+
+So, I did that. I think it was a good decision! I got more out of it than I expected.
To be clear, "better than I expected" is not an endorsement of college. SF State is still the same communist dystopia I remember from a dozen years ago—a bureaucratic command economy dripping in propaganda about how indispensible and humanitarian it is, whose subjects' souls have withered to the point where, even if they don't quite believe the propaganda, they can't conceive of life and work outside the system.
-But it doesn't hurt this time, because I have a sense of humor about it now—and a sense of perspective (thanks to life experience, no thanks to school). Ultimately, [policy debates should not appear one-sided](https://www.readthesequences.com/Policy-Debates-Should-Not-Appear-One-Sided): if things are terrible, it's probably not because people are choosing the straightforwardly terrible thing for no reason whatsoever, with no trade-offs, coordination problems, or nonobvious truths making the terrible thing look bnetter than it is. The thing that makes life under communism unbearable is the fact that you can't leave. Having escaped, and coming back as a visiting dignitary, one is a better position to make sense of how and why the regime functions—the problems it solves, at whatever cost in human lives or dignity—the forces that make it stable if not good.
+But it didn't hurt this time, because I had a sense of humor about it now—and a sense of perspective (thanks to life experience, no thanks to school). Ultimately, [policy debates should not appear one-sided](https://www.readthesequences.com/Policy-Debates-Should-Not-Appear-One-Sided): if things are terrible, it's probably not because people are choosing the straightforwardly terrible thing for no reason whatsoever, with no trade-offs, coordination problems, or nonobvious truths making the terrible thing look better than it is. The thing that makes life under communism unbearable is the fact that you can't leave. Having escaped, and coming back as a visiting dignitary, one is a better position to make sense of how and why the regime functions—the problems it solves, at whatever cost in human lives or dignity—the forces that make it stable if not good.
+
+### Prologue [TODO: section title about my previous schooling troubles]
+
+[TODO—
+ * pretty normal school experience
+
+
-### Doing It Right This Time: "Real Analysis II" and "Probability Models"
+
+]
+
+
+### Doing It Right This Time
My last class at SF State in Spring 2013 (before getting rescued by the software industry) had been [Real Analysis I"](https://math.sfsu.edu/courses/370) with Prof. "A". I regret that I wasn't in a state to properly focus and savor it at the time: I [had a pretty bad sleep-deprivation-induced psychotic break in early February 2013](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/03/religious/) and for a few months thereafter was [mostly just trying to hold myself together](http://zackmdavis.net/blog/2013/04/prodrome/). I withdrew from my other classes and ended up getting a B−.
["I could if I wanted to"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUuU99c_9mY)
-### "Queer Literatures and Media"
+###
* Getting a C- is the funniest possible outcome
* forum post
Geoffrey Hinton
-### This Semester
+Steven Byrnes on changing the world through Slack and hobbies
+cognitive formidibility as a theme in my junvenilia fiction (in retrospect, I feel like I was trying too hard)
+
+Shakespeare vs. Hrunkner Unnerby
+
+### This Semester
the world is small
https://puzzlezapper.com/blog/2025/02/carnival-of-mathematics-236/
+
+mandatory orientation
+
+XKCD on one weekend with Perl
+
+SAT predicts college GPA, high school GPA doesn't (and communty college is high school)
+https://x.com/MengHu13/status/1901771403470250138
+https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/SAT_ACT_on_Grades.pdf
+
+https://x.com/GabrielPeterss4/status/1902512259659919669
+
+https://x.com/IvanVendrov/status/1911218627182772264
+> the key social tech that college and ~no other institution has is the ability to hard commit to 100h of deep work in a specific domain with a group of people.
+> 100h is a sweet spot between the 2-5h commitments we call "events" or the 3000h+ commitments we call "jobs"
+
+complaining about the Defend Public Ed event via email and then embarrassing myself in the followup email because I wasn't in class because I was interviewing the machine shop guy
+
+https://unoptimal.substack.com/p/reflections-on-a-year-of-college
+
+https://www.henryjosephson.com/writing/college-advice/
+
+> it is not recommended that you learn logic in this manner.
+https://philosophy.sfsu.edu/formal-logic-challenge-exam
+
+STEM childhood
+https://x.com/Saraht0n1n/status/1916495641863192836
+https://benexdict.io/p/math-team
+
+I'm alienated from schoolwork (I don't remember it the way I remember my blogging), but ... I'm also kind of alienated from paid work? (I wrote a lot of code for SwiftStack and Coalition, it's not salient in the way my own projects are)
+
+"Each question should be about 4-6 sentences as you ask the question and give context."—I'm not sure I met that
+
+https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2025/05/09/cheaters-gonna-cheat-cheat-cheat-cheat-cheat/
+
+if I wanted to avoid this particular source of moral ambiguity at all costs but still wanted a Bachelor's degree, I could have taken easier classes for which I wouldn't need so much LLM assistance to help with the material ... it's just that that would be insane. I think the thing I'm doing now, of jointly trying to maximize math knowledge while also participating in the standard system to help with that, makes sense, and minimizing perceived moral ambiguity (which is all in my head) is just a really stupid goal
+
+
+Prof. Lai feedback on assignment #7: "I like your footnote. Very genuine and is a modern way of learning math."
+
+
+algebra homework lead times (due/submitted)—
+H1
+ Feb 5 by 11am Jan 28 at 10:13pm
+HW2
+ Feb 12 by 11am Jan 30 at 10:17pm
+HW3
+ Feb 19 by 11am Feb 8 at 1:34pm
+HW4
+ Feb 26 by 11am Feb 14 at 3:41pm
+HW5
+ Mar 5 by 11am Mar 1 at 6:09pm
+HW6
+ Mar 12 by 11am Mar 10 at 11:23pm
+HW7
+ Mar 19 by 11am Mar 17 at 11:18pm
+HW9
+ Apr 9 by 11am Mar 26 at 3:03pm
+HW10
+ Apr 16 by 11am Apr 14 at 7:15pm
+HW11
+ Apr 23 by 11am Apr 19 at 6:11pm
+HW12
+ Apr 30 by 11am Apr 28 at 10:39pm
+HW13
+ May 7 by 11am May 5 at 1:12pm
+HW14
+ May 14 by 11am May 13 at 10:01pm
+
+"Self, Place, and Knowing" quiz; I think I remember succumbing to temptation to look at the PDF at one point, but it didn't counterfactually change my answer
+
+https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/18-102-introduction-to-functional-analysis-spring-2009/resources/mit18_102s09_pset01/
+"Write out a proof (you can steal it from one of many places but at least write it out in your own hand)"
+
+https://www.thefp.com/p/ai-everyones-cheating-thats-good-news
+
+Estimate: I did "about" 25.5 pages of complex analysis homework/takehomes (plus 4 page expository paper) and 17.25 pages of measure theory homework. So if I start doing private work to the same standard, say 60 pages is the equivalent of a school semester?
projects / An_Algorithmic_Lucidity.git / commitdiff