I recently had a conversation with someone who told me they love the fact that there are questions we don’t know the answer to. Every time I encounter a new corner of mathematics I get this feeling of excited dread. "Oh no, this is fascinating" immediately followed by "I will never have enough time for all of this." So here’s a post about facing finitude, and borrowing phrases from people wiser than me.
philosophy
The Things I Cannot Control
People often say “focus on what you can control” as if it’s that’s simple and isolating variables in life is as easy as it is on a problem sheet. There are so many things behind the phrase "let it go." History, attachment, hope, ego, fear, unprocessed conversations, futures that only existed in your head. Life isn’t a well posed problem. It’s chaos, entropy, with boundary conditions you didn’t choose. You can’t always cleanly separate the controllable from the uncontrollable when the thing you want sits right at that boundary. It is true that you can control the effort. But the gap between effort and outcome… that’s where frustration lives. And I wish I had something more reassuring to say about that.
Lessons from a Pale Blue Dot
When I first watched Cosmos back in February 2021, I didn’t realise it would become one of the most comforting things I’d ever seen. I had just turned 14 at that time, and there was something about Carl Sagan’s gentle and reverent voice that made me ponder about life in a way I didn’t expect. … Continue reading Lessons from a Pale Blue Dot
Can a Machine ever be Conscious?
Introduction This post is adapted from a 5000-word essay I wrote for my sixth-form research project discussing whether a machine could ever be conscious. If you’re curious, a link to the full essay PDF with references is attached at the end of this blog.1 My blog doesn’t intend to dive straight into number crunching or … Continue reading Can a Machine ever be Conscious?
Maths Rant 