a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  1718 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: July 3, 2019

Regarding my interest in physics, I am obsessed by abstract math but am really obsessed with the dream of somehow materializing my dreams into hardware. When I first encountered the Schrodinger equation in 11th grade chemistry class I literally lost my shit. I love the condensed matter field, I would want to do what much more so than astronomy or string theory. I don't really give a hoot about whatever the origin of the universe was. I have a bit of masculine energy but not enough to make me want to be a mechanical engineer or something like that. I was studying economics for 2.5 years because like I said somewhere else on this site, I wanted to solve all the world's problems when I was 17. I'm a lot more cynical towards political processes now and am not sure what is good for people. I figure a good song or work of art can lift people up more than abstract social plans, and the community organizations I was a part of felt fake. I kind of hate political ideologies and law school now. I took my shitty BA and split because a lot of my classmates hated the gays and I don't want to die pegging the inflation rate at 1.75%. People in the physics department are chill as hell and joke about Karl Marx and hallucinogens. I'm like 21 now so I'm too old for both those things, but still beats hating the gays. What am I going to do, move to America and solve their political problems? Other countries aren't really as concentrated in wealth and power as that place.

If I do decide to pursue physics, I'm going to double or minor in computer science because writing software is my fall-back plan, because academic careers seem like the 9th circle of hell. I've never really given a shit about money. I ate bread for dinner one day when I was at work because I'm broke as shit. I suppose a true aristocrat owns nothing. Much more important than money is time. That being said, I find coding to be a bit too easy though. I taught myself how to code when I was 10 (sorry about the flex.... that's #middleclass). I had a domain name, blog I coded myself in PHP/mysql with content management system, apache server, validated login, hashing, input validation guard against SQL injection, pagination, whatever). Of course there are way harder things you can do in computer science and math, but I'm not sure if I'd get there unless I'm in the A.I. department of Google or academia. Also I don't find a lot of tech culture to be aesthetically pleasing.