WARNING: Long Winded Essay Style Entry
Some paragraphs were deleted for brevity's sakeI'm not comfortable with the term genius, either. We seem to be on a completely different orbit from gort meritocracy. I mean, we actually praise slowing down the mind so that we might find glory in fundamental theories. We don't glorify fast thinking.
I don't like to refer to myself as a programmer or mathematician any more than I identify myself as a writer or any more than I wanted to refer to myself as a janitor or an inmate. I may have considered myself as a philosopher for decades, but now I am most comfortable seeing myself simply as a member of an ape-like species that is most likely heading for extinction ... and it's nothing personal. On a personal level, I am simply one of these ape-like creatures who happens to like to tinker with math and programming very much in the spirit of exploration and even intellectual adventure. I mean, my god, there's a heroine epidemic, millions of people sit watching sports on television, more people die in car accidents in one year in the United States than in the entire Vietnam war, and it's basically a science-fiction bizarroland. I could go on and on - and sometimes I do ... and I consider myself one of the fortunate ones. You might be surprised to know who I consider unfortunate. I don't want to be the president of Amerika. I do not envy those I am expected to envy. Again and again, like a mantra, "Nothing that is so, is so."
I guess I tend to pay homage to figures like Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman ... and now Stepanov. My mind is kind of haywire in comparison, but as you have reminded me again and again, there are different kinds of intelligence. If I were in a room filled with "professional programmers" and the kind of folks who go to "programming competitions" I would feel very out of place. I'm just not into all the posturing ... all that monkey business reminds me that we are apes. Period.
Life is easier to endure when I remind myself of this fact, since the implication is that Linus Torvalds is a special ape with a sharp mind. We're not all going to be code-monkeys. I know I am not a code-monkey. In fact, the only way I become engrossed in writing code is when I can use it to better understand mathematical concepts.
Once the code is finished for a certain procedure, I enjoy returning to pencil and paper, and then just checking the answers ... or maybe applying the "code" mentally with pencil and paper. I call it code when it is written, but the "religiously mathematical programmer" would call it "implementing an algorithm" I guess.
My mind is sharp compared to how it has felt in the past. It is best if we don't compare ourselves with others or compete. I am no longer concerned with what someone else understands, unless of course I am trying to learn something from that person and I have to trust they know what they are talking about. To clarify, though, just because I find it difficult to learn from Donald Knuth does not mean he doesn't know what he's talking about. It just means that, as a student, I am not ready for such a teacher. I can only handle Knuth in very small doses, like when he covers Euclid's algorithm for a few pages, then that's it. I really have to be in a certain mood. I'm kind of moody.
That's why I was enjoying going through the exercises in the Book of Abstract Algebra. The mood had struck me, and I felt blessed to be in that zone. Yesterday I was in a different mood, and I pecked away at creating the code I am using along with the exercises to clarify what I am doing in pencil. Will I be able to recapture that mood again? There are several things I am devoted to studying, but I want to enjoy the task at hand and not restrict myself to any schedule or grid. I want to flow from one thing to another and back again without feeling torn or fragmented.
Hell, I just started looking into Abstract Algebra a few months ago. I am far from a mathematical genius, but I refuse to allow that to discourage me from appreciating mathematical concepts. That would be like saying one has to be married or involved with a woman in order to experience a nocturnal emission! [Actually, this is not a very good analogy for me since I think my di-ck is broken from lack of use. And some gort somewhere is saying - "derr, too much information."]
By the way, I do understand what you mean as far as spitting in the eye of gort-society, using terms reserved for "productive geniuses" whose efforts lead to manufacturing deadly weapons and engineering sports cars. It's clear that we are a time-binding species that is able to tinker with computers only by sheer chance.
You are using the term genius more akin to the way Swift used the term when he wrote, "When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him."
I recall Schopenhauer using the term in this manner as well, as when he writes about how "a genius will be mistreated by half-a-dozen blockheads" or how a man of genius shares a kind of alliance with those with cognitive impairments since both are rejected by status quo.
Just to be in a state of mind where I am content to lay on the floor with book and notebook, pencil in hand, getting up off the floor to use homegrown code to assist my understanding - I know this is as good as it gets. You have also validated this, as has Schopenhauer repeatedly in his writings.
It's a razor's edge, Holden. I don't know how it is in your culture, but in this culture here, hiding away doing math problems for relaxation might be considered asocial or even pathological ... like Winston writing in his thought-pad committing mindcrime in 1984. By "a razor's edge" I mean that this secret realm we sometimes enter is elusive. It's not something one can strive for, and it's not something one can cling to or maintain indefinitely.
I also sympathize with your resentment against celebrity culture. It is a great example of gortdom, since nothing that is so, is so. It is spitting in the face of celebrity culture when one knows he is better off with his humble delight in calmly working through a text studying something that genuinely interests him than to be a Bill Clinton or Obama Barraka ... We have no desire to be idolized or envied by the gorts.
Why are you picking on Torvalds? I thought he was one of our modern day heroes. I may have a smidgeon of religious feeling towards the world of Unix and C ... I guess I too have a few idols ... but maybe none of us is immune to this tendency. Writing operating systems or compilers is just beyond me. It's not false modesty. Just an honest appraisal of the limitations of my abilities. I can handle writing the code for basic but fundamental mathematical procedures and then making them "show their work."
That's what makes me tick. When there is no solution, rather than just returning no answer whatsoever, I make the code politely explain that no solution exists, and the output of the work done in proving this is displayed. I can make versions that just spit out the result or shoot the result to another procedure.
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IDIOT SAVANT:
a mentally defective person with an exceptional skill or talent in a special field, as a highly developed ability to play music or to solve complex mathematical problems mentally at great speed. Think of the origin of the term "geek." [SEE FOOTNOTE]
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geek "sideshow freak," 1916, U.S. carnival and circus slang, perhaps a variant of geck "a fool, dupe, simpleton" (1510s), apparently from Dutch gek or Low German geck, from an imitative verb found in North Sea Germanic and Scandinavian meaning "to croak, cackle," and also "to mock, cheat" (Dutch gekken, German gecken, Danish gjække, Swedish gäcka). The modern form and the popular use with reference to circus sideshow "wild men" is from 1946, in William Lindsay Gresham's novel "Nightmare Alley" (made into a film in 1947 starring Tyrone Power).
"An ordinary geek doesn't actually eat snakes, just bites off chunks of 'em, chicken heads and rats." [Arthur H. Lewis, "Carnival," 1970]
By c. 1983, used in teenager slang in reference to peers who lacked social graces but were obsessed with new technology and computers (such as the Anthony Michael Hall character in 1984's "Sixteen Candles").
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[END FOOTNOTE]
In our era, this is a kind of buzz-word that has some redeeming qualities, implying some kind of obsessive personality that is well-suited to putting the effort into learning things that "more well-balanced and healthy" individuals aren't interested in. They may feel they have much more exciting things to do than read through manuals and tutorials.
I often like to imagine that the computer I use "appreciates" the kinds of things I make it do. It's just my imagination, of course, but I do imagine a machine "prefers" running compilers and debuggers than being used as a deck of cards or a slot machine or just a por-nographic magazine. I'm only kidding, but I feel great peace having two terminals open running similar programs that I made specifically for helping me understand mathematical operations on the fly. The "debugging statements" actually end up being a great help when going through different exercises. I'll let you in on a secret: this was my original intention in studying computer science way back in 1995. I just wanted to be able to write my own little programs to tinker with my own little mathematical interests if I happened to live much longer than one anticipates.
I guess "programming" is not something one learns in a university. To me, it is a very personal affair. In other words, to each his own. It's an activity that harmonizes well with an amateur math junkie. I am permitted to diverge from even those I pay deference to. Alexander Stepanov wants to see programming as a mathematical discipline where one studies Knuth and other fundamental canonical texts. So much of this has to do with classism, but people tend not to acknowledge this fact.
The gorts equate high education with high intelligence. Enter industrial civilization, mass society, and celebrity culture, and the next thing you know, people are measuring one's intelligence by their bank accounts, their clothes, their car, their "mannerisms".
There is an incredible amount of anti-intellectualism in the world, at least in this part of the world. And yet, as you have implied, technical expertise does not mean one has psychological depth or philosophical insight. Still, I don't see these qualities as mutually exclusive.
Anyway ... back to the floor I go ...
Enjoy that brain of yours. At times we feel consciousness is a curse, and perhaps it is, but every now and then, if we can block out the madness, we might enjoy some evenings a million miles from the corporate mindfu-k.
The main thing about gort society is that the gort, by definition, believes that that which is so, is so, when the truth is that perception is not reality.
You have mentioned that you defy the dichotomy between elementary and advanced, and I would like to do the same as far as low-level and high-level programming. Tonight I found my bliss studying an inexpensive Book of Abstract Algebra ... doing the exercises in pencil after working on the code in C++ lifted from the Python code from September.
Once again I have managed to depress myself through writing my stream of consciousness.