Jon -
Thanks for sharing this bit. I can't disagree that the dynamics of
this list includes orbits into (gross) cynicism. Sometimes I look away,
sometimes i make popcorn and (cynically) watch (my riff on glen's riff
on "gross"), and sometimes i. wax up my metaphors and throw down,
shooting my own curls of cynicism.
I think your humble observation of that without contributing to it is of
direct help to me. It rings with the resonances I'm feeling/hearing in
the aftermath of this Charlie Kirk shooting. Cynicism is like a horned
callous, grown there for a purpose under chronic insult, but in the way
an impediment to most all other purposes? And occasionally acutely
interferes with everything good.
In my personal life, I'm more prone to the practical than the
theoretical (by a few intervals) than you I think, but I am also prone
to abstraction over grounded concretation.
Sometimes it serves me in the pursuit of noodling out the tangled web we
(I) keep weaving around ourselves as we scramble forward into the
unknown (minimizing surprisal while pushing the knot of circumstances in
it's bow wave?), but as you might be alluding to (or pointing directly
at?) decoupling from *some* honest attempt at a utility function is
perhaps the ultimate fools strategy.
As you know from our visits here, I surround myself with a world which
presents regular puzzles for me to solve just to keep going in a
practical sense... how to stay warm/cool, what to eat (beyond the eggs
myu chickens and the spinach my garden patch gives me, and whether a
given branch on a given tree might serve us all better as next winters
firewood, this summer's shade or a lesson in humility when it cracks and
falls on something else I find utility in.
To many, these puzzles might be a burden, but to me they are my saving
grace, something to tether the bouyant balloon of my mind from floating
off into the stratosphere well above the clouds it thought it was rising
to dance among.
I just spent a week with two active 9 year olds in Wisconsin, a few
hours with a 13 year old and planning a loooong drive with a 7 year
old. I'm envious of those of you who have that kind of innocence in
your lives daily... it has been decades for me and only now do I
appreciate how much it shaped me for the better.
- Steve
On 9/11/25 9:40 am, Jon Zingale wrote:
"""
Well, IDK Lawvere (other than from that category book). But it would be interesting to, while young, formulate
the predicates you'd like to satisfy when you're old. Renee' and I regularly marvel that we're still alive. When
we were young, we couldn't even imagine we'd live this long, much less imagine what properties we might have. I
suppose it's that ugly diachronic/narrativity thing again. Like ChatGPT, we can tell ourselves stories about
anything. And we'll even believe them. When I was a kid, "story" was synonymous with
"lying". "You're not telling us stories, are you?" - a regular question coming from my
parents. My response was literally irrelevant. They already had their narrative of whatever I might or might not
have done. Whose telling the stories, here?!?! >8^D
"""
He had a great impact on my mathematical life and thought. I
considered him a spiritual father and I regret not writing to him
before he passed. He was wonderfully generous with his time and his
stories were poignant, keeping a target in mind. I suppose I am
sharing because it is one of my happiest memories and because I
believe the list could use a little less cynicism. There is so much
cynicism everywhere.
As to who I wish to be? I am already so completely different from my
earliest imaginings; I wouldn't know where to start. Even as of late,
my perspectives and thoughts are radically different from what they
were months ago. In some ways, this seems catalyzed by a shift away
from pure mathematics and toward developing tools for doing
science—catalyzed by the overwhelm I feel when confronted by anything
I attempt to build that might stand. The specificity and idiosyncratic
nature of the phenomena I am studying does a lot to eat through my
theorist leanings. I am not an academic; what I am hoping to build
must work. The whole exercise is altering my stance. The past appears
as a prelude to much less than I imagined. The toy models I and others
seem to carry remind me of the useless idols and charms that died in
the hands, or around the necks, of the early Christian settlers to
this new world. A child's baseball glove in a box of belongings,
carried by a woman on her first day of college.
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