Roads Less Traveled By
So as an update for those of you not aware, I've contacted all three of the advisers I need for my planned triple-major in Physics, Mathematics, and Philosophy. And yeah, Dennet's advising me for philosophy, which is in at least a few ways rather awesome.
As someone about to blast himself through college in three years with three majors, I'm naturally worried that I'm doing the wrong thing here. I have some legitimate suspicions that my current path has been determined as much by administrative chance as by what would actually be a good match for me as a person. Thus, I thought to explore here some of the alternative paths I might still pursue, if only to torment myself with more indecision.
First, I should admit that as a child, I thought I would grow up to be a writer. Stories are my life, and roughly 90% of the people I know are fictional (this connects to another more complicated topic that I might cover here). I don't consider my attempts at writing to show much promise, but perhaps with training I could be something. Then again, so far I've never encountered a writing class that improved my writing in any way past the basics of grammar and spelling. Then there's the issue that I don't seem to have a writer's eye, as it were. When I think of a room I think in general terms, about the feeling it creates or the basic shape, never about the kind of details that writers need to evoke the place in others. The final issue is that being a writer, in addition to being a very risky, uncertain career path, is a sure way to let the splendidly analytical portion of my brain rot.
I do a lot of amateur acting, and some people seem to think I'm getting good at it. An acting career is even more uncertain than a writing one. Acting takes energy and physical ability that I simply don't have. Even more importantly, acting means always saying someone else's words, promoting someone else's ideas, and I'm very much the kind of person who wants to be known for my own ideas. Add on the brain rot of writing times ten, and this doesn't sound like a good idea.
Next, let's examine an old speculation, psychology. It's true, many of the things I'm interested in in philosophy are essentially psychological questions: identity, morality, etc. One potential reason that I'm always searching for some transcendental meaning of life is because I'm not very good with people, and the science of people could very well help with that. However, I hate fuzzy science, and while some psychology isn't all that fuzzy, it's still much more fuzzy than physics or math. While psychology would thus be quite a bad idea for a career, it will probably be something I look into over the years to support my points in other fields.
If 90% of the people I know are fictional, at least half of the remainder are people engaged in public debate. Pundits of all stripes. The duel of ideas attracts me, but it's not a career really so much as something people just end up in, without any relevant qualifications. How to end up arguing in the public eye is an important concern for me, but one I may simply have to drop, as it appears to mostly be a matter of chance and personal magnetism.
RPG design seems like writing but easier. On the other hand, it's rather limited, and I would like to grow up and interact with reality some time.
I've been dismissing lightweights here, but there's one serious contender: Computer Science. Computers present analytical challenges equal to those in theoretical physics (and indeed are often involved in that analysis). They also allow extremes of creativity, creativity furthermore well suited to an analytical mind, with the same ease of complex creation present in RPG design. I like to think of myself as a mad scientist, but to be a true mad scientist you need mad technology. The world can't be conquered with mad theory, after all. Artificial Intelligence is only a bit lower on the sci-fi-ometer than time travel and wormholes, thus adequately appeasing my 90% constituency. Finally, computers offer levels of zoos of facts and factoids, the kind of thing my brain thrives on. Whatever successor supplants the Standard Model, could it ever have the complexity of the madcap world of computer languages, programs, etc? Sure, I get a surge of glee when people talk about stau and gravitinos (yes I spelled both of those right: supersymmetry FTW!), but would I not get the same surge from python, etc, especially if I knew more about it?
While computer science gives me a bit less pundit cred than theoretical physics or philosophy, that's not my main worry. The main thing that worries me is that, let's face it, I'm too old for computer science. Anyone my age intending to pursue computer science started programming in middle school, and by now already knows several languages. There are those who grew up computer people, and there are those who didn't, and I'm one of the latter. Bridging that gap is going to take vast amounts of training, and in the end I may still be inferior to most of the people in my field. And I don't want to be inferior to anybody. I want to be one of the best. Maybe that's because of that 90% fictional contingent, all those people I know of who were famous enough that I know of them, so that they're my standard for importance and relevance in life, rather than the people around me. I don't know. All I know is that I want to be the best I can be, and I've got some sort of delusion that that means the best in my field. And I don't think computer science will do that.
On the other hand, I've got more than half of my physics and major majors already. While I don't have the same advancement in philosophy, I feel like I need some liberal-artsy lifeline or I'm going to explode. Anyway, that's the situation. Comments welcome.
As someone about to blast himself through college in three years with three majors, I'm naturally worried that I'm doing the wrong thing here. I have some legitimate suspicions that my current path has been determined as much by administrative chance as by what would actually be a good match for me as a person. Thus, I thought to explore here some of the alternative paths I might still pursue, if only to torment myself with more indecision.
First, I should admit that as a child, I thought I would grow up to be a writer. Stories are my life, and roughly 90% of the people I know are fictional (this connects to another more complicated topic that I might cover here). I don't consider my attempts at writing to show much promise, but perhaps with training I could be something. Then again, so far I've never encountered a writing class that improved my writing in any way past the basics of grammar and spelling. Then there's the issue that I don't seem to have a writer's eye, as it were. When I think of a room I think in general terms, about the feeling it creates or the basic shape, never about the kind of details that writers need to evoke the place in others. The final issue is that being a writer, in addition to being a very risky, uncertain career path, is a sure way to let the splendidly analytical portion of my brain rot.
I do a lot of amateur acting, and some people seem to think I'm getting good at it. An acting career is even more uncertain than a writing one. Acting takes energy and physical ability that I simply don't have. Even more importantly, acting means always saying someone else's words, promoting someone else's ideas, and I'm very much the kind of person who wants to be known for my own ideas. Add on the brain rot of writing times ten, and this doesn't sound like a good idea.
Next, let's examine an old speculation, psychology. It's true, many of the things I'm interested in in philosophy are essentially psychological questions: identity, morality, etc. One potential reason that I'm always searching for some transcendental meaning of life is because I'm not very good with people, and the science of people could very well help with that. However, I hate fuzzy science, and while some psychology isn't all that fuzzy, it's still much more fuzzy than physics or math. While psychology would thus be quite a bad idea for a career, it will probably be something I look into over the years to support my points in other fields.
If 90% of the people I know are fictional, at least half of the remainder are people engaged in public debate. Pundits of all stripes. The duel of ideas attracts me, but it's not a career really so much as something people just end up in, without any relevant qualifications. How to end up arguing in the public eye is an important concern for me, but one I may simply have to drop, as it appears to mostly be a matter of chance and personal magnetism.
RPG design seems like writing but easier. On the other hand, it's rather limited, and I would like to grow up and interact with reality some time.
I've been dismissing lightweights here, but there's one serious contender: Computer Science. Computers present analytical challenges equal to those in theoretical physics (and indeed are often involved in that analysis). They also allow extremes of creativity, creativity furthermore well suited to an analytical mind, with the same ease of complex creation present in RPG design. I like to think of myself as a mad scientist, but to be a true mad scientist you need mad technology. The world can't be conquered with mad theory, after all. Artificial Intelligence is only a bit lower on the sci-fi-ometer than time travel and wormholes, thus adequately appeasing my 90% constituency. Finally, computers offer levels of zoos of facts and factoids, the kind of thing my brain thrives on. Whatever successor supplants the Standard Model, could it ever have the complexity of the madcap world of computer languages, programs, etc? Sure, I get a surge of glee when people talk about stau and gravitinos (yes I spelled both of those right: supersymmetry FTW!), but would I not get the same surge from python, etc, especially if I knew more about it?
While computer science gives me a bit less pundit cred than theoretical physics or philosophy, that's not my main worry. The main thing that worries me is that, let's face it, I'm too old for computer science. Anyone my age intending to pursue computer science started programming in middle school, and by now already knows several languages. There are those who grew up computer people, and there are those who didn't, and I'm one of the latter. Bridging that gap is going to take vast amounts of training, and in the end I may still be inferior to most of the people in my field. And I don't want to be inferior to anybody. I want to be one of the best. Maybe that's because of that 90% fictional contingent, all those people I know of who were famous enough that I know of them, so that they're my standard for importance and relevance in life, rather than the people around me. I don't know. All I know is that I want to be the best I can be, and I've got some sort of delusion that that means the best in my field. And I don't think computer science will do that.
On the other hand, I've got more than half of my physics and major majors already. While I don't have the same advancement in philosophy, I feel like I need some liberal-artsy lifeline or I'm going to explode. Anyway, that's the situation. Comments welcome.