A Person Can Be Stupid, But a Face? That's Impossible

If you haven't noticed, the more busy I am in a week, the later this email tends to make it out of my inbox. It is Friday today, which means that I was very busy this week. Allow me to describe this week to you in the coming paragraphs.

I scored 80% on my French writing again. I'm telling you, it's impossible. I talked to my teacher about it but she was unable to tell me what exactly was causing the lower scores. I think that I might give up and never ever try to write a word in French again. Just kidding. I don't usually do that with things.

I watched a pretty solid Italian movie, in which a Northern Italian school teacher goes to Southern Italy on a secretarial error to teach a class of 3rd graders who live in a very rough and tumble neighborhood. I feel like I talk about movies every time, so I'll keep it short today. One of the kids in the movie is starting down a really bad path, and his brother gets taken by the police. The teacher happens to be there and watches the event unfold. He is holding flowers that he bought for himself, but he decides that they would do better in the hands of the grieving mother who just lost her son. He walks up to the door of people that he knows hate him for being a Northerner, thinks twice about knocking, and realizes it would be better to leave them on the door instead. This scene is a powerful example of performing service without drawing attention to oneself. The secret to a kinder, less divided world isn't going out of your way to do something for someone so that others will see your example, it's doing things just for the sake of doing them. If people did a little bit more sneaky flower hiding, I think that the world would be a better place. That's all I'm sayin'.

For those invested in my success, my bracket is currently #80,127 out of 24.4 million brackets. I am very proud of this fact. We will see if that is still true after the remaining Sweet 16 matches face-off tonight. I should probably start betting money at this point. Who needs college when you're ranked 99.7th percentile? My March Madness bracket has a higher score than any of my exams have ever had. I got 96.7% last year too. This might be a viable career.

I'm going to Bear Lake in about an hour, hence my insane amount of business this week. Business should be pronounced "busy-ness" in this context. I had to take my French midterm today as well. I haven't the slightest clue how that went. In physics we are learning about crystals, which are pretty cool. They're also super complicated. I am now attending 3 research groups because I'm still deciding which one I want to be a part of. That sounds a lot more impressive than it is because I don't actually do anything for any of them yet besides sit and listen to their very confusing ideas.

I'm so excited because school is almost ovvvver! I only have 3 weeks left and then I am free from tests and homework for a sweet 5 months.

My sister delivered her 2 "hmphs" and stylized "me too" perfectly in her school play. So proud of Violet for the hard work she put in to learn those 4 words. Hazel also had a significant part in Seussical the Musical, and she did excellently even with the striped socks that she intensely informed me cut off her circulation. I applaud the both of them.

My mom makes me take Ubers when she doesn't want to come pick me up from school. It has only happened twice, but that is too many. I think it is ridiculous. I could take public transportation for free most of the way home. My Uber luck is good and terrible at the same time. It feels so mean to just sit there and ignore them, so I'll usually ask them how their day is going. After that, they do not stop talking. I don't want to just ignore them, but I low-key don't want to talk to them. 

I'm listening to another of Malcolm Gladwell's books and it is not nearly as good as Outliers or Revenge of the Tipping Point. I have been inspired to begin writing a book of my own, however. We'll see if I ever finish it. It starts out with two rival Scottish football teams. Analytical non-fiction is the name of the game. I'll send a link once the first chapter is complete. I spent a couple hours on it last week, but I can definitely sink more time into it once school is out and all my friends disappear.

Surprise rant in 3... 2... 1...

IHateBYUBecauseTheyAreStupidAndPennyPinchingEvenThoughTheyAreSoRichAndTheyMakeMeSoMadCauseNoneOfTheirOfficesAreCohesiveAndSomeOfThemDon'tEvenHavePhonesSoTheyMakeYouPlayEmailTagForWeeksToTryAndGetAholdOfAnyone...

I could go on, but I will spare you the mental effort of trying to read writing without spaces. Also, just in case it ever comes in handy in a game of Trivial Pursuit or Jeopardy, the above method of capitalization is called "camel case" and is very common in programming and computer science, since spaces can sometimes throw code through a loop.

Anyways, remember this whole Paris ordeal that's happening soonish? and how it is to be covered entirely by scholarships and grants? According to BYU's financial folks, it still is, but I still have to pay upfront and be reimbursed later, which is not what their website says. It's fine, it's just really annoying. What if I wasn't in a position where generous people can afford to front costs and wait for that incoming money? I signed a contract and my account with high charges would be sent to a legal collections agency. It's just stupid.

While on the topic of stupid organizational supremacy, I have recently learned that my dissatisfaction with my religious service seems to stem from an Area issue. For those who don't know the church lingo, that's just the people above the guy who was in charge of me. Oh, and finding those boundaries is only possible because people reported where their missions were. Church bros make it very hard to find the information of what missions are included in which organizational units, which is frustrating. That is all I have to say about that right now.

I talked to some fellow shtudents (say that British-ly) from the Applied Math program and I am excited about my hiring prospects after school ends. I think it may be something along the lines of "money money money," as Mr. Krabs and my sister say.

Uhm I think that's all I can think to talk about. I need to go find something to eat because my stomach is hungry. 

Cheers,

Willyuhm

[ps. The subject of this email is a song that I think is funny, but if you are offended by swear words, don't watch it. You have been warned.]

I Proposed (do not assume anything)

You will never guess what day it is today, unless you attend Brigham Young University. Yes, it is March 21st, but this day carries significance. There is a weight to this particular day, a certain atmospheric memorial of those who came before us. A moment of silence for the nights in the testing center and skipping class to take tests, a day of remembrance for the fallen grades that didn't get to grow up and become A's like their parents hoped they would. Today is an acknowledgement of hard work and of those who have guessed on multiple choice tests questions because they had no idea what the questions were about. We see you.

Today is Spring Day.

For those who aren't familiar, Spring Day is BYU's version of Spring Break. We get one Friday off, which isn't actually off because most teachers don't change their assignment schedules to incorporate this break, so it really means you don't have class on a random Friday but still have all the homework. I cherish this day, I love it and care for it, because I would definitely rather go through 15 straight weeks of school and get out in the middle of April when nobody else is done with school yet than have a week long break somewhere in there. I will leave it up to you to decide whether I love or hate this day.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I haven't written something in about 10 days, but I have a couple things that I can talk about this time! Hooray. Sometimes I just ramble about anything I can think of on these things 'cause I promised I would. Anyways, you'll never guess what I did this week.

1. I Proposed to A Stranger...

...and it was the scariest thing I've ever done. I went to my friend's FHE activity and they were doing this thing called a GooseChase where everyone signs in on their phone and splits into two teams. There are 100 challenges and you have 1 hour to complete as many as possible. The catch is that you have to video them or take a picture and upload it to your team's list of challenges so that everyone can see them. I got an egg cracked on my head, put oil on my friend, had a rap battle with a random apartment, ate a piece of bread soaked in water, and more. The worst one was definitely the proposal. I had to get on one knee and say that the Spirit told me to propose to them and it was horrifying and I'm never doing that again. She seemed surprised at first and then intrigued but I stood up and explained what was going on before anything else could happen. Terrifying.

2. I Accidentally Held the Door for some XX chromosome people:

We were walking into the Cannon Center and I was in the front of my little group of friends, so I held the door. Some girls walked through and said "oh, thanks". I didn't want them to be confused, so in 3 millivanilla seconds my mind thought: "ohyoushouldprobablyexplaintothemthatyoureholdingthedoorforyourfriends". What came out was, "oh, it's not for you." They laughed (hallelujah), but I was so embarrassed and promptly walked directly to the bathroom and waited til they were gone. I have this problem of just trying to explain something or say what is happening or give a compliment and it doesn't come out how it does in my head. It's gonna get me killed some day. I'll be staring an armed robber in the face and try to tell him that my password is too complicated to tell someone, and I'll say something like, "oh, you wouldn't get it. It would be too hard for you to understand," and then he'd shoot me or something.

3. I took tests. I'm not saying anymore about it.

4. Venmo informed me by email that I had money to spend in my account. I was pretty sure that I didn't but figured maybe they knew something I didn't, so I checked. $3.04 in my account. I could hear the V laughing at me and telling me how poor I was. Stupid Venmo.

5. We lost in the water polo tournament. Womp womp.

6. I have never really cared about March Madness much before, but I care way too much this year for some reason. How did I not see how interesting it was before? There's so many stats to compare that help you pick winners. It's like my version of train schedules if you know what I mean. I have decided that I would love to do a study: Do predominantly Christian (or otherwise religiously affiliated) universities make riskier plays when they are at critical moments in a game? Think about it: BYU is famous for either coming in clutch or choking, and rarely anything in the middle. Think of this past football season and how many clips you saw of BYU pulling out the victory at the last second. There were at least 5! Basically, I wanna know if religious schools play the odds or take risks. When down by 2 points, what's the average shot distance for a religious school compared to a secular school? Does a belief in God give people overconfidence in their abilities? or does it actually help them somehow? I don't know, I just think it would be interesting to look at. On another note, my bracket is doing really well. I think March Madness is my new favorite holiday.

I'm probably thinking along the lines of studies because I just finished listening to Malcolm Gladwell's Revenge of the Tipping Point. 25 years ago, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book over many 15 minute periods, called The Tipping Point. The book was highly successful, diving deep into what Gladwell called "tipping points": moments where a trend, idea, group, or other such concept changes in favor of some other dynamic. The book analyzed how ideas spread like epidemics and there are rules that help ideas spread. After 25 years (during which an actual global pandemic occurred), Malcolm Gladwell decided to revisit this book idea and talk about his ideas in more depth, as well as correct some of what he felt he got wrong. I have never been bored reading one of his books. This one is free to listen to on Spotify with premium, and it's only 8 hours. This book talked about a lot of different things like bank robberies, cheetah/panther genetic diversity, and the adoption of the idea that the Holocaust actually occurred. However, the one I found most interesting was the idea of a monoculture and small area variation that creates localized tipping points. I think that Utah Valley definitely fits the description of a monoculture. The renamed town in the book was called Poplar Grove, which reminded me a lot of Pleasant Grove. It was a place where everyone was semi-rich, high performing, and well liked. It seemed like a utopia, until kids started committing suicide. They tried to figure out a cause and realized that it probably had to do something with the pressure that the community put on being elite. The kids who died weren't failures, they were #1 students in their disciplines and sports, which is why it was so perplexing. Utah has one of highest suicide rates in the country and one of the worst mental health dynamics. Is there pressure to succeed? Most definitely. It was really interesting to hear Gladwell's analysis of a monoculture and what it can do to the group and its individuals.

I've also been thinking a lot about thinking this week. Thank you, Provo Peaks Elementary, for teaching me the word "metacognition". Where would I be without you? More specifically, I've been thinking about critical thinking. In the wake of the recent release of the JFK files, I have heard so many conspiracy theories among my peers, and I genuinely cannot understand how these intelligent, logical people can believe in something with absolutely no substance of truth. I'm not calling them stupid at all. The only thing that I can think of to explain it is that it's more fun to believe in crazy things because it makes you feel like you've figured something out and creates an ingroup. As human beings, we like being inside of ingroups, not in the outgroups. Conspiracy theories make you feel like you are privileged somehow. I think the group disparity effect heavily qualifies an idea as a conspiracy theory. If an idea you believe in makes you feel that way, it is worth examining and figuring out how objectively true it is, especially by hearing the other side. It could be right, but the odds decrease as the concept or idea raises you over others. Real truth should not lift certain groups above others; it should simply increase understanding between the groups.

I think that the whole "your mind is a bucket" symbol is a pretty stupid metaphor. In case you love that metaphor, let me explain before you get offended. This allegory makes a base level assumption that I don't think is right: it assumes that you have no choice over what comes toward your bucket. Do not misinterpret what I mean here. I don't mean that you can't choose what goes inside the bucket, because that's kind of the whole point. I mean that certain things will never reach your bucket at all because they've been pre-screened. Your critical thinking creates a filter for information. If it doesn't pass your critical thinking, it doesn't ever reach the point that you have to decide anything about it. In the context of JFK declassification (and really any political event), there are a few questions that one must ask to facilitate critical thinking and promote truthfulness. I hate to break it to you, but they are the same ones you've known since 4th grade English class. First, who is writing this or spreading the information? This immediately gives you clues to why they wrote it. Is it being spread to increase fear, promote an individual, or induce some reaction? Are they known to bias their opinions, or are they reputable for purely provided information? This is highlighted in the book Cultish, another must-read that I found incredibly informational. Second, what does the actual information say about the topic? Not someone else's opinion on the matter, what do the facts say? I understand that in some cases, there is just too much information such that you can't read it all and decide on your own for everything. This makes the first point that much more important. If a headline makes you feel afraid somehow, that usually means that someone is doing it on purpose. Yes, scary things do happen, but there has never been a case in history where the problem was unsolvable.

That is seriously important, so I'll repeat it.

There has never been an event in the course of human history that was not worked through somehow. If there was, we wouldn't be here and humanity would have ended.

It is really easy to use fear to get people to do something, which is why misinformation so often gets people to feel afraid.

If you are a careful reader, you may notice that I didn't pick any sides on this matter. If you know me well, you might be able to predict what I might say about specific matters, but I didn't say anything here because that isn't my point. I am not saying that one side is right. I am saying that if you put in enough effort to understand pure facts and consider context, anyone should have the ability to choose the "right side", which may be different for specific people.

I am really passionate about reducing misinformation in the world and making decisions based on factual evidence. I cannot beg you enough. Please, especially my friends in Utah, a monoculture of ideas; do not take someone else's opinion for truth. Form your own opinion by considering all the angles and postpone emotion for the sake of belief. I don't care where you fall on an ideological spectrum, just please please please (Sabrina) make it your opinion and your ideas, not somebody else's. If it is really what you believe in and you can demonstrate that you have looked at both sides, then I don't care which side it is. That means it's right to you, and that's all I can ask.

If you made it this far, congratulations! You clearly care about aligning your beliefs with truth. Those who didn't will never read this, so they'll never know that I didn't congratulate them. Mwahahaha. Gladwell's book also talked about how our beliefs are very very influenced by the media we consume, so maybe if enough people told people to believe in what they've made informed decisions on, things would be a little less crazy.

I'm sure you're eager to get the rest of your day back. #sorrynotsorry for the 15ish minutes it probably took for you to read this. To close, I'll tell you one more thing I learned this week.

This is an Escher Sentence:

"More people have been to Berlin than I have."

This seems to make sense, but try to reason through it. It actually makes no sense at all. Is that a symbol? We'll never know...

Ta-ta, dahlings,

William Mode

[She] Loves Me Not

Hello lads and lattices. Lassies? Shout out to my Ir-ish friends (you know who you are) who can someday teach me the correct verbiage of the legends themselves.

My week was pretty much the most exciting week a person can have. I procrastinated studying for my upcoming exams because it is, in fact, extremely demoralizing when you have different layers of homework. Instead, I enjoyed the warm weather and played pickleball without shoes on. I now wish that I had put shoes on, but not enough to guarantee that such an occurrence will be singular in my lifetime.

Today I watched the new Captain America, which was pretty much the worst movie I've ever seen. It was as though a 13 year old in a low level drama program wrote their first play and said, "oh my goodness, i think i have something here." They didn't actually have anything though, and what resulted was a laughable non-comedy that was meant to be a solid action flick.

In total, utter contrast, I watched an incredible film that was both unsettling and entertaining. I highly recommend it for French and English speakers alike. It was called "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not." Mwahaha jumpscare title. I can't go into much detail because I really think it deserves to be experienced to have any sort of dramatic effect, but I will say this: I hated it by the end of the first half. My hatred for the first half fuels the enigmatic second half, in which the perspective flips. For those who have been a part of my movie guessing game, this was the closest I've come to losing. I was able to figure out what generally was going to occur before the second part began and realized many of the small pieces of "evidence" that were hidden throughout the film. I didn't expect the extreme nature of the character's condition, but I think it does a moderately good job at depicting the type of mental illness that it aims to. It was a very thought-provoking film that I immediately thought "I am going to try to forget I ever watched that" afterwards, but I think everyone ought to see it at least once. If you can't fathom watching it alone, invite me and I'll watch it with you even though I just saw it.

Today was tiring. My days are too long, but it's good for me. They ensure that I sleep at night because I worked enough during the day that I am tired. One of my problems in the summer is that I don't do things to exhaust my brain, so when I try to sleep, it stays active and runs a billion miles an hour for no reason. It then takes forever to fall asleep. I have discovered that when I do things all day that make me tired, it is easier to fall asleep. Weird how that works. The tangle-y saying "mother knows best" seems like it might have some level of truth to it.

I hate school but I also like it. It's a very strange mix that you probably already picked up on. I am looking at being a part of one of two, maybe three research groups in the physics department. I might also look at something in the math department. I think cryptography is super sick, but I don't know how cool I think it is. I am a firm believer that you can do anything as long as you are willing to put in enough work, but I do also believe that if you pick the right thing it'll be much easier to put in that work, resulting in a much better outcome for less work. I'm kinda at that point right now in my academic path. I know that I love physics and several other things, but I don't know which one I would also be the best at. If I put those two things together, then I should be set up for quite a bit of success, I would think.

I think that's pretty much all. I got to experience a great example of non-judgement and caring and empathy, etc. that I wish the whole world could learn from. 

I'll let you go to bed now, or to school, or to your p-day activities if you're reading this in a morning setting.

Bye bye,

Guillaume Ott

A Brief Essay On Madness

 A Brief Essay on Madness

I begin with a question: what is madness? There is a mystique that surrounds insanity; something within a human being that defies their humanity, especially when there is no particular rhyme or reason for its existence at all.

Madness is labeled as such when behavior is completely ignorant of circumstance or situation. Delusion is an excellent example: a person acts as though something were true despite any and all implausibility surrounding the reality they have created for themselves. Any attempts to convince a victim of delusion out of their illusion are futile. They live solely in the world that they know. To them it is reality: the perspective which informs one of the world is indistinguishable from the world itself. Are we not all the same in this sense? We believe in the illusions that are the least illusory to us. We crave what feels true and virtuous because it seems to be right in the very depths of our souls. Can we blame those stricken with our diagnosis of madness for attempting to do the same?

Insanity seems to come in many forms, and they all tend to involve similar elements centered around something that is objectively inaccurate for the typical human experience. Whether that is falling into an obsessive version of attraction hardly reminiscent of love (erotomania, as portrayed in the 2003 film "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not", or in Mark David Chapman's murder of John Lennon) or talking to people who don't exist to solve complex, secretive plots by foreign governments (as seen in John Nash's case of schizophrenia), behaviors that signify madness involve behaviors that are viewed as odd, strange, or potentially self-destructive by those close to the victim. Insanity is especially noticeable when it takes a toll on a person's ability to function in the "normal" social manner. Human beings are hardwired to be social. They evolved in groups and became very good at understanding one another over thousands of years of evolution. This means that these areas of the brain are highly developed. Because of their development, they demand a significant amount of energy to work as intended. If they are not used as much, the brain has more energy to devote to any given task, since it isn't diverting it to the social centers that other brains use so frequently.

Genius is, in a sense, madness. The thoughts and behavior of a genius in any particular field may not align with that which is "normal", since their minds do not prioritize the same things. For someone like Ludwig Boltzmann (the physicist for whom the Boltzmann Constant is named after), his mood swings often fueled his work in the physical sciences. Bipolar manic episodes created a euphoric state of mind in which Boltzmann could work for days on end, consistently thinking about and progressing the physics he was focused on. Another case similar to Boltzmann is Robert Lowell, the renowned poet diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Lowell's poems contained something so deeply human engrained in the very words on the page, yet his state of being while writing them was often complete insanity. After he began taking lithium, a mood stabilizer, his poems noticeably shift in depth and complexity to become simpler and less critically acclaimed. What might account for this? These "disturbed" genius seem to have more energy free for thinking about their respective fields, thus creating works and theories that represent the opposite of their state of mind. It is as though a bit of madness is required to create something in the caliber most recognize as genius.

In his book Gödel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter presents the Balloon Model of Knowledge: as a balloon fills with air from the outside, it's surface area increases at a nonlinear rate, exposing it to more air. Applied to a mind's knowledge accrual, this symbol becomes a powerful tool to view human knowledge. As a mind fills with more knowledge that it didn't previously have, it becomes exposed to more and more concepts, ideas, theories, or facts that it doesn't currently understand, thus increasing the opportunity for learning. If a person doesn't have to release the air to other balloons or storage tanks, then they can use that air sole for expanding the surface area of the balloon. Likewise, if a person doesn't have to use their knowledge on trivial tasks, they have more available to produce results in their respective fields.

I think the "mad scientist" trope represents some truth. Not all insane people are genius, but many geniuses are insane. The true genius, then, is one who can balance both the social, interhuman aspect of life with the inhuman world of knowledge and understanding. These are who we should recognize as genius, but often fail to do so as their results aren't as spectacularly measurable like some of their mad counterparts.

Am I mad? I'd say that I wasn't, yet I think that perhaps I am. We are all mad in some way or another. I have several traits that are potentially indicative of some typical form of madness, yet I've never known someone who had absolutely none of those traits. My madness and I are learning to live with one another as I realize what it demands from me and I realize what I can demand of it. I can only hope that someday it does not ask more of me than I ask of it, which is about all anyone can do. Ironically, a small amount of madness may be the most human thing of all: it is only when we become too human that we call ourselves mad or insane.

Why was Google's suggested subject prompt "How was the movie?"

Today was pretty fun; I guess it's only been like 5 days since my last email, so not a ton of excitement has occurred since then.

I watched the Oscars. I'd seen practically 0 of the movies that got awards. I guess I need to go watch The Brutalist. It won a lot of awards.

Two cool things happened today: I went skiing and saw a kid dancing. I will explain them in that order, and not vice versa. Some people from my work decided we should go night skiing, which we did tonight. It was pretty awful snow. It was more like gravel-sized ice pebbles, so it was kinda hard to enjoy. Nothing like the snow Ethan and I shredded through last year. That was good snow.

Now, for the dancing kid. This time it isn't me, I promise. The library got evacuated and the police showed up, probably because someone pulled a fire alarm. I was walking past listening to "15 Minutes" by Sabrina Carpenter, and I noticed a kid dancing. He was dancing pretty perfectly with my music, so I stopped and just watched him. It was one of the coolest moments of my life, probably. I couldn't have choreographed the dance better myself. It built and released at the chorus and didn't miss a beat, literally. Every single move was in sync with the sound playing in my ears only, hence why I watched this young lad for three minutes and 12 seconds. It was breathtaking. If you think I'm kidding, I'm not.

Okay, okay, I do have some actually exciting news. No, I'm not getting married. No, I didn't speak to someone with two adjacent X chromosomes. It is so much better than those things.

I am going to Paris! I got accepted to the study abroad program, so I'll be in France from Sept. 12 to Dec 5. I am very excited. I will have to speak real French to people, so that'll be an adventure. We should be doing some pretty cool things, and I figured I'd never get such a chance again, so I applied. W choice by me.

I'm supposed to go to a research meeting tomorrow. We'll see how that goes. I don't know the first thing about computational research of black holes. Maybe someday I'll give ol' Steve a run for his money. Well, a roll for his money, anyways. Running isn't really his strong suit these days. I'm trying to find some kind of research that I might be really interested in. I'd love to do something in string theory or the standard model, cause those are both pretty cool. Will I have a career where I get paid to do something? Who knows? Maybe I'll just be poor forever. It'd probably be alright.

Well, good luck with your week this week, I guess. Touch some grass for me, screenager.

William "DeFoe" Ott