Opinions

I like to learn by experimenting with things, so I like it when tools make it safe to fail. I like that it’s safe for me to fail, emotionally. Clown has helped a lot with this. So has git.

It’s good when tools are fun and create flow. When you’re engaged you’re at your best, so you should optimize for fun!

Recently I’ve been applying this to my mathematical studies as well!

Being able to iterate towards a tool that fits you like a glove is one of the beauties of a system like emacs.

…mathematical ideas originate in empirics, although the genealogy is sometimes long and obscure. But, once they are so conceived,
the subject begins to live a peculiar life of its own and is better
compared to a creative one, governed by almost entirely aesthetical
motivations, than to anything else and, in particular, to an empirical
science. There is, however, a further point which, I believe, needs
stressing. As a mathematical discipline travels far from its empirical
source, or still more, if it is a second and third generation only
indirectly inspired by ideas coming from ’reality’, it is beset with
very grave dangers. It becomes more and more purely aestheticising,
more and more purely* Tart pour Tart. This need not be bad, if the
field is surrounded by correlated subjects, which still have closer
empirical connections, or if the discipline is under the influence of
men with an exceptionally well-developed taste. But there is a grave
danger that the subject will develop along the line of least resistance,
that the stream, so far from its source, will separate into a multitude
of insignificant branches, and that the discipline will become a disorganised mass of details and complexities. In other words, at a
great distance from its empirical source, or after much ’abstract’
inbreeding, a mathematical subject is in danger of degeneration.

– von Neumann (from the first paper in his collected works)

“Doing good science is 90% finding a science buddy to constantly talk to about the project.”

Useful subskills:

• Being able to humble yourself and learn from people who have more knowledge or better heuristics
  
• Agency - you can just do things!
  
• Willingness to be bad and practice; comfort failing repeatedly and comfort working on things that are hard.
  
• Deciding that you can learn something; only you can defeat learned helplessness.