Retrospective

Today I did some work for 8090. I wrote an introduction as a response to one of the philo bac prompts as I had intended. I did some work for my computer science assignment. I did quite a bit of bicycling, and I also worked out today.

Today was leg day, and around half way through I had seated leg curls, and I couldn’t find a leg curl machine, and I asked somebody and he pointed me to the leg extension machine, and I sort of nodded and thanked him, and then went on my phone to see if I could substitute the leg curls for something else, but I guess he thought I didn’t know how to use the machine, and so started showing me, so I got in the machine and started doing the workout, and after like 8 reps (probably reasonable for a set), I got up to fill up my water, and then just left the building. I probably shouldn’t have done that. Tomorrow I will rewrite the workout to remove the leg curls.

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Tomorrow I have a presentation for my TKS demo day, and it’s sort of surreal because that will be the last time I’m doing something real for TKS, and then it ends. Odd.

Tasks:

  • Finish computer science passion project presentation,
  • Do and publish philo bac prompt response,
  • Make a set of notes for + crush demo day,
  • {{REDACTED FOR CAREERIST REASONS}}
  • Do work for 8090,
  • {{REDACTED FOR CAREERIST REASONS}}

P.S.: These daily updates are usually my only type of journaling, but this means that things that, for one reason or another, I cannot publish on my blog, I also cannot write down for my future self. I think this is dumb, so what I am going to do going forward is to keep uncensored versions of my journal entries for my personal viewing and then redact them before publication.

Critique of my philo bac response by Claude

Original Response This is my summary of its critiques:

  • I turned a philosophy question into an economics question,
  • I, too quickly, tried to reduce it to something tractable, but “a good problématique opens out, it never reduces”,
  • I didn’t analyze the key verb (“besoin”),
  • I sort of shrug off art as a means to an end as if it’s obvious. “I would argue that art serves much the same purpose as education”, the key word being purpose: the tension is that many argue that art is an end in itself.
    Claude’s suggested problematique:

Do we need artists the way we need farmers — as a means to sustain life — or does the very fact that we make and want art reveal a different order of need, one that can’t be cashed out in utility: the need for a life that is more than survival? And if art’s value is not instrumental, is “need” even the right word — or do we need artists precisely because some human goods are useless

and action item for me for tomorrow: “before you write a single sentence, spend three minutes on the key noun. Write down two or three rival senses of it.”