// μ = m // dayvan cowboy // music is math

About the Vetta project’s gradual discovery of matrix-oriented programming:

I got used to coding like this on a summer course (way beyond my actual understanding level) on numeric methods for partial differential equations. We used Matlab back then. Then, in the next trimester, I took a neural networks course. The actual course assignments didn’t require much coding, but I spent at least a week writing a somewhat generalized backpropagation learning algorithm in terms of matrices. The code is unreadable now, if not followed with its (long lost now) paper documentation, which consisted of some scrabbling and hollow matrix shapes. Now, I find matrix-oriented programming fascinating and (I was told in my summer course) it’s great for automatic parallelization but it’s somewhat of an anti-pattern for most purposes (like financial code, for example). It also may lead you (Sapir-Whorf hypothesis-wise) to phrasing problems in inappropriate terms. The whole of economics spent the 20th century mis-describing the functioning of a modern economy in matrix form, and I’m not just referring to input-output analysis, but to the greater program of neo-walrasian/debrevian program of general equilibrium.

I was such a dayvan cowboy that I spent many a night rewriting code instead of learning how to use neural net software. Boy, do I miss programming. I feel like I’ve lost some intellectual edge by fitting into the “stable mood” box. Talk about the temptation of dropping the meds.

On A new library allows readers to borrow people for a 30-minute chat. Here’s the experience of one man who offered himself as a human book

I have bipolar disorder, (so far) idiopathic derealization/depersonalization issues, a schizoid personality disorder that has been long in remission (actually it was at its height during my adolescence, and its spontaneous remission has a lot to do with the fact that I didn’t develop schizophrenia) and an attention deficit disorder. I’ve been through three or four radically different drug cocktails, not accounting for the minor variations and dose titiration. Yeah, I’d volunteer for that. I have a blog journal and all but I wish I could do more against the stigma of neurological disorders as incapacitating or making you “less of a person”. When taking the right meds for my condition I’m as much as a productive member of society as anyone else, much like someone with heart problems returns to full productive personhood as soon as their meds stabilize their condition.

Someone labels me an attention-seeker, but I’m actually accused of attention-seeking with theüberspazzen syndrome by friends. “You’re always thinking in terms of your symptoms and meds. That kinda puts me off”. But, hey, I think that’s The Stigma talking, and I refuse to bow down to The Stigma. Being ostensive about narrating your daily experience of the world in terms of the mental illness is a bit like the “queer” strand of the gay rights movement. Maybe I actually overdo self-analysis in terms of bipolar disorder and DP/DR terms, but it’s in unconscious defiance to the idea that you should hide mental illness and try and go about your issues unhinged by the idea you have a diagnosis. Maybe Alone from The Last Psychiatrist does have a point on psychiatry often playing a semiotic game, but if it’s a semiotic game that helps organize the general malaise that the “neurotypical” won’t be able to reason about becase of Sapir-Whorf issues, I’m into it.

I’m not “mentally ill”, I have a damaged brain, and the damaged part is the part that the human species shares with other mammals. The part of the brain that makes us human is alive and kicking — maybe it was alive and kicking more before I started trying to reign in the damaged part — meds aren’t that “clean” — but that’s besides the point.

So, erm, it’s not my friends’ fault that they end up echoing The Stigma. It’s actually the part-of-the-brain-that-makes-us-human doing what everyone does, doing what I do all the time: accepting the established opinion when one does not have the time, the resources or the patience to form one.