I picked up this book to read with the goal of understanding mathematics, and I finished reading it feeling like I had failed miserably at that. But I dare say it wasn’t my fault.
Written by David Bessis, Mathematica is as hard to read as the formula-filled math books that the author himself criticizes. The book’s purpose was to demystify the teaching of mathematics by explaining how to intuitively understand the concepts behind equations and nomenclature, creating analogies and comparisons along the way. At times, the author brings up interesting points, such as the part where he describes and updates the “cognition systems,” presenting intuition, reason, and “meditation,” and how to interact with these systems to build an understanding of mathematical objects. And at certain points, the author even brings up some exercises and attitudes that are truly practical, presenting useful tools for studying subjects in general.
The problem is that the practical knowledge is lost amidst pages and pages of biographies of mathematicians and himself, in addition to many digressions and constant repetitions. The book is almost an autobiography, more than proposing a new approach to the study of mathematics. There are twenty chapters and I could barely condense practical information to finish one; it was like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack.
Anyway, Mathematica is interesting as a point of philosophical discussion about mathematics, and even as a tool for reflection on the act of studying itself. But I found it weak in what really interested me, which is providing tools to practice abstraction and understanding of mathematics. It is worth a leisurely read, if you have the patience.
Because, after all, this is my site and I can do whatever I want it. I even created a new category just to talk about it.
In the last few weeks, the blog disappeared, and all that was left was a link to my Mastodon account, and for a simple reason: I deleted everything. I deleted it partly because I was fed up, partly because I didn’t see any value in anything I had written, and partly because I no longer saw any sense in what I was putting here. And I deleted it without any mercy, without downloading backups to my computer, without saving the texts anywhere else, without thinking that one day I might want to review some of the things I had written just for the nostalgia of it. And of course I missed it a few days later. But since I hadn’t made any backups or anything, I had given up on everything and, resigned, I left it as it was.
Then this morning I received an email from the automatic backup system, saying that the blog had not only been restored but also updated. And I didn’t even remember that I had turned on the automatic backup system. To be honest, I didn’t even know I had an automatic backup system. But this little system saved everything, just as it was before the blog cataclysm. Technology, when it works, can bring little joys like this.
So I decided to upload everything back. Or almost everything. I reviewed all the posts and decided to leave everything that was more personal, like rants, reflections or even stories with the infamous voice in my head, in private. I’ll keep writing about it, in private. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll decide to publish it.
For now, I’m dusting off the place, arranging the furniture and thinking about which direction to take. I’ll probably focus on what I like: motorcycles, technology and arts. Everything else is noise, and nobody likes noise.
And maybe I’ll put the comments field back, if I figure out how to do that.
Or: how I stopped worrying and decided to ride 2000km in a Cafe Racer
I decided to go down to Serra do Rastro da Serpente in São Paulo* and failed miserably. I had never taken a long trip with Elsa and I decided to try one of 3,000 km straight away, maybe 4k if I was feeling good. When arriving in Ribeirão Preto, a city about 700km in, I cried to all alive and dead gods, gave up and rode back home slowly, thinking how it was possible to feel so much pain all over my body and keep going. These are the things I learned along the way.
*A state in Brazil, the country I live.
Elsa, my Cafe Racer (a Continental GT 650) parked at a highway service station
• There’s a reason a Cafe Racer is called “Cafe Racer” and not “World Tourer”;
• What she has there is not a seat, it is a wood board;
• I envied the old guys who traveled on their roomy Cruisers;
• I belittled the same old guys who said how painful it was to travel many kilometers on a Cruiser and how they were warriors for doing so. My dude, you’re on a two-wheeled sofa. Climb up here in a cafe racer and try that before whining.
• I spent more or less 7 liters every 160 kilometers, which gave me approximately 22km/L of consumption;
• With a 12-liter tank I could theoretically ride 260 kilometers before it stopped, but every 140 kilometers I rode I was already anxious for a gas station;
• Air-cooled motorcycle gets HOT, especially if you stay above 110 km/h;
• Speaking of heat, my cell phone was my GPS and it cooked the entire way on my handlebar under the sun. I don’t think its battery will ever be the same;
• Helmet camera, do not use. The weight over time tires the neck and the wind throws the head to the side, creating a lot of aerodynamic resistance. And besides, the battery runs out quickly. Attach it to the motorcycle and plug it into a USB socket;
• By the way, I didn’t install a USB socket. I kept the cell phone alive with a 20000mAh battery, it lasted 10 hours and still had some charge left;
• BR-050 is the easier highway I’ve ever taken, little to no traffic most of the time;
• Anhanguera is the most BORING highway I’ve ever ridden, an infinite straight line with no sights to see;
Just this. Alone. Forever.
• Tolls are a hindrance to life, many accept cards but a good number only take cash. Like, paper money. Like a savage. In the year 2024. And there’s no point in using tags, that sticker you put in your bike or car to bypass the toll and be billed directly on you account: you can’t use it on motorcycles – they are illegal at toll booths and tag readers don’t recognize them.
• Lots of trucks along the way, but as BR-050 is dual carriageway they were not a problem;
• I hate passing through Valparaíso and Luziânia, two cities in Goias, with all my strength, the drivers there are suicidal. I increased the travel time by 1 hour by taking the GO-436 road, even though I was in a state of disrepair, so as not to go through that hell;
• In fact, this stretch of GO and the beginning of BR-050 were the most fun on the road;
• Take a spray bottle with water and a flannel to clean the tons of bugs that will splatter on your visor and jacket;
Visor clean after a lot of scrubbing, but still with signs of the massacre on the helmet and the jacket
• I stopped at practically every service station on the BRs to stretch and drink water, this must have increased the travel time by at least an hour;
• I’ve spend 10 hours on my bike riding each way, on a total of 20 hours on a goddamn cafe racer;
• My arms felt numb along the way;
• My legs felt numb along the way;
• I had joint and back pain for three days;
• I was wondering on the way why in the flying hell I decided to do this;
But why this pessimism all of a sudden? Mostly because I didn’t bother with generative artificial intelligence tools, until the moment they stopped being an option.
Before, I needed to actively go after the tool, activate it and manipulate it to be able to produce something and get some result. Today they are spreading everywhere, in every tool, and I’m not exactly ok with that. Windows itself wants to make AI such a mandatory business that Microsoft created a button on the keyboard dedicated to its artificial intelligence, Copilot, which has become an increasingly mandatory part of the operating system, and began to demand all new computers that, to be certified to run Windows, they’ll have to have the darn thing.
This bothers me, as I feel there is a very high chance of being violated by a corporation that only sees you as a number. On the one hand, I always wanted a decent search tool, which would actually find the files I needed just by looking at the context of the question. On the other hand, having all my private data and files – including medical reports, expense sheets, personal projects and even diaries – processed by a computer somewhere in the world, managed by who knows who, is giving away to to a company enormous power over my life, since it will be able to analyze and draw conclusions (right or wrong) about everything I do or could do. And not only that, this “perfect” profile of my life and personality will be sold to those who pay the most, putting more advertising into my life. It’s a Minority Report dystopia, but the precogs are made of chips instead of three humans in a bathtub, being used to sell Amazon’s sheets and blenders.
It’s bad to know that I’ve become the old man who shouts at the clouds and to have to say “in my time that didn’t happen”. It used to be that a computer was a computer, and an MP3 player was just an MP3 player. None of them monitored every click, every interaction, and every file I opened. An advance in technology was received with authentic enthusiasm from those who knew that life would really get easier.
Today, it’s over. Every advance and every change is made to make people’s lives worse, make things more difficult, and try to take every penny out of your pocket and send it to the companies’ pockets. Everything is either a subscription, or changes for the worse with software updates, or simply cannot be repaired because it is cheaper to buy a new device that comes with even more strings attached. And with that, I’m becoming more and more of a Luddite, trying to keep electronics out of my life to have a more analogue life, because I know that I can use, repair and control it the way I want.
I, in my naivety, did not expect to see such a strong movement to replace artists with AI tools. I still believe that they are fantastic tools that makes life a lot easier: boring tasks like cutting out a character or filling in an incomplete background have become much simpler. But seeing artists and writers effectively fired and replaced by these tools was something I didn’t want to believe. We are heading towards a future where art, music and literature are being automated, leaving humans free to do bossy work, becoming stamp beaters.
There is at least one consolation: AI depends on content produced by others to function. There will come a point where AI will feed on art produced by AI, regurgitating content to the point where there is only garbage on top of garbage, incomprehensible and unusable, breaking the cycle and all AI companies along with it. Add to this the new tools for poisoning data models, protecting works from being absorbed by models, and perhaps this moment is closer than we think.
But of course, this could also be another naive thought.
