Science vs. "Science"

This may ruffle a few feathers, but I really don't care:

I'm really sick of popular media figures convincing everybody that Science is something other than what it is. Sick of the notion that Science is an infallible authority that answers all of our questions and makes our lives better.

Don't get me wrong. I adore Science. I think that investigating the fundamental behavior of the universe is a supremely important pursuit and that the knowledge we gain is of great use in improving our understanding and our station. I fully endorse theories of evolution and of the big bang and goodness knows whatever else plenty of foolish Christians have insisted on denying in the name of literalism.

I just recognize that Science is not final. Whatever we think we know about the universe is simply a current best guess. It's a set of plausible (likely, even) explanations based on observation of correlation and testing for causation. And none of it can ever be shown to be perfectly true. It's a system that rests on the principle of falsification -- advancements can be made almost exclusively by disproving previous best-guesses.

More than that, almost all of Science is simplification. The vast majority of natural interactions are chaotic -- meaning they cannot be represented in any sort of linear or closed form equation. We cannot observe or interact with the infinite, so we build models that are "good enough". We make substitutions and estimations. We build computer models that, between the necessity of discretization and the fallibility of floating point arithmetic, can only barely be trusted.

Science is not an answer to a question. It's a process by which we go about attempting to improve the answers we have. Science is not God. It is an attempt to reveal the work that God has done in creation in a way we can comprehend.

Academia

As much as I love music, there's a reason I never could have made a career out of it. Music, in both performance and consumption, is something I do for myself. It is therapeutic to me. I love doing it, but, except for rarely, it's not something I can do in order to meet the needs of others. Oftentimes my ability to perform and other people's desire to listen have overlapped positively, but if I felt like I was somehow beholden to others in my performance, I would grow resentful and lose what love I have for it.

Essentially the same thing holds true for computer science.

I adore designing systems to solve problems. I love analyzing these systems to try to improve them and make them do their job better and generalizing them to a wider variety of tasks...but it's not something I can readily make myself do, and it's certainly not something I can make myself do because somebody else is expecting something from me.

For some reason, when I signed up for grad school, I was under the delusion that academia was a place where I could go to find novel problems of interest to me and seek guidance from a field of experts as to where to start looking to solve them. I thought it would be self-directed. I thought it would be freeing.

Nope.

I get here, and I'm subjected to the frantic energy of brilliant but frazzled men who live and die not by the intrinsic value of their work, but by the whims and opinions of their colleagues. These are men who want me to pursue my own interests, but at their pace and in the manner that they see fit because they know that their careers hinge, in part, on my potential for brilliance.

I don't work that way, at least not in this discipline. I come under sudden pressure to satisfy the needs of others in this regard and I crumble. I fall into depression, and I fall even farther behind. I can't be effective if I'm spending as much time figuring out how to convince my advisors that I'm doing good work as I am actually working.

I'll give it the rest of the semester and probably the year after that -- long enough to get my Masters -- but I'm not sure this is going to happen without taking an unnecessary toll on me. At least not here. Mostly, I think I may need to find a career doing something I'm capable of and enjoy doing for others.

So, who wants to help me start a cafe/brew-pub? I'll manage the food part of the menu and take the day shift. In the evenings, I can hang out with and lead a double life as an eccentric inventor/writer/musician. It will be fun. I promise.

Goals for my 25th Year

Analyze things less.

Enjoy things more.

Stop focusing on expectations.

Man up and ask for help when I need it.

Quit being a pansy in my personal life.

Learn to rock out on bass.

Use bass rocking as an opportunity to improve knowledge of chord structure and progression so as to rock out on saxophone harder than ever (or at least as hard as when I was 18).

Go to more concerts.

Participate in dance parties instead of hiding from them.

Learn to at least tolerate beer (in moderation).

Learn to at least tolerate coffee (in excess as needed).

Prepare vegetarian meals at least thrice a week.

Get exercise beyond copious walking.

Lose another 25+ lbs (already down nearly 40 since graduation).

Develop a stronger rapport with the rest of my lab.

Find a way to twist my research into something I'm passionate about.

Submit at least one paper or article for publication.