We're almost as far from the original Star Wars as it was from... the Great Depression(!)
-
-
Replying to @michael_nielsen @Jonathan_Blow
It's interesting getting old: more and more of the people you meet have lived their entire life in what seems like a thin layer of the now. It gets a bit hard to take them seriously.
3 replies 0 retweets 8 likes -
I recommend spending time in my social circle: extraordinarily brilliant kids with a strong mathematical bent. The better you know them, the more seriously you take them. They're not erudite, but they're dazzlingly penetrating and original. Really inspiring.
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
I'm increasingly regretting what I said, because "taking seriously" has many dimensions and I meant just one, which turns out to be quite hard to make precise. Tweet in haste, repent at leisure.
2 replies 0 retweets 6 likes -
I find that I am mostly inoculated against tweeting in haste, since tweets are by their nature aphoristic, and aphoristic writing is so hard for me that I must struggle to do it at all well. I think I know what you mean, though. And I have certainly repented at leisure, too.
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @MathPrinceps @johncarlosbaez and
In many ways this is a singularly treacherous channel of communication, in which small errors made in good faith are often irremediable and sometimes catastrophic. I doubt whether anyone at all thoughtful who has ever tweeted has wholly escaped serious pangs of regret.
2 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
It is also very true that aphoristic utterances take you only so far. Very hard to imagine condensing even into a rather long and intricate series of tweets the substance of, say, ANNA KARENINA, or of SGA. Indeed, even rather simple ideas often fare horribly when tweeted.
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.