What do you guys study in your spare time for fun? Do you tend to focus on one subject, or broaden them...

at the moment i study a book about tensor analysis. afterwards i ll probably continue with elementary differential geometry, because both tensor analysis and differnetial geometry are related. then i ll procede to functional analysis.

i think focusing on one thing at a time is best desu. else you get nowhere.

These

Cross-pollination of different fields is important

But I suppose that could be done by more cooperation of different fields instead of deploying generalists

On the other hand, maybe what is needed is both cooperation of different fields and a few generalists

I am just doing it out of interest. 90% of my free time is dedicated to maths when I am studying

Burn ants with a magnifying glass. I know what you're going to say: I wear three pairs of sunglasses when I do it. No corneal damage.

If I get bored with that, I find other ways to kill ants. Feed them to antlions, drop them in oil, etc. I've been trying to burn them with a laser but it's not powerful enough.

Polymaths have a better understanding of the universe.

>study in your spare time for fun
Nigger my spare time is for bong rips and pewdiepie videos

I've been thinking of studying astrophysocs, but I don't have a good physics background.
Then I decided to go study physics again but I don't have a good math background for that. So now I'm back to studying math over again.
And maybe some programming language here and there, current focuses on C and Lua

Evolution ecology network science complexity, emergence, ontology, metaphysics, ethics, semiotics, biosemiotics

haha :^)

this

>you will never be a polymath
fuck this, life is shit

history and chemistry
kek

Not to scale and only specialization is impressive

As depressing as it sounds, you really need to narrow it down to max 3 and optimally 1/2. That's the only way to truly make use of your time, unless your Ed Witten, but even he had to narrow it down with age.

"Study" implies some regimented form of learning the material then testing yourself. I get learning about subjects for fun, but I wouldn't usually sit down with a fucking organic chemistry test in my free time. I will happy listen to science / political / history podcasts in my free time or read books about the above.

All that being said, I do study chess sometimes.

>What do you guys study in your spare time for fun

I have been studying the human orgasm...
I am now a master-bater!

You sound like you're only getting a very surface deep level of knowledge on the subject. Reading one classical literature book doesn't mean you've learned anything appreciable about the subject. It's like saying on your CV that one of your skills is soldering when you've soldered one resistor into a PCB. That's not the same as actually being skilled with soldering.

If you're majoring in math, focus on learning subjects that strengthen your understanding and/or appreciation for the math. That pretty much narrows it down to music, physics, computer science and perhaps economics if you enjoy statistics.
Medicine doesn't do dick for learning math, along with 75% of the stuff you have on that list.

Well, there's nothing good about knowledge if you don't apply it, or distill it to form new ideas. Why are you learning all those subjects? What's the purpose? Having superficial knowledge on several topics isn't impressive. If there's no goal in mind, you're going to be below average in nearly all those things. Why don't you spend your free time exercising, learning a language, learning how to cook, [insert any other valuable skill here]?

I will tell you my life story.

I was like you a couple years ago when I left university. I was a PhD maths student and I remembered watching the news and being stunned at how little I actually knew about the world, I felt really ashamed. I mean I wrote a paper that maybe a few hundred people on this planet would understand and yet I watched the news and didn't even know what a "cabinet" was, or what a "whip" is or does, I barely understood the difference between government and parliament, also knew little about economics, I remember the financial crisis and later the Euro crisis coming on TV and just being utterly stumped. Anyway I realized I was fucking clueless, I was really disgusted at myself and like you I wrote a huge list of subjects I wanted to learn and understand to at least an undergrad level

I added most traditional subjects and even added joke subjects to my list just to "understand them" things like film studies, critical theory etc. I decided to start with these shit subjects first.

Eventually I threw them off the list after I realized most of them degenerated into what's known as "theory" or critical theory (continental philosophy, Frankfurt school, structuralism / deconstruction, psychoanalysis, feminism, postmodernism etc.). I tried to read a lot of this continental philosophy stuff, I read a few very famous books like Being and Time by Heidegger and a few books by Foucault, deleuze, derrida) but I just couldn't stand it. As this is a STEM board I doubt anyone has read these but it is pure garbage. Anyway after that I read a book called fashionable nonsense by the guy who did the Sokal Hoax:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fashionable_Nonsense

After that I was convinced and stopped studying anything related to humanities / sociology / continental philosophy / . After my experiences with these kinds of subjects I felt I'd had enough of this shit and I'd never ever read anything related to these subjects again. That's one set done

Holy shit I didn't mean to write a fucking essay but anyway. I wasted many months of my life and my free time studying all shit they learn in liberal arts colleges and humanities types courses and "studies"-type subjects. All of it was a waste of time, however I guess the most important realization I made was that all of these weird new fads you see in the media and in Western social culture regarding race, class, sexual orientation and most importantly gender was not accidental and is based entirely on the analyses of these critical theorists and continental philosophers. Just as Muslims have weird and bizarre culture which can be traced to the teachings of the Qur'an and Hadith, the insane culture and beliefs of modern leftists can be traced directly to people like Marcuse (repressive tolerance) Foucault (conceptions and studies of power), Judith Butler (performativity, both gender and even sex are social constructions)etc.

Anyway, after wasting my time reading that I wanted to learn about the world but study a more traditional social science subject, so this is where I started studying political science. Instead of reading the news, I just got standard intro political science textbooks and read a few of them in the library, but after that they started sounding the same so I got political science textbooks that focussed specifically on the US. I started reading a lot of political theory and political science (not modern literature, but guys like Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau), it changed my view on how the world works and I remember realizing I'd lived in a safe and stable country my whole life so I'd never had to actually think about how nations actually function politically and I started becoming interested in comparative politics and how different countries function.

Anyway eventually I stopped caring about the pol theory and was interested in what was going on in the world so instead of reading boring and dry pol sci textbooks I started reading the standard news sites, mainly the world news and national security sections of NYT, WaPo etc. I read it for a few months and slowly and gradually I gained a better understanding of current affairs.

After a while though, it was obvious that to really gain a cultured understanding of world affairs and an understanding of the news, you needed a good grasp on history, at least the history of the short 20th century. For instance you can't understand the modern Middle East without understanding the Sykes-Picot agreement and the treaties of Sevres/Lausanne, or understand contemporary jihadist movements world without understanding the CIA's role in funding Operation Cyclone during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, or understand Germany's leading role in the EU without looking at Germany foreign policy since their unification in 1871. Also learning history made me notice things which I had never bothered to even consider before, how various political systems and regimes have risen and fallen, how, until the mid 20th century, borders consistently shifted all the time etc. Unfortunately though, I eventually just got completely bored of this, I realized I'm completely uninterested in studying the affairs of humans, so after gaining a basic understanding of how the world works, I lost interest in any subject involving human beings. All of that, took around 2-3 years of studying a few hours a day, until I felt I had a good enough understanding of the world, politics, history, international affairs etc. to hold a conversation with an intelligent person, but obviously not good enough to have specialized discussions with an academic etc. I felt I was done and finally moved onto studying what I had actually wanted to study all along which was science, which I still do to this day.

Anyway by this point you're probably wondering why I had a sperglord chimpout and posted all this crap. The point I'm trying to make is that I spent 3 fucking years spent studying all this irrelevant stuff and although I have an improved understanding of the world, it was pointless and fucking useless. There is literally no point is studying other subjects full time, especially if it's for its own sake. If you're like me, you probably did it because you enjoy learning about various things and you're good at it so you think it's a good idea to immerse yourself in otehr subjects but as you can tell from my experience it is a complete waste of time really... all that time studying stuff I didn't need to learn could have been spent studying a different area of mathematics or physics or something slightly relevant to my subject.

Don't fall into the trap of learning various subjects for its own sake: not only will you not be an expert in that subject (unless you put serious dedication into it), there is an opportunity cost of not improving your knowledge of your own subject.. Mathematics and every science subject has far too much for one single person to absorb in their lifetime.

It's much better to focus on quality than superficial quantity. What I'm trying to say is, for goodness sake lad, don't try to learn everything like I did, especially for its own sake.

Find what subjects you genuinely enjoy and focus on that. Because chances are, that subject is so enormous that it'd probably take a lifetime to really master it.

Cliffs: cut that retarded list down to 2-3 subjects you enjoy, don't waste your free time like I did! peace.

thank you for your thoughts, it's rare to find a wall of text on Veeky Forums that isn't absolute shit

Why do you think critical theory is pure garbage?

I liked this blog but I disagree with your conclusion. I think you handled it the wrong way. I have a broad range of subjects I am interested in but there's overlap between them. Not always of course, but it is this cross-pollination in which I am most interested.

I had some period I was interested in 'pomo' and read a few books (at least two) but I quickly figured out it was a waste of time and no longer bother with that stuff. Classic philosophy has some cultural prestige about it, but I am not going to bother with it. If it is widely read it should be referenced in other non-fiction books as well and that's exactly what happens (and it discusses what was wrong and what not)

For me it is pointless because of the degree I'm taking, but I do this stuff for my enjoyment and there is little that stimulates my brain nowadays.

It is however a very good idea to free up time by avoiding and removing certain stuff. I used to think I had to finish certain books. Now I read a bit, and decide if it is worthwhile or not. If not I ditch it. It bores me? I ditch it. Too much focus on the details? I ditch it. Language is more complex as it should be? I ditch it. Certain parts not interesting? I skim. I skip chapters.

There is no need to reduce the number of subjects. In my case I want to look for stuff that connects the subjects together instead of looking for stuff that goes deep into the subject.

So even if you read a lot of subjects you will still need to specialize to some extent, but there is no reason to ditch subjects.

And in general I advice to do what you feel like, and do a lot of trial and error. See what works for yourself.

elsewhere.org/pomo/
Read, refresh, read again.

If you study that much you will lose all creative capacity and be a slave to just doing textbook exercises like a chimp.

Learn chemistry, mathematics and physics. The rest is easy shit.

>Finite all-possible-knowledge
Nice

Chinese,read some history books very rarely though , and CS

bump

I'm a physics freshmen, but I want to go into nuclear because fun, however I the only college in the country that gives such career, requires you to have two years of engineering under your belt (so I'm going with EE) in order to take the admission test.

So I have until March free because classes are given err anually so to speak.
In the meantime I'll try to learn as much of Compsci as I can, and go further with math and physics (also japanese for fun)

pls recommend a book on algorithms (is CLRS good) and discrete math.

also getting into philosophy and esoterism as well, now I'm reading history of philosophy (Copleston), the kybalion, and secret teachings of all ages.

"I downloaded some books" isn't "I'm getting into"
You're wasting your time

In my spare time I read and study Philosophy, Poetry and Linguistics. I also teach myself skills like woodworking, cooking, or repairing cars.

A lot of these hobbies/habits come from when I was an edgy virgin teenager living in liberal urban europe, read nietzsche once, and had all these ideas that some kind of "warrior poet übermensch meme" was going to have to fight to survive in the coming cultural apocalypse.

Then I went to uni to do maths and had no more time for such memeic ideas, though I still do the activities I got into thanks to said ideas.

but where did I say that I downloaded such books.
The copleston one and Kybalion bought them, I'd love to buy TSTOAA but the edition that I'm interested its quite expensive for my third world shithole.

Pls don't project.
Don't be a fool.

>"I've never tried to paint or play an instrument"
I'm a mathematical physics major, but I'm doing a dual degree in music (for fun, not for a job, I'm not that stupid), but all my math and physics professors have told me music is the hardest major at my uni (before they knew I was doing it). It's not that you have to be any smarter, it just takes so much time. Constant practicing, small and large ensembles, concerts on the weekends, etc.

Again, I'm not saying math/physics/chemistry etc. aren't difficult or more pure, I'm just saying don't discount the arts as being easy just because art majors are mostly retarded. Physics and math don't take nearly the amount of skill and practice as music and art, even if they take much more actual knowledge and reasoning.

right now im obsessed with the taxonomy of academia/knowledge and learning at least a very small bit of everything. theres no such thing as wasting time, if you think its fun to learn things for its own sake then thats sufficient

1. THE ARTS
performing arts
music (listen to classical, pop, rock, jazz. opera)
dance
theatre (aeschylus to shakespeare to hair/rent/wicked)
film (citizen kane and psycho through birdman and moonlight)
visual arts
art history (classical, Renaissance, modern, contemporary)
painting
sculpture
architecture (classical, neo class, gothic, international, pomo, also residential)

2. HUMANITIES
philosophy (especially epistemology which relates to mathematical logic and the foundations of mathematics, decartes, wittgenstein, russel, godel, tarski)
history (pre-history, ancient, middle ages, modern, contemporary)
religion/theology (basics of christianity, islam, hinduism, buddhism, jews, biblical exegesis is really interesting especially NT and trying to figure out who wrote what)
literature (know big names like homer, virgil, ovid, dante, goerthe, bronte, joyce, plath, DFW etc)
linguistics (grammar, language families, PIE, germanic, slavic, romance, IE isolates, finno ugric, indo aryan, iranian, turkic, sino-tibetian, tai kadai, afro semitic, bantu, nilo saharan etc. know africa and PNG have the most linguistic diversity)
language learning (english, spanish and french are world languages, mandarin, german, russian, arabic, hindi, japanese, ancient greek, latin, sanskrit also influential)

3. SOCIAL SCIENCES
anthropology (nothing really to see here)
sociology (demography based sociology is insightful, modern sociology esp theory based is left wing propaganda)
psychology (95% of psychology books (Dewey Decimal 100's) are epistemologically weak and just really bad science)
geography (know every country location, general sense of population, gdp, hdi etc besides irrelevant carrib and pac island nations)

(((((((((generalist/polymath knowledge
))))))))))

>implying it's not a ratio of infinities

3. SOCIAL SCIENCES cont.

political science (very important to be medial literate, right wing media: am talk, fox, drudge, town hall, WSJ, Wash Times, brietbart, national review. left wing media: NYT, Wash Post, huffpo, npr, BBC, new republic, buzzfeed, mtv. centrist: the economist, WSJ non editorials, the atlantic(maybe). know how government works)
economics (also very important, know basic concepts like market equilibrium, comparative advantage, market failures. adam smith is the daddy, marx and engels are the rebellious brats, keynes and friedman are the modern left and right wing demigods respectively)
law (constitutional law is the most intellectually interesting)

4. NATURAL SCIENCES
if youre here you already know what you need to know here
physics
chemistry
biology
space science
earth science (geology, environmental sci, and ecology i think are under appreciated)

5. MATH
pure math
mathematical logic/foundations of mathematics (euler, hilbert, tarski, godel)
algebra
geometry/topology
analysis
applied math
statistics (know basic manipulations, p-hacking, axis manipulations, low n)
comp sci
game theory (nash)

6. APPLIED SCIENCES
medicine (anatomy, physiology)
engineering (civil, chem, electrical, mechanical)

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Hello Ant Hitler.

youtube.com/watch?v=tmQL2XWErds

bump

Well, I would study Tesla's notes and projects given that info were made available to me.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

kek

Nothing but pleb tier math and physics, and brief flings with languages

I'm gonna ask here so I don't have to make another thread. For a very long time (aprox. 6 y.) I was an avid reader of fiction and philosophy, and learned 5 languages, two being ancient greek and latin which I got a degree in. Now I kinda of got burned out and all I do is aprox. 20min/day of language learning and very light reading. How do I into science? Where do I start? Math? Chemistry? My knowledge is very limited. Tbqh all I can think of is khan academy, I was told their courses are for absolute beginners. I would be interested in Biology, Physics maybe even Math.

Major in Computer Science, studying Astrophysics, dynamics, pure math, Astrology, Philosophy, and advanced CS shit on the side.

>Astrology
/x/

Unironically: Math, Philosophy, Music.
Ironically: CompSci

Hwo you niggas study in your spare time? Don't you watch videos or play video games?

The first interesting thing a random wikipedia article gives me.

While I wholly dislike studying, I spend time trying to make things. Most of my projects lie in the intersection between computer science, math, and psychology.

I'm too poor to own any vidya system or a computer capable of gaming, I don't even have a T.V. As for videos lectures and GoT fan theories are all I partake of.

Focusing on Computer Science. Doing applied mathematics I can take lots of advantages from it

>studying something ironically

Why would you waste your life away for the sake of memes?

Postmodernism is cancer.

for a guy trying to sound smart, you already sound dumb as shit op. i can tell from that post alone your knowledge on most of these things is shallow, barely enough to pretend to know things. wont cure your autism

polymer chemistry almost exclusively this entire year.

im a recent bme graduate currently working for a med device manufacturer.

>i was an uneducated retard
>i left uni to learn things i could have learned by reading modern marxist theory and following independent marxist news outlets

amazing op

>the insane culture and beliefs of modern leftists can be traced directly to people like Marcuse (repressive tolerance) Foucault (conceptions and studies of power), Judith Butler (performativity, both gender and even sex are social constructions)etc

and you remain an uncultured retard. social neoliberal "progressiveness" stems from postmodernists ye, but if you haven't read enough to know that liberalism isn't leftist you're still that retarded american you always were

>I started reading a lot of political theory and political science

>guys like Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau

>i went from postmodernist garbage straight back to enlightenment

>skipped the current zenith in philosophical theory that was german idealism, skipped everything from kant to hegel

>skipped left hegelians, skipped materialism

my eyes are hurting by this point, dunno if i can continue with this

>I have an improved understanding of the world

you have jack shit understanding of the world. stick to math

just try to read and watch stuff online for a few hours every day

>Most of my projects lie in the intersection between computer science, math, and psychology.
Unrelated but that sounds like an interesting combo. What are some of your projects?

are 15? its called reading you dumb shit. also, some of us arent in school

not him, but you clearly have autism and no sense of humor

no his mistake was overlooking analytical philosophy Wittgenstein, Russel, Frege, Godel, W James, Rorty

you dumb continentalists, get your head out of your ass, you are not important in the grand scheme academia or even of western philosophy

>le maths is the best XDDD

you own a "fuck yeah science" t-shirt with a dinosaur on it dont you?

>he isn't triple majoring in philosophy, maths, and physics while studying history and languages in his spare time

>npr, nyt, wapo are left wing media

uhh no.

wsj also is only right leaning with their editorials and atlantic easily has a left leaning publishing.

Way to completely misinterpret that post, autist. Here, I'll help:

>Stick to math, you're clearly too retarded to comprehend anything else

uhhh yeah.

Nice try CIA

Recent ME graduate and I enjoy reading up on acoustics and control theory in hopes of going into either of these for graduate studies one day. The wave propogation and frequency domain stuff comes lretty easily but state space analysis and dynamical systems justs goes over my head.
I can distill the practical information out of them but I can't get a good grasp on all te proofs. I think this stems from a poor background in linear algebra and a lack of a geometric perspective of abstract concepts. Is there any way I can improve on this or is my chance at understanding more complex maths forever lost?

I usually listen to music, play sports, and read
I would like to learn about art, literature, physics, cs, biology. most things desu, but idk how id avoid being a dilettante

You either pick one thing to put in the effort to master, or you read about a bunch of different subjects with the understanding that you will always have superficial knowledge. As long as you don't pretend to know more than you really do, I don't think there's a problem with the latter. But you really can't avoid being a dilettante if you pursue a bunch of different things. Even a single area of study is so vast and provides so much depth that it would take a lifetime to truly understand.

I think that fact should be reassuring. Instead of feeling despair that you will never learn everything, you should find comfort in the fact that a single subject will provide you with so much satisfying depth.

Personally, I prefer a balance. My focus is mathematics. But there are tons of other things that pique my curiosity, so I'll read books about them. Of course, I have hobbies as well. I know I'll never be an expert in any of them, but that's fine. There's plenty of mathematics to keep me busy.

The hip-waist ratio of this woman is incredible.

Mathematics
Physics
Philosophy
..Pussy?

I'm going to Navy Nuclear School soon so I have free reign to do whatever. My interests in philosophy and the sciences were not initially analogous.

I'm 22, I dropped out of college to start my own business. I do math for fun, I have a deep love for math in my heart.

I've even independently discovered a lot of theorems and tricks. And made some new discoveries also. (I actually have a "proof" that pi repeats.)

I study calculus (or "real analysis" as you autists like to say), infinite expressions and other infinite math, properties of decimal expansions, I also have a special place in my heart for cryptography.

Cryptography is absolutely amazing. If you want to get a major math boner, look up this stuff:
>public key cryptography like RSA
>Zero Knowledge Proofs
>deniable encryption
>homomorphic encryption
>secret splitting

This stuff seems like it ought to be impossible, but it's real. That's why cryptography is the spookiest of all math.

>(I actually have a "proof" that pi repeats.)
Stopped reading here. This is bait.

>..Pussy?

Kino

plant biology
wild edible plants
farming

go out once in a while

>study in your spare time for fun
No, I code shit; I need results.

Brain

Let.

He doesn't, he's a shallow understanding deep ego kinda guy. You can study every enigma if done in a Cursory manner.

Often better than a master of one

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