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content/me/index.md

@@ -29,14 +29,14 @@ I understand that this presents an issue: casual surfers of this website, curiou
 
 ## Basic Traits
 
-I have always thought that the defining characteristic of what makes Levi *Levi*, in so far as I or anyone have such a thing^[My chief concern throughout this document, as established in the introduction, is establishing a balance between reductivity and egotism. The broader conclusion I have come to? Human lives and persona cannot be mapped onto human language. Interesting!], is the combination of my **curiosity** and **creativity**. This is not a curiosity that manifests purely in the abstract. I am certainly interested in abstract things, rabbit holes, all-nighters composed of study, you name it - but I am equally curious in a more tangible sense, one that invokes the process of creation. Much of the substance of my life has been the result of various incarnations of this latter form of curiosity combined with a  creativity whose origin I cannot explain. In a concise way, I could state it as follows: I generally feel a strong urge to produce and put my own spin on *anything* that I consume.
+I have always thought that the defining characteristic of what makes Levi *Levi*, insofar as I or anyone have such a thing^[My chief concern throughout this document, as established in the introduction, is establishing a balance between reductivity and egotism. The broader conclusion I have come to? Human lives and persona cannot be mapped onto human language. Interesting!], is the combination of my **curiosity** and **creativity**. This is not a curiosity that manifests purely in the abstract. I am certainly interested in abstract things, rabbit holes, all-nighters composed of study, you name it - but I am equally curious in a more tangible sense, one that invokes the process of creation. Much of the substance of my life has been the result of various incarnations of this latter form of curiosity combined with a  creativity whose origin I cannot explain. In a concise way, I could state it as follows: I generally feel a strong urge to produce and put my own spin on *anything* that I consume.
 
 ### Greatest Strength and Flaw
 
 The realization of this curiosity/creativity complex yields what I find simultaneously as my greatest strength and my most detrimental flaw. I can be relentlessly ambitious and work persistently towards goals that others might dismiss as too far-sighted, impossible, etc. - but I also consistently bite off more than I can chew and overwork myself. I'm at least aware of the latter fact and try to counter it by introducing work that I enjoy, such as work on this website!
 
 ### Personality
-For what it is worth, I am an **INTP**. Whether or not this means anything is up to your interpretation. In other, perhaps more grounded descriptions (ie those from my fellow humans) I am usually thought to be neither overly optimistic nor pessimistic, one of those introverts who is really an extrovert with a *limited* social battery, a particularly animated and energetic person when the focus is something about which I care, and often I am found to be deep in thought (or mental composition of music). 
+For what it is worth, I am an **INTP**. Whether or not this means anything is up to your interpretation. In other, perhaps more grounded descriptions (i.e., those from my fellow humans) I am usually thought to be neither overly optimistic nor pessimistic, one of those introverts who is really an extrovert with a *limited* social battery, a particularly animated and energetic person when the focus is something about which I care, and often I am found to be deep in thought (or mental composition of music).
 
 ### Aphantasia
 
@@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ I have [**complete aphantasia**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia), whic
 I believe that my aphantasia is the reason that I am so affected by words (both in prose and poetry) and music as not only mere artistic forms but means of utmost expression. I do not think that I would find such necessity for creative expression through these means without my aphantasia, and as such, I prefer living with aphantasia to living the normal way.
 
 ### Favorites
-[I GENERALLY DO NOT HAVE A FAVORITE X OR Y.]{.smallcaps} I take two primary issues with the notion of "favorite" as it is used in coloquial American English: first, that one's "favorite X" is often conflated, whether explicitly or implicitly by said one, with "the best X." For any instance where I *do* have have a favorite, I do *not* make any assertion that my favorite X is necessarily the best X out of all possible choices of X. Second, I believe that the action of selecting a favorite is inherently reductive and forces comparisons that are invalid. We are not computers, and we should not be organizing everything into tensors for comparison and floating point operations. Let us enjoy diversity and variance for what they are rather than try to reduce everything to a mere favorite!
+[I GENERALLY DO NOT HAVE A FAVORITE X OR Y.]{.smallcaps} I take two primary issues with the notion of "favorite" as it is used in coloquial American English: first, that one's "favorite X" is often conflated, whether explicitly or implicitly by said one, with "the best X." For any instance where I *do* have a favorite, I do *not* make any assertion that my favorite X is necessarily the best X out of all possible choices of X. Second, I believe that the action of selecting a favorite is inherently reductive and forces comparisons that are invalid. We are not computers, and we should not be organizing everything into tensors for comparison and floating point operations. Let us enjoy diversity and variance for what they are rather than try to reduce everything to a mere favorite!
 
 #### The one exception
 With this said, there is one major exception, and that is my favorite book: *The Brothers Karamazov*, by [Fyodor Dostoevsky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyodor_Dostoevsky). I cannot understate the impact that this book had on my life, and it is thus my favorite; I carry it with me essentially at all times, and reread at least *some* section of it nearly every day.
@@ -79,7 +79,7 @@ I fell in love with Artificial Intelligence during my first semester at Brown. M
 I have long said to friends that one does not "do mathematics," but rather "mathematics does you," and this encapsulates how I feel about mathematics better than anything else I can think of at the moment. Mathematics is endlessly creative and has, to me, unlimited intrigue. I vividly remember learning about the [Sylow Theorems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylow_theorems) in my 3rd semester abstract algebra course - my first math upper level - and feeling a sense of absolute wonder and beauty at the proof, yes, but moreso at the grandeur of human genius - that *we* were able to derive this result, and so many subsequent ones, and that I had the power to understand it just the same!^[Which was perhaps *not* evident based off my score for the final exam of that course, but I digress.]
 
 ### Computer Systems
-I have been interested in the low level since I began to study computation. Getting closer to the hardware was a constant goal as I learned Java in high school. Later, when I took my first real "Systems"^[Brown makes a real distinction about what is "Systems" and what is not "Systems", much more so than I would. But, the effect of having your undergrad take place within a *particularly* semantically concerned department sticks.] course, I felt like I was a wizard, learning the ways of some magic. Computers are wonderfully beautiful and powerful machines, and the systems that they are are nothing short of exquisite. Many folks seem to think that those of the system-minded type are some hardcore, late-night hacker type devoid of social life, romance, etc. I think quite the opposite: those of us who love systems love beauty and elegance, and those who opt to write Javascript whilst blatantly refusing to learn about how the systems they use work are the ones with deficits to fill! 
+I have been interested in the low level since I began to study computation. Getting closer to the hardware was a constant goal as I learned Java in high school. Later, when I took my first real "Systems"^[Brown makes a real distinction about what is "Systems" and what is not "Systems", much more so than I would. But, the effect of having your undergrad take place within a *particularly* semantically concerned department sticks.] course, I felt like I was a wizard, learning the ways of some magic. Computers are wonderfully beautiful and powerful machines, and the systems that they are nothing short of exquisite. Many folks seem to think that those of the system-minded type are some hardcore, late-night hacker type devoid of social life, romance, etc. I think quite the opposite: those of us who love systems love beauty and elegance, and those who opt to write Javascript whilst blatantly refusing to learn about how the systems they use work are the ones with deficits to fill!
 
 ## Music
 
@@ -106,7 +106,7 @@ Music composition is thus **chiefly distinct** from other forms of creative acti
 
 ## Interests
 
-I have many interests, and while they can be *temporarily* all-consuming, I try not to let any singular interest of mine define me.^[In the past I allowed myself to be more "defined" by my passions, at least in my self-image. (I can't control how *you* define me, but I can control how *I* define me, after all, and *that* is to me the most important definition.) These days I believe that if such an all-encompassing definition is necessary it must be built from a higher level of abstraction than any singular interest - rather, what are the specific qualities that are brought to any interest? It is not the fact that I do many things but the manners in which and reasons for which I do them that should be the basis of the definition. *Exiting Modernity* talks at great length along these lines.] (The distinction I am making between "interest" and "passion" should be apparent here.) Some of my interests are chiefly **sporadic**; every once in a a while (a while might be a month, a year, etc.), I find myself immersed in and unable to escape the interest for a week or two. Other interests are more constant in my life. My foremost interest is perhaps a metainterest - I'm interested in increasing the variance within my life's experiences, and thus interests that are iterative and provide me the opportunity to do previously unknown things and expand my horizons are generally the most potent to me.
+I have many interests, and while they can be *temporarily* all-consuming, I try not to let any singular interest of mine define me.^[In the past I allowed myself to be more "defined" by my passions, at least in my self-image. (I can't control how *you* define me, but I can control how *I* define me, after all, and *that* is to me the most important definition.) These days I believe that if such an all-encompassing definition is necessary it must be built from a higher level of abstraction than any singular interest - rather, what are the specific qualities that are brought to any interest? It is not the fact that I do many things but the manners in which and reasons for which I do them that should be the basis of the definition. *Exiting Modernity* talks at great length along these lines.] (The distinction I am making between "interest" and "passion" should be apparent here.) Some of my interests are chiefly **sporadic**; every once in a while (a while might be a month, a year, etc.), I find myself immersed in and unable to escape the interest for a week or two. Other interests are more constant in my life. My foremost interest is perhaps a metainterest - I'm interested in increasing the variance within my life's experiences, and thus interests that are iterative and provide me the opportunity to do previously unknown things and expand my horizons are generally the most potent to me.
 
 ### Foreign Languages