Well, I wasn’t planning on putting more than a week between blog posts, but I’ve realized it takes a whole lot of discipline to blog regularly. Sitting down and finding time to document life and riff on it is actually kind of hard, even for a shut in like myself. I suppose being in the middle of New York isn’t helping (moving to Iowa might…).

Social skills have gotten better, although they’re below par. I still can’t figure out what normal people talk about: usually, I rely on the ‘year/major/dorm’ question list, and after that it’s hard to figure out where to go from there. Note that sometimes I pick up on things like musicality, but many times I don’t have too many threads to pick up and run with. An obvious first effort would be to try to talk about music with everyone, but that doesn’t quite work: for instance, trying to talk about classical music with most people is somewhat painful. Additionally, you have to stick with semi-universal subjects. I have a feeling trying to get people to talk about what they love is a good approach (Feynman once commented that you have to have asymmetrical information for a discussion. Or, well, he said something like that. I suppose he would say something more like “you can only talk when someone knows something and someone else doesn’t”. I’ll have to find that quote… and I have to work on being clear in communication. Drat!), but I have no idea how to draw people out and get them to talk about their passions. I tried it with an English major during orientation, which led to quite the failure in interesting communication. Ah well, I’ll get it one day.

On a tangent, church went okay, big take away thought is that I need to get back into debates. I’ve forgotten how fun they can be, and I have more ammunition than ever! Granted, I had no idea what I was doing with it, so it didn’t actually help. One very, very bad thing that I found when debating, though, is the fact that I am scared of losing. Honestly, it took me about a week to realize this, and another 5 minutes to get myself to stop rationalizing. If Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality has taught me anything, it’s taught me that honest self-examination is progress: you have to train yourself to stare at the pain instead of flinching away. So, I’ll say it again: I am afraid that Christianity is right, and I am wrong.

So why is this bad? It means that I’m not internally balanced, rationally off-kilter, basically unable to examine evidence without bias. I undermine my own basis for debate, undermine my own credulity. Now, I’m not saying that there’s a bunch of evidence that Christianity is right, and I’m afraid to acknowledge it because it’ll undermine my atheistic position and I can’t go on sinning, but rather that I’m afraid of being wrong, especially after I switched sides already. Hogwash! you may be thinking. Evidence has compelled you in one direction, and more evidence may compel you in another: there’s nothing wrong with going where the evidence leads you. True, but I never said the basis for this fear is rational. I feel I must point out that the fact that I’ve singled out Christianity is not rational either: there’s a whole pantheon of pantheons to choose from, and I’m still fixating on the religion I’ve been brought up with. Ah well.

Moving away from abstract topics, classes seem not-too-hard, the city has cooled down considerably, and I’m starting to really get the hang of walking across the street. Attended the New York Tech Meetup, which was enlightening: I feel it lends credence to Paul Graham’s musings on city environments.

On a completely unrelated note, I hope this program I’ve been working on for the last week or so will get finished soon, so I can show all of you and… uh, be done with it! Whoooooooooo.

Anyways, it’s time to find some food.

Okay, so I suppose I should finish up my chronicles on my adventures in New York, especially now that I’m situated at the beginning of orientation.

Not too much happened on Sunday, just hung around Columbia and went to church (NOW I’M GOING TO TALK ABOUT RELIGION, SKIP DOWN IF YOU DON’T WANT TO DEAL WITH IT). It’s still awkward to hang around Christians (in church, where they expect mainly other Christians to be), especially when family is around (which makes me Christian by proxy unless I say something; I usually don’t). It feels like I should blurt out the fact that I’m an atheist as the second thing out of my mouth, just to make sure that there aren’t any misunderstandings: I mean, I think that religious memes in general need to die. We’re working from different axioms, and the people I talk to should know that.

It doesn’t have to be awkward: I could announce I’m an atheist, see how people respond, and church hop if I outstay my welcome. Maybe be kind of a reverse-evangelist. That particular course of action, though, is only possible if I develop my social acumen (orientation has shown that my social acumen has fallen a bit, and I’ll need to see if I can change that).

So going to church doesn’t have to be awkward. It doesn’t have to be boring (ex. could write responses to sermons as they are being preached, which is way more interaction than a passive intake of knowledge), and as a ‘fallen child’ of the faith, I know the culture and society of the church (evangelical) and can handle it. I won’t talk about how my parents insist that I attend church, though, because I smell a 3-hour long essay and no sleep for me. I’ll spill everything in a mega-post someday.

OKAY, I’M DONE TALKING ABOUT RELIGION. YOU CAN COME BACK NOW.

Orientation was okay: got moved in, cleared up some things, and started to meet people. Really, routine orientation stuff. Thankfully, not quite as insane as the last orientation I attended…

However, I did notice that my social skills have deteriorated a bit. My response times are noticeably lagging, and I’ve forgotten what normal people talk about. Please don’t tell me I have to immerse myself in pop culture to make friends: I was hoping for a mecca of geek-dom, but none is yet forthcoming. Ah well, should have known better: the geek-dom doesn’t reside in the place, it resides in you (is this pattern-matching wisdom, aka, filling in something that sounds wise?).

Random thought: I had been thinking that lying to my children about Santa Claus wouldn’t be something I would do, but it might put a good amount of weight towards anti-authoritarianism, which should balance some of the implicit trust in the child’s main authority figure. In other words, lying about Santa might be an important part of growing up.

Have I mentioned how much I’m going to miss Washington weather?