University drop out

I am going to drop out of university and start a freelance career as writer. Yes, this week I have decided that it’s no use to continue studying mathematics until I have a full degree. I didn’t study mathematics to get a degree, but to learn mathematics. Now I have reached a point where I can say that I know enough about mathematics to learn everything else I might need on my own. Over the course of my years at university I have slowly increased the time of independent self-directed learning. Now, I have finally reached a point where I have enough skill and self-discipline to learn more efficiently on my own – independent from any distracting interference coming from a strictly regulated education system.

But why?
So, why don’t I use these skills to finish my studies quickly? There are some important reasons why I decided to quit:

1. I’ve attained real clarity about my career preferences. Staying in academia or getting a regular job as mathematician isn’t really that what I want to do. There are too many restrictions that come with these kinds of careers. Only a life as freelancer or entrepreneur allows me to do exactly what I want to do.
2. The stuff I have to learn at university isn’t that what I am really interested in. And it’s not really useful for my purposes.
3. Learning all the crazy stuff which is asked in the exams would be a big source of frustration, and a great waste of time, as there are more important things I need to learn. I don’t need to know all that special knowledge in order to write good books. And even if I did, I could learn it on my own anyway.
4. I’ve finally learned the basic skills required to have a realistic chance of success in a career as freelancer or entrepreneur.

And the sooner and the more I work on my own important projects, the earlier they can start having a positive effect on the world. And that’s my main objective. If I don’t work on something which is potentially important for improving the world, I inevitably doubt the purpose of what I do and can’t focus on it. That’s why I’m also not interested in any “regular” jobs, where I can only have a very marginal effect on the improvement of the world – at best. Some of you might suggest that I could work on a well-paid job and donate that money to totally effective charities. Even though that would be quite a good idea, I think that’s not the best course of action for me. I very strongly believe in the power of ideas. Ideas are the stuff which shaped our present world and will shape our future. Working on my own ideas and spreading them has absolutely priority above any other project! There’s a reason for that: Nobody else can take over the job of writing down my ideas as truthfully as I can do that. Now, if you say: “Ok, but your ideas aren’t really as important as project X or project Y“. Well, I don’t know whether that’s true. It’s hard to estimate the importance of a complex project a priori. So, I think it’s better to have n+1 great projects instead of n great projects, as long as none of them is clearly superior. Great projects require a lot of time. If I am distracted with studying, I don’t have a lot of time for my main projects.

Providing alternative ideas
It’s just that I am not willing to compromise, now that I know how to manage myself. If there were other people out there who did exactly what I want to do, I could step back and do something else, like doing mathematics just for the fun of it, or work in a regular job. But no, I don’t know of any other person who could act in my place. There are a lot of personal development bloggers, some of which are remarkably good. But they aren’t offering approaches, which are as systematic or extensive as I would like them to be. Providing personal development systems based on philosophy and empiricism sounds like a reasonably innovative and important challenge to me. I’m currently in the phase where I collect the basic materials for that project on this blog. The final project will be located on a new domain and will have a more professional look (something, which is closer to radivis.com than this blog). Another area where I think I can provide alternatives is science-fiction literature. Yeah, there is some (post-)Singularity fiction, but I have some possibly novel ideas, which need to be explored in sci-fi stories. That exploration is what I call explorative philosophy: Thinking through philosophical concepts by constructing narratives around them to see how they work out in hypothetical worlds. It’s not like there was no explorative philosophy already, but I have some rather radical ideas, which need to be worked out that way.

It all revolves around philosophy!
Seriously, the most useful aspect of philosophy is that is provides some orientation in this world. But digging deeper and deeper reveals that reality is much more complicated and chaotic than would be really convenient. Life would be easier if one word had just one clearly defined meaning. Religion would be more convenient if there was a single real benevolent god which everyone acknowledges. Physics would be more convenient if there was no relativity and no quantum effects. Politics would be more convenient if there was a single obvious system which works perfectly and which all approve of. Ethics would be more convenient if there was an easily recognizable really objective and appropriate morality. But no, things aren’t so easy. And it’s often a pain to find out about that fact.

Hope in philosophy
However, one can have the hope that discovering the rough structure of reality does have some kind of advantage. I don’t say that it’s always better to be “closer” to truth (if the concept of truth finally makes sense at all), but at least approaching truth makes is harder to stay naive, and makes it possible to be confused on a higher level. I for one prefer high level confusion to low-level false certainty. For my own life I do not directly apply the high level confusion I stumbled upon (if I tried to do that I would be pretty much disoriented), but the best actionable concepts which may not be the final truth but which can be seen as the best latest sensible milestones. I mean concepts like science, utilitarianism, (continuity of) personal identity, freedom, progress and growth. It may be possible to deconstruct those concepts with some kind of philosophical atomization ray, but as long as we haven’t found any better concepts that could replace them such an act of philosophical vandalism could leave us totally disoriented, and dissolve the ground on which we stand. Exposure to philosophical vacuum (nihilism) can be extremely painful. So, yeah, I want to find better concepts or improve the concepts we already have, so that it’s not so easy to be exposed to philosophical vacuum anymore. The improved perspectives and elevated steadfastness are well worth the effort. Perhaps the essence of what I’m writing here is that philosophy can thoroughly confuse you, but after surviving the initial shock of high level confusion you are immune to low-level confusion (= obsolete ideologies). I’m able to recognize quickly what’s wrong and what doesn’t work, so I can avoid these things – and focus on the things which have a chance of working fine.

Oh, and mathematics can be totally frustrating sometimes

The point at which I really thought about quitting my official study was the preparation for a seminar on rational homotopy theory. We worked with the book “Rational Homotopy Theory and Differential Forms” by Phillip Griffiths and John W. Morgan. Unfortunately, that book isn’t really easily approachable. Repeatedly, I had a very hard time to get some of the definitions to make any sense, so I had to check other materials to find out how the objects of interest are defined correctly! Once the thought “Why am I doing this here exactly?” became too dominant, I decided to reevaluate whether continuing is really worth the effort. So, I weighed the pros and cons and came to the conclusion that the continuation of my official mathematics studies is in no way better for the pursuit of my main objectives than pursuing them directly. It was a surprisingly easy decision, because I had clear priorities. Apart from that I didn’t see the real use of knowing a lot about functional analysis, operator theory, ergodic theory, differential geometry, Galois theory, commutative algebra, algebraic geometry, algebraic topology, algebraic number theory, harmonic analysis, partial differential equations, numerical mathematics, mathematical physics, and several special subjects in probability theory. At least I didn’t see their use for my main projects. If I wanted to develop a new theory in physics, most of those subjects might be useful, but there are lots of other people who are much more capable of doing that than I am. The kind of mathematics I’m really interested in, mathematical logic, model theory, and category theory, isn’t really taught (anymore) at the university I studied at. And mostly because of financial reasons (let’s say my family isn’t well off) I didn’t feel comfortable with going to Bonn or any other top university in this phase of my studies.

Six and a half years of studying mathematics officially are enough
I do not regret my decision to have studied mathematics that long. It was a good decision, but after 13 semesters my return of investment was diminishing seriously. Going into a direction, which is not useful for what I am really interested in doesn’t make a lot of sense in the end. And since I became sure that a “regular” job is not the right thing for me, I decided that the additional effort to get my degree isn’t worth it, even if I am relatively close to getting it (beware of the sunk cost fallacy in such situations). But let’s consider for a moment the trend of increasing difficulty of the mathematics seminars I participated in:

1. Algebra: Piece of cake!
2. Model theory: Nice challenge – well doable.
3. Ergodic theory: Ok, I need some help here.
4. Topological K-Theory: Umm, how does this work exactly? I was happy to get some help from a really gifted student.
5. Rational homotopy theory: Wait, does this definition actually make sense???

Extrapolating from this, I probably would have to face an overwhelming amount of frustration in a university career in mathematics.

Leveraging hard-earned skills
If I hadn’t made tremendous personal progress during the last 9 months (see From being depressed and burnt out to Being Who I Want To Be), I wouldn’t feel comfortable at all with the radical decision to abort my official studies. Even worse: I wouldn’t have been able to work effectively on my own. It seems like I really needed 13 hard semesters of mathematics, two depressions, and an astonishing recovery to get ready for what I am trying to pull off now. But I feel sufficiently confident now. And even if I fail with my projects, the experience of that effort will be worth it.

What now?
I’m aiming for a workweek in which I spend 10 hours of learning really interesting mathematics and physics and invest 25 hours in blogging and writing science fiction stories each. Both of my main projects are really important, and I don’t know whether it makes sense to attribute different priorities to them. Ideally, I want to be able to live from donations and advertisement income alone. I do not plan to sell any products directly as I’m a strong advocate of Creative Commons. Instead, I will offer my writing for free, and let my readers decide how much it is worth to them. I also plan to do some counselling to help out people directly. If that doesn’t work, I will need to think about alternative ways to generate some income. My initial expenses will be financed by selling some of my possessions and by living on my share of my father’s inheritance. In 2007 he suddenly died while sleeping in his bed – at the age of 58. He had some problems with his heart which he hasn’t told my family about. And it seems like he was unwilling to get a necessary operation in time. That’s sad and tragic, but I can’t change what happened. At least his inheritance gives me a chance to go on and invest at least one year (or two or three) into my freelance career before running out of money. Yeah, my plan might be a bit crazy, but I love embarking on that challenging adventure. Where there’s a will, there’s probably a way. And if there is no way, together we will build one

P.S.: These two books have inspired me to choose my new path:

1. Success Built to Last: Creating a Life that Matters by Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery and Mark Thompson: Basically it showed me that you can have crazy ideas which lead to great success, if you are totally dedicated and align your life to your core goals completely.
2. The Art of Non-Conformity: Set Your Own Rules, Live the Life You Want, and Change the World by Chris Guillebeau: This book gave me the final inspiration to start my new career. It also gave me some useful tips and the courage to do the plunge into an unconventional life.