I'm enjoying this thread, albeit in a bittersweet way - its good to hear of a shared struggle but the solution is to get focused and stick with something.
I've been in a similar limbo for the past few years. I was going to a university for computer engineering, but I fizzled out due to compromised discipline (excessive pot use). I liked the way it was described in a previous thread ("makes me excited about the world") because I wouldn't necessarily veg out - my thoughts would go all over the place with the possibilities.
I still get excited about the world and the advancement of our species, but in order to tie all my thoughts together I try and commit them to memory with all things considered. Here's an example:
Electrical engineering involves pathways of distributed current, increasing and decreasing voltage for certain applications, and components that perform work or output corresponding data. I'm about to get a job with the Department of Transportation. Do you see how I can relate these two subjects?
Traffic density = voltage. A traffic jam = increased resistance and effects the flow of the economy. This flow powers components, factories, retail stores, consumers that spend their chemical energy (digested food) to acquire more chemical energy (fresh food).
I'm sure I could tie all that in with the ever increasing toolbox for web development and computing, but you get the idea. Maybe this school of thought is terribly inefficient because one couldn't possibly register the intricacies of each idea. But I'm sure the brain in some way naturally does this anyway. I've read thats what they're trying to achieve with DeepMind (or any other deep learning venture), teaching AI one thing and it learns similar fields on its own.
This entire comment may digress terribly - ADD is natures response to the Information Age.
I've been in a similar limbo for the past few years. I was going to a university for computer engineering, but I fizzled out due to compromised discipline (excessive pot use). I liked the way it was described in a previous thread ("makes me excited about the world") because I wouldn't necessarily veg out - my thoughts would go all over the place with the possibilities.
I still get excited about the world and the advancement of our species, but in order to tie all my thoughts together I try and commit them to memory with all things considered. Here's an example:
Electrical engineering involves pathways of distributed current, increasing and decreasing voltage for certain applications, and components that perform work or output corresponding data. I'm about to get a job with the Department of Transportation. Do you see how I can relate these two subjects?
Traffic density = voltage. A traffic jam = increased resistance and effects the flow of the economy. This flow powers components, factories, retail stores, consumers that spend their chemical energy (digested food) to acquire more chemical energy (fresh food).
I'm sure I could tie all that in with the ever increasing toolbox for web development and computing, but you get the idea. Maybe this school of thought is terribly inefficient because one couldn't possibly register the intricacies of each idea. But I'm sure the brain in some way naturally does this anyway. I've read thats what they're trying to achieve with DeepMind (or any other deep learning venture), teaching AI one thing and it learns similar fields on its own.
This entire comment may digress terribly - ADD is natures response to the Information Age.