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 Kant and pistol squats
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I took another stab at Kant's "The Critique of Pure Reason", along
with its Cambridge companion book, and other secondary sources:
Wikipedia, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy articles. But abandoned it again, since the
foundations it lays down seem so unconvincing: AIUI, "transcendental
aesthetic" claims that space and time have to be a priori "forms of
intuition", present in the mind before experience to allow for
perception of everything else, apparently akin to predefined
data/algebraic types/structures, yet a basic robot running a
statistical model, an evolutionary algorithm, or anything else capable
of general enough adaptation is a counterexample (though in the 18th
century they did not have any of those, or the curved spacetime model,
or even the theory of evolution). The universality and necessity he
considers as attributes of a priori knowledge sound to me like
consequences of simplification one employs for modeling,
extrapolation. And then "transcendental logic" does the same with
categories of the understanding (of which there are 4 groups of 3,
neat and arbitrary-looking). Apparently then it is propped up with
more concepts, and built further upon. But once it ceases to sound
sensible, it becomes tedious to follow (though it would be tricky even
if one held those views, apparently coming from rationalism, since it
is not a light reading); it reminded me of textbooks I saw no use in,
while forced studies are unpleasant and do not stick. That being said,
it is still a fairly interesting and thought-provoking reading. For
instance, there is (outside of the book) a question of whether
mathematics is invented or discovered; Kant brings up geometry as an
example of synthetic a priori judgments, but this brief journey nudged
me to view it more (or at least to formulate) as "created as an
abstract model, and the model is studied". I thought to attempt
reading "a priori" as "modeled", similarly to reading "god" as
"nature" or "universe" in some works, but it does not work that way:
seems like Kant does actually talk about such innate "forms of
intuition". As many older works, it also makes me to wonder how much
more philosophical views may be affected by future discoveries, and
yet again to marvel at how different the world views can be: even
those of reasonable people and in recent times.

Maybe I should get back to it someday, at least for the context, and
since it seems to be considered too important to mostly dismiss this
easily, but likely for now I will focus on ethics, political
philosophy, history, and sociology: those are more likely to be
censored first. It is tempting to return to physics, mathematics, and
music studies, or simply to work on software projects, but perhaps
those can wait. Survival and DIY (and low-tech trade) skills may be
useful to acquire or improve, but those would require practice.

In physical exercises, I finally manage to do pistol (one-leg) squats:
not consistently yet, but sufficiently to practice and improve on
those. I have not tried to do those for some time, focused on side to
side squats instead, then tried half pistol squats, and then found
that full pistol squats are attainable. I keep practicing the recently
unlocked wall handstands as well: still learning--and sometimes
managing--to not slam into the wall with my back, and attempting to
balance on hands after disconnecting from a wall, though just for a
second or two. I like those exercises with elements of skill and
balancing, and it feels good to manage the challenging ones. On rest
days, I have mostly switched back to indoors HIIT/cardio workouts,
since the weather is bad for walking: around zero degrees Celsius, and
often rainy. I tried walking in a park when it is at least dry
outside, but it gets dark early, and the leafless tree branches
against the light-polluted sky are a rather sad (and all too familiar)
sight. Though it can still be pleasantly calm, given that there are no
cars in the immediate vicinity, and few people.

Locally, fines are introduced for online services using foreign
identity providers; RKN threatens to completely block WhatsApp soon;
in addition to the updated history and new indoctrination lessons, an
unified "nation-centric" philosophy program is introduced, featuring
"traditional values" and "civilization state". With most of the
popular international online services blocked already, it is worrying
that a blackout would be noticed by relatively few people, making
those more likely. Internet usage is quite a struggle for a while now,
my studies and related activities are directed by anticipation of
possible isolation, and these sections of {b,ph}log posts I write as a
kind of farewell messages to the outside world, so that in case of it
going silent, possible reasons can be guessed.

In the more cheerful news, Advent of Code will commence tomorrow,
which should be a fun distraction.


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:Date: 2025-11-30