“Thoughts on mind” is a very literal title. This blog consists of anything I happen to be thinking about, hence the diverse range of topics and lack of cohesion. I like explaining things, so a lot of posts are my explanations of things I’ve learned. This isn’t really meant to be authoritative. I mostly write for myself, not an audience, though I appreciate it when people take interest in my writing.

The format of each post varies, for example I have done references in a few different ways. I tend to format a post in the way that I feel best fits that post rather than going for blogwide consistency. That being said, I have consistently used AI-generated images to accompany my posts. This may be a controversial choice. I don’t actually endorse “AI art” in general. I think the way I use it, which is like how some news sites use stock photography, is one of the only reasonable use cases. It’s good for images that need to communicate something simple or add visual interest but are otherwise unimportant. I have written previous posts exploring the AI image generation issue in more detail.

Posts sometimes get out of hand in terms of length, with my longest posts exceeding 5,000 words. My average post length is about 1,500 words. This is partially due to my writing style, which can be wordy; if I didn’t restrain myself, my sentences would go on even longer, significantly impeding readability. One reason my posts can get long is because I have an urge to provide context for everything I’m talking about.

I tend to write more or less in an essay style. This is what I have the most experience with. Narrative writing is challenging for me so I avoid it. According to wordcounter.net, most of my posts are at a “college student” or “college graduate” reading level. In some cases, this may be down to the topic of the post itself, but it’s also because I use big words and long sentences. I’m not good at much, but I do have a large vocabulary.

I worry sometimes that I sound too much like I know what I’m talking about. Even when I cite academic journals, it should be taken with a grain of salt, because I’m not an expert. I don’t have the context of what current research is like, what the main journals are for a given topic, how to interpret a paper from a given field, and so on. I am a layperson just doing my best to understand.

There are just a couple areas where I can claim to have some expertise. The main one is math. I wouldn’t call myself a math expert under most circumstances, but I don’t consider myself to be a mathematical layperson. I can read a math paper. I’m actually in a bit of a weird place with math, since I know way more than the average person and way less than the average graduate student. Outside the mathematical community I seem like an expert but within the mathematical community I’m a total novice.

Anyway, I’m still working on writing better conclusions.