Mental Health in STEM

I've had some thoughts on my own mental health and well-being.

Note

Before I put in Write Freely's cutoff HTML comment, I'd like to add a warning about mental health and suicide — not because I am a Kaczynskian socialized leftist, but because these are genuinely difficult topics to consider, bringing up issues that have no clear cut solutions, both on high and low levels.

If you don't have the capacity to hear about these topics regarding other people, I advise skipping this post entirely.

Explanation

Last month in December 2021, I ended up reading about the suicide of a developer in a blog post from Redox OS written by Jeremy Soller.

Ok, there's a lot to unpack here — I'll get the first two pedantic and less important details out of the way first.

Tangent 1: Microkernels vs. Monolithic Kernels

On one hand, essentially here's the “street” version: you know your Linux distro uses a microkernel if it runs on ARM — so basically nearly all available Android and all Raspberry Pi devices use a microkernel. Due to the idiosyncrasies of microckernels, exactly the perfect number of drivers are installed on your Linux distro and ideally your Linux distro won't be generally installing or removing drivers. (This is probably why Android development of FOSS but not necessarily libre or deblobed custom Android ROMs isn't practically scalable — every Android handset needs either a strong leader or a rock solid and steady small team to maintain a for just 1 Android handset model.)

On the other hand, all consumer desktops and desktops running either Intel or AMD processors will need Linux distros with monolithic kernels. Most Linux distros with monolithic kernels try to come installed with every drivers under the sun in order to “just work” out of the box on most common pieces of modern hardware (read: post-Intel ME and the AMD equivalent). While your mileage may vary IRL, it's not surprising at all if a user has to install additional drivers for somewhat more obscure hardware.

There are somewhat unhelpful experts or ““experts”” who say that monolithic kernels “add unnecessary large [amount of] attack surface” and that “microkernels are the future” because microkernels have a smaller attack surface. (Yes, I literally think of multivariable vector calculus in order to remember the term correctly.) People from objective yet extremely opinionated experts such as Daniel Micay, the lead developer of GrapheneOS, to randos on YouTube, such as DJ Ware, have been saying this. (Wait — am I a rando, too, except with no YouTube/Odysee channel? Let's not think about this too hard, shall we? Anyways...)

(Don't get me started on this talk of Fuschia, some microkernel OS from Google, that's currently amounts to being a pie in the sky to everyday people right now — not like you want Google to control both your OS and hardware choices in the long-term future... but I digress.)

However, if I look around myself right now, I can't find a single available and actionable solution to find suitable hardware to install a Linux distro with a microkernel. Honestly, if you hadn't even heard of microkernels and/or monolithic kernels before reading this, then you don't have anything to worry about for quite a while.

As a final warning for falling head over heels for ARM right this minute, ARM computers (with microkernels) don't necessarily have architecture support with the X86 (32-bit)/X86_64 (64-bit) architecture (with monolithic kernels). For example, I'm not sure how Signal Desktop is, even on the officially “unofficial” Arch Linux variant for ARM (and I recently only heard that Signal Desktop just added beta support for the M1 Macs at the very end of December 2021, which run on ARM).

(Printers don't count — even though it's probably not that big of a deal, I personally dread installing a printer that doesn't work out of the box in Debian... even in non-free Debian. Via the AUR, Arch Linux-based distros are my only reliable hope for making sure all printers work.)

(Though I always could install Debian for Raspberry Pi, I'm not even sure I'm guaranteed to have as essential as Signal Desktop... which is why the Raspberry Pi 4B will still be a local hardware-based thin client for Deluge Stable and/or Kodi right now — which is of slightly more utility than what any smartwatch could offer, even if I could put a more FOSS custom ROM on it.)

So much for all the system-on-chip (SoC) when it comes to ARM...

Anyways, Return from Tangent 1

Ok, so the name Jeremy Soller sounded very familiar to me... yes, it's the one and only based Jeremy Soller from System76!

Alright, I have much respect for Soller, so I better listen up to what he has to say in this post.

After I read it, I started to think a lot about my own mental health in STEM... and realized it was in much neglect.

Not primarily because of my own (somewhat voluntary) negligence, but because at times our tradecraft is at best ambivalent towards mental health and at worst views mental health as an unwanted side effect that does not logically arise from the axioms of rigorous scientific inquiry (unless you come from hard psychology — but let us ignore that edge case).

I suppose you could say the same for any other field of study (that isn't truly applied psychology).

I have yet much more to reflect by myself, but I realized the beginning of a profound line of thought: the only thing that ultimately matters is your own well-being (yes — even over your own genius intelligence in STEM, programming, hacking, open-source, and so on).

If you are not well, then you cannot achieve to your own highest potential.

(This is not some cute social media tagline when you adore a musician too much and vocalize it on Twitter or a stupid “I am unwell” tagline from some stupid podcast called “Call Her Daddy” from Barstool Sports that only wants your money.)

Foreshadowing from 3Blue1Brown

3Blue1Brown is a YouTube channel that creates high quality math videos with some animations that use LaTeX and Python code from a Stanford mathematician.

There is a video from July 2021 that somewhat explained why there hasn't been many new videos.

Although there is also the convergence of YouTube monotonically becoming a worse platform as time moves on due to Google (or Alphabet? Who's keeping track of this corporate bullcrap, anyways?), the idea of making a solid video series supplementing undergraduate-level linear algebra or differential equations was not exactly scalable, in terms of cost of effort and money (unfortunately nothing is free in this world, according to Death: The High Cost of Living).

I do understand being burnt out, because you always feel like your creative energy and effort is being sucked into the uncaring and infinitely larger heat reservoir of the apathetic universe when it comes to maintaining a high level of one's self craft in STEM; and it's hard to just keep on top of your current duties already.

Some Examples of Remembering This Feeling I Will Feel

Below is a unsorted collection of examples that fit into this post's current theme.

Conclusion

I have a lot to think about, and almost none of it will be concerned about out-competing or outmaneuvering acolytes like Daniel Micay or other people in the GrapheneOS Matrix room.