About Me

f you are looking for a more concise, or even perhaps aesthetically pleasing presentation of this information although more limited. I beseige you to use the grid view mode by toggling the button at the bottom left of the page. In this page I will try to give the rather uninteresting answers to Who are you?, What have you done?, Where are you online?, and other typical questions a proper about page should answer. If you were looking for something more up to date about specific goals for the month I have a now page which is located here. I am currently . I am currently a student studying for a mathematics B.S. with a Pure Mathematics certificate. If you are interested in more maths related content see here. I am also a practicing software engineer learning C, C++, and Python. My interests are in Systems Programming, Embedded Systems, and Computer Architecture. I also have a

for web design. Web development has also recently become a hobby of mine. I am not a bleeding edge person, and tend to be more of a never adopter. I like stable things that fit my usecases and are easy to use. So Next.js will be my ongoing webframework of choice for the forseeable future. I tend to dabble quite a bit in applications of unique ideas like script using the levenshtein distance to calculate the distance a user's mistyped url is from the various urls of my site, and suggest the assumed proper urls ordered by closest match first. I enjoy reinventing the wheel, it's a frequent pastime of mine. I owe much to the mindset of Richard Feynman on the basis of You could consider me both a Classicist and a Innovator. I am a classicist in the sense that I believe in the importance of the old masters, and taking as much as possible from them. Furthermore I do disagree with the modern notion that "newer" is inherently better. Rather I am of the belief that Man was created to be a master of multidues, not to have a multitude of masters. To that end I am interested in a number of things. One of my major interests happens to be Pedagogy. Specifically that of the Classical Education. I advocate for ad fontes learning, and living. I also write the progymnasmata myself, excercises can be found here. I maintain a philosophical approach to life that emphasizes ethical consideration and thoughtful reflection. My personal worldview naturally influences my perspective on various topics. In response to this inherent bias, I have implemented a "certainty" rating system for all pages, prose, verse, categories, tags, etc. This is a rating from certain-impossible, and I base this off of mainstream scientific views. So something that is rated relatively low may be a foundational belief of mine, while something that I do not personally support may be highly rated. This covers most of the media bias. I am not an emotional person so most essays I write will tend to be highly generous to both sides. Even to topics I consider problematic, I am likely to explore from multiple points of view. Such is the reflective nature of 'writing', and one that does not necessarily betray the same approach in person.

I think I am more determined than ever in my future plans, and I have quite made up my mind that nothing must be suffered to interfere with them.
I intend to make such arrangements in town as will secure me a couple of hours daily (with very few exceptions) for my studies.

— Ada Lovelace

Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large I contain multitudes.

— Walt Whitman

Work

I'd love to have a career in academia, open source software, or something more of the likes of 80,000 Hours. I'm particularly interested in areas that have a high ability for ai assistance, and automation. As well as those areas that can be greatly accelerated with unique ideas, and approaches. I am not interested in mundane, repetivie tasks, and those that require much manual work with little ability to automate. For those of you who share similar interests, and would like to follow my journey finding a career like this I will be tracking everything related to that in this post.

Writing/Research/Learning/Maintaining krisyotam.com

Honestly these things do take up a significiant amount of time and energy. Thankfully however with the constant innovation of the AI Race I have been able to increase outputs, while decreasing the amount of time required to get them by several orders of magnitude. It's truly remarkable. I am able to focus on slow living reading the classics over, and over again while extracting all of the insights out of fad books, manuals, and other trendy books/media instantly with things like LM Studio, and a well curated Prompt Collection. I can use cursor in tandem with Obsidian to help autoamte cleaning, and linking my notes together. In addition I can have prompts that help find unique insights or ideas using my Obsidian database. As far as learning goes, with the heap of knowledge about memory I am able to abuse several techniques like spaced repetition for learning massive amounts of declarative knowledge which makes everything else easier. Ideas such as Cognitive Load Theory, Interleaved Practice, Deliberate Practice, and the Feynman Technique are all things I use to accelerate my learning. It's also a massive help that without spending much time on manual research myself I can have several deep research reports generated for me, and in tandem with LLMs unify them into Ultralearning curriculum for immersive learning. All in all I am able to do a lot more with a lot less time, and energy. So even though I hope to one day be able to monetize likely with patreon. I do not see any of the aforementioned as a bottleneck to a meaninful career.

Current Work

My current work involves a lot of freelance writing, affiliate marketing, and scarce AI training data curation. I also work a 9-5 which I will not specify here for obvious reasons.

Why Academia?

I believe that education is the most fundmental and foundational of all human endeavors. The bedrock of the society so to say. With this comes the responsbility as a nation, state, community, and Individual to ensure that the education system is not only effective, but also equitable, accessible, and inclusive. I have a strong preference for classical education using ad fontes techniques, and resources as I feel it produces the most well-rounded, capable, articulate, and critical thinkers. The people we need to fix the world, and solve the problems of the future. I also believe it produces the people with the moral values to know when they shouldn't act on their knowledge, as opposed to those who might misuse it for personal gain, power, or lust of knowledge.

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.
— Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park

Why 80,000 Hours?

You'll spend about 80,000 hours working your career; 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, for 40 years. So how to spend that time is one of the most important decisions you'll ever make. — Benjamin Todd, 80,000 Hours

As a Effective Altruist, I believe the most effective thing anyone one person can do is to find a career that is both fulfilling, and enables them to make as much positive change as possible. That also means considering the long-term impact of their work, and how it aligns with their values and goals. I am particularly interested in careers that have a high direct potential for positive impact, such as those that are fairly involved with one of the World's Most Pressing Problems. More specifically I am interested in careers that are involved with the following areas: AI Alignment, Existential Risk Reduction, and Education Reform.

Online Presence

I am a lot of places online. Although in the future this list will be shrinking rather than growing, I will try to provide as comprehensive a list of the platforms I actively engage with. As well as if I think I will be doing so in the years to come.

Social (Mastadon/X/Reddit/Quora)

Out of the many socials I have the 4 that are something other than a placeholder for my username are these. They are the only accounts I am logged into more often than not. I am fairly active viewing posts on a dozen or more subreddits daily, and same for some Quora questions. My contributions will probably be sparse on Quora, and on reddit most likely in the subreddits r/OpenAI, r/csMajors, r/learnmath, r/mathbooks, r/matheducation, r/puremathematics, r/math, r/compsci, r/physics, askphysics, r/theoreticalphysics, r/marinebiology, r/psychology, and r/philosophy.

Mathematics (AoPS/MathOverflow/MathStackExchange)

I am currently active on these 3 platforms for mathematics finding resources, worked out solutions, ect. I expect to participate in "MathOverflow", and "MathStackExchange" a lot more in the coming years.

Prose

Poetry (AllPoetry/Poets.org)

I spent a lot of time reading both classic, and contemporary poetry. A lot of this I do in books such as the Oxford Book Of English Verse. However when it comes to online resources for reading I utilize poets.org, and for writing in pubic, and consumption of amateur verse I spend a fair amount of time browsing AllPoetry.

Effective Altruism / AI Alignment (Alignment Forum/EA Forum/LessWrong)

With Effective Altruism, and AI Alignment quickly becoming some of the largest, and most important areas in my life. I will be spending a considerable amount of time on these forums now, and in the coming years. My involvement with writing content on them as opposed to reading user created content should have a positive correlation with my knowledge on the topics.

Gaming

I don't spend to much time gaming anymore. When I do Its mainly geometry dash, fortnite, clash royale, or the occasional roblox horror game. I am deeply familiar with each of these, and that is to my satisfaction. I no longer play FN Competitive, and don't participate in any type of tournaments. Same goes with Clash Royale, I am quite behind the curve with tower troops, evos, balance changes, ect. I intend to catch up at some point as it is my comfort game. However I surely wont be putting as much effort into it as I once did. Considering FN requires constant access to a PC, Low Latency, and good Perhipherals there is no gauruntee I will be playing much or at all in the coming years. As these are not things I can say for sure I will have constant acess to. Until then you can add me on EpicGames, Supercell ID, or Roblox. Send a email first to request@krisyotam.com

Competitive Programming (Codeforces, LeetCode, CodeChef, CodeWars, AtCoder)

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Gaming

don't spend to much time gaming anymore. When I do Its mainly geometry dash, fortnite, clash royale, or the occasional roblox horror game. I am deeply familiar with each of these, and that is to my satisfaction. I no longer play FN Competitive, and don't participate in any type of tournaments. Same goes with Clash Royale, I am quite behind the curve with tower troops, evos, balance changes, ect. I intend to catch up at some point as it is my comfort game. However I surely wont be putting as much effort into it as I once did. Considering FN requires constant access to a PC, Low Latency, and good Perhipherals there is no gauruntee I will be playing much or at all in the coming years. As these are not things I can say for sure I will have constant acess to. Until then you can add me on EpicGames, Supercell ID, or Roblox. Send a email first to request@krisyotam.com

Profile

Personality

Philosophy

ere I will try to stick to a overhead view of my personal philosophy. I will go into some depth realting to topics such as Minimalism, Asceticism, Rationalism, Slow Living, Intentional Living, Classical Education, Quietism, Stoicism, and Ad Fontes Living. I realize those are fairly blanket terms, and there is really nothing to be done about such in regards to giving a accurate preview of what is to come. What has been excluded from this to be covered in other posts are my philosophy on programming, philosophy of physical sciences detailing my approach to (mathematics, logic, and computer science), Forms of Thinking catalouging my approach to learning, philosophy on systems covering my phliosophy on software and hardware systems, and toward a literary life which covers my approach to literature.

Minimalism

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

thought I would cover this first as Minimalism is the most foundational of the philosophies, and most integral to my mental health, and way of being. By way of my obsessive learning style based on Scott Young's Ultralearning. Unecessary complexity can cause a lot of problems in my life via Decision Fatigue. It's because of this that I tailor my life as much as possible around proactive planning of future needs. Overstimulation happens to be another dangerous thing following maximalism. It is detrimental to anyone looking to lead a dedicated, fulfilled, and focused life. By way of decreasing attention span. Devices, unwanted meetings, and relationships you don't even care about can cause Productive Procrastination. I am truly not the biggest fan of real life ads.

People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time, they are the most wasteful of the one thing in which is it right to be stingy.
— Seneca

As Seneca says people are far to profuse when it comes to the time they are willing to give menial things. At the risk of sounding caustic, I am very

with the things I allow to take up my time. My goal is to create a contant flux of positive food through the senses (Auditory, Olfactory, Gustatory, Tactile, Visual). People put obscene thought into diet plans but little think about the diet of the other senses. Hearing, Seeing, Smelling, or Touching the wrong the thing can take hours of focus away from one's day at best, and months at worst. So it is best to be overly cautious when it comes to the type of person you are and the things you consume both actively, and unconctiously.

Asceticism

y approach to asceticism is driven by a commitment to wisdom and understanding. The most important form of this being wisdom and understanding for the purpose of practical application in daily life. As far as I am aware this is a somewhat controversial take that people must keep the law? Or rather a convuluted one on what the law is, as most christians don't traditionally seem to think that sin is ok. This is not something I plan on covering here but in another post at a later date. I do however feel it is worth mentioning that my belief in living a legalistic life can be derived from

. My natural goals can be most elegantly summed up as As such it is in my interest to avoid the numerous forms of distraction and meaningless pursuits that can detract from genuine understanding and purposeful living.

Rationalism

Slow Living

link to a new post you are going to make "On the Erosion of ownership"

Intentional Living

Classical Education

Quietism

Stoicism

Ad Fontes Living

Diet

he one eats is the way one thinks. A sentiment I picked up from the late Nicola Tesla who stressed the importance of high-quality food, preferring fresh vegetables, fruits, legumes, milk, and egg whites. He avoided egg yolks and acid producing foods, believing they could impair health and mental function. He directly linked his diet as the sustaining force behind his

work ethic. Even being adamant about the avoidance of stimulants such as coffee, tea, and tobacco considering them harmful to both physical and mental well-being. I share his conviction of some of the harsher stimulants like (tobacc), and in others like coffee I am currently more torn on. I am completely opposed to the open disdain of tea however and do not plan on living a life without it. I am in a phase of my life where as a young adult I lack much of the stability that many have in there later years, and tend to throw myself entirely at work. Writing, Developing, Researching, Studying, ect. from sometimes 10-12 hours at a time with 1-2 meals a day, and a lot of tea to sustain me. This has done no benefits to me as I have suffered from Sleep Apnea, Microsleep Blackouts, and Sleep Paralysis. Admittely most of my unconventional polyphasic sleep of around 3-4 hours per day comes from these Microsleep Blackouts, and the Sleep Paralysis from my mind being ready to get back to work while my body lies wholly opposed. I am currently into research about correcting my diet so I will share some of what is planned now.

The goal is to rely upon a more Alkaline Diet. The theory is that acidic foods cause acidosis, and mucus in the body leaving a breading ground for harmful bacteria and disease. In short that this can all be avoided with some form of Naturalist diet relying on mostly fruit and vegitables. At the current time I have no plans of converting in full to such a diet. The claims are interesting, and from anecodotal evidence I can even vouch for the short term results. However only raw uncooked fruits, and vegitables is out of the realm of plausiblity for me currently. I am leaning toward something more simialar to what is seen on this channel. Something of this sort allows me to continue to polish my culinary ability, learn about various cultures of food, and to eat a healthy diet routinely without lack of variety. I do not plan on using this as dogma either however. I intend on enjoying the occasional French Silk Pie. This leneancy should not do to much damage as I am rather tame on the sweets in the first place, and have alkaline alternative to practically any normal meal I'd ever eat. The only thing here is meat. I'd like to have a proper discussion on this topic in the future. At the moment I will continue to eat chicken, beef, and turkey.

Excercise

Morals

My moral framework is anchored in compassion, equality, and a deep concern for the preservation of what I consider sacred. I score 76% in Care, reflecting a strong inclination toward protecting others from harm and responding to suffering with empathy and action. With 98% in Equality, I have an almost uncompromising commitment to fairness, reciprocity, and the dismantling of unjust hierarchies. I also score 92% in Purity, though this is less about traditional morality and more about preserving psychological clarity, resisting moral degradation, and aspiring to personal and cultural integrity. My 61% in Loyalty reveals that I value meaningful bonds and principled allegiance—loyalty not to groups by default, but to people, ideas, and causes that earn my trust. At 32% in Authority, I am skeptical of power structures and deferential hierarchies, favoring earned respect over institutional obedience. Lastly, my 27% in Proportionality suggests a moral leaning away from strict deserts-based justice; I tend to prioritize compassion over calibration, and mercy over retribution. Altogether, these values orient me toward a vision of life that is cooperative rather than competitive, redemptive rather than punitive, and always questioning of the forces that claim to rule us.

Entertainment

As im sure you have figured out by now I am a bibliophile, cinephile, and audiophile. I love to read, watch movies, and listen to music. I also enjoy playing video games, but not a lot of story mode games anymore. I also don't put as much time into gaming as I used to. I just stick to the few games I am already familiar with, as there is little to no learning curve required for continued enjoyment. I am in support of piracy, and I do not pay for any of my media. I do not support the current state of the entertainment industry, and I do not plan on supporting it in the future. However I do contradict that statement in a few ways to make my life drastically easier. Such as paying for Tidal in order to have a high quality music streaming service, and last.fm for tracking everything I listen to. I also pay for the Criterion Channel to have access to a large library of classic films, and documentaries. Criterion Channel is the only place I watch films for the most part. On the occassion I want to watch something new, obscure, or a non classic favorite I will use either HuraWatch, or Soap2Day. For anime I use AniCli, and for manga I use MangaFire. For those of you wondering where I track my media, I will list all the methods below.

Contact Me

I have Signal, X, and Instagram. I also have accounts on a lot of other major sites. This is strictly to reserve the username krisyotam. I will not respond to any of your messages on these platforms. If you want to contact me all methods are listed here.

@article{yotam2025about-kris,
  title   = "About Kris",
  author  = "Yotam, Kris",
  journal = "krisyotam.com",
  year    = "2025",
  month   = "Jun",
  url     = "https://krisyotam.com/notes/on-myself/about-kris"
}