266 karma · joined February 9, 2017
First, I would agree with @codingslave in that you SHOULD NOT quit your job, if you can help it. Let me explain: Work provides important scaffolding when you are in a rut. It provides routine and social contact. Without it, it is possible you might start sliding into poor sleeping habits and withdrawing socially, which can make things even worse. At the very least, find a less stressful job to move to before leaving your current one. If this is hard to do, please reach out to family or friends for help. Please understand that it's absolutely okay to struggle and have bad days. Give yourself permission to feel.
Second, it's awesome that you're seeing a medical professional/therapist about this, and I encourage you to keep doing so regularly. "What should I do?" I think you're approaching this well. I wish you the best!
"The non-recursive way is more efficient as the CLR does not have to keep pushing and popping its call stack (which is quite slow). The non-recursive way is unfortunately harder to code. So the challenge was on!"
In this dissertation I investigate the theoretical possibility of a universal method of prediction. A prediction method is universal if it is always able to learn what there is to learn from data: if it is always able to extrapolate given data about past observations to maximally successful predictions about future observations. The context of this investigation is the broader philosophical question into the possibility of a formal specification of inductive or scientific reasoning, a question that also touches on modern-day speculation about a fully automatized data-driven science.
I investigate, in particular, a specific mathematical definition of a universal prediction method, that goes back to the early days of artificial intelligence and that has a direct line to modern developments in machine learning. This definition essentially aims to combine all possible prediction algorithms. An alternative interpretation is that this definition formalizes the idea that learning from data is equivalent to compressing data. In this guise, the definition is often presented as an implementation and even as a justification of Occam's razor, the principle that we should look for simple explanations.
The conclusions of my investigation are negative. I show that the proposed definition cannot be interpreted as a universal prediction method, as turns out to be exposed by a mathematical argument that it was actually intended to overcome. Moreover, I show that the suggested justification of Occam's razor does not work, and I argue that the relevant notion of simplicity as compressibility is problematic itself.
You don't need to create a Twitter bot like me, but I would try tweeting at @gmail or @google once a day until they respond. Good luck!
Books are hard reading though, so video lectures are also the next best option. Walter Lewin does a good job with this, so try googling his lectures.
Also, you'll probably want to stay away from Feynman lectures until you actually understand the theory.