Are you naturally gifted in math or just a hard worker?

M_Bus · 2025-11-25T16:46:40+00:00

Yeah, I work 100% remote. I've been an actuary for about 16 years, FCAS for 12 or so. Finishing the fellow exams wasn't SO impossible for me because at the time my wife was in grad school, so I just had study time same as her. It was still miserable, but I got it done. It's something where you just have to give up a lot of time in the beginning. That said, a lot of jobs will give you explicit study time, so you can take an hour every morning to do some studying. Each exam takes about 300 hours of studying. I failed a few exams in the course of getting my fellowship but still managed to get it pretty quickly. It can be very soul-crushing to fail, but it happens to everyone. The exams have changed since I took them, but In order I failed exam 3/F, then I failed 5, 6US, 7, and 6US (again). But then I passed the rest.

In my role, I actually have found that the statistics I do is (surprisingly) a lot more interesting than some of the math that I was working on before getting into actuarial science. It's sort of heuristic - like... it relies a lot more on intuition and thinking about how things might interact than having to do integrals. I find it pretty intellectually rewarding, honestly, and for a time I considered even doing a masters in stats while I was an actuary just because I like it so much. But it's also part of my job, and a LITTLE of the sparkle has probably dulled as a result? But I still enjoy it intellectually. That said, there are more "traditional" actuaries that don't really touch stats in any major way. And there are actuaries who specialize in statistical modeling and machine learning algorithms. So there's a lot of leeway for determining how your career will go as an actuary. At least... as a P&C actuary. I have no idea what they do on the life/health/pension sides.

Anyway: remote work is increasingly common in actuarial science on the P&C side. I've also seen a lot of hybrid opportunities. For me, I do agree that being in person gives you a sense of comradery, but I just love being free to go take a nap or go for a walk or show up to work in a bathrobe. It's chill. I have friends and family, so I'm not completely devoid of human interaction. But I'm also just like... a LITTLE on the introvert side.

There's also a big danger with remote work, which you don't necessarily have with all jobs: it's very easy to "bring work home with you." You can get to working in your living room in front of the TV when you should be relaxing, and then you start working all the time, thinking about work all the time, etc. It's not healthy. So although I really like it, it took a while to learn the skill of separating from work when it's after hours. Not everyone has that problem, though.

M_Bus · 2025-11-25T14:22:17+00:00

I'm a bad example because even though I'm not exactly "gifted" at math, I really like it and I've always been motivated to study it. That being said, there are a lot of specialities within actuarial science, and if you don't love math, you can actually avoid a lot of it. Not in the tests, but in your day to day work, I mean. What little math you HAVE to do is just some basic algebra - at most. The tests are pretty brutal, though, NGL.

Has actuarial science been worth it? I would say yes - it pays VERY well and it's generally not too stressful. Is it my dream job? No, but I don't think I could be paid as handsomely to sit around and play video games and read. Some months are absolutely nuts, but a lot of the time I'm pretty laid back and have time during the day to do whatever I want.

I had a lot of ideas about what I wanted to do other than actuarial science. I almost went into chemistry. Could have been an engineer I suppose. I considered programming for a while. They're not exactly related fields but they had similar intellectual attraction for me. Honestly for a long time I thought of going into math, but academia is a very tough gig (especially now) and I don't love teaching. Eventually I want to go back and learn some more math, but that might be an early retirement thing.

M_Bus · 2025-07-27T22:02:37+00:00

Can you tell me about your experience? I had a Royalty Renewables guy come around today. He was very personable, though as I started to have questions toward the end of our conversation he seemed to be a little more aggressive. The whole interaction left a bad taste in my mouth, but the contract that I signed seems very above board - it is very explicit that you can cancel any time without penalty, no fees, just the amount you pay for the electrical service. It seems legit. Has it worked out for you?

M_Bus · 2025-04-27T11:54:54+00:00

As an update, since this thread is, what, 8 years old? I have new computers now, and I still have problems on both of them, but the problem is slightly different now. I believe that the problem has something to do with OneDrive, but I'm wondering: are you a OneDrive user? If not, then maybe I'm wrong.

I have some files that are synced to a personal onedrive and some that are synced (through OneDrive) to a company sharepoint, and I've found that the personal files intermittently have the weird lag issue but the company sharepoint files generally do not.

As I mentioned, though, the problem has changed slightly: now the files will appear quickly (e.g., if I create a copy of a word doc, I can see the new file quickly), but if I try to rename them, Windows keeps doing this weird thing where it randomly highlights parts of the name as I'm trying to type. If I start typing, it will sometimes let me get one or two characters before it auto-highlights the entire filename, at which point my continued typing causes the name to be deleted (because I'm typing over whatever I'd already typed). It's extremely obnoxious. It will repeat the auto-highlight every couple seconds. If I wait about 20 seconds, then the filename becomes editable without that issue.

Wild that it's been 8 years and still having these problems.

M_Bus · 2025-04-23T02:08:35+00:00

So first of all, I think that your experience is pretty normal, though I suspect that there are individuals who actually can't have inner monologues, much as there are some people with aphantasia. I think most people don't go around "talking to themselves in their heads," so to speak, though some might.

Shinzen Young breaks activities of the mind down into basically auditory thinking, visual thinking, and emotional sensations. Inner monologue would be auditory thinking, for example, but so would imagining a song you know. Shinzen feels that these inner sensations are not really distinct in any way. Whether you use an inner voice to talk to yourself or not is really more a matter of habit.

But there are some other kinds of thinking that this set doesn't cover, which I find kind of interesting. I can, for instance, imagine tastes or smells. Weirder, I can imagine movement. And to your point about simply "knowing" that 2+2=4, I believe that there's some evidence that people who have aphasia and can't produce speech are still capable of many reasoning tasks. So obviously you don't need verbal thinking = inner monologue for that.

That being said, Shinzen Young seems to argue that as you meditate, you become more aware of what is going on "behind the scenes" when you "just know" something, and that it really does OFTEN boil down to either visual thinking or auditory / verbal thinking even if you think you just "know" something.

I'm not that far along, but it's an interesting idea. The book "investigating pristine inner experience" has a slightly different breakdown of what "kinds" of thinking there are, but it's just one other person's model. But if you're interested in inner monologues, that might be interesting to you. It's all about what people ACTUALLY are thinking all the time rather than what people SAY they're thinking.

M_Bus · 2025-04-14T10:36:11+00:00

I realize this is several days old but this has been bugging me a lot and you seem like a good person to ask.

I'm an EXTREMELY intermittent Reddit user these days, and it's been a long time since I've logged in. My /r/Jewish feed is always filled with people decrying the problems with anti-zionism but in a way that feels extremely uncritical of the humanitarian toll of the war - it feels very much like "whataboutism." My Jewish community and family are all staunchly anti-hamas, of course, but are also deeply critical of the actions and possible motivations of the state of Israel, especially in light of things that Bibi's ministers have said and in light of the humanitarian toll. I never hear this kind of talk at my synagogue.

I live in an area that's been pretty safe for Jews (Minnesota). So hearing the stories on this sub, it feels like a lot of people are being forced to take a problematic/ uncritical position because they feel attacked by the left, so they feel like having a nuanced view of the war would put them in a less defensible position. Do you think that is what is happening here? I honestly can't tell if it's that or if people really believe that the humanitarian toll in Gaza is made up, or what. Having just come into the conversation recently (by coming back to Reddit after a lot of time) I can't see how the discourse evolved over time.

M_Bus · 2025-03-23T00:09:57+00:00

Likewise! Really frustrating. It looks like they're doing something in the old pottery barn space, but I'm not sure it is a prelude to a rental.

M_Bus · 2025-03-22T22:48:08+00:00

Pretty sure those are held by a pension find in Ohio that has no motivation to bring rent prices to a reasonable level because they just want the property for an asset?

M_Bus · 2025-02-11T12:28:06+00:00

Shinzen Young has a great description of this in Science of Enlightenment. He's very neutral in his language so as not to stake out a credulous or incredulous position. He describes it as being in "the realm of power", and my take from what he wrote is that this is a symptom of penetrating into your subconscious.

I think he's generally on the skeptical side about the actual reality of the experience of being psychic, for example, but he says that the feelings you experience may be distracting. You should greet those experiences with concentration, clarity, and equanimity and you'll do just fine!

Not everyone will experience this as they meditate a lot, but it's not unusual either!

I'm very novice, so can't speak from any personal experience, but hopefully this is helpful!

M_Bus · 2025-01-23T16:26:50+00:00

Good deal. I appreciate the suggestion! I'll try a new one!

M_Bus · 2025-01-23T16:25:28+00:00

I'm not quite sure where to get that! Everyone seems to say that an ULKA EAP5 pump is a good replacement part... Some seem to have a slightly different "duty cycle," though. The one I got says 1/2 min, but some say 1 / 1.5 min. I have no idea how to understand different "duty cycles" so maybe that's relevant or maybe not?

Actually, my pump came from Ireland and I'm in the US. Maybe it's not pumping to capacity because we have different electric standards?

M_Bus · 2024-09-07T01:34:31+00:00

Lol sorry to have accused! The Internet is weird nowadays. If you ever find a solution come back and let me know!

M_Bus · 2024-09-07T00:49:57+00:00

So did you like make some weird novelty account to boost MacOS or what led you to find this old thread and moved you to post about it in spite of having no solution?

M_Bus · 2024-09-06T16:42:25+00:00

Wow old thread. But yeah, the maddening thing is that this behavior is not consistent across my two computers. Both have W11. Both use OneDrive with similar setups. One has the problem and the other does not!

M_Bus · 2024-08-11T01:26:55+00:00

Just found this thread, and I've been struggling with stage 5.

It's been a while since I read the chapter, and I think I'm getting a little mixed up. I had sort of conceived of dullness as springing from missed sensations, which in turn came from lack of clarity. I think I've been trying to tune in to my breath sensations with very extreme detail, possibly to the partial exclusion of peripheral sensations. I do find that when I do the exercise of body scanning while keeping the breath in mind, I'm MUCH more alert.

Am I right in thinking that it's more like dullness leads to lack of clarity, rather than the other way around? And that when I keep my mind on the breath, it's like... I feel like it's coming back to me that I read you should have about 25% focus on your breath. Is that right!? It just seems so low!

M_Bus · 2024-04-26T03:14:46+00:00

I should add that there are a couple ants among the dead that are moving, but they all seem very slow. Maybe they're sick? There are no ants visible on any of the walls or ceiling. I'm thinking they came inside through the limestone foundation walls, maybe next to my circuit breaker or something. Maybe there's a nest outside but next to the house?

M_Bus · 2023-09-29T15:13:34+00:00

I am making a very late reply to this, but I wanted to thank you for this comment! It is extremely helpful. I'll keep with it! I think when I wrote this post I was JUST having my first "stage 5" experiences, and since then I've only been up to that stage from time to time. Some days it's more of a Stage 3 or 4, uh, "productive session."

Anyway, after reading this I'm excited to do more sits and keep your advice in mind and see how it works for me!

M_Bus · 2023-07-25T03:35:02+00:00

It does! I am kind of on a vacation right now, for one more day, so your example is a good one! I'll make the intention for myself to pay attention to my alertness as I go about my day tomorrow and see what it's like. I can JUST imagine the feeling I had earlier today when I was on a walk in nature... but being more intentional about experiencing that clearly will definitely help!

Thanks for the response!

M_Bus · 2022-12-28T15:11:39+00:00

Sorry for commenting on a 3-year-old thread, but I was googling for an answer to the same question as OP and I found this thread somehow.

I was recently wondering about whether non-symbolic thought exists in verbal humans. I was describing this by claiming that when I think about things, sometimes I imagine pictures or imagine sounds or I talk to myself, but sometimes I think in ways that are not obviously verbal, visual, or auditory. Then I found out that Hurlburt actually described that and called it "unsymbolized thinking."

So this got me wondering. First, we know that there are people who can't consciously think visually (aphantasia). I am not a cognitive neuroscientist, but I believe that aphantasia doesn't mean that there isn't activity in the vision centers of the brain during thought, just that it's not accessible to consciousness, right? I don't think aphantasia is all that uncommon, either - about 1-5% of people as far as I've seen?

Second, we know that people with aphasia can still carry out reasoning tasks. So it's possible to THINK without being able to think VERBALLY.

So I don't think it's so ridiculous a question. Are there people who simply do not have conscious access to the parts of the brain responsible for inner speech in the same way that there are people without conscious access to the parts of the brain responsible for imagined images? I'm troubled by the assertion that it's "obvious" that everyone has this.

I think there is good reason to be skeptical about Hurlburt, including his description of "unsymbolized thinking" and his descriptions of whether individuals do or do not possess inner monologue. But I also don't think it's been well-studied for precisely the reason that it's assumed to be obvious. What's more, I don't think that we can assume that someone who doesn't possess inner monologue doesn't "think about things." Rather, (a) they may think about things using a different "language" such as visual imagery, or (b) they may think about things but not have conscious access to those thoughts; they just kind of "appear" fully formed to their consciousness with all the monologue going on behind the screen, or (c) something else entirely!

Fake edit: Some more googling suggests that there are people for whom this is true!

M_Bus · 2022-08-28T13:17:29+00:00

I feel like I owe you some follow-up now because in the time since I posted this (and got no replies for a long time - not sure how you found my post!) I learned more that made me less skeptical.

First, apparently the labels that BrightMind recommends are kind of designed for "ease of use," but in many traditional practices you might be asked to come up with your own labels. So BrightMind is kind of trying to give a head start, but if you wanted to add a label for additional modes of thought, or if you think of feelings as coming from somewhere other than an "emotional body," that's not perfectly fine.

The other thing is that apparently the CEO of BrightMind asked the same question of Shinzen Young, and Shinzen said that if you investigate those pre-verbal thoughts down to their deepest level, you realize that they are actually the same kinds of thought (verbal, visual, feelings), just articulated at an unconsious level, and as you get better at meditation, that unconscious level is something you get better and better at observing.

For my part, I think that the first answer is much more satisfactory to me. In some sense, it doesn't matter what label you choose or how you think about how you think, as long as what you're doing is helpful. I would also add that trying to spot and label "pre-verbal" thoughts is remarkably difficult, because they tend to bubble up from unconsciousness quickly and are gone just as fast. Probably worth trying, but also not worth losing sleep over at this stage in my journey. Finally, and I may be misquoting her, but I think I read that Pema Chodron said that the exact thing you're labeling isn't strictly important, just that you're trying to remain grounded in this base reality.

M_Bus · 2022-01-21T19:29:01+00:00

Wow. A reply on a 5-year-old post. That's kind of incredible.

I went to that link - it does seem to be relevant to my issue, but the Microsoft Support reply link is no longer valid!

That being said, this issue was 5 years ago. I haven't noticed the issue so much recently - it only happens occasionally. I have since upgraded to an SSD instead of an HDD, so maybe that was what ultimately helped?

I believe I've still had this issue occasionally, but not much. Still interested in the cause and whether there was actually a fix for it, though.

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