Here are some things important to who I am, or at least what matters to me. Please expect an epistemological and opinionated splurge.
Right to repair is essential. Steve Wozniak wouldn’t of made the Apple Macintosh without breaking things to understand how they worked.
The pursuit of autodidactic efforts, and inquiry are core principles of who I am; you can just do things. Put 10,000 hours into anything, you won’t be the best but you’ll learn and discover new things.
With first-principle thinking, you can achieve more than you might believe. Give yourself permission to fail, so you can learn and iterate faster. Derek Muller has a great video on learned helplessness.
Free Software Foundation (GNU/Linux); the term “free” here refers to the idea of freedom, not price. The ability to change, adapt and redistribute copies is important, it fixes huge power imbalances. If anything will save us, it’ll be open source. Interestingly, Ken Thompson initially began developing Unix to create and run a game called ‘Space Travel.’
Gaming has been a big part of my life. It’s been a social, entertaining, educational and competitive outlet. Video games are one of the greatest escapisms that bring people together in a fragmented world. It is an unappreciated art form.
Robin Williams on playing Call of Duty:
No Man’s Sky, The Outer Worlds, Skyrim, Half-Life, Factorio, Space Engineers, Portal, Left 4 Dead, Counter-Strike 2, Age of Empires II, RuneScape, Minecraft, Terraria, Gears of War, Witcher 3, dark NV (FO3/FO4), Metro Exodus, Quake, Arma 3, Valheim, Borderlands 2, Mordhau, Deep Rock Galactic, Garry’s Mod, and Sea of Thieves. I have a few more however these would be my foremost recommendations. Unix is around because of gamers.
For the most part opportunities won’t happen for you, in the beginning you have to create them. Focus on being proactive and fight the inertia by disrupting your patterns; the hardest part is doing it every day.
Having a sense of humor about life, the world, others, and yourself is the best way through life. When tragedy occurs, you will find the best place to be is with comedians.
The laws of physics are the only limit. Once you understand things, you can influence them such as electromagnets. I admire Richard Feynman.
I think this is one of the greatest science and engineering stories. It’s about making the blue LED for full RGB without any hacky workarounds. Another story worth learning about is chip progression.
It’s easier to work with bits than atoms, I work with bits. We live in a material world, and I know many of us consume the world of bits perhaps a bit too much, I think this is why I have a desire to make a hydroponics farm…
Solar energy generation and storage
I think Tesla will be at $3-5 trillion in 10 years. They’re building gigafactories in Mexico, and I hear news to deploy one in India, and eventually Italy. Texas gigafactory is marvellous, they’ve got a lithium refinery, and early Tesla bots on the go. I haven’t even mentioned the AI clusters, solar, and FSD capabilities, e.g. robo taxis. The future is bright.
Photovoltaic micro-generation (fancy way to say solar) and power storage are already the future of energy. Cost per kilowatt hour is the metric to track.
This is just my unreserved thoughts of course, I’m no prize engineer. I don’t know exactly what went wrong with Nuclear energy, of course regulation and build time contribute, but nuclear stations aren’t fond with most of the world. And the first Fusion reactor is taking forever.
Solar energy is a proven, accessible, and quick-to-deploy solution, driven by the Sun’s virtually limitless power. Its simplicity is often overlooked in energy discussions, I think maximizing impact while solving key economic challenges is with solar powering the globe.
I envision a future with decentralized solar systems, where every rooftop has solar panels and energy storage, enabling homes to be energy-independent and contribute to the grid. While the Sun provides more than enough energy to meet global needs, the challenge lies in scaling the infrastructure, which will be slowed by political, economic, and environmental factors, yet it seems to me to be the fastest, especially because of the trades like electricians and solar installers.
Staring into the singularity
Let us state that Moore’s Law is a human law, a human observation let’s call it, humans double the power of processors every 2 years (the amount of transistors on a silicon substrate).
Now imagine when AI computers are doing their version of Moore’s Law. The first two years it doubles, and then it doubles again but in one year, and then in 6 months, and then in 3 months, and so on until it reaches the singularity. Suddenly, the orthogonality thesis ponders your mind.
How will life be transformed?
1911, a speck of time on the cosmological scale, and a lifetime away for a human. Look at how much society has advanced. We complain about poor legroom on a plane, yet we FLY. You shit into clean water, in a designated room to do your business, we live better than Kings and Queens did in the 1500s.
Do we go full Cyberpunk 2077?
Feynman said “There’s plenty of room at the bottom”. Nanotechnology and artificial intelligence will be our new societal structure.
At heart my values are American
“I tell you what freedom is to me, no fear.” - Nina Simone
A country is defined by its laws, people, and human rights. I think the American ideals of freedom and democracy make others appear archaic. America’s constitutional framework is exceptionally unparalleled in world history, politics, economics, and human rights of our current time.
Of all the criticisms of American, if there is going to be a super power or hyper power in global affairs, I’m very glad it’s the United States and not any of the possible rivals.
The Anglosphere has its pitfalls and imperfections. However, people often struggle to answer what the best alternative might be. It often boils down to choosing the least bad option. The principles of the West are remarkable contributions to freedom and human civilization.
There’s a lot of spotty periods in all countries, empires, and powers, and some things do need more criticism than they get, but everything has to do with the current alternative.
When the US had all the nuclear power in 1945, the only country to have the mouse trap of humanity, they could’ve conquered the world, but they helped rebuild it instead. A point one often forgets in American history.
The fact there isn’t an idealistic internationalist secular leftist opposition to rival America, shows you how important it is. It’s quite a long list, those with sense will know of the countries that have the cruelest standards. Everywhere where human rights are not just denied but literally negated. Where freedom of expression is feared. It was only a couple of years ago where an Olympic gold medalist and UFC fighter was given the death penalty because he protested for free expression in his country of origin, Iran. I think people miss that America and almost all of the west has a willingness to resist totalitarianism, fascism, and barbarism.
I have family in the US, although it is distant, after WWII, when my grandfather and his siblings got back to Britain, some decided to ship over to America. My grandfather stayed in Britain to rebuild, and hence the family tree continued its working-class roots, my parents were born in London, and so was I. I wouldn’t have any hesitation becoming an American, even knowing citizenship is a daunting process; what I mean by that is there are people who have lived 25+ years in the US, who pay taxes, and contribute as much as they can, yet still haven’t received their citizenship but everyone is different. I know if I had the opportunity, I would move to America and become an American. I have no doubt.
“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.” ― Theodore Roosevelt
Brits
Make no mistake, I hold a deep respect for my fellow Brits—the people, the history, the countryside, the festivals, the charm, comedy, entertainment, the music, humbleness, politeness, and reciprocal values are things I admire more than you might realize.
My fellow Brits have my admiration, recognition, and appreciation; my critique is directed at the political traditions and political aristocracy, which I cannot understand in the modern day.
I don’t agree with Jeremy Corbyn on everything but I respect when he candidly uttered while taking the British Oath of Allegiance to enter Parliament “It’s a bunch of nonsense, this is pointless”…
Why? Because it is nonsense! Whether you take the non-religious or religious affirmation, you still say “I (name of MP) do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles, his heirs and successors, according to law.” An oath to the King and his successors but not to their constituents, their country and not you and your family, the actual citizens.
A bunch of nonsense, indeed.
Americans don’t know how lucky they are (ok some clearly do when they’re riding a tank wearing a beer hat, that’s some kind of freedom right there).
To inherently obtain the republic, with its sweet liberty and freedoms, without any of the strain of security to be seen as an outsider, without raising your hand to take the oath—of all that was granted to you by birthright. I can only enviously say with all due respect, you lucky bastards. :)
Britain in the technological age
Guy Ritchie was right: “Nobles were the original gangsters”.
Less than 1% of the British population in England and Wales owns 50% of the land. Many of the land owners are registered in the Bahamas and Luxembourg and do not contribute to the country. Less than 5% of the land is actually owned by “common” folk (as in, almost everyone in the population). If you go on companies house, you can find info on anyone and everyone in the UK registered as a limited. But try that with land ownership and it is as clear as mud; it’s not free either, you pay per request of land inquiry.
We could make that land into robotic hydroponic farms and add solar fields everywhere to make food and energy distribution super cheap for Britain, why not find out what’s economically possible? Instead, the land is owned by estate families that date back hundreds of years, and is kept “just bcuz”.
Britain has made incredible advances and yet it never lost the aristocrats. How do we have unelected rulers who impose a state religion? What about those of us who’ve never believed in this nonsense and advocate for science? Seriously, it is a large bucket of medieval concepts, reminiscent of times from lords and peasants, and those times are still here. How can it be an unelected aristocrat is the head of the state, head of the armed forces, and head of a state imposed church!? “This is what you get when you found a church on the family values of Henry the Eighth”.
John Cleese said it best on the coronation “I couldn’t stop laughing… All these people in these silly costumes, all taking things so seriously. I thought it was a Python sketch.”
Even the national anthem says “God save the King”; but what about the people, vox populi, what about you and your family? Aren’t we all in this together on this giant rock, our pale blue dot? “Long to reign over us” is peasant Stockholm syndrome! Even parliament still has an unelected “House of Lords” in the technological age. Here’s Joey Diaz for a taste of true freedom.
Some of my fellow Brits will argue “Oh but it’s tradition, oh it’s the ceremonies, oh it’s the tourism”. If wiping your arse with a pig was a thing in 17th century Britain, you’d still have a Brit today defending it as “oh but tradition!”.
Ever seen a man talk about the cost of living while wearing an estimated $5 billion (yes I said 5 billion dollars) crown?
Once you bend the knee to the aristocracy, and conform to their establishment of titles, privileges, cheered on by indoctrinated commoners, you pay with your intellectual dishonesty. David Bowie said this when he refused honors: “I would never have any intention of accepting anything like that. I seriously don’t know what it’s for. It’s not what I spent my life working for”. These accolades of the establishment lock you in.
Monarchists admire golden carriages while struggling with rent, lacking instant medical aid or the basic comforts their unelected rulers enjoy. It’s like Pavlov’s dog. If unelected billionaire families continue to benefit from the state, it perpetuates a medieval class system with vast inequality, dominated by a few aristocratic families. This is why America is great because in America, you’re not a peasant, you’re a citizen and you’re an individual, everyone technically is by the Constitution. Any native-born American can become President, serving as both head of state and head of government in a country without a state-enforced religion but with the freedom of religion if you are religious. The Founding Fathers knew the fusion of religious and civil authority led to authoritarian rule. That’s why the First Amendment says “Religion can be no business of the government”, a statement many societies even today couldn’t begin to make. “Mr. Jefferson, build up this wall”. The US is not a religious nation, it’s not Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or all the rest (it’s a long list).
I reiterate, America is a nation of individuals called citizens. Religions are never mentioned in the Constitution, the rights given to every citizen are in fact given to you by the Constitution. Individuals. This is the future of human civilisation. America is a beacon of hope.
We really are the greatest country in the world pic.twitter.com/rnvhefSwCl
— Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp) August 15, 2024
“America has a conservative political tradition that is just as broad and deep as the liberal tradition. But the two are rarely in true competition, let alone dialectical tension. They are as ships passing the day – conservatism being local and parochial, liberalism more cosmopolitan; conservatism concerned with order and obligation, liberalism with consequences and satisfactions. One pursues goodness, the other happiness.”
Human civilization
Pragmatism is necessary. If you don’t make anything, there’s nothing. Sounds so foolish to state until you meet all the fools who would do nothing but complain. Action is significant with first principles. Imagine a person who is a film critic and has been for 50 years, but they’ve never even tried to make a single film or piece of content, this isn’t a critic, this is someone without any weight complaining.
I think the superior ethical code of conduct for human civilization to thrive and to which must be defended are free expression, free speech, the free market, human rights, secularism, the rule of law for everyone as citizens, the economic empowerment and freedom of women, the republic and representative democrary, with the scientific method of observation, hypothesis, experiment, analysis, iteration and discovery as the leading point of reason. A metritocracy is fundamental for equal opportunity of individuals in free markets because in a merit-based economic or social system power, success, and positions are assigned based on your merit as an individual which includes a range of factors such as performance, competency, trust, abilities, and talent rather than factors like heredity, race, class, or wealth. With the nonsense I’ve witnessed, you have to state this as clear as possible.
Economics, markets and policies
I am a capitalist first, and a democratic socialist second.
I believe capitalism will create a democratic socialist world after we create billions of intelligent robots that will build abundance.
Capitalism is the framework for innovation, wealth, and technological progress through free markets, individual freedom, competition and minimal government interference.
George Orwell supported democratic socialism all his life. It is on that blends individual freedom, benefits of capitalism, and fairness. While government has a role in managing society, it must not become overbearing.
I write this with utopian thinking and without repression to say, I want a society that meets all basic human needs. Once AI and robotics dominate, human competition even from the brightest minds will no longer be feasible.
Any system or framework can become corrupt, which is why I remain skeptical of heavy government regulation. Orwell’s works, such as 1984, are critiques of totalitarian regimes, not socialism itself. He warns us of the dangers when socialist ideals are hijacked by authoritarianism.
Orwell was highly critical of authoritarian socialism, communism, fascism, and Stalinism. His focus was on fighting totalitarianism, not opposing socialism as a whole but actioning for democratic socialism.
A mixed democratic economy of capitalism and socialism blends together fine. I think this is the best outcome in the period of time where intelligent robots are emerging and will be a thing.
By basic needs I mean healthcare, education, and housing are met for everyone. If the robots can build it, it’s possible. This can be done without abolishing free markets or individual freedoms, as democratic socialism supports a blend of capitalism with social safety nets, not authoritarian control.
Now words from Milton Friedman aka Yoda of Capitalism
“Keep your eye on how much the Government is spending, because that is the true tax.
There is no such thing as an unbalanced budget. You PAY FOR IT either in the form of taxes, or indirectly in the form of inflation or debt.”
Inflation.
“There are no new ideas. Just proposals by Milton Friedman that haven’t been enacted yet.” - Thomas Sowell
“The rich get richer and the poor do the best they can”. I do sigh as it is mostly true however we have to also realise we are living in the best of times and the most interesting of times, things are in motion now to create abundance and automation with AI. Poverty is at the lowest it has ever been, medicine is thriving, and people are living greater and longer lives but there is a lot still to do.
Price’s Law and Pareto Distributions are interesting descriptions, not prescriptions of determinism but interesting observations and descriptions of patterns in the domain of work. I wonder what scaling laws, physical and statistical phenomena are useful descriptions of how nature may function and ripple how we operate.
The Gini coefficient is noteworthy, if you’re poor, please learn about this metric. It will relate to happiness in poor vs richer countries and what happens in hierarchy structures. If everyone is poor, more people tend to be happier, if there are huge differences, more people tend to be sad.
The government is the largest company in the country and everyone has shares in it by default, and the sole purpose of the company is to maximize the happiness of the citizens, protect borders and ensure the laws and rights are upheld. But the one thing I am in favour of is advocating for a garbage collection system for politicians and for laws, for instance, in science, we use the best working theories and experiments that describe our reality if something better comes along, we use that instead. Governments are a viscous substance. Easy to put in, and hard to change or amend. The public good is the priority, and a filter system is essential.
Western history
If I was a sign it would be “Don’t talk about Western History” because I will talk non stop about it. I think this is due to playing Age of Empires as a kid.
Mesopotamia and Egypt, Greeks and Romans, Medieval Europe, Renaissance and Age of Science to the colonial and modern periods.
I have a knack for talking about pirates from the Golden Age of Piracy (17th to early 18th century, roughly 1650–1730) across the Caribbean, the American coast, the Indian Ocean, and West Africa. As well as going on about the vikings (8th to 11th century).
Trading
I’m a value investor, all this means is picking a stock that you think is undervalued and believe will do well in the long term.
For me this is mostly Tesla, I believe it will have a market capitalisation of $3-10 trillion, as of writing this it is at $600-700 billion. Of course this is not financial advice, it’s speculative and dependent on future market conditions obviously. It’s my bet.
Read John C. Bogle’s book “The Little Book of Common Sense Investing”. Warren Buffet said: “Rather than listen to the siren songs from ivestment managers, investors-large and small-should instead read Jack Bogle’s book”.
S&P500, a bit of Bitcoin and a few stock picks. That’s it.
Bitcoin
Satoshi Nakamoto shook governments with Bitcoin. Bitcoin empowers the free market for citizens, creating a world without borders. The problem? The world isn’t ready yet. But progress is undeniable.
Do you own Bitcoin?
Yes. I own $50 of BTC.
Cryptocurrency
Understanding cryptocurrency starts with grasping basic concepts like hash functions. Without this, the blockchain’s purpose remains elusive.
Decentralized networks in my view are the future. But, the lack of widespread understanding and the weight of fiat systems will hold societies back for a long time.
Bitcoin has my attention.
Questions to consider
What would happen if everyone withdrew their money from the banks at the same time?
Now what would happen if everyone did the same with Bitcoin?
What about a global currency?
If there was a world currency, call it Units. Every sci-fi uses Units as a title of currency. “How many Units have you got?”, “Transfering your Units now”, c’mon it sounds great.
Political correctness is annoying
It really is dogmatism. People lay down principles and beliefs of being “offended” as undeniably universal truth without any alternative meaning, evidence, context, opinions, or quite possibly being wrong. It’s pursued by people who want attention. If the same people used their energy from getting offended all the time to doing something worthwhile to help themselves or others, it would be meaningful for society.
It stops everyone from being human. Appreciating another person’s culture is being human, roasting each other and finding common ground with our differences is being human.
People who get offended, and go out of their way to be offended by the mildest things remind me to recall Stephen Fry when he said “You’re offended? So fucking what” or similarly from Hitchen who said, “You’re offended? I’m still waiting for your argument”.
When Dr. Samuel Johnson, the great lexicographer, and author of the first great dictionary of the English language. When it was complete, Dr. Johnson was waited upon by various delegations of people to congratulate him, of the nobility of the quality, the commons, the lords; and also by a delegation of respectable ladies of London who tended on him in his fleet street lodgings and congratulated him, “Dr. Johnson”, they said, “we are delighted to find that you’ve not included any indecent words or obscene words in your dictionary.” To which Dr Johnson said, “Ladies, I congratulate you on being able to look them up”. A great story on censorship, or prior restraint as it is known in the United States, and where it’s banned by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Imagine someone who stands on their toilet, to see out of their window into their neighbour’s toilet window to be disguised. You can’t help people with the motivation to be so determined to be offended like those who went through a treasure house of English like Dr Johnson’s first lexicon in search of filthy words to satisfy themselves and some instinct about which I dare not speculate.
I watched a ton of comedy growing up, and most British comedy is taking the piss out of yourself by playing the idiot. I think it’s necessary to laugh at yourself and at a life because it relieves the things you stupidly put on yourself.
Physics and computation
I’ve probably built 50 PCs by now. I grew up playing PC games, naturally you learn everything about the technology from bits to hardware to figure out how to optimize more FPS…
It’s been interesting to see the economic landscape change over time. I recall buying an SSD which cost $500 for a simple 128GB…
NVMe or the fancy name “Non-Volatile Memory Express” introduced in 2013 are even faster than the SATA SSDs. We’re talking 500/600 MB/s to 3500 MB/s or higher which costs $100 for 1TB… Technology and this thing called science aren’t slowing down. There’s no going back now.
Electronics are a ton of fun and I highly recommend Ardunios for prototyping and Raspberry Pi’s for any electronic build ideas.
Learning the tiniest little bit of physics, material science and electrical principles will help you a lot, and things snowball fast when you are building something.
I use a Raspberry Pi that runs a script to give me stock updates, server updates, and has a function that uses a Python script to show a live feed of cameras around the world (as opposed to those offices that have multiple clocks from various capital cities), e.g. California, Berlin, London, Venice, New York, etc. Check out this website to view live feeds.
Donate unused/old clothes
Charity organizations do a lot of unpaid work to help those less fortunate, and people need clothes. Don’t hoard clothes, donate them to those who need them.
Cats or Dogs
Both. Cats and dogs rule. The debate fucking settled.
If someone is lonely, or you’re ever lonely or under pressure in this life, the unconditional love of a pet companion will heal all. Get a pet. There’s no politics to be had. Get your companion.
Content creation
As long as I’m making content, whether gaming, tutorials, facts, history or vlogging, I’m happy. Talking to people, hanging out and making videos is something I really enjoy.
Life, the universe and everything
“The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” ― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Ah yes, the big questions we have, humanity has, about what we are, where we are going, what the meaning of the universe is and so on. What’s the ultimate way to live? Well, I don’t know. My best answer is that we shouldn’t pre-decide or put a cap on what it is we’re trying to do, except to find out more about life, the universe and everything.
We didn’t exist for 13.7 billion years, and now we get to experience this life for 80-90 years if we are lucky. As Carl Sagan said “We are a way for the universe to know itself.”
Hubble & Webb Telescopes
I like space. The wonder of what’s out there.
The hubble.
Skyrim anyone?
James Webb telescope.
The Standard Model & The Big Bang
If you’re curious about the physics surrounding the unification of Quantum Mechanics and Gravity, the ΛCDM model, the Chaotic Inflation model, and other cosmological concepts, reading works by Roger Penrose is an enjoyable dive. He was a mentor to Stephen Hawking and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2020. You might also recognize him from the Penrose Triangle. I found a talk where he discusses his cyclical universe theory, which explores the periods before and after the Big Bang.
Here’s one out of many talks he gave on it.
There are many cosmoslogical models and science is testing a number of initial configurations; one inflationary model suggests that certain regions of the universe expand rapidly as peaks, while other domains, such as our own, have stopped inflating.
These quantum fluctuations are the reason we have the large-scale structure of the universe—galaxies, clusters, and voids—rather than a completely smooth and featureless cosmos. Essentially, quantum fluctuations, amplified by inflation, set the blueprint for the entire cosmic architecture we see today.
The peaks in these fluctuations represent regions of higher density, which eventually became the seeds for the formation of galaxies, stars, and clusters. The valleys, or areas of lower density, correspond to regions that remained less dense, forming the cosmic voids we observe today.
This is about String Theory but I’m sharing it is a great resource for talking about classical to quantum mechanics. “What is the true nature of reality?”.
I wonder what other guesses are to be made.
Isaac against the magnificent amount of BS
Humanity is a small light of hope and consciousness
Once you’ve travelled around a bit, you will quickly realise almost all humans are good people.
We are all descended from an unbroken line of survivors, we are in fact all bound up with one another.
We are around because nature favored those who stayed alive for as long as possible in order to reproduce; we are the process of natural selection. We’re all winners.
I always joke that pedigree collapse makes you realise wars are just intense family arguments, and if you’re adopted you’re just living with distant family.
We have responsibilities to each other. There’s a sense of pleasure in helping one another, goodness is innate to humanity.
Our ancestors didn’t survive all this time for you to give up, so get the up: motivational instrumental kicks in, David Goggins appears, demands a 20k run.
Homo sapiens and humanism
One of the greatest speeches that still gives me goosebumps by Carl Sagan.
“You know what you see when you’re up at the Space Station looking down at our home planet? No borders”. I can’t recall who said this exactly, I heard it on a podcast sometime ago but I think about it often.
I love existence. Life is great. People are great. Humanity is great. I don’t take it for granted the fact that I get to explore this life. I’m lucky to experience existence.
What am I optimizing life for? I think freedom. I think mostly my freedom. What are you optimizing life for? Maximising freedom too? Are you after legacy? Money? Attention? Well there are plenty to choose from.
Who are you then Joe? What makes me, me? I’m a existentialist secular materalist humanist atheist or as I say, another dude on this giant rock!
Why Humanism Matters
A humanist believes in leading good and worthwhile lives guided by reason, rationality and compassion rather than by superstitions. The ideas of reason and rationality from the enlightenment period where science comes into it, yeah, that’s essentially where I am placed I would say.
Stories are very important as they are guiding narratives which make you embark on your own hero’s journey. Religions are belief systems but atheism isn’t a belief system. It simply declines claims without evidence, that’s literally it.
As Ricky Gervais said: you say “There is a god in the sky”, I say, “can you prove that?”, you say “no but it’s written in this book”, I say “I don’t believe you then”.
But where does that leave our story without ancient books? Well just as Elon points out, the ultimate guiding narrative is to conquer the universe to find better questions to ask what this is all about. So far we are on our own. I submit to you this, let’s make sure we tell a great story.
The Universe and Us
Do you believe in something though, you must believe in something Joe?
If I were to believe in something, I would put forward The Last Question by Isaac Asimov. The book comes back to the same answer I would give without this suggestive read, I believe in us, humanity.
It’s a short book, a great and recommended read, especially if you’ve familiarized yourself with the technological singularity and Moore’s Law. We are the universe experiencing itself. :)
The Last’s Question is sort of similar to Einstein’s admiration of Spinoza’s view, the laws of the universe as expressions of nature are synomyous with existence itself. The universe’s order, beauty and mystery is divine and full of wonder.
Carl Sagan once said: “If by ‘God’ one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. But this God is emotionally unsatisfying… It does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity”.
Hitchens had this to say “The universe is not made for us, nor are we made for it. It simply is.” Hitchens saw the universe as indifferent and devoid of inherent purpose, arguing that attributing divine qualities to the cosmos was unnecessary and anthropomorphic. Similar to Richard Feynman.
But back to our home planet and us, humanity, the thing aside of the philosophical roads one may traverse, the most important thing to me is, humanism because we are this tiny (tiny is an understatement of the universe) light of consciousness together.
Remember, we still don’t know how big the universe is, we’ve only observed the observable universe, which stretches about 93 billion light-years across. Beyond that, the universe might extend infinitely, but we can’t see it yet due to the limitations of light and the universe’s constant expansion. Even within what we can observe, the scale is mind-blowing.
In our own Milky Way galaxy, our cosmic neighborhood, scientists estimate there are around 6 to 11 billion potentially habitable planets, Earth-sized worlds sitting in the “Goldilocks zone” where conditions might allow liquid water to exist.
That’s just one galaxy among an estimated 2 trillion in the observable universe. Imagine the possibilities. There has to be life out there.
I stargazed with my dad a lot in my childhood. We were both interested in space. I recall standing in the garden looking up at the night sky, at our universe, “What’s out there?” we’d both ask. Some of my fondest memories. I forget how lucky I am that my father didn’t push anything on me, just allowed me to figure life out, thanks dad.
Just be good and have fun
I disagree with state religion but I support the freedom of belief for all individuals. I have friends from around the world who follow various religions or have no religion, and I’ve worked for various religious people and non-religious people, but it comes down to good humans over bad humans, to me, no matter your label, god(s) or identity.
I think this is one of the reasons why I like video games a lot because despite all of our differences we put them aside to play as a team, have a laugh and have fun.
Talking to an individual is far greater talking to a group because crowd programming can destroy a meaningful conversation with someone that is determined to pursue opposing views.
One narrative many technologists enjoy, myself included, is offered up by Douglas Adams, let us build civilization so we may ask better questions about life, the universe and everything. Clearly from studying nature on Earth we’ve come very far, ultimately from Galileo Galilei’s discoveries.
It nicely put by this: “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence”. I think humans are innately good and religion borrows our morality. Chimpanzees, your long-distance cousins, laugh, cry, grieve, and feel happiness just as you and I.
“What’s different about religion is that people don’t feel they need to have any particular expertise to have opinions about it. All they need is strongly held beliefs, and anyone can have those. No thread about JavaScript will grow as fast as one about religion, because people feel they have to be over some threshold of expertise to post comments about that. But on religion everyone’s an expert. Then it struck me: this is the problem with politics too. Politics, like religion, is a topic where there’s no threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion. All you need is strong convictions.” - Paul Graham
“I would rather have questions that can’t be answered rather than answers that can’t be questioned”. - Richard Feynman.
“What are we holding on to Sam?”, “That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.” - J. R. R. Tolkien.
The infinite mystery of it all
We find ourselves lost in the mysterious universe without having any real purpose. This doesn’t frighten me. I can live with doubt, uncertainty and not knowing. I’m full of doubt and doubt is a remarkable thing because it makes you ask questions. I don’t have to know an answer.
Despite the universe appearing meaningless, despite the harsh realities of this world and our existence, despite life appearing meaningless, here is what I will say, you’ll find living is meaningful. Cherish it.
Maybe we’ll never know the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, maybe it is true that mother nature’s imagination is so much greater than mans, she is never going to give it up. We don’t know if the complexity goes forever or if it is a set of simple hidden rules for everything. We have plenty of time to figure it out though…
Technological abundance
I’m a techno-optimist. I want to see a future where humanity is free and energy is cheap.
Increasing technology around the globe is the answer to empowering every individual.. Already SpaceX has Starlink, enabling connectivity of 100Mb with 20ms latency anywhere, you could be high in the sky, on a boat in the middle of the ocean, in a remote desert or jungle. It doesn’t matter, you’re connected to your planet, and to the rest of the wild apes, known as humanity.
Neuralink is at the front of integrating computation to humanity. I have nothing but respect for what they are doing.
I think there will be AGI and robots everywhere, I think space colonies and energy abundance are all possible long-term (very long-term); optimism is courage, if it’s not naive.
We’ve already started the snowball to Fermi’s great filters. Perhaps I’ve been playing too much No Man’s Sky and Stellaris.
If I had a million, I’d bet it on Tesla.
Learn AI
Learn to code, learn AI, and hack the planet.
Citizen journalism
Vox Populi.
Ok that’s it, my exuberant opinion binge is finished, I hope this explains more about who I am, and what I think is important. Thanks for reading.