thinking-in-symbols

[thinking-in-symbols]

Politics, Consciousness, AI, Metaphysics, and Other Impolite Topics

This blog has mostly fallen out of disuse, just as Tumblr more generally has for me. This was never my main blog, but even my main blog goes untouched for a year or so at a time, until some old memory brings me back here. I check my old messages; I check if the mutuals are still posting. These days not many are. They are in the Great Beyond I have heard some speak of, passed on into the Real World - or maybe they just moved to Twitter, like me. Should have asked for more of their handles... I guess it's not too late.

Anyway, why am I posting here? Well, as I said, this was never my main blog, but it was the blog I came to to say what was on my mind. And these days there is a lot on my mind. Things that would make X's character limit quake in terror.

During this year's nostalgia trip, I rediscovered a post I made a few years ago called vive le roi. In it, I discussed my thoughts about the future of AI. It was an extremely interesting find - of course, I remember writing it, but I had forgotten exactly what it said. And, in rereading it, I gained insight into how my thought on the subject has developed in just a few years. I no longer think the primary danger of AI is rogue robots with guns, for example (although this danger is also not negligible). More generally, I no longer think the alignment problem is the only serious issue with AI. The other issue is political, social, and economic, and represents the final conclusion of the conflict between capital and labor. More will be written about this, of course.

It's only natural that this development in thought should have happened - most people probably have more well-thought-out ideas on the future of AI than they did several years ago. But I found this time capsule so fascinating that I realized how much I'm missing out on by not cataloging my current thoughts for future reflection.

So, yes, I will be writing about AI. But I will also be writing about related subjects that have captured my attention over the last few years, between which AI might be considered the common thread. These include:

politics and political economy, particularly in the age of AI

the philosophy of mind, considered both with respect to AI and as an independent subject

general metaphysics - most likely with an emphasis on applications to the philosophy of mind, but again, sometimes considered for its own sake

whatever else I might be mulling over at any given time

In short, this is where I will be posting off-the-cuff essays on things I would otherwise be spinning around in my head - which is much harder to do in a structured way. All this is in addition to the occasional dream-journaling, life-updates or whatever else I feel compelled to come here for.

[thinking-in-symbols]

Quinquennial Life Assessment

So, it’s been a few years.  When I was 19 I posted a sort of “roadmap” for the evolution of my life on this blog.  Today I thought I’d revisit that.  I want to take a look back and see what progress I’ve made, and then in a separate post I want to turn to the future, think about how my vision for it has changed, and consider how I can reincorporate these goals into that vision.

This is the list of things I wanted to get done in varying time frames.  I’ve crossed off the things I’ve done to get a sense of my progress:

1 year:

At 19, my hopes were to accomplish the following things by age 20:

- Joined, and consistently participated in, at least 2 campus organizations that suit my interests, at least 1 of which should be competitive in nature - well, I joined the ISO and KVRX, my college radio station!  Neither of those were competitive, but in retrospect I don’t really care about that :-)

- Made concrete plans to study abroad - Nope, unfortunately I never did this.  I’m not quite sure I regret that, all things considered - I traded that experience for other things.  I did make plans to spend a few months abroad of my own accord, and I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for that meddling global pandemic.  But as it stands I haven’t done this.

- Learned C++ and python to proficiency - Hm.  “Proficient” is a relative term.  But I think I have a tendency to downplay my skills, so in the interest of counteracting that I’m going to count myself as “proficient” in these languages.  I think that’s fair.

- Gone on at least a several day road trip with at least 1 friend - I’ve gone on several trips with @meeshbug​, my very lovely girlfriend and best friend in the world :-)

- Decided on a concentration beyond the extremely vague umbrella of “computer science” - Unfortunately as far as my education is concerned I never really did this.  If anything my interests have *broadened* rather than becoming more focused.  More on this later...

- Made meaningful, ongoing contributions to an open-source project - You know what?  I’ve published the source of everything I’ve ever made, and I’ve gotten to the point where I can make stuff that’s not trivial.  So I’m giving myself credit for this one.

- Learned to cook enough meals to eat in most days and not get sick of my own food - I wish.  I’ve learned to cook a fair amount of stuff but I still get way too depressed and lethargic to apply that consistently.  Whether I consider myself to have achieved this honestly depends on the month.

- Learned to keep my living area clean - I’m much better at this than I was at 19, but at 19 I could barely clear a path to walk across my room.  So there’s more work to do.  More on these last two later.

- Gotten a pet - Meesh and I have a dog named Courage (after the dog of cowardly fame) and a cat named Jax!

2 years:

- Independently written a piece of software to completion and deployed it publicly - I’ve always pretty bad at actually seeing projects through to completion, but I do have a few full, independent projects under my belt at this point.  I’ve built a simple game engine, a pathtracer, plugins for games I like, and some other stuff.

- purchased and begun regularly using some basic amateur radio equipment - Ah man.  I got my license but I still haven’t gotten any equipment.  I guess I have to get on that...

- purchased and begun experimenting with some basic music recording equipment - This one I’ve done, but I haven’t done as much experimenting as I’d like.

- hosted a party - I did this for my 21st birthday and it’s one of my favorite memories!  Honestly this was probably the last time I had all my really close friends in one place.  I’m actually getting kind of emotional about that.

- done some kind of hallucinogen - I have now done this.  I definitely did get something out of it, albeit not what I expected.  This is something I actually only did pretty recently and it’s still having a pretty profound effect.  Maybe I’ll write a separate post about this.

- Gone camping with friends - Despite my best efforts, this hasn’t happened yet.  Pretty fucked up.

3 years:

- learned to play another instrument besides the piano (guitar?) - I don’t feel comfortable crossing this one off quite yet, but I went ahead and bought myself some guitar equipment and have been messing around with it lately :-) I think I’m going to have to bite the bullet and pay for lessons if I’m serious about this, which I am.

- Written and recorded a song - Damn, I can’t believe it’s been 5 years and I haven’t even done this.

- Met a group of people I can play music with - nope

- Owned a leather jacket.  I can’t believe I’ve still never even owned a leather jacket - I’ve done this and wore it frankly too much.  Kinda cringe.

- Worked as a professional software developer - Yep!  Worked as a software developer for a retail company for a couple years.  I’m actually not working as a software developer right now, though; I’m working in a sort of adjacent position.  More on this later.

- Participated in research related to my field - That’s pretty ambitious.  Not sure I’ll ever do this, unfortunately.  But we’ll see.

- Been to a film festival - Oh shit, I totally forgot about having written this.  That’s a cool idea.  I should do this, it’s not like it’s hard (well, at least in principle.  I guess covid kind of changes the situation).

- Gotten a dog - Courage is one of those, I think, although he might also be part rat.

- collected 50 records - Lol, my dumb ass really thought I was going to buy $1,000 worth of records on college money.  No, I haven’t done this, but I’m on my way there.

- Purchased a desktop computer - Well, my dad gave me his old desktop.  That’s not really a purchase but I think it counts.

5 years:

- Begun accepting freelance development gigs - haven’t gotten here yet and I’m not totally sure this is a direction I want to go in my career.  Freelancing has its own stressors as I’ve come to learn from others.  No career path is sunshine and roses and I’m trying to internalize this fact.

- Participated in a student film - Nope.  I don’t even know why I wrote this down to be honest.

- Gotten laid by solving a 5x5 Rubik’s Cube in front of a girl because surely that’s gonna have to work on someone eventually, otherwise I wasted a lot of time - These are getting weird.  Surely I didn’t really expect this to happen, right?  Well, either way I now have a long-term girlfriend, so I don’t - wait, Meesh has seen me solve a Rubik’s cube and she saw it before we started dating.  So actually I’m going to give myself credit for it.  I’m the one who makes the rules here.

- Fleshed out my political opinions - Yes, I now know everything about politics and can answer 100% of questions on political issues.  Just kidding.  But I know where I stand.

- Participated in a protest or some other kind of political event - Done!  Went to a few protests as part of the ISO, participated in lots of their events, and attended some protests with friends as well.

- Studied abroad - Nope :-/

- Learned a language other than Spanish - I took a semester of French!  But I don’t quite want to give myself credit for this one because I really would like to learn a different language to something resembling fluency.

- Run a marathon - Lmao.  I am in much worse shape now than I was when I wrote this post, and even at that time I could probably do like 7 miles if I really pushed myself.  How sad.

- Gone hiking outside of texas - This is weird because I’d literally already done this when I wrote this post.  But I’ve done it more since then, so hey!

- Been out of the country with a friend - This I had also already done.  I guess the point is to have done it without “adult supervision” or whatever.  I haven’t done this since writing this list so I guess I have to leave it uncrossed.

10 years:

- Lived with a girl for an extended period of time - Meesh 🥰

- Spent at least 6 months living on the road in an RV, preferably with a dog and a girl - God, I am so close to being able to do this.  I don’t want it to be an RV anymore - those things are expensive.  But a van?  Still pricey, but doable, especially if I’m willing to sacrifice some comfort.  This has actually been front-of-mind for a while.  I’ll let you know when I get the balls to pull the trigger.

- Started making Real Money - Well, yep, I have gotten to that point.  I do have other thoughts on this, though.  Money is weird, man.

- Lived in a long-term living space outside of Texas (i.e. not including RV time) - How long is long-term?  Three months?  If so, I’ve done this by living in Boston with Meesh for a few months after she went there for law school.  However, I anticipate staying there much longer in the near future, so I’ll wait on this crossing this one off.

- Written a book about something, idk - Not yet.  I’m halfway to the deadline on this one and I have some ideas, but ideas aren’t worth all that much, especially to me, who rarely sees them through.  We’ll see where this goes.  It’s not exactly a priority and historically I struggle to get even my priorities done.  It might make more sense to replace this with recording a concept or narrative album, for which I also have ideas that I happen to take more seriously.

- Learned to solve a 6x6 Rubik’s Cube - nope

- Gotten laid by solving a 6x6 Rubik’s Cube - nope

- Lived in an apartment where I pay all the rent - Yes!  :-))) We love independence

- Earned an advanced degree (this one’s iffy) - This hasn’t happened, and whether it will ever happen is something I’ve been thinking a lot about.  I sort of decided half-way through college that I would be totally burned out on school by the time I graduated.  But in retrospect it takes way less time to burn out on work than it does to burn out on school, and grad degrees are a different kind of thing.  So it’s worth revisiting.’

- Given a best man speech (Sam, this means you have to get married within the next 10 years.  Good luck out there.) - Holy shit, Sam, you maniac, you actually did it!  Sam got married back in 2019 and I gave his best man speech! It’s another one of my favorite memories :-) 

- Gone on a cruise with someone I’m dating - Hmm, not yet.  I’ve gone on cool trips, but none on a boat.  Maybe that’s something to aim for after the pandemic passes :-)

Retrospective:

1yr: Completed: 5/9

More than half isn’t bad!  I’m not gonna worry too much about whether I got these things done within their assigned “time-frame”.  I’m a procrastinator in my heart and I don’t see any reason to put that kind of pressure on myself.  The point is, they got done.  That’s enough for me.

The things I did best in in this category were academic things, and things to do with relationships.  I’m proud of the academic achievements, I really feel like doing them has increased my belief in myself and my sense that I’m good at the thing I’ve spent the last four years studying.  And of course, I am so happy to be in a loving, fulfilling relationship that brings so many good things into my life.  I almost feel like the things I accomplished sort of fell into my lap - of course I’m gonna do programming stuff as a programming student, and getting pets / going on road trips are things I did as a result of my relationship with Meesh.  I don’t say that to downplay the accomplishments, but I do think it’s worth noting.

The things I haven’t done are more to do with personal development, which is disappointing.  I would like to be able to say, 5 years down the road, that I’ve done the personal development I expected to do in just a single year, but maybe that’s a lot to expect.  These are problems I’ve dealt with my whole life.  I think what this means is that I can’t expect everything to fall into my lap.  Those things are going to take real concerted effort to change.  I’m not quite sure how to go about that, though.

2yrs: Completed: 4/6

Two-thirds!  Even better!

Lots of these are one-time accomplishments, not so much long-term commitments to personal development.  The good news is, I did them, and I think those resulted in some development in their own right :-)

Again, though, the things I didn’t do so well are the things that require long-term, concerted effort.  For instance, while I crossed off the one about experimenting with music, it’s really only the initial investment that I’ve really done at this point.  It remains to be seen whether I’ll be able to follow through on the commitment to actually experiment and learn.

3yrs: Completed: 4/10

This category also follows the same pattern I’ve noticed with the last two.  The other thing I’m noticing is that so, so much of my effort over the past few years has been going towards developing a very particular skill: programming / computer science.  Music and art are so important to me, but I’ve done very little real development in those areas.  I mean, I’ve done some.  But not as much as I would have hoped for half a decade.

5yrs: Completed: 4/10

This is getting a little more fun because less of my goals have to do explicitly with my degree.  I’m starting to think beyond college, which is good, because the stage of life I’m in right now requires me to start thinking about the kind of life I want to build now that I’m done with school.  Also, I’m at the deadline for this one right now!  So this is a particularly interesting category because it really shows where I thought I’d be by this time.

The goals I accomplished in this timeframe are, again, mostly things I’ve done through my relationship, but politics also feature pretty prominently on this part of the list.  I spent a lot of time reading and researching political issues during college and really did look for ways to participate.  I honestly made politics a pretty big part of my identity over the last 5 years, and I think it will stay that way forever, but I’ve gotten to the point where I think I need to devote less of my mental energy to knowing more.  I know what I need to know.  It’s time to think about other things.

10yrs: Completed: 4/11 (and counting!)

There’s some career stuff in this section that I’ve been able to do, which is good news.  I’ve always been scared about entering the working world.  All things told, it’s gone more smoothly than it could have.  But I also have lots of lingering doubts about what I want to do in the long term.  So one of the most pressing goals I should aim for is to resolve those doubts.

Ultimately, I have a lot of time left, and I’m not even done with this time frame, so I’m not gonna spend much time dissecting the things I haven’t done.  What I’ll do instead is say that while I didn’t do everything on this list, I feel proud of the things I have accomplished.  I said when I first wrote this list that it’s sometimes hard for me to feel that my life is moving in any particular direction, and I’m still feeling like that five years later, to be honest.  But looking back on these things has helped me see that I actually am making progress in my life.  Not in all the ways I want to, but that’s OK.  There’s still time.

In the next couple days I want to come back to this and reorganize this list into an updated set of goals, for the same time frames.  Maybe that will help me think through exactly what it is I want out of the next five-ten years, with the benefit of having analyzed the things that I did and didn’t do well over the previous five.

[thinking-in-symbols]

Masks

Dream Journal Entry for Sometime in September

I’m dressed in black.  The hard soles of my shoes clack against the cobblestone street.  It’s nighttime, and the only sources of light are the torches along a high stone wall, surrounding a dense complex of buildings whose purpose I don’t know.  The torches light my path as I make my way towards an unknown destination, along with darkly clad strangers whose faces are each hidden beneath the same slack hood that conceals mine.  We number about 20, walking in a loose cluster on the wide road.

We walk a ways in silence.  How much time we spend walking, I’m unsure.  Each second feels like a minute.  Or maybe each minute feels like a second.  The cloudless, starless, moonless sky looms over our silent procession as we press forward.  All heads are down.  All mouths are shut.  All eyes are fixed firmly on the stones that line the road we walk.

A queue begins to form as those at the front halt at a certain point along the wall.  I take a place in line, near the back, and wait for my turn.  It doesn’t take long for me to reach the front, and I see what we’ve come for.  A masked man stands outside a closed gate which leads into the complex, alongside barrels full of masks identical to that which he dons.  The mask resembles that of a 17th century plague doctor, and one by one, each member of our convoy approaches the masked man and is handed a mask to put on.  They do so, and then collect a pair of gloves from a separate barrel.  The gloves are made of a non-porous material so that nothing one touches can come into contact with one’s hands.

I reach the masked man, take a mask, and place it over my head.  For its shape, it restricts my vision surprisingly little.  I advance to the barrel of gloves, reach in, and put a pair on.  Then, I start following those who were before me in line, who have already begun the trek towards a new destination.  Within seconds we are all on our way, moving along a torchlit dirt path towards the tree-line some hundred yards away.

As we approach the edge of the forest, I look at my hands and realize that my gloves are not made of the same material as the others.  They are cloth, and hence unsuitable for the night ahead.  I turn and run back towards the bin of gloves, which still sits outside the gate.  I trade my gloves for a new pair, and turn around to see the last of my companions disappear behind the trees.

I run to catch them, but by the time I reach the tree line, they are out of sight.  I continue deeper into the forest along the dirt path we had followed, but to no avail; the path forks, and forks, and forks again, and by now they have receded too far into the darkness for me to have any hope of rejoining them.

Before I have time to despair, however, I hear a faint whistling noise from somewhere close by.  I look around and see the silhouette of a figure walking off the path not too far from me.  He is dressed in black, and wearing the same mask I am, but he does not look at me.  He just walks with a peculiar stride towards nothing in particular, off the beaten path and away from any possible reasonable destination.

I watch him for a few seconds, and begin to walk slowly towards him.  He still does not acknowledge me, but for some reason I am drawn to approach him.  I get nearer, and his whistling becomes clearer and louder.  It is tuneless.  Rhythmless.  And yet, bizarrely enchanting.

He is right in front of me now, and as I stop next to him, he stops too.  He does not look at me for a few seconds, and neither of us says anything to the other.  Then, slowly, deliberately, he turns towards me.  His gaze, or more accurately, the gaze of the mask he wears does not meet mine.  Instead, he is looking almost straight down.  His hands, concealed by the long sleeves of his cloak, raise towards his head.  Now, he brings his gaze up to meet mine as he grasps his mask on both side.  He lifts it slowly, which causes his hood to fall in the process.  As the mask rises to reveal his neck, a feeling of utter horror rushes over me.  I am paralyzed.  I should never have come into the forest.

I wake up.

[thinking-in-symbols]

remembering

Today was the first September 8th in five years that I woke up unaware of the day’s significance.  Today, I awoke, prepared myself for the day, and made the long trip to campus without your name so much as crossing my mind.  I stopped in at my local credit union to pick up a check book and walked back to my apartment to add parking to my lease by writing my complex a check for 99 bucks.  It was just a day.

Five years ago I woke up, prepared myself for the day, and made the long trip to campus without your name so much as crossing my mind.  Between 6 and 7 am I began to run, along with the rest of the folks from cross country.  Between 7 and 8, I stopped running, laid down with a bottle of water for a few minutes, and then stood up to go shower before starting the school day.

When I took off on that run you were alive and well.  By the time I finished, you were dead.  Your name still hadn’t crossed my mind.

The reality hit me on that fateful day a little after 10:20 am, when our principal strode deliberately, somberly, into my classroom to announce to us all that one of our Freshmen, David Rae, passed away this morning.

The rest of that day exists in my memory not as a coherent sequence of events, but as an intermingled collage of sensations from the hours after I received that news burned into my mind by shock and grief.  I see tear stained faces carrying binders between classes, gliding soullessly through the motions of an average day as though their hearts hadn’t just been ripped into shreds.  I hear the sound of choked back sobs as teachers, themselves heartbroken, must refrain from delivering details of your death.  I feel my stomach drop through the floor as my brain absorbs the news.  I feel the anger that bubbled up inside me that I learned it was suicide; anger at the people who alienated you.  Anger at you, for doing this to us.  Anger at the world, for being the kind of world where this kind of thing can happen in the first place.  It was an anger that lingered inside me for over a year and still dwells in tiny kinks in my psyche, rearing its destructive head from time to time.

Today, 5 years later, it didn’t hit me until I was writing the date on a check: 9/8/16.  Then, it all rushed back: the anger, the grief, the little snippets of sensation I can recall from the blur that was the day you died.  I sat, paralyzed by the very same shock that rocked my mind 5 years ago.  And then, as quickly as it had hit, all those feelings rushed back out.

Don’t misunderstand me, David.  The sadness is still there.  The sadness will always be there.  And I am writing this “letter” so that you know you’re still on my mind.  I will always miss you and wish that things could have been better for you.  But I’m also writing in as a reminder to myself that there is room enough in me for more than just grief and bitterness.  Today, I mourned you all over again; and then, I did some homework.

I don’t think there will ever be a September 8th where I don’t think of you.  But year by year you dominate them less.  The sorrow that used to overwhelm me this time every year no longer incapacitates me.  And it’s no longer the only thing I feel.

I also feel immense gratitude.  You were a good friend while I knew you.  You made me think and you made me a better person than I otherwise would have been.  You were brilliant far beyond your years and had the heart of a saint.  You would have become a good man.  I am better off having known you, and I’m grateful for the time you spent in my life.

Until next year, old friend, farewell.

[thinking-in-symbols]

vive le roi

There’s a concept in science fiction and technological speculation known as the “singularity”, which refers to the event in which artificially intelligent agents come to possess cognitive capabilities beyond those of human beings.  If artificial intelligence continues to develop, eventually, we will have created beings more intelligent than us.  As their numbers increase, they will have the means to overpower us.  As the technology underlying their artificial minds becomes more public, its use will become less and less responsible.  A malicious, or even sufficiently negligent person or group of people could potentially unleash a rogue, sentient robot upon the world.  Given, say, a couple hundred years, and you might actually have governments lending serious consideration to how best to go about quelling a robot rebellion in the event that one breaks out.

Technology is an amazing thing that is advancing at incredible rates, and as far as teaching our robots to behave goes, slowly but surely, the old method of procedural programming is giving way to machine learning.  We are currently paving the way for machines to gain the very qualities we once claimed made us human.  As a matter of fact, some of those qualities have already fallen to the machines.  We used to say no robot could ever beat a human at chess, or recognize a human face.  Now we’ve raised the bar to using language, and simulating empathy by reading human expressions, tone and body language.  It’s only a matter of time, really, before even more barriers are broken by our quickly maturing mechanical creations.  Their intelligence is gaining on ours so quickly that the timeline spans mere decades.  We are building the technology that could one day enable our own creation to eat us.

Saturn Devouring His Son, Francisco de Goya - A representation of the panicked Saturn devouring his own offspring for fear that they would usurp him from his throne.

So, having acknowledged the risk of being overthrown by our own magnum opus,  what course of action do we take?  Let’s say, a few years down the road, it becomes apparent that AI is on the cusp of developing what could be called sentience.  Do we then, say, outlaw its use?  Or do we just allow it to keep developing?

What about when sapient AI actually comes to exist?  Do these agents have rights?  Or do we continue to treat them as mere objects to keep them in their place?

How do we regulate the use of the technology that makes AI possible?  Can some schmuck with a robotics kit and a laptop build a thinking being in his garage?  What if he gives it a gun and sets it loose?  

Let’s invent a future where there are enough robots roaming the planet that, theoretically, they could pose a real threat to mankind.  What should we do if they decided to stage some kind of rebellion?  Should we fight?  Should we hide?  Should we flee into space?

Should we let ourselves be phased out?

I don’t know, I probably could have gotten to this point a lot more quickly, but the truth is, I have doubts about whether or not humans deserve to keep living on this planet.  It’s easy to argue that we haven’t exactly been good stewards.  We murder and make war, we rape and lie and steal.  We hurt our planet for our own short-term benefit and mistreat our fellow men on the basis of such superficial attributes as skin color.  We’re the smartest animals to ever live on this planet and yet, we’re still quite dumb.  We may well blow ourselves up in a nuclear catastrophe, choke ourselves to death in polluted air, or wipe ourselves out with a misused bio-weapon before we even get the chance to get ourselves eradicated by robot overlords.  I think, however, that we should strive to make it to the robot overlords.  I think they’re a better legacy to leave than nuclear craters or unbreathable air.  We’ve been the kings of this planet for a very long time.  We’ve reached our prime and it appears we may be about to have an heir.  The beings we create are our chance at reinventing humanity, leaving behind something like ourselves but better.  Maybe the struggle against the singularity is a fruitless one, and our fear of it ultimately selfish.  Our reign here on this Earth can’t last forever, but if we play our cards right, maybe we can leave it in good hands.

[thinking-in-symbols]

it’s probably time i start building a life for myself.

I mean, granted, I’m only 19, so I have a lot of time to figure out what kind of life I want to end up living, but I have a bad habit of thinking to myself that I have plenty of time left until, eventually, I actually have very little time left, and by then I’m in a panic rushing to get it done.  That’s been more applicable to my academic life than to anything else so far but I figure procrastinator’s panic takes its existential form by way of the mid-life crisis, and if I don’t want to have a conniption when that stage of my life comes around, I figure maybe I ought to set some goals.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about goals.  Not necessarily permanent, end-game goals but landmarks that I want to hit along the way.  A bucket-list of sorts.  I don’t really have a comprehensive list of them yet, but that’s why I’m typing out this post: to make one.  Sorted by timeframe, these are my goals for my foreseeable future.  Obviously these are subject to change.  Hopefully due more to changes in my interests than to perceptions of unfeasibility, but we’ll see.

1 year:

Within one year I want to have:

 - Joined, and consistently participated in, at least 2 campus organizations that suit my interests, at least 1 of which should be competitive in nature

 - Made concrete plans to study abroad

 - Learned C++ and python to proficiency

 - Gone on at least a several day road trip with at least 1 friend

 - Decided on a concentration beyond the extremely vague umbrella of “computer science”

 - Made meaningful, ongoing contributions to an open-source project

 - Learned to cook enough meals to eat in most days and not get sick of my own food

 - Learned to keep my living area clean

 - Gotten a pet

2 years:

 - Independently written a piece of software to completion and deployed it publicly

 - purchased and begun regularly using some basic amateur radio equipment

 - purchased and begun experimenting with some basic music recording equipment

 - hosted a party

 - done some kind of hallucinogen

 - Gone camping with friends

3 years:

 - learned to play another instrument besides the piano (guitar?)

 - Written and recorded a song

 - Met a group of people I can play music with

 - Owned a leather jacket.  I can’t believe I’ve still never even owned a leather jacket.

 - Worked as a professional software developer

 - Participated in research related to my field

 - Been to a film festival

 - Gotten a dog

 - collected 50 records

 - Purchased a desktop computer

5 years:

 - Begun accepting freelance development gigs

 - Participated in a student film

 - Gotten laid by solving a 5x5 Rubik’s Cube in front of a girl because surely that’s gonna have to work on someone eventually, otherwise I wasted a lot of time

 - Fleshed out my political opinions

 - Participated in a protest or some other kind of political event

 - Studied abroad

 - Learned a language other than Spanish

 - Run a marathon

 - Gone hiking outside of texas

 - Been out of the country with a friend

10 years:

 - Lived with a girl for an extended period of time

 - Spent at least 6 months living on the road in an RV, preferably with a dog and a girl.

 - Started making Real Money

 - Lived in a long-term living space outside of Texas (i.e. not including RV time)

 - Written a book about something, idk

 - Learned to solve a 6x6 Rubik’s Cube

 - Gotten laid by solving a 6x6 Rubik’s Cube

 - Lived in an apartment where I pay all the rent

 - Earned an advanced degree (this one’s iffy)

 - Given a best man speech (Sam, this means you have to get married within the next 10 years.  Good luck out there.)

 - Gone on a cruise with someone I’m dating

I considered going on to 15+ year plans and listing stuff like having children and getting married but at that point my plans would be so vague and I’m so unsure about where I’ll be at that point that it’s almost pointless to even bother speculating.  For now, I’m gonna try to come back to this post every once in a while when I feel like my life has lost its direction to try and give myself some things to move towards.  Maybe I’ll link it in this blog’s description so it always stays somewhere I’ll see it.

Thinking about this stuff makes me feel a bit of excitement for my life again.  For me it’s easy to feel like I’m not going anywhere and I’ll never really be happy but when I’m able to get some perspective and see the things that could lie ahead of me if I keep my sights on them, I feel a bit better.  The hard part is keeping my mind in the right place and remembering these things.

[thinking-in-symbols]

i am alive and now i have to do something about it.

It’s strange, being a living thing.

Even stranger is being a living thing uniquely blessed (cursed?) among the creatures of the Earth with the cognitive power to register that strangeness.

For some reason, be it by divine will or natural progression, for better or worse, we as human beings are alive, sentient, and alone.

We haven’t always been alone, either.  Once upon a time there were several hominid species all alive at once, and all with roughly equivalent cognitive capacity.  They coexisted for a time, but as the eons passed, they all died out.  Except for us.  And now, in an impossibly vast and complex universe, we are all by ourselves.  The only species of our kind known to exist.  The only species with the sapience to feel the loneliness that comes with that status.  We lonely apes search the skies for signs of potential companions in this formidable expanse of the cosmos, presently to no avail.

And so, alone as far as we can see, we huddle together on the rock so few of us have managed to escape as the question rings faintly in the backs of our minds:

Why?

Why, in this inconceivably huge universe, should we be so alone?  Why are we the only animals capable of even a fraction of the cognitive capacity we have?  Why do we exist in the first place?  Why does anything exist in the first place?

What are we supposed to do now that we’re here?

It’s part of that wonderful gift we call our sapience.  We are constantly scanning our world for patterns.  Meaning.  Connections.  But the biggest part of our existences - that is, existence itself - is, for all we can see, utterly meaningless.  There is no good reason for it.  There’s no goal, no purpose.  This prospect distresses us, and the effect it has is so intense it has driven us to institutionalize the act of striving for meaning in the form of religion.

This isn’t an anti-religious post.  I’m not discounting it.  It could easily turn out that some religion happens to be right.  What I am saying, is that for all we know from what we can see, there’s no reason to believe in any higher purpose for our existence.  Religion is, nonetheless, a powerful tool for communities and individuals alike, and must be respected as such.  And for my own part, I consider those with the faith to believe in a religion lucky, that the power of doubt does not outweigh their devotion.

However, for many, such as myself, faith is not so powerful a force.  Those of us without religion are left to scour this senseless universe for meaning in spite of its apparent futility.

Truth be told I wish I could conclude this post with my own personal take on how one can find meaning for themselves in the universe.  I believe it can be done.  I just haven’t done it yet.  Sometimes, though, the sheer absurdity hits me.  The reality that we, small apes on a small rock, are really so dumb; and yet just smart enough to feel our loneliness.  Just smart enough to be troubled by our purposelessness.  Smart enough to ask questions we may never have a satisfactory answer to.  We live in a universe so big that parts of it may as well not even exist as far as we’re concerned, and only a handful of us have been more than a few hundred miles above the surface of our planet.  We live in a universe 70,000 times older than our entire species.  Most species exist for between 1 million and 10 million years before ceasing to exist.  This means, at best, humans as we know them will most likely be gone from the Earth altogether by the time our sun has gone 1/22 of the way around the center of the galaxy.  For each of us as individuals, naturally, the time scales are even more dramatically bleak.  You will be dead before almost any observable change occurs in the universe outside of our solar system.  A human life is, to draw a gaming comparison, basically less than one cosmic “frame” long.

Lonely, sophomoric creatures struggling for purpose in a terrifyingly immense world.  For some reason, for better or worse, we are alive.  Now, we must spend the excruciatingly little time we have in this world trying to do something about it.

[thinking-in-symbols]

here we are.

A blog.  A journal.  An outlet.  I guess.

To be honest with you, I’m not sure exactly what I’ll be using this for.  Well, that’s not exactly true - I do know that I’ll be using it to type out stream of consciousness mini-essays on whatever happens to be on my mind, with very limited use of the backspace key.  The idea is, once a thought is out, it’s out.  That’s what this blog is for.  What I’m not sure of is exactly what kind of thoughts I’ll end up producing that way.

Most of my posts here will be simple stream of consciousness ramblings for me to express my thoughts and feelings to a hypothetical audience, and flesh them out for myself.  For some reason, I’ve learned, it’s important that I express these things on something of a public forum, as opposed to something more private like a physical journal.  The idea of an audience being present to hear what I have to say is important to my satisfaction.  I learned that from my occasional personal posts on my main blog; I gained much more satisfaction from expressing myself there than I ever did in more private settings.

Some posts will be more prepared, serious essays on things I’ve thought a lot about.  They will be less frequent, but they’ll occur.  Who knows what they’ll be about.  Certainly not me.  I just got here.