always a work in progress, this is simply my attempt at capturing my personal philosophy as it grows and changes over time with new experiences and information
My purpose in life is to share my knowledge effectively and empower others to do the same.
I believe that the sharing of knowledge between individuals and across groups is the main driving force in the rapid technological advances of the last several centuries. It's also a matter of needing to self-select in to the space most likely of giving you a large audience across space, and more importantly time, that affects the amount of impact you can possibly have. My new thoughts and ideas have a next to zero chance of influencing others if I never share them. And in the same way, as long as they are in my head alone, I have fewer opportunities for correcting mistakes in logic or facts that others are sure to help me notice. And even on-going debates with others unlikely to ever fully agree are opportunities to refine my arguments and try new ones because I'm being pushed beyond the easy solutions.
First, some definitions:
- my knowledge
- anything that I have read/encountered/experienced/learned/discovered/thought that has passed through my life
- share effectively
- sharing to reach the largest possible intended audience and they understood the intended message
- empower
- to leave others with a sense of control, capability, and energy to act
My mission is broad and lifelong, and my successes are ideally medium-to-major-sized and frequent. I expect my net positive impact on the world to take place via a compounding interest model. Each small win increases my probabilty of inspiring other small changes in myself and others that over my life will add up to a big gain for myself and others.
- tiny
- Sharing content by others that have already summarized things that I agree with
- Telling someone about something I'm less sure of but that they can look up themselves and that I think may help them
- Connecting people in my network when asked
- Pointing out areas of improvement around cultural sensitivity in the moment with gentle reminders
- medium
- Showing someone how to use a new tool that will help them
- Connecting people in my network unprompted, when I think they will both benefit
- Sharing content by others along with my own thoughts summarized in brief
- Indirect mentorship (larger groups, annonymously etc)
- huge
- Helping someone resolve an ongoing problem or frustration with a new idea or teaching them something
- Writing out and sharing my own ideas in longer format than pure commentary
- Helping to create new tools or materials that improve learning and/or knowledge sharing
- Direct mentorship of others (in person, on-going, etc)
- Computer Science literacy and access
- Educational pedagogy
- Relationship building and maintanence
- Minimalism
- Self-defense skills from predatory advertising techniques
-
daily
- meditation/reflection
- write || draw || photograph || create content
- exercise
- floss
-
weekly
- publish content
-
monthly
- re-connect with a friend
- get to know someone new
-
yearly
- update this personal philosophy and mission statement
- Public speaking
- Clear argument articulation
- Allyship to communities of color
- Not hating rainy days on principle
- Playing a stringed instrument
I strive to always communicate my feelings with honesty and personal vulnerability while leaving plenty of space for silence, disagreement, correction, and growth.
We can only ever have the relationships we build together, so we must communicate as a team to discuss what we want to build, how and when to build it with the resources available, make plans to acquire new resources or skills together, etc.
- Ideally, no relationship should end with any party being surprised at the situation
- The health of a relationship can never be more than the health of the individuals in it
- Relationships which are not mutally beneficial are defective
I hope to always surround myself with passionate doers who share my values for positive change in the world. I also hope to maintain open channels and interaction to communities with varying degrees of overlap with my own in order to avoid the silo-effect and to encourage healthy flow of different ideas.
- Communities are like massive polyamorous relationships without all the sexytime oxytocin to help people put up with each others' bullshit
- Culture can just happen randomly with no one steering, or it can be intentionally focused on and built to meet member needs
- Communities that encourage sharing and vulnerability are hard to create, but worth it
With minimalism and world impact in mind, I always try to be intentional about the things and objects that I allow into my home. I believe that most purchases are failed attempts at grasping happiness and that as the clutter adds up, so does the disappointment about the failure to produce happiness. I can always get by with less, though I try to find a content balance between appreciation for modern technological advances in highly specific use-cases and the more multi-purpose functionality of traditional objects.
- Functionality > aesthetics, though both is clearly ideal
- Aesthetics may serve as it's own function after all other functional and resource-impact-mindfulness has been taken into consideration.
- Reduce/avoid consumption of goods whose packaging or components will long outlive the use of the good itself
- Repair > replacement
- Limit impulse purchases, wait 30 days and re-evaluate the necessity of any purchase to allow for more distance from the direct effect of advertising
Money is just a tool. I use this tool to meet my basic needs, and after that I use it to leverage for greater positive impact on the world.
Most of the things money can currently be spent on in the first world are useless for meeting this goal. Hoarding money for the future is also a waste of a resource. Living in the current capitalistic(-ish) system, I find myself torn between the need for enough future-planning to buffer against unforseen circumstances (and my own likely young-person blindspot as to the actual security of my financial future) and the desire to apply all extra funds to good causes immediately.
Currently, I don't donate on a regular basis to any shortlist of causes, primarily because I haven't sat down and done enough research to feel that I can make an educated and as-impactful-as-possible contribution while staying true to my core beliefs. As a result, I so far give opportunistically to smaller causes as they occur, such as supporting friends' fundraising for a cause, or, lately more often, direct financial help to young people from difficult backgrounds who are trying to get out in the world and do great things.
Like Bill Gates researching and then focusing on the global eradication of malaria, I aspire to one day identifying a space in which I think I can help have a huge impact with the resources I have available.
- I don't care much about my salary once my basic needs are met
- I do care about fairness of compensation relative to peers and work done
- My perfect world has no such concept as income, robots would do all the essential work, and humans would spend time on creative activities
I hope to always have the security to allow me to choose my workplace for the amazing peer group and their passion for working towards solving an important problem in the world.
Right now I'm working to help improve computer science education and bring the joy of programming to people around the world, with a strong focus on achieving gender parity and diversity numbers that more closely reflect the true diversity of the world.
If anyone would like to try to get me to work somewhere new, I hope that they can see the bar is set pretty high.
I really enjoy rock climbing (indoor bouldering mostly tbh), and I'm very into playing kendama lately. I juggled for a few years before encountering the kendama, and I have almost completely ignored regular juggling since. Once I master that daily writing habit, I guarantee I'll write about my thoughts and philosophy about practice, as inspired by my obsessive hours with the kendama.
- If the person I am communicating with does not understand me, it is my failure, not theirs
- All emotions are valid and useful, not all responses to emotions are valid and useful
- Use of physical force should be applied as minimally as possible
- Humans are animals, with animal instincts like any other
- Humans must strive to understand the impact of our evolutionary nature on our individual actions
- Tools are never evil, only their use
- Morals, as a human concept, are ultimately relative and socially negotiated
- Insticts, as a functional reality of nature, greatly influence morals in predictable ways across human societies
- Frustration is an indicator that your level of caring is higher than your level of control
- The free sharing of ideas is the most powerful act one can perform
- The power of the Internet is it's capacity for enabling human idea sharing
- In any information gathering context, an important question is always "Which voices are not yet being heard?"
- Silence is often interpretted as acceptance and support whether we intend it or not
- The ability to edit and curate incoming information is an increasingly important skill
- Less is more once basic needs are met
- Anthropegenic (human-escalated) climate change is real
- We need to create tools that put modern data into human-comprehensible formats
- We hurt future generations with our unchecked resource consumption
- Facing the data and the reality of others can be painful but is necessary for self-improvement
- Errors / bugs / failures are opportunities for learning
- Re-framing situations as good/bad is a tool that can be abused like any other
- We are always learning something, whether we realize it or not
- Clear, honest communication is the best policy
- Game theory indicates that deception, cheating, violence, etc will always be considered viable strategies in certain situations
- I will always have blind spots that I must rely on others to point out to me
- Those in a relationship are responsible for building and maintaining it to meet their shared needs
- It is very hard to be honest with oneself about true strengths and weaknesses
- Frequent exposure to different ideas is important to personal growth
- Current forms marketing are often predatory and take advantage of human cognitive biases rather than relying on sound and fair reasoning
- Keeping information to yourself for the purposes of increased personal gain at the expense of others is greedy
- Keeping information to yourself until you have time to act on it first is lazy
- Sharing information freely so that others can strengthen or improve the idea even more is better for everyone
- Human readability and understanding is the most important feature of code after functionality
- Poor commit messages are a missed opportunity for communicating more clearly
- Jordan Peterson on speaking your truth, https://www.facebook.com/HereforLater/videos/656352387890966/
- Find original source and link to transcript as well for readability