About

An eccentric dreamer in search of truth and happiness for all.

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Introduction

My grand mission is to maximize the happiness of all sentient beings throughout spacetime, either by advancing pivotal technologies in the history of human civilization, or by spreading important ideas into our culture through creative endeavours that create positive conscious experiences.

I’m the type of person who can spend a lot of time daydreaming or pondering the meaning of life, the nature of reality, and why people are the way they are.  Inevitably, I find reality at times rather unsatisfactory, and feel a determination to create a better world somehow, whether by understanding and changing the real one through scientific research, enterprise, or political discourse; or inventing my own through creative writing or programming simulations like computer games.

The same goes for being unsatisfied with myself.  I consider myself a work in progress, and still far from the “gentleman and a scholar” ideal that I try to aspire to.  I’m also beholden to the renaissance ideal of the polymath with a breadth of expertise.

One of my particular strengths is in finding connections between disparate ideas, allowing me to envision creative solutions to technical problems. Practically, my two major skills in life are programming and writing.

Career

As a Master of Computer Science, I’ve been focused on the connections that form our perceptions of reality (neural networks and pattern/object recognition). Having studied cognitive science in undergrad, I’m a connectionist who thinks that mimicking the human brain’s exceptional information processing abilities is, well a no-brainer.  The hope is to at least find ways to improve how computers perceive and interact with the real world.  

More ambitiously, I aspired to eventually be able to predict the future with neural networks! To that end, I have worked in the past as a data scientist at a startup called Maluuba, and as a research scientist at Huawei Canada.  In particular, I have worked on Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, and the intersection of the two. Basically, I worked on AI/ML stuff before it was cool.

For complex reasons, I switched industries to do ethical game development under the vision and leadership of a former moral philosophy lecturer at Twin Earth. I was initially a senior programmer, but as needs changed my role shifted to be a writer for the team. I have since moved on, but it was an honour to play my part.

Personal

For hobbies, I like to play the piano and alto saxophone.  I’ve also practiced several martial arts (with a strong preference for anything that involves swinging around a sword) as well as martial sports (like fencing).  I occasionally do some creative writing, mostly in the fantasy and science fiction genres, and hope to one day write a good novel.  Sometimes, in addition to playing them, I design strategy and role-playing games, both digital and board.  I also like to consider myself a bit of a connoisseur of quality anime.

I have eclectic tastes, and am equally comfortable reading Scientific American as I am reading, say The Economist, or a D&D Player’s Guide, or a manga like Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End.  And, I have a habit of dabbling in amateur philosophy and debating politics.  Given that my own political view and philosophy are actually rather eclectic and nuanced, I tend to respect, if not necessarily agree with, any well defended argument.  I like to follow current events too, and during elections tend to turn into a bit of a political junkie, having actually volunteered on the successful election campaigns of a few local MPs.

I’m going to guess that most of the boring people will have stopped reading by this point and I can write whatever I want here.  I sometimes meow at kitty cats when I think no one is looking.  I used to want to take over the world when I was in grade school, but have long since realized that right now it really isn’t worth the effort, so I’m concentrating on making it a better place first.  That in itself is probably a lifelong endeavour.

My favourite short story is The Last Question by Isaac Asimov. If you haven’t already, go and read it!

Religious Views

I consider myself a liberal Christian agnostic.

I’m a Christian agnostic in the sense that I want to be intellectually honest and admit that I don’t know the truth, but I choose to take a Kierkegaardian leap of faith towards Christianity as my preferred religious tradition.

I’m a liberal Christian in the Enlightenment influenced sense that I choose my own reasoned interpretation of scripture rather than just accepting doctrines without scrutiny. I’m particularly partial to emphasizing the “red letter” moral teachings of Jesus.

An unorthodox idea I think makes sense is the notion of purgatorial hell and eventual universal salvation, which I consider more consistent with my understanding of God’s justice and mercy than the traditional view of eternal damnation.

In my humble opinion, the Bible consists of words and letters written by imperfect men who were nonetheless affected by, at the very least, the notion of God, and can serve as a foundation to inform and understand one’s own personal relationship with the divine. To me, the details are less important than the overarching themes.

Regardless of whether God actually exists, the perspective of an impartial observer of the universe is useful to take to understand what objective universal morality could look like. If God exists, it is my belief that He would, per the various omni-attributes ascribed to Him, actually be able to know and feel our pain and pleasure, and so care about everything that happens to us.  Thus, the greatest good, to maximize the happiness of everyone, is, by this logic, God’s Will.

To me, the creation and populating of a utopian and eternal heaven is the greatest good possible and the right thing to do, and most probably would be God’s purpose for the universe, and one I think a truly rational person should align with. I detail more of this personal philosophy in my essay Innate Truths, which is my attempt to answer the question of the meaning of life.

Political Philosophy

My philosophical beliefs have a significant influence on what I stand for when it comes to politics.  Again, to me, the right thing to do is to maximize the happiness of everyone. I believe that the best way to achieve this is through a kind of liberal socialism (possibly of the kind that Mill and Rawls espoused), and I see value in both the liberal and socialist intellectual traditions as dual heirs to the Enlightenment emphasis on equality, reason, and progress.

Liberal democracy ensures that the decisions made by the government have the consent of the governed through popular sovereignty. As a decision procedure, voting is effective because false views tend to be widely different and cancel out, while the truth tends to agree with itself. Different human experiences will inevitably lead to different viewpoints, but the underlying truths will correspond to reality and form the majority opinion, more often than not, on average. This is the wisdom of crowds effect, and it is why democracy works. Nonetheless, this should be combined with constitutional rights that protect individuals from the majority overreaching.

Democratic socialism involves a system where the means of production are held democratically by the public rather than private capital interests. In practice there are many ways to construct such a socialist economy, ranging from entirely decentralized markets of cooperatives, to varying degrees of central planning (possibly augmented by modern AI technology), and any realistic system will probably incorporate elements of both the market and planning (i.e. market socialism). The point is for a system that operates in the interests of the greatest common good, rather than for the profit of private property owners who for the most part can ultimately trace their historical roots to unjust military conquests. I’d also settle for something like a universal basic income within a mixed market economy with both public and private sectors as a potentially more practical and politically feasible solution to the problem.

In practice, rather than splitting hairs over ideological purity, I generally support leftward, progressive politics.

Contact

If, for some reason, you need/want to reach out, here’s my email.