Thursday, October 31, 2024
I've lightly subscribed to two blog posts a month, so here we are. I'm unsure what to write, but lately, my conversations prove that my talking knows no bounds once she is unleashed. I need a title for this form of content: the macrodose (a la Reboot)? the tidbit (a la William)? assorted links (and thoughts) (a la Tyler Cowen)? or the ramble (a la myself)? Furthermore, it's become moral imperative that I read a lot. I love the wisdom of older people who prove me dumber with each sentence. Man, I'm illiterate.
Anyway, here are some of my reactions to some of the things that I've encountered in the past two weeks.
In his essay, "Writes and Write-Nots," Paul Graham describes the intellectual divide that will emerge in this new world that we find ourselves in. There will be the writers and the ones who do not write. There will be those who can whip up prose at a moment's notice and those who will have to open up their phone to search for a URL, leading them to a prompt box, allowing them to write. Then, when I think about this. I find it interesting that they're now the blogger's evangelical. Casey Handmer, Tyler Cowen, Paul Graham and the like make it seem blasphemous not to have a blog. We do not have to write with ink; merely type on our keyboards, and without summoning a pigeon, this work can be shared with the whole world at a button's notice! And yet, here we are, waiting for a successful person to motivate us to write down our rambly thoughts and share them in more than 140 characters.
Recently, the Progress Conference was held in Berkeley. I didn't attend, but it seemed like a fun time; my feed was filled with new excitement, which was fun and exciting. I've also started reading Escape from Earth by Fraser Macdonald. I like it quite a bit. Anyway, it shares the story of scientist Frank Malina and the evolution of the Jet Propulsion Library. We have a Xeroc PARC and its associates in star power. Their job is to figure out the technical substrates of magnificence, the magnificent thing that sends metal straight into the sky at a velocity so quickly it escapes the atmosphere and enters orbit. They do it. They realize that as something increases in altitude, perhaps it sheds the weight it does not need. Malina and co. They succeed. It builds Caltech, the hub of the Pacific national scientific enterprise.
But, here I see something surreal: the notion that the work of the scientists at JPL was accelerated by imminent war—going from the astronautical to the aeronautical. They're all one secret away from being exposed as spies, factual or not, and being imprisoned for decades. The war-comes-technology thesis makes much sense. Fury drives action and money. Money is everything, and governments have quite a bit of it. This is a narrow light on my views. Still, I find it hard to believe that when my dear friends mention high-skilled immigration, metascience, and AI safety as the due priorities of the upcoming election, they remember that much of this shift in appreciation is in preparation for potential war. These subjects are not disjoint. The cerebral gets to think and preach in the public light as much as possible, but money is only put where the mouth is under dire circumstances.
This all becomes real when I remember that a few weeks ago, maybe a few months ago, I got a lab email saying that members should be careful bringing their laptops during international travel, especially if they were going to Russia, China, and so on…the adversaries. We live our lives, and there’s little mention of the Smith Act, passed under Roosevelt. The law that mandates non-citizens to register with the government and forbade overthrowing it.
The only Bertrand Russell authored text I’ve read is “In Praise of Idleness.” I read it in reparations for my rat-race-afflicted soul, reaching for something more and, in that, facing that it needed much less. Well, the essay was good. I reread it now to recall whether the statement is true. But in bringing him up about a week ago, I was intrigued about his life. And it turns out, it is pretty sorrowful. He was a member of yet another collaborative circle (unsurprising). He led a hearty life, was a Nobel Prize laureate in literature, and was a very prolific writer—a true polymath, who found appreciation and scholarship in literature and mathematics. His reductionism was uncharacteristically idealistic, whereby all we know of the mathematical world could be boiled down to a few simple ideas. He was a logician. I write this all in a summary of the autobiography I currently read. This is a reminder to explore his life in more depth. Existential depression is the greatest friend, but it precedes the greatest betrayal. You fall in love with the world so profoundly that you’re left distraught and broken.
In like fashion, I’m reading Consilience by E.O. Wilson. The biologist-written book calls for great convergence if you will. There’s no discernment between discipline when we all seek enlightenment and wisdom, not discovery and menial, marginal, scientific advancement.
With this, I'm quite frustrated that I'm not a worldly woman. I do not know what's going on across the pond. I write this not to complain nor to brag that I live a life of bliss and can ignore such things. I write this to contextualize what I ought to do. Go back? Write about them. Read about them? Read about me? My start. All that I'm here for. After all, I'm much more than the eagle.
In all, may we lead meaningful lives. Let there be a habitable world to lead them in.