Hello world!

Why is it that “Hello World!” is the traditional first program? Does it symbolize the birth of a new creation? The start of a new journey? A rite of passage for newcomers to the mystic arts of programming? A celebration of achievement?

Or was it just coincidentally used as an example in a foundational textbook and from there wormed its way into all other introductory texts and rites of initiation? (from what I can tell this is apparently the answer, which I think is rather depressingly anti-climatic)

For some reason, just thinking about that made me feel…nostalgic, I guess. Thinking back to when I first started playing around with Java applets because I was bored during a “Web-mastering” class. cmd was an esoteric black box of mystery back then. My own first “Hello world!” displayed in a Java applet on an old version of Firefox. Using a browser based compiler and Notepad++ (¹⁰⁄₁₀ still use it regularly for Windows stuff) to build my jars.

Definitely a symbolic marker of a journey’s beginning and not just an example from a book.

I think it is quite appropriate - this marks a new beginning of sorts, where instead of pondering and contemplating by myself, I put my thoughts on display for others to learn from, critique, contribute to, and help refine. I’d like to think that I’ve done a decent job of looking at things objectively and coming up with the most general ways of describing problems and solutions. But, I’m a sack of flesh driven by probabilistic interactions of molecules with a limited range of senses. Not exactly an optimized problem solving machine. We all have limited perceptions, and we can only work with data that we have.

Which is why it is important to take in other perspectives and get feedback. The limit of objective accuracy (if such a thing was quantifiable, which it might be), as the amount of data available approaches infinity, is 100%. Emotions can be data points, but only if the underlying mechanisms and implications are understood and factored in, and the emotions themselves thoroughly inspected. Knowing yourself and being able to seriously question your own motivations is something I think is important when trying to be reach conclusions.

All of which leads to this - a blog! So exciting! My writings shall be paragons of literary craftsmanship, overflowing with a bounty of metaphors! Rivers of prepositions will flow along meandering banks of rich, loamy nouns covered with bright and colourful adjectives! Verbs will merrily frolic among the rolling green paragraphs! Exclamation points and question marks will do glorious battle in the deep, mysterious sentence forests! Villages of periods will stand fast against the great and terrible darkness of run-on sentences!

Yeah, I was never really that big on English class so I’m really not too sure what a preposition is, but I do read a lot which I’d like to think sort of makes up for it.

Purpose

As I somewhat alluded to above, the point of this is to put my thoughts out there and get feedback. There are also some technical tidbits that people may find useful, or which just get me really excited/pissed (and now have an outlet for me to dump them into instead of ranting at my poor non technical friends).

I also want to start laying down on disk some specific thoughts, organizing and refining them. I’ve got some opinions on things, and I’ve tried really hard to make sure they factor in reality as much as possible. I think it’s possible for us to do a lot better with our civilization in many ways with existing technology if we can just put it all together the right way. I think quite a few problems we have today could be solved by going down a level and changing things there instead of layering more complexity on top. But, I have a limited perspective, and as hard as I try to make sure that my conclusions are the most general possible there is only so much I can do alone.

Topics

I intend to cover a bunch of philosophical-ish stuff, mostly pertaining to human civilization stuff like food production, logistics, governance, etc - everything along these lines that I post should be viewed as a WIP seeking refinement. There are some fundamentals that I think are fairly solid, even though the implementation may be off. That right there is one key thing - I want to separate concept from implementation. Just because firefighters back in the good old days were in competition with each other does not invalidate the concept of organized firefighting itself. Just because the Romans decided to line their aqueducts with lead does not mean that having running water is a terrible idea. I feel like this distinction is often lacking in discussions. People get caught up in one aspect, be it a specific implementation or an associated ideology, and use that to dismiss the goal as being impossible or undesirable with vehement prejudice. It happens just as much as people demanding unrealistic implementations for laudable goals with religious fervour.

One topic that will probably come up multiple times just because it is so broad is using our knowledge of how we work to improve ourselves. Not just physically with implants, chemical or genetic therapies, or vat-grown tissues but mentally and emotionally. There is literally an entire industry dedicated to convincing people to do or buy things so clearly we can to an extent manipulate each others mental and emotional states to some degree of success. Yet, much of transhumanism (at least that I’ve seen so far) focuses on the physical above all else, which is interesting.

When it comes to technical stuff, I do a decent amount of software work. I’ve played with a wide variety of languages and tools, and built a wide variety of solutions. My degree plan includes Biomedical Engineering and Molecular Biology - I am a transhumanist, and I am working on stuff in the lab that is in line with that. Currently, I am involved with research in enzymatic biofuel cells, specifically implamantable glucose ones. I am also interested in renewables, sustainability, etc so there may be some of that too. I am particularly interested in any tech that could be used to create self-sufficient communities that can support current standards of living - I’ve got high hopes for biotech in this area, especially for food production, biodegradeable/recyclable plastics, and possibly even energy production (I’m looking at you, organic photovoltaics!). Generally speaking, things that grow can take care of themselves as long as you provide energy, raw materials, and defend from predators - much more straightforward than maintaining machinery, especially if the raw materials are present in the atmosphere naturally or are easily collectible waste products from other processes (like making plastic from poop!). So, technical posts will have quite the range of possible content. Good time to start practicing those organization skills.

I think that’s sufficient for an introduction. Apparently I am already well above 1k words…so, I guess anything that would fit in here that I think of later I may just stick in the About section, or maybe come up with a nice tag/category for “Introduction-ish” posts…

I will be trying to post regularly, but no guarantees.