This piece has not yet been edited. **** How do I think? ***** Should others think differently? It's wonderful there's such diversity within peoples' thoughts and life philosophies. Some living for today, for nobel causes in 3rd world countries, to get rich, to find love. It's reassuring in the same way a breadth first search offers completeness, in the same way random restart and simulated annealing helps avoid becoming infintely trapt within local optimas. I would not stake humanities success on the correctness of my ideals. Perhaps I should think differently and I look forward to shaping my direction as new information becomes available and circumstances emerge. ***** As a single thread, even when weaved between others That doesn't mean it isn't lonely, feeling like a single thread weaving an path through a tapestry whose composition we don't fully understand and cannot fully observe. I want to understand this composition. I want others to want to understand this composition, why it is we wave, and what opportunities exist for us all to weave better. Irrespective of our different goals, mutual understanding is imperative to us making informed decisions. Knowledge should never be held hostage or become collateral damage, unless to protect knowledge as a whole (a most saddening exception, one of the most sad things there is). Who's to say one's strategy for weaving is universally superior to another? I suppose one can painstakingly calculate the costs of having to repair said weaves, or the value that a "correct" weave actually offers, for and to whom. One may even speak of opportunity costs, of risks, and on the cost of not risking enough. One can even debate what value is, how it is measured, and for that matter, what a "correct" weave actually means. And people try. Economists, statisticians, computer scientists, mathematicians, classical scientists, game theoreticians. But this struggle is constantly undermined by the pressures of being human. The pressure of conforming to society, achieving personal happiness, and marketing/promoting one's ideas in order to inflate their importance and have them adopted to a degree one believes accurately reflects their merits. I feel like there should be a better way; a better global effort towards an internally consistent and accessible world. This is the world I strive to see realized, though I know it is not to be achieved in my lifetime. ***** On choosing a philosophy Choosing a life philosophy is challenging, especially without first setting a context. For many, I would guess their context is around 150 years; approaching the upper bound of one's life and their usefullness as pertaining to their children and grand children. The window I live in is three thousand years. Arbitrary perhaps. It is the duration of time the past feels relevant to my life today. I look at the past three thousand years and I am distraught, how much information has been lost? How many great minds have returned to the earth without their learnings to survive them? This summed lost impact is surely greater than my own, should it even survive. And of the learnings of others which have survived, how have people's lives improved because of them? And, I'd be remiss if I did not also consider, in which ways have they become worse? On this I am not prepared to answer. ***** Sacrifice; The consequences of my decision Having a contextual window of 3 millennia has consequences. It means that my actions do not optimize for the those living around me. Their window only practically represents 1/20th of mine. I necessarily have to invest in other people. My mission is not one that can be accomplished individually. I thus constantly feel I can only afford to keep company with those who will push me on my service towards these goals. - I become anxious about not using my resources efficiently - I have started to become increasingly upset by trivia and experience even greater disdain when I take pleasure in it. - I have sold most of my possessions to eliminate distractions - I try not to purchase expensive things unless there is a practice reason and the delta in price is justifiable - I am willing to spend money on others - I have automated much of my life (laundry, groceries, rent) so I can spend as much time as possible focusing on problems I feel are more important. ***** Fear of missing out Our number of seconds in this world are perpetually diminishing. Every moment we deviate from our objective is a moment we lose forever. It's painful knowing we need to rest and take breaks. At the same time, this reality comes with opportunities for optimization. Effective procrastination is thus a topic of personal interest. It's also upsetting knowing there are only a certain number of forks we can make and still be on track to hit our goals. Only so many things we can be mutually good at. I often wonder if my limited travelings, cultural exposures, relationships, meditations, are actually inhibiting my success. It's likely that learnings fundamental to my success lie in one of the experiences I have not yet had. I am only human. I frequently fight the urge to change my path. Sometimes I wish to dissapear in a different country and lose contact with anyone important to me. Sometimes I consider prioritizing happiness. ***** Growth versus execution Balancing growth and execution is one of my biggest presonal challenges. Recently I've felt pressure to prioritize execution over learning and I have great fear this strategy will work against me (in terms of the absence of compound interest of my knowledge) in the future. ***** A leap of faith I believe that (1) striving to create a universal knowledge base, (2) working towards discovering and eliminating inconsistencies, and (3) making this knowledge base accessible, are the root of progress and advancement.