User:Mike Johnson

About me

I have a B.A. in philosophy from St. Olaf College. My post-graduation experiences have ranged from day trading to working on a patent for audio equalization. Like most people who study philosophy, I'm interested in quite a few rather disparate things.

Interests

- Wikis, especially the psychology behind contributions.

- Future technological change (I find Ray Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Near" to be a very important, if somewhat naive, book- my review is here).

- Frontiers in virtual worlds and games (i.e. Second Life and Spore). When do online worlds become more than collectively solipsistic adventures?

- Algorithmic content analysis - i.e. through bayesian analysis and classification neural nets.

- Various aspects of biology including neurology, genetics, and evolution. I have a particular interest in how constraints from physical chemistry and biochemistry may limit cellular and organismal complexity, and also how changes in neural crest development may have influenced the evolution of behaviorally-modern humans.

- Theoretical physics and astrophysics, mostly stemming from reading too many sci-fi books.

I blog at http://moderndragons.blogspot.com/.

Citizendium

I'm a constable here on Citizendium. Please let me know if you need a hand with something. I'm also a member of the Citizendium Executive Committee.

I've written an introduction and opinion piece on what free content license Citizendium should choose. Comments encouraged.