User:Andrew Cady

I have no formal education. I have, however, read many books. I have no focus, in the sense of specialization, although I'm a quite competent unix and lisp hacker. I also have a broad familiarity with a number of specialized topics, particularly: philosophy of knowledge and language in the last century; the philosophy of math; political philosophy and "critical theory"; neuropsychology (which I learned about owing to an interest in AI); and game theory, particularly in its applications to economics and collective decision-making systems.

I read some of the Feynman lectures (Six Easy Pieces and Six Not So Easy Pieces) and Q.E.D.. I am quite convinced that physics describes everything that exists in the universe, which is not to say perfectly; but I am no longer much interested in matter, or rather in isolated matter (such as physics studies). It is the structural organization of matter (i.e., "information") that interests me now--that is what I think is (in the sense of human importance) the fundamental stuff of reality. This is a shift from when I was actually reading these things, when I thought that (isolated) matter was the "real" reality, so to speak.

Another big shift--probably in a way the same one--was in my impression of math. I had an interest in the foundations of math, in the logical reductionism (if you'll excuse my use of the term!) of Russell, etc.. Mathematical knowledge seemed to me something quite special, almost mystical, and quite set apart from empirical knowledge. Reading Piaget's The Child's Concept of Number demolished that view. When I came to view the continuum as something along the lines of Kant's conception of a priori--as an ordering of perception imposed by human subjectivity--I became much less interested in pure math.

I don't buy into the idea of human progress (which is not to say technological "progress"). This schematization of history seems to be imposed more because people like it than anything else; even over short time periods it usually depends on a selective attention to evidence. Humans have still failed to solve the problem of fully conscious direction of society; that is, human societies are not self-conscious, even as much as they pretend to be. Up until now, and for the foreseeable future, we just ride the waves. The various attempts of humans (past and present) to influence the direction of history are what interest me today.