engagement with the world

Getting into courses on Audible also got me into books. I have discovered a lot of interesting books lately. I have taken a little break taking courses and been occupying my time with books. Courses are hard. They require you to read the lecture notes after each lecture. That can be a lot of stress when you have to stop every half hour to read. It is so much more relaxing not having to read. I have taken the majority of courses that I really wanted to take. Now I will slow down and take my time completing courses. It got pretty stressful for a while there. I was taking four courses at a time, all with lecture notes accompanying them. I still have about four new courses lined up for my near future, but I don't think I will be so obsessive about completing them in a timely manner. They will always be there for me to resume where I left off once I get around to it. Right now though, I have a lot of good books that are taking presidence over my courses. 

Physics was what broke my focus. I was taking all philosophy courses and then I decided to take two physics courses. They broke my spirit. Physics is really difficult. I am glad that I chose to spend my life on philosophy and not physics. The problems with philosophy just seem so much more important than conceiving of a way in which matter or energy actually exists. Our theoretical knowledge does not show us what particles or waves actually look like. Physics leaves the truth of such matters up to the imagination. A theory can be true to our world but not give us further descriptions of the universe that we actually live in. Modern physics is so complicated that you would have to study your life to understand it, and even then, I am not so sure. But its truth enables us to create really advanced technology.

We are only touching the surface of potential use for quantum computers. And there is also evidence to suggest that we don't even need to create the hardware because we can just emulate it. In ten or twenty years, we will have massive amounts of computing power. We must also learn what to do when the technology is used in disruptive ways. When bad actors get their hands on this technology, how will it effect our society? How will we implement safeguards to protect ourselves in the technology age? What identification systems will we turn to in order to verify that we are who we say that we are? How can we create a prosperous virtual society? How can we encourage others to use the technology responsibly and not to cause harm? The few will always try to exploit the many, but what policies and procedures should we erect to stop bad actors in their tracks? And what should we do when we find bad actors exploiting the system in a previously unknown way?

What sort of financial life do I want for myself? I want to invest more in shares. If I spend the next few years building my financial portfolio then I can achieve security for myself. I get paid more than I spend. I can just keep dumping my excess money into shares and savings. I am starting from almost nothing after many years of living in debt. I can only go up from here. What is the point of money and where should the money that I do not use go? I live a very frugal life. I don't need much to be happy. I don't generally go out so I don't spend as much money as most people. This means that my pay gives me more than I need which allows me to invest in securities to increase my own security. And investing is really fun because you can put your money towards causes that actually matter to you. You can invest in the areas that you want to see society progress. Capitalism isn't just about making money. It is about supporting the technology that you want to see progress in the future. 

Text, audio, and video are the trinity in human education and entertainment. I spread my time between reading, listening to audiobooks, and watching television shows and movies. Those are the passive ways to experience content. Then to engage, one can write and make videos. I even recorded most of my books using audio. But I get audio from text anyways using text to speech. And I could get the transcript of a video and that is converted to text and that can be recreated using audio. So text, audio, and video can all be converted to and from each other. With text, I use my eyes. With audio, I use my ears. And with video, I use my eyes and ears. I can accurately convert information from my eyes to my ears and even combine them for a fuller experience. Text could be recorded to audio for a more emotional experience or we could satisfy both our eyes and our ears with video. Audio adds depth to text and video adds depth to audio. 

Different mediums have different responsibilities. With text, I can go as fast or as slow as I want. With video I have to keep pace and split things up into scenes. With audio you have to think about your recording equipment and environment. I wish there was a YouTube based only on audio. If I could easily log my recordings then audio would be another option for me. But podcasts are hard. It is very difficult to find a good host for your productions. But it is not like I am missing out. Video gives me both audio and video so I don't really need to make a podcast. But I could have seen a different world where there was a YouTube like platform but audio only. I have always wondered what the best medium was but I don't think you can look at it like that. They all achieve different purposes. When I listen to a book, my eyes are staring off into the nothingness. When I am reading, my environment is silent. And when I am watching a video I am both watching and listening to the content. 

It all just depends on the level of engagement I want to experience. I could be reading but imagining the scenarios described. If I am just listening, my mind paints a picture in front of me, making it not relevant that I was staring into the nothingness. A video however subtracts the need for imagination as it paints its portrayal. A video tells me who someone is but text and audio just give me a glimpse. In video, less is left to the imagination. We can both read the same book and picture the characters in different ways. A video tells us more about the characters so less is left to the imagination. But are some things experienced better by leaving our imagination to do the work? Or can they not really be compared as they are in fact different types of experiences? I divide my time between text, audio, and video. But is one better for me than the other? Or are they truly the trinity of human understanding? Are they all just as equally important as each other for our developmental psychologies?

I am overloaded with books right now. I have enough content lined up to last me years. It feels really good getting back into books, consuming the past knowledge of our species. I am pretty much up to date with modern philosophical discourse. I have been exposed to most of the dominant philosophies over our human history. Now I am looking towards the future and technology and what it will do for our philosophical discourse. Because we now have another intelligent being to analyse our world with. What happens when technology can create new philosophy? Are the days of human philosophers dominating the field numbered? Will AI direct our philosophical future? Can AI give us a unique perspective that we failed to see previously? Can it piece our world together better than we can? Would it be able to make unbiased assessments about our world, our life, how we are living it, and how we should live it?

There are many different methods of expression. Sometimes I think it would be cool to have an audio version of YouTube, where I can upload audio and AI draws what is being talked about through video. I could record and pause and record and pause until I obtain a complete production, splitting my words into scenes like I do videos. But no such technology exists so it looks like I will have to be happy with video and text as a medium to share meaning. I very much love all the ways in which we capture and distribute meaning. How we most effectively learn fascinates me. The packages in which we distribute information tells a lot about who we are as people. But it isn't just how we learn but how we engage and how we are engaged with the world. Even if one reads a book for entertainment instead of knowledge, they are engaged in the content. It possesses them. Their mind is somewhere else. Not in the pages themselves but described by the pages.

A virtual world created to entertain each individual. And this world is fictional, existing only to the individual immersed. Just like this world I create while I write this. There is nothing happening in the world that is causing me to write this. I am in a flow state and I know what I am going to say before I say it. I only occasionally rest to contemplate my next string of words that come from within. The reality of the words I write come from a fictional psychological state that I put myself in to be able to create such output. Meditation is but a fictional and exciting reality that we manifest to escape our own reality. Are television, movies, and books not escape methods? We don't want to always sit and do nothing. We like to be engaged in the world, doing something to occupy our time. For those who are wise, they understand that this means to spend your time learning. But learning cannot take up all of your time. Sometimes our brain needs a break so this is when we chill and entertain ourselves with content that ultimately provides no meaning to our day to day lives. But hey, I really like comedy. Laughing is beneficial to the human spirit.