Bayle Shanks's website: me

Generic info about me

Some things i like

The intersection of A.I. and neuroscience. Collective political decision making, other forms of societal improvement. Taking walks, going outside and looking at stuff. The sky, clouds, storms. Music, for example Black Sabbath. Books in general. Some comic books, for example Sandman. Milkshakes. Sake. Movies, for example Quiet Earth, the Naked Gun series, Bill & Ted's excellent adventure, Terminator I & II, Dr. Strangelove, the Pink Panther series, Clerks. sci-fi&fantasy, for example asimov.

Some things others like me like that i do not particularly like (or have time to do)

computer hardware. backpacking (like but no time). robert jordan books. larry niven books. martial arts.

Professional

As of this writing, i am a grad student in the computational neurobiology program at UCSD.

On the side, i work on open-source projects with a focus in collaboration software.

In college i majored in cognitive science with a focus in artificial intelligence. I also studied math.

Please see my work website for more about this side of my life.

Where i'm from

Grew up in southern Connecticut, United States of America. Went to college in northern California (silicon valley). Now live in San Diego, California.

I live around here.

Other

Gender: male. U.S. political party affiliation: none.

I wonder what my Erdos number is?

My Masmune shirow number is 3.

Other pages here about me

Links to friends' websites

FOAF

My FOAF is at http://purl.net/net/bshanks/misc-files/foaf.rdf (what is FOAF?)

Random stuff about me

I love the stars.

I like watching a continuous transition and trying to locate (or to make up) an exact point where something changes from one to the other.

My favorite season is the fall.

I want to say something about dreams, but i don't know how to put it into words. There is something spiritually important about them. I don't want to say they are real, because you can be awoken from a dream but not vice versa. I don't know what i am trying to say (i don't think it's unsayable i just think i can't think of it right now).

I worship kindness, love, beauty

I hold honesty and freedom in high regard but not for their own sake, but because i think they further love (in the case of honesty; in the long run if you can learn what is true (both interpersonal truth e.g. if you can trust people not to lie and objective truth e.g. science) then you can make the world a better place) and beauty (in the case of freedom; letting other people do what they want even when it seems to increase misfortune and ugliness is actually the only way to maximize beauty because they will think of types of beauty that you will not).

I like math.

I like "neat" things.

I love interesting things.

I like to learn.

I like to categorize.

I love the strange.

The great goal is to end all suffering.

I worry that my love of neat and interesting things may lead to me making the world a worse place. I want to make the world a better place.

I think the future is scary.

I am nerdy.

I like other people but sometimes don't understand them and sometimes unintentionally make them uncomfortable.

I need a lot of alone time.

I believe in the supernatural (consciousness is supernatural) and spiritual things greater than ourselves (one can, for example, get a feeling of mysterious beauty from a song, and such feelings seem like a "pointer" in the computer sense, to some complex facet of reality), but I cannot say if these things are just inanimate ideas such as "beauty" or if they are conscious entities such as the goddesses/gods of religions, or if they are something else that we have not thought of (and may be incapable of conceiving of).

I tend to try to respect the feeling of "sacred" as it applies to "spirituality" although as noted i'm not sure if such things as a goddesses or gods or spirits (other than conscious animals) exist.

I love the noise that slow commercial jet aeroplanes make. This sound constantly shifts and has many layers.

I like heavy metal music.

I like computers.

I like physics.

I don't like meanness.

I don't like fanciness.

I don't like being told what to do or what not to do.

I don't like or dislike sports.

I love my family (which includes Katherine).

I love my friends.

I like animals.

When I was a kid there was some sort of programming language (I think it was a Logo) where there was some key combo you would press and that would take you from the view of the running program to a view of the source code. It made the colors of the border of the screen invert. It felt like you were going from the real world to the ethereal ghost world, or from looking at a stage to backstage, or from day to night. I am the sort of person who prefers the inverse/unreal/night to the normal.

I don't want everyone to have to work so much.

I love going on long walks in the woods.

I am messy and disorganized.

I am prone to oversimplification.

I like sleeping.

I have trouble sleeping.

I have a very poor episodic memory, which makes me sad.

I love the sky.

I love going on walks near a stream.

I love sci-fi and fantasy.

I love books.

I get obsessed with learning about things and with categorizing and hoarding knowledge (in the sense of storing it, not in the sense of not sharing it).

Sometimes I get particular about being literal and pedantic, although in theory I think imprecision in communication is often more optimal.

I like debating.