Juan David's Newsletter - March 7, 2021
Patience in Research, Perception is Linguistic, and How Vulnerable is Our World?
Hey guys,
The coolest thing I’ve done this year is my biophysics research, involving peptides.
I’m being intellectually challenged consistently because there are a million concepts I need to learn. And with learning hard subjects comes patience, a lot of it.
I’ve learned you need so much patience to do scientific research. I’d like to start making contributions, publishing papers, and maybe even creating companies. But to get to that level comes years of patience to 1) become competent, and 2) meeting people.
The latter is crucial because I’ll never know everything but other people can complement my knowledge.
Anyways, this has been me for the last few weeks.
And this has also been me.
This is amazing but is it worth it? Let’s ask Richard Hamming!
Well I now come down to the topic, "Is the effort to be a great scientist worth it?"
To answer this, you must ask people. When you get beyond their modesty, most people will say, "Yes, doing really first-class work, and knowing it, is as good as wine, women and song put together," or if it's a woman she says, "It is as good as wine, men and song put together…"
I think it is very definitely worth the struggle to try and do first-class work because the truth is, the value is in the struggle more than it is in the result. The struggle to make something of yourself seems to be worthwhile in itself. The success and fame are sort of dividends, in my opinion.
From Richard Hamming’s You and Your Research.
Everyone should try scientific research whether you think you like science or not. Give it a shot!
Curiosities 👅➗☄️
1. Perception is Linguistic
The longest and (likely) the most insightful essay I’ve written was about the mystery of language, and how it affects our perception of reality.
We should think more about in what languages to think certain problems. I’d even argue our languages are like programming languages. For instance, if Java isn’t good for data science, why would you use Java? Just use Python, man.
In this video, Jason Silva elaborates on this idea. Here’s a bite of what he said.
Perception is essentially linguistic. The world is made of language. Reality is kind of written into being inside of these cultural mindware environments in which we live.
By Jason Silva
2. You’re like everyone else but like no one else
The cellist, composer, and conductor, Pablo Casals, on being unique:
Each second we live in a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that never was before and will never be again.
And what do we teach our children in school? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France.
When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique.
In all of the world there is no other child exactly like you. In the millions of years that have passed there has never been another child like you...
You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything.
Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is like you, a marvel? You must cherish one another. You must work—we must all work—to make this world worthy of its children."
Source: Joys and Sorrows: Reflections by Pablo Casals, page 295
We’re unique but that does not mean we matter more or that we’re better than others. It means we should use our uniqueness to lift each other up.
3. Equations That Changed the World
It’s mind-blowing how we can use symbols and numbers to model reality.
I understand about half of these and realizing how much more there is to learn. It gives me the discipline to learn more, and encouragement to keep a child-like curiosity.
4. TOP Quantum Computing Lectures/Course on YouTube
This distinguished Caltech professor published a full course on quantum computation.
Watch them here.
5. How Vulnerable is Our World?
One way of looking at human creativity is as a process of pulling balls out of a giant urn. The balls represent ideas, discoveries and inventions. Over the course of history, we have extracted many balls. Most have been beneficial to humanity. The rest have been various shades of grey: a mix of good and bad, whose net effect is difficult to estimate.
What we haven’t pulled out yet is a black ball: a technology that invariably destroys the civilisation that invents it. That’s not because we’ve been particularly careful or wise when it comes to innovation. We’ve just been lucky. But what if there’s a black ball somewhere in the urn? If scientific and technological research continues, we’ll eventually pull it out, and we won’t be able to put it back in. We can invent but we can’t un-invent. Our strategy seems to be to hope that there is no black ball.
- The Vulnerable World Hypothesis by Nick Bostrom
A thought experiment that will give you chills! You have two options to keep reading.
Easy-to-read version based on the published paper
I’d recommend starting with the first one.
As always, thank you for reading! I’ll see you next week!
How would you rate this week's newsletter? 🤔🧮
Take care,
Juan David Campolargo