Normal Human Heroes

September 17th, 2009
Riding the bus this morning we were stopped at one corner for a bit, and there was a woman there waiting for another line. She was dressed very simply in a work uniform, with her hair back, and a 2 or 3 year old son in her arms. He was looking about, squinting and seeming a little irritated with the sunlight. She seemed in that quiet early-morning mood, and though she gave off a strong impression of intelligence and maturity I got the feeling the child was unplanned, perhaps had when she was still a teenager. I’d also guess she was single, and I started to think about life and outcomes we may never have wished for but that we come to live with. Then, as he was looking with confusion at the bus or something else, she came out of her reverie and with great warmth and easy affection, kissed him on the cheek.

September 15th, 2009
With human history stretching back a few thousand years, there’s been quite a few exceptional people. Or maybe just fairly regular people who’ve done exceptional things, and that makes us consider them exceptional. Regardless, whatever you might find admirable, there have been people who’ve displayed those traits to an extraordinary degree. For most of us, I’m talking about courage, compassion, wisdom, tenacity, etc. What causes us to look up to a person – or a group – even more, is when they were able to bring about lasting change. People who improved the world around them, often times being part of the reason our lives are as good as they are. Maybe it’s the leaders of the civil rights movements, Abraham Lincoln, the authors of the Declaration of Independence, or the signers of the Magna Carta. It could be the founders of the environmental movement, those who have intelligently campaigned for better working conditions in the US and elsewhere, or diplomats who have devoted their lives to improving human rights. It could be Marie Curie, Davinci, or Pythagoras. It could be more personal heroes, such as parents, a teacher, or hard-as-nails ancestors upon whom our existence depended.
Whoever they are, whoever you might look up and whatever great works you might be thankful for, practically none of that survives an existential disaster. It matters a little, sure, that we and others have benefited from their efforts for at least a few years. And just maybe those accomplishments will keep doing good after existential disaster, like giving a permanently hamstrung humanity on a blasted earth some better form of government, as they appreciate what literature of ours survived. Perhaps some superintelligence carries a little of their values or work with it into the stars, after we’ve all been turned into computronium, and maybe that makes it just slightly easier to take. But as an acceptable approximation, all the good that has ever been done on this Earth won’t really mean crap if our planet becomes a roiling mass of replicationg nanobots or inert nano-smiles.
There have been thousands if not millions who have even died to protect a worthy ideal or leave a better world for future people, and the continued value of their efforts requires us to protect what they gained. If we fail to ensure a meaningful future, then we also fail to ensure a meaningful past, and the sum of all human sacrifices will mean almost nothing. The mantle of human history – perhaps inconveniently, perhaps surprisingly – falls on us.

August 18th, 2009
I got back recently from an 8-week research internship in Idaho, working on artificial neural networks. Like my 3-month study in Japan, my reasons for going had nothing to do with meeting people, but like Japan the other students are what I most remember. Unlike in routine life where everyone has their established groups and limited motivation to branch out, here everyone is a stranger, and since almost everyone likes to interact with people they don’t stay that way for long. When I went to Japan, I hadn’t had the experience of getting to know so many new people since junior high, and it really kind of blew me mind. We obviously all shared some kind of large interest in Japan, and I thought having less in common with the Idaho students might make a large difference, but it didn’t much. These kinds of things make me wish we didn’t normally live such cloistered social lives, but with few exceptions, c’est la vie.
It’s interesting to think back to first meeting the other students, getting first impressions, running through the conventional where-are-you-from and what’s-your-major, etc. This is the level on which we know most of the people we interact with in life. And yet most of those first impressions weren’t very accurate, and they necessarily all did an abysmal job of representing those people’s depth and complexity.
I love to think back to first meetings and imagine telling the past Frank all the things I would learn about a person, all the things we would do, and how surprised past me would be. We each have people who’ve radically affected our lives, who’ve become fixtures and critical elements of our stories. With the exception of some family, those grand arching interactions all began with a “Hi, how are you?” or a “Hey, what’s up?”. The tip-of-the-iceberg cliche just doesn’t cut it.
Back at home, I feel like I know those other students relatively well. There’s sure to be much more to learn, things that only years of friendship might uncover, but those 2 months made a world of difference from being strangers. I care about them, their lives and their futures, but I don’t actually think those people are exceptional. I can’t find any good reason to believe that a great many of the people I see or meet for a short time aren’t just as interesting and enjoyable and able to be missed, if one gets to know them.
There are currently 6,778,285,580 people on earth, according to the estimate by the U.S. Census Bureau. Yes, some of those people are basically  assholes. And there are some exceptional people who are just as trite and uninteresting as they first appear, who do not merely hide or repress their depth so much as they utterly lack it. But unless you’re a real misanthrope, there are billions of people on this world that with time and a common language you’d come to appreciate and enjoy. Millions upon millions of potential friends, kept from being so only by lack of social and physical proximity. A million years, lived as we live them now, would not be enough to know them all†. And each and every one of those intricate and valuable lives would be lost in an existential disaster‡.

†  If we assume conservatively that friendship can be shared with 1 in 14 people, that leaves about 500 million such people. If you got to know one a day (really know, not just learn a few facts about), this would take you more than 1,369,863 years.
‡ Or possibly have so few survivors that the human race will be unable to maintain its numbers, or be repressed by an immortal totalitarianism, etc

August 12th, 2009

“Daylight”
I’ve been listening to Matt and Kim for a while now, they’re a local band out of Brooklyn that a friend got me into. Besides the music itself I really enjoy how happy they are in all of their videos. I fantasize about a world in which more people are free and able to be that happy, at least if they want to. I have some friends going through hard times, and they in turn have it better than the millions who lack basic necessities. Even on the scales of happiness we’re familiar with already, there is a lot of room for improvement.