Hello, World
August 26th, 2024
When learning a new programming language, the first thing people usually do is write a simple program that prints “Hello, World!” to the console. Unsurprisingly, this is called a “Hello, World!” program. Given my background in web development, I thought that “Hello, World!” would make a fitting title for my first post on here, especially since I also wanted to introduce myself and explain why I built this site in the first place.
My name is Jonathan Christian, and at the time of this writing, I’m a 27-year-old web developer living in Humboldt County, CA. After a few years of mulling it over, I finally decided to take the time to build myself a personal website from scratch. I did this for two main reasons.
The first reason is that I wanted to have a little corner of the internet that was all mine. Using a third-party solution to build this site would have been much quicker, but then it wouldn’t really be mine. I would just be storing my data on a company’s server. If that company ever went under or lost my data, I would lose access to my site with no way to ever get it back.
Tech independence is important to me, and I also like to build things, so I took the time to learn how static site generators work and then built one of my own. This website was made with a Ruby script, some markdown files, and a single CSS stylesheet. I can’t stand bloated, over-designed websites, so I designed mine with the goal of keeping things as small and simple as possible.
The second and main reason I built this website was to have a blog. I’m a very curious person by nature, and I want to understand the world more deeply. I have a general idea of how the world works, but to be honest, I only have a high-level understanding of things. And that’s just the human world. I know even less about physics, biology, chemistry, and the other forces that literally shape reality.
Does free will exist? What about God? Does consciousness persist after death? What even is consciousness? Is it emergent or fundamental? Are we alone in the universe? What would the ideal world look like? What should the goal of a civilization be? Is capitalism good or bad? How does our monetary system work? Should we care about climate change and the environment? Do humans have the capacity to govern equitably at scale, or is there some kind of bug in our neurology that prevents us from doing so? What will the future look like? Is Artificial General Intelligence really around the corner? If so, is it going to be good or bad for us as a species? What can I do as an individual to make the world a better place in a way that actually matters?
These are the kinds of questions I want to try to answer for myself. Some of them cannot be answered definitively due to their very nature, but I still want to try answering them nonetheless. At the very least, I will learn to understand and appreciate why they are unanswerable in the first place.
While I already have answers that I believe to be true for some of these questions, they are woefully uninformed. If I want to be able to say that I’ve honestly tried thinking for myself and answering these questions, I need to start from a blank slate, examine all of the available evidence, and then do my best to answer each one objectively, regardless of my current feelings about the topic. After all, I’m seeking the truth here, not validation of my worldview.
While I could set out to answer these questions without a blog, I want to write an essay for each topic or question so that I can more formally structure my thinking, address all of the arguments that come up for each one, and share what I find with anyone else who may be interested in these topics as well.
Furthermore, having others read my research and conclusions opens up the possibility of receiving feedback on things that I might have misunderstood or overlooked, which will help me get closer to the truth than if I were to work in isolation.
In addition to writing about these bigger, existential topics, I’m sure that I will also occasionally write shorter posts about things that I find interesting or worth sharing.
How often I end up posting on here remains to be seen. While I enjoy thinking and writing, I still have a business to run, bills to pay, and other responsibilities to manage. With that said, we all have blocks of time throughout the week that we can devote to side projects. Instead of mindlessly scrolling or streaming, I want to try to build a habit of working on this in my downtime, which will be a much more productive and fulfilling use of my time.
I hope that my work finds its way to people who are also curious about the world around them, and that it inspires them to live a deeper, more examined life. Perhaps over time I will end up writing about more specific topics, but for the time being, I’m excited to stretch my mind and explore the things that pique my curiosity and share my thoughts on them with the world.