Hey Steemit users! I'm Alex. I'm hoping my experience here will be more pleasant and enjoyable than other networks!
I'm a designer / front-end web developer from Nashville, Tennessee. Check out my site here. My interest in Steem has slowly been growing since I had first heard about it, when I started seeing @lukestokes share some of his original content on other networks. I love the concept of this network, and I hope to continue seeing high quality content being published here.
What I'm Into
Being your average 23 year old nerd, I'm really interested in all things technology and science. I have particular fascination with physics, chemistry, and neuroscience (even though I'm spending my days writing front end code!). Where these sciences intersect, areas like medicine and computer science (genetic engineering anyone?), is what I have really been diving deep into. I spend a good deal of time thinking about the future, and what our species looks like 10, 15, 50, or 100 years from now. I'm hoping it's much less authoritarian than now. I also enjoy studying history & ancient civilizations (everything from the Sumerians to the Egyptians, Greeks, and Mayans), psychology, economics, plants / herbs, and probably tons more that I'm not think of at the moment.
In the future, you will probably see some posts from me writing about the previously mentioned topics. In my humble opinion, when I look at the world and its history there is a beautifully rich interconnectedness between events and human behavior, infinite (or near infinite) causalities leading to the next moment, the very next collapsed wave-function. I hope to spur discussion and new philosophical ideas on how all of these topics can and do relate to one another. I don't necessarily consider myself a fatalist, but I do to some extent consider myself a Singularitarian and I do believe all of human knowledge is essentially building and leading to a moment in time where humans and Artificial Superintelligence will merge minds...where the global brain truly becomes a functional organism and posthumans potentially become the limbic system for the noosphere.
It's certainly an out there concept, but one that has plenty of data to support it - we can go further into that in the future though. For now, I am hoping this quick intro sums up who I am and why I am coming to Steem to share my ideas and content. I hope to get to know some more of you and perhaps make new friends who seek to make change and improve the world around them!
Welcome to the party. Upvoted per @lukstokes resteem!
Thanks for the welcome & upboats @scaredycatguide!
Welcome to Steemit!
Check out steemtools.com
and
Whitepaper
@ Steem.io
Welcome to Steemit, and hope you will enjoy your time here! I'm also interested in physics, and love reading books about famous physicists, quantum theory, the nature of the universe, etc. At one time I was a physics major, but I reached a point where my brain just couldn't keep up with the math involved so I switched to computer science and became a software engineer instead.
I'm following you now. Sounds like you will be writing some cool content, so looking forward to seeing what you come up with!
Hey thanks @cryptomancer! I'm also very fascinated by quantum mechanics - a fictional book I read as a teenager called Discipline had a profound impact on my interest in this area. In a sense, it was the beginning of my curiosity of possibilities and probabilities. String theory was still pretty hot at the time! I've often wondered if I I should have gone that route, but I'm happy doing what I do right now. You've provided me some validation too that I'm doing the right thing haha.
Thanks for the follow and encouragement! I will surely be laying out some of what's been brewing up very soon :)
String theory and its big brother M-theory blew my mind when I first learned about it. I was particularly attracted by the idea that it might take 11 dimensions to provide a unified "theory of everything". As a hobbyist in computer graphics, I spent a lot of time in university trying to imagine what it might be like to visualize higher dimensions by taking various 3D slices of hypercubes & the like and trying to animate them on the computer. Fun times, and a lot more interesting than the business software I write for a living these days!
Who's the author of Discipline? I might have to look it up, always interested in finding new reading material. And have you read Flatland? I think that was the start of my fascination with abstract geometrical spaces.
Same here! I am still utterly fascinated by the concept - and I wish we could really test for these maths to see of there is more validity behind it. I love trying to visualize what higher dimensions might look like -- the way space bends on itself is so cool! I can't say I've tried doing that exactly, but I have messed around with making some 3d fractals at least!
Discipline was written by Paco Ahlgren. I believe it's the only novel he has written and I don't think it had tons of sales, but I met him totally unplanned when I took a visit to Barnes and Noble as a young teenager. He said some things that really resonated with me as a kid that, if I'm being totally honest, had a profound impact on the way my life played out. I don't think I have read Flatland, but I've heard it mentioned before! I will definitely see if I can snag a copy next time I'm at the local library.
I just checked out the Amazon page for Discipline. I think I'll make that my next read, looks like a great book. Thanks for the recommendation, and very cool that you got to meet the author!
Have you looked into quaternions? That's a good way to produce 3D fractals. I took a computer graphics course once where one of the class projects was to make a raytracer, and I spent some time playing around with raytracing quaternions. It amazes me how relatively simple looking mathematical equations can produce such endless beauty!
I thought you might like to see one of the quaternion images I raytraced:
I'd love to see some of your artwork too; might be a good topic for a future post!
I hope you enjoy the read! I will definitely share some art soon, I have plenty in the archives. I have never heard of quaternions but they sound right up my alley. That images is the exact kind of weird / organic looking shape that I love about 3d fractals!
You said Nashville, all it took to get my attention! Welcome, and i may see you and Luke when I visit family over Thanksgiving! Have a ball here.
Best, Guy
Thanks @ibringawareness! That would be so cool to grab a drink and chat up crypto and liberty, other things of that nature! Definitely let us know!
I think I may be a singularitarian too by the sound of it!
Welcome onboard @alexpatin - hope to see more of your works and thoughts around here :)
It makes a good deal of sense when you think about it in a certain light, doesn't it? I appreciate the welcome @kevinwong!
Welcome to the community @alexpatin, developer has good future here.
Thankyou @juvyjabian! Excited to be a part of the community.
You're right, steemit is very exciting.
What have you most enjoyed about it so far?
Making friends and establishing connections, reading different kind of stories.
Hello young, philosophical nerd!
Hello @cathi-xx! Great to meet you :)
Followed ya and looking forward to see how far you dip your toes in the steem waters!
Thanks @jesta! I'm really enjoying everyone so far. Thinking of dropping the other networks for a while and staying just on here. Hoping to dive deeper as I learn more!
There are many people I really respect here because of their contributions to the community, their generosity, their humility, and their reasoned approach to conflict resolution and problem solving. @jesta certainly fits in that category. He created https://steemstats.com/ and https://steemdb.com/ among many other things including a cluster for websocket API access to the blockchain. Aaron is good people. :)
Welcome @alexpatin! Great opportunities for a developer here. Enjoy!
Thanks for the welcome @lydon.sipe! Excited to see whats cooking!
Welcome alex!
Hey @raymonjohnstone! Thanks for the welcome :)