New Month's Resolutions
It’s the beginning of August, and that’s as good an excuse as any to make resolutions. I’ve been coasting for a long time, and I want to do more stuff that matters with my life. To wit, here are some things I plan to spend at least an hour per day on:
Improving Idris. I’ve been a programming languages nerd since forever and I think there’s a strong chance Idris, or something like it could become popular. It’s exciting to be involved in a language so early in its life cycle. There’s an opportunity to have a lot of impact, and nothing is set in stone. For starters, I plan to rewrite the build system and improve the testsuite.
Make interesting computer games. Video games have the power to put people in new places, situations and stories. I’m inspired by games like Half-Life 2, Analogue, Gone Home, Amnesia and Hatoful Boyfriend. The field is super new and there’s a lot of ground to be broken. Not sure what I’ll do first, I need to figure out an idea I can accomplish.
Investigate the public good problem. I’ve written about this before, (in 2013: 1, 2, 3), and I still think it’s super interesting and important. The trick to changing the world is getting other people to do it for you. If I can make it make rational business sense to invest in public goods, I can have a massive positive impact on society. For starters, I’m going to force myself to get over my aversion to Coq (did they really have to name it that?) and formalize elementary game theory in it. I tried to do this in Idris years ago, but the effort fizzled. Idris is buggy and aimed at programming rather than pure math, so this should be a better fit, even if the name and the syntax put me off. It remains to be seen if formal methods are a good idea for “practical” mathematics, but I’ll have fun finding out. Meanwhile, Snowdrift.coop is interested in much the same thing. It’s worth thinking about their mechanism as well.
- Exercise. This one is boring, but it’s supposed to really help with the mental health and the not dying.
I plan to do progress updates here every Sunday.
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