The University I Want

Another lemma lay slain at her feet, another book was conquered. Knowledge flowed into her from the slain beasts and knowledge made her stronger. She was ready for the tests, and defeating them, advanced levels. She was not quite at the end yet, and she had made some mistakes, had died a few times, but her pace was still good. She was running at the front of the pack and her eyes blazed with determination, the aura of her competence visible from afar.

 

I make no secret of drawing some inspiration from the system of advancement in some games for some of these ideas, but I think this is as much because it plays directly on human psychology as for any other reason. So, then, the title is fairly self-explanatory. I am rather deeply dissatisfied with the current system – I am aware it works well for some, but for others, including myself and some of my acquaintances, it certainly does not. It gets the job done, just barely, but a complete overhaul could do it vastly better. 

In essence, what I want is complete flexibility. An ability to decide everything, with the university serving to merely assess the quality of your decisions. As you might guess, lectures are terribly inflexible creatures, as such they are the first to go. Seminars should follow except in cases where they are absolutely vital to assessment or learning, which I do not think is the case particularly often. Set exam dates and course lengths are also particularly pernicious and should be expelled post haste. With all those gone, I also don't particularly see the need for the distinction of full time versus part time students, or for full-fledged enrolment or tight location restrictions. 

You might be scratching your head wondering what exactly I'm actually leaving in at this point. Well, not much, I'll admit, the format I desire is rather different from most things around. Perhaps it is most similar to some of the standardised tests, such as the SAT. In essence, each student would sign up with a university for a nominal fee, and from then on would have only recommendations, not demands.

The university's primary role would be to offer an extremely extensive list of exams – one corresponding to a logical size of course. Some might cover the full material of a course as it stands right now, others might cover some fraction of that, others yet may be on even narrower topics. The exact logical scope of the content on each exam could be reasonably determined by choosing tight groups of knowledge, as mentioned in the previous post, and perhaps ensuring they are not too small to prevent the student from having to write too many or from getting by with information only stored in the short-term memory. Each student would then be free to come in to the university facility and write any exam at any time. The exam would be randomly generated from a large list of, say, several hundred questions on the covered topics for each individual student. That way even if the questions were publically available at all times, learning enough of them to have questions with which you are familiar appear on the examination would be exceedingly unlikely unless the topics of the exam were extensively studied anyway.

Scores would be assigned for the examination as normal, and would count towards the student's cumulative grade point average weighed by the size of the examination, much as is commonly done now. I would suggest, although this is unessential, that exams could be retaken endlessly, but with some small, and gradually increasing, penalty for each attempt in order to compensate for the increasing probabilities of luck. The university would charge some amount of money to cover the facility, monitoring, and scoring costs for each attempt. While this would encourage an extremely literal form of studying to the test, that is not actually an issue if the tests are constructed to be sufficiently comprehensive. 

This of course brings up the question of what exactly students would study. Each exam would come with recommendations on appropriate materials from the university, and with samples. Discussion groups could also be made available for free, and professors or advanced students could act as tutors or could answer question for some appropriate fees. Some pre-recorded lectures could also be made available, much as they are often available presently, if deemed necessary. 

To have this system be fully compatible with the current system, the attainment of some majors could occur upon the successful completion of a certain set of exams, while honours ranks could be awarded for the achievement of sufficiently high scores on this set. A university might then award an undergraduate degree upon the completion of a sufficient number of exams (weighed by size, of course). 

I'll concede this leaves, the issue of special course types. Courses with labs could be pared down to labs and coursework being performed separately, with the labs having to be scheduled for some restricted periods of the year. Courses with an emphasis on discussion need to be carefully considered – what role does the discussion serve? I believe that it could be in most cases be restated as a requirement of papers to be graded (to be treated in much the same way as exams), with perhaps a smaller discussion component, which could perhaps partially be migrated to an online forum. Regardless, such courses in my experience, are vastly in the minority and workarounds which maximise freedom could be found even for them. For such programs as graduate education and postdoctoral studies, which require research more than course attendance, the course component could be streamlined along this system while research would be done as normal in institutions actually dedicated to it. 

So with the outline done, what does such a system actually accomplish? Never one to be modest, I will say that it makes everything better. Hours and attendance rate become fully flexible, so anyone of any age and occupation may choose to engage in certified education, and have some results to show for it. It allows you to demonstrate any knowledge that you may have acquired through independent study and to do so cheaply. If you learned a natural or programming language on your own you would have an easy way to show that. If you learned large swathes of evolutionary biology or of political science, you could show that too. If you're a history buff, you could perhaps pick up a history major on the cheap. More than that, however, if you are in fact just entering university from high school and wish to learn something in preparation for work, you can do so very quickly. It is entirely conceivable to compress the standard four years of university into a half year for a sufficiently talented and determined individual. Indeed, a new meaningful metric could be added – perhaps GPA per month, providing an alternate, and I would argue potentially superior, metric for someone's capacity to learn. Anyone could take the four years they do now, but someone who wishes to complete her mandatory education all at once would be able to do that as well. It is not uncommon even presently for students to miss a lot of lectures and learn most of a course before the examination, and this system would render such behaviour meaningless and educationally neutral.

On the institutional side, undergraduate education would be much more cost efficient and affordable. Students could engage in it part time while working without the need to save up for long periods of time. Professors would be in a delicate position, however. On the one hand, many would be out of a job, on the other, those who are actually fully dedicated to research would have all the same money allotted to them and more, and would be able to engage in research full time. Indeed, teaching and research have always been something of an odd couple and separating the two may prove advantageous. 

The current state of universities seems primarily influenced by their nature at inception, with only a very minimal amount of evolution having taken place since then. While this state may have some merit for certain people, it is certainly not for everyone, and their purpose, goals, and nature need to be rethought from the ground up. The option I seek is the path of maximum freedom and cleanest execution, letting students make their own choices and aim for their own goals, unfettered.

Knowledge and Learning

We travelled upstream against the flow. From the sea, we entered the delta and moved forward, always struggling, pushing against the current. The river branched and we chose to follow it west, travelling with no destination in mind, always pitting ourselves against the strongest flow. It branched again and again, until we faced a mountain, a small rapid current running down its slope. We swung our oars with all our strength but the water was too strong for us and we could make little headway. Stepping out, we turned our oars to spades and started digging a new channel. It would take years, but in time a new stream would flow, with a milder slope, and boats will run along it as far as they can.

 

I think what we could really use sometimes is a comprehensive map of all human knowledge. Not a map of what that knowledge is, mind you, but rather a map of how its bits and pieces are related. While this is a daunting and implausible task, I think it would not be unreasonable to consider how such a thing could be constructed. 

I will primarily first focus on knowledge of mathematics, since it's the clearest of all fields of study, and extend the system to other fields by comparison. In essence, I believe that knowledge is intimately tied to its acquisition, or, more precisely, I would claim that it is tied together by its acquisition. We can consider each little bit of knowledge, a theorem or a lemma say, as a point on a giant field. Then, in our construction, we will have an arrow direct us from one point to one or more others if you can learn the next point with some study once you know this one. Of course, most new bits of knowledge require combinations of several previous bits, so let's say one colour will be one possible combination, and another colour will be a different one. 

As an example, we might be able to learn integration if we understand infinite sums, areas of rectangles, and graphs. Then, we'd have arrows from those things pointing towards integration, and we might colour these arrows red. Then we might alternatively be able to learn, at least indefinite, integration as the reversal of differentiation, so we might have a green arrow pointing from differentiation to integration. To avoid cyclical definitions, however, we should specify that while there can also be an arrow pointing from integration to differentiation, that arrow would have to be red, not green, to signify that you can't learn integration and differentiation from each other without invoking anything else. In fact, if you consider this entire system, you will notice that there can be no cycles – that is, you can't have A learnt from B, which is learnt from C, which is learnt in turn from A. Having such a cycle would mean that you're using circular logic somewhere, which would automatically render such a bit of knowledge invalid unless it has an alternative source that does not involve itself. What you can have, however, is a bit of knowledge that is based on nothing. The only such bits, however, would be the axioms of mathematics, and equivalent things in other fields.  

Next comes perhaps the most important step. We can add weights to the different colours of arrow, with the weight signifying how long it would take to acquire the new bit of knowledge from the previous bits if you follow this route. These could be empirically estimated by having a few people actually learn the information, although these would naturally never go past estimates because of people's varying aptitudes towards different fields or approaches to learning. Nonetheless, with these weights in hand, we can do many things, some merely interesting, some genuinely useful.

On the useful side, we can find the shortest path to learning each bit of knowledge and thus plan out the most efficient route of learning if we have some goal. This could be extremely relevant for empirically designing courses of all levels. For example, bits of knowledge that can all be learned from the same other bits can be grouped into a course or, more widely, a field of study. As another example, knowledge that does not have many requirements but leads to many other possible bits would make good introductory courses.

On the interesting side, it is not uncommon to describe a field of study as "broad" or "deep", and these can now be assigned real definitions. A deep field is one which has a very high weight on at least one bit of knowledge. For example, if it takes a decade of study to learn to grasp some part of string theory this can be considered a very deep field. Conversely, if all you need to understand any particular bit of literature is to know the language and maybe read some commentary, and it only takes a few years in sum, this field might be relatively shallow. A broad field, on the other hand, is one in which the sum of the weights of the deepest (this restriction is needed for the sum to not depend on the number of intermediaries) bits of knowledge is relatively large. For example, if in physics once you knew string theory you knew all physics (wouldn't that be nice?), the field would be relatively narrow. Conversely in literature you may have to take the sum of the weights of all books ever written and all commentary ever written on them for this metric, and this would make it an extremely broad field. Thus, we would have some interesting empirical measures. Others could be made up, perhaps something can be designated "trivia" if it takes very little to learn and isn't a prerequisite for much else, and something might be "easy" if the weights of the arrows to it from its predecessors is low, and "difficult" if the weight is high. 

There are wide individual applications as well. A person might track how far she is on the graph, and compare how much of the same knowledge she and a friend possess and how much of his knowledge complements hers. To efficiently solve some problem, you might assign several people who all have the bits of knowledge that are absolutely essential to the problem, and have very little knowledge in common outside of those, so they can each bring a different perspective or focus on a different aspect. For bragging rights you might take the sums of everything you've learned and see if you're more knowledgeable than someone else. We can also see that someone with very broad knowledge would be a good generalist, and perhaps conversationalist, someone with very deep knowledge a good specialist, and perhaps would be suitable for being a scientist or other researcher. 

On the whole, putting knowledge in a clear structure such as this would be highly advantageous for both understanding it and making any decisions that involve it in an way. From education to employment decisions to conversation or philosophy, a system such as this could facilitate many things, especially as it itself would not need a high weight to learn.

Changing Humankind

Ask the river—is it the same water that flows in it today as yesterday? Do the fish stay at the same shallows from season to season? Do the rocks on its bed remain unchanged in the decades and centuries? Does even its very path not meander and shift over millennia? Change is inevitable; the only questions are where do we start and how does the change take place.

 

Summary: we're evolving, and the ways in which we're evolving are changing. As time passes, social factors, and technological developments are likely to translate into genetic alterations, and have done so already many times.

 

These questions in this case pertain to evolution, and specifically to the evolution of humans. I doubt anything I say here will be especially original, except for some wild speculation, but it is of some interest nonetheless. The first thing to consider is how has the process of evolution itself changed, followed up soon after with some implications, and finally the promised sketchy speculation.

 

We can look at the evolution of humans as a fairly smooth transition, but even this transition has phases which I hope to delineate. The first phase is the longest and the most tedious—the phase of single-celled organisms. There is, however, one important thing to note here. For the first while, at least, they reproduced only asexually, which meant that evolution was fairly straight-forward. The organisms that were best adapted for pure survival prospered most. I shall call, somewhat inaccurately, this process in which selection is driven only by death "viability selection".

The next phase, encompassing the vast majority of interesting prehistory, is the phase in which viability selection coexisted with another selection process: sexual selection. With sexual reproduction, organisms learned that making a choice in your mate is a good idea, and with that choice came another means of selection. Now, while surviving was still key, getting a good mate, or often any mate, became crucial as well. While sexual selection, especially at the outset, still drove towards offspring with a greater probability of survival, this was something that happened in each individual pairing, but, interestingly, did not necessarily translate into maximising survivability on the whole. For example, a male with a beautiful tail is clearly able to take care of himself well enough to maintain this luxury, and is thus very fit. However, selecting for having a beautiful tail can reduce the survivability of offspring in the species as a whole. Thus, in the second phase, viability selection and sexual selection mixed together in complex ways, and both waxed and waned in importance sporadically.

The third phase then, is one that is unique to humans. If I had to choose a beginning for it, I would select the first agricultural revolution (c. 10000 BC), however its roots lie earlier, with the mastery of fire and the development of tools. Regardless, this stage is characterised by a greatly diminished role of viability selection. Many have unfortunately taken this decline to mean the end of human evolution, simply because the unfit hardly die any more. However, even setting aside that, with greater population densities, diseases became rampant as never before, the decline of viability selection more means a greater role for sexual selection than anything else. As this stage focuses narrowly on humans, there are some important single events that I believe had a qualitative effect on the process of evolution. As such I'll split it in two parts for this discussion.

From the beginning of the first part, even the strength of sexual selection became muddled. Because of the pair-bonding in humans, even if you are seen as an undesirable mate, you will still find someone (equally undesirable) who wants you. Seemingly, this ensures fairly uniform reproduction, but this is not quite so. Evolution here finds an outlet in adultery—even if you are with your mate for life, there is no particular reason you must bear his children, or inseminate only her, if you can get away with it, of course (I'm ignoring the ability to support additional children due to success for now). Indeed, research suggests that for most of history, people have gotten away with it, and that something like one in six men was responsible for more reproduction than the other five (my apologies for the lack of a source, I'll add it if I find it).

It is perhaps not surprising, then, that I consider the event causing the shift to the second part of this phase the invention and widespread adoption of birth control. With it in place, women can satisfy the evolved urge to seek the fittest mate, while men can satisfy the urge to mate with as many as possible, without risking as seriously endangering the long-term viability of the pairing (as would have happened if a male had to contribute to the upbringing of another's child). As such, I feel that the route of sexual selection through adultery has largely closed. In approximately the same period of time, however, another route has opened. With a less rigid social structure, women gained the ability to move from one mate to another, and eventually even to raise children on their own. This change to some extent broke the strict pair bonding system and has ensured that mating is less of a guarantee for each individual.

Thus, we have a move from pure viability selection, to a mixture of sexual selection and viability selection, to almost pure sexual selection, and perhaps to weakening evolutionary pressures even in that category. What's next? I don't know, although I have a few interesting guesses. Sadly, evolutionary biology is not, at present, an especially predictive science, so we'll have to wait and see if they're validated. Meanwhile, however, we can speculate to some amusement on the effects of the changes that have occurred thus far and those to come.

 

The first two phases are fairly boring and very long, so the assumption I'm going to make is that at entry into phase three, mankind was fairly stable and adapted to its environment. The rather recent disruption brought about by the phase three changes are then the matter of interest. Physiologically, it is a well established fact that we developed the ability to process gluten in response to the development of agriculture in general and bread-making specifically. This is not especially interesting, however, except to note that while receded, the influence of viability selection is by no means gone entirely, at least at this stage. However, with the diminished scarcity of food, the stops should have come off energy consumption, which would primarily benefit two things—muscles and brains, the primary energy consumers in the body. However, would these be selected for? I would argue for maybe, and yes respectively. With agriculture comes increased group size, with group size, increased social interaction, and with that, greater opportunities for advancement through intelligence. The case for muscles is more ambiguous, as demands for them fall, however selection for strength and intelligence both benefits from another factor. Since they require high energy inputs, we can expect that in phase two they would have been signals of fitness (as one who could maintain large muscles and brain must have ample food), and thus we can expect run-away sexual selection for these even in the later phase.

Beyond these simple effects, however, we should consider the outcome of the mechanism of sexual selection. In essence, males can choose one of two strategies: they may either be reliable and steady, thus enticing a desirable partner into a permanent pairing (by showing that they will be reliable providers for the offspring), or they can be promiscuous, thus showing they can produce offspring who will be successful at reproducing, in a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. A female's ideal strategy would be to respond by living with the steady type and having children with the promiscuous one, as far as possible while managing risk. The balance of the two male strategies will then be set by the ease of cheating, the level of its rewards, the probability of detection, and the level of consequences of detection. To be fair this balance is likely established more on the cultural level than the genetic one, but that also makes its shifts in response to changing circumstances more immediate and its outcomes no less interesting. The effects of these shifts should be considered before checking for their occurrence. We know, for example, with some degree of surety that, male homosexuality is commonly a result of someone's genes going for the stable profile, and then going a little too far. So, on that side we can expect greater non-violence, neatness, and perhaps some of the characteristics commonly associated with femininity. Juxtaposed against this, we have the high-masculinity option—I feel like I can't be sufficiently concrete with this, so I'll let your imaginations fill out the details.

I believe the overall trend can be viewed as flowing from greater consequences and risks in adultery at the beginning of this phase, to lower and lower towards the end of its first part. This is generally the pattern associated with movement from smaller traditional societies, to urbanisation, and mostly more liberal outlooks. If you live in a small community, or on an isolated homestead, and your husband begins to think ill of you, consequences will be much more dire than in a large city with greater opportunities. Thus, we can assume that evolution tended to shift humanity towards greater profligacy in this period, and people to give greater favour to intercourse outside of pairings.

At the entry into the second part of this phase, however, we can see birth control stripping away the majority of the evolutionary appeal of adultery. At the same time, however, greater independence for women tends to enhance the power of sexual selection. As such, two primary classes seem to emerge: independent females pairing with likely-to-reproduce males (and not infrequently caring for the child alone), and the more classical pairing of stable male with a female. I would argue that current trends point back towards stability becoming a greater favourite than before, and that to some extent this trend will continue until the next large shift in society. Of course all these strategic characteristics aside, I suspect that intelligence and, to a lesser extent, strength are still favoured either way, as are other runaway characteristics such as height (being tall is also fairly energy-inefficient).

 

So, all that weak conjecturing aside, the interesting question is where do we go from here? What will be the next paradigm shift? This is of course the realm of pure speculation, however I would suggest three likely paths. The most obvious is, as usual, that we're going to have more of the same. More independence for women, a looser-knit society, greater reproductive control. This is terribly tedious, however, so I'll let you work out the implications yourselves while I move on to the other two.

The second path for humanity is transhumanism. Frankly, I think travelling it is inevitable to one degree or another. We are driven to make ourselves as appealing to potential mates as possible, and enhanced strength, speed, intelligence, all have very high appeal. The two main questions with this path is how quickly will it come, and will it mean the end of evolution in the biological sense. Starting with the latter, the answer likely depends on certain factors. If we see something like the singularity, then probably yes, evolution will either stop or become irrelevant. If we only see enhancements, however, and especially do not see genetic modification or the indefinite expansion of lifespans, then it may continue. Even in this scenario, however, it is likely to be dwarfed in significance by technological advancements, and would be relegated to a secondary position. That said, insofar as the strong pressure of rapid change may exist, we may witness a further strengthened selection for intelligence and a downgrading in importance of physical characteristics, as they would be relatively easily manipulated. This also partially answers the first question—the slower the technological advance, the more time evolution has to maintain its relevance. However if this is the path that humanity treads, then we may see the true end of biological evolution at its end.

If you were less than enchanted with that last path, the final one is likely to further raise your hackles. If transhumanism is somehow avoided, or stalls, and thus evolution is given a lot of time, we may see something of speciation. The condition at the heart of this is the extent of upward mobility. The flow of reasoning is as follows. Pairings are created through encounters between individuals. Encounters will commonly occur in places of education (e.g. university or high school), at the workplace, or at social gatherings. Only the last of these avoids stratification by class, and even then those with a higher income may, for example, attend more expensive bars than those with lower. If we assume that these patterns lead to a reasonably high degree of pairings and mating within one's social class, the only intermixing of genes would come from movements of individuals between classes. I believe that the rate of individuals dropping from a higher class to a lower one is generally low, hence upward mobility is of the utmost importance. If it is sufficiently low that genetic mixing is infrequent, humans may literally evolve into two species. I would not presume to guess at their distinguishing characteristics, but the process would be extremely slow, taking at the very least millennia. Frankly, we're likely to kill ourselves off before seeing the effects of anything this interesting happening.

 

The path stretches out long behind us, and is shrouded in mist ahead. My one piece of advice is to watch our collective step, not least out of curiosity.

The City that Always Sleeps

It is no secret that I like the night. I love her dearer than the day by half, in fact, and sleep is an annoyance in my life habitually tossed aside. A night many months ago I pulled myself away from the screen and I ventured outside. The city was a thing of beauty, completely transformed from its daytime prosaicness. The streets were a glistening black from a rain recently fallen, the lamps lined them like torches banishing the dark, and a gentle reflection of the glow rose up to meet its source from the wet pavement. The air had a peculiar taste in my nostrils, bringing back memories of other evenings well spent, of rains that had fallen, and of friends I loved, so that for a moment I shut my eyes and simply savoured it, needing nothing else. But, most of all, where the sidewalk at any other time was crowded with people, and the roads jammed with cars, now there was no one and nothing. I stood on the street alone and felt like the city belonged only to me.

 

That preamble aside, the point is simple enough. Having everyone sleep at night is grossly inefficient and probably the biggest single waste of resources ever perpetrated. Bigger than all wars, bigger than every boom, bust, and recession, just unimaginably big.

Consider for a moment a world in which not a person cares when she sleeps. Three eight-hour shifts replace just one. Now, every manufacturing plant runs around the clock, every day (I realise a few do so anyway at times, but I believe this is a tiny minority – please correct me if I am in error). Each machine is used three times as much, and one plant can do the work of three. The situation is a little more difficult with the case of an office building, where personal space allotments are greater, but I'm sure a way can be found to accommodate three people. Office space prices drop to a third as three groups of people replace one.

But those are merely the direct benefits – the indirect ones are far greater. With workers arriving in three shifts (or even better, on a loose continuous schedule), traffic on the road at the peak time drops to a third of its present amount. With lower traffic, we need smaller, and fewer, roads, cutting spending on road construction by half or more. But more than that, more condensed offices and other buildings mean that we only need half as many of them (I'm making allotments for grocery stores, etc, which are already open most of the day). If we only need half as many, many areas of the city can be half the size. With space thus compressed, commuting distances shrink considerably, and if you care about greenhouse gas emissions, even this alone may have a greater impact than any other measure out there.

More generally, with people awake at all hours, utility companies get what I can only assume is a dream for them – a fairly steady consumption of their services around the clock. With much less of a gap between the peak and the lowest daily consumption, much less spare capacity has to be built into the system (the same way we only need narrower roads even though the same number of people drive). With that, without reducing consumption of electricity (or internet) the generation needs can be cut significantly. The same unfortunately would not be quite true for water, gas, etc, as these can be stored effectively, however the storage capacity necessary at any one time would be reduced.

Even the level of crime would decrease, at least slightly, as there would be fewer times when one can avoid being seen.

The one major aspect of city-dwelling that would not see an improvement is residential housing. People want their own space, and there's no way around that, and ways around large houses as status symbols also seem to be progressing rather slowly.

 

So what's stopping us from embracing this plan I'm making out to be a panacea? Well, a number of things. First, I won't deny that there are some costs. All streets need to be better lit; windows need to be sound-proofed, and probably tinted to filter yellow light; residential housing really does take a lot of space; cities are already there, so remaking them would take some magic, or patience (for the population to triple). All this, however, still pales in comparison with the savings, and if it's so hard to change a current city, why don't the Arabs splurge their oil money on making a model one, since it would be the most efficient place in the world, right? Well, the two biggest obstacles are undoubtedly social inertia and the human genome. The first is obvious enough – "this is how it is, and we don't wanna change" is a common sentiment that meets most ideas for change. The genome is more insidious, however. It's managed to infiltrate each of us, and convince us that we're diurnal and that the sun shining means our eyes should be open. Technologically, overcoming it isn't too difficult – it can be countered by filtering out the yellow light to which our brain responds when we need to sleep, as alluded to above, and by producing it artificially when we need to wake up. The challenge is that our instinct is to do everything during the day. Every time someone is born even into the social structure I envision, she will want to stick with the daytime, and the case for removing discrimination from the sleep cycle will have to be made again and again, an effort of reason to defeat instinct.

Sadly, this is always an uphill battle.

What this blog is not (and is)

This blog may be somewhat atypical, and, I hope, far from the standard you have come to expect, so let's first cover what expectations you should not have as a reader:

This is not a blog about my life.

• There will be no mentions of any personal information unless necessary for a point I wish to make.
  
• I'm not antisocial – you can email me or leave a comment any time if you want to talk about whatever.
  

This is not a blog about current events.

• I may mention happenings as a case for an interesting idea, but not much more.
  
• News are undeniably interesting.
  

This is not a blog that updates on a schedule.

• The blog is about ideas and dreams. Those rarely come on a schedule, so neither will posts.
  
• I might also get bored with the affair at any time, and I hereby reserve the right to feel no guilt over not updating.
  

This is not a blog with a theme.

• I plan to write on whatever topic fascinates me, and these are many.
  
• While I expect most posts will be about ideas, some may be about stories (fiction), or anything else I feel like.
  

This is not a blog that is stylistically consistent.

• My mood drives my writing style, so it may go from dead serious to very silly in an instant.
  
• There are only two things I promise: good grammar and an attempt at clarity.
  

This is not a blog that pays any attention to lengths of posts.

• If it takes me five thousand words to write what I want, so be it.
  
• I'll try to include a summary of conclusions if I go too long, but no promises.
  

 

"Well then, I've read all the little points and I'm beginning to understand what you're plotting here," you say, "but can you elucidate the matter a tad?"

Why, certainly, voice in my head! In general, I have a very low opinion of blogs, however there is one purpose for which I have determined one of the things can prove useful – to leave a trail of my thoughts. Some few ideas have been bouncing around my head for a time, but writing a story of fiction to narrowly illustrate one point seems painfully contrived (and a lot of work), and writing an essay that only I will read feels somehow empty. Thus, this blog, with the simple aim of putting ideas on virtual paper, whatever form they may assume.

"Oh, but you haven't explained what's with all the anonymity? Are you secretly a crazy privacy nut?"

Nope, or I try not to be. My instinct does tend towards not telling much about myself, but there are actual reasons for it too! This blog is about the ideas, not about me, and I don't want them to be disregarded or favoured based on my sex, age, education, background, or hypothetical lack of any of these!