June 6th 2017
My Life as a Series of Blog Posts #1
Subject: About My Curiosity
When I was three my grandmother, a scientist, gave me a gift that set me on a path that has defined my entire life: my first microscope. I taught myself to clean it and operate it and I often went outside for sample gathering adventures, looking for artifacts such as leaves, dirt, rocks, broken eggs, and flowers. I loved learning about a world I couldn't see with my eyes alone, and that encouraged me to think about things from a variety of perspectives, to never leave a stone unturned, and to listen to and analyze every opinion, because you never know where an answer will turn up. Every new observation sparked more curiosity about the world we live in. I realized that while I was always looking down into the microscope and discovering new things, maybe there was just as much to learn by looking up. I stared at the bright lights in the sky for hours, and this led to my fascination with astronomy and astrophysics. I also became interested in biology and physiology through the dead bugs and feathers I collected. This prodded my parents to find me a graduate-school-level Latin-filled textbook of human physiology which, in turn, sparked my love of Latin. When I was four I received an electronic T-Rex, one of those robots with a thin, green, plastic covering. I ripped half the “skin” off and took it apart, because I wanted to learn how it worked. I tried to put it back together, and most of the electronics broke, including the voice box and its ability to move its head, but it still could walk. From my four-year-old point of view it was a success.
It looked a bit like this, but more retro
I continue to tinker to this day; I make it a project every time I find an old piece of technology that I can reprogram and fix. I have been an autodidact since birth, and as I got older my modes of learning morphed from taking physical things apart to delving into more stimulating cerebral activities. On any given day you might find me making a bowl of popcorn and sitting down for a lecture on quantum biology or philosophy, reading something interesting from @JustTryMe90, or blazing through a book such as Daniel Suarez's Daemon, about a rogue computer program that changes the world (here is a link to the amazon page, its a fantastic read, especially if you are a computer geek like me, https://www.amazon.com/DAEMON-Daniel-Suarez/dp/0451228731). You might also find me developing one of my weekly thought experiments and its accompanying research project, where I seek to prove a theory determined by my visio-spatial musings. I often get asked what I mean by a thought experiment so I will explain that now. My thought experiment/research projects go a bit like this: I ask a question or state a learning objective. After coming up with a theory I spend the entire week learning all I can through different academic disciplines, drawing connections between information from both sciences and humanities. I use all the resources I can get my hands on. Once I collect all the information I can, I enter the second phase: finding and creating connections with the help of my preferred problem solving styles, lateral and abstract logical reasoning. I do this until I come to an explanation, and if I hit a dead end, I put the thought experiment on the back burner until I have an explanation that withstands my vetting process. All in all, I think having curiosity is one of the best tools to have in ones life, it makes life fun and interesting, and it also can lead you to new things that can change the course of ones life; like Steemit. If I had one piece of advice I could give to children or even adults, is that you should never lose your urge to learn and to seek new things out!
And thats about all folks, hope you all enjoyed learning just a little bit more about yours truly. As always if you like what you have read here I write (almost) daily blogs on a variety of topics! If you would like to see my future posts please follow me or upvote this post (whichever you choose or none at all!)
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