What I've decided to do with my life
The Pursuit of Positive Impact
Make a Positive Impact. As high an impact as you can, on as many people possible, and across as long a duration of time as possible. You can also take credit, where reasonable, for the dividends for the multiplier effect of the people you impact in turn affecting others (Parenting being the strongest one in that regard).
This was how I tried to formulate success in life and assess what I should be putting effort into. Practical constraints of life and just weakness of will got in the way for better part of my life so far.
My point is simply that there are limitations to "Argument from Authority".
The main reason I'm interested in it is something I wish to cover later, but in short: If there is a technological silver bullet that can potentially help promote peace*, bring about poverty reduction**, tackle global warming***, catalyse space exploration and just enable technologies unthinkable today****: it has got to be Nuclear Fusion. So, sure, it likely isn't a silver bullet, but it sure sounds worth pursuing.
I'm pretty sure I'll backtrack on some of these claims when I get past the mount stupid of Dunning-Kruger Effect, but here's hoping I make it past the valley of despair.
Make a Positive Impact. As high an impact as you can, on as many people possible, and across as long a duration of time as possible. You can also take credit, where reasonable, for the dividends for the multiplier effect of the people you impact in turn affecting others (Parenting being the strongest one in that regard).
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| Maximise the "Impact Volume" |
This was how I tried to formulate success in life and assess what I should be putting effort into. Practical constraints of life and just weakness of will got in the way for better part of my life so far.
Goals, Choices and Disappointments:
For the record, I took the decision to pursue a career in "proper" Engineering, and when offered the choice and opportunity, I tried to stick to efforts I viewed as being positive. It started off with turning down an industrial placement offer as a software engineer in a respectable corporation because I was not convinced of the impact it'd have (in hindsight, I think I was wrong, and it limited my options when pursuing graduate opportunities). I wanted to remain in a developed country for quality of life and career opportunities, which was then constrained by Visa/Immigration factors when it came to choice of employers. I made the choice, when given the opportunity, with my employer to focus more on projects that tried improving fuel efficiency of Diesel Engines, and then on to supporting Hybrid Power-train demonstrators. I currently work on Battery Electric Trucks and Buses, but the only thing I'm truly proud of is putting in the effort to try and convince some the Diesel-world colleagues that that's a worthwhile effort, if we were to take a long-term view. It's not that great and perhaps not even significant, but it's likely better than the conscious decisions made by many friends, relatives and colleagues that I know of, right?
This reads as an apology, because it is one: to myself.
Recently, some conversations and articles gave me the impression that most of us are contributing in one way or the other to what is essentially helping the rich get disproportionately richer and does little to make the world better. It does help provide livelihoods to people, and help them survive and live a decent lifestyle, but the point is that it is an inefficient way to do that, and possibly worse if we consider some of the other impact.
I could save up, and move on to work on more direct efforts that I think are aligned with transitioning us to my ideal vision of future of humanity, and no matter how insignificant it may be, it's worth pursuing. There are plenty of options that fit within the practical life constraints, including my own preference for the minimum lifestyle quality threshold that I find acceptable.
Or is it? A friend recommended 80,000 hours to me, and I found it to be quite a rational and clear approach to career advice for people like me. One can choose to work for organisations that are not on the forefront of ethics (but not destructively unethical), innovation or impact, earn a lot, and use that to influence others' work, all the while maintaining a high standard of living comfort and luxury. It seems obvious, but it somehow seemed immoral to me all this while.
The Trigger:
There's a quote that struck me as both extraordinarily depressing and yet inspirational. I came across it around the time I had a car accident, which may have strengthened its impact:
This reads as an apology, because it is one: to myself.
Recently, some conversations and articles gave me the impression that most of us are contributing in one way or the other to what is essentially helping the rich get disproportionately richer and does little to make the world better. It does help provide livelihoods to people, and help them survive and live a decent lifestyle, but the point is that it is an inefficient way to do that, and possibly worse if we consider some of the other impact.
I could save up, and move on to work on more direct efforts that I think are aligned with transitioning us to my ideal vision of future of humanity, and no matter how insignificant it may be, it's worth pursuing. There are plenty of options that fit within the practical life constraints, including my own preference for the minimum lifestyle quality threshold that I find acceptable.
Or is it? A friend recommended 80,000 hours to me, and I found it to be quite a rational and clear approach to career advice for people like me. One can choose to work for organisations that are not on the forefront of ethics (but not destructively unethical), innovation or impact, earn a lot, and use that to influence others' work, all the while maintaining a high standard of living comfort and luxury. It seems obvious, but it somehow seemed immoral to me all this while.
The Trigger:
There's a quote that struck me as both extraordinarily depressing and yet inspirational. I came across it around the time I had a car accident, which may have strengthened its impact:
"The definition of Hell: The last day you have on earth, the person you became will meet the person you could have become."
I wish to avoid further disappointment down the road, and wondering what would have happened had I chosen a different path. All of that, along with me having obtained "permanent residency" in a developed country and my recent marriage, have taken care of some of the obstacles in the way. In these circumstances, remembering an earlier application I made while at university, to CCFE, triggered what I'll later describe as an early mid-life crisis or the best decision I made in life: I'm switching my focus and transitioning my career to work on Nuclear Fusion.
Why Fusion?
Why Fusion?
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| Practically every major source of energy is derived ultimately from the sun, which runs on Fusion. Major advances to our civilisation on earth or beyond probably requires more than just sun-dependent renewable energy. (Image Source: NASA) |
There are many reasons to NOT pursue Nuclear Fusion, that some have reminded me with good intentions:
- Is there really a demand?
- Other renewables and storage systems may be sufficient to tackle Global Warming.
- The word "Nuclear" is tainted with health and safety concerns, and governments cannot fund such projects when it seems like a disregard for human life in an expensive pursuit of cheap energy.
- Is it even possible?
- It is just a few decades away, and has been that way for a century.
- If it has taken this long without any real gains after decades of effort by brilliant scientists, maybe it's just not practically feasible in our lifetime (Lyman Spitzer comes to mind).
- Work-Life Balance and Satisfaction:
- Job prospects are slim.
- There is no guarantee your efforts are going to make any impact at all.
- The pay is going to be terrible, you're not going to be satisfied with the progress, and you'll feel depressed for sacrificing quality of life for nothing.
"There is no appreciable energy available to man through atomic disintegration."
My point is simply that there are limitations to "Argument from Authority".
The main reason I'm interested in it is something I wish to cover later, but in short: If there is a technological silver bullet that can potentially help promote peace*, bring about poverty reduction**, tackle global warming***, catalyse space exploration and just enable technologies unthinkable today****: it has got to be Nuclear Fusion. So, sure, it likely isn't a silver bullet, but it sure sounds worth pursuing.
I'm pretty sure I'll backtrack on some of these claims when I get past the mount stupid of Dunning-Kruger Effect, but here's hoping I make it past the valley of despair.
I'm pursuing a formal course and hope to maintain a website to record my learnings: https://wordofhuman.com/NuclearFusion/
Let's build some stars of our own. FUSION FOR THE WIN!
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*by mitigating energy resource conflict, which usually influences most conflicts between sovereign entities.
**by means of better energy equity, which in turn can improve living conditions
***fossil fuel replacement with lower energy storage demands, better energy density, on-demand generation and control that most means of renewable energy generation
****largely due to the fact that majority of the energy sources involve limited release of energy released from chemical reaction. Scaling up is possible, but only until you hit the energy density wall.
Let's build some stars of our own. FUSION FOR THE WIN!
---
*by mitigating energy resource conflict, which usually influences most conflicts between sovereign entities.
**by means of better energy equity, which in turn can improve living conditions
***fossil fuel replacement with lower energy storage demands, better energy density, on-demand generation and control that most means of renewable energy generation
****largely due to the fact that majority of the energy sources involve limited release of energy released from chemical reaction. Scaling up is possible, but only until you hit the energy density wall.
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