epistemology is the theory of knowledge--how we acquire it, how we determine its validity, and how we gauge its limits. for many reasons, it is also my favorite branch of philosophy; I hope this mini-series will show you why. [potrero hill, san francisco, april 2025]
about three years ago, I made a decision to become a power user of certain online anonymous forums (mainly twitter, occasionally irc, but also [redacted]. the idea here was twofold: first, since all interactions were anonymous, I couldn't rely on the credentialism that my government name gave me to gain followers and enjoy quality interactions; I had to get good at writing interesting things. second, local (irl) and semi-local (discord, etc.) networks only give you knowledge of locally and semi-locally optimal decision trees. in other words, you can't know if what you're doing is the best thing you can possibly do, unless you expand your search window to the whole world. global internet forums fix this epistemic failure mode, but only if they're frequented by the best minds and not heavily moderated.
and so I started interacting with random strangers more and more, and getting more mutuals. at this point I was still in gainesville, but I quickly realized that an outsized proportion of people who were working on interesting things AND were also interesting themselves (important distinction here) were either in new york city or san francisco, with the technically-minded biased toward the the latter.
luckily, I was 1) on a nasa fellowship at the time that let me spend ten weeks at any ffrdc per year, 2) there was a nasa research center near sf that was doing the research I wanted to do, and 3) I already had friends in the area. so it was sort of a no-brainer to stay a couple summers in the bay area.
and those summers were so much fun: I lived with my college friends again, built things and sent them to space, and--although I didn't make much of it at the time--met my online mutuals. through them and through my time on these forums, I got to party on a retired navy ship, go to an underground rave full of biohackers injecting themselves with the latest formulations, spend a couple days on the top of salesforce tower brainstorming how to save the world with darpa project managers, philanthropic advisors, and a cohort of extraordinary misfits, sit down with kids building the future from their dorm rooms, met a guy building supersonic jets...
I've just moved to sf more permanently a few months ago, and I've continued doing more of the same. I go to space meetups where astrobiologists show their latest spelunking finds. I go off the beaten path to hang out with quirky circus performers, savvy designers, and have lunch with perhaps the most brilliant contemporary thinkers. in a few days, I'm signed up for a class to learn how to build my own neon signs, be a spectator for an underground robot fighting ring, and so much more, all because I started talking to random strangers online. these things are, of course, two-way streets; I'll pay it forward by hosting meetups when I'm more established and relentlessly sharing what I can. good epistemology, no?