Why are you doing what you're doing?
- be me, 16 year old Colin
- have a massive existential crisis
- why am I here? what the hell is everyone doing? why does any of this even work?
- stare at ceiling for weeks thinking about this
- finally realize: everyone's just trying to be slightly less sad and slightly more happy
- the whole world runs on people solving problems for themselves and others
- ohshit.jpg
- decide right there I'm going to solve the biggest problems ever
- problems so huge that solving them will make me rich and loved
- yeah it's shallow but I'm 16 and desperate for meaning
- still have 2 years of high school left
- then covid hits
- forced to stay home, school goes online
- 8 hour school days become 12 hours (sometimes 24) with unrestricted internet access
- time to find problems to solve
- start watching BBC news nonstop to see what's broken in the world
- spoiler: everything in 2020-2021
- realize news is just the same political talking points recycled forever
- this isn't helping
- hear about Bill Gates and his foundation giving away billions
- sounds cool but doesn't click
- charity money runs out eventually, that can't be the answer
- fall down YouTube rabbit hole
- find futurology channels talking about how tech can solve everything
- asteroid mining ending scarcity and stuff
- getting interesting.jpg
- hour-long Youtube pop science binges lead me to this kurzgesagt video about aging
- mind absolutely blown
- never even considered that death was a problem you could solve
- holy shit this is it
- this is the biggest problem and basically nobody's working on it
- finally have a satisfying answer to the “what should I do with my life” question
- if we had cheap space access for asteroid mining and better medicine we'd be rich and immortal
- makes perfect sense to teenage me
- don't realize it yet but I've just committed the rest of my life to this
- find Ray Kurzweil's books
- think his AI stuff is kinda crazy (lol)
- but the nanotech ideas? those make total sense
- medical nanobots seem obviously necessary and weirdly doable
- can't take it anymore, skip year 12 entirely
- jump straight to year 13 because I need to get out there NOW
- plan is civil engineering and materials science for undergrad
- then masters somewhere better
- then PhD somewhere even better
- will be making immortal nanobots by early 30s easy
- get to university
- realize academia moves at the speed of continental drift
- my early 30s timeline is looking more like my 40s
- hell no
- drop out a year later
- going to make this happen before 2030 or die trying
- mfw I'm racing against my own mortality to defeat mortality
Also, mfw I realise that this is a link I'll send to everyone who asks me the "what inspired you to do what you're doing" question