Five areas

I have always been very interested in the following five areas, and eager to get in touch with the vast amount of knowledge and talent people associated with them.👇

• Neuroscience and everything about the brain

• The underlying principles of AI and computers

• Space industry and rocket engines

• Blockchain and Decentralization (Decentralized Governance System)

• The latest biotech breakthroughs (on extending lifespan)

Neuroscience

The brain is our most amazing organ. The physical basis of the brain, the way neurons and synapses work, the origin and development of human self-consciousness are topics of greatest interest to me.

I think understanding the brain and consciousness is very important for understanding ourselves and doing self-training (making us smarter).

“Forty Studies That Changed Psychology” and “Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain” are excellent reads for a start, the former being the 40 great psychological experiments that form the cornerstone of modern psychology. The latter has a more detailed description of how the brain works.

Information & Computer

Although I am determined to train myself to be a great engineer & programmer, my interest in the information industry is not in how they are applied, but in what underlying theories they rely on and what makes them a reality.

For example, I'm interested in Turing machines, and I'm more curious about the difference between humans and computers in the end, whether humans will transform themselves into computer-like life forms.

Same with Shannon's information theory, how we understand information and bits, how should we see the entire digital world. These questions may not be profitable, but researching them makes me happy.

On this topic, I highly recommend the book “The Information” by James Gleick.

Space & Rocket

Space has been a human dream since the first stargazer. In countless science fiction works, the next era is always the space age.

So I think space and Mars colonies are the next milestones for human civilization. I can't imagine a world without a space program, where humans stay on Earth waiting for the next mass extinction, without any adventure and progress, how boring it would be!

Thanks to 3D printing (energy advancement) and SpaceX-guided rocket recovery technology, the cost of launching into orbit is showing an incredible exponential downward trend.

I think in eight years there will be a lot of space commercial companies and a lot of civilian access to space.

For this future, I highly recommend the books "The Case for Mars" and "The Case for Space" by Robert Zubrin.

The first is a detailed plan for humans to rush to Mars and return to Earth with local materials, which is more practical than Wernher von Braun's expensive Mars plan. The second book details what's happening in the rocket industry with "Moore's Law" and the future it will change.

Blockchain and Decentralization

The birth of bitcoin and blockchain is important, most of human history has been in war or tyranny, democracy is the flower of civilization that has only appeared in the last two hundred years (it is the exchange of blood and death), and this flower never even blooms in many countries of the world.

Our yearning for a better life has been exchanged for political strongmen and oppression, and we always hope that there is a strong enough force to help us solve all problems. Decentralization in this context seems deviant, this is another road, a road that has been traveled and failed so many times that not even Vitalik Buterin and Satoshi Nakamoto can be sure that this road will eventually succeed.

But it's a direction worth trying, and we're seeing change happening. Bitcoin gives many people the ability to protect their wealth from violence.

While Ethereum is currently full of fancy NFTs and various money-making apps, people come to Ethereum just because they want to be rich.

I still don't think blockchain will always be like this, I think there will always be a small group of people who will try to build more meaningful applications and more efficient governance systems in a decentralized world, I choose to walk with them.

This road is not necessarily successful, but we will not give up trying.

Biotechnology & Life Extension

The problem of longevity is one of the big problems that humans hope to solve in the long run (so you always see molecular structures on the cover of "science"). Many years ago, this field seemed stagnant, but now there is suddenly hope that humans can cure cancer, upload their own consciousness, and even modify their own bodies and program their own DNA.

Biology is being combined with computer and artificial intelligence technology, more and more problems are being solved by computers. For this trend, I recommend "The Code Breaker", "The Genesis Machine" and "Life 3.0”.

The first book is very exciting, telling how Jennifer Doudna used CRISPR technology to initiate a revolution in gene editing (CRISPR-Cas9). Jennifer Doudna herself also won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

The second book is on a similar topic. In the future, it is possible for people to directly code cells and genes, to transform our biological form. The third book is about the future life forms of human beings, not only the transformation of the software level but even the direct transformation of our hardware (body).

Summarize

These are the five areas that I am most interested in.

I keep reading a lot of books on cutting-edge technology every year, even though they don't seem to be related. I believe the technological revolution is happening and we have unprecedented power to change the world (and ourselves).

I am excited about these five areas and the knowledge contained in them, although it is just the beginning, I will do more related research in the future.