About me:
To tell you the truth I don't know much about me: am I free or just a machine? will "I" remain after my body dies?
Was there something of me before I was born? Is there some higher purpose in life beyond eat, drink and be merry?
What am I, where am I, what is the world and what should we be doing? I don't know! As you can easily see, in fact,
I don't know anything of importance, except this: that I don't know. Knowing that one doesn't know is, in my mind
at least, extremely important. Without it, we are either Gods or fools. I've never met a flesh-and-bones' God!
Perhaps because, even if I did face a God, my limited condition would make me unable to discern whether it was
really a God (infinite, not-created, all-Knowing, etc) or only another frail (created) creature, possibly deceived,
like me.(How would, even the Christian God know if He, in all His All-Powerful, All-Knowing, All-etc, was living a
simulated phantasy created by ... X ? Perhaps He wasn't really Powerfull at all! Perhaps He wasn't even free! And even if He could really know the truth, and know that he knew the truth, how would I know if His vision, and my vision of His vision, was an illusion or not?)
So the only things I can really say are the relatively unimportant ones: things that have happened to me, things that I've done or attempted to do, things that were made to me, people I've met, people I've loved, people who have loved me and my intelectual-emotional positions on a number of things.
Unfortunately I find all this quite boring, elusive and/or changing. It certainly doesn't say who I am. So I'll just cease and desist of all attempts to state my true self and I'll just say the usual bla bla bla, everyone says in these occasions.
Academically:
- I have a BA in philosophy (Lisbon University) a masters in Cognitive Science (École Polytechnique, Paris) and I'm taking a BA in "Informatics Engineering" (Lisbon University)
- My interests lie mainly on Artificial Intelligence, transhumanism, ontology, astrophysics and everything I don't understand.
Professionally:
- I have been a high-school philosophy teacher (2011-2004) and have had a four-year scholarship by the FCT (2003-1999). All the rest has been small jobs here and there
Others:
- I like mountain biking, swimming, kayak and basically everything that has sports and nature in it. I hate competition (gives me stress and anxiety). The best sport I've ever knew is Kung Fu taught by Guilherme da Luz, quite complete in terms of flexibility, strength, reflexes, etc. I never was anything like a fighter though. Don't like the martial aspect of martial arts (not as a participant, at least), I saw it essentially as an exercise in communication.
- I live with my beautiful princess Lídia, since 2004, we started dating in 1991.
There is also a long, awful, boring autobiography here written probably in 2007. (this was written in June 2012)