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Readme

Instead of attempting the daunting task of writing about myself (I am perennially unhappy with the results), here is a collection of things I want to associate myself with. They are things I like, things I think about, things that have influenced me. You can interpolate the rest.

Research disposition

My views on artifical intelligence are pretty fluid. The best snapshot of what I think at the time is in my annual reflection: 2022.

But everyone curious about research should see (in order of increasing commitment to consume):

• On Exactitude in Science, Jorge Luis Borges
• The Rage of Research, Laura Deming
• Research as Understanding, Kanjun Qiu
• On Slow Research, David Pfau
• The Scientific Virtues, SLIME MOLD TIME MOLD
• The Morality of Fundamental Physics, Nima Arkani-Hamed
• When We Cease to Understand the World, Benjamín Labatut
• The Beginning of Infinity, David Deutsch

How I thought about college was more relevant when I was there. But that wasn’t so long ago, and I’m still doing research, so the influence is there. I found Violence and the Sacred: College as an incubator of Girardian terror accurate. We were competing in a lot of meaningless ways. But it wasn’t all bad. I formed a lot of opinions about human nature. I also believe that the world really needs people who are intensely mimetic. One activity I participated in—debate—some would say is the prime example of meaningless competition. I loved it. Sally Rooney wrote an essay about how stupid debate is (it’s socially insular, it promotes big egos and toxic idolization, etc.). But by the end of the essay we are both ready to win just to prove we can again.

Once, my naive self told a research advisor that I thought physics was the purest, highest tier of knowledge. My advisor (probably after rolling his eyes) told me I’m not special in a nice way: “Zhengdong, you’ll be able to find interesting problems in every field.” They turned out to be right. But the course of my love-disappointment relationship with physics left several traces in how I think about academic motivation. Bob Henderson writes about the Sisyphean chase for the holy grail of knowledge in What Does Any of This Have To Do with Physics?. During high school space camp, I met Nicholas Suntzeff. He talked about walking home after a dinner in Chile celebrating his Nobel-winning research, running into a girl begging on the street. Why spend one centavo on cosmology when little girls are crouching in subway stairwells, begging? I don’t think the answer is always that we shouldn’t, but topics labeled make the starkest contrast. Finally, physics supplies some of the most visceral motivations for research. Who wouldn’t want to discover true facts about doomed neutron stars, the timelapse of our universe, how every light in this video is not a star but a galaxy, orbital rendezvous, megamasers, or black hole star shredders? Terrifying.

Fun fact: I have an Erdös number of at most four, from Paul Erdös to Vasek Chvátal to Yori Zwols to Thomas Keck to me. Crazy how that’s only one more than the median Fields Medalist. Anyway, this is surely a very scientific measure of my progress as a researcher, can’t wait for it to go down as I reach my final form.

Maximum fun

Where I give you fun recommendations.

Reading is so great. You learn so much. And it takes as much time as you want. And it can be free, if you want. My favorite books are:

• One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. Wikipedia says this book is “often cited as one of the supreme achievements in literature” with four citations. Come on people. What more do you need.
• Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar. Something something it’s not about the idea but the execution.
• Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri. The characters remind me of people in my life. My favorite is “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine.”
• Dune by Frank Herbert. Yeah, so basic. In general I like sci-fi where technology is only part of the background, like the short story Folding Beijing by Hao Jingfang.
• When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead. It’s a children’s book. I read it in sixth grade, so you can too. It’s very short, so don’t read any blurbs, just read the book.
• Bone: The Complete Collection by Jeff Smith. It feels like you got through a Lord-of-the-Rings experience in one sitting. The art is splendid.

My favorite poem is I died for beauty, but was scarce by Emily Dickinson.

My favorite movies are:

• Knives Out (2019). Maybe one of the greatest of all time, don’t let any pretentious gatekeepers tell you otherwise. It’s clever and original. And the obviously bad accent tells you it doesn’t take itself too seriously.
• La Grande Vadrouille (1966). I’ve watched the Mandarin Chinese dub dozens of times.

My favorite music would take too long to explain and the explanations are a bit personal. I usually list some albums I enjoyed annually though: 2022, 2021. And without explanation, here is one playlist: These Songs Do Not Have Flaws.

My favorite games are Twilight Struggle and StarCraft II. Eventually I want to make a game. Right now I have no experience and am not serious about getting any. But it seems like one of the best ways to practice many skills—designing human agency, implementing the code, writing the story, drawing the art, and composing the music. The peak exercise of renaissance ability. You’re creating a whole experience for people to enjoy. Watch Jenova Chen talk about designing Journey. I really admire people who did everything or almost everything for really great games:

• Eric Barone for Stardew Valley.
• Justin Ma and Matthew Davis for Faster Than Light and Into the Breach.
• Jon Ingold and Joseph Humfrey for 80 Days.
• Lucas Pope for Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn.

The summer before college I switched to using Dvorak. My keyboard when I’m not on a laptop is the Leopold FC750R PD, yes, that color, with brown switches. If it’s good enough for The Machine, it’s good enough for me.