Hello there, Effective Altruism community!

I originally posted this on the Effective Altruism Forum as a way of introducing myself to the community

Hello there!

Ever since 2018, I've been increasingly interested in the effective altruism movement. The movement, at first just seemed like some really non-conventional, cold-hearted career advice. But I have learned that this is far more than just simple career advice. I will explain how EA affected my life-philosophy as well as my career ambitions (which is still tentative).

Keep in mind that this is not a post about my life-story, because I don't think I need to mention details about my life here - it is solely focused on my opinions on effective altruism. Nevertheless, it would be impossible to not at least mention a bit of my life since this movement affects that too.

Preface

I was first introduced to the movement in very late December 2016 through 80,000 hours and their career guide (now outdated), but I found it scary because when they said 'Do something that helps others' - I thought that I would need to abandon all my passions, which I will get to later on.

1 and a half years later, I took a sneak peek to their website and saw a post that consoled me which was the idea that you don't need to be a doctor to save lives, written by Gregory Lewis. Instead of having to spend a long time getting the needed qualifications, as well as doing a few years of residency, you can earn to give and save far more lives than an individual doctor could (with of course much less time spent training). The post also mentions that despite the increase in life expectancy in the UK, most of it was unrelated to medicine and more relevant to better housing, nutrition, wealth and a wholesome of other things.

I liked how the post was rejecting common notions and how it focused on doing as much good as possible rather than just doing good, therefore, it made me want to investigate 80,000 hours' website more and more. I started reading their career reviews, advice and ideas. At the time I was also aware that the advice 'Follow your passion' is really bad advice, pointed out by people like Cal Newport and Mike Rowe - which also made me agree with the ideas of Effective Altruism, since they don't find this advice very good either.

Back in school I was often told that altruism was sacrificing to do good: in order to do good you must have some kind of maytr complex. On podcasts with Rob Wiblin (from 80,000 hours), he has said multiple times that EA is not about sacrificing yourself to help others - in fact he says it would be better if nobody sacrificed at all to do good. EA is about just doing good, the sacrificing part is entirely moot.

How EA changed my philosophy on life

I've always viewed myself as a deep thinker and EA tends to cater towards these people. Especially when I watched Will McAskhill's video on EA and read 80,000 hour's post on future generations and the value of a life. Peter Singer is also someone who fed my deep-thinking mind. Although I don't agree with all of his ideas, I still think that they are enough to disrupt a consumer lifestyle that most people from 1st world countries tend to embark on. Like McAskhill, he also has a great Ted Talk (although I think he emphasises a bit too much on earning to give).

I have read his free audiobook "The life you can save" and I think anyone that is fed up of being rich yet unfulfilled should read it, as it gives detail into things such as the psychology behind charitable acts, which charity you should donate to and anecdotes from other people who are giving away. I like how Singer emphasises that even if you don't know someone else who is in dire need, that doesn't mean that you should just ignore them. If you can help them, it is clear common sense to help them otherwise, you're pretty much a fool.

He has even convinced me to work towards being a vegan since taking away, for example, a cow's life for a little bit of cuisine pleasure (even if they were killed ethically and grass-fed) when we have a number of vegan alternatives is pretty barbaric. Would you do this to your own pet if you felt a little hungry?

EA in general makes me think of living life in a better way. Many I know tend to live a conventional life of working a 9-5, 40 hours a week, earning money for frankly mostly pointless stuff like a big house or a super-expensive car and maybe a nice holiday to some exotic place, then go back to their jobs subconsciously aware that they are living a perpetual cycle of earning money, spending it, earning money, and it goes on and on. Try and add starting a family to the mix.

P erhaps though, they really enjoy their jobs, it's almost like a hobby, but even then - is it meaningful? Will it matter in the end? Sure they may have fulfilled their dreams, but what does it matter in the grand scheme of things? EA gives me another picture of living life, like doing work that could help lots of others and make them remember you for something, as well as having an inter-connected goal that is not just about fulfilling one's dreams. I wouldn't be happy if I fulfilled everything I would have desired to do (selfishly speaking, not accounting for helping others) - I would just search for more goals.

I am one of those people who don't think anything will 'matter' in the end (be it the heat death of the universe or the end of time). This might sound very nihilist of me and it very much is - but being a nihilist doesn't always have to be a bad thing. Pleasure feels good, such actions like going out with friends or saving a life and seeing someone smile feels good. The why and how we should have this is not known, but pleasure is still a good thing, therefore we should have more of it. This makes the idea of future generations very important as they could be living in a more just, healthier and enjoyable world than the world of today.

The goals of EA according to Will McAskhill from a podcast is something along the lines of 'As much good conscious experience as possible'. Which I can infer that even though the heat death of the universe may very well happen and nothing will be left. That won't happen for another billion years so there isn't really much point in worrying about such stuff. There is something more important than the end, it is ironically more of an immediate importance, despite the fact that future generations are important in my opnion.

It also show s that you don't need to believe in God, Allah, YVHV, Jesus, Angels, Demons, Heaven or Hell to be a happy person and give your life some kind of meaning. Helping others is a pleasure in itself, similar to playing a very fun and intellectually rewarding game or sport - you don't get rewarded anything other than the satisfaction of doing it. 

Without effective altruism

Originally I planned to be a freelance Indie game developer, because I've made games for quite a few years, and still do now. I also like the freelance lifestyle of how flexible it is, rather than sitting in an office from 9-5 and having to go through rush-hour, I can go on a pleasant walk if I feel like it or travel around working remotely. It's still my passion, but I also want to learn about the Effective Altruism movement and develop a similar passion to the one I have for Computer games.

Video games definitely have value in them, as they can be enjoyed by loads of people and like books, board games, movies and whatever art form exists out there, they can provide a very provocative message. But I believe that they don't solve the all world's problems in the same way as Effective Altruism does as it directly solves the problems as opposed to, at best advocating them. Think about this: Would you rather play video games instead of visiting the doctor to cure your blindness?

That being said, I would still like to make money out of making games, if anything for advocacy and or earning to give.

What do I plan on doing?

I don't really know how I can help in any direct way. Without giving away too many personal details - I'm looking for an apprenticeship in the tech industry since that is a largely growing industry and it is something I'm good at. Tech is often used in EA, not limited to things like websites and data science - as well as problems like AI. Even the type of thinking used in EA is not too different from writing software or gathering data.

I run a blog which, although mainly I write posts about the development of my games, I also write about EA (in a series called "Selfish Effective altruism" because you can be an altruist for very selfish reasons). I find writing as engaging as making games (I used to write fiction books when I was in primary school to secondary school). The posts about EA aren't meant to be too scientific (because of my lack of access to scientific studies/ literature); they are more of intended to encourage people to look up such topics and create some discussion. In the process, I even learn about the problems I write about because I have to research them. 

Conclusion

This post is my introduction to EA, I hope anyone reading this can perhaps relate in some way or another. I'm not experienced at EA and I'm still a newbie to the movement. Nevertheless I think I was introduced to this movement at the right time since it is still a niche movement and I could help promote the movement.

I will be doing a bunch of cross-posts, putting EA posts from my blog to here. I'm also working on a post about Bitcoin and crypto-currency, which I hope to publish later this month - if you want to suggest problem ideas worth looking into, please let me know.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post!

That's all from me!

Selfish Effective Alturism #1: Why I don't give money to beggars on the street

Hello there, in my last post where I talked about Bounty Hunter III, I mentioned that I was going to put out a blog about something that isn't game development. Here it is.

Preface

Most may have gone into a situation where you see a sad person on the street who is seemingly poor. They may have a sleeping bag, some food from the local 'Sainsburys' or 'Tesco' and a hat, flipped over with some coins inside. Some may feel some pity for them and give them enough to buy a freddo... or two. Others tend to just pass by as if that stranger did not exist at all. Whether or not this is a good idea is quite a debatable matter. Schools tend to encourage people to give to poor people in assemblies and tutor times. My high school/sixth form was a church of England school so clearly they would share the story of the 'good Samaritan'. If you don't know the story of it, watch this video.
I have always been a bit skeptical about the story, since I usually just walk past beggars (as the title suggests). This isn't because of the story itself, I think the story presents a very charitable deed, but rather the application of the story. Not all beggars are like the one in the 'good Samaritan'.

Shady strangers

I remember a few years ago, on my way to one of the sessions in the art class I was in, I stumbled across a sad-looking woman. She seemed to have been pregnant and she begged me for money because she seemed poor. I had a £20 on me. When I lied to her that I didn't have money she asked me to use the cash machine, I told her that I didn't have a bank card and then she asked me to check my wallet, when I lied about that, she asked me about the cash machine again. I ended up in a catch-22 for what felt like an eternity, which eventually annoyed me. I eventually decided to give her the £20 note because I felt bad for her and she thanked me with incredible happiness. If you thought this conundrum ended here, she had a sister who also begged me for money.

She was far more suspicious because she didn't seem like she was pregnant and she begged me for money even though I gave the £20 I had to her sister (which looking back, is a complete mystery why she didn't share that £20). She annoyed me even more than the last one and I even shouted at her that I didn't have any money, but she just kept on begging. She eventually stopped begging and went off. I was in a bad mood and had slightly more to fear when coming to the outside world, I didn't attend the class on that day. In retrospect, the latter action was a bit of an immature move on my part.

This wasn't the last time I would see these kinds of people. I encountered another one months later. Over time I've just learned to lie and ignore them, I wouldn't recommend lying in most other scenarios, but just to protect yourself from potential thieves, lying may be the most sensible course of action.

With that being said, I have several reasons why I wouldn't really help these kinds of people.

Firstly, I have no idea who they are or what they work as. This makes me very weary of who I give my money to, even though the pregnant woman in question was pregnant - nowadays I wouldn't give £20 let alone £50 to these kinds of people. They might spend it on drugs or even if they were going to spend it on something good, it's most likely not going to help them long-term. £50 probably won't pay the rent for one month, even if you live in a studio apartment. Though, it might help you pay for a months worth of basic food, if you are lucky. Sometimes I give a poor person a chocolate bar or a water bottle I won't miss, in fact that would be a better option than giving them any money.

Secondly, I'm only helping one or two people which is nothing considered the fact that the world's population is over 7 billion, and this number will only go up as time goes on. Furthermore I think there would be negative consequences if I donated my money to just one person, they might rely on me to constantly give them money and become a leech. They should know that I'm not someone who makes £90,000 a year let alone is Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos (the latter of which being the richest man in the world). I wonder why some beggars pick on young people who probably don't have any jobs (like me at the time), rather than a rich-looking 45 year old with a suit. Maybe the 45 year old knows that these people are just leeches, whereas a young person are easy to sympathize with therefore can be fooled into giving money to them.

Quite suspicious, huh?

However, I have learned a way to have a much larger impact and not have to go through that terrible episode.

Effective altruism

Over a year ago, I started reading blogs from a non-profit organization called 80,000 hours. The name is based on how many working hours the average person has in their lifetime. Quite a name indeed. The blog's advice, although at first was a bit demoralizing, has some of the best career advice I've ever heard. If you want to know about the organization, here's a TED talk by Benjamin Todd, the founder of said organization. As well as very thoughtfully debunking the idea that "Follow your passion" is good advice for having a good career, it also emphasizes on how much impact you can make as an altruist.

80,000 hours got a lot of coverage in the news back in their early days due to the fact they encouraged "earning to give". Basically, you get into a high earning career and donate a certain fraction of your income to an effective organization that is low on funding - examples of achieving this could include finance, software engineering or consulting. I can see why they got a huge amount of coverage, when many think of making a difference in the world, they think that being a doctor is the way to do it. I too was enamored when I learned that an individual doctor has a very modest impact on society and earning to give was higher impact than an individual doctor's efforts.

Linking this with my example of the beggars, I'd be better off donating a consistent amount of money to effective charities that can help people like those 2 strangers I mentioned earlier (and much more than just 2) rather than random people I can't really help directly in the long run. It's also a better use of that £20 and I can console myself that I would have helped more skilled people save more lives than if  I gave the same amount of money to each poor person on the street. It's also better than giving food I wouldn't miss or buying food for beggars because I could donate money to a soup kitchen to hire several cooks to feed a larger share of the population.

With that being said, 80,000 hours recommend that only a small number of people should earn to give in the long run, since the world's most pressing problems are far more talent constrained (as in specific skills needed to solve the problem) than funding constrained.

What do I mean by pressing problems? What I mean are problems that could have a devastating long-term impact on humanity, they're often not the first things you would hear, like improving education. Things like AI, biotechnology and developing nuclear weapons could have devastating long-term effects on humanity if they were to go haywire. AI could be negatively influenced and possibly exterminate us all, biotechnology could release horrible diseases which could kill billions. Therefore these are far more pressing problems which are far less funded or worked on compared to funding in something like global warming or cancer research (though they are quite pressing too).

Conclusion

The reason I wouldn't give money to people on the street is that I would make a rather modest impact and it would even be negative in some ways. Instead I think it would be far more wise to give money to organizations that can help a larger amount of people or better yet do more direct work for the organizations if you have the needed career capital/skills. Because being an effective altruist isn't about doing good, it is about doing good on a much larger scale than one might think.

If this blog piques your interest in reading about effective altruism or 80,000 hours, you can start to read their key ideas. Although I do think their career guide is also pretty good, it's quite outdated as their ideas have changed since then, so you should read it in conjunction with their key ideas.

I'm hoping to write more on the subject area of effective altruism, because it has really made me think about what to do with my own future.

I'm far more ardent about this kind of lifestyle than the conventional one of going through education, obtaining a fancy degree, getting a 'good' job, working hard, earning lots of money to buy a large house, two cars and support a family that will in turn most likely do the same thing. Actually I was never really into that average lifestyle to begin with. Being an effective altruist (or just an altruist in general)has also been shown throughout millennia to deeply satisfy people on a personal level - a life committed to helping others.
The next blog I write in this series will be on future generations, because I found out that they were more important than I thought. Until then...

That's all from me!

Digital escapism

Hello there!
A few months ago I was contemplating quitting DeviantArt, and then later on I decided I was going to quit it. Despite what I wrote about twitter, I don't think that social media is all bad and that isn't the reason that I'm quitting DeviantArt, neither was it the reason I quit Twitter or YouTube (I know I said I was not going to quit YouTube, but my opinion have since then changed) for that matter.

Preface

Social media in all fairness is useful in a way, for example you could use Facebook to hang out in certain communities, with LinkedIn you can make networks (very valuable for applying to jobs), Instagram and DeviantArt is quite useful to those artists who want to connect with other artists. I myself met a few of my friends on DeviantArt, so it would be pretty silly of me to say that DeviantArt hasn't helped me gain some friends at all. However it has come to this point that its use has expired and even having it around just feels like a burden.

Digital escapism

When I first joined DeviantArt in Christmas 2013, I couldn't relate to a lot of the people I had at school and had a small, closely-knit group of friends. Most of the people in my year group weren't too interested in the stuff I liked or really liked who I was, I had good intentions but I was often weird and a bit annoying. The internet played quite a large role into filling these voids, I met people who I could relate to.
Since I did not need to interact with them face-to-face, I could bypass a lot of posture and  facial expressional checks which made me comfortable with talking to people online, including people of the opposite gender to me (which very few, if any opened up to me in school). 

Later on, I told my real-life friends about my online friends and they didn't really seem to like the fact that I was talking to the online friends rather than them. Some called me 'anti-social' for not speaking to them. At the time I thought they were just desperate for attention and I continued spending more time with my online friends. There was also a lot of back-stabbing in my small real-life friendship groups, one of them would annoy the other and they would usually take it out on me. They ridiculed my interest in retro gaming (which I still like but not as ardent over) making up silly jokes about how I was stuck in the past. Unfortunately this kind of bullying, although it declined from there, was still active until the end of high school. I'm not trying to say that these people are horrible, they have, for the most part changed their ways and have matured.

What I am trying to say is that, this is quite important because it may reflect the reason people, especially teenagers and possibly young adults, may have much more pleasant experiences making friends on-line and perhaps how social media can be an escape to some from the horrific realities of their lives.

The spotlight effect

If you do not know what the spotlight effect is, here is a good post on what it is.
I often talked to the people I knew on-line in a very over-familiar way often saying things which I wouldn't even dare to say IRL. There was no kind of real life response like the intonation of their voices or facial expressions. Especially in 2014, I was incredibly rude and a lot of what I wrote was incredibly cringe-inducing, in fact felt like I had panic attacks when I was deleting that load of toxic waste. 

I became much more aware of this when I talked to some of these friends on a voice chat, I was often very shy and awkward and both of us were just waiting for one or another to speak. Even writing messages felt like I was talking to a brick wall, with me writing jokes and funny messages and the other person responding with emoticons. To an extent this can happen in real life, for example in sixth form I would tell a joke to someone in my class and they would giggle a little bit, the difference was that things felt much more like you could understand what the other person was thinking. I have found out the brain does not fully comprehend a "like" or an "emoji" and could signal a social approval which would make my brain associate the like with the fact someone cares about a joke I said rather than an actual social component.

Maybe they did, however due to the VC experience with a few of them I have some doubts, hence explaining the spotlight effect I had, when these people seemed to care much less about me than I had thought. The most embarrassing comments were usually the ones that were long lines of embarrassing jokes and nobody responding to them (in retrospect, I can see why), the worst thing about these is how it would be impossible to know how they would have reacted. In real life, this may happen to a certain degree but it is more obvious since they may have some odd look on their face or be very evasive towards you.

However in real life, what you say doesn't stay up forever unlike its on-line counterpart which would make the conversation in the latter all the more awkward.

Deep values behind real world interactions

Funny thing was that during the time I often used DeviantArt, I frequently thought of meeting my online friends in real life (to be honest I would still like to), I even spoke about it to them a good amount. Now I can really see why I wanted to meet them in person, because real-life interactions are far more valuable than writing/texting to them. I skyped one of my online friends and I really enjoyed it, I made a lot of jokes and we had a good laugh together.

Meeting up with people in real life, although it is a very hard thing to do and I even still struggle to this day with trying to set up a day out with some friends. I am hoping to get better at this, but what I have learned from being in Italy with the sixth formers was that I felt happy hanging out with them, the real-life interactions were very valuable even when I wasn't talking, just over hearing their conversations. Things like Twitter or Instagram do not provide these kinds real life interactions and rather replace them with a like or a re-tweet as social approval indicators.

As I have mentioned before in this post, there are also real-life indicators to if what you say was uncomfortable or odd, therefore there is far more of a way of receiving feedback. I can also see why my friends hated me messaging my online ones. Although they were quite aggressive and idiotic about what they were saying, I now know that they were on to something and my reflections now are a kind of "I told you so" moment.

Conclusion

I'm not trying to say on-line or real-life friends are intuitively bad, better or worse than the other. The real life friends I had have changed and have formed different opinions, in fact a few months ago I even hung out with one of the friends who called me anti-social previously and we had a good time. He also understood why I had these online friends; he seems to have these kinds of friends right now as well.

What I'm trying to say is how the online world can be such a great place to escape to and potentially meet great people to those who may have had bad experiences IRL like I did. The interactions feel like a nice dream, but eventually we will need to wake up to the cold-or-liberating reality that real-life interactions are far more rewarding than its on-line counter part.

And maybe at some point, you could schedule a day out to meet these online friends in real life and have a nice cup of tea or the such like.
With that being said, I will watch the sun descend into the sunset as my DeviantArt account does the same.

That's all from me!

P.S.
I don't know what deleting my DeviantArt will do to the traffic of my blog post, but if it reduces it, I'll try finding another way to gain traffic.

Why I quit twitter and will most likely never return.

Hello there!
I've decided to change things up a bit and start this year with something that isn't related to game development. This is something I would like to do more often, I like to present my own personal opinions on certain matters.
Anyway, on to the main topic of this post: Why I quit twitter.

The Preface

Despite the title, this post will mainly be about social media in general rather than just about Twitter, the reason I put twitter in the title was that it was the specific social media I quit. Now then, on to my main case.

I'm pretty sure we have all heard about social media at one point or another, we see brands like McDonalds or Pepsi all telling us to follow things like their Twitter or Facebook. We also see many famous people who have at least one form of social media as a way to get them closer to the general public by showing off the ice cream they had last night or that curry that they cooked lately or those god-forsaken selfies and more pictures of their food. There are also lots of people who are not celebrities who use social media in public places like the train or school, they tend to be the people who would consume such content by pressing the 'like' button.

What I am trying to say is that social media is virtually everywhere we see. And I too was hooked on this grand phenomenon at some point. My first opening into this world was when I joined Scratch c. July/August 2011. It was quite a cool way to interact with others and I even met a few people on there that I still see to this day. At the time, most of my family members had a Facebook account - I thought this was a fundamental bit of tech, however I was not old enough at the time and I hoped I would get one in the future. Hold on to this thought. It will be important later.

Twitter's Beguiling Charm

Starting from 2013, I decided to make a twitter account since I was pretty much inspired by the Minecraft creators at the time and I wanted a chance to speak to them, as well as using Twitter as a tool to fuel my own success. I don't completely know the specifics of why I joined Twitter but that may have been why. Regardless, Twitter became a new found hobby to me and my first step into the world of social media. I thought it was relatively harmless (possibly thanks to the kind environment of Scratch), however the reality could not be any further from the truth.

I would find myself often distracted by the people I looked up to i.e. Markuss Perrson, not to mention I also felt increasingly despondent what with all of the people's 'amazing' lives being presented on social media and them getting a lot of attention whereas nobody cared about my posts.
The reason I still used Twitter and did not delete it, was that I thought maybe some day, some day, in the name of some miracle, people would notice my posts. It was this false hope that kept me going, although I my use of Twitter started to wane.

It was not until I saw Dr.Newport's Ted talk on quitting social media, which I truly realized the hot mess Twitter caught me up in. When I first took a glance this video I thought "This video was quite a lot of rubbish, why is he telling me to quit social media".

However when I watched the video fully later on, I started to realize that Newport was on to something here. A lot of what he said struck a cord with me, and brought up thoughts that were in the back of my mind and I realized the reason nobody cared about my posts and why I would start to feel depressed when I looked at other people's positive images of their lives. I started to ready Cal Newport's blog "Study hacks". Through there, I also found out that the 'Like' button was actually a device used to exploit very basic underlying human traits like being accepted. The worst realization of this, was that these social media companies were using these things to make money. This revelation made me delete my Twitter account on April 2018 and I have no regrets over what I have done.

The last of my Twitter before it kicked the bucket. I wasn't born in 1999 by the way.

The Delusions Of Social Media

Since I'm probably the only one out of many people I know who came to this realization, I would obviously get some criticism when I would suggest that they get off social media. Thankfully most of their claims are quite flawed, and this would be a good time to push in some solid counter-arguments:

"You need social media to promote the product you are making"

This argument does seem to make sense since social media is very centralized, which could help you meet people on there easier than making your own domain. However this comes with a 'but', since loads of people use social media and are begging people to see their products, how will you be any different from the next person who uses social media?

 Believe me, some people on social media use some very dirty tactics like "If you like my stuff I will like your stuff" which makes me question the value of the promotions on social media. Plus, since social media is so focused on bringing people constant novel stimuli, how will people even stick around for long enough to understand what your product is, compared to some dumb posts or memes?

I think blogs are a better way of promoting something because they emphasize more on the quality of the content (possibly since it does not have a silly 500 word limit). I'm pretty sure a good blog post would be infinitely better than some tweet that is essentially "BUY OUR STUFF"! A blog post is more like trying to write a good quality book rather than a silly message.

"You need social media to keep up with your friends latest stuff"

This argument is far weaker, for a simple reason too: because I don't care about what my friends are up to.

I don't need to know that they were married or what they ate today - that's their own business not mine. Even I wouldn't share this stuff either, because it's my business not yours. If I want to communicate with my friends, I have things like Email, Discord, and Text message. The middle one is much more privatized than social media a bit like Skype and allows you to establish your own server with your own rules and perks, (as far as I have researched about Discord). These are enough to have me live and communicate with friends.

"Aren't video games the same thing as social media?"

This is an argument does have some truth embedded in it. Especially with mobile games like Candy Crush and the manipulation of the human brain it brings with it. There are games that function a lot like social media with the low effort needed to put in to tasks and trying to seriously hook the player in. However, this is not what video games should be generalized on, I think that video games should be viewed as an engaging hour or two long experience (given it is not in school or work hours) rather than a silly 5 minute distraction.
Social media on contrast is based on constant swiping and tapping on your phone. The amount of people I see tapping away on Snapchat like mindless drones is unbelievable. You can enjoy a video game in the same way as you can enjoy a sport or a book, they are great fun to play with friends or solo. Social media is probably the kind of thing you would do when you have dead air. It is filler to a void that could have been filled with otherwise more productive or enjoyable activities. Think about it, do you think constantly browsing through a feed and refreshing the page is much fun?
I wouldn't think so either.

"You use YouTube right? That's a social media!"

That's true, I use it to listen to music, look at certain tutorials if I'm stuck or a way of learning something new. However, do you know what YouTube has, that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat doesn't have? YouTube is a platform for sharing videos, which is a problem that these other four do not really solve. YouTube has given a way for people to share videos (which are an important form of information) which was very hard for people to do pre-YouTube.

With all that said, there is a catch to YouTube. Since YouTube has grown bigger over time, they introduced a partnership with numerous creators which allowed them to make money from advertising. This does not seem like too much of a bad thing at first, until you find out the fact that YouTube have algorithms that decide what content should be viewed more. Many youtubers criticize the fact that algorithms rather than human beings are doing the work of viewing content. They presume that algorithms are far less superior than human work and therefore causes a problem. However they could not be further from the truth; they need to consider the fact that a human needs sleep, food and hygiene whereas an algorithm does not. I think these algorithms are far more efficient that humans at doing tasks like these, however the main problem is not the algorithms, but what they are being fed. One example of a problem like this can be found here, when content creators are finding a quick 

But I still think there is some value on YouTube relative to most social media, and there is definitely a way to make YouTube an invaluable tool without the negatives it may bring. With most other social media however, there is very little value that is provided by these activities alone, possibly highlighting that these 'tools' may be incredibly overrated.

The over-exposure effect

I mentioned several points ago that I desired to have a Facebook at some point. As you may have figured out, that 'point' never came. I'll tell you why:

I have established that YouTube had something to offer whereas Facebook did not, I learned this lesson from using twitter because that much like Facebook did not have anything new to offer other than create a new 'cult' within the internet - but why are these social medias incredibly popular anyways? 

The answer could be to do with being over-exposed to such things. In my case a lot of who I saw had social media and they were posting a couple of funny and cool tweets, this gave me a reason to sign up for platforms like Twitter. This could have definitely been the reason why my friends and family signed up for these platforms which they would then submit their waking hours to. Although this problem exists far beyond social media, however the effects of it could be arguably much more drastic as social media is based around constant 'news' and 'updates', and then checking them around the clock - in a similar addiction to drugs, tabloid news, smoking and gambling among many other addictive habits. Whatever they are, that glance off your school's friend's public opinion you were just notified about (which you probably did not need to know about in the first place) seem to be making Zuckerberg and Spiegel (not "Spike Spiegel") lots and lots of juicy money. That's quite a business model indeed. 

Conclusion

Don't take this as me forcing you to quit social media, this is ultimately a choice you make. This is mainly a post to project my opinions and growing concern with such social media platforms. No better time than now would be when I post them. With that being said, I don't really care if you use social media or not, if it allows you to link to posts you find interesting or you use a bot to post links to your actual, more valuable content, then more power to you. But you are probably better off using social media for at most an hour or just quitting it entirely.

That's all from me!

2018: The Good and The Bad and Beyond

2018 for me was quite a good year, a lot has happened then. Looking back in the last post I wrote in 2017, what I wrote doesn't really reflect my current opinion. I was quite ambitious at the time, I am now more laid back than I was back then - I don't think I will fly to the moon anytime soon and I'm fine with that.
Now let's get to the summary of this year, with the bad going first (just to get it out of the way).

Bad things about 2018

• Last year I wanted to get better at maths in 2018 and sadly that has not happened much, although I did do maths occasionally, I did not do it to the extent I wanted to last year - and there is a reason why: I did not really have a great plan, there was nothing I did that had a solid goal to work towards unlike my programming or even learning Japanese. With those I set myself small goals with things like learning Kanji and trying to do a couple of mini-experiments or creating small projects that could be completed in under 4 months. I did mention that I wanted to learn maths to improve my programming and I still do, but I now think that I should perhaps integrate it into my programming... somehow. I also did not improve on art as much as I would have liked although I did a lot of pixel art for Bounty Hunter II and my other games. I didn't really do much digital art or traditional art (except for the lame little doodles I would do in my lessons or, less commonly, at home).

• Due to my immense ambition last year, I started to feel the pressure of demotivation at school as I have to worry about an increasing amount of things like homework and coursework. Don't get me wrong, I still want to do the best I can but I feel like the ambition has died down since last year, to the point where I was starting to question the value of school again, like I did in 2016. I don't want to get too personal here with school but I was never really a 'school person'. Look, I can understand that a formal education is valuable to employers and it is required in some jobs like medicine or academia (maybe this might change in the future with apprenticeships). But the way the education system functions is pretty flawed in my very humble opinion and I hope to do a blog post on my opinions on education maybe at some point next year (although I am aware it may get some backlash). But I definitely learned that putting effort into something because you were pressured to do it or just because you may have been 'good' at it, can make you more likely to burn-out when the extra load comes in. Anyone who is in high school take note of this!

That's all the major negatives or beefs I've had with this year, on to the positives, and thankfully there's a lot more of that then the negatives.

Good things about 2018

• I fulfilled my promises of completing both Bounty Hunter II and Red Blue Adventures: Crash n' Brawl in the time frame I set in 2017. I feel quite proud of this accomplishment - it's like I can set myself goals and work towards them as hard as I can and at the end be rewarded with an extra project or two under my belt. Both were quite a blast to develop and I have learned a lot from both projects; BHII is especially something I'm proud of since the game was the first one I've finished that actually has a clear story to follow and actual characters with actual dialogue. Although the characters are not what you would get out of an RPG game like 'Final Fantasy' - it's still a game with some sort of story to tell other than 'Defeat this bad guy and save the world'. It's more like the first Half Life game where a story is being told but there are a lack of stand-out characters (except for Gordon Freeman and the G-Man). I'd love to make another story-oriented game like this in the future - or perhaps I might already be developing one!

• I started to learn a new language which was Japanese starting in May, this can more-than make up for the fact that I have not practiced maths that much. Especially since the language is radically different from English in almost every way like the syntax and characters. It also taught me a bit about Mandarin Chinese through Kanji and I honestly don't see these symbols as weird signs from the ancient gods anymore. In fact I was thinking if I get decent enough at Japanese, I could have a bit of a go at Chinese - I could call it the Bay-Jing challenge! Anyway, I'm glad I finally summoned up the courage to learn a new language like Japanese, it helped me become more enthusiastic about learning a foreign language.

• Not only did I finish 2 games, but I also made more games than I did last year and I managed to push out their source code for the world to see. I also learned a lot making each of these games, which can show how I could accomplish a lot in a year. I learned a bit of  3d modeling, I finished a game in C++, I had a go at implementing a 3d design in a 2d environment (with partially working collisions) and I learned about the A* algorithm which are pretty cool accomplishments within themselves. I started to also learn some JavaScript (in which I'm making another small game on). I like to think that, what played a role on this was that I adopted a more focused and structured mindset on what I do, and try to not be distracted by anything that is not related to my work. This did help me a bit in school too, so I am seeing this play a role outside of my games. I also enjoyed my life a little more, which nicely leads into the next point.

• I started to really assess the value of things like social media or other things that may distract me. This was something that really affected me last year, I often went on things like twitter ,especially during summer of 2017, and I used discord (although I don't count it as social media) a lot during October of the same year. Later on I started to subtly develop feelings of anxiety and general feelings of unproductiveness. I didn't really contemplate these feelings until early 2018 where someone by the name of Cal Newport pointed out that spending lots of time on things like social media can really make you feel a sense of depression when you see someone showing off how cool their life is or how it can pull away from your work when you idly check if you have received any messages. I have adopted the name of this which is "check stimming" and it has been something I've been doing for probably longer than I'm aware of (since 2011 probably) when I would check my inbox for something cool.
  These things have been in the back of my mind for a while. As a result of this realization in late April 2018, and after a lot of consideration and archiving I decided to let my twitter account fly away. I had lots of doubts, indeed I may have lost some potential friends, I may have destroyed one potential area of advertisement for my games and blog, but I was using it less and less as time went on. I questioned the value of twitter, and I honestly don't regret deactivating it. No longer do I have the temptations to check my messages or the tweets of people I'm following, (not that I cared too much about them anyways). I'm considering doing the same for DeviantArt, but I feel like it's a bit too much of a bold move to quit it cold turkey. I can post art and I use it as a way of traffic to my blog. But if my blog has enough traffic, then I'll probably make the move to pull the plug on DeviantArt and de-activate it. I'm not considering quitting Discord anytime soon because it offers a more personalized way of communicating with people rather than Twitter or Facebook. I'm not quitting YouTube either since it allows me to upload trailers and possibly in-depth videos about my games or anything that I think deserves a video - though I would link them via my blogs or website rather than directly promoting them on YouTube itself, although if there is a less centralized alternative, I'd happily jump ship. Maybe in the future I could also blog about digital minimalism too. I've also created something that I would like to use in lieu of any/most social media in the future which I'll show in the next section.

• I've made my own website and hosted it, I want this to be the place that I check the most things and update. I see it as a way to amalgamate things like my projects, my source code, art and my blogs so I can have a convenient platform to share my kind of content on. It was also a great way for me to teach myself HTML and CSS (which are quite easy to learn but hard to master) and web-design in general.

Beyond 2018 and into 2019

• I would like to improve my Japanese skills further and have a more solidified approach to learning it, as in I have one method that is the most efficient I'd have for the present and stick to that. I'd like to know almost every Kanji that appears on Japanese newspapers or media by maybe mid-2019. I plan to put my main focus on sentince-mining since I've been adding sentence flashcards to Anki so I could learn about grammar rules on there. I really hope it will help, I hope it will.

• In terms of maths, I would like to create a better approach to it, perhaps in the form of making a game that contains some form of mathematics (i.e. a game that uses SAT collisions or something like what Sebastian Lague makes). I'm not too sure about art goals but I would like to post at least a few digital or traditional artworks next year, for the most part my art goals have pretty much been on hold this year in exchange for things like making my games which I don't mind too much. But don't worry I'll still keep drawing and won't stop any time soon. I don't count on too much of these things being improved but it would be a bonus to see them improved.

• In terms of making games, I would like to see around 4 or more games being finished next year, because I want to keep improving, pushing myself beyond my limits and creating new projects. One of them includes a project that has stemmed from 'Magnum Foundation' which is a successor to one of the games I have released so far, which I plan to release late in the year. I would also like to reveal the other project which is more ambitious and again is a successor. I also plan on pursuing projects that are not games, like websites or perhaps small little simulations and miscellaneous things (like something on Node.Js or a calculatior) but games are usually the easiest area to come up with ideas for.

• I would like to also get a real job, to get experience of the real world - whenever it's a minimum wage job like working in the Krusty Krab (RIP Stephen Hillenburg) or some weird retail store. I've never had a real job before so I think working at any kind of job I can get my hands on would be a good idea for me to gain some experience of the working world. I could also make a bit of money as well!

• Since I have a website up and running, I would like to improve on its looks and make it look more like a website that one may look up rather than something from 20 years ago. I would like to make it have an art section. I would like to just generally make it a more usable place for me to easily post content and I could possibly give it some traffic.

• I would also like to travel a bit more, yesterday I went on a hike to somewhere outside of London and let me be honest, I have no regrets. It was quite fun socializing with the two people I went with (who were not part of my family) and appreciating the countryside more. In March I'm going to Italy (Venice) on a photography trip so that's something for me to look forward to. As well as that I'd like to go on more hikes/visits outside of London whenever it is by myself or with the two people I went with. I'm strongly considering to go to the land of the rising sun A.K.A Japan in possibly the summer holidays. My dad (who is aware I'm learning Japanese) suggested to me the idea and insists that we do something towards it. I'm quite euphoric of these things. It's nice to go out and travel outside of that little well called "London", sure London is convenient and comfortable (for me at least), but I will get a better appreciation of other cultures and places if I go there. These travels would be far more rewarding than the instant gratification and novel stimuli of social media. Which can lead me into my final point before I end this blog and go outside to wait for the final minutes of 2018.

• I plan to re-hash the way I look at technology, by using it to deeply cultivate the things I truly love, to interact with communities, learn new things and stray away from shallow activities like check-stimming and use it instead to connect with the world at large. The true value of when I meet people on the internet is meeting them in real life and establishing a deeper relationship that is harder to replicate by merely technical means like going out or enjoying a movie. I don't hate technology, on the contrary in fact, but misuse of it like anything else can lead into disaster and as a result, a less pleasant life. In other words, technology should be used as a tool to be controlled to enhance our lives rather than letting them control us (although I'm less sure about AI that uses enhanced machine learning algorithms).

Conclusion

This year has been quite a blast, I learned a lot and thought about things that were subtly popping up in my head throughout the years. It was to a large extent, better than 2017 in my opinion. I feel like I'm taking my life in a more healthy and productive direction, and I would like to continue this in 2019. I am hopeful it will be a good year and hopefully I'll have more wisdom and knowledge than I do now.

By the way, did you know next year is also the final year of the 2010s and when the last of the 90s (let alone anyone born before 2000) babies will be in their 20s. Happy birthday in advance, to anyone born on the 1st January 1999!

With that being said, I hope you all have a lovely happy new year!

That's all from me!