My name is John and I’m a human trying to live optimally. This article gives a brief overview of my background and describes my plans for Optimality.
About Me
I’m a Software Engineer with about a decade of experience. I hold a Ph.D. in Economics where I wrote a dissertation on the Economics of Education. I am a social influencer. I mainly use my platform to help people #LearnToCode and #BreakIntoTech.
I expect the best way for you to get to know me would be to reach out to me directly. An About Me page, my social pages, email, legacy blog, open source programming work, and research are all accessible through my Social Homepage, here.
I previously blogged for about a decade at AfterEcon, and at Blogger before that. I found Blogger lacking the features that I was looking for. AfterEcon was built with WordPress, providing great ability to customize, but maintaining and marketing the site is burdensome.
Four Pillars of Optimality
My mental model for Optimality content follows four pillars:
I am trying to live a good life, and I’m simply sharing my notes along the way. This requires a concept of the good. At the highest level of abstraction, then, philosophy is a pillar of Optimality content.
I generally leverage economics as an application and analysis toolkit for my higher-order abstract concerns. Applied economics will be a staple!
Applying economics to my life has notably resulted in the allocation of much of my time and effort to tasks associated with programming and technology.
If that seems strange, stay tuned! After a few articles, I expect the connection will begin to become very clear, and you may find yourself becoming interested in similar tasks.
Content related to technology will be another pillar. This includes content aiming to help others learn and excel in such a career, discussion of best practices, occasional technical notes, and troubleshooting tips for particular issues I run into.
Policy discussions are the final pillar. Careful application of economics includes recognizing that a particular course of action may be optimal for an individual and not optimal for society. Discussing optimal social action includes discussions of public policy.