I'm a theologico-political investor trying to refactor justice and reason without patriarchy, so we can ditch intergenerational trauma but keep gardens, spaceships, life extension, and babies. This is interdisciplinary, involving:
* Theoretical work like integrating macroeconomics with CPTSD research: http://benjaminrosshoffman.com/the-debtors-revolt/
* Practical work like getting masks into prisons in early 2020
* Finding ways to help other people with interesting projects that might help us reassemble a humane technological civilization.

I don't need much as a guest - ever since I did a few months of intensive Iyengar Yoga, my hips are open enough that I can sleep comfortably as long as I've got a clean carpet, rug, or futon to sleep on and a good blanket. Anything more is an unaccustomed luxury. As a host I've got more to offer, no need to worry.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I want to get to know more people from outside my current network - who have different perspectives from mine, and see opportunity in reconciling different perspectives - since that creates more opportunities for exchange.

Interests

I'm reading Spinoza's Ethics and practicing Feldenkrais to improve the accuracy of my self-image as a human being. Qigong, Iyengar yoga, and Tai Chi were also helpful, but I hit diminishing returns.

I haven't coded in years but I went to computer camp as a child and wrote a space invaders style game in assembly code, I'd like it very much if my life circumstances justified a deep dive into a technical subject again.

My housemates and I have obtained an rTMS machine, which uses focused electromagnetic pulses to stimulate or suppress activity in targeted areas of the cortex. I'm already getting capacity improvements from this, and hope that we can use it to route around institutional trauma, to help some of our high-potential friends jailbreak themselves. Still in the exploratory phase.

My lover and I have a baby on the way, and we're trying to create a social web that provides an adequate environment for a new person to autonomously grow and learn, since we don't think that our needs can be met ethically through the ethos of middle-class guarded enclosures, schooling, etc. I'm heavily influenced by David Deutsch's Taking Children Seriously, and currently reading through Bryan Caplan's books in preparation for that.

• singing
• meditation
• traveling
• blogging
• coding
• music
• atheism
• qigong
• tai chi
• feldenkrais
• iyengar yoga
• spinoza
• rtms

Music, Movies, and Books

I learned a lot about history and the scientific mindset from Isaac Asimov - his fiction, like the Robots and Foundation series, but also his science writing, which doesn't just explain what "we know," but how people figured it out. This gave me a sense of what science really *is* and empowered me to use my own mind to make sense of things rather than just trying to repeat what I've heard. Natural Wonders Every Child Should Know, by Edwin Tenney Brewster, has similar virtues.

Other books and authors that influenced me:
- A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
- Jane Jacobs, especially The Economy of Cities
- Permutation City by Greg Egan
- Ayn Rand
- Spinoza, especially Ethics and Theologico-Political treatise
- Moshe Feldenkrais
- Lawrence Watt-Evans
- Eliezer Yudkowsky
- Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
- Plato, especially Theaetetus
- Alpha Chiang's Fundamental Methods of Mathematical Economics (this, plus the comic books published by the US Federal Reserve, contributed a LOT to my economics education)
- Lord of the Rings

At important parts of my life I've felt a profound connection to the songs of Leonard Cohen. I got into JS Bach's St Matthew Passion in college, and then after I saw a documentary (endorsed by Tyler Cowen) about Glenn Gould, I got into the Goldberg Variations, which have gotten me through a couple tough times.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Here's how I ended up in Harlem:

Matt Stoller did a good job writing about how when Boeing acquired McDonnell Douglas, the managerial nihilists in the latter managed to take over the company from the previously engineer-run Boeing, and hollowed it out for quarterly gains. Eventually Boeing cut enough corners in its new 737MAX that the planes started falling out off the sky, but even after the FAA grounded it, the stock price kept going up. Then the stock market turned sharply downward due to COVID, and a bunch of my friends shorted Boeing and made a nice pile of money.

On an open-ended phone call a week or two later, one of my friends asked how philanthropy could help with the looming public health crisis. The first response was that if we could do something to help (e.g. efficiently fill demand for PPE or medical devices), we ought to be able to do it on a for-profit basis. I started thinking out loud about what might be an exception. I'd seen a recent AOC tweet about terrifyingly unsanitary conditions at Riker's Island jail, and I noted that prisoners don't have access to money or the vote, and can't relocate to somewhere more to their liking, so they're no one's market and no one's constituency.

It turned out someone else on the call had worked closely with a major rehabilitation activist, Shaka Senghor, who was able to organize a small $100k distribution of 100,000 masks and other PPE through his connections in prison reform organizations, to a few prisons and jails where he could vouch for the prison wardens or state correctional bureaucracies.

We found that this created a bandwagon (Oprah signal boosted it, Madonna put in some money, and then Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey put in $10M through the National Sheriff's Association, which seemed like enough to handle that aspect of the crisis), but no one who participated in the bandwagon seemed interested in empowering people to do more like it.

Our follow-up efforts to get vitamin D and cheap BiPAP machines into hospitals and prisons were blocked, but in the meantime our work on prison reform got us connected with the NYC political scene; a candidate for Manhattan DA introduced us to a prisoner-mental-health activist in Harlem, who's now running for state assembly, and trying to start both a school for underprivileged kids in the Detroit area, and a working high-value-produce farm in the same area to give formerly or currently incarcerated people access to a new way of life and means of supporting themselves, in a healthier environment.

Teach, Learn, Share

I'm happy to teach what I know of Qigong, Tai Chi, and Feldenkrais modalities.

What I Can Share with Hosts

I'd love to talk philosophy, theory of change, or business ventures. If I bring my travel gongfu tea set I can make you some high-quality small-cup tea, make sure to let me know if that's a plus. Also happy to bring my electric percussion massage gun. Happy to cook as well if that's something you'd like.

Countries I’ve Visited

Canada, England, Estonia, Israel, Romania, Scotland

Countries I’ve Lived In

United States