What I'm In This For

My name is Matthew Campo. I finally took and scaled a decently recognizable picture that actually looks like me now. There was much point in introducing myself if I was unrecognizable. I'm finally getting the ‘ich’ out of way before I post on the new weekly topic tomorrow.

I joined this course admittedly because I need a "G," but I was holding out for something that had great relevance to my concerns, as a psychology major and cinema minor, and was excited to see that I had time for this class. The Internet and human population in conjunction have been compared to a tremendous, dynamic information processor. The Internet has also streamlined the ability for individuals to acquire information. Perhaps the most important thing I have learned for as a psychology major is how to engage my skepticism constructively, by searching the news and academic journals for reviews, meta-analyses, epidemiological studies, and experiments to answer the questions that I have. Some questions, however, I find are better approached simply by google and forum lurking, or with a combination of more formal and informal sources. I try to assimilate as much useful knowledge to answer not only academic questions but to live a better life. I try to reconcile my innate biology with the modern demands typical of a student/information worker: eating food in accord with human genetics, walking around outside as much as possible (while I’m studying), throwing in some bursts of physical activity, and standing at my desk. The only times I really sit are while eating (usually once a day in the evening) and in classrooms (so as not to obstruct anyone’s view, or have to stand way in the back or off to the side, but the standing thing may catch on eventually, like it has in Swedish workplaces). I like to cook. I also practice Wing Chun Kung Fu, here at B.U. I get the most emotional release through singing, but I also play the keyboard.

Although my focus is psychology, the classes I have taken for a minor in cinema have ended up helping me to think seriously about cognition and consciousness. My world-view revolves around my belief that individual conscious beings should be free from intense suffering against their will: this is my concise version of negative utilitarianism or bioethical abolitionism. Moral causes need to be pithy to gain traction. However difficult it is to implement it, I try my best to deduce appropriate actions from that first principle. Of course, due to bounded rationality, it is essential for all of us to use some heuristics in decision making. A pretty time-tested heuristic is the pursuit of truth. Science is a means by which I would like to pursue first principle that I describe, not an end in itself.

The problem that concerns me the most may unfortunately be the hardest problem that can possibly be pursued. It is even called the "hard problem" of consciousness: why we even have a subjective experience. While this may have been historically a purely academic query, because we can reasonably make inferences about the subjective experience of other people, and animals as well to an extent, this may be all going to change. The emerging field of artificial intelligence turns the hard problem into a genuine ethical dilemma. If there are multiple realizations of consciousness that can take place within architecture similar to, but not necessarily the same, as a natural biological brain, there is the potential to rather than usher in a trans/posthumanist utopia that many respectable scientists predict, end up create more immeasurable suffering, perhaps frighteningly, suffering invisible to an outside observer. I obviously have to find some niche in which I could hopefully contribute at least a shard of evidence to help in answering this most monumental question. Thankfully, the emerging field of cognitive neuroscience is making serious forays into the study of consciousness, and experts from multiple disciplines from computational science to quantum physics are making, perhaps essential, contributions to this cause. Perhaps in the future, philosophy of mind may finally have empirical data to test some of its most logical and intriguing, but currently untestable theories of consciousness.