Kunal

This is an outline of my personal views on life. I hope to keep an open mind; this will evolve over time.

# Crime

America has way too many people incarcerated.
Prisons aren’t effective for re-integrating people in society.
We should reduce our tendency to punish, and instead focus on living together.
Many people do not feel safe around police. We should spend less on policing.
This is a race issue; prisons seem like the latest form of “force black people what to do”.
Violence is so often driven by disparity in basic needs.

New tools are most often funded and used by existing powers. They will give the big guys more power. This includes most scientific and engineering advances.
The technology is amoral. Your creation and use of technology is moral, because you belong to a larger society.
You are much less likely to get paid to “fix” systemic issues.
Tools can help with “how?”, but will not answer “what is important?”. (speed, but no steering)
Making “free software” is a moral action; code is not naturally a scarce resource and does not have to be commodified. This is just one piece of a system-level power struggle; see more here.

There is no single right way to live. There may not be any universal “right” way to live.
It is easy to forget that other people are as complex and self-aware as we are.
Most of our outlooks are shaped by our experience (vs innate), especially in a population-dense, human-designed place like a 21st-century American city.

Scientific research should not be paywalled (with few exceptions).
The “paper” is one of many ways to communicate new results.
All of our understanding is mediated through humans. We have only shared knowledge, not universal knowledge.
“Science” is not one thing.
How science “works” is still under debate; for example, here are my notes on Lakatos.

I am fallible. Teach me. Here are causes I support.