Humanistic science.

Being a software engineer and science freak in general, I quite like numbers. But it has not always been like this. I used to truly hate maths and everything related. It appeared cold, brutal, without any content or emotion within it.

Before it was too late for me, I dug deep into informatics, computer science and all information technology in general. I started rediscovering maths again, from an entirely different perspective. Mathematics as a part of this world, a pretty universal language for describing things. It started to fascinate me, even though I've never been one of those naturally talented people that just look at a theorem to make it prove itself.

I learned a lot about programming, engineering, building things in general. After some time, I found that something that I used to hate have become my greatest passion and fascination. Information science, computations and all that stuff - I really got into it.

Now I am a software engineer. I like building systems, writing code, applying working methodologies. I am also a "do-it-yourself scientist", ready to conduct some experimental computations on my own. Books, videos and podcasts about any sciences are pretty much for me, and I am always interested in learning new stuff.

So what is this all about? Well, my perspective on numbers is, as I discovered some time ago, quite different from the common one. Maybe it comes from my past hatred against mathematics in general, but I feel like a science-humanist, so to say. What do I mean by that?

I try to see the world as numbers. I try to understand the information that is running inside and around us, from tiniest particles to spacecrafts, from protein folding to stock market analysis, from simplest procedures to getting into our brains. Information is everywhere, but seeing it this way does not make the world easier or poorer in any way.

While there are some certainly complicated procedures we pretty much understand, like some aspects of evolution, others remain mysterious and undiscovered, even if some "scientists" say otherwise. Because what are emotions? Nah, what are thoughts on their own? What is the essence of thinking and feeling? Or maybe the right question is is there anything like that?

I am not trying to say that maths is hopeless when it comes to humanism. Just the opposite. On the other hand, I am the last person to say "emotions are just some chemical reactions in your brain", which I find quite ignorant. What I am interested in is discovering how things that we consider to be humanistic or natural are built on some scientific foundations. And I like to dig deep, so I quite often get to philosophy, rather than pure fact-driven science.

What I want to write about here is pretty much everything related to numbers that I find interesting. I hope there will be some programming, computations or methodologies. I want to throw in some statistics (and why some of those are useless) and probabilities. I want to share the stuff that I come across and become fascinated with or just the opposite, find it misguiding or just wrong. And because I like to see the world as numbers, everything can fall into that "stuff" category.

If you are still reading this, I sincerely hope it is going to be worth it.