Almost a Year into Fatherhood

I can't believe it's almost been a year since I became a father! There have been ups and downs throughout but the experience has been overwhelmingly positive. My daughter is just at the age where she can stand on her own and enjoy simple things like going to the park and social events with friends, family, and our community. I can already see her personality coming out little by little and she is, and hopefully will continue to be, a wonderful person. My first identity is now being a father, and being a scientist has shifted into my second identity. I am thankful to be a university professor since it does give me more flexibility to work from home and at least be around for parts of the day, plus I get four months off teaching, giving me more time to be with my daughter.

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My Thoughts on the General Forms of Knowledge

As a social constructivist, I believe that most knowledge is socially constructed. However, I have concluded that there are three forms of knowledge: 1) Empirical Knowledge, 2) Social Knowledge, 3) Self-actualized knowledge. Below I will briefly summarize them: 1) Empirical knowledge can be thoughts (or symbols) based on experiments or observations of nature that can describe and predict some phenomena. In principle, this type of knowledge should be generally accepted by all people, due to clear cut evidence needed to support any claims based on empirical knowledge. However there are many people that reject empirical knowledge due to having other beliefs (Self-actualized knowledge) that they feel are more “true” to them, even if there is no empirical evidence for them. By definition we are all ignorant until knowing truth, so for many people, a lack of empirical knowledge comes from the lack of interest in science or understanding the true nature of our universe. 2) Social Knowled...

The Silent Civil War

We often think of civil war as a violent split—one faction of society breaking away from another. But I’d argue that civil war can take a quieter, more internal form. The current federal government of the United States, under the leadership of Donald J. Trump, has taken actions that resemble a war on its own institutions. Key democratic pillars—such as the Department of Justice, the judiciary, and the rule of law—have been undermined through politicized appointments, public attacks on judges and prosecutors, and refusal to comply with oversight mechanisms. These aren’t isolated incidents. They are part of a pattern that echoes authoritarian shifts seen in places like Hungary under Viktor Orbán, Turkey under Erdoğan, and Israel under Netanyahu’s successful judicial overhaul campaign. These actions threaten to slow innovation, weaken economic growth, limit public services, and degrade overall quality of life for lower class people. This quality was already under pressure due to widesprea...

General thoughts on Politics

I'll be honest, I never cared the least bit about politics before my first international trip to Europe in 2017. In Europe, I found that people speak a lot about politics, which was the topic of many of my discussions with strangers. After having so many interesting conversations about US politics with Europeans, I came to realize just how important politics really is and how little I knew about it. After returning to the US from Europe, I immersed myself in several political classics like Plato's The Republic and Marx's Communist Manifesto along with following different channels that talk about politics, geopolitics, economy, and history on YouTube. I really wanted to gain some insight as to why different countries have different systems and the history behind them and how they got there. As a result, geopolitics has become one of my favorite subjects to study. I think that everyone should be more informed about domestic and international politic...

My Thoughts to the World

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