Category: Personal

Hello, and thanks for checking out my website!

It’s been quite a while since I last owned mollygraham.net and it’s pretty strange to think about all that has happened between then and now. Back in 2010, I was in Vancouver earnestly trying to develop my skills as a seamstress and clothing designer, and this site used to have images of my first attempts at creating my own brand. Oh how the times have changed…

This post will be a little more personal than the others, just because it’s my first and I want to set the stage for both who I am and the ideas I intend to pursue. For the most part, future posts will be centered around philosophy and ideas about artificial intelligence and human cognition.

However, please allow me to briefly introduce myself.

Fashion design (actually the arts in general) is ruthlessly cut-throat, and at some point I realized it would require more dedication than I was willing to provide. It was not for a lack of energy did I relegate this skill back to a hobby; I just had a feeling there might be something better suited to my abilities that I could pursue instead. Actually, it was the need for a website which lead me to learn about HTML and CSS, and eventually it introduced me to programming in general. Since I tend to be somewhat pragmatic, and knew this field was secure and paid well, I decided to take courses on software development at BCIT. I was extremely lucky and managed to land two awesome developer jobs after a year of part-time courses. I worked as a junior programmer for almost a year and a half, and learned a lot about computer science and technology, as well as aspects of working at medium to large-scale companies. However, Vancouver’s dreary weather was starting to gnaw at my psyche, and I had always been interested in living in Toronto, so off I went. It was while I was pursuing programming jobs here that I decided to apply to the University of Toronto, but this time for psychology.

While working at Western Union Business Solutions, I was introduced to the idea of artificial intelligence. We actually had an office book club (I hope it still lives to this day) which would meet for an hour every Friday to discuss a book relevant to software development. After we finished one on object-oriented programming, it came time for a vote and Hofstader’s brilliant Godel, Escher, Bach was chosen. Not only did it blow my mind, but it lead the conversation to discuss AI. Immediately the notion captivated me and I had to know more. This had to be the single coolest idea I had ever heard about. Moreover, one of my colleagues (… Ari? I have been struggling for many years to remember the name of the person who said this) mentioned that consciousness might be a recursive function. BOOM. Since I already had a decent understanding of psychology due to taking it in high school, I could kind of see how this was possible. I had to pursue this.

So when I enrolled at U of T, I figured I’d major in psychology and minor in computer science. The faculty of computer science wasn’t exactly the same practical, hands-on approach that the polytechnic offered, and feeling disillusioned, I switched to philosophy to round out my theoretical understanding of both the mind and computer science. It turned out that I actually love philosophy, and had been quietly philosophizing for most of my life without even realizing it. I just love reading new perspectives and ideas, so I felt right at home writing essays about abstract topics.

It was in third year when the idea hit me. I envisioned a rough outline of an account for how the phenomenon of consciousness came into being, ontologically speaking. Furthermore, these ideas could be isomorphically implemented into computers or machines. After years of feeling directionless and unsure about what I wanted to pursue, I finally “felt my calling.” Carl Jung was spot on: “People don’t have ideas, ideas have people.”

Now, it’s my last term in my fourth year and I am taking a seminar in philosophy of mind which will give me the chance to write about these ideas, and better yet, get feedback about them. Eventually I will go on to do a graduate degree, but I haven’t done any research about it yet. After I graduate, I will take a year to work and write, as well as devote time into my other hobbies, like sewing and practicing the cello.

I apologize for the rambling autobiography, but I wanted to give my readers a sense of where I’m coming from. I also want to document the thoughts and feelings I have had over the last several years, perhaps as a way to appreciate the growth and changes I’ve been through. This is just the beginning though; the engine has been fueled and I will do whatever it takes to build a conscious machine.

Anyway, the rest of my entries will not be about my life, and if I do sprinkle in my personal stories from time to time, I will keep them brief and modest with the aim to relate them to wider contexts.

Thanks for reading!