michael_nielsen

Hah, want to critique my bio??

It's a bit of a generic laundry list. The most interesting bit to me (if I hadn't heard nice things via friends-of-friends!) would be the bit about history and anthropology, juxtaposed with the tech. But there's nothing unique in the bio.

Thanks, I appreciate it. It was my first pass, honestly reflects the subjects I think about most often, trying to give people an easy way to slot me into their pattern recognition...

I'm sure for lots of people that's great. But at least for me I'm often happiest finding people who I have a hard time slotting into my pattern recognition. Not all, of course, but a lot.

Difficult to write that without it sounding like it's a bit pretentious or self-righteous. But I think it's really just a personality characteristic, not something consciously chosen.

No, not pretentious at all, I really like that kind of person too, just not sure how to signal it in 280 characters yet. When I see an uninformative bio I basically just disregard it and look at tweets or other context to decide. Hmmm.

Well, for me, "The secure transport of light" or "Fallibilist. Optimist" etc are at least 10x "Worked with Thiel on VC". I know (a) this person is an original; and (b) I have some genuine overlap in interests with them.

For me, "Searching for the numinous" really sums up a lot of my life, in a way that's meaningful to me. And a surprising number of friendships have started with someone saying that they'd seen my bio, loved it, and they were, in some measure, doing the same with their life.