Matt Galindo

Carrying on the work I started in my Bachelor’s, which includes a paper on Analytical Philosophy and Action Theory, I am currently writing a book which models action as a scope of modal potential within which an agent (or player) moves discretely within an atomic game. I attempt to show how action as we know it is grounded metaphorically in the very basal empirical studies of physics and evolution, mediated by Information Theory and Computation. Viewed as merely a complex scalar of a more microscopic game, rationality extends the same logic employed by agents with a much more limited modal scope, resulting in confusion around how to frame action at various levels of analysis.

This book will attempt to weave these disparate strands of research into a wholistic interface capable of reconciling the various solutions to the Problem of Action, or as Frankfurt put it in his 1978 paper by the same name: “...[how to] explicate the contrast between what an agent does and what merely happens to him.” To do so, I evoke Anscombe’s Intention, formalizing a Counterfactual Substitution Test and Intentionality Index that will ideally mediate both the metaphysical and intuitional aspects of Action Theory.

I believe one of the most efficacious ways to study the structure and meaning of language is to examine how it changes—both in patternistic ways and as derivative examples. In the current age, there is no more abundant landscape for discovering language mutations than the internet. The question which I originally posed in a Bachelor’s research project on The Interpretability of Internet Language was this: what features would be relevant to apprehend such that, if properly labeled, they could be used to train a supervised model capable of predicting which novel terminologies would “catch on”, or to what degree they would be interpretable. Moving forward, I plan to conduct the study proposed in the final chapter.

I have been writing creatively for over a decade. My published work spans the literary genres of poetry (Caught in a Webb, Genesis, Instagram), including Chinese poetry (新眼同途), as well as Science Fiction short stories which are accessible on my Subreddit.

I chose the alias “Nick Weathers” and the subsequent publishing moniker “Weathers Writing” on a whim, and it became instantiated after working with a friend to develop a logo that I really liked. My pièce de résistance is a novel called The City which has been many years in the making, and likely will be many more (not to worry, as you can see, I have many other projects to keep me occupied in the meantime!). I also have a Weathers Writing Instagram, although there is currently no content posted.

One of the primary reasons I wanted to learn computer science was to bridge the practical gap between language teaching and language learning. One glance at my resume and you’d find a whole lot of teaching and tutoring work, which isn’t an accident. I love helping others learn, especially with regard to language. In terms of learning, I’ve been studying Chinese for over seven years now, and I’ve found that the number of exceptional online resources is minimal. Therefore, I wanted to develop my programming literacy to the point where I’d be able to create dynamic web applications, mini-games, and text-based learning modules capable of driving learner engagement and proficiency in a way that other softwares simply don’t.

My more immediate projects are based around simple image and word generator tools which can be mixed-and-matched, sentence builders, and a more involved racing game. While the work for these is still in its infancy, you can view my progress as I push commits to my Github. Longer-term, I want to bake in AI in such a way that can tune generative materials (including in-game activities) to user-specific proficiencies. I believe that context-specific approaches like these will become common across many fields over the coming years.

In addition to the projects mentioned above, I also have an interest in Computer Vision and web-games more broadly. If you’re interested in seeing my progress on these fronts, check out my Waldos and React Game repositories on my Github.

In terms of hobbies, I love to cook different kinds of cuisines (American, Italian, Thai, Cantonese, Mexican, etc.), exercise (lift weights, run), and take walks through nature—especially along the coast and through trails near my house. I also love hanging out and playing games with my friends and family.