Ryan Boorsma

A father trying to piece together purpose and tools for life, then pass them on.

[Ryan Boorsma @RBoorsma]

@AnnaLeptikon This reads like a prayer to me, and though I'm not the one to address it, I can add my prayer for you.

[Ivan Werning @IvanWerning]

A friend just revealed to me that the middle name of Benoit B. Mandelbrot is Benoit B. Mandelbrot.

[Anna Riedl @AnnaLeptikon]

If you know any professional medical detectives you'd recommend, please send them my way. I still do not even have a diagnosis.

[Ryan Boorsma @RBoorsma]

@AnnaLeptikon Beautiful!

[Ryan Boorsma @RBoorsma]

@robinhanson Bit of character to it. Seems fine to me.

[Giga Based Dad @GigaBasedDad]

CS Lewis understood

[Lily Tang Williams @Lily4Liberty]

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY

YOU MIGHT not realize how fortunate we are as Americans to be able to celebrate love on Valentine’s Day. Before 1988, when I was a young woman living in China, it never even occurred to me that such celebrations should even exist.

During the Cultural Revolution and many years beyond that, love was a forbidden subject. We were only allowed to show our “love” in public when it was our love for Chairman Mao, the Communist Party, and the motherland. Even expressing love to an immediate family member would be criticized.

Couples caught holding hands together in public would be humiliated. My parents would call each other “male comrade” and “female comrade” instead of “husband and wife.”

Gender and beauty were canceled. Girls were required to wear unisex clothing and have approved hairstyles. Feminine clothing and behaviors were not tolerated. Wearing makeup was not accepted. Youth were strictly forbidden to date during school years.

The girls were encouraged to rat out suitors by turning over love letters they received from boys. The boys would then be lectured by the teachers, notes were sent home to their parents, with their violations recorded in their STUDENT FILE, a secret document kept on each student by the government.

I was forced to apologize in school for being too “sentimental” because I kept a photo album. When I had a “puppy love” during my middle school and high school years I told myself to keep it quiet, as even my friends would turn me in.

Romantic songs and art were banned. We were only allowed to sing red songs to show affection to Mao and the CCP. The artwork on posters and walls were about collective love and loyalty to our leaders, never to family or friends.

Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao were the focus of our directed “love.” For example, the lyrics to one popular song we had to sing in school went like this: “My parents are dear, but Chairman Mao is dearer.” Spouses were urged to report on each other, children were brainwashed to turn on their parents.

In my college freshman year, we were warned by the Communist Party Law School Secretary “don’t think about dating or marriage; focus on your studies to build China.” Of course, some of us rebelled against CCP rule, at least in secret.

Things started to change publicly when a romantic novel was published. It caused a national firestorm; the novel, “Love shall not be forgotten,” was about romance: a woman and a man who put their own happiness first in a society that values sacrifice. Finally, the dating bans and dancing party bans were lifted.

After I came to America, I read a book written by a defector and former personal doctor to Mao. He revealed that Mao engaged often in dancing parties and had as many young women as he wanted during the Cultural Revolution. At the same time, the powerless were being kept down by a party and told they should not live a “capitalist’s lifestyle.”

My family and I were eyewitnesses to the true communism that exists in reality. You see, the reality for the perfectible socialist man — is a place where utopian promises never come. It is, instead, a place of hatred, division, envy, oppression, poverty and suffering. It is a place where there is destruction of love, families, individuals, human nature and humanity.

Today, in America and outside of China, I am free to wear whatever I want; I can pursue beauty, express my feelings and opinions freely. And yet, ironically, I see too many young people in America idealizing socialism and communism.

Just recently I was informed by a young Twitter commentator “You did not survive REAL communism. Real communist society has never existed.” This is a shocking lie and propaganda.

The real communism I lived in is the same one that has exterminated nearly 100 million people this last century. I sometimes wonder if the victims of real communism are turning over in their graves because of what many young Americans now believe. Have these real victims of communism been forgotten so easily?

Valentine’s Day is a time I will always treasure. I am happy to see people celebrate love. Love is a part of family life and individual freedom, expression, and desire that must not be suppressed or eradicated.

So, I want to invite you to celebrate this Valentine’s Day with me, to celebrate one of our most profound, precious, and powerful human emotions — love. It is love that will keep alive the memories of those millions who died under communism.

(My op-ed was published by @UnionLeader in 2023)

https://t.co/Kpg8ljqlI9

[Ryan Boorsma @RBoorsma]

@AnnaLeptikon I like your whole post but I really hope people get to the climax:

"Or even better, entirely ignore the question and instead create the most virtuous and authentic vision of a life and yourself, purely for yourself, and aim towards it, the rest will take care of itself."

[Ryan Boorsma @RBoorsma]

@ID_AA_Carmack This makes me think that light is constantly delivering data to us.

It's like God has encoded light to speak to us, we just need to learn how to read it.

[Ryan Boorsma @RBoorsma]

@andrewmccalip This makes me think that light is constantly delivering data to us.

It's like God has encoded light to speak to us, we just need to learn how to read it.

[Ben Landau-Taylor @benlandautaylor]

Periodic reminder that "freedom of the press" doesn't mean that Journalists are a special class with special legal privileges and immunities. It means that any asshole can own and operate a printing press to mass produce and distribute whatever bullshit they want.

[Ryan Boorsma @RBoorsma]

@AnnaLeptikon Fingers crossed Anna.

I hope that writing and posting this helped with some of the mental anguish as well.

[Ryan Boorsma @RBoorsma]

@AnnaLeptikon @AndreasPuerzel At the gym and read this between sets. Great timing!

My favorite line: "If you aren’t a bit scared of your next workout set, it’s probably not stretching you to grow."

[Ryan Boorsma @RBoorsma]

@robinhanson Ouch... I just immediately think of how uncomfortable sitting on planes is for me.

Hopefully the Internet connection is reliable along the way.

[Pasha Kamyshev (wrote a book!) @PashaKamyshev]

https://t.co/nfM7NCopht

[Jeremy Wayne Tate @JeremyTate41]

Why do we do math in school?

When I asked this question as a kid, my teachers always told me, “You’ll use it one day.”

That’s almost always false.

Most adults are never going to be in a sticky situation with two binomials, thinking, thank goodness I can FOIL my way out of this mess. Most of us get by just fine without ever solving for x again.

And especially in an AI age, fewer and fewer people will “use math” in the narrow, practical sense.

But the origins of math have never been primarily about utility.

Math is formative. It trains the mind to love what is true, to recognize what is orderly, and to be drawn toward what is beautiful. It teaches us that the universe is not chaos, but something intelligible, something structured, something that can be known.

And you can see that truth made visible in the world’s most breathtaking churches and cathedrals: arches, vaults, domes, proportions, symmetry, harmony, light—geometry turned into glory. The mathematics that shapes a cathedral is not cold or sterile. It’s the language of wonder, carved into stone.

We don’t teach math because everyone will use it.

We teach math because it forms the kind of person who can see that reality has meaning.

[Andrew Côté @Andercot]

I will break down the narrative shift at WEF and geopolitical events as simply and succinctly as I can.

For decades the WEF championed a few things:
+ Open borders immigration
+ Globalization of supply chains
+ Climate change mitigation

European countries adhered to this the most closely. It got them:
+ Large unassimilated third world populations
+ Economic dependence on Russia and China
+ Hamstrung national economies and energy shortage

Regardless of your politics about the ideologies motivating the three main policy points, the implementation of the policies has been disastrous.

Meanwhile, China and Russia have not adopted an ideologically motivated set of international or domestic policies but instead have continued to play the global chessboard of realpolitik: calculated, super-rational decision making to increase their spheres of influence, consolidate domestic power, trade pawns for knights, etc.

Because China and Russia are rational actors they are all too happy to take up industries considered 'too dirty' or 'expensive' for the West:

-> Russia supplies the energy to Europe, such that European countries are directly funding Russia's war on Ukraine

-> China supplies the manufacturing to all the West, building up technological and manufacturing dominance in key military domains of electronics, power supplies, drones, robotics, semiconductors, etc.

The net-net:
+ This did nothing to help the climate, since China and Russia make no pretenses about meeting carbon targets of any kind

+ Globalization of international trade did not have the intended effect of cooling off geopolitical disputes, because the aggressors (Russia and China) developed a market position dominant enough such that the buyers (Europe and NA) became dependent on the lower price.

+ Third world immigration to developed countries has mostly led to large degrees of social unrest, as the liberal inclusive and egalitarian framework of Western countries is tested by newcomers with different values, that are not keen to assimilate, do not believe in gender equality, etc.

The policy points of the WEF should be contextualized as fairly reasonable goals to ensure a degree of economic interdependence among European states in the post WW2 era. How do we avoid another European continental war between France, Germany, England, Italy? The existing common cultural heritage of these countries has made open borders and economic interdependence among them quite nice and friendly in the EU itself. There is nothing the English love more than to vacation in France and complain about French people, and the French are glad to take their money and make fun of the English. They fail utterly when these are extended to trade relationships and population exchange with completely foreign cultures outside the European continent, which includes Russia because of its historical 'outsider' status, or China, both countries which see themselves as historical underdogs competing against 'the West' for their rightful place as leaders of the global order.

How has North America reacted to this divergence of ideology and reality?

Right now the US and Canada are showing a pure split, which becomes framed as "adherence to the existing international system" or "America First Nationalism"

-> Canada is doubling down on the 'international system' and leaning further into international trade dependence, in this case with China, under the false assumptions that China has similar motivations as Canada: mutually beneficial trade that strengthens both countries. China does not want this from Canada, it wants a Vassal state at the American border with looser borders as a base of operations to conduct espionage, sabotage, information gathering, IP theft, cyber crimes, etc. China's biggest dream in this scenario is carte-blanche to deploy a large number of autonomous robotic vehicles and drone platforms as well as digital infrastructure that can pipe information back to Chinese servers to completely map the critical infrastructure it would need to quickly disable in order to gain lead position in a hot-war with USA.

Canada's moves are easier to fit into existing international narratives, but worse for its citizens and future geopolitical independence.

-> USA is doubling down on its 'America First' rhetoric, which is really a re-statement of realpolitik: that America will pursue its own national priorities as a self-interested rational actor, which means disregard for international law and convention when it suits them, abrogation of trade agreements when convenient, territorial expansion and aggression, military operations against foreign adversaries, and so on. This is extremely polarizing: among American nationalists they see it as a return to virtue and manifest destiny; among Globalists they see it as jingoistic expansion and the end of Pax Americana.

Whatever the outcome the previous International System failed in its objections.

The climate sacrifices made by Western countries did little to nothing to appreciably limit carbon emissions or global warming in the context of a rapidly industrializing Global South;

Multiculturalism and widespread immigration has created greater degrees of social unrest internally and along with supply chain interdependence has not created the economic and cultural exchange to prevent new military conflicts from arising;

In more simpler terms, the International System was only a stable and bound configuration with buy-in from all parties; as America defects, Western countries will either need to also pursue their own version of national realpolitik, as I expect Denmark and Germany to do, or else align themselves with a new superpower, as Canada has done with China.

[Ryan Boorsma @RBoorsma]

I have been through extended periods of unknown medical diagnosis as well (though not so severe, but consistent pain for more than a year). I hope you find resolution, however it may present.

I have been enriched by your posts in the short time since I learned about you. So hopefully you can take heart that you are making a positive difference.

[World of Engineering @engineers_feed]

“Projects we have completed demonstrate what we know - future projects decide what we will learn.”
- Dr. Mohsin Tiwana