“Though he has made a swift ascent of the ivory tower, Bostrom didn’t always aspire to a life of the mind. ‘As a child, I hated school,’ he told me. ‘It bored me, and, because it was my only exposure to books and learning, I figured the world of ideas would be more of the same.’ Bostrom grew up in a small seaside town in southern Sweden. One summer’s day, at the age of 16, he ducked into the local library, hoping to beat the heat. As he wandered the stacks, an anthology of 19th century German philosophy caught his eye. Flipping through it, he was surprised to discover that the reading came easily to him. He glided through dense, difficult work by Nietzche and Schopenhauer, able to see, at a glimpse, the structure of arguments and the tensions between them. Bostrom was a natural. ‘It kind of opened up the floodgates for me, because it was so different than what I was doing in school,’ he told me.
But there was a downside to this epiphany; it left Bostrom feeling as though he’d wasted the first 15 years of his life. He decided to dedicate himself to a rigorous study programme to make up for lost time. At the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, he earned three undergraduate degrees, in philosophy, mathematics, and mathematical logic, in only two years. ‘For many years, I kind of threw myself at it with everything I had,’ he told me.”
Ross Anderson’s piece in Aeon on Bostrom (2013).
It reminds me of and inspires myself; I was politicised at a similar period, and always feel like I’m ‘catching up’.
“Though he has made a swift ascent of the ivory tower, Bostrom didn’t always aspire to a life of the mind. ‘As a child, I hated school,’ he told me. ‘It bored me, and, because it was my only exposure to books and learning, I figured the world of ideas would be more of the same.’ Bostrom grew up in a small seaside town in southern Sweden. One summer’s day, at the age of 16, he ducked into the local library, hoping to beat the heat. As he wandered the stacks, an anthology of 19th century German philosophy caught his eye. Flipping through it, he was surprised to discover that the reading came easily to him. He glided through dense, difficult work by Nietzche and Schopenhauer, able to see, at a glimpse, the structure of arguments and the tensions between them. Bostrom was a natural. ‘It kind of opened up the floodgates for me, because it was so different than what I was doing in school,’ he told me.
But there was a downside to this epiphany; it left Bostrom feeling as though he’d wasted the first 15 years of his life. He decided to dedicate himself to a rigorous study programme to make up for lost time. At the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, he earned three undergraduate degrees, in philosophy, mathematics, and mathematical logic, in only two years. ‘For many years, I kind of threw myself at it with everything I had,’ he told me.”
Ross Anderson’s piece in Aeon on Bostrom (2013).
It reminds me of and inspires myself; I was politicised at a similar period, and always feel like I’m ‘catching up’.
I always feel like I’m catching up too.
Link to the article, for the lazy