About Eric

Agnostic. Skeptic. Instrumentalist. Mathematician.
Liberal. Pacifist. Vegetarian. Philosopher.
Quiet. Thoughtful. Caring. Inquisitive. Loving.

In a crowd, I either stand out or am invisible, depending on your point of view. I’m the guy who sits in the corner by himself, writing in his journal about the people he sees around him. I’m the guy who reads philosophy on the train and plays his DS in the restaurant. I’m the guy who wears all vegan fair trade clothing and goes to work everyday as an activist, trying his best to make the world a better place. I’m the guy who spends fourteen hours in front of a computer screen working on social media for a nonprofit and then unwinds by playing an rpg. I’m the guy who submits papers to academic journals for fun and writes creative nonfiction on the side that never gets published.

Yeah. I’m that guy.

What I’m Doing With My Life

My life is one of service. I want the world to be a better place, and so I strive to do my part in making it that way.

My main job is as Webmaster of Share Our Strength, a national nonprofit dedicated to ensuring no child ever has to go hungry. I do all the design, most of the development, and about half of the copywriting. I also spend a lot of time working on social media for the organization.

My second job is as a student. Although not currently enrolled in any curriculum, I expend a lot of effort to ensure that I continue learning every day in the field I am most interested in: philosophy. My plan is to get a doctorate in the field of normative metaethics, which, if you stop and think about it, is a pretty good pun. Although I am not sure yet, I may also follow up that degree with a second doctorate in mathematical logic. Whether or not I do this is dependent on how I feel after receiving my first degree.

My third job is as a volunteer. There are many things that I can do in this world to make it a better place, and a lot of my spare time is spent on doing my best to ensure that that better world comes into existence.

My fourth job is as a gamer. Although I am not paid to do so, I exert a huge amount of effort in completing games of all kinds. It’s just one of the things that I do.

And, finally, my fifth job is as a writer. I’ve been published in a lot of different places, mostly online. I’ve had multiple articles in print magazines across the country, two nonfiction books that no one’s ever read, countless blog entries across personal, corporate, and nonprofit blogs that you’ve never heard of, and physical private journals I’ve written in sporadically that date as far back as 1983.

At heart, I am a philosophy person with a pronounced bent toward mathematics and logic in general. Yet I possess a strong sense of right and wrong that is not justified, but only felt. It is this moral sense that predominately guides how I live my life.

I also have a strong passion for writing. It is only through the written word that I am fully able to best express myself; due to a slight speech impediment and an infamous knack for forgetting suitable synonyms unless I am seated w/ a pen in my hand, I will never be much of a speaker, however well I may write speeches.

Despite these quirks, I remain a hopeless romantic–a lover of love itself–constantly looking forward to the day when my hopelessness will be disproved by counterexample.

I am vegetarian, with aspirations toward veganism; I am a fervent pacifist, with ideals far from what is practical in today’s world; I am socially liberal, with leanings toward a Tolstoy-style anarcho-socialism; I am a determined skepticist, a strict agnostic, and a beleaguered instrumentalist; I am argumentative, painfully outspoken, and dreadfully afraid that my subconsciousness is but temporarily hiding a closet capitalist nature, fully bent on rugged individualism and the justice of the capable serving above and without the worthless.

I am Eric Herboso. I am me, and no other. I am.

— Eric Herboso, 2007

 

What I’m Interested In

I am an instrumentalist, a skeptic, a pacifist, an agnostic, and a vegetarian in preparation to go vegan. I am also nihilist toward even nihilism, and my favorite hobby is arguing against whatever my conversational companion is most passionate about. (c;

Politically, I lean very far to the left, somewhat idealizing Tolstoy-style anarcho-syndicalism. Of course, I’m also a realist when it comes to political issues, so I mostly end up supporting Greens when they can win, and Democrats when I’ve no other choice. In this season’s U.S. Presidential race, I’ve supported Ralph Nader, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, and, thankfully enough, Barack Obama. (Please note that despite giving my support to these candidates at various times, there is much I disagreed with with each of them at all times. Like Gravel’s fair tax, Kucinich’s ET position, and Obama’s Israel policy.)

I enjoy rpg video games, Magic:tG, Diplomacy, Go, Shogi, StarCraft, Smash Bros., Animal Crossing, Xenogears, Heroscape, and blogging. I also love to read and work with the philosophy of mathematics, reverse mathematics, model theory, logicism, confirmation holism, and analytic philosophy. My philosophy of science interests also extend to brane theory, where I am currently working on publishing a small paper; and I am attempting another paper in consequentialism in metaethics. Additionally, I find straussianism extremely interesting, though not entirely plausible.

I love to read, and can’t get over Howard Zinn, Douglas Hofstadter, Noam Chomsky, Richard Feynman, Stephen Jay Gould, and many others in nonfiction; nor do I ever tire of Hal Clement, Orson Scott Card, Ayn Rand, Dave Eggers, T. S. Eliot, Diana Gabaldon, George Orwell, Lewis Carroll, and many others in fiction. I have a lot of favorite books, though which I like best seems to change a lot based on whatever classic I just finished. My current favorite (due mostly to the fact that I just discovered it last week) is The Perks of Being a Wallflower. (Please note that just because I love reading Rand and Card doesn’t mean I approve of being an asshole or a homophobe respectively. Written works can be enjoyed no matter how base the author’s ideals may be.)

I also love to write, as is evidenced by this very blog.

What I’m Really Good At

Analysis. No matter what situation is placed before me, when pressed I can speak intelligently on the situation in favor of whatever vantage point is required.

I tend to think a lot, especially on topics that most people consider not worth thinking about. One of my favorite thoughts is on why one plus one always seems to equal two. Another is how can I reconcile what I believe is right with what I do every day? I spend a lot of time on these questions.

The First Thing People Usually Notice About Me

That I’m quiet.

In public, I tend to stick to myself. I write in my journal a lot from a distance. I observe and learn and think.

When one on one, however, I get the chance to open up quite a bit more. Then, I suppose, what sticks out most is how I talk. I’m not quite as stuffy as I am in my writing, but it’s close enough to be noticable.

The Six Things I Could Never Do Without

The official list of things I cannot do without changes over time with me. But there are a few extra-special items that always remain on the list, no matter what. These special few items are listed below.

  1. Human interaction. Preferably live interaction, but at times I’ve had to make do with only reading the words of others and responding to them in my personal journals. This is of prime importance to me.
  2. Books. Human interaction by itself is quite fine, until you really want to delve into a topic. Then most people are poor substitutes for a good book. Perhaps it is a form of escapism, but when life really starts to grate on me, I generally turn to books.
  3. Writing implements. Reading is all well and good, but it is naught but a monologue if you can’t respond to what input you receive. Even when I read fiction, I love going over what I’ve read and exploring the universe time and time again in my mind. But since the authors aren’t usually present (nor others who share my literary tastes), I tend to write my thoughts to a nameless ’somebody’, of whom I know not the identity. Perhaps I am writing to ‘the one’, or maybe I am writing to no one at all. But I strongly suspect that I’m really just writing for myself.
  4. Good bedsheets. I know that sounds silly compared to the above, but once you’ve gotten used to high-quality bedding, switching to the coarse sandpaper they sell at Wal-Mart just doesn’t cut it. Even on a blow-up bed, I always use high thread count sheets.
  5. The internet. What’s strange is that I was introduced to the internet in 1993 on AOL 1.0, and so for much of my life did in fact live without the internet. Yet whenever I am away for longer than a couple of weeks, it starts to get to me. My social interaction level is very low compared to most people, but I make up for it by doing things online. If that makes any sense….
  6. Nature. I adore going out into the wild to enjoy it for its own sake. If I were for some reason unable to do so any longer, I don’t think I’d be the same as I am today. Nature relaxes me in a way that few other things can.

I should mention that although masturbation was not mentioned in this list, were the number extended to a few more items, it may very well have made the cut. Still, I credit myself for realizing that my bedsheets are more important to me.

I Spend a Lot of Time Thinking About


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On a Typical Friday Night, I am…

Reading. Or writing. Or maybe playing a video game. I don’t really schedule out these things. Sometimes I work pretty late, too.

But if I’m lucky, maybe I’ll have gotten up enough courage to actually go out and meet someone new through crazyblinddate.com or something.

The Most Private Thing I’m Willing to Admit Here

Who I am today is not who I once was. I used to have opinions and do things that I now consider quite abhorrent. If you have a problem with the fact that I’m a real person with a past and everything, then you probably shouldn’t talk to me.

Also, since most people consider contact info to be private, I guess I’ll put that here as well. My preferred contact method is by e-mail at EricHerboso@gmail.com, though you may also call me at 202.368.5365 (that’s 202-foul-dolt) anytime over the weekend; I love speaking to new people, so please, go ahead and call me.

If IM is more of your thing, I’m generally online only through GTalk (EricHerboso) and AIM (EricHerboso), though on occasion I’ll rarely sign into other services as well.

For additional info on me, please feel free to do a search on “Eric Herboso” in google. As far as I know, I am the only person with my name that’s findable online, so every search result you get will be of me in one form or another.

Below are a few examples of some of the content you can find of mine online.

For more info, please feel free to data-mine the online accounts I have linked in the sidebar on the right under the heading: “Find Me Elsewhere“.