User:JohnAdams1800

Disclaimer: This is my user page, not a blog, article, or ideological platform. I do not disclose my personal information on Wikipedia.

My main goal is not to right great wrongs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tendentious_editing#Righting_great_wrongs), but to document events and information. There are some exceptions, such as genocide denial and slavery, but in general I don't edit contentious topics.

I have a Bachelor's of Science in mathematics and statistics, and I can verify the results and proofs for most mathematics and statistics articles that are at the undergraduate college level or below. I don't focus as much on editing mathematics articles on Wikipedia, because I prefer using LaTeX formatting.

Link for graphs: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:RCraig09#Inequality,_social_issues

Wikipedia Articles and Projects
I regularly edit articles, mainly related to world events, both in the United States (my home country) and around the world. I am a regular editor of the pages War in Sudan (2023-present) and Myanmar Civil War (2021-present), because they are important armed conflicts that don't get much media attention but have an effect on the lives of millions of people.
 * In particular, I mainly use Sudan War Monitor as my main website for information on the War in Sudan, and The Irrawaddy as my main source for the Myanmar Civil War.

I do edit other articles, such as articles related to economics, history, and society. I usually don't edit articles related to contentious topics.

I don't usually edit mathematics articles because they are well-sourced and written, and mathematics hasn't change much in recent decades. Of the seven Millennium Prize Problems, only one has been solved. Fermat's Last Theorem took 358 years to prove.

About me
I'm a graduate university student in the United States, getting a PhD in mathematical statistics. I'm ethnically Asian American.

Side-note: My username is inspired by John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams, who were the only 2 presidents out of the first 12 that never owned any slaves. (Martin Van Buren freed the 1 slave he owned, and supported anti-slavery policies.)

Some other relatively unknown anti-slavery leaders I admire are Edward Coles (Illinois), Jonathan Jennings (Indiana), Harriet Robinson Scott (Dred Scott's wife), Daniel Henry Chamberlain (Massachusetts-South Carolina), and Henry Cabot Lodge (Massachusetts).

Spiritual beliefs
I am agnostic, and have seen too much tragedy to believe in happy endings. I agree with Indeterminism and absurdism, but not nihilism. Nihilism has been used to justify some of the worst atrocities, such as the Holocaust and Khmer Rouge.

Yet the existence of nearly-miraculous numbers such as pi (3.14), e (2.718), and the 50-50 sex ratio have convinced me that external forces do exist, but are not those prescribed in religions.

I don't believe in the afterlife. As Stephen Hawking said: "There is probably no heaven, and no afterlife either. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that, I am extremely grateful."

Favorite quote
“Out of every one-hundred men, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior and he will bring the others back.” -- Heraclitus

This is an analogy for the 1% rule in Internet culture over 2,000 years later.

Personal Philosophy
My political, economic, and religious views don't fit in an ideological box, and are guided by the maxims of truth, introspection, and pragmatism. I am an empiricist, and open to changing my mind on most issues.

Ideology should not be a litmus test, but adapted to particular circumstances. Confucius gave different advice to different people, depending on their circumstances.

Some people who have influenced my views include James Wilson (Founding Father), Mellow Melon (https://aops.com), MJ DeMarco (businessman), Adam Khoo (Singaporean businessman), Peter Turchin (historian), Matthew Syed (journalist), and Adam Conover (comedian).
 * For example, in my view the left-right political spectrum doesn't represent a worldwide perspective on politics, rather just the Western world. For example, much of the rest of the world has a shame-based culture, while the western world has a guilt-based culture: Guilt–shame–fear spectrum of cultures.
 * The United States has a two-party system, but much of the rest of the world with electoral competition has a multi-party system.

The Pareto distribution and Zipf's law from statistics have influenced my political and economic views.

My economic views can be classified as part of heterodox economics, and I focus on empirical evidence, not merely conjecture. One example includes the anchoring effect, where individual judgement is based on relative comparison, and has been used as part of the decoy effect.
 * In my opinion, mainstream economists do not take into account the realities of physical force, taxation, and borders. Before World War II, the right of conquest was the standard by which the world operated, and even today the Russian invasion of Ukraine highlights how physical force--blood and iron or the barrel of a gun is the foundation of political power.
 * They also don't take into account how money is a social construct, with no inherent value, and the only reason it carries inherent value is because we choose to believe it does. Inflation is due to an increase in the money supply, which is inevitable due to the paradox by which the fiat currency system and fractional reserve lending operate (P < P + I).

Side-note: I am neither a communist nor a fascist. Both ideologies have usually led to totalitarian regimes that have committed democide and genocide in their wake.

Influential Economists
Some economists who have influenced my views include Thomas Piketty, Ha-Joon Chang, Bryan Caplan, and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita.

Piketty inspired my views about the political economy, Chang and Caplan inspired my views about economics, and Bruce Bueno de Mesquita inspired my vies about political science. In particular, Capital and Ideology by Piketty is one of my favorite economics books.

Favorite Mathematics and Statistics Books
I am not commercially endorsing these books, and I haven't attached any links to the books (I'm not an affiliate marketer).
 * Complex Analysis by Lars Alfors
 * Napkin by Evan Chen
 * John Freund's Mathematical Statistics and Irwin and Marylees Miller.
 * Elementary Classical Analysis by Marsden and Hoffman.