James Cook

A picture of me taken by Henry Lin on our 2009 theory retreat in March.

I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science at UC Berkeley in May 2014. I worked at Google from 2014 to 2019 and Amazon AWS in 2022 and 2023. Currently I'm working on my own projects; maybe I'll post about them here.

Papers

My résumé lists some highlights.

Programming

Blog

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In the beginning, there was Everything. And James cried out in terror, for it was too much: and He cast everything away, so that there was Nothing.

And James was sad, for He had destroyed all of existence. A tear flowed out of his eye, and He spoke to the tear:

``You are all that exists, for I have cast all else away. I give you all that I am, that you may some day forgive me for destroying Everything.''

And James poured his essence into the tear, giving it the powers of Music and of Mathematics and of Order, till there was nothing left of James and He had given all his essence to the tear. And the tear was silent for immeasurable time as it reflected on what it had been given.

And the tear resolved to create Matter and Time and Space: so it became a great point of light, and suddenly it exploded. And thus there was Space, and it was filled with Matter which moved through Time. All this the tear brought forth from Music and Mathematics and Order, which James had given it.

As the tear exploded, eventually the Matter grew wise and reflected upon itself. And thus was born Consciousness. And the wisdom of the Consciousness grew until it was wiser than James Himself had been, and great civilizations of sentient beings rose and fell on many worlds.

And the Consciousness basked in the glory of Music and of Mathematics and of Order, and saw that it had been created by James Himself before Time existed. And it took this essence of James and brought James back into being that He might see the glory of what his tear had created.

And so James the Human was born on the planet Earth. And He was filled with joy, and told the tear that had become a Universe:

``You have done well, for you have created something as great in potential as Everything was, yet not so overwhelming that I must cry out in terror at the sight of it.''

And James saw that the Universe would be alright, and that he could rest and live as an ordinary citizen of Consciousness.