I grew up as a really awkward kid—a late bloomer—in a smallish suburb north of Boston. I graduated magna cum difficultate from the local high school, and barely eked out a first year of college before turning to a life of vagabondry for a number of years. In my late twenties, I went back to school to earn my B.S. in cognitive science at Tufts University, after which I went on to study new topics in the same field at Indiana University where I will soon earn my PhD under the advisory of Douglas Hofstadter, Colin Allen, Hamid Ekbia, and Randall Beer.
At the moment, I consider myself a theoretical cognitive scientist and philosopher. I am working to develop both a conceptual and a mathematical account of the distinction between the living and the inanimate. That is to say, I'm building a natural explanation for the magic that brings atoms to life. For more about that project, see my research and publications.
When that work is done, I intend to turn my attention towards finding arbitrage opportunities in technical finance. My hope is to one day create the ability to fund practical research into the scientific topics that I find dear, unfettered by the ideologically or commercially conflicted—or the merely uninformed—intents of mainstream government and corporate funding sources.
Matthew Hurley
April, 2018