Who is R Brasher

I struggle with this question, maybe more than I should. I could identify myself by my name, but a name is just a symbol. Knowing a symbol without knowing what it represents is the same as not knowing anything at all.

I could identify myself by telling you whom I know. That would go a fair distance, because our identities all are greatly influenced by our social context. However, identifying myself by naming other people would not tell you who they are. Alas, it would be no different logically than merely naming myself.

I could identify myself by telling you what I do. By education I am a mathematician, so I do math. By profession I am a machine learning engineer, so I do machine learning. My hobbies are numerous, so I do many things.

By themselves, those things give you some understanding of who I am in that they give you some idea of what I might do in the future. On the other hand, unless you are a prospective employer, why would you care about my current profession, my credentials and those skills I develop outside of work.

What is left, my political inclinations and my religious beliefs? That might tell you something which would give you opinions about me, but only because that would put me in some group of which you yourself are or are not a part. Telling that to people I already know well would only lead either to empty agreement or pointless argument. Providing that information to strangers would be useless at best and dangerous at worst.

Then, there is only one logical possibility left. I shall tell you what I am in the context of this blog. I am the writer. If you accept me as a teacher, then I will be the teacher. I will share some of my experiences day to day and try to make those experiences entertaining. I will write tutorials on my hobbies to share my skills. I will write short works of fiction that will be sketches for works that I might later publish in fuller form.

I will write. That is my identity here. That is my purpose here. That is what you may expect here from me. There are no other promises that I can give you, and none other that I would intend to keep.