User:FETSmoke

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FETSmoke is what you often get when you're debugging a power electronics circuit using Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors (MOSFETS, or FETs for short). Esoterically, there's an old joke that what makes transistors work is the smoke that they inject into the case in the factory, which is why they stop working if you let the smoke out. I wasn't thinking of that when I chose the name.

This bio is somewhat vague to try to preserve anonymity.

I'm male, born around 1960, and spent all my life in the New England region of the USA.

I scored at the 99th percentile on two IQ tests around 1990; on the test that scores in the customary way I got just under IQ 140. This means that with wisdom and commitment I can do a lot; alternatively, I could have such an IQ and be a cocky, useless fool.

I've worked successfully for many years in electrical engineering and software engineering. I have a USA patent in the area of telecommunications, and a patent is pending in the area of electrical engineering. I do some mechanical engineering, and am an amateur machinist. I've had my writing published multiple times in the industry press; total readership significantly over half a million.

I cook reasonably well as necessary, and make a bit of a specialty of gasless vegan cookery. (Cook in acid, then in multiple rinses, as for TVP, or lentils, which come out tasting like hamburger, or keep the acid, as in hummus. But this often doesn't help.)

I'm a former gay activist. I like women, I love men and the whole thing has come to seem like a waste of time.

I'm an epistemological nihilist -- I believe nobody can know anything, because I find the word "know" immensely valuable and refuse to cheapen it so I can use it. (See the writings of Karl Popper, and the philosophical problems of Edmund Gettier.) I suspect, based on rather recent work (see Good and Real, Drescher, MIT Press), that there is a tendency for it to be rational to serve the interests of others, which is nice because life would be revolting if it wasn't true.

My goal on Wikipedia is to empower the public with a valuable, reliable reference, with as little uproar and human suffering as possible. I'm severely depressive, and easily hurt very badly by corruption and attacks, which is why I'm frightened of Wikipedia and stay away from it a lot.

Those who poison the well of knowledge may yet die of thirst.