I try to make kindness, openness, rationality, and altruism central to who I am. A friend said about me: "Brian is honestly the sweetest person I've ever met. He has a genuine love for everyone, regardless of their flaws. His friendliness and sense of humor put people at ease, and he'll listen to anything without judgment."

I graduated from Swarthmore College in 2009 with a major in computer science and a minor in statistics. I enjoy geeky academic subjects of all sorts: neuroscience, physics, mathematics, psychology, economics, philosophy.

My life goal is to reduce suffering in the most cost-effective ways possible, a theme evident in the following links:
* An interview with me
* Academic website
* Philosophical website
Feel free to connect on Facebook.

NOTE:
Not ever having kids is a requirement for me in terms of a serious relationship, because I feel the time and money required to raise children could be better directed toward activism and research. That said, by all means message me to become regular friends regardless of your plans about offspring. :)

I'm a software engineer at Bing in the Core Ranking division. I mine large data logs, build ranking models, and evaluate why Bing messes up on certain queries.

Apart from being fun, the main purpose of my job is for earning money so that I can donate toward charities that reduce animal suffering. I'm also on the board of directors for Effective Animal Activism, which evaluates animal organizations on their cost-efficiency. (By the way, it's not a big deal if you eat meat, because there are other dimensions of personality/lifestyle match that matter a lot more than this.)

I'm also helping to create two other new organizations: Animal Ethics, which will research suffering of animals in the wild, and Future Suffering Institute, which will explore possible sources of massive computational suffering in the future and what we can to do reduce their likelihood.

* Reading and writing about philosophy
* Academic research
* Cost-effectiveness analysis
* Calculus, probability, statistics, and machine learning
* Making way too many dumb jokes
* Grammatical proofreading
* Microsoft Excel

* Trusting, honest, straightforward, sometimes "oblivious" to social subtleties
* Not concerned about dress or appearance
* That I have a child's sense of playfulness

* Animal Liberation and Ethics into Action by Peter Singer
* Pain: The Science of Suffering by Patrick D. Wall
* How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker
* Felicifia (http://felicifia.org/) and LessWrong (http://lesswrong.com/)
* Nick Bostrom, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Gary Drescher, Paul Almond, David Pearce, Yew-Kwang Ng, Max Tegmark, Oscar Horta, Robert Sapolsky, Richard Dawkins, Douglas Adams, Bruce Coville, and many more which this margin is too small to contain.

* Sleep (on average 9.25 hours per night)
* My office treadmill -- yes, Microsoft allows this :)
* Discussions about academics and activism
* Time to for getting work done
* Green vegetables, beans, and tofu
* Wikipedia

* Improving Bing's top "10 blue links"
* Ways to reduce animal suffering
* Cognitive science, neurochemistry, evolutionary psychology, ethology, and entomology
* Future of humanity, artificial intelligence, cosmology, simulations, and ethical implications thereof
* Whether insects are conscious
* Effective philanthropy and career choice for making a difference (http://80000hours.org/members/brian-tomasik)

* Finishing up work
* Catching up on personal emails and Facebook conversations
* Reading or discussing ideas for reducing suffering
* Skyping with friends

I love Mister Rogers' Neighborhood and still watch it every once in a while. Some of the songs make me cry.

* You share a passion for academics and/or reducing suffering.
* You are hard-working, frugal, and maybe aiming to make a difference in the world.
* You don't ever want kids (childfree). I have a vasectomy to ensure this. :)
* You wouldn't mind if I stay inside to work on my activism projects rather than going out or traveling.
* You're willing to keep finances separate indefinitely.
* You don't mind my walking on my treadmill desk.
* You agree that total honesty is a key operating principle in a relationship.

I'm equally open to local and long-distance relationships. My last serious relationship was long-distance, and it was very good. Skype does a lot to break down distance barriers.