Hi, I'm Willie Loftie-Eaton
About Me
I am a recent BSc Hons Computer Science graduate from the University of Stellenbosch. I enjoy studying Computer Science, Mathematics, and Statistics. In my free time I practice guitar, read, play ultimate frisbee, and run. I would like to have an impactful career and hence I try to organize my life such that I gather useful skills, and learn about cool problems to tackle. I’m interested in making civilization last as long as possible. I’m always looking for friends, so feel free to reach out if you want to chat.
To know more about me, you can visit my blog where I will share things that interest me.
My resume lives here as a PDF.
My Work
cilpy
A computational intelligence library for Python. This library allows researchers
to study nature inspired algorithms on dynamic, constrained, and multi-objective
optimization problems.
SU Developer Society I am a co-founder of the SU Developer Society (SUDS), and organized events for the society in the second semester of 2025. The goals of the society are to build friendships, projects, and industry relationships, while helping students explore the vast landscape of computer science. I am no longer part of the leadership team of the society.
CAlab
The goal of this project is to enable computations and visualizations of
Cellular Automata. It is something I work on in my free time, and at the moment
is capable of computing 1-dimensional Cellular Automata.
This website
This website serves to inform you about me, and is a place where I can share my
ideas and work with the world.
A bit more about me
I love Renae (you’ll know her surname eventually), computer science, and running.
Philosophy
I will write blog posts that lay out the philosophies I hold, but here is a too brief summary.
Fundamentally, I buy Sam Harris’s idea of the Moral Landscape (I’ve not read the book). I observe that I have eperience, that there are qualia. I observe that some qualia are pleasant and some are unpleasant. I assume that my experience is a result of the interaction of atoms (which I also assume exists yada yada …) and more complex structures that emerge from how the atoms are arranged. I observe that there is one object that repeatedly appears in my observations, and I assume that that object is me, and that what happens to that object influences my experience. I observe that there are other objects that look and behave like me too - humans are the most obvious example, but dogs and shrimp also count. For multiple reasons (empathy, compassion, but ultimately because it is evolutionarily fit to do so), I assume these objects also have experience, and hence I don’t want to cause them suffering and if I can help it, I want to bring them long-lasting wellbeing. Therefore, you should do what improves the wellbeing of conscious beings.
Another idea I strongly believe in is one Joscha Bach (roughly) stated on episode 101 of the Lex Fridman podcast: “Something exists to the degree that it is being implemented”. You are nothing other than what you are doing in this very moment - what is it that you want to be?
Interests
I am training to become a competent software engineer, and try to spend my free time programming.
I am training for a sub 3-hour marathon.
Meditation is an important part of my life.