Curated Essays
Explorations of paradox, consciousness, and the nature of knowing
2025
18October
The Attachment-Detachment Paradox: Why Your Habits Need Both to Survive
Habits don't survive on motivation; they survive on identity. This article reveals the paradoxical strategy of combining intense, long-term attachment to who you are with a radical, short-term detachment from what you do.
Why Successful People Give "Obvious" Advice (And Why It Still Doesn't Work For Most)
Why does "obvious" advice from successful people rarely work? This article reveals the gap between their words and their success: they aren't just "focusing on their strengths"—they know what their strengths are, a non-transmittable secret that's the real key to their success.
June
The Abundance of Choice: How to Commit in a World of Many
This essay challenges the scarcity mindset in modern life by using the law of large numbers as a metaphor for abundance, arguing that commitment from a place of confident, intentional choice—not fear of loss—cultivates stronger relationships and greater personal fulfillment.
Life's Algorithm: The Human Dance of Exploration vs. Exploitation
A deep dive into how humans, much like algorithms, balance the need to explore new possibilities with the drive to exploit known successes. Exploring the multi-armed bandit problem as a lens for understanding life decisions.
The Unified Canvas: How All Disciplines Are but Different Strokes of the Same Truth
Beyond academic silos, discover a radical perspective: that physics, philosophy, biology, and spirituality are not just interconnected, but different languages describing one singular, underlying reality.
May
The Fluidity of Reality: Why Anything Can Be Anything
This essay explores the profound fluidity of reality, demonstrating how our experience of a thing's "whatness" is not an objective fact, but a dynamic co-creation of context, perception, and our internal state.
The Inquisitive Machine: How Uncertainty Fuels AI's Next Leap Beyond Consciousness
Dive into the future of AI where true intelligence isn't about simulating consciousness, but about building systems that intrinsically question and explore their own uncertainties.
Hacking Your Focus: Using Place and Presence Like 'Severance'
An essay on the power of separating work and life spaces to improve focus and mental clarity, inspired by the TV show 'Severance'. How environmental psychology can enhance productivity.
The True Scarcity: Why Questioning, Not Intelligence, Defines Our Age
In an age of infinite information, raw intelligence is abundant, but the courage to deeply question everything is rare. This piece explores why true inquiry is the most critical skill for navigating our complex world.
Beyond the Human Benchmark: Redefining the Goal of AI
A philosophical look at why AGI might not need to be "human-like" and what a more valuable goal for its development might be. Questioning the anthropocentric approach to AI development.
The Unseen Power: Reclaiming the Wisdom of Our Common Senses
Our common senses are often overlooked, yet they hold profound power as direct gateways to understanding, connection, and spiritual insight. Rediscover the innate wisdom embedded in everyday perception.
The AI Mirror: What Chatbots Teach Us About Connection, Truth, and Ourselves
How interacting with AI reflects our own cognitive biases and social expectations back to us. The unexpected psychological insights from human-AI interaction patterns.
April
AI Risk Reconsidered: Human Actors, Not Rogue Machines
A re-evaluation of AI safety concerns, arguing that the primary risks often stem from human intent and systems design, not sentient AI. Refocusing the safety conversation.
Decoding the AGI Discourse: Hype, Hope, and Hidden Agendas
An analysis of the public and private conversations surrounding Artificial General Intelligence. Understanding the motivations behind different AGI narratives.
The Infinite Posterior: Life as Variational Inference
An exploration of life and consciousness through the lens of Bayesian statistics and variational inference. The mathematics of meaning-making and belief updating.
The Belief Filter: How Our Assumptions Shape Reality (and How Influence Works)
An article on how our pre-existing beliefs act as filters, influencing what we perceive and how we are influenced by others. The cognitive architecture of worldview formation.
The Invisible Structure: How Life Approximates Reality
Discussing how living systems create internal models to navigate and approximate an external, complex reality. The computational theory of mind meets biological systems.
Love Beyond the Blueprint: Rethinking Our Relationship Rules
A philosophical look at social contracts and human connection, inspired by the fluidity of code and system design. Questioning the rigid frameworks we apply to relationships.