what is this?

an unstructured (and super long) distillation of my various bouts of inspiration, thought, and rabbit holes.

media i’ve enjoyed recently

• agents play hide and seek (similar to https://gwern.net/backstop)
• https://ai-2027.com/
• steam, steal, and infinite minds - ivan zhou
• evolution as backstop for RL - gwern
• situational awareness - leopold aschenbrenner
• android dreams - anand majmudar
• how i got here - preston thorpe
• simulating civilization on minecraft: rich vs poor - ish
• no solvency, no security - trae stephens

interests

• broadly: emergent intelligence and how systems can adapt and learn in uncertain environments without guidance
• other interests:
  • designing computational models for decision making from neurological first principles
  • adversarial attack models (red teaming simulations, anomaly detection, wargames and games in general)
  • evolutionary design (human evolution, cellular automata, conway’s game of life)
  • quantum computing
  • aesthetically: sci fi terminals and mechanically minimal interfaces

tunnels

03/14/25

my thoughts on the true definition of design, as articulated by claude:

[design] is the process of creating a set of conditions where interesting things happen for everyone, and the beauty is in the formulation [of the experience] itself. The formula is the art. But it's not a repeatable formula — it's a one-off composition that responds to the specific constraints of this set of people, this room, this year [add or replace with other variables]. Like physics, it has universal principles, but unique applications.

My two cents: Unlike math, you cannot derive the same outputs with the same inputs. This is a fault of how the industry interprets design. Its a transactional “advocate for the user” and “meet stakeholder needs”. The transactionalism has killed the artistry of this craft. To uncover a truly great designer is to dig at their formulations, not dig at their produced OKRs.

12/14/25

there are 2 types of “talent” in the world:

1. those who define success on finite scales: getting a top engineering offer in sf, earning a PhD for the name brand, building a company to optimize numbers.
2. those who define success on immeasurable scales: scientists trying to build agi, engineers trying to establish the foundations for cross-planetary civilizations, curious students reading 200 pg books on quantum entanglement out of pure interest and not to get the bare minimum knowledge to pass their physics exam. see (12/12)

these are clearly very one-off examples but I think we can generate many more, and its unfortunate that the media substantially glorifies the former. my bet is that curiosity will eventually outperform ambition and raw intelligence.

12/12/25

there are simply endless things in the world to learn. the most rewarding learning happens in the spaces where there is no finite answer and an infinite possibility space. “existential problems”.

11/20/25

“production is deterrence and the factory is the weapons system” ”… in 2025, the factory itself is the weapon” - trae stephens