Here's a question worth thinking about. You can ask AI anything and get a decent answer in seconds — so what's the point of school? It's a fair question. And honestly, if school just pumps information into your head, then yeah — AI does it better. It moves faster, stays more patient, never has a bad day, and shows up at 2am when you're panicking about a deadline. But a philosopher named John Dewey…
Most people think the opposite of knowledge is ignorance. It isn't. The opposite of knowledge is confident ignorance — not knowing that you don't know. Ignorance you can work around. Confident ignorance you build on. And everything you build on it eventually collapses. There's a line for every person, every company, every field. On one side is what you actually know. Things with real structure.…
10 minutes is a powerful distance. If you walk, take public transit or drive for just 10 minutes from where you currently are you are likely to encounter another human being who either has way less or way more resources (i.e money, assets, human networks) than yourself. Similarly information can travel much faster than us as humans. Within 10 minutes of latency you can easily communicate across…
Something fundamental has shifted in how power works, and most of our institutions haven't noticed. We're living through what might be called "leverage arbitrage divergence"—a growing gap between how fast some actors can change the world and how fast others can respond to those changes. Think about it: A small team at TikTok can alter the attention patterns of a billion teenagers in months.…
As we enter the next phase of artificial intelligence development, we face a critical but largely unexamined tension between what scales efficiently and what gives human experience its meaning. This tension shapes how we design AI systems and the society they'll help create, yet remains almost entirely absent from mainstream technology discourse. The economic incentives driving AI development…
The Core Truth In just 27 months, Cursor went from a basic code editor to the defining AI development environment by making one crucial bet: shipping velocity is more valuable than shipping perfection . They turned their ability to learn and iterate faster than anyone else into an insurmountable competitive moat. While competitors debated features in boardrooms, Cursor shipped, learned, and…
We are living through a fundamental crisis in how humans create and share value with each other. What appears to be political polarization or social media dysfunction is actually something deeper: the systematic erosion of collaborative dialogue that has been the foundation of human flourishing for millennia. The Science of Lost Connection Recent research reveals the scope of this crisis. MIT's…
A 6-axis robot arm reaches for a coffee cup. Joint 1 is off by 0.5 degrees. Joint 2 compensates but overshoots by 0.8 degrees. By the time the arm reaches the cup, it's 3 inches to the left and crashes into the table. An LLM agent analyzes quarterly sales data. It misinterprets Q2 growth as 15% instead of 5%. This becomes the baseline for Q3 projections. The agent then builds a hiring plan based…
How nested digital currencies could align economic incentives with community values The Misalignment Crisis Sarah runs a small organic farm outside Portland. She spends her mornings testing soil pH and her evenings calculating whether she can afford health insurance. Despite growing food that nourishes her community and stewarding land that sequesters carbon¹, she watches cryptocurrency…
We've all been there. You see a problem clearly, have a solution that makes obvious sense, but can't get anyone in authority to listen. Meanwhile, decisions get made by people who seem disconnected from the reality you're experiencing. Here's the uncomfortable truth: political influence and actual knowledge often exist on opposite ends of the spectrum. The people making decisions frequently aren't…
When we direct the same curiosity we apply to technology toward other human beings, something remarkable happens. The same mechanisms that build technical intuition can create profound human understanding and connection. Here's how this transformation works and why it matters for creating a better world. Part 1: Moving Beyond Assumptions to Genuine Discovery In technology, curiosity leads us to…
Part 1: Curiosity Means Saying "Yes" When Others Say "Not Now" Have you ever wondered why some people seem to navigate technology with such ease? It's not because they're geniuses or because they were born with a keyboard in their hands. Their secret weapon is much simpler: curiosity. Curiosity is what drives someone to install a new app just to see how it works. It's what makes them volunteer for…
In our rush to embrace AI and data-driven decision making, we're making a fundamental error that could have profound consequences for how we think, work, and live together. We're building systems that prioritize "human + machine" interactions when what we truly need is "human + human + machine" frameworks. The Difference Matters The distinction is subtle but crucial. Throughout human history, our…
Take two pieces of paper. Stack them on top of each other. To make them stick, throw some glue between them. You get a big messy middle of glue. What has a mess of glue got to do with anything with business? Let me explain. Anytime two different concepts or ideas come together, they create a mess, like glue. “Glue code” is a term used by software engineers trying to stick two layers or systems…
Photo by Dio Hasbi Saniskoro from Pexels At some point in their career, every individual in the technology industry struggles with answering the question, “how do I maximize my impact?” If you feel stuck in your career I hope this provides some clarity to you. Every job I’ve taken up has been based on the potential of learning and the potential of impact. I started my career in a roughly…
Finding a computer programmer job was the first professional problem I faced. First, I had to make a resume listing all programming languages that I knew, and projects I had worked on. Second, I emailed over fifty companies. I told them about my interest in working for them. Third, some of them got back and told me to do an interview. Fourth, I spoke to a group of 3 to 6 people at various…
Extreme dualities fill our modern discourse. People within the same geography either feel capitalism is either great or terrible. In the same country, people feel democracy is either flourishing or destroying society. Social media is either awesome or awful. People are either privileged or not. Treating privilege as black and white lead to one of two outcomes. Either, the privileged feel bad about…
To startup or not to startup? This is the million-dollar question that I asked myself every couple of weeks through my 20s. How do I decide? What are the criteria? Will the idea be good enough? Am I good enough? Will I be able to execute? So many questions and no answers. Every day potential entrepreneurs wake up feeling I am not good enough. Building confidence to take that plunge is tough.…
Courage to speak the truth, Strength to hear the truth, Desire to seek the truth, Nuance to see the changing truth. I scribbled this short stanza in my diary this morning. I often think about what is the truth? How do we tell truth and falsehood apart? We all have our lenses to look at the truth. Your truth and my truth are not the same. Truth often lies in understanding the context of the other.…
Do you have a tough time starting new things? Do you fear failure? Starting new things is hard. Starting new things while working with other humans, even tougher. Starting new things well is a superpower worth cultivating. Starting things you consider hard can be overwhelming. Starting a company is one of them. If we are able to start things with a group, we can achieve things that we will never…
What’s the secret to unlimited opportunities? Why do some people get more opportunities than you? We grow up learning that you need to work hard and smart. It will result in more time, money and freedom. We can then work on whatever we want. We undermine the role of pitching our ideas and ourselves. I started my career working on custom boot and build systems. I got the opportunity by sending out…
Have you ever wondered why your manager hides certain information from you? My experiments with transparency span being a founder and early-stage startup team member. The phrase I am tired of hearing during my working life is that information is “need to know basis”. This statement undermines the person asking you questions. I've documented the intersection of my values with an adaptation of my…
“Its (one-on-one) main purpose is mutual teaching and exchange of information.” - Andy Grove [1] I first ran into one-on-one meetings in the famed High Output Management by Andy Grove. It’s a meeting in which a manager meets with their direct report. If you are a knowledge worker, you have these meetings either as the direct report or as the manager. Running a good one-on-one meeting is the…
The past one year has been a time for deep introspection about why I am doing what I do. How can I continue doing what I want to do and what my moral compass is? Three encounters evolved me over the past one year - Buddhism, Amit Varma and my curiosity. One non-negotiable idea as a Buddhist is that each person is capable and enlightened. “A great human revolution in just a single individual will…