2025 Year in Review

Self

A year ago I was excited to start a month of medical leave. It ended up being three and I spent most of it studying linear algebra. It was lovely, glorious, beautiful.
One day I was sitting in Fort Greene Park and came up with an elaborate multi-step solution to a fiddly problem. I thought it quite elegant and, walking a loop in the park while watching people play tennis, was very pleased with myself and basked in my supposed intelligence. The very first statement of my argument was struck down by my tutor. Moments like this were common at the start, but I got better. I also took away a more general shift in perspective: This was proof math. There were no calculations. I wrote arguments in English that happened to concern mathematical objects and the validity of the arguments depended solely on the language. It almost felt like all I needed to do was be convincing, and reality would follow.
I realized that though there are objective truths, my access to them is more social than I used to think. Without feedback, I’m much more likely to deceive myself, or to spin in doubt when a quick conversation could confirm the next step. I needed to talk to other people to figure out reality.
Coming from a mindset which views the opinion of the crowd with great suspicion and likes to figure everything out by oneself, being more open to assess reality through discussion with others was a significant change. It also meant a greater interest in those parts of life that really do depend on shared norms, where reality is a social construct. It can be fun to make up the “truth” with others! But the main takeaway is that I’m just one guy among billions and though I can sometimes uncover reality by myself, there’s great value and fun in leaning more on others. Mind-blowing discovery I know: “Talk to other people”. Haha.

This gradual shift in mindset accompanied me throughout the year. I joined a weekend trip to Maine with two guys I had recently met and we turned back soon after arriving because turns out there’s not much in Maine, but the conversations we shared made the trip worth it. I did my annual summer trip to Europe and bounced around different places in Germany, Switzerland and England. In Zermatt I went on a hike with an old roommate, we stayed overnight in a mountain hut and got stuffed on Apfelstrudel while gazing on the Matterhorn and talking about whatever came to mind. I was worried about my still recovering knee but it worked out okay! In December, on my birthday, I went on stage for the first time to tell a story. It took a while for me to figure out its shape, and then I remember telling it to a friend while sitting in a cafe in the UWS and getting the response “oh you’ve got a good outline!” That confirmed a feeling which had been nagging me: I was hesitating to go into detail and be specific.
It felt so good to go on stage and know what I want to say (looking at you, improv). Most importantly, I enjoyed the whole process leading up to it, I told it to quite a few people and noted their responses. By getting that feedback and being willing to share more I felt like I was building on that mindset of uncovering reality through dialogue with others. Looking forward to working on the next one!

Articles

Shooting an Elephant

The perfect essay.

With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum, upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts. Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty.

If I were to write essays this is exactly how I’d want them to look: Using an interesting personal story to talk about a larger theme. What strikes me about this one is just how dense it is, no word is wasted, every sentence drives the story forward, and yet despite the pace it has real, drawn-out, emotion. It finds a, to me, perfect balance between getting the information across efficiently while also doing it in style. On another note, while Orwell is famous for his fiction, I honestly think his non-fic essays are the real jewels.

Relationships are coevolutionary loops

Henrik has become my favourite blogger.

This is what I infer when I see someone who is comfortable in their unique strangeness, too. There probably exists someone who enabled that evolution of personality. A parent, a friend group, a spouse. It is rare for people to come into themselves if no one is excited and curious about their core, their potential. We need someone who gives us space to unfold.

This is one essay out of several that I loved from this blogger. I think in this one the lesson - developing as a human being requires having conversational partners with whom you vibe well - feels obvious, but I think there’s value in consciously thinking about these things and whether one is actually doing the obvious thing. I think it’s also underrated the extent to which you yourself will change if you follow this path. I can see it in myself and it surprises me how much I’ve changed beyond 30, an age at which I would have assumed who you are is pretty fixed. Henrik’s posts make me think that one good practice for life is to pick a journey not a goal. “Journey over destination” is a well known phrase but I’ve always understood that to be about remembering to enjoy the moment rather than keep one’s focus on the next step. Now I’m looking at it as picking the right journey matters more than picking the right destination.

Burdens

People are going to have move past basing their self-worth on work.

One common therapeutic strategy here is to talk about how much the patient’s parents/friends/girlfriend/pet hamster love them, how heartbroken they would be if they killed themselves. In the absence of better alternatives, I have used this strategy. I have used it very grudgingly, and I’ve always felt dirty afterwards. It always feels like the worst sort of emotional blackmail. Not helping them want to live, just making them feel really guilty about dying. “Sure, you’re a burden if you live, but if you kill yourself, that would make you an even bigger burden!” A++ best psychiatrist.

I went to a slatestar meetup this year and afterwards looked over some old blogposts and this one stayed with me. With AI continuously getting better it raises the question of what do you do when it feels like you can’t meaningfully contribute? Feels like we may need a new society-wide philosophy to give humans something more to look forward to.

Other: 21 observations from people watching Of Marx and Moloch: How My Attempt to Convince Effective Altruists to Become Socialists Backfired Completely Fuck willpower

Books

The Inevitability of Tragedy: Henry Kissinger and His World

A history of US foreign policy and the philosophical underpinnings of Henry Kissinger.

Contrary what the rationalists believed, reason was limited in what it could achieve. It had no answer to those ultimate questions that have been raised since the time of the ancients [..] about the meaning and purpose of life. Even though modern, scientistic thought had done its best to deny that those questions even made sense - Life has no meaning! Now get on with it! - they kept emerging and reemerging, much to the annoyance of the rationalists. [..] Science may have “lightened the burden of living” but it had not “lightened the burden of life”.

I must confess that until this book I looked upon all of philosophy as a dubious use of time. At the same time I felt this viewpoint had to be wrong as I have so many friends I admire who love to study it. This book changed my mind by pointing out that if you don’t at least try to deliver answers to unanswerable questions, people will go and listen to whoever else is doing so (and this could end up being extremists). Personally I don’t mind finding my own meaning and not worrying about the larger story or purpose, but I can see how for many people that’s not satisfying. At the same time this book provides a fascinating overview of how US foreign policy developed across the 20th century and was constantly pushed and pulled between realists and idealists. Kissinger (as a realist) explicitly warned that following the idealist path would lead the US to acting as a “world’s policeman”. Reading about that made Iraq etc all fall into place.

East of Eden

Finally read a fiction book I loved again.

Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic? …Well, think about it. Maybe you’re playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.

My favourite fiction books are those which feel real. One way that can manifest is if in a pivotal moment a character does something that would normally be surprising, but given all the prior events (featured in the story) is obvious. It validates how I view the pathways of a human being across life, how I view cause and effect basically. An example of an author that I think does this well is Franzen, whose characters lead relatively normal lives and face normal choices and are therefore easy to relate to. I found it interesting to read a book where the characters did not lead normal lives at all, in many ways seemed larger than life, and yet I could relate to them very much. They felt real.

Means of Ascent

Final time I mention a book from this series I promise.

Until the end of their lives, these men and women would tell stories about the summer they followed Lyndon Johnson and his Flying Windmill around Texas; as Oliver Knight of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram would write about one trip, “That mad dash from Navasota to Conroe in which I dodged tree stumps at 70 MPH just to keep up with that contraption will ever be green in my memory.”

It’s crazy how much history rhymes. The Kissinger book I mentioned discussed how during Hitler’s rise the right’s narratives resonated much more strongly than those of the left, and this one is mostly about LBJ’s ‘48 Senate campaign and fraudulent victory against Coke R Stevenson. I see echoes of that in our last decade. Stevenson is an extremely highly respected figure in Texas, almost a hero. He has a twenty year record, so everyone should know what he stands for and he doesn’t think it’s necessary to do a major campaign. He’s old school, doesn’t like to publicly attack others, doesn’t even bother with calling out LBJ’s weaknesses. His campaign speech simply promises to do what he’s always done: Do what’s right for Texas. In the meantime LBJ tries to visit every single corner of Texas in a helicopter, to the point where for some destinations he doesn’t even land but just uses his megaphone to shout out some slogans before flying on. On those trips he makes up the most outrageous lies, to the point where, if the audience suits it, he is swapping the actual planned policies of himself vs Stevenson. He knows if he loses his career is over, so he works himself so hard he gets sick and doctors (plural) tell him if he keeps it up he will die. He keeps going. And despite his opponent barely campaigning he loses! But his opponent makes a mistake by announcing vote tallies early, so LBJ directs some underlings in counties he controls to fake enough votes so he ends up ahead. It is brazen fraud and there is a period where it looks like LBJ might not get away with it, but his saving grace is that he is viewed as more willing to compromise (i.e. less likely to do what’s right for Texas) than Stevenson. So the national party sticks with him. My main takeaway from this series has been I should advocate more for myself. I try and view things from all angles and I think that has led to me getting the short-end of the stick more times than would strictly be balanced. So here’s to advocating for myself more.

Other: Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

Movies / Shows

Murderbot (AppleTV)

This is a relatively light-hearted comedy, but I see it as a prescient portrayal of times to come. The humans are generally disconnected from their surroundings and spend their time wondering what throuple to be part of, while it comes down to the robots to make the important decisions.