Reflections

What factors enabled China to dominate so many critical industries?

Did China really ask Western companies to transfer technology in return for market access—and is that why China is so dominant today? Yes, the “market access for technology” pattern was real in important parts of China’s rise—especially from the 1990s through the 2010s, when foreign firms often needed joint ventures, licenses, or approvals to operate in China in sensitive sectors. U.S. government findings around the Section…

Feel the AGI!

Given the latest lift in LLM coding capability, like many others I rapidly went from about 80% manual+autocomplete coding and 20% agents in November to 80% agent coding and 20% edits+touchups in December. i.e. I really am mostly programming in English now, a bit sheepishly telling the LLM what code to write... in words. It hurts the ego a bit but the power to operate over software in large "code actions" is just too net…

The defining question of our times: "Who are you without your job?"

as a software engineer, i feel a real loss of identity right now. for a long time i defined myself in part by the act of writing code. the pride in a hard-earned solution was part of who i was. now i watch AI accomplish in seconds what took me hours. i find myself caught between relief and mourning, awe and anxiety. the craft that shaped me is suddenly eclipsed by a machine. who am i now?

The past is the present

We look at the present through a rear view mirror. We march backwards into the future. Marshall McLuhan

Emotional returns vs financial returns

Loose reflection. Since I work in finance, and since my area of focus is around investing and personal finance more broadly, a lot of people—friends, relatives, colleagues—ask me for advice on various aspects of their finances. And in all of this, the one big recurring theme I've noticed time and again is that people…

You can just do things

François Chollet: Social media is the sedative that makes us forget we ever had freedom and agency. You can just do things, but first you have to close the app.

Skyfall post-AI world edition

"Digital Fall" \[Verse 1\] This is the end Hold your resume close and pretend That you'll find work when the models descend When it crumbles We will stand tall Face it all together at digital fall At digital fall \[Verse 2\] I used to draft the briefs at dawn Now GPT-7's got my login on The presentations build themselves My expertise collecting dust on shelves The algorithms never sleep or fall \[Pre-Chorus\] That's when the…

Summoning Ghosts: Why You Need to Try AI Coding Tools

Andrej Karpathy: I've never felt this much behind as a programmer. The profession is being dramatically refactored as the bits contributed by the programmer are increasingly sparse and between. I have a sense that I could be 10X more powerful if I just properly string together what has become available over the last year and a failure to claim the boost feels decidedly like skill issue. There's a new programmable layer of…

Some non-advice advice

Post type: Loose reflection. Certainty: Reasonably sure. I get a lot of messages on LinkedIn from young students and graduates. They'll share a templated note, attach a resume, and ask for a job. When I tell them we're not hiring, they pivot: "Can you give me some advice then?" And every time, I freeze up. Because I…

Reading as escalation

A few thoughts on reading.

Human nature will never change

Markets change. Businesses change. Technologies change. Human nature is a CONSTANT. Read Shakespeare to grok people... — Josh Wolfe

Post-cognitive world

I would also now add a surprising element to my 2024 essay: as the cost of cognition approaches zero, that which is repeatable will be replaceable—and will indeed be replaced—by AI (a favorite saying of Palantir Co-Founder Stephen Cohen), which opens up an aperture for those who truly undertake creative acts. In short, we are going to be forced by the technology to be more creative; we will be impelled to do that which only…

Odds and ends

The 'Instagram Generation' now experiences the present as an anticipated memory. - Daniel Kahneman

The cost of extreme weather

The cost of extreme weather in Australia is rising. Three new graphs show just how much the cost of extreme weather is increasing, the growth of extreme weather costs as a proportion of the economy, and the impact on insurer sustaina The cost of extreme weather is growing in real terms Averaged over the past three decades and adjusted for inflation, insurers paid $2.1 billion a year to policyholders impacted by extreme…

The infinite pleasures of diving down rabbit holes

I believe going down rabbit holes is essential to living well. When something catches my attention—a "ripple"—I follow it wherever it leads, even if it seems random or pointless. These intellectual adventures have led me to the best books, projects, and ideas in my life. A few thoughts on tumbling down weird rabbit…

Kafka on reading

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us…

How long do we have left?

We officially competed in the onsite AI track of the ICPC, with the same 5-hour time limit to solve all twelve problems, submitting to the ICPC World Finals Local Judge - judged identically and concurrently to the ICPC World Championship submissions. We received the problems in the exact same PDF form, and the reasoning system selected which answers to submit with no bespoke test-time harness whatsoever. For 11 of the 12…

Bhuvan's law

"Any discourse about artificial intelligence is indistinguishable from talking out of your ass."

Speculation Is like water—it always finds a way

From a front-row seat in Indian markets, I trace how post-COVID tech and payments supercharged both investing and gambling. The essay makes a simple case: bans without internet, payments, platform, and cross-border enforcement just move the problem. Better to design the dam—keep play on regulated rails and cut harm.

On luck and randomness in life

A Conversation on Randomness, Narrative, and the Meaning of Life with Google Gemini What follows is a dialogue exploring one of the most fundamental tensions of the human condition: our search for meaning in a world that often seems governed by chance. We dive into the science of chaos, the psychology of storytelling, and the philosophical frameworks designed to help us navigate this profound uncertainty. Q1: How much of our…

On Walking

Henry David Thoreau's essay Walking isn't just about nature—it's a diagnosis of modern life's deepest tragedy: we've become estranged from our wild selves. In a world dominated by left-brain thinking that treats everything as a resource to exploit, we've lost our contemplative spaces and buried our primordial desire to wander.

Why read?

Rose: So what's happened to us that gives us that kind of society in which people of the best young minds have not read? Harold Bloom: Well, the screen. The screen, the screen. Television screen, movie screen, the television screen, the movie screen, and now overwhelmingly, computer screen, and yes, in particular, the great gray ocean of the Internet, which frightens me deeply because if young people go into, or onto,…

What It Means to Be Human in the Age of AI

We stand at the threshold of perhaps the most profound identity crisis humanity has ever faced. As AI systems increasingly match or exceed our cognitive abilities, we’re witnessing the twilight of human intellectual supremacy—a position we’ve held unchallenged for our entire existence. This transformation won’t arrive in some distant future; it’s unfolding now, reshaping not just our economy but our very understanding of what…

War and Peace isn’t a novel, it’s a mirror

“How pleasant it is, your excellency!” he said with a respectful smile. “What?” “It’s pleasant, your excellency!” “What is he talking about?” thought Prince Andrew. “Oh, the spring, I suppose,” he thought as he turned round. “Yes, really everything is green already... How early! The birches and cherry and alders too are coming out... But the oaks show no sign yet. Ah, here is one oak!” At the edge of the road stood an oak.…

Stephen Hawking on the philosophy of life

Guest: You have said you do not believein God. Do you have a philosophy of life that helps you? Stephen Hawking: It is clear that we are just an advanced breed of primates on a minor planet orbiting around a very average star, in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. BUT, ever since the dawn of civilization people have craved for an understanding of the underlying order of the world. There ought to be…

The Protection Racket: A History of Tariffs and Who Really Pays

On that day, an executive order was signed imposing a sweeping new regime of "reciprocal" tariffs. The action was vast in its scope, targeting nearly 70 countries and territories in addition to the European Union. The tariff rates varied widely, based on justifications ranging from trade imbalances to national security concerns. Rates for some nations were set as high as 41% (Syria) and 39% (Switzerland), while key trading…