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Working Thoughts

These are a collection of my most salient contributions to the thought space of humanity. They update as I learn more about life, of course.

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These are a collection of my most salient contributions to the thought space of humanity. They update as I learn more about life, of course.

Most Code Has Yet To Be Written

As of 2025, computers, digital computers, are 80 years old (ENIAC). What we consider modern day programming languages are even younger than that. And most popular programming languages like Python are a little over 30 years old.

I believe that most code has yet to be written, and that the Googles and the Facebooks and the other megafauna of the software world are merely precursors to what software will be in the future.

If code can be equated to language and prose, then the discovery of programming languages is the discovery of a primordial alphabet of computation, and the Aristotle of programming or the Shakespeare of programming, et cetera, won't be born for hundreds of years.

Parallel Reading

Reading one book at a time isn't a good move. It's much better to read multiple books in parallel. I read five books at a time, and whenever I finish one book, I replace it with another in the queue.

There are multiple benefits to this:

  1. It allows you to context-switch between multiple books to stave off boredom during a long reading session.That means that you can set aside 30 minutes to an hour for a reading session and switch between the books when you get bored.
  2. It allows you to see the connections between multiple books at once. If you're narrowing in on an era, or if you're trying to understand a topic, this skill set allows you to read about the same topic from a lot of different angles and allows your brain to join the concepts through its own subconscious interactions. (See "discursive reading")
  3. It makes it more likely that if you want to give up a book, you won't feel guilty about it because you have multiple books that you're reading at any given time. One book being lost won't hurt you as much, and you'll be able to move on to better books.

A Personal Library Isn't What You Think

A personal library is not the collection of items that you own in your library, the movies that you have, or the books that are on your shelf, or the records that are next to your record player. A personal library is the collection of why these materials resonate with you. It exists somewhere between a person and the material in the library.

The annotations are the point. The highlights are the point.

Commonbases are Commonplace Books

Commonbase and commonplace books both attempt to do the same thing: they force the author to use resonance to filter source materials into ledger-sized entries, and then for each of those entries, gives them an ontology to connect them to the wider network of thinking that an individual has over the course of their life. As such, it becomes a common place for multiple ideas, a communis loci.

The Role of LLMs (And Real Use Cases In My Life)

I still think LLMs are a holistic technology the same way personal computers are. A hard technology for an individual to genesis, but easy for an individual to harness as they please.

Following the null hypothesis of technology, speculation isn't worth all that much. The AI space of today is massive for those who are willing to explore the space and make it work for their needs.

2025 Use Cases that I Really Use:

You Should Have a Website That's More Than A Portfolio

The mainstream internet continues to get shittier and shittier. Thanks to the tragedy of the commons from economic pressures and weak leadership, websites that used to be unique are all converging into distraction feeds like TikTok.

If you seek to own your own path in this world, you should seek to own your own domain.

Publishing is easy. Saying something valuable and consistent in an accessible place is hard. Don't just make your website a static portfolio. Breathe into it. Let it change with the seasons.

The U.S. Power Structure Will Go: Baby Boomers > Millennials > Children of Gen Z

I think this more has to do with demographics than anything. After the baby boomers retire or shuffle off the mortal coil, a lot of their power and wealth won't go to the Gen X right after them. It will go to the Millennials. The Millennials have the biggest population in the United States and are currently the biggest working force as well. However, a lot of millennials didn't have kids at the rate that the baby boomers and Gen X did, so I believe that after millennials are in power, Gen Z's children will be in power, who are usually the nephews and nieces of millennials. As a side note, hopefully the millennials don't vote as much in our favor as a voting block as the boomers did. It's because of this that money is being trapped in the asset classes of the elderly, and our country is suffering for it.

Books (And Book Clubs) Are More Important Than Ever

With the proliferation of short-form video content on social media, the voting bloc population are becoming less and less capable by the hour of handling difficult lexicographic conversation and argumentation.

By reading books, you can reclaim your ability to do deep critical thinking on a single subject that takes hours, days, weeks, months or even years to comprehend.

Books have changed my life more than any other medium that I've interacted with, including conversation with really smart people or classes with fantastic teachers.

In addition, after the advent of language models that are quickly becoming more and more ubiquitous, language itself is becoming cheaper and cheaper. The models, to their function, are pumping out streams of un peer reviewed, no skin in the game word vomit.

As such, by getting a high-quality version of language directly shot into your brain on a regular basis, you'll be able to compete at levels of thought that are better than what your peers will be able to come up with.

An Engineer While Alive, An Artist After Death

A la Leonardo da Vinci, I think it makes the most sense to collect skills in curiosity and engineering/scientific ways of thinking while you're alive. These fields tend to be pragmatic and pay better, and are less volatile. They also tend to be more immediately satisfying because they don't require an audience to appreciate your work.

Being an artist after you die means being able to live on in legacy through museums and ideas. Much like having a website instead of a social media presence (see above), being able to have your work continue to exist and find new readership after you stop being able to create new work (by dying) is what creates the kind of scarcity that makes people value art in the first place.

To be technical and creative is a rare mind to be born with, but I believe it can be taught to an extent that will cause the intended effect in anyone.

How You Treat Your Items Is How You Treat Yourself

This isn't exactly a one-to-one correlation, but people who apply a level of conscientiousness and detail to the elements in their life (this isn't just spending a lot of money on something if you have it and can afford the luxury version -- e.g. not just for the wealthy).

This is how you look into the detail and understanding of the items in your life. Some questions:

  • Do you know how your car works?
  • Do you know how your sink works?
  • Do you know what material they use to make your clothes? Where is the material from?
  • Do you know how your metabolism works? What about your pituitary gland?
  • Are you familiar with the weather patterns in your area? What vegetables can grow in your area?
  • What is sound? What is loud, actually?
  • How well do you know your God?
  • How well do you know your neighbors? Your family?
  • Have you timed your way to work? Have you counted how many oak trees are on the way from home to work?