Insights

2024

April 20 · 3 min read

The road to change is paved with suffering

To make a change we have to suffer. What can we do about it?

January 21 · 6 min read

Our flawed foundations

In a recent podcast, Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris discuss dogmas - beliefs that people hold to be true, irrespective of evidence for or against them. They highlight the negative consequences of this - certain foundational beliefs lead to bad behaviours. Their discussion focuses on religions, which have written, well defined axioms and so are straightforward examples to discuss. However, I do not think their reasoning went far enough. It's not just religions that have foundational beliefs. Every person must have a set of beliefs they assume to be true without evidence.

2023

October 29 · 2 min read

What problems do you want to solve?

You will always have problems. Even if you don't have a problem in the present moment, you won't have to wait long to encounter one. You'll either have a new problem to solve thrust on you by the changing external world (something breaks or stops working), or your lack of problems itself becomes a problem - you become bored or unhappy and need to shift your emotional state.

August 06 · 4 min read

Rationally awake

In rationally logical, we explored logical thought - an important part of rationality that lets us split the world into pieces. To continue developing our understanding of the rational, we need to examine another key concept - reason.

July 23 · 3 min read

Rationally logical

Rationality is a virtue in the modern world. We describe it as a positive trait, and look at someone who behaves rationally with high regard. In this and the following essay I intend to explore rationality in more detail, and develop a better understanding of what it means to be rational. Logic is an obvious place to start this analysis - a basic attempt to define rationality might be 'the application of logical thinking'.

May 08 · 2 min read

We are uncertain and we need to be

What does it mean to know something? 'I know that the next train will arrive at 3pm'. How do I know that? 'Because I looked up the train timetable on my phone'. Knowledge is built on top of other knowledge. If that's the case, there must be something fundamental that the rest of our ideas are built on. What are the different foundations of knowledge, and can we rely on them?

February 05 · 3 min read

New ideas

New ideas are how we progress. They allow us to come up with more efficient ways to achieve our goals, or even to change the goals themselves. Novel ideas can range from something as big as a new fundamental physical theory which enables a significant technological revolution, to a change of your morning routine. It should be clear that these are pretty important. But how do we go about producing new ideas?

2022

2020

October 04 · 2 min read

The two types of technology companies

There are two different types of technology companies - deep tech companies and product tech companies. There are significant differences between how these companies work and the types of people who work at them. Think of Airbnb. From a technology point of view, Airbnb is just a website. There’s nothing technically challenging about building a similar website - websites have been around for decades. However, Airbnb unlocked a new experience for users that did not exist before.

April 08 · 2 min read

Work, motivation and purpose

Why do we work? The simple answer is to make ends meet and pay the bills. Once you've got past survival, the next challenge is to find happiness and purpose in your work. This leads to the question - how do you choose a particular profession? Maybe it's because you have the right skillset for the role, but skills can be learned and they won't affect long term happiness. There is something deeper at play...