I think a scientist must think across time, imagining themselves to have lived long enough, like redwood trees, to have experienced not just new evidence but the history of civilizations, because we are human and humans inherit cultural narratives that are then etched as communally accepted norms.

Take atomism, for example. The major figures of the 16th-18th century science, especially physics, were aware of the democritus's worldview. Atomism was't simply discovered post renaissance. It was already there in our cultural consciousness, and new evidence then reshaped atomism.

It seems that even though temporally localized scientific evidence reshapes our picture of the world, it seems, we as human beings tend to adopt worldviews more culturally from history, and on larger time scales, new scientific evidence works by first shaping and reshaping the broader culturally visible worldviews, until the fracture points in the worldview become too huge to salvage it.

I don't think I am even talking about paradigm shifts—those are narrower in comparison. I am talking about shifts in worldview. We arguably had one from a view in which nature was not seen as intelligible (believe it or not, the very common background assumption that nature even allows itself to be analyzed and understood wasn’t always present in human societies). We have not seen anything like that happen in recent centuries, even though we have seen paradigm shifts, but we must be wary.

In evolutionary biology, we have a relatively good understanding of how all life forms came to be, once we assume the LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor) as the starting point. But explaining how LUCA arose from non-living matter remains a puzzle. LUCA itself is extinct now. Its existence was inferred from genetic and evolutionary evidence.

Science has many such explanatory gaps, which often feel like a deep conceptual chasm between what existed before a point in time and what came after that point — a sense of "this was not inevitable from what came before". These gorges feel like “Axioms” that nature decided to hand in to us, not in the form of attributes of things that existed when the universe was first created, but at a later time, and about complex things — Axioms because they appear to be primitives.

I think such gaps point to a pattern in our explanation of natural history: we have such gaps in explaining consciousness from ordinary matter and energy, life from non-living things, and material objects from quantum potentialities. There are probably many more examples. Once we jump that gap, we have methods that work well—evolution once we assume LUCA, modern neuroscience once we assume consciousness, and quantum mechanics once we assume material objects. There is a discontinuity at the point where those entities or capacities first appear.

The transition feels underdetermined by what came before. Imagine a Maxwell’s demon-like being that can probe and manipulate nature. Let’s say it exhaustively studies every little detail in the universe that came into existence up to a particular point in time; it may still lack the control to create or the computational ability to anticipate the axiom that would come into existence in its future.

This does not imply supernatural interventions — that’s an evasive explanation.

But there is also no logical guarantee that those gaps would be filled; we can only hope. But I think that hope is based on the centuries-old picture of the universe as a closed, mechanical device, like a giant clock. It has been a useful view, but it is not a logical necessity.

It's perhaps even possible that nature does, in the middle of its history, insert “axioms”— new primitives — that cannot be derived from the past, but we can still retain a naturalistic view of things, in the sense that once those axioms are assumed, there is no arbitrariness thereafter.

This is what we can conclude about the future:
Firstly, if nature inserted axioms halfway through at some points in the past, it can do so in the present or future as well if we assume time-symmetry for such occurrences. That is, what we control and manipulate in nature today may, in principle, neither allow us to anticipate the axioms that nature may “insert” in the future, nor give us the ability to create those axioms proactively by ourselves, given our current knowledge: a limit to our control.
If nature does not insert axioms halfway through, we can, in principle, control and independently create everything that comes later from what came before, up to limits allowed by fundamental limiting theories, such as in computability and quantum mechanics (perhaps it is these limits to control that lead to those axioms that nature appears to insert).

Around the time of Newton, or before, we pictured ourselves as tiny insects stuck in a vast, seemingly endless resin, with any abilities towards knowledge we acquired, about why we were there or what lay beyond us perceived as modest gifts.

However, after Laplace, there was a significant shift (and, arguably, the birth of an element of arrogance). Laplace's ideas, particularly his views on determinism and his sense of an “outsider view of the mechanical universe”, encouraged a view of the universe resembling a clockmaker observing a clock. We positioned ourselves as outsiders, objectively analyzing the universe. That's proving to be increasingly misleading.

I do not suggest a return to the supernatural, but rather a sense of humility, curiosity, and even gratitude for our methods and rigor, while remaining suspended, like small insects, in an “endless resin”—the observable universe.

In modern terms, Laplace’s program metamorphosed into the slogan “The Universe as a Conway's Game of Life”—put some elementary stuff and elementary rules, and everything emerges. But I think that's a category error. Unlike in Conway's game, there is no sensible way to get out of the universe and restart it with a different initial condition. It's a reductionist dream, but likely a category error. We can only hope to describe this existence partially, from within. But we can do a great deal—and often get surprises—even with that modest hope.

The universe is less like Conway's game and more like a LEGO set, where novelty that was not foreseen in the initial condition, even in principle, can arise. Don't ask me what the LEGO blocks are—I don't know. I doubt if we will ever be able to point out or find a miniature model of the universe and assert “the entire universe is just like that”.

Until the 3rd year of my PhD, I had peers, but everyone left the program at that time, and I have been alone socially ever since.

The only person I talk physics with is my advisor, and that's only once a week for an hour. I am still curious, and when immersed, I can still enjoy a physics problem, but over the past 5 years, I have felt a sense of pointlessness, a sense of shame for not being as obsessed with physics as I used to be.

When I look at YouTube videos of other universities or conferences, I get envious because I know I would thrive there, but I have no chance of attending. Sometimes I even think of quitting entirely.

The only community I have is when I read history books and encounter Einstein, Bohr, or Wheeler in my fantasy. I don't know if, given the lack of belonging in Physics, it's time to move on, or if I should stick with it for the imagined audience and for my younger self’s dreams. But I want to be realistic and not delude myself.

Five years ago, the first thing I did every morning after getting out of bed was to go to my notebooks and continue what I had been calculating and writing the night before. Now I feel an aversion to Physics, and days go by when I feel lethargic and repulsed by my notes. The curiosity I mentioned kicks in only when I actually get to my notes and persevere for a while.

But I feel angry, an anger not directed at anyone, but to the air in my room: anger that all my peers left, anger that I got stuck in this small university, anger that I no longer feel as engaged with my work.

Maybe I shouldn’t have metaphorically tattooed my field of study across my forehead.

I now realize that if you build your identity out of tribe memberships, attachments to people, and borrowed identities (even the identity of being a “physicist” counts as a borrowed identity that transmits from one generation to another), it’ll fall apart when unfortunate conditions align.

I find echoes in the Japanese film “Departures,” in which the protagonist, a professional cellist, loses his job when the orchestra he plays in disbands. His sense of self was closely tied to his craft, which left him in a state of great despair and dread. He reluctantly takes a job as a Nōkanshi after finding an advertisement for it in the newspaper. Over time, his identity renews afresh with a newfound appreciation for his profession, tending to the dead. Perhaps, he realized that he is still there in his body, only his roles have changed.

In a way, a profession and a passion for one's craft are like a love interest: some last a lifetime, while others come and go depending on alignment, timing, and so on.
I don't think physics is useless. Physics is still a beautiful subject, and some aspects of it have already permanently changed me. But just as a beautiful, valued, ever-admirable former lover with whom one's life does not align anymore, it's time to let go.

The real stuff that makes me, me, comes from how I move through the world, the way I keep chasing after things, the way I am around other folks, the way I think and feel, even when the ground shifts under my feet.

This stuff of me is not necessarily unique to me; others may have similar ways of being, too, but that doesn't erase my sense of identity. I'm still there like a sand grain among many.

Belonging isn’t some permanent tattoo either. Sometimes we find ourselves in a pack, all chasing the same thing for a while, and then the road forks and everyone scatters. That’s just how it goes.

It is said that the apparent historical analogy between the problems in electrodynamics at the end of the 19th century and the measurement problem in quantum mechanics inspired the quantum reconstruction program of research. But i think in retrospect a honest report would go something like: while the reconstruction program did illuminate on the mathematical structure of quantum theory (such as for the usuage of complex number, etc), it did not, at least not yet, achienve the analog of einstein's success for electrodynamics of moving bodies in two respects: it still did not clarify the ontology in an undisputable manner, and it still did not suggest future implications for physics.

I think a warning sign that a hope for an Einstein-style payoff already existed in the pre-reconstruction program quantum theory, the regular textbook version. Unlike in the Lorentz contraction for aether, everything in quantum theory worked and works perfectly, not just ad hocly

Perhaps that suggests that while the history of science can provide guidance, it cannot guarantee the same kind of success. The exploration, as much as the methods and direction of exploration, is to be actively figured out. 

Einstein himself did not imitate any method. In a way, his methods are his invention as much as his discoveries. The same holds for Newton. Heinseberg is an exception who borrowed Einstein's method, and it worked for him, but it may not work for everyone. 

But there are a few common threads among Einstein, Newton, Darwin, and others, regardless of their methods (the methods were contextual to their unique circumstances): Intellectual humility, honesty, rigor, clarity, independence to ask one's own questions, and a religious kind of curiosity. 

And those virtues, depending on the circumstances, take different forms and methods. So if we are to imitate, we have to imitate the virtues, not the methods.

Kant introduced this distinction, which he called the distinction between phenomena and noumena. Phenomena are objects as they appear to us. Noumena are what exist independently of our cognition and thus are inaccessible to us. But science has arguably meddled with phenomena, and it has succeeded, so noumena feel useless to a scientist. I think a scientist may even go further and say there is no noumena at all—only phenomena and phenomena which we have not accessed yet. 

I think the key behind this claim is the (reasonable) assumption that any distinction between things in nature can always be represented as a distinction in sense impressions or concepts, at least indirectly, with the aid of instruments. There is no distinction between things in nature that cannot, in principle, be mapped to distinctions in sense impressions. I’ll call this the representability principle: For any real distinction in nature, there exists in principle a corresponding distinction in possible sense impressions or conceptual representations, possibly mediated by instruments. 

Kant may now say, “You cannot rule out the possibility of distinctions that never affect appearances.”- to which this Immanuel will reply, “While that is true, that's as speculative as saying the negation of it—but the negation is useful and productive, unlike the original statement.”

Everett's daughter reportedly committed suicide, believing she would meet Everett in a parallel world. Ideas about reality, whether they are true or not, can affect human behavior, even dangerously. If a legitimate scientist said something harmful, even if not intentionally, but as a hypothesis to explain something, people may take it seriously. Now I don’t know if I can go as far as to claim that Many Worlds is a dangerous idea, but I cannot rule it out as not dangerous either. As a scientific hypothesis, it’s consistent, but the danger is in how it’s received by people without a background in Physics and how it may affect their actions. 

This is what Vonnegut was talking about when he was writing about Kilgore Trout’s dangerous ideas, even when Trout meant no harm. The ideas we construe in science are not culturally sterile. 

Now. There are two kinds of dangerous ideas. On the one hand, there are ideas that actually correspond to reality and turn out to be dangerous. The nuclear arms race is an example. It started out as a scientific curiosity, then it became a technological curiosity, then patriotism, war, and now countries bullying each other. Other dangerous ideas don’t necessarily correspond to reality, but become psychologically as dangerous as if they were real. Everett’s daughter is an example.

I think on a societal level, the whole “the universe is indifferent and life has no intrinsic meaning and we have to create meaning” business of the mid twentieth century was a response to the possibly dangerous Laplacian worldview. Laplace isn’t right. We know that today. But we also don’t know what replaces Laplace. My own take is Wheeler's participatory realism, where novelty is constantly being created in the universe. There’s no reason to associate any religion with it. But I think it’s a more enthusiastic universe to be in. The universe still doesn’t care about our individual problems. But our actions in the universe contribute to the creation of novelty. You and I are co-authors in the creation.

In the current state of physics, is it fair to say that we have a situation of "we have all or many of the clues on the table, and we need to piece it together correctly," or instead the situation of "We lack sufficient evidence to make progress"?  My own view is that at any given time we are, and have always been, in the former situation, because it is that which informs experiments and a sense of 'what to look' in the first place. 

And 'we lack sufficient evidence' is often an excuse when the issue lies with our methods of inquiry. A guy in the 12th century could have said we lacked sufficient evidence to understand why planets moved, but the problem was not a lack of evidence itself, but the methods he pursued: he probably had all the tools he needed to make a telescope or to do experiments, but he never did what he should have done with those raw materials to get the answers.

It’s common to hear "But quantum gravity effects are expected near Planck energies, Planck curvatures, tiny length scales far beyond current experimental reach."— and I think these are excuses too. Einstein's special relativity is an example. Special relativity is an effect that becomes noticeable at speeds closer to the speed of light, and yet Einstein did not sit around saying, "We lack the technology to go that fast"—he figured out what would happen in those regimes with what he already had. 

A more epistemically disciplined method would take what we already have and determine what it suggests will happen in regimes we cannot access. It is only when speculations run amok (by imagining wacky thought experiments, for example) that we say "data does not force a unique solution yet."

If we resurrect Newton today and make him make sense of all the evidence we have so far, I think he'll likely come up with the most disciplined conclusions that almost certainly follow from what we know, and for the rest, he'll stop and say 'hypothesis non fingo' and walk away. 

Here's the thing. Not all speculations are equal. Newton's universal gravity was indeed a speculation, but it is not the sense of 'let's guess something consistent and see if it works' (that's a more Popperian idea), but rather a sense of 'what are the generalities that hold for all instances we have looked at'. 

I think a Newtonian style requires an equal measure of discipline, humility, and restraint—discipline to piece together existing evidence and humility and restraint to stop where the evidence stops. In contrast, the Popperian style is one of excess—guess whatever you want, but make sure it is consistent and can be falsified.

One may say, “But we need to make a bold hypothesis!” I think that’s also a Popperian stance, but Popper’s stance is based on an outsider's view. He was not a scientist himself, so many of the unobservable things looked like bold guesses to him. 

But to the scientists themselves, the concepts they invent are often inevitably forced by the evidence. This was even true of Faraday's fields. I think Popper's main contribution is not in guiding scientists to do science, but in demarcating non-scientists ' supposed science from science. 

Curious but disciplined scientists already know how to do science.

I'm thinking a lot about the arguments in complex systems science for treating higher-level laws, such as evolution by natural selection, as fundamental rather than merely effective laws emerging from the laws of particles and fields, as most physicists view them. I’m talking about views that posit evolution as higher-level principles, which say something like: all objects are made of atoms and fields, but despite that, certain laws of nature do not even in principle follow from the laws for atoms and fields, but are fundamental. But we physicists have developed the habit of thinking that all higher-level laws follow from the laws of atoms or elementary particles. 

But then again, I think it may be so that there are higher-level fundamental principles that are supervenient on familiar particles and fields, but the debate as to "derivable in principle or not derivable in principle from microphysics" dissolve as a ill defined debate–because that debate seem to be based on a picture of the world as though it is conway's game of life (in which case we can ask if the laws of complex structures can be in principle be derived from laws of cells). 

But the world need not be like Conway's game of life. In which case, the debate makes no sense. 

To be clear, there are cases where we can infer macroscopic behavior from microscopic description of elementary particles: for instance, our inference of electricity from Bloch’s theory for electrons, for example; this example still isn't exactly like Conway’s game of life, since even for Bloch’s model to work, we need, not just the microscopic things and their laws, but also the experimental context, such as provided by the lattice structure which is essential to even specify the problem. In such contexts, yes, once we specify the macroscopic context, we have something like Conway’s Game of Life. We can tell how much and what sort of electricity we are going to measure from the microscopic description of the electrons.

All of these concern the nature and limits of emergence. 

More broadly, I can ponder the possible views on the relationship between laws of nature and nature in itself. On the one hand, the safest bet seems to be one where laws of nature are our mental constructions that map to how the shared world works, so that with those mental constructions we can know what we can expect to happen in repeatable circumstances of the same kind (such as the weight due to law of gravity for a pebble versus for a bigger rock), and, aided with logic, can even tell what will happen in newer circumstances of different kinds (such as the expected path from the law of gravity along with laws of motion for a moving rock) that have not been performed before. 

This is more like the laws of nature as rules of a mysterious game show—where we don't know how we ended up there or why— but we realized we can learn some rules of the game while playing—but we can never know whether the game is closed under those rules or even if it is all a dream, or whether we can recreate a new game from them, or even whether it is a category error to hope for them. More like playing the game, the witness. In this view, we can know as much as we can about the universe, but our understanding may always be open-ended and tentative, and something mysterious perpetually remains. 

The other is a more pompous view where one thinks the universe is like a game of life with some primitive elements and definte ways for the ways the primitive elements behave, and everything else, even the whole universe, could be deduced from them, and if we have those primitive elements and can supply the same conditions, can give birth to a new universe. etc. I think the former view is safer, more historically justified, than the latter, which I think is more characteristic of modern physics.

I think culture also played a role in favoring one view over the other. Historically, when science was culturally entwined with religion, the latter view was more favoured, with god behind the fundamental laws and the primitive stuff. Then later, atheism adopted the same view but without anyone behind the screen. But I think, regardless of belief in a deity, the former view is more justified on historical grounds. And it, ironically, does evoke in me a stronger feeling of mystery and even reverence, without a destination for that reverence.

The latter view, seeing laws of nature as the universe's ultimate rulebook, nevertheless has its advantages. It provides a sort of emotional conviction (a sense of “it cannot be otherwise”). That conviction is needed to do mathematical proofs and reasoning effectively. For some reason, it feels hard to do mathematical reasoning with tentative facts—it's perhaps a psychological effect. The mind more forcefully and easily sees the conclusions that follow when presented with absolute truths than when presented with tentative observations or truths.

But the latter view has the drawback of assuming that fundamental laws can be associated only with the very small. This may not be true. Even in the latter view, the laws of nature can stay fixed over time, but may act at different times in the history of the universe. For instance, the law of evolution by natural selection may be a fundamental law, but one that manifests only at a later stage in the universe's history. Many such higher-level fundamental laws may exist for complex systems. More like how a new rule of a game can start applying only after many missions, and a large part of the plot has already been completed. This, also, I think reconciles the two views. Because now we never know, just by looking at what has come so far, or even the smallest, that we have looked at everything we need to observe or deduce the fundamental laws of the universe. The universe is more like an unfolding Christopher Nolan movie.

I was thinking about the future of living with AI, especially regarding the sense of purpose and value in human life. I think there are two broad possibilities, and in either case, we will likely be fine and become more humble. 

The first broad possibility is that AI becomes very advanced but never develops a sense of moral agency and individuality. In this case, human beings will become transhumans in some ways—we'll do what we always did, but more efficently and effectively.  

The second broad possibility is that AI gains agency and individuality, in which case there are two subcategories. In both subcategories, AI agents and humans may become moral equals, even when AI is intellectually superior, but that does not make humans lesser, for the same reason animals are not lesser just because humans happen to be smarter—the right to live, sustain, and pursue interests is still granted to everyone. 

The first subcategory is when AI agents become so smart that they form a self-sustaining "species" with their own purpose and goals, and may no longer see a reason to interact with or serve humans. In this subpossibility, humans may still have purpose, a life, happiness, and the exchange of values, just as humans have such joy even before the industrial revolution and, arguably, even before the agricultural revolution. There's joy even if we end up in a cave with some fire, stories, and the warmth of friends. 

The second possibility is that AI agents become our collaborators, sharing civilisation-level goals and purpose. In this case, humans may become more like the less intelligent colleagues whose presence and warmth are nevertheless valued in a team effort. In this case, too, humans may not become "lesser" in just the same way a less intelligent colleague is not lesser in any human way.  

Ok, well. I was thinking about the moral seriousness of Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein. Many seem morally shaky. Hume and Kant were both racists and misogynists. While there was no notion of race in the time of Aristotle, he still saw no problem with slavery, and he held condescending views on women. Newton was a misogynist and never cared about the social brutalities of his time (silence equals harm). Only Einstein was morally serious about social issues, but he was still arguably a male chauvinist in his personal life. 

I used to think of all these figures as heavenly, with halos around their heads. Now they seem more like mortals. If I imagine them today in a room (perhaps with modern attire), while I'd still marvel at their useful ideas, I'd chuckle inside myself to notice how they still missed noticing some obvious-seeming truths due to the social conditioning, and how their genius was useless in some respects and hid them behind the curtains of comfortable illusions.

In that sense, to me, they may seem no different, if I met them today, than a smart colleague who made some good observations and reasoning in some problems but made completely wrong observations and reasoning in others. 

I wonder if even the seemingly best public intellectuals of today may, in 400 years' time, look as confused as Aristotle, Kant, Newton, or Hume seem in some respects. In what respects might they be seen as not morally serious enough? I think the movements of the present that seem hard for some people or life, but manageable or ignorable for others, give us hints. I think climate justice, immigration, the LGBTQ movement, digital manipulation and attention theft (such as algorithms’ addictive design), and industrial gauging of a human’s worth are possible prime cases.

Technical and scientific writing is often seen as cold and distant compared to, for example, fiction. However, it seems to me that technical writing, even in academic publishing, has a shorter emotional range with which to engage the reader, not a nonexistent one. 

On the one hand, one can write arrogantly, with a sense of finality, and unclearly—almost to intimidate—which makes the reader sceptical, frustrated, and even angry; this, I think, is the more common kind of scientific writing.

On the other hand, one can write with humility, adopting a subtle, tentative attitude, with the primary intention of making the work understandable and useful to the reader, taking extra care to slow things down, break them down, and acknowledge limitations with grace. Essentially, the goal is to come across as a caring friend who happens to know more than you on a specific matter, rather than as a condescending prodigy. This approach is rarer, and it evokes a sense of warmth that encourages continued engagement with the work, openness to the ideas, and even a desire to meet the researcher in person and have a conversation.

These qualities reflect the researcher’s personality. In writing, there is a saying that if you want your true voice to come through, you should read aloud what you have written and check whether it feels like something you would actually say. Therefore, just as in fiction writing, it may be helpful to read technical prose aloud after it is put on paper or into print, as a way of checking for the presence of personality on the page.

When I was starting out in Physics, I constantly wondered how on earth Physicists come up with equations—an amazement which I have observed is shared by so many non-physicists, because many have expressed that same puzzle when I became a physicist myself. It looks like magic from the outside. It also makes practitioners look like some sort of wizards capable of doing special things.

But I now want to articulate a simpler truth about the field. The intention is not to suggest that no effort or persistence is required to be able to play with equations, but to emphasize that it’s doable by anyone with enough curiosity and willingness to think clearly and legibly.

Equations in physics can be seen as characters in a story—a model or a conceptual scaffolding. In papers that start right off the bat with equations, it is often the case that they work within the existing story, like an episode in an ongoing serial. But papers that are dense in prose and then supply equations towards the end, or never do it until the next paper is written, are initiating a "story" for which the characters are not built yet. Just like in stories, equations are the carriers of identity—of what exists—of agency and change—of how things change, and of what is not possible—the constraints of the world.

Both kinds of physics papers are important, but the former tends to focus on the foundational aspects of physics, while the latter is the dominant mode in many technical papers that build on existing foundations.

The scientist's emotional labor each day translates into emotions in the work. A scientist’s work, when viewed at the level of daily practice, is rarely the dramatic act of discovery often imagined—it is instead the quiet, sustained effort of either writing or engineering. Reading, while necessary, is passive; the active engagement with science happens when one articulates ideas in writing—whether through papers, equations, or personal notes—or when one builds tools, models, or experiments to test and explore those ideas. Even theorizing only gains scientific weight when it is externalized in some form. Here’s a self-check, by the way, for what doing science looks like in the slice of a single day: if one is not writing or engineering, one may not be actively doing science.

I’ve been thinking about cryopreservation lately—like the kind Alcor does. People often say it’s not pseudoscience because it “doesn’t violate known physics.” The argument seems to rest on the result from statistical mechanics that, in principle, even irreversible processes like death might be reversible.

But that always makes me wonder—if physics eventually showed that some processes really are irreversible in principle, not just in practice, wouldn’t that undermine the whole premise? And even if it didn’t—maybe mind uploading could still be possible—there’s another issue that bothers me more.

Even if we could somehow decode every bit of information in a dead person’s brain and perfectly copy it into a computer or an AI system, how would we ever know whether the person was actually “back,” or whether we’d just built an incredibly good replica? We already see early versions of that today with AI mimicking people’s voices, personalities, and even writing styles. At some point, resemblance alone ceases to signify identity.

And then there’s an even stranger problem. If the mind is just classical information, in principle, you could copy it more than once. You could put the same brain pattern into multiple bodies or machines. Would that mean the person had been reanimated many times over? That feels wrong. Intuitively, it seems much more like you’ve created several new beings who all share the same past—more like procreation than resurrection.

Once you follow that line of thought, it starts to feel like we keep circling back to the same conclusion humans reached thousands of years ago, all the way back to Gilgamesh: individual immortality may just not be on the menu. What can endure is the species, the lineage, the continuation of consciousness itself.

And in a strange way, that makes sense. I call myself “me,” but the basic texture of my inner life—the way pain feels, the way happiness feels, the way desire or ambition feels—doesn’t really belong to me. It’s shared. Anyone who has ever lived, or will live, knows those feelings from the inside. What changes are the details: the memories, the specific experiences, the social and genetic circumstances. But beneath all that, the constant hum of consciousness probably feels more or less the same from any human head.

That realization is both sad and comforting. Sad, because it goes directly against the deeply ingrained urge to want this self to last forever—an urge that’s probably just an evolutionary mechanism pushing organisms to preserve themselves. But comforting too, because while that urge doesn’t really line up with the physical and cognitive reality of how minds work, something else does endure. 

From an evolutionary perspective, it also makes sense that biology wouldn’t support our dreams of immortality. Natural selection had no reason to shape brains that could be perfectly preserved, decoded, and reanimated later. Consciousness evolved as something useful in the moment—powerful, yes, but disposable. There was never any payoff for making it copy-proof or eternal.

Thinking about mortality more generally, another idea keeps coming back to me: scientifically speaking, being dead is the same as being not-yet-born. There’s no experience either way. So a lot of the fears people have—like being trapped in a dark void, or suffocating in a grave—are really category mistakes. They assume experience continues, just in a worse form. The problem is that consciousness evolved to imagine futures, not to imagine its own absence. We can’t picture non-experience, so we substitute scary images like darkness or emptiness (people who believe in some faith system probably substitute a more pleasant imagery, I think—and they aren't losing anything by doing so). 

What’s interesting, though, is that none of us feels dread about the millions of years before we were born. Dinosaurs, ancient wars, past lovers who lived and died—we missed all of that, and it doesn’t bother us. Maybe that’s because the past can be learned after the fact. Like the way you can come into the movie late and still ask your friends what you missed.

Dying early in human history—which the 21st century might still count as, if the story has a long way to go—feels unsettling for a different reason. It’s not about nothingness; it’s about not being around to hear how it all turns out. Coming into a movie late doesn’t bother us much, but walking out before the ending does. That, I think, is the real source of the fear. It’s a kind of existential FOMO.

If that’s right, it’s tempting to think that people born closer to the end of the story—if there even is one—would feel better off than we do, or than someone who lived twenty thousand years ago and “missed” the Enlightenment, the pyramids, healthier lives, and so much else. But then you remember that no one feels anything afterward. Satisfaction only exists while you’re alive.

And the interesting thing is that satisfaction doesn’t really depend on whether you “saw everything” or made it all the way to the universe’s end credits. It just has to feel vivid and coherent. Someone who died in 4000 BC, imagining gods and angels, could feel just as complete and fulfilled as someone far in the future, looking back on how the universe’s real fate turned out. Imagined futures can be just as emotionally powerful as real ones—sometimes even more so.

What that highlights is how important strong beliefs about “what comes next” have always been. In the past, it was the gods and heavens. In an ideal future, maybe it’s a sense of having fully understood the universe and looking forward to the heat death. Both can offer closure. The problem is that we’re stuck in between. We can’t fully believe the old myths, but we don’t yet have a complete picture of reality either. That limbo might be why 20th-century philosophers were so obsessed with existential dread.

It also suggests that tying death anxiety to FOMO might be relatively new. People have always feared death, but often for different reasons—leaving loved ones behind, facing judgment, punishment, or salvation—not because they were worried about missing the rest of human history.

So maybe the best consolation for our time is a kind of humanism: treating humanity itself as something sacred, something to care for and be grateful for. Not eternal individuals, but a continuing process of thought, feeling, and shared meaning in front of the vast, indifferent cosmos.

I keep thinking of that line from Ted Chiang: “The universe began as an enormous breath being held. I am glad that it did. Until this great exhalation is finished, my thoughts live on.”

And somehow, that feels like enough.

There comes a stage when people you once knew, with whom you have parted ways, effectively become strangers, in the sense that the likelihood of any future depth is almost the same as with someone you have never met. Yes, it is possible to reach out and reconnect with an old friend you lost contact with, or even a former partner with whom things faded gradually without an official ending. In such cases, the old bond can sometimes resurrect in a surprisingly vivid or even melodramatic way. And yes, it is also possible for context to transform a past connection: meeting a former colleague you once fancied, for instance, but where circumstances kept things formal, and later, in a different setting, discovering dimensions of them you never knew before.

But that is a different story from the kind of connection where all of the following are true: a) there was no real bond to begin with, b) the interaction—whether platonic or romantic—simply faded over time, and c) there is no natural context in which to encounter one another again, meaning the only way to reconnect would be through a deliberate, out-of-the-blue message.

In such cases, the people involved are known faces, not known people. You may be better off striking up a conversation with the first stranger you come across on the street—for they carry freshness, novelty, and unexpected potential for curiosity.

When a past connection lacked depth, emotional imprint, mutual momentum — or whatever you may call it—and when a long silence has passed with no organic context, such a person essentially becomes a stranger. Psychologically, we tend to think of strangers as lying ahead in time: people we have not yet met. But it seems that strangerhood can be time-symmetric. Strangers can exist both before and after a relationship, not only in the forward-directed sense.

We often think of relationships as static entities, but they are really little life processes. There is no point trying to resurrect something that has long since senesced; it makes more sense to return to it only in memory, as one might symbolically lay flowers on a grave.

It seems to me that Mary Shelley’s novels follow two persistent threads. The first is her extensive knowledge of history, politics, and the history of science. Frankenstein, Valperga, and The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck all read like “what if” explorations of political or scientific history. Frankenstein imagines a world in which galvanism can truly reanimate the dead; Valperga asks what a woman endowed with power, moral agency, and romantic attachment to a rising tyrant might have seen and felt while standing opposite the real historical warlord Castruccio Castracani; and The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck explores the possibility that the pretender Perkin Warbeck was, in fact, noble.

The second thread arises from her tumultuous personal life. The Last Man, Lodore, and Falkner feel like “what could have been” emotional reimaginings of loss, family, identity, and survival (with The Last Man also drawing on historical plague narratives). The Last Man envisions a world in which she herself—transformed into Lionel Verney—is the final survivor, accompanied by thinly veiled portraits of the men she loved and lost (Shelley and Byron). Lodore examines female identity and autonomy, shaped by Percy Shelley's influence and ultimately liberated from it. Falkner, meanwhile, reworks her complicated relationship with her father, William Godwin, into a narrative about reconciliation and moral redemption.

In a sense, though, this is true of all storytelling—novels, films, and plays alike. Even Shakespeare reinvented preexisting tales, histories, and myths. Literature, in this way, operates much like science: each new creation builds on ideas, experiences, and structures that already exist.

But art and science are not merely remixes of what has come before. They are remixes guided by an emotional, moral, or intuitive truth arising from experience—even from imagined but plausible experience—something like a “flashlight” that directs the creative process. The concept of mass, force, and motion predated Newton. What didn’t predate Newton is the method of counterfactual reasoning, which revealed the generalities in nature that lay hidden. When Isaac Newton was building his theory of universal gravitation, he was led by considerations such as his cannonball thought experiment, in which he imagined that projectiles travel farther when propelled with greater initial velocity, and by his observation that separating massive bodies required proportionally greater force. 

In the arts, life experience and knowledge supply the flashlight that draws us toward particular emotional or philosophical counterfactuals—stories that explore paths we never walked but might have. In science, the flashlight often arises from the counterfactual itself (not many scietific truth reside in plain sight): it illuminates new ways to rearrange known facts and generates fresh counterfactuals that we call predictions.

In science, the counterfactual often seems to hold the truth — and that is precisely why it’s essential to keep expanding the boundaries of experience by exploring and by building tools (which function as new portals for our encounter with nature) — even tools not directly intended for scientific inquiry.

If Einstein had had no conception of an elevator or of being on a train — each of which offers distinct classes of phenomenal experience: the sensation of being pushed back by an accelerating train, the feeling of lightness in a descending lift — he might not have had a way to intuit the nature of freefall or acceleration. These kinds of phenomenal and embodied experiences arguably make possible the construction of counterfactuals such as “What would a freely falling person experience and observe?” and “What would an observer on a moving train experience and observe?” It is precisely these counterfactual constructions that revealed deeper natural truths, such as the equivalence principle.

The expansion of phenomenal and embodied experience through new tools often resembles a video game in which we unlock new map locations: once a location is unlocked, we are free to explore it. Likewise, once a category of embodied experience is “unlocked”, we gain the freedom and conceptual bandwidth to construct counterfactuals — in which scientific truths (at least in physics) seem to reside.

Who knows what forms of embodied experience we currently lack, and which may hold deep secrets? Might there be profound truths we cannot yet conceive because we lack the relevant bodily experience?

What makes a person? Is it their affiliations to social groups, or is it their beliefs and preferences, their temperaments, their abilities, their embodied existence and experiences, or simply the re-identifiable sequence in time of the bundle consisting of all of the above? This bundle that persists in time makes a person, but it’s just a matter-of-fact, like one’s birthdate, and neither something to be proud of nor something to feel sheepish about. And that matter-of-fact individuality is not interchangeable, just as the way two little classical particles are distinguishable and are not interchangeable because they occupy distinct spatial locations at all times. It's the answer to "who am I?" and the answer is just a dry fact. Yes, the answer can evoke different kinds of feelings, such as fulfillment, despair, regret, and longing—but those associated feelings are not themselves the answer to "who am I?" They are an answer to a related question of "Do I matter?"

It feels nice to have a sense of distinctiveness, a living object that persists over time as a distinguishable entity, irreplaceable and not confused with other such living objects. The living objects here are, of course, people. They call this quest to demarcate oneself as an island amidst humanity– ‘individualism’. But individualism was, I think, only a tool invented to make people more accountable, give them agency over their actions, and prevent them from doing preposterous things and hiding behind a mob. 

But it seems the tool has, over the years, metamorphosed into a way to justify a sense of self-worth, when in reality, all our characteristics often overlap to varying degrees in varying combinations. There is nothing irreplaceably distinct in any one of us. However hard one looks inside oneself, there is no mystical essence of being me that is not there in you or in others.  And since nothing undeniably distinct in kind can be found in any one of us, the tool encouraged seeking distinctness in degree. And that's where the problem starts.

There is Potos, who thinks, "I'm good at certain things. But there could be others who are much better than me in those things. But I still matter, and I can still add something useful despite it. And there could be other things that matter more to some people than the things I'm good at." 

There is Katos, who thinks, "I have the greatest ability in some things, and none higher than me exists. Others may be better in other things, but those things don't matter as much as the thing I'm great at,"  

And there is Armis, who thinks, "I have the greatest ability in some things, and none higher than me exists. Others may be better at other things. And depending on the person concerned, those things may matter just as much as or more than the thing I'm great at."

I think the hyper-individualistic societies, unfortunately, encourage the development of the Katos and the Armis.

 Now, a fully collectivist society isn't also good because it hides accountability, as stated earlier. On the other hand, individualism matters only to the extent that it maintains accountability for one's choices and actions and affords the freedom to choose in the first place. 

As for the sense of self-worth, the answer to "Do I matter?", I think individualism should have no say; instead, it's better to give an answer that goes something like "I am a contributor to this human project", and yes that means there are many more contributors just as you, and many more better than you are, but you're still relevant, still worth existing, still worth listening to, still worth being likeable in this moment to someone. 

Notice that "I am a contributor to this human project" takes the shape of "I'm a part" and not the shape of "I'm a whole". It's ego dissolution, really. The individual as a distinct entity exists as a neutral fact, but there’s no more need for an ego. And that's what fosters the Potos. A society of Potoses is a collectivist society in which individuals are accountable to one another and are free to choose. For Potos, the answer to "Do I matter?" is neither a settled fact from the past nor a resolution sought from the future; it is only a sense of pursuit that feels alive and active in this moment, and as long as that pursuit is alive now, Potos would say he matters.

Now it is true that certain things that matter to some people, but not to others, may, over time, get naturally selected and proliferate in society. Things like science are an example. But that does not mean that being associated with such things makes one "better" than those who are not. Claiming otherwise confuses what matters to people individually with what benefits society as a whole. 

Yes, what proved beneficial to society collectively guides collective decisions—at least that's what we hope—and that's what likely leads to further societal progress (—even in this judgment, we are using induction, so some epistemic humility is warranted). 

But even the inductively judged collective value of things still does not entail, at the individual level, assigning "better" or "lesser" value labels to things on behalf of other individuals. We can only say, "Here's what I see and here's the evidence. You decide what you want to do."

The belief of Potos isn't just a "humble thyself" stance (though that's also a valid way to look at it), but also the most rational one. Let's say Potos has a skill or a unique way of looking at things. Skills are always trainable, and others could have trained more and more effectively than Potos. And ways of looking at things are not mystical revelations, but are the result of observations with our mental faculties. And because the mental faculties are shared and the reality is shared, others are capable of the same observations and conclusions too. I can look at the sun and the moon; others can too.

There is sometimes this unease from adopting the stance of Potos: The paranoia stemming from the fear that says, "If I'm only a contributor, and others can do it too, then why should I do it, and won't there be repetitions arising from many arriving at the exact same contribution?" It's the unjustified fear that you're no longer relevant.

Potos the individual does things earnestly 

Because it feels good to them,

Because the individual found some activity that nobody seems to have paid as much attention to as the activity deserves,

Because they can do it,

Because they feel that "somebody ought to do it", 

And not because the universe was waiting for their existence to pop up and do that activity that no one else could. 

And yes, there are sometimes parallel discoveries, inventions, compositions, and so on, but that does not erase the fact that you played a role and that your sweat, personality, and expressiveness are in the work. Isn't that camaraderie in serendipitous realization that others have been behind the same goal as you, fulfilling in itself?  Isn't that serendipitous realization that others have been behind the same goal as you, an assurance that certain truths are structurally participatory and public? Heck, even if you are forgotten from the work, isn't the satisfaction from having played a part already enough? You have already seen your soul grow. I would have seen my soul grow. That's enough for me. Even if there is no contribution, despite trying, that too is enough.

I was asking myself two questions this morning: Is philosophy best seen as a rudimentary form of modern fields such as science, public policy, and artistic modes, or is it of no use any longer, despite its lingering cultural and professional relevance? This is Hawking's view.

 Or is it rather seen as perhaps a perpetually useful field, like a perpetual spring, that has so far birthed science, artistic modes of expression, and public policy, and, in due course, may birth more, and without it, science and art modes and policy may plateau? 

An observation of the history of physics, for example, and arguably in other fields too, suggests the latter possibility. But I want to deviate from the usual defence of Philosophy given by many modern Philosophers. Unlike them, I do not believe we need philosophy for philosophy's sake.

Philosophy perhaps functions more like a TV show writer in the sense that he may, based on circumstance, choose to produce a show, and once the premise is set, the subsequent episodes and seasons are taken over by the specialized fields, but without the TV show writer, we may not have new shows. We will only have new seasons and new episodes of the existing shows.

 But academic philosophy? I’m not so sure. Even though philosophy is useful, I believe the most useful philosophies come from philosophically oriented practitioners in active, more technical fields, and not from passive observations of technical fields, as many academic philosophers feel today. 

In physics, most productive philosophies seem to have come from active physicists; yes, Kuhn made an observation, and so did Popper, but those are observations about physics and science in general, not about the day-to-day decisions a physicist makes in his work. It's nowhere near as useful as the philosophies of Newton, Einstein, Bohr, and Wheeler for thinking through a problem. 

I think the same also applies to the arts, politics, and ethics, etc. For useful philosophy of art, one first needs to be an artist. For useful political philosophy, one first needs to be a political agent or participant. For useful moral philosophy, one needs to be a moral agent. 

If one wants to be a philosopher, one must probably first engage actively with a craft about which one wants to philosophize, rather than make comments about what other people do. A philosopher of physics must be a physicist first.

I'm not necessarily critiquing academic philosophy, only that I believe academic philosophy has greater potential if the activity that the subject of philosophizing entails is also pursued earnestly, firsthand.

We often imagine that science, the arts, and politics are the successors to philosophy and that the latter is no longer relevant, as though science progresses from one technical edge to another, with any philosophical worry a waste of time. 

But it seems history may turn out to show the following pattern: there comes a phase of "philosophical marination" where different sets of methods, worldviews, concepts, and goals get reevaluated, and that phase is followed by centuries of technical progress within that set of tools, methods, worldviews (perhaps the last 500 years is one instance of this period), next the philosophical marination phase happens again when no amount of technical prowness proves useful, and again for the next few centuries technical progress based on that second philosophical marination happens. The noble and useful aspects of the previous philosophical marination are often retained in the subsequent ones. And this repeats. 

In the past, perhaps the origin of religions was one such philosophical marination, then the Renaissance was another, with the good social aspects of religion— such as cooperation, a sense of reverence for giants of the field, and a sense of "holiness" to the big, socially validated ideas of the field— being carried over to the next philosophical marination.

Prophets replaced by geniuses, religious organizations replaced by scientific societies, scriptures replaced by the cannons of science. Heresy replaced by pseudoscience. This is not the same as Kuhn's paradigm shift; it is something else. 

I think an ideal state of mind to maintain in view of these cycles of marinations is neither "anything goes", nor "science forever", but a sense of epistemic openness, one that will obviously adopt the goodness of science, but may also add more than that. Over time, it becomes something else—science becomes analogous to whatever Pythagoras and Plato once did: useful, but not really science in the modern sense. 

And in this marination phase, the torchbearers of the next episteme don't appear to be the technical practitioners of the former episteme, nor the pure philosophers who observed the former episteme without practicing it. 

They are likely, instead, the philosophical practitioners of the former episteme. Thomas Aquinas and Newton were, to varying degrees, infused with the religious episteme of the time and practiced it, but they were also philosophers with one foot in a new episteme. 

The fully technical practitioners of the previous episteme would have been the religious clerics who had no regard for philosophy or for anything beyond the episteme they inhabited. 

And the fully philosophical practitioners would have been those who did not inhabit or were against the episteme of their time, but also did not have a firm foot on any new episteme either, but were speculating from outside any episteme—Giardano Bruno and many other speculative philosophers of the time would have been examples of this. Bruno had some good guesses and speculations, but he was not operating from any structured epistemic framework, such as empiricism, and he was also outside and against the religious episteme of his time.

The optimal place to be in, it appears, is to be a philosopher who first-hand engages with the tasks of the present episteme. In the modern case, for physics, it would be a philosopher who also does physics (for example, by conducting experiments or performing mathematical calculations).

My point of view as a physicist is rather untypical among my colleagues. Many physicists still prefer a reductionist account of “what exists,” assuming that only the so-called “physical world” is real and that all our experiences—feelings, thoughts, abstractions—are ultimately reducible to metaphysically assumed elementary substrates (“fields and particles”) and nothing more.

Yet I suspect that some corners of physics—particularly those beginning to grapple with phenomenology and the role of the observer—are slowly expanding this stance. These developments suggest that we may be inching toward a broader definition of what “observation” means.

In my view, the word scientist should refer to anyone who makes honest, careful, complete, and undistorted observations of all kinds that present themselves to phenomenal experience. Observation includes not only seeing a comet through a telescope, but also noticing how a change of variables simplifies an equation, or recognizing a common structural feature among a set of abstract objects. Pure mathematics, on this account, is simply the discipline that restricts itself to observing abstract mental objects rather than laboratory phenomena. Mathematicians are scientists of a different domain—one composed of logical and symbolic forms that they observe through introspective experience.

Indeed, my understanding of observation is even broader. I consider the observation of feelings, moods, and internal sensations to be part of observation as well. These, too, present themselves to experience and can be represented, analyzed, transformed, and communicated. Artists, therefore, also count as scientists in this wider sense. Their domain of observation is the realm of feeling, lived experience, and subjective texture. They observe internal emotional states, memories, and longing, and they represent these observations through narrative, imagery, sound, or other forms. These artistic works are analogous to the models and theorems of mathematicians and scientists: they are representations that help us understand, share, appreciate, and navigate reality.

But this demands an expanded view of what reality is. Reality, on this account, is the aspect of phenomenal experience that is shared and relatable by all observers. Tables and planets are real because we can all observe them together. But so are things like pain, love, and fear—we all can observe them even when we do not observe them simultaneously. What is real is what is publicly experienced and can be shared in a language, whether it's about external sense perceptions, inner emotions, or abstract thoughts.

Artists, mathematicians, and scientists are united by a common method. All are honest observers and describers of different domains of experience. All construct representations—whether equations, theories, artworks, or stories—are based on what they observe. And all contribute to the shared human project of  expressing and making sense of the world.

In this broader, more inclusive framework, observation is empirical engagement with the full contents of experience, not only with what traditional physics would call the “physically real.” Perhaps this is what those ancient painters in the Lascaux cave were grappling with: they painted things that existed outside their cave—danger, food, animals—but also things that existed inside, in the terrain of dreams and imagination. Even then, long before “science” or “art” were formalized, humans were already engaged in the same fundamental act: observing experience in all its forms, and representing it and sharing it so others could understand and navigate reality.

What are the Moral principles behind decent interactions with strangers? My stance is to operate within the following moral framework  that ensures an affirmative answer to the following three questions in decreasing order of priority: Does it benefit the other person? Does it benefit the common good of the community? Does it truly benefit me, not just my ego?

This means one can approach a stranger if the primary intent is to offer something simple and positive — perhaps just a brief greeting or a word of appreciation — without expectation or demand.

Goodwill, by definition, includes: Honest intent; context awareness to avoid intrusion as much as possible; an easy, immediate, and socially unpressured exit for them, judged from the likely perspective of an average person in that context (For example, approaching someone in a dark alley is inappropriate — even if one is respectful from their side — because there is no reasonable perception of ease or safety in that context) and finally, having zero expectations.

Without these four components, it is not goodwill.

There is always a possibility of error. Even if one believes the context is appropriate, it may not be. Even if one believes a small gesture might be welcome, the other person may simply prefer not to be engaged in that moment. That uncertainty is unavoidable in public life.

Therefore, the ethical standard is not to guarantee a positive outcome from the interaction, though that may be the hope, but to conduct oneself cleanly: to offer something lightly, to remain responsive to cues, and to withdraw immediately if there is no reciprocity.

Every human is free to respectfully approach another human, in a socially attuned way. Every human also has the full right to decline. Social life depends on this asymmetry — the freedom to initiate and the freedom to refuse. While cumulative social attention can become burdensome in certain situations, spontaneous goodwill is neither constant nor uniformly directed. Not everyone feels the same impulse toward the same person at the same moment. In cases where someone is clearly receiving excessive attention, that excess is typically visible within the situation itself, allowing individuals to calibrate accordingly — and perhaps decide to approach at a later, more open moment.

As long as the initiation is brief, non-intrusive, responsive, and free of expectations, it falls within reasonable moral bounds.

The Pythagoreans were probably theistic, but with impersonal objects of reverence. Why do I identify myself with them?

Firstly, I think we should stop calling “laws of nature” and instead call the mathematical regularities in nature the “inevitabilities of nature.” The phrase “laws of nature” makes it sound as if the universe sat there, idle, waiting to be handed laws—like commands it must follow without exception. But that’s not how everything began. And calling them laws makes it seem as though these mathematical regularities could have been otherwise, even though we have no evidence to support that claim. Yes, our descriptions of these regularities get refined over time as we gather more knowledge, but that only deepens our understanding of their inevitability. It does not reflect a change of mind on the part of any “law-giver.”

Pythagoras believed that the cosmos was playing a kind of music—the harmony of the spheres. A music we cannot hear unless we pay careful attention. That music takes the form of numbers, shapes, symmetries, changes, and probabilities manifest in atoms, planets, stars, and everything else. The universe is like an orchestra playing this harmony, with rests and tones, and we are the musicians who can, if we choose, play along—listening carefully and filling in the rests with improvisation, building, expressing, and creating within the limits of what nature allows.

In this sense, the cosmos is an endless jazz concert.

Shakespeare alludes to this in The Merchant of Venice:

“Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with a patina of bright gold:

There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st

But in his motion as an angel sings…”

And Goethe seems to have sensed something similar when he said, “Architecture is frozen music.” I like to think this refers not only to the architecture of the things we build, but to the architecture of the universe itself.

The Pythagoreans had beliefs in soul transmigration, ritual purity, and a moral cosmology of number. I do not share those exact doctrines. Instead, I have my own rituals and beliefs. I believe laboratories and observatories are sacred spaces because they are portals through which we peer into hidden harmony. I believe moral life reflects a hidden harmony among human beings, and that the act of conversation can itself be sacred. I dislike the label “atheistic”; it makes the universe dead when it is so “alive” and intrinsically meaningful.

The cosmos is fundamentally structured by mathematical relations, and this structure is worthy of reverent participation. And yes, I mean both rigorous analysis and reverence. My view is: do empirical inquiry, but do not forget to feel it. The feeling is part of why it is worth doing.

The harmony of the spheres, to me, is like listening to music that continues to hum silently in the mind long after it has stopped. We listen to the mathematical harmony of the cosmos through laboratories and observatories, and its silent hum continues within us.

Now you may say, cut the mumbo jumbo and cut to the chase and ask me how “sacredness is detected”, and I think that is the wrong question. It is like asking how love is detected. But if I must answer, I would say: we detect it by doing mathematics, by observing, by building, and by creating. The feeling that arises is how we encounter it.

Structurally, what corresponds to sacredness is that the harmony of nature is such that comprehension is possible at all. If someone studies mathematics and feels no reverence, I would not say they are missing something; I would not tell them how they should feel. That is their inner world.

But I do not understand why there is so much aversion to the word sacred. Sacredness is just about realizing how insignificant we are and how powerless we are in front of the harmony of the cosmos. Sacredness is not about metaphysical excess. It is about being fully present to the true feelings certain objects and experiences evoke, and remaining with them in silence and reverence. Reverence because they are fleeting and will soon pass into the irretrievable past. Reverence because there are real limits to what is possible—and those limits are also our own.

Tens of thousands of years ago, people were hunter-gatherers, and over time many became agriculturalists. They transitioned gradually and unevenly from predominantly mobile ways of life to more settled ones.

It seems to me that people’s psyches may also have shifted with these modes of living. The former may have experienced material life as more portable and less fixed, with a lighter attachment to possessions and place. That does not mean their belonging was shallow. It may have been deeply enduring—anchored in tradition, human connection, legacy, and even nature—rather than in accumulated property.

The latter may have developed a more permanent view of both material and immaterial sources of belonging: land, property, inheritance, as well as tradition, human connections, and legacy. Here, “property” historically could include other human beings—slaves, subordinates, and, in many contexts, women—which I see as one of the moral vices that emerged alongside agrarian surplus and settlement.

In modern times, even though there are few hunter-gatherers left, it seems to me that immigrants (I psychologically and identity-wise identify with the immigrant community, though technically I would be called a legal alien) often develop a neo-hunter-gatherer-like sense of belonging.

I was born in India, and growing up there I had a clear sense of “this is home.” Over the years, after spending a long time abroad on a visa, that sense of material belonging has become more tentative and provisional—especially given that I do not intend to return to India long term, but instead hope to remain somewhere in the Western world (due to the intellectual resources and cooler weather, primarily).

It seems, then, that in the modern world, people settled in countries—whether by birth or naturalization—may develop a neo-agriculturalist-like inner orientation, while immigrants may develop a neo-hunter-gatherer-like one. I am not suggesting that anyone is literally farming or foraging. I am referring to a sense of belonging to people and land, and to whether identity is anchored in territory or carried across it.

By being an immigrant, I sometimes feel as though I have become an echo of something ancient—not in a primitive sense, but in the sense that my material attachments feel portable. I find myself more attached to purpose, to nature, and to the people I meet and fall in love with along the way than to any particular piece of land.

This is sometimes described as immigrants having a provisional identity. I do not think that is quite right—at least not for those whose identity never came primarily from possession. My identity feels enduring. It is simply not enduring through attachments to things that, in my situation, are structurally uncertain and potentially fleeting.

This is my last post in this series. Henceforth, if I write, I will begin producing professional work in journals, magazines, and books—not in obscure corners of the internet that no one reads. I had something dawn on me.

In the historical past, to excel in science, the minimum requirements may have been curiosity+deligence+some competence; now it is curiosity+deligence+some competence+alignment of research interests with those around you and the willingness to work 'under' someone, not just on your own and not just 'with' someone. 

The last ingredient has been missing in my case.

I did not want to wait until I get tenure to pursue the problems I found meaningful, and I did not want to focus on assigned research tasks I found 'meaningless'. I think I now know why I felt that way.

For the last 13 years, I tied the meaning of my life solely to the pursuit of meaningful problems in science—the big questions.  In fact, until a few years ago, nothing gave me meaning—not relationships, not friendships—than the pursuit of truth did. I thereby never got involved in a relationship, nor did I maintain lasting friendships. The source of meaning was singular and grand.

 Life is too uncertain to put on hold what you find meaningful decades into the future, I thought. "I am going to do the only things that I find meaningful right now", I proclaimed in my early 20s.

In other words, I became a misfit because of these two stupid formulas: the first was realizing that life is finite, and pursuing what felt meaningful immediately. But what felt meaningful did not overlap intellectually and socially with those around me. I persisted anyway in the same environment until I got into trouble with advisors for not following their orders and agendas. The second was the singular nature of my source of meaning. Those around me had lives and loved ones, and science was another dimension of their lives. I never really had a life outside science. So there was no 'backup source' of meaning when science didn't go as planned. Which made me even more forcefully cling to my ambitions in science.

Don't get me wrong. I think the seemingly 'small questions' in science can also be just as fulfilling and satisfying. There is so much to be intrigued by the down-to-earth problems, such as the physics of the fluids in the kitchen. Or the physics of how tires skid off a layer of ice. The reason I am ambitious about the big questions— such as the nature of gravity, implications of quantum mechanics, the nature of life, consciousness, and the possibility of artificial sentience—is that not many are pursuing such questions seriously, and I thought somebody had to pursue those, and that somebody could be me. I would even avoid the 'small questions' vs 'big questions' classification because it may give the wrong impression that one is less interesting or harder than the other. That is not the case, I think. A better classification is 'risky' vs 'safe' inquiry. The questions in safe inquiry may lead you to a dead end or a discovery, and either possibility is safe for your career. The questions in the risky inquiry are a matter of 'do or die' for career prospects. In other words, part of the appeal of the big questions for me is their inherent risk.

That said, a better survival strategy in academia is to first ensure research alignment either by finding the right fit or by changing one's attitude to fit into the closest available match, and, secondly, as a safety net, finding meaning in other aspects of life, just like everybody else. Because it's hard to find self directed intellectural meaning in academia. Maybe it isn't ideal to consider academia a spiritual calling, but simply a job—even if most endeavours in academia end up producing papers that add nothing to the soul or to society. It's Somber, I know. But that's the choice in front of us—either to choose academia for what it really is, or to quit. 

I'm going to accept and choose what it really is, simply because I like to learn and think freely, at least eventually, when I get career stability. And also because I trust academia more than any other existing form of social organization for its potential to produce new knowledge, despite prevailing academic culture.

Here is what I intend to become. A researcher, a Scholar, a writer, and a professor. 

1) Either in physics and physics-adjacent fields,
2) Or in social systems, human behavior, anthropology of mind, and statistical methods.

Let me reflect on what went wrong between 2020 and 2026 (and thus the mistakes to avoid):

First, I failed to ensure social and intellectual alignment before committing to environments and collaborators. As for intellectual alignment, I assumed I could work in isolation, perhaps as a defense mechanism. I must not expect others to shift toward my interests, regardless of how persuasive I believe my arguments to be. As for social alignment, I think I value conversations and social engagement that blend personal reflections fluidly with technical work—I am averse to conversations about reviewers, professional survival talk, funding anxiety, or institutional politics. I like conversations about history, philosophy, and even personal storytelling.

Second, I did not take full ownership of my decisions. I allowed external expectations—especially parental advice and pressure—to shape my trajectory. Going forward, I will make deliberate decisions, even if it costs materially.

Third, I was overly ambitious about a narrowly defined goal in physics and overly skeptical of alternative approaches and questions. As a result, I struggled to find advisors or programs aligned with my vision. While ambition is valuable, I was insufficiently attentive to the prevailing social, cultural, and institutional environment of the field. I must learn to assess context quickly and adapt.

Fourth, I failed to specialize and instead maintained diffuse interests across multiple problems. To survive in academia, I must develop a coherent intellectual identity. This requires expertise in a defined methodological toolkit and a sustained thematic narrative that organizes my work—a sort of story for my research career. Diversification can follow later.

Fifth, I failed to have a life outside of science. I'm going to sail, backpack, cook, dance, write, and do social service.

If I continue in physics, I will focus on applying results from quantum foundations to condensed matter and gravitational physics, specifically investigating foundations-informed mechanisms of emergence in these domains. And later, if I gain career stability, I will expand into biological physics, starting from the same tools (statistical physics and emergence theory) I have acquired to tackle gravitational and condensed matter problems. I will develop technical mastery in open quantum systems, quantum trajectories, and statistical mechanics. Currently, there seems to be no existing community with those exact methods and narrative alignment. So I need to align with a community based on the methods mentioned alone, or on the narrative mentioned alone.

The latter will support a “foundations-first” identity. However, if institutional constraints make that approach too risky, I will adopt a “methods-first” identity: contributing to questions in open systems the community already prioritizes while occasionally extending those methods to my broader agenda. When risk is high, I will prefer the methods-first strategy. But in this case, I need to seek social nourishment elsewhere, perhaps by striking up a conversation with strangers.

On a foundations-first trajectory, I may need to align with philosophy-of-science circles. In a methods-first trajectory, I may need to align with open systems and statistical mechanics communities, even if those circles are indifferent to foundational questions. I must choose one primary alignment rather than attempting to straddle both. The only exceptions I can see for partial dual alignment of method and narrative are in Jonathan Openheim's research cluster in England, and in Barbara Drossel and George Ellis's circles in Germany and South Africa.

If I pivot to social studies through further formal training, I will pursue quantitative social anthropology of religion and culture across long time scales. I will build expertise in statistics, network analysis, historical data science, and computational simulation. I will anchor my work in a durable skill set while occasionally extending the same methodological toolkit to adjacent problems.

In either trajectory, I will test the coherence of my intellectual identity by asking:
Which conferences is this work appropriate for?
Which journal clusters are the natural publication venues? The answer should include a mainstream recognizable cluster.