Essays

An Agricultural Revolution in Industry

The more sophisticated production systems become, the harder they are to operate. The center of scarcity is shifting from the ability to make things to the ability to keep making them. This essay names the cycle of observation, judgment, intervention and learning "operational intelligence," and, by analogy with the agricultural revolution, considers how AI might let us store it and compound it.

Writing Down My Principles for Action

Good character does not produce good action; rather, the accumulation of good daily choices builds good character. To connect my principles of action to everyday judgment and action, I set out three principles — openness, ownership, and singular focus — and describe how each supports learning, kyō (興, starting things out of genuine enjoyment), and courage.

Ima Muso (今、無想。)

An account of how I stopped aiming for finished writing and chose instead to leave fresh thoughts behind, unfinished. Words that don't close off dialogue with an ever-changing world are the ones that survive longest. This is the preface to this site: a garden where I observe the world from the place where technology, culture, humanity, society, and civilization intersect, and record the process.

The Convergence of Modern AI

Dividing the three years since ChatGPT's arrival into three periods (early generative AI, post-generative AI, and personal AI agents), this essay sorts through the shock of AI agents running in local environments and the problem of managing their permissions. It declares that the point of convergence for modern AI has been fixed, and that the conditions for the Singularity have already been met.

The Purposeless Quest

We do not move because we have a purpose; we merely call the impulse that moves us a "purpose" after the fact. This essay argues that humans are beings who commune with the world through four circuits — description, design, implementation, and the creation of meaning — and that the purposeless quest is what most fiercely resists death and carries humanity forward.

The World Awaits Understanding

Fervently vowing to change the world is the opposite of understanding it. Change imposed by outside pressure is reversible, but understanding is irreversible. I argue that the world transforms at the very instant someone correctly understands the phenomenon before them and recognizes it as a new premise.

Notes on 2026

A New Year's record looking back on 2025 and setting a course for 2026. After a year of sowing seeds, being blessed with connections, moving hands and feet, and returning to Eastern philosophy, I resolve this year to move my feet more, use my luck to the fullest, face people and education, build systems to create breathing room, and consume more creative works.

Precepts for Myself: Reiwa 7 (2025)

A record of my personal precepts for Reiwa 7 (2025), set down in seven articles: make use of what is given now, the duty to receive, trust in curiosity, the principle of the front line, creation without verification is delusion, being a good friend at someone's side, and mastering what lies beyond words. Guidelines for the year, written down as brief precepts.

The Gift That Knows No Effort

Untangling the structure of the "Church of Effort" that worships hard work, and reconsidering the relationship between effort and talent. Effort consumes time as quantity; talent converts time into quality. Loving something is the necessary condition for noticing one's talent, and the state of winning naturally, transcending the very structure of competition, is what I call sai (才), the "gift" at the root of sainō (talent).

The Umwelt of Artifacts

Taking Jakob von Uexküll's concept of the Umwelt as a starting point, this essay considers the possibility of borrowing perspectives from artifacts such as machines and AI. It argues that borrowed perspectives extend our cognition and enable new abstractions, but that only humans can take responsibility for the consequences that follow.

The Art of Discarding and Choosing

I question the common belief that to choose is to discard everything else, and view choice as having two stages. What we must discard is the reality and attachment we already hold before choosing; the possibilities not chosen are not discarded but simply fade away. This essay sets out the art of choosing by discarding.

The Years Accelerate

Before I knew it, I had turned 27. Since passing 25, time has been slipping by at an accelerating pace, and by my own sense, less than half my life remains. A short reflection in which I resolve simply to do what must be done, answer what I am asked, and leave behind the ideas I ought to leave behind.