i'll never do a space walk in a foreign solar system. i'll never make contact with an alien. i'll likely live and die here on earth. i'll never be an astronaut.

but for some irrational reason, i believe that if i do meaningful work, work that pushes humanity forward, then in that pursuit, i am that astronaut.

when he's doing the walk, i'm right there alongside him. or, not next to him actually - he's standing on my shoulders, on all of our shoulders.

every inch of progress is an inch that stacks up to get him to orbit. to get him to another planet. to get him to another sun.

he will be there because of us. because of what we built. because of how hard we toiled and experimented and laid it all on the line to get him there. to get all of us there.

in that moment, we are all astronauts.

I’m writing this because it feels like we’ve entered a new world, and I want to take advantage of the opportunity.

Five months ago, AI code writing was a fantastic lever. It helped our team go faster, write boilerplate code, debug, and even complete small features on its own. Today its no longer just a lever, now it is the paradigm itself. Most of 2025, we called this way of building “vibecoding.” Now it’s just the way we write software.

As someone who builds and sells software for a living, that’s a striking development. It makes me want to do a pulse-check: am I building my business the right way? Am I focusing on the right things? Should I be thinking about my life differently?

The future is daunting, exciting, and very uncertain. I want to make the most of it. So I’m writing a few principles to guide me through the next era. I believe that if I follow them, work doggedly, stay curious, and do the right thing, I can win.

What does winning mean to me?

On a macro scale, it means making a positive contribution to humanity. I believe in the Jobsian view that we should leave a dent in the universe. Tens of billions of people who came before me toiled, experimented, and died to make my life amazing. I owe the current generation, and the billions who come after me, the same effort. Winning also means being happy and healthy, and one day being financially stable enough to support my family. On a micro scale, it means building a successful company.

belief

I haven’t felt this viscerally since the first time I played with ChatGPT in my dorm room, November of 2022. My first few prompts to Chat were for writing poems and jokes. I was amazed to see the coherence and dynamism of the responses. I quickly asked it about its own sentience, and it gave graceful answers. I was enamored.

I didn’t study for a single one of my finals that semester. I knew there would be a few weeks of arbitrage where professors didn’t know what this new technology could do. I felt gleeful about the “secret” that I had unlocked, amazed that the students around me were still dutifully studying, unaware that the world had changed.

Watching AI write code makes me feel the same way now. Outside a narrow subset of companies, the rest of the world has spent the past few months operating as usual, unaware that the world has completely changed. Opus 4.5 ushered in that new world.

I knew AGI would come someday. I live in SF, read all the essays, listen to the podcasts, keep the pulse with musings on X. I’ve debated the predictions, both aggressive and doomer, and heard postulations from researchers, VCs, founders, and everyone in between.

But until you see it for yourself, watch it automate large swathes of your work, until you feel its magic applied to something real; you don’t really “feel the AGI”, do you?

More broadly, watching it eat software has made me a believer. I understand why AI hasn’t cracked every domain of knowledge work yet; there are practical problems with evals and diffusion. But I believe those are tractable problems. I can look at the trajectory from here and imagine what an Opus 7 will be capable of. I believe AI will upend how we do knowledge work, and as a knowledge worker, I want to be ready to take advantage of the opportunities it creates.

my vantage

To be clear, this is not a breathless discussion. I do not feel doom. I feel a lot of uncertainty, which can sometimes shade into fear, but I am largely optimistic. I think AI will do wonders for the world and improve the quality of life for everyone.

I don’t claim to know the timelines for this change, and I don’t think they matter much for what I’m doing. Whether it takes five years or fifty, my principles remain the same.

I’m a proximate consumer of AI. I live in SF. I did YC. My friends and I are all deeply involved with startups and the cutting edge. I’m tapped into the online knowledge ecosystem of where the industry is going. But I’m still a consumer of AI, not a creator. I don’t work at a lab, chip company, or physical infrastructure company. That is, of course, optional. I could pivot to one of those, but I’m not inclined to. I love my customers. They have so many problems to solve to reach their full potential, and they need my help to solve them. As long as that’s true, I’ll keep building.

What follows are my personal principles for winning on the march toward AGI. Many of these principles overlap with what we’ll do with our business, but those belong in a separate document that we won’t share publicly.

be close enough to grab the falling apple

In an interview with the Acquired Podcast, Jensen gave an analogy about how he’s guided NVIDIA through many eras of technology: gaming, crypto, scientific computing, and now AI.

You want to position yourself near opportunities. You don’t have to be that perfect. You want to position yourself near the tree. Even if you don’t catch the apple before it hits the ground, so long as you’re the first one to pick it up. You want to position yourself close to the opportunities.

That’s kind of a lot of my work, is positioning the company near opportunities, and the company having the skills to monetize each one of the steps along the way so that we can be sustainable.

— Jensen Huang, CEO and co-founder of NVIDIA (on the Acquired Podcast)

Given the rapid pace of change, the best thing I can do is stay close to the tree and grab the apples as they fall. I don’t know exactly how the landscape will change, but I’m certain it will.

Here’s why I believe I’m well-positioned:

• My industry (Physical AI) is on the frontier of what’s possible. There are many unsolved problems and, better yet, unknown unknowns. The apples are plentiful and falling fast

• I live in SF, and I’m in communities where this technology is the norm. I get information earlier than most of the world. I think anyone could do this if they followed the right people and conversations online, but proximity still helps

• I am agile. I am a broke 20-something-year-old. I don’t have an inflated lifestyle or a dearth of material possessions. I am lucky to have no dependents. I live minimally. I avoid people, places, and institutions so bureaucratic that they stifle my ability to change direction quickly

• I am willing to make a diving catch. I’m bold enough to take big bets. I’m comfortable with risk, and I have good intuition for taking calculated ones

• I am scrappy

don’t be dogmatic about my role

In the era of manual knowledge work, everyone had a box they played nicely in. You were an engineer, an accountant, a teacher, etc. You completed the tasks someone in your box would handle. You used the tools that someone in your box would use.

AI has blurred the lines between these boxes. A single person can use tools and abstract their impact over multiple roles.

The only description I should have of myself is “I help X people do Y things.” The how — with what tools, in what fashion — will change dramatically, and the rate of change will accelerate.

If I’m dogmatic about what I am, the world will leave me behind. “Computer” was once a job title for humans. Now I’m typing on a machine that automated them.

The boundaries that society, my education, or my job placed on me are artificial. All that matters is how I can best provide value for the people I care about.

focus on the things that won’t change

Right now, everyone is asking what will change. When Bezos was building Amazon, he asked the opposite question, allowing him to focus on compounding over the long term.

“I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?’ And that is a very interesting question; it’s a very common one.

I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two -- because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. ...

In our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that’s going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection. It’s impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, ‘Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher,’ [or] ‘I love Amazon; I just wish you’d deliver a little more slowly.’ Impossible. And so the effort we put into those things, spinning those things up, we know the energy we put into it today will still be paying off dividends for our customers 10 years from now. When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it.”

— Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon

Change is the constant right now, and, given the magnitude of it, it’s hard to predict every little thing that will be different. A better use of my energy is to focus on what won’t change: my personal values and the needs of my customers/loved ones, and then to orient myself in that direction for the long term.

Even though the platforms, tools, and personas will change, those underlying truths will not. If I focus on what won’t change, I’ll do alright.

do things i love, things i might even do for free

This was always a prerequisite for doing great work, but now it might matter even more. Only the most knowledgeable, most obsessed people will remain valuable. I’m reminded that Magnus Carlsen once entered a chess trivia competition and won.

For much of knowledge work, the human contribution will matter less and less at the margins. This will filter out many people; most will be okay with producing a “good-enough” level of work product. There will be only a few crazies who are willing to work excruciatingly hard to squeeze out the last few percentage points of excellence. The Current Thing is to call this extra effort “taste”, but also see “quality” and “craftsmanship” for attempts to define the same.

The marginal value of human work, in both knowledge and physical domains, will approach zero. I want to be one of the people who continues pushing right to the end, until I am quite sure there is nothing I as a human can do to make humanity better off.

Even still, I might work for free, because I think it’s fun. People used to hunt to eat. Now they hunt for sport. Right now, we work to earn our keep. Is it far-fetched to think that one day we’d work for sport?

internalize that the models will only get better

In the summer of 2024, Sam Altman gave our batch a talk. One thing he said that stuck with me: “This is the worst GPT will ever be. The models will only get much, much better.” It’s easy to nod and smile. Duh, of course they’ll get better! It’s much harder to actually internalize.

The models are only getting better. What does that mean for how I approach my work? How much better will they get? At each point along the curve, what can I accomplish that I couldn’t before?

I will only work with people who are optimistic about the future and excited to harness these capabilities. I will only work on companies that benefit from this improvement. I will only work in industries that get bigger and more valuable as a result.

I won’t surround myself with people who stagnate, or worse, try to stand in the way of progress. I don’t think indefinite AI progress is a foregone conclusion: there will be boom-and-bust cycles, physical constraints, and regulatory hurdles. But the long arc of technology has made one thing clear: you either jump on the train or eventually get run over. I’m damn sure not going to be roadkill.

don’t panic

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain

— Frank Herbert, Litany Against Fear, Dune

Fear is only useful to me for about two seconds, when the jolt of fight or flight spurs me into action. After that, it’s strictly detrimental. It just provides dread that makes me unhappy or paralyzes me from taking action.

I’m not a fearful person. I know that change is requisite for improvement. I welcome it, and I’m excited about the opportunities ahead. I just really, really care about winning, and the thought of losing is, to put it mildly, upsetting.

With all my decision-making, I must remove fear from the equation. I’d rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right.

simple ideas

The kicker is that none of these principles are new or unique to the march to AGI. These are the same things that always mattered. Just swap “models getting better” for “technology getting better,” and you could hand these principles to someone in any era of the modern world.

Charlie Munger said it best: take a simple idea and take it seriously. If he were still with us, he’d probably tell me, “Don’t midwit yourself into losing.”

Vedant - follow these principles. Work hard. Stay curious. Just keep compounding. Don’t die. You will win.

on apple

For the past few years, I’ve had this nagging sense that something wasn’t right with Apple ( ). We all have. There’s been something markedly different about their focus, culture, and product innovation in the last 10 years. They’ve lost their je ne sais quoi.

In this era, they’ve failed to lead the way on the next generation of consumer hardware. You can argue that their last truly great product was the AirPods, back in 2016, but even those weren’t novel. To find something world-changing, you’d probably have to go all the way back to 2010, with the iPad and its multitouch. Along the way, they’ve stumbled over new products time and time again. Project Titan, their self-driving car project, was canceled after years of development, never seeing the light of day. The Vision Pro has been a bust; they’ve already started scaling back manufacturing ahead of the next generation.

Quick, without cheating: what’s the current version number of the iPhone? You probably hesitated before giving a sheepish guess, and for good reason, too. They’re unremarkable. Since the iPhone 13, they’ve all felt exactly the same!

Ask your friends when they last upgraded their iPhone, and compare that to the breathless reactions the world had to iPhone releases in the 2010s. No one’s camping outside for the next iPhone anymore. The feature improvements feel smaller and smaller, and there’s only so long that marketing buzzwords can drive consumer behavior.

Under Tim Cook’s stewardship, they’ve clearly shifted their focus from “Value Creation” (building new, innovative products) to “Value Capture” (the services business and walled garden). Services is now a $100B revenue line with disgustingly high margins. But the clock on that bet is now expiring. As Steve Jobs said, you must be the one to disrupt yourself, lest someone else do the disrupting unto you.

warning signs

There are two other structural problems that have me worried about Apple’s future.

First, Tim Cook is rumored to be retiring. Transitions are notoriously difficult (just look at the Ballmer years at Microsoft). It’s not determined who the new CEO might be, but John Ternus is rumored to be the odds-on favorite. I don’t know much about Ternus, but he’ll have to make bold decisions to right the ship. Will he be a risk-on leader, willing to cut focus on shitty product lines and spend R+D on big bets? Or will he bow to the corporate overlords and keep the dividend machine humming?

Second, Apple is no longer TSMC’s “preferred customer”. For over a decade, Apple was the undisputed golden goose at TSMC, getting first dibs on every new chip node. That era is over. As of 2025, NVIDIA has reportedly overtaken Apple as TSMC’s largest customer. Fabs like TSMC make multi-billion dollar capex decisions that look years into the future. TSMC’s analysts have decided that the iPhone is no longer the most important silicon on the planet. Probably nothing!

the killer

The painfully obvious, perfect representation of Apple’s product woes is Siri. When Apple first acquired Siri almost 15 years ago, it was brilliant. And then, it just never changed. IT NEVER GOT BETTER. Sure, they claimed that they added features, but it never meaningfully improved the quality of my experience. The world changed, and AI architectures did along with it, but Apple sat comfortably on its hands. Today, Siri is at best a way to set a kitchen timer, and at worst, an annoyance that turns on when you don’t mean it to.

Then ChatGPT happened, and Apple was caught flat-footed. Three and a half years later, their response has been pitiful. Apple Intelligence is nothing short of horrible; most of my friends went out of their way to turn off the feature. The failure was so striking that their Head of AI is stepping down. Apple is the only company in the Mag7 that is being left behind in the AI race.

This is a big problem because the way we use consumer hardware will fundamentally change in the age of AI. Consumer devices are now the gateway to your AI personal assistant. For the average person, applications and operating systems won’t be as valuable as the intelligence layer. And Apple, as the world’s preeminent consumer hardware company, has left the door open by failing to build its own world-class intelligence.

This brings me to the last nail in the coffin. This month, Apple announced it is outsourcing its device AI to Gemini. APPLE IS OUTSOURCING AI TO GOOGLE.

This should be a red alert for anyone familiar with technology history because it rhymes all too well with the IBM/MSFT saga.

the new ibm

In the 1980s, IBM was the world’s dominant computing provider, but it outsourced its operating system to a fledgling startup. They failed to realize that the most valuable part of the stack was not the PC itself, but the operating system that ran on it. 45 years later, Microsoft is a multi-trillion-dollar company, and IBM is worth a few hundred billion.

A similar scenario seems fated to play out for Apple and Google. The subscriptions, apps, and the walled garden that Apple has meticulously crafted won’t matter quite as much in the age of AI. Don’t get me wrong, these components still have value in their own right, but the majority of the value will mostly accrue to a different part of the stack: the intelligence.

IBM had a decent business for years after the OS deal. They still do. But their growth trajectory looked radically different than Microsoft’s. Commodity hardware providers don’t make it into the Mag7.

If Apple continues to fail at 1) delivering a new, world-changing piece of consumer hardware and 2) building and owning the intelligence layer, I don’t think they’ll be considered a Mag7 company in 10 years. And so far, I haven’t gotten any signs from their team that they have what it takes. They’ll do fine as a business. They’ll continue to make money, I’ll continue to buy a new MacBook when I want a laptop upgrade, and new AirPods whenever I inevitably lose them, but the well will eventually run dry. You can only capture so much value before you’ve squeezed out every last drop.

Oh, and Berkshire also sold off most of their Apple holdings (not that we should be paying attention to what the world’s best investor is doing with his money).

on google

Nothing I have to say about Google ( ) is revolutionary. They’re my favorite to be the world’s first $10T company. The market (almost) agrees with me. That’s why they’re worth $4T today. The reason that I’m excited is that I think there’s at least another 6T in the tank!

In 2023, the narrative was that Google was left for dead. The Bard rollout was a disaster, losing the company $100 billion in market value in a single day. ChatGPT was the fastest-growing consumer app in history. Perplexity was starting to nibble away at the search pie. Inside Google, years of peak-wokeness and COVID-era stagnation had created a culture of scleroticism. Google wasn’t seen as a place where people did their best work. Instead, it was where you went to work from home, phone it in, and become a poolside product manager.

Google’s golden goose, search, was under attack, and for the first time in two decades, they had no answer.

In 2025, Google came roaring back. As of January 2026, Gemini has surged to a 21.5% share of the AI chatbot market, up from just 5.4% a year ago. They’ve reentered war-mode. Sergey is back, working on the Gemini team alongside Jeff Dean. Demis and DeepMind have accelerated, and practically every business line at Google is crushing.

Google’s mix of products, infrastructure, models, and data makes it n = 1. It is the only entity on Earth that is truly vertically integrated for the AI era.

advantages

1. Google owns the world’s biggest, most important web properties

Google owns Search and YouTube, the two biggest web properties in the world. They respectively have 4.9 billion and 2.7 billion monthly active users.

They also have 7 other products with 1 billion users each: Android, Chrome, Gmail, Drive, Maps, Play Store, and Photos. These give them treasure troves of data on an unprecedented scale, and a large, diverse product surface to deploy AI products that other companies don’t.

2. YouTube

YouTube Shorts has a staggering 200 billion daily views, and YouTube TV is now the largest pay-TV provider in the US.

Their library of video content is the biggest in the world, which makes me bullish on their ability to lead the way in generative image and video models and bring them to socials. OpenAI and Meta’s efforts here have flopped. I’m interested to see what Google can cook.

And don’t forget, one of the first commercial use cases for deep learning was social media algorithms. Expect better AI to keep those to keep printing.

3. CapEx

This is where the boys get separated from the men. Google is the only top AI lab that can fund its CapEx without equity funding.

Sam Altman is currently back in the Middle East to raise another $50B to build more infrastructure. How many sovereigns exist with big enough checkbooks? At OpenAI’s growing scale, the equity markets can’t quench their demand forever. They need to spend their own cash.

Meanwhile, Google is funding its $90B in annual CapEx entirely from its own bankroll. They’re expected to “significantly increase” CapEx this year.

4. TPUs

Google’s v7 TPUs are the best alternative to GPUs on the market, offering roughly 4.6 petaFLOPS of compute, matching NVIDIA’s Blackwell B200.

They are the only AI lab to have proprietary, leading-edge compute at a time when everyone else is desperate for allocation. Even Anthropic has expanded its use of TPUs, signing a deal to access up to 1 million chips through 2026.

5. Gemini will be the world’s biggest consumer chatbot

Gemini’s referral traffic grew 388% YoY, and it now holds a 22% market share. During this same period, ChatGPT’s share has fallen from 86.7% to 64.5%.

Gemini’s integration as the default assistant on 800 million Android devices and its new role powering Siri mean it will continue to eat into ChatGPT’s lead and eventually surpass it. OpenAI also won’t be able to keep up with the combination of marketing spend and distribution advantage that Google already has.

6. Google Cloud

Google Cloud is the fastest-growing major cloud provider. Revenue growth has accelerated to 34% YoY, outpacing both AWS and Azure. They’ll hit $20B in net income this year, and their contract backlog grew 82% YoY to $155B.

Since they’re vertically integrated with their own cloud infrastructure, they have a major margin advantage. Competitors pay a margin “tax” to NVIDIA or other hyperscalers when they want to allocate compute. The $38B OpenAI spends on AWS doesn’t go as far as the same $38B Google will spend on its own compute.

7. The AI productivity suite

Google Workspace is becoming AI-native, and its features are already awesome. The workspace bundle now includes Gemini, AI in Gmail, notetakers, and more, all for less than a ChatGPT seat. I’m mulling over cancelling that subscription.

The winner of the AI business suite will generate massive revenues. I’m not ready to say that Google will dethrone Microsoft Office, but I do think they’ll bring a better product to market first.

8. Antitrust

One of the biggest risks to this thesis was the government forcing Google to sell off its ecosystem. But in a massive win for Google, the 2025 antitrust ruling was far less severe than expected.

The judge ruled that Google would not be required to divest Chrome or Android, explicitly noting that the “advent of GenAI” has fundamentally shifted the competitive landscape. In an ironic twist of fate, Gemini finished that year with rocket ship growth, while OpenAI and Perplexity both tried and failed to launch browsers.

If anything, Google is now more of a monopoly in 2026.

9. Founder Mode

Sergey Brin said he’s willing to bet the company on AI. I believe him.

The big risk is Search, obviously. It’s the greatest money-printing, high-margin business of all time, and Google has to choose to disrupt itself and potentially kill it. They’re showing they have the appetite to do it. Google AI mode is gaining more real estate on the Search page (it’s a great product by the way, and has completely replaced Perplexity for me).

Even if they become the world’s leading chatbot, which is a multi-trillion-dollar prize, there are doubts about how well it will monetize. I doubt Gemini could ever be as high-margin as Search, but I can see a world where it does more revenue. Leads from chatbots have 3x higher conversion rates (lower CAC) than traditional methods, and you can see a world where frictionless, agent-to-agent commerce increases LTVs. Each query could be more monetizable than traditional search, with highly personalized targeting on the scale of trillions of queries per year.

Look, I don’t have a perfect answer for how they’ll monetize effectively. I do believe that 1) it’s possible and 2) Google is willing to disrupt itself. Maybe I should give Apple more leash on point 2, but there’s something rotten about their culture that won’t let me do it!

el fin

That’s my thesis. becomes the first $10T company and in the next 10 years, falls out of the Mag7 conversation.

Take it with a grain of salt. It’s from a retail investor, written in a few hours, and is probably lacking some nuance. I’m not just any retail investor; I’m a 23-year-old with minimal savings and no dependents or mortgage. My bankroll is marginal compared to someone making investing decisions for their retirement account. I can see how this changes the decision calculus.

That said, I’m placing a buy/sell order tonight!

I mostly wrote this as an exercise in reasoning. I plan to review this prediction into the future and grade my logic.

I plan to get in and out of positions on 5 to 10-year horizons, so all that matters to me is that I’m directionally correct. Now, let me stop writing and go put my small amount of money where my mouth is.

Thanks for reading, and let me know what you think!

sheila

I want to tell you a story. It’s about Sheila, my great^4000 grandmother. Actually, she might be our great^4000 grandmother. If you look far enough back into the Savannah1, the cradle of humanity, it’s hard to see where the knots are tied and frayed, how the tapestry is woven, and how far the roots really go.

But back to Sheila.

Sheila lives in a band of hunter-gatherers, and today, as in most days, they are on a mission for one thing: food.

After a long day of walking, Sheila is tired and weary. Sheila and the other women in her band are tasked with gathering roots and nuts, while the men hunt. But the past few weeks of foraging haven’t reaped anything noteworthy. The nuts in her basket are getting lighter. The little ones are tired and hungry, slowing their pace as their stomachs begin to rumble.

And then, she sees something. At the edge of the river, just a kilometer away, is what seems to be a grove of fig trees. Jackpot.

The band excitedly hurries over, and their suspicions are confirmed. The branches are heavy with the green and purple fruit; their sweet, fermenting scent wafts lazily in the breeze. Today, the band will not go hungry.

But they’re not alone. Baboons shriek on the lower branches, greedily stuffing their cheeks with the fruit, hungry for the same precious calories that Sheila and her clan so desperately need. Men brandish their spears to keep the baboons at bay. The children quickly climb up the trees, tossing figs down to the women, with awaiting baskets in hand.

They know time is of the essence. By tomorrow, the tree will be bare. So today, they gorge.

Sheila digs in. At first, she’s gleeful, even grateful for the food. Her aching muscles thank her for the energy she is delivering to them. But soon, her stomach is stretched to its limits, and a part of her wonders if she should stop.

But her brain is programmed with a different set of instructions. Calories on the Savannah are scarce, to say nothing of sugar, the fastest-acting nutrient her body can process. She may not stumble across another fig tree for months. So tonight, she will keep eating.

Her brain recognizes the sugar on her taste buds and starts flooding her nervous system with dopamine, emboldening her to keep going. MORE, MORE, MORE. She will not stop until there is not a single fig left in the grove.

She’ll lie down that night with a bit of stomachache, but that’s okay. Her brain has done its job. By flooding her with calories, it has increased her chances of surviving and reproducing. It’ll take that excess energy and store it as subcutaneous fat, which will be useful the next time the band’s foodstuffs are running low.

100,000 years later, one of her descendants, a fat-ass kid in Frisco, Texas, used those same evolutionary instincts to rip through an entire family-sized box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch while watching ‘Us’ by Jordan Peele. In a single sitting, he consumed a heroic ~4,000 calories and 400g of sugar.

That fat-ass kid was me. That’s why I’m writing this essay.

why?

It’s not like I was naive. By that point in my life, I had acquired plenty of knowledge on why eating an entire family-sized CTC was not a good idea.

I knew that excess sugar could lead to diabetes, that overeating could lead to obesity, and that whole foods were important. I knew that gluttony was a sin and restraint a virtue. I knew that the morning after, I would feel horrible, both physically and mentally, and regret my actions.

So why did I do it?

My consciousness knew that it was a bad idea. But unfortunately, it was my subconscious that was in control. My monkey brain was in the driver’s seat, and using dopamine as its megaphone, it just kept screaming for more.

But this time, my monkey brain was mistaken. Instead of contributing to my ability to survive and reproduce, it detracted from that same goal. Binging on sugar is a great strategy to die young and never pass on your genes.

And it isn’t just our instincts to eat. There’s a handful of evolutionary instincts that kept us alive in the Savannah that are slowly killing us today. The reason is the tension between our primal, underdeveloped brains and the rapidly evolving society that humans have constructed around us.

the ‘built’ world (and tension)

On Earth, the human body has proven to be the world’s most effective evolutionary machine. The instincts, chemical regulations, and emotions it produces have not only helped us survive and reproduce, but also enabled us to become the apex predator of the world.

(round of applause to the human race, that’s fucking sick!)

In a world with little to no technological progress, this is a good thing. The makeup of the climate and geography would change, sure, but never faster than the rate of human evolution. We’d be fine, up until an asteroid or supernova said otherwise.

But then technology ‘happened’, and everything changed. Human hunter-gatherers, like Sheila, had always slowly invented technology, from baskets to spears, but around the time of the Agricultural Revolution, our rate of technological progress began to accelerate at a dizzying pace. Our ability to ‘outsource’ evolution to external technology like irrigation and farms, to eventually writing and money, meant that humanity’s ‘real’ evolution became superlinear, while our biological progress stayed linear.

This has led to today, where we carry supercomputers in our pockets, yet still have the same fundamental body as our ancestors. This has led to tension that, in my opinion, causes many of society’s challenges today.

In the ‘built’ world (what I’m calling modern society, with roads, houses, phones, media, grocery stores, etc.), the requisites for survival2 are much different from those of our ancestors on the Savannah.

To survive and thrive in the built world, we must understand all the instincts from our monkey brain and actively fight against them. What follows is a so-unscientific-you-probably-can’t-even-call-it-pseudoscientific explanation of how our evolutionary traits harm us in the modern world.

We’ll explore the most glaring mismatches I’ve identified, why they’re so harmful, and strategies I’m beginning to use to improve my outcomes.

food

Food has been one of my vices for my entire life. I grew up in an Indian family where second and third helpings of chapati and rice were routine and encouraged, and where buttermilk was a staple at dinner. I always had a sweet tooth: as a kid, my mom would fix me a bowl of fruit with a dollop of whipped cream, and I’d sneakily grab the EZ Whip and spray another mountain of whipped cream on top of the dessert.

From those origins, it was no surprise that once I had a car and my own money, food was a challenge. It was too easy to get a Caniac Combo or gummy worms from the convenience store. It was hard to stop eating even when my stomach was full. It was common for me to stress eat whenever I had a bad day.

I’ve spent a lot of time struggling with my relationship to food, and therefore, my weight. I’m not alone: of the American adults aged 20+, 33% are overweight, and 40% are obese! This is frightening, especially given that severe obesity significantly increases all-cause mortality.

How is this possible?

For Shiela, every calorie was painstakingly foraged and hunted by hand. In the built world, we have the opposite problem. There are too many calories present. Calories are wonderfully easy to come by. There are grocery stores and restaurants on every block. A snap of your fingers (and a few bucks) can command you thousands of calories. We even have private taxis for your burritos!

Your monkey brain doesn’t internalize this new paradigm. It still thinks that each calorie is hard-earned and wants to hoard them. It wants you to gorge on food. It believes that it’s helping, just like it helped Sheila. But now, it’s making you fat and slowly killing you.

There’s a reason most foods are laced with sugar. It’s addictive. Food companies want you to spend more on their products to grow their profits, so they add ingredients that make you habitually consume them.

In the built world, with all its caloric excess, it’s actually more optimal to systematically undereat.

This does not mean to starve yourself, but it does mean turning down a second serving or skipping on the ice cream cone. There are so many calories around you that if you don’t fight back, you will be flooded with them.

When you’re presented with unhealthy options in front of you, and are stupefied by why they seem so enticing, remember that your brain has been conditioned to love sugar and saturated fat.

When you can’t stop eating, remember that your monkey brain wants to hoard food, and that you have the power to stop it.

And tell the monkey brain to step aside. You, the intelligent, discerning human, are in the driver’s seat now.

information seeking

My second biggest vice is social media. I spend WAY more time on social media than I want to. I’m constantly posting some random shit on my Instagram Stories (sorry for being annoying 🤣). I can’t help but doomscroll on Instagram Reels. And I catch myself slacking off on work by scrolling X.

Social media is the digital equivalent of taking a smoke break. When work is hard, I can ‘take the edge off’ by scrolling online for a few minutes. When I’ve had a bad day, I get ‘comfort’ doom scrolling for an hour past my bedtime, holed up under the covers.

Again, our evolutionary instincts have been sinisterly warped to capitalize on our attention.

Our ancestors were rewarded for being curious and collecting more information. The more they knew their environment, the more they would understand where the predators, prey, and natural resources were. The more they learned and experimented, the better tools and strategies they would develop for improved food acquisition, safety, and health.

As a result, this propensity for information seeking was rewarded and passed on into the gene pool. That also means our brain is now wired to collect as much information as it can.

Unfortunately, just like food, information is now abundant. This year, the global datasphere is expected to reach 181 zettabytes. That’s the digital equivalent of 90 quintillion pages, enough to create a stack of paper that would reach across the observable universe. News, social media, blogs, email, messages, games… there’s information everywhere, and it’s all sucking away our attention.

Watch a movie with friends today, and you’ll see that halfway through, someone will pull out their phone and scroll. Fifteen years ago, that would’ve been a blasphemous act. Now, it’s normal. We’re so used to constant stimulation that we can’t focus. Information is bombarding us from every direction, and our monkey brains can’t triage what’s important and what’s not.

Social media has capitalized on our attention. It’s created clever roulette wheels that give us just the right amount of dopamine to keep scrolling. The creators of short-form content know that our brains are irresistibly drawn to their apps, and they design them to make them ever more addictive.

For me, this lack of attention span harms my life. It prevents me from being in the moment with loved ones. It detracts from my ability to produce focused work. And as I alluded to, it drains me of my precious sleep and pumps me with anxiety. Altogether, an unpleasant cocktail!

This information bonanza has addled our monkey brain. It treats information like calories to be hoarded, and is always screaming for more. But consuming too much information is not the way to thrive in this world. Actually, it’s a great way to be anxious and depressed.

We must stop our monkey brain from jumping from tab to tab, from screen to screen. To make our lives better, we must focus more and consume less.

laziness

The human body is always running a cost-benefit analysis on perceived effort and expected reward. It does this because that’s what it needed to do in the Savannah. If it burned too many calories searching for food, it would decrease its chances of survival.

In the built world, this prevents us from doing things we know are ‘good’ for us, making us lazy and prone to procrastination instead. Our monkey brains are great at focusing on the effort part of the equation and can only hazily define the reward. This makes sense given that in the Savannah, the downside risk of burning too many calories (death) was protected at the cost of the upside of gaining a surplus of calories. This is probably why humans have faced loss aversion for eons. We’re built to protect the downside even if we have high expected value.

Practically, this focus on effort instead of reward is enough friction that most people never do anything. They never work out. They never start the project. They never go and say hi to the girl. Our monkey brain is protecting us from the downside risk of wasted energy. Of course, in the built world, expending effort isn’t a problem. Especially given how much we eat, we should probably expend more!

Instead, we need to retrain our brains to focus more on the reward, not the effort. This makes us more likely to do things, to start things, and, as a byproduct, improve our lives.

Scott Adams put it best. This habit is a direct result of our monkey brain’s default mode of thinking.

We need to remember why our monkey brain doesn’t want us to do things, and then do them anyway.

The way Paul Graham says to overcome procrastination plays on this perfectly:

“When I’m reluctant to start work in the morning, I often trick myself by saying ‘I’ll just read over what I’ve got so far.’ Five minutes later I’ve found something that seems mistaken or incomplete, and I’m off.”

Our monkey brain wants the path of least resistance. It will be fine idling away, living a lazy, meager existence. The trick isn’t to wait until you feel like acting; your monkey brain will ensure that moment never comes.

It’s to act despite the resistance. Our ancestors survived by conserving energy. In the built world, we survive by spending it.

risk-taking, tribalism, and status

Remember that I mentioned Sheila was in a band? Being in a group is an important building block of the human experience. We are social creatures because in the Savannah we needed to be. Chances of survival increased if people took turns in the night watch while others slept. If you could specialize labor (the men hunt while the women gather), you’d increase your chances of getting food. And if you stuck with the pack, you’d reap the benefits of tribal knowledge through better technology, geography, and quality of life.

That humans are social creatures is a limiting factor for our quality of life today. In the past, truth-tellers and risk-takers were shunned or killed. As such, everyone knew their place in the hierarchy and was careful not to upset the balance.

Today, truth-tellers and risk-takers are the most rewarded members in our society. Capitalists who take risk in the market have the chance of exponentially increasing their wealth. Scientists who uncover truths about the universe win awards. Wealth and prosperity are driven by new science and technology. Political and religious leaders have more eyeballs on them than ever before. It is the most rewarding time in history to take risk.

But not only are the upsides so high, but the built world has also provided unprecedented downside protection.

Today, 99% of risk is financial, not physical. Our lives are never in danger! Moreover, based on your privilege, education, and country of origin, your safety nets are absurdly strong. I would posit that if you live in the United States, are educated, and aren’t addicted to drugs or have a crippling illness, your downside for risk-taking is basically 0.

Let’s think about taking a risk as a (childless) 20-something-year-old in America. Imagine you quit your job, liquidated your savings, and started a career as a traveling bagpiper. The absolute worst thing that could happen is that you can’t kick it on tour, you lose all your money, lose your job, and can’t pay rent. My assertion is that you’re sufficiently diligent, you can change all those things in < 3 months.

Status is equally non-relevant.

For example, if you are a law-abiding citizen and live in the first world, people’s opinions of you don’t matter. Unlike the past, your ‘hierarchy’ will never affect your ability to get food or shelter. If you have money, people will trade you for those things. And money doesn’t care about your status. The money you acquired from an evil dictator in Russia and the tooth fairy count the same at the grocery store.

You can be as weird as you want, as neurodivergent as you want, as long as you abide by the laws, your life will never be at stake.

If you wanted to, right now, you could start crawling around your neighborhood on all 4s. Nothing would happen. Don’t break the law, and you can do whatever the fuck you want.

Still, even though the calculus of risk-taking and status has changed, people’s decision-making hasn’t. We’re still so tied to what other people’s perception of us is. We feel that we must conform to what society, our family, and friends do — we must work the high-status jobs, practice the popular political belief of the day, or obsess over whatever fad is the craze3.

But all these perceptions are just that: perceptions. The only way they affect our lives is if we allow them to. Our monkey brain will plead for us to do just that. But in the built world, you can live a wonderful life outside of the bounds of perception.

I’m obviously talking my book here, but as soon as I was able to stop letting my brain map risk, reward, and status to its rudimentary understanding of life, I was able to do things I cared about (like starting a company), which made me happier.

I think this would have equally profound benefits for everyone reading this.

short-term gratification

An overarching flaw of our monkey brain (and much of the theme of this essay) is its bias towards short-term gratification. On the Savannah, it’s hard to think long-term when every day is a struggle for survival. Why should something in 15 years matter? I might starve or get eaten TODAY.

This means our body is centered around gaining short-term rewards (mainly dopamine), and isn’t sure how to internalize long-term rewards.

So we do things that please us in the short term (junk food, porn, social media) and harm us in the long term; these things are usually at the detriment of long-term health, fulfillment, family, and career goals. It’s not our monkey brain’s fault. It can’t conceptualize long-term gratification, so it doesn’t know how to reward it.

But it’s true that in the built world, the best things in life happen over multi-year or even multi-decade time horizons:

• Building the body of your dreams

• Pursuing mastery in a craft

• Creating a long-term partnership and family

• Building a great company

So to ensure fulfillment, we need to overcome our monkey brain’s inclinations and hammer home the long-term view. Impatient with actions, patient with rewards. Delay gratification as much as possible, sacrificing the short-term (cheap) rewards4 for long-term (wholesome) rewards.

so what

I’m not here to tell you how to live life. You should do whatever makes you happy. As long as you don’t get in my way of achieving that goal, I won’t get in the way of yours.

What I am telling you, what I am begging you, is that you should choose. You should be in the driver’s seat. You should not be at the whim of your monkey brain. It’s a dumb, little fucker, and its goal is NOT to make you happy.

It has an entirely different incentive structure than you do, and if you give it control, it will drive you off a cliff. You’ll sleepwalk through your entire life, scrolling through TikTok while waiting for the tenth DoorDash of the week, wondering why something is missing in your life. (Okay, I lied, I will tell you that you shouldn’t live your life like that, it sounds miserable.)

I want you to be in the driver’s seat because you are perfectly capable of having an awesome life. And for you to do that, you have to be aware of all the roadblocks in front of you. I spent a lot of time beating myself up for my struggles with food and social media without fully understanding the root cause. I always thought it was a failing of my character and discipline. And to be sure, there’s a lot that it does reflect on me, and there’s a lot I can do better, but it makes it a lot more manageable when I realize that there’s a dumb little monkey brain actively preying on my downfall.

If we can understand the underlying reason why our brain makes certain decisions, then hopefully we can steer it to make better ones. And if we can steer it to make better ones, then hopefully all those little decisions can lead to a better life.

That’s what I’m trying to do with my life. Hopefully, this helps you do that better for yours. Good luck.

childhood

Five years old and on my deathbed. Or at least, that’s what it felt like.

My earliest memories from my childhood were being terrified of death. I’d lie in bed, desperately trying to fall asleep, but unable to as anxiety attacks overcame me. To escape, I’d pace around the house for hours, punching myself in the leg over and over, trying to swap the pain in my head for something else.

In the morning, I’d wake up groggy, sometimes with bloodshot eyes, and always with a softball-sized bruise hidden underneath my shorts. I’m sure my parents were confused why their elementary schooler looked like he needed a morning coffee. I was always too afraid to tell them the truth.

Third grade was the first time I had an anxiety attack at school. We were learning about the solar system. Somewhere in that lesson, it finally clicked for me. The universe was so, so big. And our planet was just this small dot inside this infinite void. I was just this insignificant kid on this insignificant rock. I meant nothing, my life meant nothing, a nd my death would mean nothing. I threw up in the bathroom at lunch.

During the last week of elementary school, I wasn’t so fortunate. I broke down in class, crying. I was inconsolable, sputtering gibberish. My teacher had 25 other 10-year-olds to wrangle; it was time for her to do damage control. This would be my first time meeting with the school counselor.

I sat in the counselor’s chair as she lobbed over question after question. I desperately wanted her help. But for some reason, my lips betrayed me. I didn’t know how to verbalize how I felt. I wasn’t sure if this fear made me a nutjob. I was scared this episode would make its way back to my parents. I felt that if I opened my mouth, the cat would finally be out of the bag. The whole world would finally know that I had this freakish phobia. I would forever be an ‘other’.

So I stayed quiet. She poked and prodded, trying her best to make headway. After a few minutes, she took a big sigh. We sat there in silence for a few minutes, her analog clock ticking loudly in the background. She gave me one of those half-raised eyebrow looks. It was like she was sizing me up, searching for some thread that she could pull on. But we were at an impasse, and if I didn’t want to save myself, how the hell was she going to save me? “Okay, Vedant, let’s walk you back to class.”

As a kid, I had always told myself that when I was an adult, I would finally go to therapy, and it would solve all my problems. I’m not sure where I specifically got this impression 1. Whatever the case, I always promised myself that when I had my own money, I would deal with and pay for it myself. I would never let my parents in on my troubles. Instead, my secret would be kept safe in solitude. What a terrible burden for a child to carry on his own.

and still…

As I got older, I learned to manage these death-induced anxiety attacks better. They happened less often, probably a dozen times in the next 10 years, but when they broke through, they were worse than ever (an episode each year, what is this, the Thanatophobic Super Bowl?)

There was a night my sophomore year when I got too high and tried to walk home. My chiefers out there know that if you have anxiety issues, smoking makes it 10x worse!

An anxiety attack rolled over me, this time so bad that I sat on a bench at the corner of Rio Grande and 22nd Street for hours, crying, failing to calm myself down.

My episode during junior year was even worse. This time, the pain wouldn’t go away, and none of my usual distractions were working. I was so desperate to make the pain stop that I could have done anything. Part of me was concerned that ‘anything’ could have meant self-harm… we lived on the 7th floor, with a balcony peering into the courtyard.

There was a weird cacophony of feelings in my head: my fear of death, anxiety, fight or flight, and the urge to do something rash. It wasn’t a good recipe. I was too afraid of what would happen.

Ironically, my cripplingly fear of death would keep me from doing anything too stupid. The rational part of my brain knew I would be okay. Still, I was scared about what lengths I would go to, and I didn’t want to risk being alone. It was now 4 AM on Tuesday. I began banging on my roommate’s door, and with enough persistence, they eventually woke up. They calmed me down, and I eventually slept on the couch. I had an 8 AM midterm a few hours later.

…still nothing

To this day, I still haven’t gone to therapy for my fear of death. I know that it won’t be a silver bullet, but I know that I still should. There is some invisible wall, something between my fear and shame that holds me back.

I’ve also had fewer anxiety attacks as I’ve grown older. Part of the reason that these attacks don’t happen anymore is that I don’t let them. I don’t dwell on death. At the first sight of any destructive thoughts, I’m quick to change the subject in my head. I refuse to watch horror movies. And if I’m consuming any other media that reminds me of death, I stop it immediately. Lastly, life has become a lot busier. I don’t have the idle time to ponder these things as I once did.

I’m not proud of this. It feels like instead of confronting my fear, I sulk in the shadows and sneak by. I have not conquered the problem. But I’ve gotten damn good at hiding from it. I know that this is a losing strategy. I will have to answer to death. What I do now, and my relationship death while I still have the blessing of life, will decide if, in the waning moment of my life, I cower in the face of death, or if I will stand proudly in its midst.

elegance of the hedgehog (or, new perspectives)

A chapter I recently read in The Elegance of the Hedgehog has emboldened me to take death head-on.

There’s a scene where Paloma (a tweenage girl) and her family visit her grandmother in a retirement home. Her family goes through the motions: polite small talk, dusting the shelves, oogling at the ‘oh so beautiful’ marble countertops. But everyone’s on edge. Everyone is too afraid to be honest, to say what they’re thinking. Grandma is nearly dead.

So instead, they treat her mind like papier-mache. They’re too afraid to be honest with Grandma or discuss anything important. They don’t care to know how she’s actually feeling, because she might as well be dead anyway.

However, Paloma is different.

She sees her grandmother, really sees her. She talks to her like a human. She listens to her stories and laughs with her. And when she leaves, unlike the rest of her family, she ruminates on her visit. She doesn’t pretend like grandma is fine. She is dying, and this fact deserves to be on the front stage. To Paloma, the cowardly thing to do is to ignore and move on.

This scenario happens all the time in real life.

When the young people see signs of aging in their elders, they hastily look in the other direction. Young people are invincible. The problems with aging are so distant, so foreign, that frankly, they’re not worth worrying about.

But even if we’d like not to admit it, we do worry. We worry because we know that soon, we will be sitting in that wheelchair. We will look down at our fingers and be surprised to see the wrinkles and cracks. We will try to summon our strength as we walk up the stairs, but we will find that it is zapped. Our liveliness now gone, our horsepower fading.

So when we see these old people, we are actually terrified. We weep because we love them and we don’t know what they will be, if at all, when we see them next.

But mostly we weep for ourselves. We see ourselves in them, and it terrifies us. Death is the one thing we can’t control. It is also the one thing that is inevitable.

Just like Paloma, I think that we should not move on from mortality so easily. We should not forget the old people, or that we are inexorably aging. We should sear it into our minds.

• How does old age look?

• How does it smell?

• How do old people eat?

• How do they move, so slowly and gently, with their hands shaking uncontrollably?

• What do they talk about?

• What do they remember?

• How do they feel?

We should use this remembrance to live life vicariously. We should live every day knowing that we will die. We will die, we will die, we will die.

So how do we do that?

countdown

Firstly, I think we should be frequently practicing rituals that discuss death. Religion seems to be well-suited for this. In my view, religious doctrines have two primary objectives:

1. Explain the unexplainable phenomenon of death

2. Give us moral frameworks to maximize our time alive and create meaning for our death.

But religion isn’t the only tool to address these objectives. Even for agnostics like myself, there are ‘scientific’ practices we can rely on.

For example, every day, I remind myself that I will die. I keep a daily log of how many days I have until death. I assume a lifespan of 80 years.2

Seeing this number (20,795 and dwindling!) brings me clarity. Every day, it provides an opportunity to evaluate whether my actions are serving my goals, and if my goals are serving my purpose. Often, as I stare at the number, I think of the Steve Jobs quote:

“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

It also makes me more effective. Staring in the face of death, timewasters like Reels seem trivial rather than tempting. I want to squeeze the juice out of every second of life. I want each droplet to practice my craft(s), build excellent health, spend time with my loved ones, and enjoy my hobbies. Death is great at narrowing the cone of focus towards the things that matter. I’m sure this is the same power that religion brings to people.

I’m unsure about the confounding variables here, but since I’ve started this practice, I’ve cherished moments more. It’s a short hop from ‘you only live once’ to ‘every moment only happens once’. I find that I am more optimistic, more engaged in conversations, and more grounded in the present.

discourse

I’ve now 180’d my perspective to believing that death should not be taboo. No more secrets about our existential dread. No more hushed tones when we discuss loved ones dying. The more that we build up mysticism around death, the harder it is to rationalize it. Instead, if death were more matter-of-fact, then folks could more readily share their beliefs. We could build shared frameworks on how to consider death. This would make it easier for each individual to cope with this burden.

This is likely true for all vices/addictions/fears; open and honest discourse would facilitate a society better equipped to address these problems. But death would benefit the most: by nature, it is the most unexplainable and existential problem humans face.

For example, what if when a child started kindergarten, their parents and teachers began discussing death with them? What if this were part of the curriculum?

In American society, it is taboo to talk to kids about their mortality. So when kids cross the street, parents tell them to be careful and look both ways. They don’t tell them, “If you get hit by a Honda Civic, you’ll almost certainly die.” Instead, it’s for some abstract reason called ‘safety’.

It should not be the job of an authority figure to carry the burden of mortality for their dependents. Instead, it should be their job to safely transfer this knowledge as quickly as possible. We are all after animals, with evolutionary instincts to survive and reproduce.

Not talking about death does not mean that kids don’t think about it. It means that they’ll have to decipher and digest it on their own. And I hope that my experiences prove that the downsides of this approach are dramatic. As early as kids can carry on a coherent conversation, death should be a talking point. Kids should have avenues to talk to their teachers, parents, and most importantly, their peers about death.

Again, maybe here is where religion shines, and the stories shared in sermons and youth groups strengthen your sense of mortality over time. Perhaps some other households discuss death and aging more openly. But my upbringing had none of these qualities. I was on my own.

I hope that by the time every kid comes of age, they’ll be equipped to handle their mortality. Yes, the process will be gradual and sometimes frightening. But it will be worth it.

The puberty/sex talk is a canonical moment in every American teen’s life, and for good reason, too. We don’t want unplanned pregnancies or widespread STDs. Death is an even more important topic. Why should it not be treated in the same manner?

funerals

Funerals are a great way to capture the zeitgeist of death in a given culture.

Some funerals are parties. Some are religious gatherings, filled with chanting and prayers. However, Christian Anglo-Saxon, and broadly, American funerals are depressing. Black tie. Quiet voices. And if it’s depicted in a movie, there’s often a healthy dose of pattering rain.

They don’t have to be this bleak! Other cultures show us that this is possible. Yes, we should mourn the deceased’s life. We should remember their accomplishments and how they impacted their loved ones’ lives. But what if we re-framed it and used it as an opportunity to reflect on the lives that those in the audience still have to live?

Just like the ‘days till I die’ log, what if a funeral, instead of a chance to mourn what was lost, is a chance to celebrate what we have, and what is still left to be had!

I don’t think that this is something that can systematically be changed. I would never suggest to grieving people what they should be doing for the funerals they put on.

All I know is that for my funeral, I hope that people use it mainly as an opportunity to practice the joy of life, not the sadness of death.

the octagon

I want to put more aside time to think about death. I want to put myself and grapple with. I guess you could characterize it as some form of meditation.

I want to explore deeply where it hurts, where in the past I would be quick to change the subject. Why am I so scared of death? What do I think will happen when I die? And if there is no afterlife, why is that such a bad thing?

I want to put myself in a position to die gracefully. This does not mean how I die, but how I accept this death. It would be a shame to go out crying and screaming; it’d be a sign that I’m weak, unready, and unwilling.

My goal is to die like they said Buddha did, at peace and with a slight smile all the way to the end.

That probably won’t be enough, though. I need to go to therapy. I know that this is not an uncommon fear. There are probably tried and true frameworks to diagnose and cope with this dread.

Whatever the tactics, the idea is directionally consistent: the only way that I will defeat this fear is by facing it head-on. It will be painful to do so. I will be scared and frankly. I’ll probably have to go through another anxiety attack or two. The path of least resistance tells me not to, but eventually I will pay for this shortcut, and that’s a price that I don’t want to pay.

dying, dying, dead

I can tell you all of this. I can tell you how I’m dealing with death, how I think we should live, and how we should change a handful of things about society to deal with death.

I can tell you all that and still admit that I’m terrified of death. I don’t want to die. I hope that I never die. I hope that ASI can develop the sorcerer’s stone so that I can live forever. Even still, immortality is definitionally impossible. No matter what I do, how hard I think, or how much I squirm, I know there will be an end for me.

Maybe it boils down to my mindset. Maybe I should find a way not only to come to peace with death, but look forward to the day I die of old age with my old ones surrounding me. Maybe I should believe that if I live my life morally, I'll achieve salvation, or that I'll be reborn as one of those particularly tall trees!

I so badly want it to be true. I so badly want there to be something to look forward to. But honestly, fuck that. I can't get myself to believe. I think that the most likely outcome is a cold, decomposing body. I’ve seen it in humans, I’ve seen it in animals. I can’t shake the feeling that the same will happen to me.

Maybe my soul will go somewhere sweeter. Or maybe, my ‘soul’ is just a collection of neurons firing, ones that will cease to fire after my heart stops supplying blood to my brain. Tragic.

I’ll be honest. I don’t think I’ll ever get over this fear. I’m sure that I’ll get better coping mechanisms and structures like my ‘days to death log’. I’m sure that friends and family will now be more inclined to discuss death with me, and from those conversations, something productive will come out of it.

But in the end, I will have to walk to the plank into the void by myself. No sword, no shield. Just me, bare and naked. I wonder, when I get to the end of the plank, and I’m looking down into nothingness, what will my last thought be? Will I be afraid? Will I be solemn? Will I be accepting?

It won’t matter what I think. I’ll still have to jump.

This is a short story about my family, the Khalaps. It’s a story of a band of swashbuckling traders turned industrialists and landlords, whose empire collapsed at the hands of patriarchy and a regime change.

This is also a reflection of how it impacted me. If "the story of the father is embedded in the son”, then what does that make of the story of the bloodline?

The Ancestors (1300s - 1500s)

The earliest records of the Khalap family tree go back to 1370! We hail from the Konkan region, a long, narrow strip of land along the western coast of India. It runs from roughly north of Mumbai, in Maharashtra, all the way south into Karnataka. It’s bounded on the east by the Western Ghats and on the west by the Indian Ocean.

Smack dab in the middle of Konkan is its crown jewel, Goa. It’s my favorite place in India, and more importantly, where the Khalaps made their mark.

Today, Goa is the vacation state of India. Its lush, tropical climate breeds inviting beaches and warm waters. Bachelor parties and Europeans merrily visit, indulging themselves in showers of seafood and alcohol. If they’re adventurous, they’ll see a ‘party shack’ on the beach, where they can find every illicit drug they’ll ever need.

But back then, my ancestors enjoyed Goa for much different reasons. The Indian Ocean is one of the oldest maritime trade highways in the world, linking Arabia, East Africa, and India together. And for this bountiful trade, Goa was India’s front door.

Goa, with its tropical climate and monsoon rains in the summer, made it an ideal cradle to grow coconuts, cashews, and rice.

The monsoons also made it perfect for seasonal trade. Arab dhows and Indian ships sailed with the wind in one direction, and would sail back home months later.

In the Hindu varna system, society was divided into four groups: Brahmins (priests/scholars), Kshatriyas (warriors/rulers), Vaishyas (traders/merchants), and Shudras (laborers).

The Khalaps were members of the Vaishya caste. In the 15th and 16th centuries, they were heavily involved in this maritime trade. They had a fledgling fleet of two ships, used as the backbone of trade operations.

They exported rice, supari, textiles, and timber to ports in Hormuz, Cairo, and even Malaysia. In return, they imported Persian luxuries like dates, pearls, and carpets. The staple import was horses: Arabian horses were lauded by the Indian nobility for both their class and utility. Sultans used them as a status symbol. They paraded with them and rode them in ceremonies. They began to maintain huge cavalry forces, on the order of thousands of horses per army.

The thriving horse trade eventually attracted the attention of the Portuguese, who landed (then swiftly conquered) Goa in the early 1500s.

The Catholics (1500s)

As a metaphor, Dune is a bit too on the nose. The Europeans loved their spice!

For centuries, spices from South Asia flowed into Europe through the Arabs and Venetians. This frustrated the Western European monarchies, who sought to cut out the middlemen. In the 1400s, the Portuguese, emboldened by naval supremacy, sailed to India for themselves.

In 1498, Vasco da Gama landed in Kolkata. Soon after, the Portuguese realized that Goa was a better strategic location. It was a safer location, had a weaker ruler, and crucially, was the hub of the sweet, sweet horse trade.

In 1510, Alfonso de Albuquerque attacked Goa, starting a 450-year Portuguese reign in this corner of the world. Goa became the capital of the Estado da Índia, the Portuguese headquarters of all of Asia. The regime had changed, and the Khalaps had to change with it.

The Portuguese rule immediately caused turmoil for the maritime merchants of Goa. Thanks to the trade with the Arab world, many of the merchants were Muslim. Those who followed the Quran usually enjoyed favor with their trading counterparties in the Middle East. Unfortunately for these Muslim traders, the Portuguese were God-fearing Christians. Naturally, they immediately massacred the Muslim population of Goa. The Crusades never end, they just pause temporarily!

At first glance, this drastically reduced the competition for Hindu traders (like the Khalaps). But would the Vaishya caste be allowed in business? Or would they too face a sour fate?

The answer was that, for now, they’d survive. Albuquerque was pragmatic. He knew that he needed a merchant network to facilitate his empire, and the Portuguese had very few of their own in the early years of its conquest. Hindu traders were allowed to continue trading (and even given protection!) if they paid the proper tribute and taxes.

Thanks to the Portuguese military might, they monopolized the most profitable commodities, horses and spices. But the Khalaps and other Vaishya could still trade rice, supari, coconuts, timber, and textiles.

The Khalaps continued to grow their trading business, but became weary of their future. In the middle of the 16th century, Catholic missionaries began their Inquisition, erecting massive churches and establishing missions. Favor increasingly went to those merchants who converted to Christianity.

To their credit, the Khalaps stayed true to their Hindu faith. But they still wanted to make their money! They moved more inland, away from the main ports in Old Goa, to seek relief from the watchful eyes of their Christian rulers.

The Shake Up (1600s)

By the 1600s, the Khalaps had settled in Mapusa, in North Goa. This location provided a haven for our Hindu merchants.

It was close enough to Portuguese Goa to participate in trade, but inland enough to have autonomy and create enterprises. They began to expand their network of trading partners, first, via inland caravan routes to the Mughals of Surat and the Deccan powers of the far east. These routes had stability, but were slower and less profitable than maritime options.

And then, their big break! In the 1600s, the Dutch and British East India Companies arrived in the Indian Ocean. They were strong, financially and militarily. They broke up the Portuguese monopoly, effectively opening up the seas for Hindu merchants.

The Khalaps took advantage of this breathing room and promptly began trading Northwards. They traded with British Bombay (now Mumbai) and again, the Mughals in Surat (now Gujarat), this time with the faster and profitable channels in the Indian Ocean.

The trading enterprise was thriving again, but the Khalaps did not rest on their laurels. They remembered what happened to their trade routes with their previous European colonists. They had no expectations that the British would be friendly to them forever. To create generational wealth, they couldn’t just be merchants. They had to expand.

The Capitalists (1700s - 1800s)

At this point, the Vaishya merchants had accumulated handsome sums of capital through their trade. Now, they began to put this capital to work. In the period, it’s unclear what industries the Khalaps were involved in, but they likely followed the playbook of other Goan Vaishyas of this time period.

As I mentioned, Goa is known for its bountiful natural resources, and Mapusa was no different. When you go to Goa, you get the sense that the world is tinged in reddish-brown. Don’t worry, it’s not your rose colored glasses. The ground, hillsides, and even building stones have this distinct hue. That’s because Goa’s soil is chock-full of iron and aluminum oxides. In the late 1700s, people started becoming aware of its mining potential.

Goan timber, sourced from the dense, hardwood forests of the Western Ghats, was plentiful and strong. Given its coastal culture, Goan Hindu carpenters and shipwrights were known to be some of the finest craftsmen in India. Vaishya used these attributes to their advantage to finance shipbuilding enterprises.

And this is where I won’t hide any ugly details. Remember the trade of rice, supari, cashews, and coconuts? The Vaishya class began to realize that they could consolidate the power of these crops. Instead of just trading, they created plantations to grow for themselves.

They established a tenancy system. The Vaishya became Bhatkars, the landlords of Goan agriculture. They leased their land to Mundkars, peasants who tirelessly tilled the land and lived in mud huts. For the ‘privilege’ of working on this land, the Bhatkars heavily tax the Mundkars, and if the rent or taxation were ever unpaid, they’d forcibly take the land back from the peasant.

Such became a vicious cycle, where Vaishya exploited labor from the peasants, became their landlords, and even their moneylenders.

As a result, Vaishya ruthlessly accumulated eye-watering amounts of capital and land. As I mentioned, we’re not sure what industries the Khalaps were explicitly involved in at this time, but they certainly were part of this landlord, rent-extracting class.

To me, this is a darker mark on the Khalap history. I’m a red-blooded capitalist, but am very sympathetic to the Georgist principles on land reform. As we’ll see later on, some of the Khalaps have tried to resolve their karmic debt in this regard. I’ll leave it to the reader to forgive them or not.

The Industrialists (1900s-1950s)

Into the 20th century, the Khalaps continued to build their wealth through trade and enterprise. Under the Portuguese rule, there was notably no income tax, so our Khalaps were able to accumulate capital, reinvest all of the profits, and build monopolies in their industries.

This is where we introduce my great-grandfather, Jagganath Khalap, who ushered in the modern industrialist era for the Khalaps.

By this time, a class of capitalist families had separated themselves into a class of untouchable financial and political powers (think something synonymous with the chaebols of Korea).

• The Dempos, an old Brahmin family from Panjim

• The Salgaocars from Vasco

• The Chowgules from Margao, famously strong in shipbuilding

• And finally, the Khalaps from Mapusa

It was now the 1940s, and the global industrial supply chain was humming. To support the technological booms associated with the world wars, the Great Powers were hungry for raw materials to transform into finished goods for their ships, planes, and tanks.

Specifically, Japan had come calling. In the 30s, it was rapidly industrializing and needed India’s natural resources to power this growth. In the 40s, they became embroiled in military conflicts with China and the USA, and needed to fuel their military push.

Portugal was a neutral state in these world wars, so it gave Japan, an Axis power, a loophole to obtain natural resources without getting shipments blockaded by Allied powers.

The families saw an opportunity to double down on mining and create a profitable export business to Japan. To lock in their monopolies and consolidate power, they created an agreement amongst themselves.

Each family would exclusively control a region of Goa (for the Khalaps, this was Mapusa in the North) in which they would be the sole miners of iron ore and manganese. And because each family owned thousands of acres of land in their region, they didn’t have to worry about upstart competition. They simply wouldn’t lease out land intended to start a competing business!

Jagganath Khalap found himself at the helm of a powerful business, eager to stretch his influence wider. He pushed hard on the mining industries, even repurposed some of the heavy machinery to build Goa’s road systems. He was the landlord for most of Northern Goa. And now, he had a perfect monopoly.

But it wouldn’t stay this way forever.

Boatloads and Boatloads (Mid 1900s)

At the height of his power, Jagganath Khalap was extraordinarily wealthy.

In the mid-1900s, most Indians were impoverished. In 1947, India’s GDP per capita was 250 - 300 Rupees a year.

100-200 Rupees a month could comfortably support an Indian middle-class lifestyle. Jagganth’s brother, himself a doctor, lived very well at 1,000 Rupees a month. For comparison, an Indian Civil Service officer, a highly coveted role that put you in the upper crust of society, earned ~1,500 Rupees a month. Both were handsome salaries that afforded wealthy lives.

Jagganath, by comparison, was earning 10s of millions of Rupees per year! In the 40s, there was ~ 1 car per 10,000 people in India. Jagganth himself owned 5 of them, putting him in the ranks of the top industrialist / aristocratic families in the country. The guy was filthy rich.

Wait, so why am I not a prince? Why am I not writing this to you on a Yacht docked in the Maldives, Mai Tai in hand?

The answer is a combination of populism and patriarchy.

Populism (Late 1900s)

In 1947, India finally achieved its freedom. The British left, leaving in its wake a bloody partition and the prospect of rebuilding a nation. But my beloved Goans wouldn’t get their freedom until 14 years later, in December of 1961.

The Portuguese, under the rule of the dictator Salazar, stubbornly held on to its colonies across the world, still viewing Goa as its foothold into the east. The Indian Army launched Operation Vijay to annex Goa, and within 36 hours, the Portuguese surrendered.

This marked the beginning of the Khalap descent. Unlike the zero-income-tax Portuguese regime, Jawaharlal Nehru’s Indian administration was heavily socialist. They enacted steep progressive taxes in the ballpark of >90% for incomes over 1 million rupees. This made it difficult to reinvest the capital needed to maintain the monopoly.

Nehru’s government also pursued land to the tiller laws, which Indira Gandhi later cemented. This reduced the power of the traditional Batkar class by securing tenancy rights for peasants and often redistributing land back to these people.

The Khalap real estate fortune was slowly evaporating (and rightly so!), and the mining business would soon be on its last leg.

Patriarchy (Late 1900s)

India is a notorious patriarchal society.

Arranged marriages are common, with dowries exchanged from the bride's family to the groom's family for accepting the proposal. There are too many heartbreaking stories of children as young as 14 being shipped off to marry grown men.

Wives move away from home, and live in the same house as their in-laws, expected to do the cooking and cleaning and perform their ‘womanly duties’. Thankfully, tides are turning, more women in India are educated and working than ever, but for Jagganath and his family, patriarchy was the rule.

My grandmother was born as Nandini Khalap, Jagganath’s second child. The family now had two daughters. Then another. And another. And three more. The Khalap family soon became a Brady Bunch comprised of seven sisters!

By all accounts, they were smart, capable, and educated. My grandmother studied journalism and is now a published author of multiple books. Her sisters were similarly brainy. But that wasn’t enough for Jagganth and his wife.

Jagganath’s wife, my great-grandmother, mourned that she never had a son. Because of Indian tradition, when they married, they left home to live with their in-laws. When they all grew up, she would be completely alone.

Jagganath, for his part, refused to pass down the business to any of his daughters. Why else do you think he tried to conceive seven times in an effort to have a son? Instead of training up his daughters to hand over the reigns, he foolishly decided to wind down the business.

Maybe he would have eventually had a change of heart and chose one of his daughters as a successor. The world would never get to find out. Jagganath would die of an untimely heart attack, without his affairs in order. From there, his estate devolved into a mess.

The mining enterprise was sputtering to a halt. The real estate empire had crumbled at the hands of a new administration. The centuries-long Khalap dominance in the Goan industry was no more.

They had traded with the Arabs, fended off European invaders, and built India’s modern industry. Still, at the end of it all, they collapsed under the weight of their hubris, their unfailing desire to uphold the patriarchy.

The Aftermath

By the time my mother was born in the 70s, the complexion of the Khalaps had changed. The seven sisters were marrying and having kids, and their new families, in search of better economic opportunity, moved to bigger cities in Maharashtra like Mumbai and Pune.

In Goa, the Khalaps were still comfortable, but from my mother’s account, they weren’t extravagantly rich. She grew up in Mumbai, but spent the summers in Goa, in a big house with all her cousins, where she could play. She remembers a normal, upper-middle-class Indian lifestyle. At the Goan house, they had two cars, along with a maid and a cook.

For some of the Khalaps, that wasn’t enough. They felt that they had been unfairly cheated out of some of their land and tried to work through the court systems to reclaim it. But for others, the ending was fair.

My great-uncle, Harsha Khalap, is the last Khalap of his generation (the rest of his sisters/cousins changed their last names when they were married). He told me this:

Harsha’s father (Jagganath’s brother) made him a promise.

“Stop looking backwards and trying to reclaim the wealth of the past. Instead, look forward, think about what you can create yourself. Anyway, the wealth created by real estate was largely unethical. Better to distance yourself from the deeds of your ancestors. The people who were given the redistributed land deserved their share.”

Harsha’s father moved his family from Goa to Pune, a partly symbolic move to show that his clan was starting over. They would no longer claim any rights to the Goan real estate. They would create their own life.

It’s working out well for Harsha. He studied intensively in metallurgy and started a successful manufacturing facility in India, which he hopes to pass down to his son.

My grandmother married Arun Mahadeshwar, who himself had a similar come-up. He started a small factory in Mumbai assembling electronic panels. It’s still operational today and provided the livelihood for my mother to come to the USA and start this awesome life for me.

The Khalaps now live across the world (seven sisters make a lot of kids!), and I am lucky to have many amazing aunts, uncles, and cousins in India and beyond.

The other powerful Goan families have had a different fate.

The Dempos sold their mining interests in 2009 for $350 million. They’re diversified across different industries, and notably own the Dempo Sports Club, one of India’s most famous football clubs.

The Salgaocars continued their run in industry, though their family has had infighting for years, with factions suing each other in court for the wealth. One of the Salgaocars even married into the Ambani family, worth $100 billion!

Finally, the Chowgules maintained their dominance in shipbuilding. There are still Chowgule shipyards in Goa and beyond. They parlayed this money into building Chowgule College, one of Goa’s premier schools.

All three families were hit hard by the 2012 Supreme Court ban on iron ore mining in Goa, but have been able to diversify into other businesses.

My Reflections

I’m happy that everything worked out the way it did. I love my life.

If the Khalaps kept at their industrial dominance, I’d probably still be in India right now, training up to run some family business that I probably wouldn’t like. I wouldn’t have got the opportunity to be born and raised in the USA, the best country in the world. My childhood was comfortable and happy. I got to play basketball and eat burritos. I played Xbox on the weekend and got milkshakes with my friends. It was the best.

And I wouldn’t have had the latitude or drive to start a company of my own!

It's easy to think of some pipe dreams where I was a pseudo-Indian aristocrat, but that sounds like a dull and unfulfilling life. Instead, I get to be like my enterprising ancestors, starting a business for myself, mapping out uncharted territories, and taking risks.

It makes sense why I love business so much. It’s the family legacy. I love reading business histories and biographies. I love breaking down business models. It’s addicting to make users and revenue go up and to the right. It’s all a beautiful game to me.

It makes me take my craft seriously, knowing that my ancestors built businesses that dwarf mine. I want to be better than them, grow bigger than them. But I want to do it in the right way. I don’t want my businesses to be rent-seeking. I want them to be innovative and value-adding! It’s why I’m so enthralled with software and ‘high-tech’ businesses. It’s one of the few industries in the world where you can add to the pie, instead of fighting others for an ever-shrinking slice.

Mostly, I think about Jagganath Khalap, and even my grandfather, Arun Mahadeshwar. May they both rest well. I wonder what they would say to me right now. Would they be proud of my work? What advice would they have for me? What fascinating stories do they have to tell?

How would they push me to go harder? What would they say about my work ethic, focus, and consistency? I wonder if they’d give me tough love or be more uplifting.

I want to be greater than both of them. I want to be the greatest Khalap of them all. Charlie Munger says to become friends with the eminent dead. Now, they’re also my competition.

It is my destiny. It’s in my blood.

Footnotes:

• Much of this history was orally conveyed to me during a dinner in San Mateo. Thanks to Harsha Mama, Padmashri Aaji, and Raju Aajoba for your words. They have changed my life.

• Because it was orally conveyed, I’m confident that there are inaccuracies. I’ve done my best, but I will continue to refine this essay's accuracy over time.

• ‘Official’ sources debate who the ‘four families’ of Goa actually were. Based on what I was told (admittedly biased because we are all Khalaps!), I created the list.

• There are a few narrative books written by Khalap merchants that are from well before Jagganath’s time. I am working on getting my hands on them.

• I am immensely proud of my family legacy. The dark parts are as important to highlight as the successes.

Intro

When infrastructure engineers at robotics teams first learn about Server Configuration Management (CM)/Automation tools like Ansible, Salt, Chef, and Puppet, they jump for joy.

They think they’ve found their panacea: “Robots are just edge servers, right? Let’s use CM tools for everything: provisioning, deployment, configs, and inventory management. Done.” Time to go home, kick up their feet, and let a CM tool handle their work for them!

That optimism isn’t entirely misplaced. These tools are solid. Robotics teams commonly use them in different parts of their CI/CD pipelines.

However, things start to break down when using CM for robotics application configuration; this is where the mental model of “robots as servers” falls apart.

Robots need dynamic, device-specific, and runtime-dependent configurations, which differ from the static config templates CM tools were built for.

In this blog, we’ll discuss why CM tools fall short for robotics configs—and what we need instead.

Incorrect Networking Assumptions

CM tools were built to configure servers sitting comfortably in data centers, like the AWS us-east-1 region in Virginia. Every square inch of these facilities is supported by world-class networking infrastructure and teams of experts on standby to fix whatever goes wrong.

At the time of writing, the last major outage in us-east-1 was in June 2023. It lasted two hours.

In robotics, a mere two-hour network drop is a walk in the park. Depending on your use case, it’s common for your robot to drop off the network for hours, even days.

CM tools, built with data center networking assumptions, aren’t designed for this level of flakiness.

Push-Based vs. Pull-Based Model

Some CM tools (Ansible or Salt’s default) rely on a push-based model. This means the server (cloud) pushes configuration updates to the client (robot).

In robotics, this is risky. If the network’s shaky, you might push a new configuration while part of your fleet is offline. Now you’ve got different robots running different versions of your software. Worse, if a robot goes offline mid-update, it might end up in a broken state that needs manual recovery.

A pull-based model is better. In this approach, the client polls the server for new configurations and pulls them down whenever an update is ready. Puppet and Chef use this approach.

But whether they push or pull, these tools still assume a reliable network — and that’s where things fail.

Queuing

Let’s zoom in on a pull-based system. It defaults to pulling configurations from the server at some regular interval (Puppet’s is every 30 minutes). However, in the event of networking or power drops, we’d prefer that the client poll the server for a new update immediately upon restarting or re-establishing the network connection.

But we don’t usually want the robot to apply the new configuration immediately once it has been downloaded. Robots are stateful systems. They might be mid-mission, interacting with a human, or doing something sensitive in the physical world. Applying a configuration change at the wrong moment can have dangerous consequences.

Servers don’t face this problem as sharply. They run in predictable environments, with workloads that can be drained or paused with less disruption.

So, for robots, instead of applying updates immediately, we want a local queue. The robot should pull down the config and store it locally. Then, when it’s safe, the robot can apply it.

CM tools don’t give you this out of the box. No retry logic. No local job queue. If you care about when and how updates get applied (you should!), you’re left writing that logic yourself.

Safe Updates and On-Device Versioning

Atomic Updates

It’s best practice to have atomic updates and rollback functionality. We don’t want to incrementally update configs and be left in a bad state if the update completes partially. We also want to easily roll back to a previous configuration version if our application isn’t behaving as expected.

An atomic update is all or nothing. If any part of the update fails, the whole system is rolled back, leaving it in its original, working state.

Salt, Puppet, and Chef apply updates sequentially, like scripts. If something fails, they move on. This assumption makes sense in a server farm, where you treat your machines like cattle. However, robots are more like pets, so we should treat our configuration updates with care. We can’t simply move on if the update only completes partially.

Device Versioning

CM tools rely on a central manifest that defines the server’s preferred device state. Because it is a central command/control system, it doesn’t care much about the device’s current state. This means that versioned, per-device history is not a first-class citizen.

So if a robot misses config v3 and the latest version is v4, it will naively try to jump ahead—but that’s not always safe. You’d prefer to give the device the data for both v3 and v4 to upgrade sequentially, ensuring a smooth update.

This lack of versioned per-device history also makes rollbacks difficult. Rollbacks require versioning and snapshots. We want to know the device’s version history, its last good state, and establish a safe way to reapply it.

With traditional CM, you have to create version tracking, define migration paths, and handle rollbacks yourself. That’s critical path infrastructure we’d prefer not to build ourselves!

Drift Detection

Unlike servers, robots have configs that are edited locally. Whether an operator or end user modifies a setting in the business logic layer (like a CAD input in construction) or a robot recalibrates itself, these changes are not in lockstep with the cloud.

When local configs and cloud versions are out of sync, we call this a configuration drift. The drift itself isn’t problematic, but what’s important is being able to resolve it when it happens.

Teams have varying policies for resolving drift. Some want the robot to be the source of truth. Others want the cloud to win. Some even prefer one-off, snowflake configs. But all of them need visibility. CM tools don’t give you that. They only track the cloud’s desired state. They have no idea what the device is running right now.

That means you can’t handle drift—you don’t even know it exists. And if you don’t know what’s running on the device, you can’t be confident that your next update will work.

Analytics

Weak device versioning also negatively affects our ability to run analytics.

A robot’s application configs are its analytics primitives. When debugging a field issue, measuring uptime, or running an A/B test, you correlate performance with the config in place at the time. That requires device-level versioning.

Again, CM tools miss this. Without it, we can't trace metrics back to the exact config that was running. We’re forced to hack around this with brittle logging or tagging systems that don’t scale. The result: we lose precision in our data, and any insight we draw about fleet performance is less trustworthy.

Schema Management

CM tools are process runners. They don’t know or care what’s in the config—they’ll happily deploy garbage as long as the YAML parses. But our deployment process can’t be that naive. A valid file != valid config. We must ensure that our configuration schemas are correct and safe to roll out, without piling more friction onto the software engineer deploying them.

CM tools don’t natively integrate with configuration schemas like JSON Schema, Protobufs, or CUE that enforce types, valid values, or structural constraints. That means you can accidentally set max_torque: 1389, launching a robot arm through a wall!

CM tools don’t have a built-in way to check if a new config is compatible with the previous config and the application code. If there’s an incompatibility, errors get caught at runtime instead of deploy time, where the stakes are much higher.

This puts the onus on the software engineers, who must perform this checking. But engineers don’t want to add this infrastructure to their laundry lists of tasks. They don’t want to build config validation infrastructure. They also don’t want to cross their fingers every time they deploy.

They want something that just works, and control over the schema to make sure it does.

Overrides

Overrides should be simple. You should be able to specify: “These five robots at Customer A get a camera config X” or “Any robot running version 2.1 should increase its timeout to 25s.” You shouldn’t need to write a new file for every robot or fork your entire structure to change one value.

But that’s exactly what traditional tools make you do.

Salt lets you override through Pillars, but you end up writing conditionals in YAML or Jinja, hardcoding robot IDs into top.sls files. There's no layering, no merging — just string-matching and crossed fingers.

Puppet uses Hiera, which sounds fancy until you realize it means a new file per override. You want to tweak something for ten robots? You’re now ten files deep in a folder maze. There's no way to say “robots with camera=flir” or “battery < 50%.”

Chef does support layered overrides — default, normal, override, and force_override which sounds like a good idea. But it’s hard to trace where a value came from in practice. Overrides can come from cookbooks, roles, environments, or node-specific JSON. There’s no unified view or merge semantics you can reason about. So when something goes wrong, debugging turns into an expedition through scattered files and Chef's run-time state.

Ansible is even simpler — and not in a good way. Host vars and group vars overwrite each other. There’s no merging, no targeting, and no live visibility.

They all assume that configuration is something you set once, like a shipping label. But robotics doesn’t work like that. They need dynamic, layered, and functional overrides.

Conclusion

CM tools are still useful in robotics. They’re powerful for orchestrating software updates, doing OS-level configurations, and installing dependencies.

But they weren’t built to safely manage configs in robotics for fleets of stateful, network-constrained robots. They lack the needed robustness, composability, and targeting.

Robotics teams need something better.

That’s why we’re building Miru: configuration management purpose-built for robotics. We help robotics teams manage, version, and deploy their application configs. If this has been challenging for you, reach out! We’d love to help.

Thinking that stems from the ‘Lump of Labor’ Fallacy is widely used by opponents of AI, Robotics. Let’s explore what it means and why these people are wrong.

The core thesis of this fallacy is that the economy is a fixed pie. When you replace a job (say, with automation), these jobs do not get replaced in the aggregate.

This is why, in the face of increasing automation in both the physical and digital worlds, they are skeptical about the job market for future generations. These opponents are causing us to decelerate the adoption of AI and Robotics, costing the world trillions of dollars of productivity.

What happens during major technological shifts?

Historically, the 'Lump of Labor' has been proven wrong time and time again. The Industrial Revolution replaced artisans with more factory workers who could make goods cheaper and faster. The IT revolution replaced human computers (Gen Z doesn’t realize this is where the word ‘computer’ comes from) with millions of engineers and IT workers. AI and Robotics will have the same effect.

Usually, new technological advancements can, in the short term, replace jobs. That much is true. But technological advancements also catalyze economic growth and, in the aggregate, create far more economic opportunity than the status quo.

Technology leads to the cost of goods falling and the quantity of goods increasing. This creates more prosperity as people can consume more and live better lives. This is a virtuous cycle because the job market benefits from increased productivity and consumption.

Where do the jobs go?

It's unclear where the jobs will be replaced in AI and Robotics. There are leading theories -- teleoperators for robots, more customer service reps in food and hospitality, many more artists, and my favorite, 1000x job creation in the space industry. Still, nothing is certain, and this is not inherently a bad thing.

Since AI is humanity’s most significant technological leap to date, it’s unclear and, therefore, easy to default to the pessimism that there will be no jobs left.

However, when Henry Ford made the first Model T, it was equally unclear that, one day, there would be millions of taxi, truck, and rickshaw drivers around the world. It would have been unclear that people would unlock the ability to earn more by working outside their one-mile radius. It would have been unclear that a multi-trillion-dollar logistics industry was waiting to be created.

People have the right to be somewhat cautious about Robotics and AI. It’s a huge, huge, huge leap. Entire labor markets will shift. Our cost structures will radically transform. In the physical world, the cost of goods will asymptote to the cost of raw materials. In the digital world, the cost of goods and services can feasibly asymptote to 0.

Cheaper goods = more opportunity

What would the economy look like with exponentially cheaper goods and services? I'm not sure, but here are some questions that excite me about the future of the job market.

• What if the cost of education approached 0? How would the world benefit from a billion kids who finally have the opportunity to be engineers, scientists, and surgeons thanks to the power of a world-class, truly personalized education at their fingertips?

• What if the cost of healthcare, in everything but drugs/surgery (which robotics will make cheaper), approached 0? What would the world do with billions of healthier, more productive people with longer lives?

• What if the cost of software approached 0? What could an individual accomplish if they had the power of a 500-person software team at their fingertips? (And what would happen to Miru’s biz model 😅!?)

In this world where cheap goods are proliferated, consumption increases, and the job market will flourish.

The ripples

We can’t leave people behind. Jobs will undoubtedly become automated, and more emphasis should be placed on re-education and transition paths to new, more economically productive opportunities.

I'll be the first to say that these efforts need more work, and I'd be happy to help anyone with an idea.

Inequality will probably increase in the short term as people with capital and knowledge use AI to increase their leverage. Still, in 20-30 years, inequality will be much lower than it is today. How the world weathers the turbulence between those times is yet to be seen.

Again, it's okay to be cautious. As much as I would like the world to be a techno-utopia, the real world doesn't conform to those ideals. Real people will be affected during this transition and must be cared for.

But there is a distinction between being cautious and being a Luddite. Progress is good. Creative destruction is good.

The opponents are wrong. It's a great time to be an optimist. AI and Robotics will bring increased prosperity to the world.

The following is an excerpt from a letter I wrote my sister to celebrate her graduating high school and starting college. College is one of the few things in this world I have enough lived experience to give advice about, so in this letter, I tried to share some of the things I learned with her. I’ve now decided to share them with you.

This is just my opinion based on my personal experience. There are a million ways to live your life and none of them are right. I don’t claim to have any of the answers. In fact, there were many times I didn’t take my own advice!

I’ll probably re-read this in five years and have changed my mind on many points - such is life.

On College

College is a whirlwind. It will pick you up, put you down, change you, mold you, and break you. It's an interesting blender of 4 years that pops you out the other side as an adult. Enjoy it. Don't take a second for granted. There will be a lot of moments that will test you and won't be fun. But there will be even more memories and people that you will remember for the rest of your life. Sometimes, take a moment to stick your head up out of the weeds and breathe it all in. It'll be fun.

However, most people think college is JUST supposed to be fun. And if you want to be like most people, it can be. But (stepping on my soapbox) most people don't succeed. Most people are mediocre. Have fun, but understand your mission objective. Our parents have worked hard their entire lives to send you to college. They will spend $70k - $80k in 4 years to afford you this opportunity. DO NOT SQUANDER THIS. College is an opportunity, and opportunities are only what you make of them.

If you stay disciplined and consistent (benders are okay, but only occasionally), you will have plenty of time for fun. Speaking of the mission objective, it's important to name yours. There is no right answer to this, but some are better than others. Things that were important for me were:

Finding Myself

It's interesting. At some point during my freshman year, I woke up and realized that I was living my life. I decided my outcomes. I could do literally whatever I wanted to do as long as it satisfied my goals. I didn't have to do anything or be anyone.

I decided to judge myself based on who I was and what I cared about. That moment gave me relief - it felt freeing and motivating. I hope you have this moment for yourself. In my opinion, this is when life really starts.

Finding What I Love to Do

People aren't happy because they work high-paying jobs. They are happy because they are fulfilled. They spend their time on Earth doing things they think are important and doing these things brings them joy. Sprinkle in a good family, and they seem to do alright for themselves. The formula is as simple (and profound) as that.

I find it interesting that there is a strong overlap between these fulfilled people and the most successful people. This is because to be the best in the world at something, you have to be extremely passionate about it. You can't fake it. This means that while you’re in school, you should do everything humanely possible to find things you are passionate about. You have 4 years of minimal responsibility and maximum freedom. This is the time to do it! Explore things, follow your curiosity, go down rabbit holes, be weird, and just don't stop chasing. Everyone has something in them, don't stop chasing until you find it.

Disregard the dogma that drives people to conventional paths. Everyone has a 'thing'. That 'thing' is usually not tech or business. Sometimes they use tech and/or business to practically do their 'thing' in the real world, but many times they don't. Many kids will put the traditional path on a pedestal. Use the path to your advantage, but don't let it consume you. There is a difference. Use the path to help you chase. Use it as a resource. Just don't stop chasing.

Finding the Right People

Your environment dictates your outcomes. Your friends and your family define who you are. You will see the patterns of this early. Who parties, who studies, who's in shape, who's depressed, who's a corporate bot, who's ambitionless - everyone seems to have their archetypes. Your friends don't have to all be clones of each other (or you), but just be careful. You can get sucked into something you don't want to be, and those holes can be tricky to climb out of. Conversely, you’ll be surprised that if you become friends with people who you admire, you start to latch on to some of their good habits.

Just as you should decide who you want to be, you decide who your friends are. And guess what, your friends influence who you are too! It's a circle. Just be selective and be intentional. Honestly, those two words are probably good pillars for all of your life. The last thing about friends (and relationships). Everyone in your life is fleeting. Your family will always be there. Your partner may always be there (you'll have to find them first). But everyone else has their own life. They come and go. They don’t wait for your permission to change - they have their own lives to live. Don't hold on to anyone or anything that doesn't serve you. You have to take care of yourself first.

Finding Good Habits

Habits are the operating system for your life. They are everywhere -- in our living space, our work, our relationships, our health. Bad habits are hard to break. Good ones are tough to create. But they are important.

An interesting thing is that your habits are really just guided by your priorities. So first, make sure those are in order. In fact, every few months. I suggest you write down your priorities in a journal. This helps you make better decisions and therefore, maintain better habits.

To me, sleep, diet, and exercise are the pillars of any good life. Do those things well and consistently, and you will be surprised at how much they affect your happiness. Cleanliness is also extremely important. Keeping my living space clean was always a struggle. But it's so important. In many ways, a cluttered living space is the reflection of a cluttered mind. I always found that taking the time to clean made me feel better afterward.

In college, building discipline is hard. There’s always ‘something’ going on, your environment will always give you a reason to not do what you are supposed to. Studying every day, working out every day, going to class every day, being off your phone, not scrolling on socials. These things are all important. You'll have to learn all these habits for yourself, and I'm sure you will try and fail. But if you're ever lost, come back to this.

The great part about graduating from a good university is that it is effectively a slingshot. It can launch you to places, people, and organizations that are usually unfathomable for 20-something-year-olds. However, you can only use this slingshot once. Use it or lose it. Your actions in college will dictate the trajectory of your slingshot. You want to aim as high as possible.

If there's anything you can take away from that spiel, it's that you should be selective and intentional about your life. You have the power to be whoever you want to be. You could be a fisherman, emo-girl, painter, entrepreneur, coder, lawyer, garbage man, writer, etc. The point is that anything you think is cool, you should try. Even if you have to be a beginner at it, and you suck, you'll be surprised about how you can learn anything and do anything with enough effort. You're lucky because you have physically seen this firsthand. What was it like when you started lifting? Imagine how weak you were and how hard it was to move small weights. Look at you now. You’re a bonafide swole-body! You can do that with anything. Literally, anything you set your mind to. It's up to you to have that confidence in yourself. Just make sure the things you decide to explore are the things that you care about. Decide those things for yourself. So many people will try to decide for you. Don't let them. You have the power to be the person you want to be and have the life you want to live. I hope that is exciting. To me, it’s all the freedom I could ever ask for.

Other Thoughts…

1. Read a lot. It's so fun. I really enjoy biographies.

2. Make friends with people who challenge you. Make friends with people you look up to. That's how you can become like them.

3. Everyone wants to mentor you. People like that feeling. Reach out to as many people as you can. Ask them questions. Pick their brain. I don't care if they are 55 or 25. People want to help. But they won’t unless you ask.

4. You will be rejected many times. You will lose many times. Try to build resilience. It's an important asset.

5. Work hard. Nothing happens if you don't work hard. Nothing at all.

6. Use your phone less. So many people waste their lives as phone zombies. I've fallen into that hole many times.

7. Learn to love being by yourself. Explore by yourself. Do things by yourself. Spend time by yourself. You will find that it is delightful.

8. You don't owe anyone anything. At all. Do it for yourself.

9. Learning doesn't happen in the classroom. It happens by yourself. In clubs or on online communities or YouTube or Wikipedia. "I never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain.

10. Work out a bunch. Eat well. It's sick to be in shape.

11. Partying is fun - in moderation.

12. Conversely, drugs poison your mind and body. That’s why they make you feel good(and then later, not so good). Make sure you’re aware of that.

13. You will die one day. Remember that. When you waste time or do things that you don't think are right, just remember that. Death is forcing function to follow your passion.

14. Money is less valuable than freedom. For many people, money buys freedom. However, you can earn freedom in other ways.

15. Be the type of person you want your future partner to love and respect.

16. You will get your heartbroken. Put yourself out there anyway.

17. Tell people how you feel. That's always the best way to overcome conflict and strengthen bonds.

18. If your gut tells you something is wrong, listen to it.

19. Test scores don't define you. In fact, nothing defines you that is outside of yourself. But if you failed the test because you know you didn't give it your best, that's when you should be worried.

20. You actually won't learn much in business. Learn outside the classroom.

21. Work fuckin hard. trust me. Just work hard.

22. Fall in love with problems, not solutions

23. Ideas don't come in pretty boxes, but ideologies do. Think for yourself.

24. Respect people. Give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I messed up this badly my first few years.

25. Be the person to say hi first. Everyone is just as nervous as you are. Have a firm handshake and a big smile.

26. The internet is awesome. Use it to your advantage. You can use the internet to do SOO many things.

27. Learn how to code. And build projects and websites outside of the classroom. I will pay for literally whatever you need. But trust me, it's awesome.

28. Start things yourself. Don't wait for permission. In fact, a good rule of thumb if you’re not sure about something is to do it anyway and then deal with the consequences later. Life’s too short for you to wait around for someone to tell you the rules. “Don’t ask for permission, seek forgiveness.”

29. You are not too young to do anything. You are the perfect age.

30. Listen to podcasts and read blogs. There are interesting ideas in the right pieces of content. Again, read tons of books.

31. Work hard!

32. Networking just to network is so dumb. Talk to people if you're actually interested in what they have to say.

33. That being said, networking is an important skill in your arsenal.

34. Keep a good and consistent relationship with our parents. Try to call them as much as you can. They'll miss us.

35. Be organized: Google/Notion calendar, Notion, To-Do Lists, Timers, Schedules, etc.

36. In order for something to improve, it must be measured. Meticulously track the things you care about.

37. Be okay with failing. Be okay with being a beginner.

38. Do it all for yourself. Be who you want to be.

39. It's okay to be weird. It's usually a good thing. Being weird means you are different. And being different means often means you’re doing something interesting.

40. Never stop being curious.

41. Journal your life. Document your thoughts and growth. Future you will be thankful.

42. Do hard things. Doing hard things is scary but when you do them, you feel really good. Seeking out hard things is awesome because it gets easier to do those hard things until you look back and you've grown so much.

43. Most risky things aren't that risky unless they involve you getting seriously injured. Most of the time, precieved risk is just an excuse for fear or a lack of confidence. The cool thing about risks is that on the other side of them lies reward.

44. Everything has tradeoffs, even doing the right things

45. Be frugal

46. Choose good people

47. Take a break when you need it

48. The days are long but the years are short

49. You will be just fine. No matter what happens. Just keep going.

50. I couldn't think of something else, but 49 is such an ugly number to end a list!

To Shruti, I'm grateful that you're my sister. Life is a lot better with you. I'm excited to see what you accomplish. Make yourself proud.

To everyone else, I hope this was useful. Best of luck.

- V

Originally published June 23, 2024

At School

School teaches poor writing habits. Here's how we can learn better ones.

In American elementary schools, students often face writing assignments that ask them to respond to questions such as, "What is the best thing on a school playground?” They’ll get 45 minutes to write their essay in a pre-defined, boilerplate format.

The details of the format are irrelevant, but what’s important is the rubric. Yes, teachers award points for clarity and organization, but the lion’s share belongs to style, ‘quality of writing’, and grammar. In the words of Charlie Munger: “Show me the incentives, and I’ll show you the outcomes.” These rubrics crank out hordes of students focused more on flowery language than on developing solid ideas.

"Show me the incentives, and I'll show you the outcomes."

My peers and I were especially plagued by this bad habit. As a 6th grader, I found myself surrounded by classmates who clumsily inserted words like “plethora” and “magnanimous” into their essays. Most of them, myself included, lacked the fundamental understanding of what those words meant. A common practice at my school was going on Thesaurus.com the night before our essays were due to find and replace all the verbs with “higher level word choice”.

These bad habits trickled into other aspects of our learning. There were too many times that I participated in a Q+A session in class where a student raised their hand, talked in circles with big words, failed to make a point, and smugly smiled to themselves after. It was a painfully frustrating experience.

Again, big words do not equal big brains. A presidential candidate would never use a word like ‘superfluous’ in a speech. Why? For him to get elected by the masses, his words need to strike the same chord with a mill worker as they do with a theoretical physicist. Anything else that takes away from the clarity of his ideas is just, well, superfluous!

Caesar

It's worthwhile to study the best writers of both past and present to discover better writing habits.

Julius Caesar was known in Rome for his mastery of writing. His recounts of his battles in Gaul drew both praise from Roman citizens and respect from his enemies. Here’s Cicero on Caesar’s writing:

“Admirable indeed… like naked forms, upright and beautiful, pared of all ornamentation as if they removed a robe…for there is nothing better in the writing of history than clear and distinguished brevity.”

It’s obvious that Cicero lacked the "clear and distinguished brevity" that he admired in Caesar. Still, even he was impressed by the simplicity and clarity that powered Caesar’s words and ideas. Caesar wrote like someone hitting you in the head with a baseball bat. The strokes were short, blunt, and effective.

Paul Graham

Paul Graham (PG), founder of Y-Combinator, is an essayist whom I particularly enjoy. It’s not just me — his essays have a cult-like following in Silicon Valley. His writing is fantastic because he boils down difficult business concepts into digestible essays. In a Quora post from 2014, Michael Wolfe described PG’s writing perfectly:

“ Paul writes the way that great coders code.

1. He uses exactly the right number of words, no more, no less.

2. He expresses his points clearly and directly.

3. The product looks effortless, although lots of work probably went into it.

4. The writing solves a very clear problem - getting a very relevant set of thoughts exactly to a specific audience who needs to hear them.

5. He is not afraid to use analogies. Many "real" writers are taught to use them sparingly, but they are extremely effective.”

If you’ve ever programmed, you know that the most elegant software is not complex. It is the opposite — like taking a long for loop with nested ifs and collapsing it into a single, beautiful line of chained Array methods*. It’s simple, magically simple.

PG writes clearly so that his readers must confront his ideas head-on. There is no subtlety. As a reader, you feel like a cape-less matador in the ring with an angry bull. Nothing is standing between you and the ugly truth.

And yet, PG never tells you “So here’s what this means” or “This is why X is important.” Instead, his plainly described ideas do this for him. PG rarely asserts anything; still, an entire industry takes his word as gold!

My Learnings

I’ll likely spend the rest of my life trying and failing to write like Caesar and PG. Here are some lessons that I’ll take with me along the way.

1. Be concise. Occam’s Razor suggests that if you have two competing ideas to explain the same phenomenon, you should prefer the simpler one. I’ll always look to err on the side of being concise.

2. Edit ruthlessly. Like anything else, a graceful final product is molded by countless iterations and failures beforehand.

3. Use analogies! They allow your reader to empathize with you, which helps their understanding. Imagine this scenario: Your friend just returned from a vacation in Alaska. If you ask her, “How was the weather?” She won’t reply, “It was -12 Fahrenheit.” Instead, she’ll probably say, “Dude, it was cold as f*ck!”And you'll thank her all the more for it.

*Array methods like forEach(), map(), and filter() allow you to execute looped tasks in a single statement. Chained together, they can be extremely powerful. I’ve been learning JS for the past few weeks ;)

Thanks to Theiija, Jack, Prayaag, and Rohan for helping me revise this.

Writing this was fun, and I hope you found some of the ideas useful. I’m going to continue experimenting with longer-form posts. My writing muscle is weak, and the only way it'll get stronger is with more repetitions.

Until next time,

V

Originally published January 4, 2024.

Henry Ford published his autobiography, 'My Life and Work', in 1922. In his introduction, he writes of the opportunity that lies ahead of the world he lived in. Many of his ideas seem even more applicable today, in 2023. I'm writing about them to share with you.

On Opportunity:

"We have only started on our development of our country—we have not as yet, with all our talk of wonderful progress, done more than scratch the surface."

“When we consider that more power is used merely in ploughing the soil than is used in all the industrial establishments of the country put together, an inkling comes of how much opportunity there is ahead.”

In 1922, the Second Industrial Revolution was well underway. With it came a flood of machines into agriculture, manufacturing, and transportation. However, there was still extreme inefficiency. Ford commented that more energy was consumed in sowing fields than in manufacturing. How much more could we produce if we increased efficiency, consumption, and production? The opportunities seemed boundless.

In 2023, a little over 100 years later, we are on the precipice of such an opportunity. There are so many inefficiencies in our world, both physical and digital that we are so close to automating. Far too many people do work that they hate because, both as individuals and as a society, we need their work to subsist. With AGI and robotics, we’re inching toward a world where these people can do other things, do better things.

The concept of a more automated world can be scary. We’ve grown up watching sci-fi movies filled with dystopia. In 1922, many people felt similar angst about the impending mechanization of their world.

On a ‘Dystopian’ Future:

“When one speaks of increasing power, machinery, and industry there comes up a picture of a cold, metallic sort of world in which great factories will drive away the trees, the flowers, the birds, and the green field…With all of that I do not agree. I think that unless we know more about machines and their use, unless we better understand the mechanical portion of life, we cannot have the time to enjoy the trees, and the birds, and the flowers, and the green fields.”

The world with AGI doesn’t have to be cold and dystopian. Just like the world with machines wasn’t either. It’s up to humanity, in the way that only humanity can, to harness this powerful technology as a force of good. It’s up to us to define the world we live in, a world that we may understand better with better technology to help us thrive.

What of the opportunity that comes after AGI? It is our opportunity to explore. To explore the depths of the oceans, to explore the outer reaches of space, to explore the microscopic biomes in rainforests. To explore ourselves, to create art and music accessible to everyone. To explore meaning for ourselves and our lives. To create a human definition of purpose that doesn’t revolve around subsistence.

Although the future is not guaranteed to be this wondrous, humanity has the opportunity to define it as such.

On People:

“I think that we have already done too much toward banishing the pleasant things from life by thinking that there is some opposition between living and providing the means of living….Power and machinery, money and goods, are useful only as they set us free to live. They are but means to an end.”

We have already done too much towards banishing the pleasant things from life. People in 1922 believed there was a difference between living and providing a means of living. In 2023, though the world is exponentially wealthier, we believe the same thing.

We believe that you work hard so that you can enjoy your life on the weekends. We believe you go to school for something you hate to make money. We haven’t found purpose, and thus, we believe that purpose simply doesn’t exist. But why?

There might one day be a time when you and I will be alive and we will live in an automated world. It could be in 5 years, or it could be 50. When that day comes, you might be able to easily find your purpose, but why wait around to find out?

The world was built by people like Henry Ford, who refused to stop until they found and executed their purpose. He refuted experts, job promotions, and friends whenever they told him a gas-powered car wouldn’t work. He spent 12 years prototyping the model T before he released it. He believed in a future so vividly and cared about humanity so deeply that he poured his soul into that car. 100 years and billions of people later, we have so much to thank him for.

Our future will only be what we define it as, what we decide to build. There are many questions about the future, but one thing is certain: The future is coming. Time will not stop marching for our indecision.

What do we want that future to be?

Acknowledgements:

• All quotes from ‘My Life and Work’ by Henry Ford and Samuel Crowther

• Thank you to David Senra and the Founders podcast for inspiring me to ‘become friends with the eminent dead’. I’ve become a better man as a result.

I plan to write many essays in the future. This was not planned to be one of them. However, I feel strongly about these ideas and felt like they were serendipitously pulled out of me. It lacks revision and careful editing. That is on purpose. This is me in my rawest form. You'll see different versions of me in future essays.

I'd love to hear your thoughts and criticism.

Until next time,

V

Originally published on LinkedIn, December 19th, 2023.

Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) is a technique used in robotics that allows the machines to create a map of an unknown environment (mapping) while simultaneously keeping track of the robot’s location (localization) within said map.

It turns out that roboticists are pretty straightforward with their naming conventions 😅

SLAM is the bridge between a robot’s perception and navigation stack. It allows them to ingest sensory data from the real world and transform it into information about how it should interact with its environment.

By continuously updating their map and location, robots can move safely and efficiently, avoiding obstacles and adapting to changes. As we’ll see, SLAM is one of the crucial components of autonomous robotics.

Let’s dive into the three core concepts of SLAM: localization, mapping, and loop closure.

Localization 📍

Localization is the process that a robot takes to determine its position and orientation in its environment. It’s not enough to know where the robot is on the map. It also needs to know its direction, speed, and acceleration.

Some techniques used in Localization are GPS for absolute positioning, odometry for change in relative positioning, and sensor fusion to combine data from multiple sources (cameras, LIDAR, IMUs).

Localization does face some challenges. Real-world environments are dynamic and noisy, impacting a robot’s ability to localize. Sensors can also suffer from data drift over time, which can compound to cause large deviations in a robot’s estimated vs. real location.

Mapping 🗺️

Mapping is the process that creates a representation of a robot’s environment that can be used for path planning, obstacle avoidance, and decision-making.

There are two approaches to establishing a map:

Grid-Based:

In this approach, the space is represented by a fixed-size grid. Each cell in the grid has information about whether the cell is occupied or empty.

Grid-based approaches are popular because they are intuitive (imagine a chessboard) and simple to implement. However, in large environments, it can become computationally expensive to maintain and update the grid.

Graph-Based:

In this approach, the robot’s position and orientation (poses) are nodes on a graph. The edges are observations or movements between these poses. This helps the robot establish its relative position on the map.

This turns the mapping into a graph optimization problem, where we seek to minimize the error between observed data and the graph structure. Graph-based approaches are more flexible and scalable than their grid-based counterparts but struggle to respond to sparse environments that lack many landmarks.

Loop Closure 🔄

When humans navigate our surroundings, we don’t start from scratch every time. Instead, we use reference points from our previous experiences to inform where we are, i.e., “I just crossed the bakery, which means I’m 2 minutes away from home!”

Similarly, robots use loop closure to recognize previous locations they’ve visited, using this information to correct the robot’s position and update the map, effectively closing the loop.

To detect these landmarks, robots use feature matching and place recognition techniques. Both rely on inputs from sensor data and machine learning to do this pattern matching.

Graph-based mapping and loop closures connect nicely. The nodes of the graph-based map are informed by loop closures, which in turn helps optimize the graph.

The Chicken or The Egg Problem 🐔🥚

A debate as old as time is the discussion regarding what came first, the chicken or the egg? In SLAM, the challenge is quite similar: which should come first, mapping or localization?

Because both mapping and localization rely on each other for pieces of the information that they need, the interdependence can create a loop where errors are magnified and accuracy is difficult to attain.

Fortunately, in the real world, robotics teams can manipulate the environment to better prepare the robot to accomplish both tasks simultaneously:

• Bootstrapping the environment by providing the robot with rough parameters on what it will be seeing

• Incrementally mapping and localizing, which continually reduces error as the robot proceeds on its mission

Using ML to input semantic information, like object recognition and scene understanding, which provides richer data

Conclusion 🔚

I hope you enjoyed this brief, beginner’s guide to SLAM in robotics.

This week, I’ll be posting a few tutorials on how to set up SLAM simulations in ROS2. These will be great ways to learn about how robots interact with their environment via SLAM!

Follow for more blogs, technical walkthroughs, and news about everything robotics 🤙🏾

Subscribe now