Last updated: January 2026
What I’m reading
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl — Frankl’s account of surviving the Nazi concentration camps and finding meaning even in unimaginable suffering. What stayed with me: the idea of stepping back to see life as a whole—a magnificent theatrical performance in which even our hardest moments are part of something magnificent. Frankl expresses this beautifully in an extended play script at the end of the book. It reminds me of the concept of Lila in Hinduism—the universe as divine play.
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm — A mind-bending exploration of ideas that resist being remembered or understood. It’s fiction, but it gets at something real: some of the most important truths are the hardest to hold onto. What remains when everything you know has been stripped away? What do you fight for when you can’t remember why?
End Times by Peter Turchin — Turchin applies mathematical models to history, identifying cycles of social instability and collapse. Fascinating, though I remain skeptical whether the work holds up to scientific scrutiny—studying history rigorously through mathematical means is genuinely hard. Turchin is a great explainer of the field, but the jury’s still out.
Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow — A biography of America’s first Treasury Secretary and one of its most consequential founders. The guy was just so principled and talented—you gotta hand it to him. Sometimes the first people arriving at the scene are the ones who see things most clearly.
This is a now page. It’s a snapshot of what’s on my mind, updated whenever something significant changes.
Follow along on 𝕏: @ibab — where I share thoughts on AI, research, and the future.