Currently

I’m currently the founding engineer of a defense tech startup and working on an e-commerce brand. Before this I was studying ECE @ University of Toronto, dabbling in research across AI, biophysics, math, and cell biology. I’m “on leave” from my degree. I’m Korean, I like to move, and I’m too opinionated for my own good.

Here’s what I’ve read so far as an adult.

I’ve also recently picked up piano (again).


What I want to do with my life

In late high school, I wanted to become a professor. I really enjoyed teaching others (and still do), and at the time I liked working on technically challenging things. I thought academia was the best environment to facilitate those needs. I consequently spent 3 years involved with academic research, working as an RA in various labs since the end of high school.

But after working at multiple labs, I became unenlightened with academia. Some key reasons were: poor pay; overbearing bureaucracies which made everything move slowly; poor incentives to maximize publications; and to me the most unappealing, being surrounded by neo-marxists & closeted communists. Diversity of thought was nonexistent.

As I got older my goals shifted. It quickly dawned on me that financial freedom was a necessary component to live a life I’d be proud of. That’s my north star today. I deeply care about giving back to my parents and friends in my life, building a family of my own, doing charitable work, travelling the world, speaking my mind freely, and pursuing the arts. To do these things in the highest echelons, I need financial freedom.

I believe the best way to achieve this is by playing asymmetrical games. High risk, high reward. Work hard, retire early. Compounding a high salary over time will not get you there. It is impossible (see below).

It will take 12 years to pocket 7 figures.

It will take 12 years to pocket 7 figures.

Things I think about

  • What are the mechanisms behind memory?
  • How and why does music affect how we feel?
  • How does resonance frequency work?
  • Where does music taste come from? What can it tell you about a person? Is it linked to one’s mental health?
  • What will human hierarchies look like in a post-work/resource abundant world?

Advice I would tell my younger self

  • Work on things that excite you. If it feels like a chore or a 9-5 then you’re doing the wrong thing. Your heart is in the wrong place. Listen to it, don’t be miserable. But don’t act out of emotion. For big decisions, take 2 weeks to think about it. Ask for advice.
  • If you’re uncertain of what to do, keep options open. But don’t stay in the comfort of optionality. Work towards converging on a short term path.
  • When a path is decided, double down on it and block out noise. Otherwise, it’s impossible to have tested the path fully.
    • Your are either going to be correct on this “bet” that others can’t see and be successful, or you won’t be. But you will never know if you’re “correct” if you keep swaying like a sailboat caught in the winds.
    • Give it a fair shot before giving up.
  • Don’t build for nothing. Overbuilding / working on code aimlessly will give only an illusion of progress and waste time. Sometimes the thing to work on isn’t technical: listening to customers, ideating, design, etc. Planning is always good.
  • You do not need to be performatively in the office for 80hrs+/week to get shit done. Focused sprints throughout the day can do the same. Quality > quantity. Don’t fall for the monk mode LARPs on Twitter. People in real monk mode aren’t posting.
  • The world is big. The hardest part is getting your product out in front of the 8 billion people on it. Distribution is King.
  • Listen to your advisors, but also be skeptical. They may not be representative of the market you’re after.
  • Start financial budgeting early. Most spreadsheet templates are dumb, just make your own and grow it over time. Learn what works for you.
    • Stop obsessing over productivity software – sometimes simpler is better (Google Docs).
  • Don’t get peer pressured into thinking your life goals are “wrong”. There is nothing wrong with being family focused/traditional. You are not “wasting” your talent by NOT pursuing science.
  • Get a WHOOP earlier and be disciplined about sleep and exercise.
  • Making money is really easy, you’re just lazy.
    • There are people with half your IQ making 100x more than you because they aren’t smart enough to doubt themselves.
  • You are the main character of your own story. Start filming your journey before it even begins. You’ll cherish it when you look back.
    • But remember there is a God. Even if you don’t believe in his existence, believe in it for the sake of staying humble. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Be humble.

Things I believe

  • The brain is an empty vessel
    • You only know what you know, hence no idea is above scrutiny
    • Humans are mimetic, you are programmed by your surroundings
    • Truth is not an observation, it is what passes a series of filters
    • Reality is shared truth, repeat a lie enough it becomes truth
  • Every action will have consequences
    • You have the ability to change things, apathy is pathetic
    • You should care about things bigger than you
    • Manners go a long way, smiling is easy
    • Kids need patience and guidance, not protection
  • Equality is a fake promise
    • Hierarchies, and genetic and cultural variance will always exist
    • Hierarchy + genetic variance + cultural variance = inequality
    • Beauty is objective - the risk, details, skill, stories, and dedication define it
    • More competitive people and ideas will survive (but may not dominate)
  • Goals should feel hard
    • Improvement happens outside of comfort zones
    • Improvement is necessary to remain competitive
    • Persistence over perfection
    • Work on interesting things; the “work-life balance” concept is paradoxical. Work should give your life meaning.
  • Incentives explain most things
    • humans : cars :: incentives : roads
    • In the presence of other incentives, most “experts” are fake
    • Some cultures are better than others: the ones with competitive incentives will win
  • Family is important
    • Being a good parent is the most important job
    • It is OK to care more about humans than animals
    • The nuclear family is the best form of gonvernance
    • Children belong to the family, not the state
    • Parents should not be in senior homes
  • Vibes are real
    • Our brain is a byproduct of thousands of years of evolutionary pressure
    • Our intuition is exceptional at understanding human well-being and social interactions. “Bad vibes” from someone should be taken legitimately.
    • Physiognomy is real
    • Science is counter intuitive
    • How you do anything is how you do everything

Less structured:

  • You need to be looks-maxxing. Every time you look at yourself in the mirror you reinforce or update your idea of self. Your self image impacts your confidence, in turn extraversion, in turn social success, in turn the quality of your human network, your career, etc…
  • You can meet anyone in the world if you put your mind to it.
  • We feel a certain emotion (on top of nostalgia) when playing Minecraft because it activates our innate primal instincts. The game is the literal manifestation of veni, vidi, vici.
  • Children should grow up with a giant world map on the wall. It helps them stay curious and realize the world is not centered around them.
  • Most men don’t go to therapy for depression because it is fundamentally female-coded. Male depression and female depression are different. Men need empowerment and purpose to contextualize their suffering, not an outlet for trauma dumping. Powerless men feel broken and afraid. Emasculated. To help a man feel better, you help him feel powerful.
  • If everyone had a sibling of the opposite gender, the world would have less issues.
  • You should be skeptical of all data and scientific studies. Pious acceptance of data-driven ideas and dismissive attitudes for ones without will limit your ability to understand the world.
    • Most studies have (accidentally or intentionally) flawed data collection and presentation. Data is easy to manipulate to drive a narrative. It’s also hard to verify data. Most of us validate data through their trust in institutions that provide it. Our critical thinking is offloaded to institutions.
    • By doing so, we risk dismissing lived experience and anecdotes, and become succeptible to propaganda. We stop trusting what we see with our own eyes because it doesn’t match what “the data” says.
    • In <5 years, fake data will be everywhere. Generative AI will make it impossible to discern what’s real and what isn’t. Without decentralized ways to check something’s validity, we are succeptible to the narrative of “experts”.
    • Data/media/language literacy is the most important skill to teach someone.
  • At large, human nature beats rational thought.
    • Examples:
      • Often when a drowning victim is being saved, they will reflexively push the lifeguard helping them below the water so they can breathe.
      • The body will fight for its life against another animal in a life or death scenario.
      • We have taught people not to steal, rape, kill for eons but people still do it. Most criminals know what they are doing is wrong.
      • You can’t argue away pain.
    • Obviously there are exceptions. Some humans have “mastered” human nature, such as monks. But “mastering” is not smart evolutionarily. If a monk and a “brute”, irrational human were competing for the same resources in a fight, the monk would lose. Rationalist masters of human nature are not competitive in an environment where there are “untamed” fellow humans. In a world with no real rules, rationalism will lose.
    • This clash between human nature and rational mind is what drives our meaning of existence - and what makes us distinctly human.
    • When things go to shit, human nature will dictate hierarchies.
  • Scale has thwarted human psychology. We were not built to meet more than several hundred other humans in our lives. Most men throughout history never met a beautiful (today’s standards) woman in his life. This is a big source of modern day issues. The best thing we can do is to raise our kids right - without access to the chasms of the Internet until they reach a maturity that helps them navigate it.
  • There are 5 factors that explain inequality of outcomes:
    1. Difference in biology-based ability,
    2. difference in biology-based preference,
    3. differences in culture (incentives),
    4. differences in merit,
    5. and difference of treatment from the ingroup/systemic discrepancies.
    • Liberals argue that the latter is solely responsible, and downplays the impact of the former 4.
    • Biology explains most of variance at the tail ends of the bell curve. The best athletes often have intrinsic genetic advantages (e.g. height for basketball).
      • Chess is an IQ dependent game. Men have larger IQ variance. It’s not surprising the best chess players are all men.
    • People are also drawn more towards things they are good at. Nobody likes playing a game that they consistently lose. Sometimes one’s learned preferences are a result of factors beyond their control.
    • There is a thick line between being a sexist/racist/any-ist and being a realist. You can simultaneously acknowledge reality while advocating for equality of opportunity.
    • Outcomes are not a good metric for determining opportunity.
  • Groups fighting and conquering other groups were a recurring element of human history. Resource scarcity and a thirst for power drove most of it.
    • Today, most of Earth’s current-day-valued resources (fossil fuels, metal reserves, semiconductors, etc.) are finite. The desire for more (greed) is a part of human nature. Until we solve scarcity, the quest for power is neverending.
    • I don’t think there is anything special about current-day or past victims of conquest. They were simply weaker and uncompetitive in the view of evolution.
      • A society can strive for equality of opportunity without handicapping its historic winners. A meritocracy is the closest we have to such system.
  • It’s hard to sum the sign of climate change.
    • There are many upsides to carbonization that are never talked about: greenification of deserts, more plant life, more habitable land, protection against the ice age, and increased human flourishing (e.g. using carbon fuels to help lift countries out of poverty, fund more efficient infrastructure, etc).
    • We never zoom out enough on the time axis when discussing new “temperature highs”. A “record high” might not be a record if compared to the last 100 vs 1000 vs 10000 years.
    • Externality arguments are fundamentally flawed. For example: “sea level rise is bad because we will lose land and buildings”. This argument ignores the ingenuity and ability for humans to rebuild buildings or relocate to a different location, which is something we do every day regardless of the sea level or weather.
    • There are countless uncertainties when trying to predict a chaotic dynamical system. The models have never been accurate when predicting apocalyptic scenarios since the 1900s.
    • The effectiveness of policy is hard to measure. Similarly to how communism sounds nice on paper, in practice policies like a carbon tax may have unforseen ramifications. Just now, we’re realizing paper straws are just as bad for the environment as plastic straws.
    • The best excuse for authoritarianism is an existential risk to all of humanity. Global movements and events like “fight climate change”, pandemics, etc. are convenient trojan horses that governments can use to incite fear to strip away freedoms.

non-PC takes:

  • There is a reductionist oppressor/oppressed agenda being pushed in politics. This hijacks the empathetic members of society to feel like justice needs to be restored. There is no room for nuance.
    • BLM : the wrongly jailed innocent black man
    • Palestine : the children dying to bombings, the “open air prison”
    • Climate change : the young generation bound for a doomed world, or dying animal species
    • Abortion : the rape victim who has to carry her rapists child
    • Nuance and context are irrelevant. It stops mattering that 13% of the population commit 60% of crimes, that Hamas was elected by Palestine, that we can engineer climate change adaptability, or that rape and incest account for hardly any abortions. There is one narrative presented about history.
  • To have diversity, we must have exclusion. For example, if we want to enjoy distinct cultures such as Chinese food, then China must remain different from the rest of the world to some degree. “Melting pots” are stupid for said reason. Embracing diversity at arms length is the way to go.
  • The social dynamics of an elementary school playground are the same ones that control the modern world.
    • I saw this greentext somewhere, and I thought it was very accurate. Paraphrased: “People who can’t defend themselves physically parse information through a consensus filter as a safety mechanism. They don’t ask “is this true”, they ask “will others be OK with me thinking this is true”. This makes them very malleable to brute force manufactured consensus; if every screen they look at says the same thing they will adopt that position because their brain interprets it as everyone in the tribe believing it. Only strong men and aneurotypical people are actually free to parse new information with an objective “is this true?” filter.”
    • Learning to fight is hence a good way of staying safe.
  • Aesthetics of a movement matter a lot more than people think. Nazism would not have been as successful without its strong aesthetics. Brand appeal nowadays is almost all aesthetics. Think of brands like Red Bull, Nike, Apple. There are distinct aesthetics that sell more than the ideas or product. UX/UI is the real competitive edge.
    • This is why the modern day left will never actually win. It’s impossible, because of the indomitable human spirit. The aesthetics of effeminine, weak, androgynous people and their aesthetics deeply unsettle natural human instincts.
  • Banning guns probably won’t work to fix America’s gun problems. Look at Brazil and Switzerland. Gun epidemic is actually a mental health and economics epidemic.

All above views are mine, and not reflective of any instutition or company I’ve ever worked for, or work for now.