Back to the blog again<br>Home<br>Back to the blog again<br>Published 4 days ago
It's time to get back to the blog again. Why?
Recently I wrote an application for a program I wanted to join. Call me old<br>school, but I didn’t want to use AI to write any of it. (Okay fine, I used it to<br>reword one of my answers to get under the word count, but that’s it, I swear.)
I’ve always disliked filling out applications and especially the personal<br>statement parts. I have a bad memory, even for things that have happened in my<br>own life. My working hypothesis is that it’s related to my aphantasia.<br>Regardless, it feels like pulling teeth trying to recollect parts of my life,<br>let alone figure out how to frame them as a compelling story for a time when I<br>"demonstrated ingenuity" or "showed grit".
When I filled out this application, that aversion was still there, but there was<br>also something new that I noticed as I re-read my answers. I felt a delight in<br>reading my own voice. It felt different, imperfect, not slop.
I feel surrounded by slop. I create (code) slop, I read slop, and, as I<br>considered my answers, I suddenly became afraid that one day I’ll think in slop.<br>That the confident, polished, and ubiquitous AI voice would infiltrate my brain<br>and I’d slowly forget what my own voice sounds like. That my voice would die,<br>not with a bang but with a whisper and I wouldn’t even notice.
I (like so many of us) have tried to blog a few times in the past. Writing seems<br>like a good way to explore new ideas and refine my thinking. I have enough of an<br>ego to think that sometimes I have something to say worth sharing. But writing<br>is hard, and those efforts have always petered out (as you'll see if you look at<br>my post history).
Maybe this time won’t be any different. But this time feels different, in that<br>it feels existential. I suddenly feel the need to say something and write it<br>down while I can still plausibly say that I’m expressing my (mostly) pre-ai<br>self.
I’ve always been a procrastinator, but it’s never to late to start getting fit.<br>I started going to the gym regularly when I turned 30 - too late for getting a<br>sick gym bod to have much value in being good at sports or in my dating life,<br>but hopefully early enough to build a habit that can keep me healthy into old<br>age (yes I read Outlive, yes I enjoyed it, sorry if you think that’s cringe.)
And, as the AI era comes upon us, I think it’s time to commit to exercising my<br>muscles of independent thought and self expression before they atrophy past the<br>point of no recovery.
To be clear, I do believe that, over the long run, AI will transform the human<br>condition for the better. I write this as I’m on a flight home to San Francisco<br>where I’ll get back to work on my AI startup. While I’m not yet sure what I’ll<br>write about next, I don’t intend for this blog to become another series of<br>screeds warning about the coming AI apocalypse or holier than thou statements<br>about how I still write code by hand (I don’t) and AI has ruined everything (it<br>hasn’t, at least yet).
But, I think I’ll try to write everything on this blog myself. And it might be<br>fun to write the code for this blog by hand too. And even if this attempt at<br>blogging ends up like all my others and I don’t write another post, at least<br>I'll have this as a time capsule into what Rahul sounded like. In June of 2026.<br>Back when he was in his mid 30s. Living in San Francisco. Working on yet another<br>AI startup. Already missing his girlfriend back in New York. And maybe, before<br>AI rotted his brain.
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