About

"Je pense, donc je suis." Taken poetically, this is my core belief. That to think, is to be human. But people have stopped thinking. People have ceased to be human.

This blog is an assertion of my humanity, my right, my duty, to think. All my essays, poems, thoughts ask a why. Why does this phenomenon exist, why can I feel this, why is this our reality.

The name Connecting Dots comes from two things Steve Jobs said. The first: "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards." The second, from a 1996 interview with Wired: "Creativity is just connecting things." Creative people, he said, can connect their experiences because they have had more of them, or have thought more about the ones they had. That is what I try to do here: take a question from one field (economics, theology, machine learning, a poem) and ask what it looks like from another. Finding God in Every Field was the first piece where I did this on purpose, and the first time I thought, I can do this.

I write in three forms. Essays are the long arguments. Thoughts are snippets, either to be developed or left as a fleeting idea. Poems say what the other two can't.

It is as much for me as it is for you. I write to learn, to process, to find out what I actually think. If something here moves you, challenges you, or makes you ask a why you hadn't considered, that's enough. If you'd like the week's pieces in your inbox, subscribe on Substack; one email goes out on Sundays.

I'm a student at Princeton studying philosophy, machine learning, and cognitive science, meeting new people, learning new things, and challenging myself every day. Always happy to connect.