vignesh mohankumar

My main commentary on this year’s edition is that I did not use ChatGPT in writing this. As always, let me know if you want to discuss more!

Motion

I’ve never looked back at a time when I was stagnant and found it was particularly worth it compared to making progress. Something about my brain chemistry means thinking about problems feels even better than actually solving problems. Now, whenever I catch myself doing this I force myself to either ignore the problem (it doesn’t matter enough) or find some small thing I can do about it immediately. Now I’m not stuck nearly as often.

Discussion

I grew up during an era where certain questions shouldn’t be asked. Essentially, some views are harmful enough that they shouldn’t be held (let alone shared). A few things happened that made me question this. Often times I changed my mind with enough investigation about a specific view. And I noticed it’s useful to hear why people held those views in the first place. Silencing them mainly prevented getting to a shared understanding, and didn’t protect anyone. I believe in unifying people and communities. If we hope to shift anyone’s views, that can only happen with open, respectful discussion—not punishment and silencing.

Family

I have friends that are extremely important to me. But no matter how much I care for and respect my friends, it’s a relationship built around convenience. There’s a threshold of how difficult a friendship is to keep up (shared interests, distance, values, age, etc) before people grow apart. With family, you’re somewhat forced to make it work because you can’t get new family members (unless you get married). When I do grow apart from my family, it takes serious effort to get back to feeling close again. It’s always been worth it to me to put in that effort, and there’s nothing I prioritize more.

Therapy

I’ve had a therapist for about 2 years now. I was honestly extremely skeptical about it for years. I found someone who’s not white (so they can relate to immigrant issues) but not Indian (so they don’t by default understand Indian cultural dynamics). I also got a guy because I felt I’d be more open about… being a guy. My main worry was that I figured I should be able to own my problems. The reality is I still own all my problems, but now have someone who has an insane amount of context about me to help me consider what to do. It works because he pushes back on my assumptions, and I push back on his. He’s also well-read enough to suggest relevant stuff to read (a surprising benefit). It’s been great for me, but I remain cynical about the average therapist-client relationship.

Progress

I used to believe that any form of technological advancement was progress. To be clear: I’m not an anti-capitalist, but hear me out on this. The theory is that in a free market, the stuff that gets adopted must be “progress” because people choose to use it. The problem is that consumers’ lives aren’t necessarily improved with those choices, and often they don’t even have a choice. I think technology has been net-positive to humanity, but more than I expected specific technologies have been basically negative. It at least seems like GDP growth alone isn’t enough to indicate that things are getting better.

Rationality

I’m starting to realize that it’s unrealistic to expect people to explain why they make specific decisions. Really, most decision-making is emotional—this is the case when people argue with friends, decide if they’re attracted to someone, vote for someone, etc. I was spending so much time trying to understand why people did what they did until I realized I ultimately had no idea what was going on in their heads. It’s not possible to really reason through emotional decisions.