I think and write about technology and society. Sometimes I build things too. Things I’m currently pondering:

• How can institutions navigate between stifling bureaucracy and collectivist anarchy?
• How can one create scaffolding between spiritual practice, gestalt therapies, and adjacent modalities?
• What do emerging technologies herald for humanity and the planet?

I graduated in 2022 from MIT with a Master’s and Bachelor’s degree in computer science. I’ve also dabbled in economics and philosophy. Right now I’m advocating for minimal security standards for benchtop DNA synthesizers, with the support of SecureDNA. You can find my complete thesis here, the thesis-based paper I submitted to AIES here, and a blog post I wrote summarizing both here.

In the past, I’ve been a data research analyst at the wonderful Center for Security and Emerging Technology, a researcher for the Metagovernance Project, a policy intern at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and a researcher at the MIT Computational Cognitive Science group.

Intellectual influences of mine include Elinor Ostrom, Nadia Aspourahova, and David Chapman. I am deeply grateful to them and their mutuals for inspiring me and shaping my worldview.

For updates on my writing and projects, join my essay mailing list. You can also find me on Twitter.

Latest:

• (Not) Spoofing Hotmail

My best essays:

• Technology is not inevitable
• Choosing a therapy

Things I love (and which you should try if you haven’t):

• The soundtrack of Orfeu Negro
• William Butler Yeats (plays, poetry, philosophy)
• Toccata and Fugue in D minor (One good version)
• Words Without Music
• 蔥油餅加蛋
• Oscar Peterson’s cover of Triste (especially the first ten seconds)
• Riding down a gently sloping hill, hands off the handlebars
• Templehof airfield