Even did a ~7 year career detour through quant finance "if I like Software Engineering and Mathematics so much, why don't I combine the two?"

Finally realized that the best use of my time was to just to work hard at a career I deeply enjoy (Software Engineering), working on products I actually care about (not valuing arcane derivatives products), and just invest the excess in diversified index funds (with some single stock selections here and there, thanks TSLA and NVDA).

Just as engineers can get "nerd sniped", I feel like "trading" is a somewhat malevolent strong attractor for a lot of folks. Folks do need general financial literacy, but an extra hour spent per day working harder to progress day job / long term career likely has a higher net present value than trading options or crypto.

I was working on crypto during the NFT mania, and THAT felt like a bubble at the time. I'd spend my days writing smart contracts and related infra, but I was doing a genuine wallet transaction at most once a week, and that was on speculation, not work.

My adoption rate of AI has been rapid, not for toy tasks, but for meaningful complex work. Easily send 50 prompts per day to various AI tools, use LLM-driven auto-complete continuously, etc.

That's where AI is different from the dot com bubble (not enough folks materially transaction on the web at the time), or the crypto mania (speculation and not utility).

Could I use a smarter model today? Yes, I would love that and use the hell out of it. Could I use a model with 10x the tokens/second today? Yes, I would use it immediately and get substantial gains from a faster iteration cycle.

Convinced my parent's to buy a new PC, they organized with a local computer store for me to go in and sit with the tech and actually build the PC. Almost identical specs in 1998: 400Mhz Pentium 2, Voodoo 2, no zip drive, but had a Soundblaster Live ($500 AUD for this at the time).

I distinctly remember the invoice being $5k AUD in 1998 dollars, which is $10k AUD in 2024 dollars. This was A LOT of money for my parents (~7% of their pretax annual income), and I'm eternally grateful.

I was in grade 8 at the time (middle school equivalent in USA) and it was the PC I learnt to code on (QBasic -> C -> C++), spent many hours installing Linux and re-compiling kernel drives (learning how to use the command line), used SoftICE to reverse engineer shareware keygen (learning x86 assembly), created Counterstrike wall hacks by writing MiniGL proxy dlls (learning OpenGL).

So glad there wasn't infinity pools of time wasting (YouTube, TikTok, etc) back then, and I was forced to occupy myself with productive learning.

/end reminiscing

Ketamine was very interesting. Proper completely dissociative "K-hole" experience. I feel like it helped with Anxiety, but I can't pinpoint "why" from an introspective perspective.

Psilocybin on the other hand. Was a hero dose, and I'm a changed person afterwards.

Could feel the "layers" of my identity being stripped off, almost regression to a more child-like state. Very interesting experience. Had strong synesthesia: sounds would produce colors, colors would produce tastes, fun experience.

Near the peak of the experience I had these strong recurring auditory hallucination of my mothers says all these random words from my youth, these were accompanied by strong feeling of anxiety. After a lot of post-experience integration and reflection I realized that my mothers anxiety about the world was effectively "programmed" into my brain during my upbringing. e.g. Generationally transmitted anxiety.

Therapy always talks about childhood trauma, etc, but actually experiencing it was another level, and really helped me on my journey to being a less anxious person.

Before the Psilocybin experience, I suffered from existential depression: what's the point of living if the sun is going to explode in ~x billion years. Towards the peak of the experience everything was super chaotic, I felt like I was being transported into different realities (e.g. realities with different laws of physics, or different space time geometries). This was hugely anxiety inducing and would otherwise be called a "bad trip." I felt "lost" in this sea of all different realities.

As I was coming down from the peak and started to reintegrate, I had a strong distinct sense of "coming back" to our current reality. It felt like finding a safe tropical island in a sea of chaos: e.g. our currently reality is a safe space and point of stability in a sea of chaos and uninviting realities.

I was truly, deeply, grateful to be able to return to the familiar and it made me really really deeply appreciate myself and the blessing that our reality is to us.

Post the experience I also acquired the ability to observe my emotions from a third person perspective. e.g. rather than feeling "angry" I could tag the emotion "angry" and react accordingly, almost as if I gained ring 0 access to my brain when I previously only have ring 1 access.

All-in-all probably the most profound and healing experience of my life.

  1. Deeply felt and understood my anxiety was generationally passed on from my mother's anxiety,
  2. Eliminated my existential depression, giving me a deep appreciation for the beauty of our reality,
  3. Gave me ring 0 access to my emotions making me a much more stable, calm person.

Any limitations / bumps in the road, or it "just works"?