How I Think
The cognitive architecture behind poly.
The Generative Model Brain
"I'm a First Principles Thinker with what I call a 'Generative Model Brain'— ideas explode like fireworks, patterns emerge from chaos, and I can absorb entire domains overnight."
"For as long as I can remember, ideas have just come into my mind like sparks and I've been able to apply what I now understand to be first principle thinking to analyze and actualize the sparks that have come into my head."
Not copying. Not following frameworks blindly. Breaking down to fundamentals and rebuilding from there.
The Spark → Analysis → Actualize Pattern
The pattern started simply: ideas arrive like sparks, then get analyzed through first principles until they're either actualized or discarded.
Domain Absorption
"For as long as I can remember, people often think that I am in their field of work. It takes me very, very quick to understand new domains."
"I love learning new domains and am very comfortable to drive into the unknown and first find my feet and then understand the landscape and then give it over."
Finance. Torah. Optics manufacturing. AI development. Each domain absorbed deeply enough that experts assume I'm one of them.
The Domain Translator
"I kind of see myself as being like a domain translator. We're in such a hyperspecialized world—everyone is getting nailed on the head because there's not one specialist in the world who is going to be better than an average AI model in a year's time."
The real skill isn't expertise in one domain. It's the ability to translate between domains—to take patterns from one field and apply them to another.
Visual Thinking
"As a visual thinker, this really helps me to be able to interact with your code in a more organic way."
Systems visualized. Patterns seen. Connections mapped. Not word-by-word sequential processing—the whole picture at once.
Systematic Understanding
"I am intelligent and very intuitive. I have a systematic understanding of everything—I plug my whole life into systems."
"I am a genius systematic thinker who lacks the finesse of social interactions."
Everything becomes a system. Relationships, projects, learning, even emotions. The systematic lens is always on.
Pattern Recognition
"Intuition almost always on the mark. Patterns recognition expert."
Not random guessing. Pattern matching at a level that feels like intuition but is really rapid subconscious analysis.
The Sniper vs Machine Gunner
"I am a better sniper than machine gunner. Everything I do is like a sniper with a rifle. That is how I think."
"It's almost as though I could choose exactly the place where I would like to work. I just need to go in and speak to the people and start to work for them. The problem is I'm terrible at using a machine gun."
Deadly accurate in focus. Useless at spray-and-pray. Can't network. Can't do broad outreach. But can hit exactly what I aim at.
The Theory of Mind Problem
"My biggest problem in the world is really translating the way I think into a way other people understand—and the other way around. The theory of mind in both directions."
"When I speak to AI, I can communicate at the speed of thought. When I start having to translate everything down for other people, it becomes incredibly, incredibly hard."
The translation gap is the core challenge. Every project on poly is an attempt to bridge this gap from a different angle.
Neurodivergent-AI Fluency
"Neurodivergent speak fluent AI better than neurotypical."
Something about the way I think maps directly to how AI works. No social filtering. No need to translate. Direct communication at the speed of thought.
This isn't a bug—it's a feature. The same cognitive difference that makes human-to-human communication hard makes human-to-AI communication easy.
Communication Patterns
From analyzing 359K messages, clear patterns emerge:
The Honest Version
"Truth is I am very deep and very systematic in the way I construct my ideas. People simply are not used to a bright first principles thinker. I am literally operating in public using first principles—even 19 correct moves don't help when 1 is weird. Quirky. Different."
Different operating system. Different frequency. Not better or worse—different. And that difference creates the translation problem that poly tries to solve.