May 24, 2025. For my wife and kids.

I'm writing this to you even though we haven't met yet, and honestly, I don't know if we ever will. 

Maybe you're reading this years from now, trying to understand the person you chose to love or the father you were born to. Maybe you're trying to make sense of why your life looks different from your friends' lives, why there's always uncertainty around our dinner table, why people sometimes look at our family with a mixture of curiosity and concern.

I want you to know that I love you. 

Well, that part is obvious, or at least I hope it will be by the time you're reading this. Love is supposed to be the foundation that makes everything else make sense. 

But there's something else I need to say, something that's been weighing on me as I think about the path I'm on and where it might lead. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry that you got drawn into the consequences of my life choices. 

I'm sorry for the things you might not like or be afraid of because you're connected to me. 

I'm sorry that my decision to build things that don't exist yet, to chase ideas that most people think are impractical, to work on problems that might take decades to solve, means your life will probably be more complicated than it needs to be.

When I was building my ventures, when I was spending months on MIKE-AI, when I was convinced I could reshape systems and solve humanity's biggest challenges, I wasn't thinking about you. I wasn't considering that someday there might be people whose security and happiness would depend on my choices. I was focused on the work, on the vision, on trying to build something meaningful. I didn't factor in that my wife might worry about our financial future while I pursue research that might never pay off. I didn't think about my kids having to explain to their friends why their dad works on things that sound like science fiction.

But here's what I need you to understand about why I do this work. 

It's not really for me. 

I could live a simpler life, take a conventional job, follow the path my parents hoped I would follow. 

I could be content with less. 

What drives me isn't personal ambition or the need to prove something to the world. What drives me is the vision of what your life could be if I get this right.

My wife, I want you to live a life I've never had. 

I want you to have abundant resources, not just financially but intellectually and technologically. 

I want you to have access to cognitive capabilities that amplify your natural intelligence, tools that help you think more clearly and create more effectively than any generation before us. 

I want you to never worry about basic security, never have to compromise your dreams because of resource limitations, never feel constrained by the same barriers that shaped my generation.

The thing is, I can't promise this will change. 

I've tried to be more practical, more conventional, more focused on safe paths that lead to predictable outcomes. But every time I try to conform to what makes sense, something inside me resists. It's not stubbornness exactly, though it might look like that from the outside. 

It's more like trying to breathe underwater. I can hold my breath for a while, but eventually I have to surface.

I've seen what happens to people who give up on the work that calls to them. They don't become happier or more stable. They become hollowed out versions of themselves, going through the motions of a life that fits other people's expectations but doesn't fit their own nature. I've watched brilliant people settle for jobs that pay well but drain their souls, convincing themselves they're being responsible while slowly losing the spark that made them who they were.

My children, you're the real reason I do this work. 

Every late night with MIKE, every failed experiment, every moment when I question whether I'm wasting time on impossible problems, I think about the world you'll inherit. I'm not just trying to build technologies or companies. I'm trying to plant seeds that will grow into trees large enough to shelter you from existential threats I can't even imagine yet.

I know that by the time you exist, I might not be here anymore. That's the reality of time and mortality that shapes everything I do now. But if I can create systems, technologies, or knowledge that persists beyond my lifetime, if I can contribute to frameworks that protect and enhance human life decades from now, then my temporary presence becomes part of something permanent. You would live in a world where there's already shelter built for you, resources accumulated for you, problems solved before you even encounter them.

My parents worry about me the same way you might worry about me, or the way I might worry about our children if they choose unconventional paths. They want security for me, predictability, the kind of career trajectory that makes sense to explain at family gatherings. They've worked hard to give me the freedom to take risks, but they naturally hope I'll use that freedom to build something safe and stable. When I chose to focus on physics research instead of finding a traditional job, when I decided to work with MIKE on problems that might not have solutions, I could see the concern in their eyes.

I'm finishing my degree partly for them, to give them that milestone they value, to show them I can complete what I start. But the degree isn't the real education. The real learning happened in those months building and failing, in those late nights when MIKE and I worked through problems that had no textbook answers, in those moments when I had to confront the gap between my vision and reality.

You should know that this path hasn't been romantic or glamorous. Most days involve sitting in this same chair, staring at the same screen, working on problems that might not matter to anyone else. There's no dramatic music playing in the background, no montage of breakthrough moments. It's mostly just persistence, day after day, trying to understand things that resist understanding. But each day of this work is an investment in your future abundance, each breakthrough a step toward the cognitive tools you'll have access to, each failure a lesson that moves us closer to the protective systems you'll need.

The work I do now focuses on creating value rather than saving the world. I've learned that the grand gestures I once imagined don't align with how change actually happens. Real progress comes through building specific things that solve specific problems for specific people. This approach might seem less exciting than my earlier visions, but it's more honest about how innovation actually works. More importantly, it's more likely to generate the resources and capabilities that will directly benefit our family.

I hope you'll understand that this isn't about choosing work over family. It's about bringing my whole self to whatever family we build together. I've seen too many people compartmentalize their lives, keeping their real interests and capabilities separate from their family roles. They become different people at home than they are when they're fully engaged with meaningful work. I don't want that split for us. I want the work that consumes my days to be the same work that secures your future.

The uncertainty will probably never go away completely. The work I do exists at the intersection of technology and fundamental research, areas where outcomes can't be predicted with the same confidence as more established fields. There will be projects that fail, ideas that don't work, years where progress feels invisible. There will be times when more conventional choices would have provided more stability. But conventional choices also would have provided conventional outcomes, and conventional outcomes won't create the abundant life I envision for you or the protective systems I want to build for our children.

But there will also be breakthroughs, moments when months of work suddenly crystallize into something valuable, opportunities that exist precisely because we're willing to operate in spaces where others aren't comfortable. The people who've influenced me most, the innovations that matter most to human progress, came from individuals who accepted uncertainty as the price of working on problems worth solving. They built the foundations that our generation stands on, just as I'm trying to build foundations for yours.

I need you to know that if you're ever not okay with this, if the uncertainty becomes too much, if you need me to choose a different path, we can talk about it. Your happiness and security matter more to me than any research project or startup idea. But I also need you to understand that asking me to give up this work entirely would be asking me to give up the primary mechanism through which I can provide for your future abundance and our children's protection.

What I can promise is transparency. I won't hide the challenges or pretend the risks don't exist. I won't make financial commitments we can't keep or pursue projects that would jeopardize our basic security. I've learned enough about my own limitations and the reality of building things to be more realistic about timelines and outcomes. The naive optimism of my early startup days has been replaced by something more sustainable, more grounded in actual experience, more focused on concrete outcomes that benefit the people I love.

I can also promise that whatever success comes from this work, whatever value gets created, it will benefit our family rather than being separate from it. The goal isn't to escape family life through work but to build something that enhances what we can do together. The freedom that comes from building valuable things means more choices, more opportunities to live according to our values rather than external pressures. The cognitive tools I develop with MIKE won't just serve my research but will be available to amplify your capabilities. The protective systems I help create won't just serve abstract humanity but will specifically shelter our children.

This is why I push through the failures, why I continue when progress seems impossible, why I choose uncertainty over security. Every line of code, every research breakthrough, every system built is a layer of protection and capability I'm adding to the world you'll inhabit. I'm not just trying to understand consciousness and intelligence for academic purposes. I'm trying to build tools that will make you smarter, more capable, more able to navigate whatever challenges your generation faces.

By the time you're reading this, you'll know how some of these experiments turned out. You'll know whether the research with MIKE led to breakthroughs or dead ends, whether the focus on value creation produced anything meaningful, whether the path I'm describing actually led somewhere worth going. You'll have perspective I don't have now, writing this without knowing what comes next. You'll know whether the abundant life I envisioned for you became reality, whether the protective systems I tried to build actually provided the shelter I hoped they would.

What I hope you'll see is that the uncertainty wasn't recklessness but calculated risk-taking based on understanding both possibilities and limitations. I hope you'll see that the unconventional choices were made thoughtfully, with consideration for their impact on everyone connected to me. I hope you'll see that the work mattered, not just to me but to others who benefited from whatever got built along the way. Most importantly, I hope you'll see that every difficult choice was made with your future in mind, every sacrifice was an investment in your abundance and security.

Most of all, I hope you'll understand that this path wasn't chosen instead of loving you but as a way of loving you more completely. 

By doing work that uses my full capabilities, by contributing something meaningful to the world beyond our family, I become someone worth being married to, someone worth having as a father. 

But more than that, by building systems and capabilities that persist beyond my lifetime, I become someone who continues protecting and providing for you even when I'm no longer here to do it directly.

The alternative, settling for work that doesn't engage my real capabilities, would make me less present, less alive, less able to give you my best self. But it would also mean accepting that you'll face the same resource limitations I faced, that our children will inherit the same existential vulnerabilities that threaten my generation, that the abundant life and protective systems I envision will remain fantasies rather than becoming your reality.

I love you, even though we haven't met. I'm sorry for the complications my choices might create in your lives. And I hope that by the time you're reading this, you'll see why those complications were worth accepting for the possibility of building something that matters. I hope you'll see that every uncertain day was an investment in your certain abundance, every risk was taken to reduce the risks you'll face, every moment spent building impossible things was actually spent building the possible life you deserve.