April 22, 2025. The World we built.

The extraordinary reality we inhabit is largely artificial. The electricity powering devices, the internet connecting our thoughts, the concept of a "personal website" - none existed for most of human history. Yet we live within these human-created systems so completely that we rarely notice them. 

They've become our environment, and we've become unconscious of their constructed nature.

The world we've built exists in this unique position between physical reality and collective imagination. 

Money illustrates this perfectly. It's simultaneously nothing, just paper or digital entries with no intrinsic value, and everything, shaping almost every aspect of human existence. Its power derives not from physical properties but from our collective agreement about what it represents. This agreement isn't a law of physics but a social contract we maintain through shared belief.

This pattern extends far beyond currency. 

Nations, corporations, laws, educational systems, even our concept of time organization like weekends and work hours, these aren't natural phenomena like gravity or photosynthesis. 

They're human constructs, systems we've built and maintained through collective belief and action. 

They exist simultaneously as completely artificial yet absolutely real in their effects on our lives.

What we call "reality" consists of multiple layers. 

There's the physical substrate governed by natural laws, the biological layer of living systems, and then this vast superstructure of human meaning and organization. This third layer differs fundamentally from physical reality. Physical reality exists independently of human observation or agreement. Mount Everest exists whether anyone believes in it or not. But social reality, from money to marriage to markets, exists only because we collectively act as if it does.

Throughout my journey building MIKE-AI, I became acutely aware of how these constructed systems create both possibilities and constraints. 

The wall I encountered wasn't a law of physics. 

It was a confluence of human-created systems: capital allocation mechanisms, computing resource distribution networks, energy infrastructure limitations. 

None of these were immutable facts of nature, yet they shaped my reality as concretely as any natural law.

This leads to a profound question: how does something imaginary become real enough to constrain physical possibilities? 

The answer lies in collective fictions. 

These aren't lies or falsehoods but shared stories that coordinate human behavior on massive scales. 

When enough people believe and act according to these stories, they become self-fulfilling prophecies, creating the very reality they describe. 

This recursive relationship between belief and reality has no parallel in the natural world.

The recency of this constructed world deserves recognition. For big percentages of human existence, we lived in small bands of hunter-gatherers. Then, in an evolutionary instant, we created agriculture, cities, writing, kingdoms, corporations, stock markets, algorithms, and artificial intelligence. 

Each innovation built upon previous ones, creating increasingly complex systems that shape our experience of reality in ways our ancestors could never have imagined.

This accelerating complexity presents both opportunity and danger. As these systems become more intricate and interconnected, they begin exhibiting emergent properties not designed by any single mind. Our financial markets can crash for reasons no individual fully understands. Our social media algorithms create unforeseen societal effects. The technological systems we build increasingly exist beyond complete human comprehension, yet we remain dependent on them for our daily existence. This creates a philosophical paradox: we are both the creators of these systems and, increasingly, subject to them.

When I reflect on my path from childhood fascination with a broken TV remote to building MIKE-AI in my bedroom, I realize I'm traveling a road paved by countless minds before me. 

The programming languages I use, the mathematical principles I apply, the very concept of artificial intelligence, these weren't discovered like new elements. 

They were built, piece by piece, by human minds thinking beyond what currently existed.

This constructed nature of our world carries profound implications for how we approach change. If nations, economies, and technologies are human constructs rather than natural laws, then they can be reconstructed. Not easily, not quickly, but they remain malleable in ways that the laws of thermodynamics simply are not. Our social structures, economic systems, and technological frameworks aren't fixed realities but ongoing projects we collectively create and maintain.

This understanding shifts our relationship with authority and tradition. 

Many systems present themselves as natural, inevitable, or sacred precisely to resist questioning or change. 

But recognizing their constructed nature reveals this as a strategy, not an inherent truth. 

This doesn't mean rejecting all traditions or authorities, but approaching them with awareness of their human origins and therefore their potential for transformation.

True innovation isn't just improving what exists but questioning why things exist in their current form at all. 

The world we've built isn't just physical infrastructure but conceptual infrastructure. 

The mental models, the frameworks, the assumptions we use to navigate reality, these too are constructions, often invisible yet powerfully constraining what we believe possible.

Consider education. Our current educational system wasn't discovered in nature. It was built for specific purposes in a specific historical context, primarily preparing workers for industrial economies. The semester schedule, standardized testing, age-based progression, these aren't laws of nature. They're design choices that once made sense but may not serve our current needs. Like quantum states collapsing into different realities when observed differently, our educational systems could manifest in entirely new forms if we approached them with different intentions and assumptions.

Scientific progress doesn't occur through steady accumulation of facts but through revolutionary changes in the conceptual frameworks scientists use to interpret those facts. What appears impossible within one paradigm becomes obvious within another. Our social systems operate similarly. What seems unworkable within our current economic paradigm might be straightforward in a different one. The constraints we face aren't always physical limitations but often conceptual ones.

Our economic systems demonstrate this constructed nature even more clearly. The idea that quarterly profit growth should be the primary measure of success isn't inscribed in the fabric of reality. It's a relatively recent human construct that shapes behavior, resource allocation, and decision-making across the globe. What if we measured success differently? What if we collapsed the wave function of possibility into a reality where different metrics, perhaps wellbeing, sustainability, or knowledge advancement, drove our economic activity?

This reveals another philosophical dimension of our constructed world: the relationship between means and ends. 

Many systems begin as means to human ends but gradually become ends in themselves. 

Money begins as a tool for facilitating exchange but becomes a goal pursued for its own sake. 

Corporations begin as vehicles for coordinating economic activity but become entities whose survival and growth override their original purpose. 

This inversion, where tools become masters, represents one of the deepest philosophical challenges of our constructed world.

When I encountered limitations with MIKE-AI, at first I initially interpreted them as failure. 

Now I believe they actually represented an invitation to question the constructed systems that created those limitations. 

Instead of trying to scale within existing constraints, perhaps the more innovative path involves imagining different systems entirely, different ways of organizing computing resources, different approaches to capital allocation, different metrics for success beyond the conventional.

Living in Indonesia provides me a particular perspective on these human constructions. 

Global systems were largely built without input from much of the world's population. 

Financial systems, internet governance, AI development, these weren't shaped equally by all humans but by specific groups in specific places with specific interests. 

This doesn't make them inherently flawed, but it does make them partial, reflecting some human experiences and needs while potentially overlooking others. 

The perspective from a person in his bedroom in Indonesia differs fundamentally from the perspective in Silicon Valley, and both perspectives have validity and insight to offer.

This raises questions of legitimacy and representation in our constructed systems. 

Who gets to build the world we all inhabit? 

Whose imaginations shape our collective reality? 

In natural systems, legitimacy doesn't arise; gravity affects everyone equally regardless of consent. 

But constructed systems derive their legitimacy from human agreement. 

As these systems increasingly determine global possibilities, the question of who designs them becomes ethically urgent.

The conclusion emerging from this reflection isn't cynical but profoundly hopeful. 

If the world is built rather than discovered, then it can be rebuilt. 

Not through naive idealism that ignores constraints, but through deep understanding of how these systems came to be and creative reimagining of how they might evolve. 

This perspective gives agency back to those who feel trapped within seemingly immutable systems.

Perfect worlds disconnected from current reality serve little purpose. 

What matters are real possibilities within existing conditions that point toward better futures. 

Recognizing the constructed nature of our systems helps us identify these concrete possibilities, these seeds of different futures already present but not yet fully realized.

This is where my fascination with quantum mechanics and human systems converges most clearly. 

Just as quantum mechanics reveals a reality more fluid and probabilistic than our everyday experience suggests, examining our constructed systems reveals a world more malleable than it appears. 

The solid structures we navigate daily, from banking systems to social media algorithms to educational institutions, are actually probability waves of human coordination, collapsed into particular forms through our collective choices and beliefs. 

They appear solid only because we consistently observe and interact with them in the same ways.

What makes us human isn't just our capacity for rational thought but our ability to begin something new, to initiate action whose consequences cannot be fully predicted. 

In a constructed world, each human represents not just another instance of humanity but a unique perspective, a distinct possibility for beginning something unprecedented. 

Our human uniqueness consists precisely in our capacity to reshape our constructed reality.

The perspective of a constructed world brings both responsibility and possibility. 

If we collectively build the world rather than merely inhabit it, then we each play a role in its creation. 

Every time we accept a system as "just the way things are" rather than a human construct that could be different, we make a choice. 

We collapse potential into a particular reality through our participation or non-participation, our acceptance or questioning.

We are "condemned to freedom" because we cannot escape the responsibility of choice. 

In a constructed world, this freedom extends beyond individual life choices to our collective creation of social reality. 

We cannot escape responsibility for the systems we maintain through our participation, nor for the potential systems we fail to create through our inaction.

Building from a bedroom doesn't seem so limiting when viewed through this lens. Yes, I face constraints from existing systems that concentrate resources and opportunities in particular geographies. But I also maintain freedom to imagine different systems, to build at their edges, to find other minds who see similar possibilities. The constraints aren't walls but boundaries that define a particular space of possibility, and those boundaries can be pushed, reshaped, or transcended.

This perspective also transforms how we understand power. 

In a natural world, power often means control over physical resources. 

In a constructed world, power includes the ability to shape the collective imagination, to influence what others perceive as possible or impossible, desirable or undesirable. 

The most profound power lies not just in controlling existing systems but in creating new ones that others come to inhabit. 

The Tech Titans wield this creative power, but so does anyone who introduces new possibilities into our collective imagination.

The systems we're building now deserve particular attention. AI, social media, financial technology, life engineering, these aren't just tools but frameworks that will shape human experience for generations. 

Are we building them with sufficient awareness of their constructed nature? 

Or are we already treating them as immutable realities, forgetting that we are their architects? 

The decisions made now by the Tech Titans I wrote about previously will shape the landscape of possibility for billions of people, yet most of those people have no voice in how these systems develop.

The technologies we build don't just serve existing purposes; they transform how we understand what purposes are worth pursuing. 

They don't just solve problems; they reshape what we perceive as problems in the first place. 

The constructed nature of our technological systems isn't separate from their physical components but extends to the worldviews they embody and propagate.

Consider how differently we might approach these technologies if more people recognized their constructed nature. 

Not to dismiss the very real constraints and challenges we face, but to see them clearly as human creations rather than natural laws. 

We might become less likely to accept broken systems as inevitable. 

We might become more creative in imagining alternatives. 

We might take more responsibility for the world we collectively build.

I've written previously about fear, the fear of being averaged, of being irrelevant, of not making a contribution. 

But considering the world as something we build together rather than something that simply happens to us transforms the nature of that fear. 

It's not about leaving an individual mark on an unchangeable reality. 

It's about participating consciously in our collective creation, about collapsing the quantum wave of possibility into a reality that better serves humanity. 

It's about recognizing that relevance comes not from standing out but from contributing meaningfully to our shared project of world-building.

Our fears often relate to our position within social imaginaries - the ways ordinary people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met. 

But recognizing their constructed nature allows us to participate in their transformation, to help shape the imaginaries we inhabit rather than simply worrying about our place within them.

The quantum perspective offers additional insight here. 

Just as quantum particles can exist in superposition, taking all possible paths simultaneously, perhaps our contributions to the constructed world exist in multiple states simultaneously, influencing outcomes in ways we cannot fully predict or observe. 

The impact of our ideas, our questions, our work may collapse into reality in places and times far removed from our immediate experience. This doesn't diminish the importance of contribution but expands our understanding of how contribution works.

The present contains both the accumulated weight of past constructions and the seeds of future possibilities. Our actions in the present don't just build on the past but reinterpret it, revealing possibilities that may have been there all along but remained unrealized until now.

This drives me forward after encountering limitations with MIKE-AI. 

Not just building the next thing, but questioning the systems that create limitations in the first place. 

Not just accepting constraints, but understanding their constructed nature and imagining beyond them. 

Not just succeeding within existing frameworks, but helping to build new ones. 

This approach transforms the wall from an endpoint into a starting point for new explorations.

This perspective also changes how we understand history. 

In a natural world, history is simply what happened. 

In a constructed world, history includes not just what happened but what might have happened, the paths not taken, the possibilities unrealized. 

We must brush history against the grain, seeing not just the narrative of progress but the suppressed possibilities that didn't make it into the dominant story. 

Understanding our constructed world means recovering these alternative possibilities and recognizing them as resources for imagining different futures.

The world we've built demonstrates remarkable complexity and capability. 

That I can share these thoughts from Indonesia with minds across the globe represents a kind of miracle. 

But it's a human miracle, not supernatural or beyond comprehension, but the result of countless minds working together across time and space to build systems that expand what's possible. 

We stand not just on the shoulders of giants but on mountains of human ingenuity expressed through countless small contributions over centuries.

Unlike other creatures, humans externalize their knowledge, creating systems that outlive individual minds and allow for cumulative development across generations. Our constructed world represents this accumulated externalized knowledge, this collective human memory and imagination made concrete.

This perspective simultaneously humbles and empowers. 

It humbles because we inherit a world mostly built by others, shaped by choices made long before we were born. It empowers because future generations will inherit the world we're building now, and we have more agency in that construction than we sometimes believe. 

The systems we accept, question, maintain, or transform become part of the world others will inhabit.

Our responsibility extends not just to the immediate consequences of our actions but to future generations. The systems we build today will shape what's possible for people not yet born, creating an ethical dimension to system design rarely acknowledged in conventional discussions.

As I continue forward, navigating the quantum possibilities of what comes next, I hold this awareness close: the world isn't just something I inhabit, but something I help build. 

Every choice, every innovation, every question asked or unasked shapes not just my path but the collective reality we create together. 

Even from my own bedroom, with limited resources and a squeaky chair, I participate in this collective world-building.

There is no view from nowhere, no perspective that isn't shaped by particular circumstances and experiences. The knowledge and innovation emerging from a bedroom in Indonesia necessarily differs from what emerges from a Silicon Valley campus. But this difference doesn't make it less valid; it makes it an essential component of our collective understanding, bringing perspectives and possibilities that wouldn't otherwise exist.

Perhaps the most important insight remains this: in a constructed world, the most fundamental innovation isn't a new technology or business model, but a new way of seeing. 

A recognition that what appears solid and unchangeable is actually fluid and emergent. 

A willingness to question not just how things work, but why they exist in their current form at all. 

And an understanding that the world we build tomorrow begins with how we see the world today.

The most important revolutions are not those that discover new facts about the world but those that provide new ways for describing it. 

In a constructed world, these new vocabularies don't just describe reality but help create it, shaping what possibilities we can perceive and pursue.

The questions before us grow increasingly complex. 

As artificial intelligence advances toward AGI, as climate change reshapes our physical environment, as global power structures evolve, we face decision points about what kind of world we're building. 

These aren't just technical questions but fundamentally philosophical ones. 

What values should guide our constructed systems? 

Whose voices should shape them? 

What kind of world do we want to create?

A just world requires not just equal distribution of resources but systems that enable equal flourishing, that expand rather than constrain human capabilities across diverse circumstances and identities.

From my perspective in Indonesia, building at the margins of the global tech ecosystem, I see both the tremendous power of our constructed systems and their limitations. I see how they enable connection and innovation while simultaneously creating barriers and constraints. I see how they reflect certain perspectives while excluding others. And I see the potential for building differently, for creating systems that draw on diverse perspectives, that serve broader needs, that collapse the quantum wave of possibility into more inclusive and sustainable realities.

Innovation doesn't require standardization but can emerge from the creative tension between different ways of understanding and building reality. The diversity of human perspective isn't a problem to be solved but a resource to be leveraged in creating systems that better serve our collective needs.

This is the challenge and the opportunity before us all. Not just to inhabit the world we've built, but to contribute consciously to its ongoing construction. Not just to accept systems as given, but to recognize their constructed nature and participate in their evolution. Not just to succeed within existing frameworks, but to help build frameworks that better serve humanity's deepest needs and highest aspirations.

The constructed world always contains not just what is but what could be, not just actual systems but potential ones. Our task is not just to navigate the world as it is but to help bring forth what it might become.

The world is not fixed. 

It is built. 

And we are its builders. 

This simple truth changes everything about how we understand our place in reality and our responsibility toward it.

So here's where I stand: I'm ready to build. 

Ready to create systems rather than just inhabit them.

 Ready to question boundaries that exist only in our collective imagination. 

Ready to be misunderstood by those who mistake the constructed for the natural. 

Ready to collapse quantum possibilities into new realities.

And honestly? 

I'm done with treating imaginary limitations as if they were laws of physics. 

The capital allocation systems, the computing resource distributions, the "way things are done" - these aren't walls, they're stage props. 

They seem solid only because we all agree to act as if they are.

It's time to set our minds free from these self-imposed constraints. 

Time to recognize that the most powerful technologies we've created aren't our computers or networks but our shared beliefs about what's possible. 

Time to rebuild not just technical systems but conceptual ones.

Will I be called naive? 

Probably. 

Unrealistic? 

Almost certainly. 

But every significant reconstruction of our shared reality began with someone being called exactly these things. 

The world we've built began as impossibilities in the minds of people who refused to accept the limitations of their time.

So let the building begin. 

Not just from Silicon Valley campuses or government laboratories, but from my bedroom, from unexpected corners of human experience, from anywhere humans dare to imagine beyond what currently exists. 

The future belongs not to those who accept the world as given, but to those who recognize it as built...

and dare to build it differently.