Musings on 24th birthday

Another birthday has come around.

I remember that when I was eighteen and nineteen, during my first two years of college, I used to write fairly earnest reflections on each birthday. As life grew busier, however, I found myself with less and less time, or perhaps less and less mental space, to turn inward and reflect. And so, from twenty through twenty-three, I stopped writing birthday essays altogether. Still, I want to gather up these fragments of life again, the small things that may seem trivial when I look back years from now—and preserve them as echoes across the long passage of time. This year, I want to summarize my thoughts, and my hopes for the future, in three points.

The first is to keep an even mind. Setbacks and misfortune are unavoidable parts of life. They simply arrive at different times for different people, and in different areas of their lives. I need to learn to live with setbacks in my studies, in research, in health, in investing, and in relationships. Every dog has its day. If Lady Luck is not on my side today, then all I need to do is keep working on myself, remain patient, and be ready when the time comes. The motto of my high school, was “Be your personal best” Back then, what I took from it was the phrase “be the best.” Later, in college, I began to understand it more as “be yourself.” Now, I think of it differently still: to grow as much as I can within the scope of my own life and possibilities. I do not need to become someone else.

The second is to understand both what changes with the times and what does not. As of today, frontier models, including GPT-6 Astra and Claude Fable 5.1—have already had an enormous impact on nearly every aspect of life and society, even though AI adoption in China is still far from universal. There is little need for me to repeat here just how capable these systems have become. And that leaves me deeply concerned about the future. My concern has two parts. The first is societal. A large number of people may eventually find themselves becoming part of a so-called “useless class.” I do not know what kind of social order will emerge from that transformation, or what role governments will ultimately play in it. The second concern is personal. Agents can already take over much of the research work I once had to do myself, and recursive self-improvement, or RSI, seems to be drawing closer. In such a future, where does my own value lie? What knowledge and skills will remain meaningful even after AGI arrives? These questions still trouble me today.

The last is to stay young at heart, and to remain curious. Literal eternal youth is, at least for now, obviously a fantasy. But youthfulness of spirit, the energy to engage with the world, and the curiosity to keep asking questions, can still serve as fuel that carries a person forward. I can already feel my own state of mind moving away from the rawness of youth. Perhaps one day I will even become the kind of person my younger self once looked down upon. Two years ago, on my birthday, I made one of my rare birthday posts. I captioned it with a line from Taylor Swift’s 22: “I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling 22!” Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a song about being twenty-four that captures quite the same feeling. 22 has overnight parties, exes, and spotlights on the dance floor. My twenty-four will look different. But I still hope to remain a little naive and romantic: to keep exploring, to fight wholeheartedly for the things I want, to embrace uncertainty, and to peel back, layer by layer, the fog that lies ahead in life.

May things go well for me, and may I find my own way.