About EtheReal

A curious child

I was always a deeply curious person, never content to take things for granted. I wanted to see the world for what it really is — to explore and understand it without prejudice. My grandfather taught physics, mathematics, and chemistry, and from a young age he gave me a love for numbers and for the natural world that fascinated me.

I still remember begging him to keep naming larger and larger numbers. I was convinced that, at some point, he would run out — that the room, or his memory, simply couldn't hold them all. When he tried to explain infinity to me, I couldn't grasp it, and in my childish arrogance I decided he must be wrong. How could anything be infinite? Eventually the database of knowledge in his head would run dry.

Then came one of the first realizations that I remember deeply baffling me — one that stuck with me ever since: you don't need to know the name of a number to keep going. You can always add one more digit, and the number grows. The names run out long before the numbers do, as it is the very nature of potential to be infinite. Both observations turned out to be true — a database is finite, yet it can always expand further.

The question that never left

A thread that ran through my whole life — one I write about more fully in the book — was trying to understand how it is that we exist at all. How could something, and something this intricate, arise from nothing?

Even if you place a god at the beginning, the question only moves: who made god? How could god make himself? However you turn it over, it seems you must already have something in order to make something new.

It wasn't until my teenage years that I began to suspect I had been framing it wrong all along. What if the "nothing" we imagine isn't what we think it is? What if nothing itself has properties — ones capable of giving rise to something?

I asked myself what nothing could even be. And it led me back to that first realization with the numbers. Just as you can always add one more, there can always be more space. Space and time feel close to nothingness — they are what define the dimensions we live in, the borders of our existence. The answer wasn't satisfying in itself, and its deeper meaning came years later, but it settled something in me: nothing may be a concept we have simply misunderstood.

Why EtheReal exists

The vision behind this platform is to help people understand themselves, and the world around them, a little better — and to offer tools that let you get things done more efficiently, and in your own way. It is time we valued uniqueness, and learned how alike, yet singular, we all truly are.

But I would be lying if I claimed any motive greater than this: I am searching for my soulmate. That search is the heart of it, and I won't pretend otherwise.

A little awe

This world still holds countless secrets. We have not yet seen the depths of our own oceans, nor reached the core of our own planet. So however far our technology carries us, I hope we remember not to grow arrogant — to admire nature, and to leave room for wonder and amazement.

And in time — perhaps we could make the world a better place.