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Reflections from 500 Pages into War and Peace

At the beginning of this year, I started reading War and Peace thanks to this post. This is my first proper literary classic, and I was intimidated—it’s a massive 1300-page novel. At that size, it’s more of a doorstopper, a blunt-force murder weapon, a budget-friendly bullet shield, or an effective paperweight—certainly less of a “novel” and more of a commitment.

I was also anxious that it would be too dense for my feeble brain. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Contrary to public perception, the novel is easy to read, enjoyable, and gripping. The best way I can describe it is as the most searing and brutal portrait of life. Because of the novel’s length, the characters are deeply fleshed out, and their psychological insides are laid bare. Tolstoy subjects them to the full spectrum of the human experience—love, loss, grief, doubt, gluttony, boredom, epiphany, and assorted existential crises.

Before I began, I came across a review—I forget where—that said the book is filled with philosophical digressions, and they were “annoying.” That stuck with me, probably because I had just started exploring philosophy myself. But after reading 500 pages, I can confidently say that these reflections—on love, faith, duty, honor, the meaning of life—are my favorite part. They’re dense, nuanced, and quietly brilliant.

One of the most underappreciated aspects of the novel is how it forces you to interrogate your own philosophy of life.

Here's on such philosophical reflection.

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From Book Six: 1808–10, Chapter I:

“How pleasant it is, your excellency!” he said with a respectful smile.

“What?”

“It’s pleasant, your excellency!”

“What is he talking about?” thought Prince Andrew. “Oh, the spring, I suppose,” he thought as he turned round. “Yes, really everything is green already... How early! The birches and cherry and alders too are coming out... But the oaks show no sign yet. Ah, here is...

I just finished watching The Theory of Everything, a biographical drama about the life of the famed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking. It follows how Hawking finds love and battles adversity as he slowly becomes paralysed after being diagnosed with motor neurone disease. He was given two years to live after his diagnosis, but he defied the odds and lived for another 50 years, passing away at the age of 76.

The movie is light on science and heavy on the emotional toll that Hawking’s condition takes on his wife, Jane Wilde. It’s a beautiful, feel-good film. The highlight, of course, is Eddie Redmayne’s stunning performance. That’s not to say Felicity Jones, who plays Jane, is any less brilliant.

One of my favorite parts of the movie comes toward the end, when Stephen Hawking is asked about his philosophy of life. His answer is devastatingly beautiful with echoes of Carl Sagan.

Guest: You have said you do not believein God. Do you have a philosophy of life that helps you?

Stephen Hawking: It is clear that we are just an advanced breed of primates on a minor planet orbiting around a very average star, in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. BUT, ever since the dawn of civilization people have craved for an understanding of the underlying order of the world. There ought to be something very special about the boundary conditions of the universe. And what can be more special than that there is no boundary? And there should be no boundary to human endeavor. We are all different. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there is life, there is hope.

So I read through the poem. And it's brilliant. The poem is basically a father's advice to his son on how to be a man. And I mean, as far as advice goes, it's pretty good. Of course, the thing about advice is that you can't generalize it. And sure, you can nitpick this or that. But I think you can do a lot worse than following the advice Rudyard Kipling gives.

Here’s the full poem, in case you’ve never read it or need a refresher:

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If—

by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and...

A few good links.

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Kevin Munger on Anti-Mimetics

I always enjoy, although frustratingly so, reading Kevin Munger, who is probably one of the most interesting thinkers on all things media. I don't always understand half of what he says because it's often deeply technical, and I don't come from a media studies background. But I make it a point to read his work because it's phenomenally thoughtful. This post on anti-mimetics was delightful. I'm still processing it, but here's an excerpt that stood out:

Humans are quite plastic; our sensory apparatus changes based on the communication environment in which we are raised. But we're not infinitely plastic. The information-density frontier must involve all of our senses, telling us something about what the human is, what evolution has designed us for. When are our senses most heightened? When the stakes are high and we are physically engaged with many other people. Team sports. The high school dance. The street protest. The memes in these context are physical processes using all of our sensory inputs to react to the behaviors of many other people simultaneously.

So, The Poster is correct that the meme is (potentially) the densest form of communication within the degraded artificial space of a feed-based social media platform. But these platforms' antimemes are the embodied, social processes that cannot be encoded as digital media, and they are far more information dense than anything that happen on a screen.

Note: What are Memes and Antimemes?

To understand what Kevin Munger is getting at, it helps to clarify two key terms he's playing with: memes and antimemes:

A meme—in its original sense—is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person, like a cultural gene. In the internet age, memes have become bite-sized units of communication: an image, a phrase, a remix, a trend. They travel fast, mutate easily, and carry meaning in compact form. In Munger's words, they're "the...

An essay exploring the history, economics, and politics of tariffs, prompted by the re-imposition of sweeping new trade barriers. The request called for a detailed, nuanced, and fact-checked analysis covering the evolution of tariffs, their successes and failures, the spectrum of economic opinion, key research and researchers, and notable historical anecdotes.

In prompting Gemini to write this essay, I had a realization, one that many people have had and said before: using an LLM like this feels like having a ridiculously smart, PhD-level expert in your pocket. Someone who knows a lot about a lot.

What excites me and terrifies me in equal measure is just how much you can learn if you ask the right questions. The potential is insane. Of course, there’s nuance in how you go about learning this way. There are valid concerns about the downsides of learning from an LLM — limitations, bias, lack of depth, and so on. But still, as that famous Thomas Sowell quote goes, "There are no solutions, only trade-offs." It fits perfectly here.

And then I think about someone with a crappy internet connection in a rural part of India or sub-Saharan Africa. Someone who has no access to quality education, no resources, nothing. Yet with just a basic connection and access to a tool like this, the number of things they can learn or do on their own is staggering.

Of course, this doesn’t mean we should ignore the tough questions around AI. Far from it. But still, these are exciting and terrifying times.

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In the grand theater of economic policy, the tariff is a character actor that refuses to leave the stage. The curtain rose on its latest act on August 1, 2025, with an announcement from the White House that crystallized the new era of American protectionism.

On that day, an executive order was signed imposing a sweeping new regime of "reciprocal" tariffs. The action was vast in its scope,...