Welcome to Scientific Existentialism: A Year-Long Inquiry Into What Actually Matters

You've built a successful life. By every external measure that once mattered—career, recognition, security—you've achieved. And yet.

There's a questiona that won't stay quiet anymore. It surfaces in the early morning, in the spaces between meetings, in the quiet after the noise dies down: What is it all about?

This isn't a crisis. It's an honest reckoning. And you're not alone in asking it.

Most accomplished adults reach a threshold where the answers that got them here no longer satisfy. Religion offers transcendence. Self-help offers optimization. Psychology offers coping. Philosophy offers abstraction. Each provides something, but none quite addresses what you're actually asking: How do I think rigorously about existence without losing wonder? How do I build a worldview that holds up under interrogation?

Scientific Existentialism offers a different approach.

Over the next year, we're launching a 52-week inquiry that combines empirical rigor—actual knowledge about how the universe works, how consciousness operates, how truth is built—with existential depth. The willingness to sit with hard questions without rushing to resolution.

The result isn't comfort. It's clarity. And from clarity, authentic freedom emerges.

What You'll Explore

The inquiry unfolds across six phases:

Phase 1: Cosmology and Origins (Weeks 1-8)What is reality? Why is there something rather than nothing? Where do physical laws come from? How did life begin? What is consciousness? You'll move from the deepest questions about existence through the emergence of life and consciousness to the recognition that you're part of a cosmos you're only beginning to understand.

Phase 2: Existential Risk (Weeks 9-12)Now that you understand the cosmos, what threatens it? We'll examine the real risks to human civilization—not as abstract speculation, but as present reality. And we'll ask the harder question: given that extinction is the default fate of 99.999% of all species, what would it actually take to be the exception?

Phase 3: Epistemology (Weeks 13-20)How do we know anything at all? What can you trust? We'll explore the structure of knowledge, the limits of certainty, how to recognize bias, and how genuine intellectual transformation happens.

Phase 4: Self and Identity (Weeks 21-32)Who are you beneath the roles? What persists? What changes? We'll interrogate identity, consciousness, agency, and what it means to become authentic.

Phase 5: Ethics, Meaning, and Futures (Weeks 33-50)How do you live well given everything you now understand? What makes life meaningful? How do we build just systems? What futures are possible?

Phase 6: Synthesis and Integration (Weeks 51-52)What is true, and what do you do with it? A final integration of the year's inquiry.

On Method

These essays are written in collaboration with synthetic intelligence—an epistemic partner grounded in rigorous inquiry. Not to replace human thinking, but to enable deeper interrogation. The framework is the product of human-AI dialogue, refined through multiple iterations of questioning and revision.

Each essay is an invitation to think more deeply, to interrogate your own assumptions, to notice where you've accepted inherited answers without examination.

Why This Matters

I've spent decades asking these questions. As someone with autism, I've never been able to simply accept what I was told. I needed to understand—really understand—what's true and what matters.

That journey has convinced me: the world needs more people thinking rigorously about existence, meaning, and authentic becoming. Not more gurus. Not more certainty. But more voices willing to ask hard questions and help others do the same.

How to Engage

These essays are long-form thinking. They're not meant to be skimmed. They're meant to be sat with. Some will challenge you. Some will clarify. Some will raise more questions than they answer.

That's intentional.

The goal isn't to convince you of something. The goal is to help you think more clearly about what you actually believe.

Subscribe to the full essays on Substack. Read the teasers here. Join the inquiry.

→ Read the full welcome post on Substack