The Stimuli Problem

I've been thinking about a memory that won't leave me alone.

I'm a young boy, maybe around ten years old, kneeling in dirt beside my grandfather. He's showing me how to position a tiny succulent between two rocks. "See how the shadow falls?" he says. "In twenty years, this plant will remember this moment." I don't understand what he means, but I watch him work—patient, deliberate, seeing something I can't yet see.

Years later, I'm building rockeries with him at a cactus garden. Planning paths. Thinking about how people will move through the space, what they'll discover around each corner. He never went to school for this. He just started noticing plants one day, then couldn't stop. That curiosity led him up mountains, into remote valleys, until he found species no human had documented before.

What unlocked this in him? When did a retired man become someone who adds new knowledge to the world?

The Accident of Potential

Here's what haunts me: How many people never find their thing? Not because they lack ability, but because they never encounter the right spark at the right moment.

My other grandfather had a different lesson: "Don't think so much. Just go do it." Where one grandfather taught patience, the other taught action. If he wanted something, he pursued it. No elaborate planning. No perfect timing. Just movement.

Both were right. Human potential needs both—the patience to develop mastery and the courage to begin. But more than that, it needs the right encounter at the right time. The book that changes everything. The person who sees what you can't see in yourself. The challenge that reveals hidden strength.

These moments are accidents. They depend on privilege, luck, geography, timing. The tragedy isn't that people lack potential. It's that potential requires the right stimuli to emerge, and those stimuli are randomly, unfairly distributed.

The Democratic Inflection Point

What if they weren't?

I've spent years thinking about this problem. Every breakthrough I've witnessed—in others, in myself—started with an external catalyst. Someone or something that provided exactly what was needed at exactly the right moment. Parents who love, presence, and devotion make's you feel invincible. A teacher who said "try this" instead of "you can't." A random conversation that reframed everything.

But these inflection points are scarce. They're accidents of circumstance. You have to be in the right place, know the right people, stumble upon the right experience. Most never do.

This is what keeps me up at night: We live in a world where human potential blooms or withers based on random access to the right stimuli. It's not a technology problem. It's not an education problem. It's a timing and matching problem.

The Future of Unlocking

Imagine a world where everyone has access to their catalyst moments. Not generic advice or one-size-fits-all solutions, but the precise stimuli that unlock what's already there, waiting.

My grandfather found his calling with plants because he happened to notice something beautiful. But what if he hadn't? What if that spark had never come? How many people are walking around with dormant brilliance, waiting for an encounter that may never arrive?

This is why I can't stop thinking about AI—not as a replacement for human connection, but as a democratizer of those crucial moments. The patient mentor who sees what you can't see yet. The bold voice that says "just go do it" when you're overthinking. The companion that provides the right challenge, question, or encouragement at the precisely right time.

Not artificial intelligence, but augmented intuition. Not replacing the humans who shaped us, but ensuring everyone has access to that kind of shaping.

Building for Potential

When I think about the digital world we're creating, I don't think about efficiency or optimization. I think about my grandfather's garden—each element placed with intention, creating conditions for growth. I think about his patience and his counterpart's boldness, and how both were essential.

We have the opportunity to build technology that doesn't just serve us but sees us. That recognizes potential and provides the right stimuli to unlock it. That democratizes the inflection points that change lives.

The question isn't whether AI will change the world. It's whether we'll build AI that helps humans discover what was always within them, waiting for the right moment to emerge.

Because everyone has that potential. They just need to find their garden.