# Notes from Ashutosh Trivedi

*I write here about nature, beauty, philosophy, mathematics, science and music.*

![Ashutosh Trivedi](/ashu.jpg)

# Observe the unknown.

I am Ashutosh Trivedi. I love nature, and alignment with it is what I seek. I write here about nature, beauty, philosophy, mathematics, science and music.

[Founder, VideoDB](https://videodb.io) [X](https://x.com/ashu_trv) [GitHub](https://github.com/codeAshu) [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/in/ashutoshtrivedi)

-   [Mandelbrot![Mandelbrot](/figures/mandelbrot.svg)![Mandelbrot](/figures/mandelbrot-dark.svg) Mathematics Fractals, higher-order structure, and the proofs that feel inevitable once you see them. Self-similarity as a way of thinking. 3 pieces](/topics/mathematics)
-   [Descent![Descent](/figures/descent.svg)![Descent](/figures/descent-dark.svg) Optimization Gradients, search, equilibria, and what a system is really minimising when it looks like it is learning. 1 piece](/topics/optimization)
-   [Phyllotaxis![Phyllotaxis](/figures/phyllotaxis.svg)![Phyllotaxis](/figures/phyllotaxis-dark.svg) Beauty Why some structures feel right before they are proven. Murmurations, metre, proofs, mountains. 1 piece](/topics/beauty)
-   [Society![Society](/figures/society.svg)![Society](/figures/society-dark.svg) AI and agents Emergence, alignment as architecture, and what happens when the players are no longer human. 3 pieces](/topics/agents)
-   [A tree![A tree](/figures/tree.svg)![A tree](/figures/tree-dark.svg) Philosophy Dominant thoughts and curiosities of life and mind in India. 6 pieces](/topics/philosophy)
-   [Stillness![Stillness](/figures/stillness.svg)![Stillness](/figures/stillness-dark.svg) Yoga and the mind The oldest engineering manual for awareness, read by someone who builds minds for a living. 4 pieces](/topics/mind)
-   [Interference![Interference](/figures/interference.svg)![Interference](/figures/interference-dark.svg) Science and technology Notes from building infrastructure for machines that see, and from the papers that change how I think. 3 pieces](/topics/science)
-   [Knight's tour![Knight's tour](/figures/tour.svg)![Knight's tour](/figures/tour-dark.svg) Chitrakāvya Computation as poetry. Sanskrit verses that are also diagrams and algorithms, and the side research around them. 1 piece](/topics/chitrakavya)
-   [A walk![A walk](/figures/walk.svg)![A walk](/figures/walk-dark.svg) The human experience What it is like to be a person learning in public, one moment at a time. 2 pieces](/topics/human)

Darśana

Six illustrated explainers on the Indian philosophical schools, written as a compiler's notes: Sāṃkhya, Yoga, Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta, with original diagrams and a few things to try.

-   **Sāṃkhya** 1 of 6 · 18 min [The clay before the pot](/darsana/samkhya)
    
    The oldest of the six and the one most often called scientific. Its first move is the question every creation story skips: a maker can shape a pot, but where did the clay come from?
    
-   **Yoga** 2 of 6 · 22 min [A road out of the clay](/darsana/yoga)
    
    Sāṃkhya explained how consciousness gets caught in matter, and admitted it had no way out. Patañjali's Yoga is that way: a discipline rather than a theory, and the word does not mean what the studios think it means.
    
-   **Nyāya** 3 of 6 · 24 min [Where there is smoke](/darsana/nyaya)
    
    The school of how we know and how we argue: four roads to knowledge, one shape for every inference, and a complete catalogue of the ways a losing opponent cheats.
    
-   **Vaiśeṣika** 4 of 6 · 18 min [An inventory of everything](/darsana/vaisheshika)
    
    Nyāya's partner: the realist's list of what there is, down to the atom, with space and time counted as things rather than gaps.
    
-   **Mīmāṃsā** 5 of 6 · 28 min [The act keeps its own books](/darsana/mimamsa)
    
    The school that defended the Vedic rite when the Buddhists had all but buried it: the word is older than the god, a text with no author cannot be wrong, and nobody is needed to pay out the fruit of an act.
    
-   **Vedānta** 6 of 6 · 42 min [The seer who saw both](/darsana/vedanta)
    
    The end of the Veda and, its teachers insist, the end of thought. One set of texts read four ways: the world as appearance, as God's body, as God's dependent, as God himself.
    

[The six, in order](/darsana)

Latest

-   **Essay** Oct 17, 2026 [Every mind has a material cause](/writing/every-mind-has-a-material-cause)
    
    Samkhya says the effect pre-exists in the cause, the substrate is inert, and discernment comes before the self. Read as a design note for AGI, it says most of our alignment vocabulary is pointed at the potter and the clay decides more.
    
    [AI and agents](/topics/agents) [Yoga and the mind](/topics/mind) [Science and technology](/topics/science)
    
-   **Essay** Oct 10, 2026 [Simple rules, whole societies](/writing/simple-rules-whole-societies)
    
    Three local rules give you a murmuration. Slightly different rules give you a stampede. The rules between agents deserve the same care as the capabilities inside them.
    
    [AI and agents](/topics/agents) [Mathematics](/topics/mathematics) [Optimization](/topics/optimization)
    
-   **Research** Apr 1, 2026 [Chitrakāvya: poems that are programs](/chitrakavya)
    
    Sanskrit poets encoded knight's tours, magic squares and palindromic surfaces into verse, a thousand years before Euler. The archive, with the tour you can step through.
    
    [Chitrakāvya](/topics/chitrakavya) [Mathematics](/topics/mathematics)
    

[All writing](/writing)

## A poem, a diagram and an algorithm in one composition.

Around 1300 CE, Vedānta Deśika wrote a 32-syllable hymn that, read along a knight's tour of a half chessboard, becomes a second hymn.

[Step through the tour](/chitrakavya/knights-tour)

![Knight's tour](/figures/tour.svg)![Knight's tour](/figures/tour-dark.svg)

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