Physics with a side of philosophy

Bio

I’m a physicist who now works in Finance (It's more common than you think). I also spend a lot of time thinking about philosophy—especially ethics, perception, and the “why” behind the choices societies make.

Recent Thoughts

Voting, justice, and the logic of participation

Imagine a small minority could pass a law that labels 90% of people in a society as “criminal” (for example, “right-hand people are criminals and shall be incarcerated immediately”). In our current society, this would mean 90% of people wouldn’t be allowed to vote. The confiscation of voting rights of the incarcerated are one of the many ways that practices in the criminal justice system solidify inequality in our society.

Banning prisoners from voting cuts off the mechanism people, the majority even, could use to change the system that defines them as “criminal.”

I feel reasonably strongly that prisoners should have the right to vote. But is there a reasonable argument to the contrary? If this extended to firearms would it still be reasonable? Should violent criminals have access to weapons capable of widespread harm? Feel free to reach out if you have thoughts on this!

Consciousness and Plato’s cave

The Allegory of the Cave resonates with me because it treats “reality” as something we experience through a structured interpretation. In the cave, the shadows aren’t random—they come from something behind them.

In that same spirit, our senses can be seen as an interface: what reaches consciousness isn’t the world “as it is,” but an imprint the world leaves on our perceptual system. If we had the biology of migratory birds we would effectively be able to see the magnetic fields. The Maxwell equations may have basically been self-evident to us. Since experience depends both on what our antennae can pick up and on how our cognitive machinery translates this into meaning, it may be (or almost certainly is) the case that there are worlds of phenomena that we'll never codify because there are places that scientists will never think to look.

Perhaps mathematics can bridge this gap. How many times have seemingly purely theoretical mathematical discoveries turned out to be the key to understanding physical phenomena? But even if this were the case, it still presents an unreachable frontier. The proof to Fermat's last theorem was over 100 pages and is not the largest proof by far. If there was a proof that was 1 million pages long, then it could take the most talented mathematician most if not all of their lives to understand it. The truth of the world will likely be forever beyond the reach of our understanding, much like the ever-fleeting boundary of the observable universe.

Why the simulation question may be beside the point

Simulations don't have to be in silico, architects and civil engineers make simulations all the time with physical substrates. Atoms were once modeled by billiard balls before more complex models came along. The question of whether we are simulated, exacerbated by the debut of the matrix and even more so by the advent of LLMs, may not be as consequential as it seems. Whether we are produced in silico or have physical substrate, we are still atomic interactions projected on a canvas that can't fully capture the complexity of the world. A subset of reality interacting with a subset of the information reality contains.

Favorites

Favorite movies (Top 21)

1. Bones and All — A road trip across the margins of America between two young people drawn to violence and hunger.
2. Pulp Fiction — Interlocking stories of crime, redemption, and absurd timing in the underworld.
3. Black Swan — A dancer’s descent into obsession as two roles blur into something darker.
4. Grave of the Fireflies — Two siblings’ heartbreaking struggle to survive during the devastation of war.
5. La vita e bella — A father’s fierce attempt to keep hope alive for his son through unimaginable suffering.
6. The Deer Hunter — A group of friends are torn apart by war and brought back into an uneasy peace.
7. The Prestige — Two rival magicians escalate into obsession and betrayal in a fight for impossible perfection.
8. The Shining — A haunted isolation that turns a family’s life into slow-motion psychological collapse.
9. Prometheus — An expedition to the edge of human origins meets something alien and far beyond expectations.
10. Sinners — A tense descent into temptation and consequence as characters collide with what they can’t escape.
11. Reservoir Dogs — A tense aftermath of a failed heist where trust starts to evaporate fast.
12. A Clockwork Orange — A young troublemaker’s attempts to escape his violent nature collide with coercive “rehabilitation.”
13. Scarface — An immigrant’s climb from desperation to power becomes a spiral of violence and paranoia.
14. Black Panther — A king defends a nation while confronting legacy, identity, and the cost of vengeance.
15. The Fly — A scientist’s experiment goes wrong and turns his life into a brutal fight against transformation.
16. Pearl — A fragile young woman’s fixation on fantasy curdles into obsession and cruelty.
17. Nope — A skeptical family hunts answers as strange events push them toward a breaking point.
18. Midsommar — A couple is pulled into a sunlit cult that offers relief and then demands payment in blood.
19. Hunter x Hunter (series) — A determined young hunter follows a path of tests, strategy, and strange abilities.
20. Wall Street (1984) — An ambitious outsider learns the rules of greed and gets caught in a higher-stakes game.
21. Doctor Sleep — A traumatized psychic teen-in-hiding grows into a protector as an evil hunger returns.

Artists I like

Some artists I like:

• Lana Del Rey
• The Weeknd
• Queen
• Glass Animals
• Polo G
• Tyler, The Creator
• Alessia Cara
• Lorde
• Miley Cyrus
• Rihanna

Research Interests

A big part of what I’m curious about is how “information” turns into experience and behavior—inside the brain, inside groups, and inside systems we build.

Contact

Reach out anytime:

• eniwbola@umich.edu
• LinkedIn
• GitHub