Hi, I’m Fang Zhang.

I use this blog to think about one question: where meaning comes from, once I know how much of the world mechanism can explain. I come at it from three directions.

First, AI. I write about how a machine learns from data, how today’s language models are built, and what “understanding” means for a system like that. This is the part I know best from my work, and I try to explain it plainly, with the papers and numbers behind each claim.

Second, the self. I write about how I think, how I know what I know, and how the mind fails and how to guard against it. Dreams, awareness, belief, decision-making: the mechanisms I can explain, and what is still left over after I explain them.

Third, the cosmos. I write about where we stand at the largest scale, and how meaning can still come from us once smallness is accepted.

The three keep arriving at the same place: how far mechanism explains, and what to do with the part it does not. For that part I read the iChing and Zhuangzi alongside the papers and the code.

I see the three as a sequence. The cosmos is a vast order that was there first, and it is lawful enough for a small mind to read. My own mind is intelligence being lived now. AI is the newest layer: it is trained on human writing, so it is a compressed copy of human thought, not a start from zero.

I don’t expect to settle the question. I write to see it more clearly, one post at a time, and I’m glad to have you reading along.