Gautam John

Author: gkjohn

  • Complexity, Quantum, and the Limits of the Measurable

    A few weeks ago, Padma pointed me to a book called Notes on Complexity by Neil Theise. I got it, read it in a sitting, and it blew my mind.

    Then this morning, my inbox contained a newsletter about Google’s Willow quantum chip. Started reading. Interesting. Then. Wait. This connects.

    Hear me out. I know this sounds far-fetched.

    Both the book and the newsletter describe the double-slit experiment. Fire electrons one at a time at a barrier with two slits, and you get an interference pattern — as if each electron went through both slits simultaneously. The moment you install detectors to find out which slit each electron used, the interference pattern disappears. Two clean bands because the act of forcing resolution destroys the thing you were trying to see.

    The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics says the wave function never actually collapses. The observer doesn’t stand outside the system, watching. The observer becomes entangled with it. There is no outside position.

    Google’s Willow chip — which solved in five minutes a computation that would take classical supercomputers longer than the age of the universe — only works because it lets all possible states coexist and interfere. The answer emerges from that interference. If you force early resolution, the computation fails.

    And I thought: this is exactly what I’ve been watching in leadership and convening for twenty years.

    The leader who needs resolution, who is uncomfortable with the coexistence of contradictory framings, who forces convergence before the group has had time to think together, is installing the detector. The interference pattern disappears, and you get a clean result that is smaller than what the group could have produced.

    The log-frame does this to fields. The impact report does this to organisations. The demand for attributable, measurable, legible outputs does this to the relational work that actually generates change — it forces classical resolution on what was, until that moment, a generative superposition.

    In philanthropy, in systems change, in any work that involves groups of people thinking together about complex problems: there is no observer position. You are not watching the system. You are entangled with it. The quality of your presence, what you notice, what you hold open, what you allow to remain unresolved, is itself a move in the system.

    The answer, when it comes, emerges from the interference of all the paths that were held open long enough.

    Hold that thought the next time you walk into a room of people trying to figure something out together.

    Originally written for LinkedIn on 17 March 2026. View original →

  • Figuring it Out…

    … over 20 years and 4 hours.

     

    If you grew up in an intellectual corner of the Indian internet, particularly around libertarian, market-first principles, Hayek, and all that, Amit Varma was someone you looked up to and someone whose clarity mattered.

    I’ve known Amit over a nearly twenty-year arc, but we’d never sat down for a proper conversation until now. And finally being in conversation with him was just so wonderful. The four hours felt effortless and it was just such a natural conversation.

    What surprised me most was how Amit helped me see my own story in a new way.

    If there’s a single thing I’ve learned over the past decade from walking alongside many of India’s civil society leaders, it’s that sometimes the deepest work is just to stay. That presence is important. That sometimes you need to stay in the unglamorous work, in the moments where certainty has collapsed and where you don’t have the answers, and all you can do is hold the space.

    This conversation made that visible to me in hindsight. I began with a faith in methods, first principles and frameworks, then pivoted to practice, where you try, fail, listen, and adapt. And perhaps now I’m in the phase of presence, where presence is what matters.

    Here it is to share with all of you:

    Episode 437: Gautam John is Figuring it Out

    Originally published on Substack on 10 February 2026. Read on Substack →

  • The Deepest Work Is Just to Stay

    If there’s a single thing I’ve learned over the past decade from walking alongside many of India’s civil society leaders, it’s that sometimes the deepest work is just to stay.

    That presence is important.

    That sometimes you need to stay in the unglamorous work, in the moments where certainty has collapsed and where you don’t have the answers, and all you can do is hold the space.

    A very long conversation I had with Amit Varma on Seen and the Unseen made this visible to me in hindsight. That I began with a faith in methods, first principles and frameworks, then pivoted to practice, where you try, fail, listen, and adapt. And perhaps now I’m in the phase of presence, where presence is what matters. (With a fair warning that it is 4 hours of conversation, which Amit made feel effortless.)

    Thx for sharing Rohin Dharmakumar

    Originally written for LinkedIn on 10 February 2026. View original →

  • Episode 437: Gautam John is Figuring it Out — The Seen and the Unseen

    A conversation with Amit Varma on The Seen and the Unseen.

    He studied law, found success as an entrepreneur, and has since spent almost two decades in the social sector trying to make the world a better place. Gautam John joins Amit Varma in episode 437 of The Seen and the Unseen to share his reflections on society, technology, gender, friendships, fatherhood…

    Transcript

    This transcript was generated with AI-assisted transcription and may contain occasional transcription or speaker-attribution errors.

    (more…)

  • One Year Later…

    … still here…

     

    The shape of absence definitely changed over the year.

    At the start, it was an Ella-shaped hole. But it hasn’t gotten smaller. In a way, it’s gotten bigger. It’s gotten bigger in a way that encompasses us. We now live in Ella’s world.

    I used to say that the tragedy is that Ella will be one chapter in our story, but to her, we were her entire story. I’ve realised that’s not true. We now live inside it. Or at least I live inside of Ella’s world in some way.

    What I’ve learned about grief is that it can be debilitating, missing the absence. But it can also come back to you in those little moments where you’re doing something familiar and you feel an intense presence. Sometimes it’s almost somatic—feeling my hands in Ella’s double coat, her kind kohl-lined eyes looking at you, her basmati rice smelling feet, her cool nose nuzzling your ear. They don’t go away. They’re part of our story now.

    A month after she passed, I told Shobitha I didn’t want to get over it. A year later, I understand that differently. It’s not about not getting over it. It’s making it a part of the everyday. There’s some version of me now that lives in Ella’s world. It’s different, feeling presence even when it’s not physical.

    What this year has also done is offer me time to think of Ella at her best. Not just the last week. And that’s been lovely.

    When I go for a run in Cubbon Park, I remember the Ella who used to run through the park without a leash and with terrible recall—so much so that I had to walk with cheese in my pockets in the vain hope that she’d come back. Never really worked. She’d roll in muddy streams and leave home white and come back brick red. The playful, growling energy that she had. The dog who loved hard and lived hard and went hard with everything.

    The house still holds her. Her favourite corner will always be her favourite corner. Her collar is right there on our bookshelf. We still have her ashes. For a while I wasn’t ready to say goodbye.

    Maybe now it’s time.

    The thing that really surprised us, but also made us happy, is Sparky.

    He came into our lives six months before Ella did. For those six months, he was the only dog. When Ella came in, she had to fight for her space, and she did. For most of the thirteen years they spent together, they were genuinely playful, accommodating.

    The first few days after Ella passed, maybe even the week after, Sparky was a little withdrawn. But he’s now come out of that shell as a new dog—perhaps the dog he always was. He’s calmer, friendlier with other dogs. He takes long walks to say hello to particular dogs. Maybe he’s just enjoying being a singular feature of our lives, the extra cuddles and the extra treats and the extra time. It’s beautiful to watch.

    I will say that there’s nothing that’s had us think we didn’t make the right call, at almost the right time. With the benefit of hindsight, it was perhaps half a day too late. But just that.

    Ella taught us so much, and continues to. ❤️

    Originally published on Substack on 7 February 2026. Read on Substack →

  • Productive for Being Productive: What Paris Hilton and LLMs Have in Common

    What do Paris Hilton and Large Language Models Have in Common?

    Paris Hilton was famous for being famous, which set up a self-referential loop where visibility generated visibility, and since the metrics said she mattered, she did.

    I’m starting to think AI is productive for being productive.

    In The Wall Street Journal this week: 40% of executives say AI saves them more than eight hours a week, while two-thirds of their employees say it saves them two hours or less. How do the same tools in the same companies create such opposite realities?

    Workday found the mechanism: time “saved” by AI gets eaten by correcting errors and reworking AI-generated content. Because executives are generating, their subordinates are fixing, and work isn’t moving faster as much as it is sliding downhill faster. Workslop, they call it.

    Meanwhile, 56% of CEOs say AI has delivered no financial benefit, though the dashboards look great and everyone’s producing more of, well, something?

    IDK if this is very different from philanthropy/social change, where individual interventions can look impressive but leave the underlying system untouched. More of a feeling/vibe of progress decoupled from the fact of it.

    So long as we measure outputs, not outcomes, count what individuals produce, not what organisations accomplish, the gap between those is where collective capacity will go to die.

    The thing is, Paris Hilton was in on the joke and built real businesses behind the performance.

    Originally written for LinkedIn on 23 January 2026. View original →

  • The Three-Body Problem Is Philanthropy

    The thing about the three-body problem is that it exists in chaotic equilibrium, and no closed-form solution ever exists. The trajectories of each body become exquisitely sensitive to initial conditions and impossible to predict over long timescales.

    This is exactly the predicament of philanthropy and social change.

    Call it impact, and you can measure it. Call it capacity building, and you can do a three-year grant. Call it systems change, and you get a systems map and a theory of change. None of these are wrong. But they are incomplete.

    What I love about Tanya Kak’s piece is that it asks us to see differently—to see adaptation not as a catalogue of climate fixes but as the social infrastructure of bonds, knowledge, and institutions that allow communities to bend without breaking.

    And once you see differently, you can’t fund or govern in the same way. It is a one way door. Walk through it.

    Originally written for LinkedIn on 19 January 2026. View original →

  • Distance, Discourse and Doing

    On structural analysis as a way to manage guilt

     

    A few days ago, Deepinder Goyal posted a thread on X defending Zomato’s business model. Like everyone has pointed out, it was tone-deaf in places, self-serving in others, and what followed was the predictable pile-on. But this post isn’t about that. This post is about my response to it and unpacking what I learned about myself in the process.

    I’m pretty good at finding the frame, naming the dynamic and arriving at a crisp, pithy take.

    “Capitalism does capitalist things.”

    “He didn’t create the brken labour market, he just built a business on top of it.”

    “Zomato isn’t the problem, it’s a symptom.”

    These feel true, and might even be true but what does it says about me?

    Thankfully, I have friends who push back, and we have enough trust that we can debate without descending into the algorithmic acrimony that doing so on a public timeline would involve. One friend said that labour is cheap, it’s our strategic advantage in India, and the system has always been broken. My immediate reaction was: why is he offering an undergraduate argument dressed up as realism? I was screaming on the inside: take the red pill, bro. But at some point in the discussion, I had to ask myself whether I had actually taken it.

    Being good at analysis—thinking you can see the system, name the forces, trace the historical arc—makes one feel aware. But does being aware mean one isn’t asleep? Because if I can name the problem as structural, it lets me off the hook for being a part of it. Being able to explain everything also excuses everything.

    And my truth is this: I use these apps. I live in Bangalore. My life has been made easier by the same labour arbitrage I am busy critiquing. The delivery guy shows up at my door. I tip well, feel the awkwardness of the exchange, close the door and go back to my life, conscience assuaged. But being honest about complicity isn’t the same as doing something about it. It can just be a way of managing guilt enough to keep going.

    “Tip well, be kind, delete the app,” I joked in one of the chats. A wry update to Leary’s “turn on, tune in, drop out.” But I haven’t deleted the app and I probably won’t.

    I work in philanthropy and social change. The whole job is supposedly about making things better—supporting and building capacity, shifting conditions, playing the long game. And I believe in that work. I do.

    But what I’m beginning to notice is that in my personal life, with friends, in these late-night chats about the state of things, I choose resignation more easily than I’d like. If everything is too broken to fix, I can keep sharpening the hot take.

    So here’s what I’m left with at the start of this new year, filled with old discussions and familiar debates: what would it mean to be in the mess, not above it? To do something with the seeing, rather than letting the seeing be the end?

    Admitting it is a start but caring has to mean more than seeing clearly.

    Originally published on Substack on 5 January 2026. Read on Substack →

  • Arriving Empty-Handed

    On Grace, Attention, and Belonging

     

    I spent most of 2025 writing about leaving abstraction behind and moving closer to the body, closer to people, closer to whatever happens when you stop trying to get to the point too quickly. I wrote about not overriding discomfort, about choosing usefulness over visibility, about letting things unfold at the pace they actually require.

    And then, near the end of the year, I counted.

    7,496 writing sessions across 155 days. 700 hours, not lost to my phone. 154 workouts. 162 hours moving my body. Weight dropped 7.3 kilograms whilst muscle mass increased.

    The numbers are precise, almost confrontational in their clarity. They sit uneasily beside everything I’d been arguing for. Still, they’re hard to dismiss because they show repetition, commitment, and a year spent returning to the same practices again and again.

    What they don’t answer is the question that began to bother me as soon as I saw them laid out and the questions I’m closing the year with:

    Was I practising something, or was I documenting my right to be there?

    Was measuring helping me deepen the work, or was it a way of earning a belonging I didn’t yet trust was already mine?

    As I looked back, three words kept surfacing not, so much as goals I’d named in advance or values I’d tried to live up to, just what the year itself seemed to insist on returning me to. Each of them left traces in the numbers but also exposed a place where I was still working harder than I wanted to admit.

    ● Grace ● Attention ● Belonging ●

    Ella

    The piece that stayed with people most this year wasn’t about systems or practice but about loss. In February, I wrote about the days after we helped our dog, Ella, leave. I didn’t plan it, I wasn’t thinking about audience or resonance, only that the grief needed somewhere to go, and writing was the only place it would settle.

    Everyone who opened that piece read it through.

    I noticed that when I stopped trying to sound capable and wrote from the place where love and loss collapse into each other, people didn’t respond to the writing itself but to the honesty. Not admiration as much as recognition.

    That’s the texture of belonging I keep coming back to now; being met without having to demonstrate usefulness, being seen because you let something real land rather than because you shaped it carefully enough.

    The question that followed me for the rest of the year was quiet but persistent: could I arrive everywhere else the way I arrived there? At the page, at the gym, in relationships and without armour, without proof, and trusting that being human might already be enough.

    Grace

    If you look at my training data, the story appears simple. I started from almost nothing and climbed steadily through the year.

    What the data doesn’t show are the negotiations on the mornings I wanted to push when my body was asking for restraint, the days recovery felt suspiciously like laziness because my plan said intensity. Progress happened, but only because I kept interrupting my own urge to override the signals that mattered.

    (more…)

  • Exit Versus Voice: On Vitalik’s Network States Essay

    Vitalik Buterin’s “Let a Thousand Societies Bloom” is animated by a real discomfort with how thin and distant many of our institutions have become. His answer is exit: pop-up cities, network states, tribes and zones, each positioned as freedom — choice as pluralism, the need for new intermediate institutions between the individual and the state.

    Then I saw this from Subrata Singh where a panchayat is inviting citizens to volunteer a few hours a week, to support day-to-day work.

    Both are responses to shared institutions that often feel unresponsive, impersonal, or hollowed out.

    Vitalik says: when institutions don’t work, build new containers elsewhere that are more coherent, more selective and more aligned. Create spaces people can opt into, and let pluralism emerge through choice.

    The panchayat says: perhaps the work is to thicken the container we already share. To rebuild capacity by presence, by showing up, staying in conversation, and offering time and attention where we are.

    One treats pluralism as the freedom to choose one’s community. The other treats pluralism as something practised, relationally, with people you didn’t choose.

    The truth I am drawn to is that relational capacity grows from staying, from being willing to enter imperfect institutions and make them a little more human from the inside – even/especially when the work is slow, unglamorous, and awkward.

    We may well need a thousand societies to bloom. But we also need more people willing to ask: “How can I help, here?”

    Originally written for LinkedIn on 29 December 2025. View original →