Husan Isomiddinov
A few words about my Academics
Academic Path:
I am on my 2nd gap year, building and testing ideas in my hometown, Tashkent. College has this unique pull on me: it’s never been about knowledge. No. I believe any learner is, in fact, a self-learner. So I didn’t rush to attend any random college; to fulfill my label as a "diploma-owner." No. I wanted to pause, learn, and make better decisions about my future.
I don’t think I need college now, unlike my past self, who couldn’t figure out where his future belongs. But I want college. And I want it badly. That self-education? College accelerates it, puts one in this healthy competition of learning, and gathers like-minded autodidacts. (Sorry, Mom and Dad.)
Intellectual Interest:
I studied politics & philosophy during my high school. I was passionate. Kant, Arendt, Ibn Khaldun, Locke, Rousseau—read them all. I wanted to understand how societies decide what's true and how power shapes collective beliefs. (I believe my interest came from my unique background growing up in Uzbekistan, a post-Soviet nation). But later, I discovered that politics optimizes for consensus over truth. It surely didn’t align with my builder-thinker ambition.
Recognizing this, I shifted to startups. Not just startups, but startups in AI, because that's where this whole ambitious construction is happening. I read Graham's essays on building, joined Twitter to track modern thinkers—Michael Nielsen, Andrej Parpathy, Demis Hassabis, and Fei-Fei Li—and built and scaled my own EdTech, Agora. (SATashkent acquisition).
And now, I am learning the technical foundations—cognitive science, ML systems, symbolic reasoning—because talking about how AI learns without understanding the math underneath is like studying Rawls without reading the American Constitution. I may sometimes question if this path is where I belong (and that’s fine. That’s how we make decisions). It is just the pure intellectual ambition of these “small-team-fast-execution” communities that excites me to contribute.
Beyond Academics
Physical Fitness: "A soul housed in a rotting body wants to leave that house faster." Saw the line somewhere and it stuck with me eversince. I want to be at my physical peak. I've been lifting weights consistently since the spring of 2025. I also run actively (we even formed this mini-running club thing with my friends: Silk Stride.) And I've been playing tennis for a while. Still mediocre. I also made it a habit to invest a certain portion of my income to my health: medical checkups, pills, vitamins, skincare, haircare, etc.
Star Wars: A big fan. George Lucas is a genius for creating an entire franchise that deals with the complexities of love and hate, democracy and tyranny, good and bad, brotherhood and opposition. Star Wars might be fictional, but the issues it raises are not. And Andor was the best show I've watched.
Art: Art is not about paintings, for me. It is about perfection. Mastery over a certain objective: any sufficiently advanced work is indistinguishable from art. And I appreciate beautiful art of any sort.