Tarik Yildirim is hard to describe, as he routinely transgresses disciplinary boundaries and jumps between the world of thought and the world of action.

Highlights from the World of Thought

• Undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Harvard University

• Master’s degree in Financial Economics from Oxford University

• A multi-disciplinary blog that ran for almost fifteen years

• A scientifically up-to-date metaphysics book currently in development

Highlights from the World of Action

• Seed-funded and mentored a proptech and an insurtech startup

• Incubated a martial arts academy and a talent agency

• Founded a non-profit tutoring platform and a non-profit hacker space

• Played a key role in the turnaround and sale of a compbio company

Like everyone else on the exploratory path of self-discovery, he too had his own share of detours & failures, which ended up enriching him as a person.

• A dropped PhD in mathematics

• A closed down UI/UX agency

• A failed social media startup

And like everyone else, he too was born into a certain set of nested environments, which ended up shaping his character and destiny.

• A country suffering from perennial political and economical instability

• A city which is literally the epicenter of the East-West culture clash

• A family strained by a generational gap and an authoritarian father

As he got older, he became a big fan of the following Steve Jobs quote.

“… you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down…”

Looking back at his own life, he now sees a pattern of convergence which was not apparent at all while he was going through the ups and downs.

Here, numbers indicate the chronology of transitions, and arrows go from general to specific. Notice how his flow has been eerily balanced across the two domains. Each move in one domain was followed by a move in the other, and each domain had an equal share of coincidence, guidance and drift.

Today he is working on a philosophical treatise that aims to synthesize the two end points in the above diagram, by integrating the mathematical worldview that has been so successful in Physics, with the informatic worldview that is now proving to be so successful in Biology.

A private person by the standards of the day. Here are his whereabouts.

• Digital: Does not use social media, but can be reached via email

• Physical: Lives in Amsterdam together with his wife and daughter