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Ideas at the edge of signal and meaning

Essays on product, AI, economics, and what happens when you cross-pollinate all three with a Tajik-French-Russian polyglot's perspective on the world.

From the notebook

01

What Economists Know About AI That Engineers Often Miss

Incentive structures, externalities, and market design have always shaped how technology diffuses — we just haven't been calling them that in the product room.

02

The PM Interview Is a Product. Here's How to Ship It.

After teaching thousands of PM candidates at Udacity, I've noticed the same pattern separating candidates who get offers from those who don't.

03

Advertising in the Age of Generative AI: Signal Loss and What Comes Next

When the model replaces the middleman, what happens to the marketer? A framework for thinking about AI's disruption of the advertising stack — from someone who's built on both sides of it.

04

Cognitive Load Is a Business Metric: Why Simplicity Compounds

The behavioral economics of interface design — and why every extra click is a broken promise between you and your user.

05

Five Languages, One Calendar: How Being a Polyglot Changes How You Think About Scale

Every language I speak is a different operating system for thinking. When you build products for global users, this isn't a soft skill — it's a technical one.

06

The Market Design Problem Nobody Talks About in Platform Strategy

Two-sided markets, network effects, and liquidity traps: the econometric concepts that explain why most platform bets fail — and what the data says about the ones that don't.

07

Building for a World With AGI: A Product Manager's Ethical Checklist

When the product you're building might be the last version of that product humans build alone, the questions you ask in your PRD start to matter differently.

08

Hyperloop, Hype, and Honest Roadmapping: What MIT Taught Me About Ambition

Co-leading the MIT Hyperloop team wasn't just an exercise in transportation futurism. It was a live lesson in the gap between vision and execution — and how to bridge it with data.

09

Gardens as Models: What Growing Things Teaches You About Product Iteration

From the botanical gardens of San Francisco to the terraces of Dushanbe — slowness, seasonality, and the deep patience of perennials. A meditation on iterative growth.

Deeper reads

When 800 words isn't enough to say what needs to be said.

I

Economics of Attention

The Econometrics of Human Attention: Why CTR Is a Broken Signal and What to Measure Instead

A deep-dive into why the click-through rate became the de facto currency of digital advertising — and why its reign should end. Drawing on advertising science, behavioral economics, and a decade of platform product experience.

Coming soon
II

Language & Intelligence

Can a Language Model Be Multilingual in the Way a Person Is? On Translation, Cognition, and AGI

What it means to truly think in five languages — not translate between them. A personal exploration of linguistic relativity and what it implies for building AI that understands human culture, not just human text.

Coming soon

Shorter thoughts
on Threads & Instagram

Day-to-day observations on product, AI, markets, and the occasional garden update.

Follow on Threads @tajnargis Instagram @tajnargis