Descartes and the Thinking Machine: AI and Human Cognition
What Descartes believed about thinking, and what today’s AI systems can teach us about how human minds actually work.
Working titlePhilosophy
Where I learned to ask better questions.
Articles, notes and papers in progress on thinking, technology and the people who use it.
Papers in progress.
More papers on the way.
I write where philosophy meets technology and product. Want to know when a new paper is out?
Notify meArticles and notes.
Fourteen pieces on demos, standups, roadmaps, AI and the people side of product.
MAY 2026
Exorcising the Demo Demon (A Survivor's Guide)A demo that fell apart live, and the habits, staging environments, deploy windows, video backups, that keep it from happening again.
JAN 2026
Why We Should All Do Daily StandupThree-plus years, seven teams, and every standup cadence imaginable, what actually makes the daily standup worth keeping.
NOV 2025
How One-on-Ones Changed My Career as a Product Manager (and Why You Need Them Too)From dreading one-on-ones as a chore to running them as the highest-leverage half hour in the week.
JUN 2025
Who Are the Real Winners of the New AI Wave?On AI product management vs. AI for product management, and a step-by-step walkthrough of vibe-coding a real MVP.
MAY 2025
Yes, Empathy Belongs in the War RoomEmpathy toward users, the business, your team, and your developers, and how it built a document an ML engineer actually thanked me for.
MAR 2025
"I Think," "I Feel," "I Hope": Why Product Managers Must Be AssertiveWhy hedged language quietly costs product managers credibility with engineers, executives, and customers alike.
APR 2024
How to Write a Product RoadmapFeature-based, goal-oriented, or strategic, the three shapes a roadmap can take, and how to build one.
MAR 2024
A Product Manager's Guide: Essential Documents for Crafting Successful Case StudiesThe seven documents worth preparing before you build a case study, problem statement through project plan.
OCT 2023
Empowered Teams: The Key to Unlocking Product Excellence and Accelerated GrowthDelivery teams, feature teams, empowered teams, why the difference comes down to trust, not budget.
SEP 2023
Navigating a PM's Thought Process: Suggesting Amazon FeaturesA structured walkthrough of a real product problem, clarify, segment, prioritize, worked in real time.
AUG 2023
Cracking the Code of Effective Product StrategyWhy most companies struggle to build a real product strategy, and what separates the ones that don't.
AUG 2023
Unlocking Product Excellence: A Journey from Ideation to InnovationWhy the traditional ideation-to-deployment pipeline breaks down, worked through with a fictional PM named Jacob.
AUG 2023
Riding on the Wings of Chaos as a Product Manager: What I Would Do if I Was on the NairaLand Team in 2023Twitter's chaos era pushed the spotlight onto an older, quieter platform, what I'd do with it as PM.
JUN 2023
Go-To Market Strategy: Chaka as a Case StudyA full GTM teardown of Nigerian investment platform Chaka, value prop, pricing, competitors, and a rebooted strategy.
Degree
BA Philosophy
University
University of Ibadan
Path
Direct Entry, finished in three years
Why philosophy.
I studied philosophy at the University of Ibadan, coming in through Direct Entry and finishing in three years. People still ask why a product manager studied philosophy. The honest answer is that I didn’t choose it for a career. I chose it because I wanted to understand how people think, what makes an argument hold, and why we believe what we believe.
It turned out to be the best training I could have had for building products.
What it taught me.
Ask the question behind the question
A feature request is rarely the real need. Philosophy trains you to keep asking why until you reach the assumption underneath. Most of my best product decisions started there.
An argument is only as good as its evidence
A product spec is an argument: here is the problem, here is why it matters, here is what we should do. I write them the way I learned to write essays, with every claim earning its place.
Ethics is part of the work
Building with AI means making choices about people’s data, trust and livelihoods. Thinking carefully about right and wrong is not a side topic. It is the job.
Be comfortable not knowing
Philosophy rarely hands you a final answer. That patience with open questions is what lets me explore a problem properly before rushing to a solution.
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”Socrates, in Plato’s Apology
Where it shows up.
In my product work
It shows up as research before roadmaps, and as products built for the people actually using them. At Termii, that meant questioning the industry assumption that every customer has an email address, and building Termii Engage around how African businesses really identify their customers.
In my teaching
It shows up as questions before answers. My students at AltSchool Africa learn to reason through a problem, not just follow a framework.
In my life
It shows up as curiosity. About games, about anime, about people, and about how things could be better than they are.
Still a student.
I am now studying for a Professional MBA in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Ibadan School of Business, adding the language of strategy and operations to the habits philosophy gave me. Philosophy taught me how to think. Product taught me how to ship. I am still learning both.