What’s the point of giving it your all?

Of building something from 0 to 1, only to realize the idea you thought was uniquely yours has already lived in the minds of others—ten years ago, or more? The old saying “everything has been done before” is hitting me hard lately. I started down a path thinking I was the first, only to discover I was retracing a well-worn road. The disappointment is sharp.

We live in the so-called age of “think different.” But somehow, we’re more conformed than ever. Ideas don’t branch out—they converge. At one time, I believed I had ideas worth pursuing. And maybe I still do. But lately, everything I start feels like déjà vu. Already done. Already dusted.

Just Dance

The cold truth? Almost everything is a remix. Nearly all of what we do is built on top of something else. Sure, there are true 0-to-1 leaps. But even those stand on the shoulders of giants.

I was watching an interview with Tim Sweeney—the creator of Unreal Engine. His passion was palpable. He talked about writing real-time rendering fog for games, breaking down the math behind it. He said it took him 30 hours of programming to make it feel just right. It was genius work, and no one knew it was happening at the time. He was deep in it. Creating. Alone.

The Gap

After watching that, I had a moment of self-doubt: Could I write fog rendering code now that I’ve seen this explanation? No. Not even close. There are people out there who can intuitively model reality—physics, light, geometry—and bring it into being.

That got me thinking about my own field: Data Analysis. In a way, it’s the same. Our job is to approximate reality—to model processes, make predictions, find insights. But while I’m good at applying understanding, there’s still a layer of physical or conceptual modeling that I haven’t mastered.

And here’s the truth: most people are in the same boat. We’re often handed a cross-section of knowledge—just the solution, not the foundation. And that’s not a flaw. That’s just… the gap. Between what we do and what we could do if we had the time, the base, the system.

Don’t Stop

Eventually, even Tim slows down. The people who blaze new trails—they all do. But the act of translating the universe into a system that almost resembles truth? That doesn’t stop. And increasingly, it won’t be just us doing it.

Lately, I’ve been hearing more and more about AGI and ASI—Artificial General Intelligence, Artificial Super Intelligence. These systems are coming, if they’re not already here in fragments. They’ll model reality more completely than we ever could. They’ll compute with precision, without rest, without limit.

But here’s the catch: they’ll never be human.

They won’t know what it’s like to be scared. To try and fail. To build something you thought was original, only to realize it wasn’t. They’ll know physics, logic, patterns—but not what it means to be us.

And maybe that’s the whole point. Maybe that’s what we bring to the table.

So I say: keep going.
Rebuild the same idea a thousand times.
Write your version of it. Shape it with your hands.

Even if it’s been done.
Especially if it’s been done.

Because you haven’t done it yet.