Consensus

April 17, 2026
By Aathreya Kadambi

Today I decided to visit a tea shop in West Berkeley called Blue Willow Teaspot. The atmosphere is super nice and they have all the equipment to make great tea. A bartop counter and shared tea spaces in the front give it the vibe of a bar, while the tables with surrounded by a bookshelf simultaneously give it the vibe of a cafe. Electric kettles are everywhere, along with refillable teacups. And I got a bunch of extra tea at closing time.

And generally speaking, I was watching a real critiquing Bay area residents for trying too hard to be morally right, and realized that in some sense part of my problem is always trying to abstractify life. I think this is a way in which I’ve sort of been trained to think.

I often try to think about morality or ethics and such things, but maybe it’s all pointless to think about until a situation arises where I can use my theoretical frameworks for actual good. Otherwise, maybe such abstractions are really just distractions from actually living life in some sense.

Before I reached such a consensus though, I was thinking about this game theoretic approach to ethics: any game can formulate “ethics” needing Pareto efficiency along with a functional on the Pareto frontier, and life can in many ways be viewed as a game.

I was trying to use these ideas to defend against silly arguments that I saw, and also as a way of challenging individual rationality in the face of improvements gained from collaboration.

But in the end, I realized I’m probably overthinking it all. I was trying to be more intentional with my life, but somehow I will need to practice this through my actions rather than my logic.