Abolfazl Mokhtari (ابوالفضل مختاری)
Welcome to my personal digital garden.
I am a PhD student in Seismotectonics and Engineering Geology, focusing on fault mechanics, seismotectonics, and structural dynamics (specifically researching the complex multi-segmented Kuhbanan Fault).
Beyond geosciences, I am an explorer driven by curiosity across several interdisciplinary domains:
- Systems Thinking & Mental Models: Understanding how complex, non-linear dynamics govern nature, cognition, and organizations.
- The Neuroscience of Learning & Meta-Learning: Evidence-based instructional design, durable learning (Learning that lasts), and constructing friction-free knowledge architectures for neurodivergent and ADHD minds.
- Artificial Intelligence & Autonomous Agents: Exploring LLMs, agentic workflows, and automated knowledge curation.
- Music Theory & Guitar: The structural geometry of acoustics, modes, and harmonic systems.
The Guiding Philosophy: Be Zircon
In geology, the zircon crystal ($\text{ZrSiO}_4$) is Earth’s oldest surviving witness ($4.4\text{ billion years}$ old). It endured not by absorbing everything around it, but by strictly rejecting lead ($\text{Pb}^{2+}$) while locking in uranium decay clocks with mathematical purity.
In a world overwhelmed by informational noise and shallow summaries, I apply this mineral metaphor to learning:
- Via Negativa: Subtraction before addition. Defining what not to read is the first prerequisite of intellectual autonomy.
- Crystal Learning: Concepts must interlock into a resilient mental lattice rather than accumulating as loose piles of sand.
- Biological Pacing: Real competence demands incubation, sleep, and time—resisting the illusion of compressed, instant mastery.
Feel free to browse my writings in the Archives or explore by Tags.