Meaningness

The karmic traditions developed this most completely and thoroughly. You don't need to buy into the supernatural claims to benefit from them. A great starting point can be Shinzen Young's The Science of Enlightenment and/or Sam Harris's Waking Up. After that, you might look into Why Buddhism is True or The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali or Mindfulness in Plain English. The Healthy Gamer Youtube channel also has great videos going into this and how they tie into psychology. David Chapman's https://meaningness.com/ is also pretty great.

Yeah. Other LessWrong posts are usually great. I recommend almost everything at http://slatestarcodex.com, http://ribbonfarm.com, http://meaningness.com and other insight sinks.

The author of the book (of which this is a part) seems to have put a fair amount work into it: http://meaningness.com/#contents If the rest of the content is even half as good as this, it's well worth the read.

Not a classic nor even something that's stood the test of time nor even something that's done yet, but I've been interested in David Chapman's stuff https://meaningness.com/ https://meaningness.com/eggplant https://meaningness.com/further-reading (some of his influences and suggestions for reading, much of which is philosophy or philosophy-adjacent) Mental models are one of his primary focuses (especially in In the Cells of the Eggplant). (He has a background in formal AI and a longtime academic interest in how an AI, or a human, could usefully model and act in the world. More recently he's been a serious student and practitioner of some less-well-known-to-English-speakers sorts of Buddhism, which he mostly tries to describe to his website readers from a secular, naturalist perspective.) I appreciate that he's kind, curious, thorough, intelligent, and eclectic. I sometimes think I'll be doing well if I get to 30% of his attainment in any of these areas!

Not knowing what to do is a tricky problem, and lots of people seem to be suffering from it at the moment. The negative side of middle age is knowing the bad effects of things like new technologies, so finding it harder to get excited about them. I think we've destroyed lots of the support structures that at other times would have helped. So yes, first of all - it's not necessarily just you, the environment is involved too. I think there's a wise route out, and people do get there. I don't know what it is. Some things that might help in case you haven't tried: 1. Psycotherapy. Even if you don't have clinical depression, this can still be valuable. Look for a practice (better than a single person as they're vetted, can find the best person for you, and mentor each other) and words like "integrative therapy" and "transactional analysis". It can be expensive. I've a friend who goes for a few months every two years even if mentally well, as it helps. Like a very emotionally aware life coach. 2. Life changes. Things like meditation are so popular to almost be a cliche, but I think they can help. If you're more philosophical maybe things like https://meaningness.com/ will inspire more than more hippy materials. Getting just a bit healthier, sounder sleep, improved diet but do so in a simple way by following someone non-obsessive, non-fadish - I recommend podcast and books by https://drchatterjee.com/ Good luck! You're not alone.

David Chapman has a great writeup on this: https://meaningness.com/sad-light-lumens His other writing is great too, but much more philosophical which may or may not be your cup of tea.

I recommend getting a lot of really bright lights. It's the peripheral vision of brightness that seems to matter more than the temperature. https://meaningness.com/sad-light-lumens

Agree strongly on 4000 weeks, and I'm planning to check out the second one. Although I haven't personally engaged with it, David Chapman's Meaningness writings (https://meaningness.com) try to address this stuff from an analytical perspective.

You're kind of leaving out the whole "literally poisons the user or gives them cancer" part. I certainly wouldn't trade slightly better thermostats for a higher risk of heavy metals poisoning. Also LED bulbs are great – they're much more efficient, and much cheaper. They can be great for reading, you just need to get one of the correct brightness. You can even do things like https://meaningness.com/sad-light-lumens which would bankrupt you (figuratively) if you used tungsten filament bulbs. Obviously you want to get LEDs of the right hue, and LEDs tend to be a bit colder than tungsten by default. Of course the upper range of tungesten is higher but this is irrelevant for all practical purposes (unless you're staging a West End or Broadway production).

I am currently using a Fovitec Bicolor 650 LED panel - it was cheap and I am cheap. I replaced the power supply with a higher-wattage unit because it flickered at max power, that might be enough to make me not recommend it but it works for me. I previously used some adhesive LED strip lights on a 24x24 plate of aluminum. If DIY electronics are your aesthetic, go for it! See also these posts: https://meaningness.com/sad-light-led-lux https://meaningness.com/sad-light-lumens for a much more detailed writeup (no affiliation).

The theory here has similar ideas to Chapman's classic: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths The main argument is that (sub)cultures have to do at least some gatekeeping to stand a chance of not dissolving into the mainstream, and being replaced by "$thing lite" that's more amenable to the average passer-by.

I mean there's https://meaningness.com/ which is pretty central in post-rationalist thought if you ask me, but maybe it's less central these days.

This concept is obviously intended for a broader writ but I love the way this plays with the yesterday-surfaced SICP/Sussman video's spontaneous crisis of the late 1990s which changed the way computer engineering needed to be taught: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34657535 It also matches reasonably well to the concept of nebulosity and the ways it complicates modernity from David Chapman: https://meaningness.com/nebulosity Importance of "container" takes on more importance in our ideal conceptions with liquid.

I came across this a while back, and it seems like it might be worth a try: “LED lighting is improving rapidly. You can install very bright lights for treating seasonal affective disorder (SAD) easily and inexpensively. Common sense says that will be more effective than commercial SAD lights that are much less bright. My experience confirms this.” https://meaningness.com/sad-light-led-lux

“Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution” — https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths SBF definitely seems like a sociopath in this model. BTW: the best criticism I have read on Effective Altruism is: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/criticism-of-criticism-of-critic…

David Chapman, hands down. The kind of insights I get reading his pieces can't be found anywhere else on the internet: https://meaningness.com

I've got two IKEA FLOAT Led panels on my ceiling, each 2400 lumen. The panels can be adjusted in Kelvin (2200 to 4000) and are dimmable, so when it's evening and I need to get some work done I turn them a lot more yellow to not mess with my sleep rhythm. I find making the room very bright helps a lot with waking up and focus, compared to when I had only one or two bulbs as lighting. It does take some getting used to as some have already pointed out here. I've seen more people interested in this topic so I'm adding some recent links I've came across: https://www.benkuhn.net/lux/ https://blog.plover.com/tech/corn-bulbs.html https://meaningness.com/sad-light-lumens

I look this post up and re-read it every now and then. Not it 100% fits my real-world experience, but has definitely fit some cases to a T. https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths > Creators and fanatics are both geeks. They totally love the New Thing, they’re fascinated with all its esoteric ins and outs, and they spend all available time either doing it or talking about it. > Mops also dilute the culture. The New Thing, although attractive, is more intense and weird and complicated than mops would prefer. Their favorite songs are the ones that are least the New Thing > The sociopaths quickly become best friends with selected creators. They dress just like the creators—only better. They talk just like the creators—only smoother.

People with nice haircuts that produce nice looking documents and talk to the government for funding. If the money funds technology that is still great! But be very careful when a subculture becomes a platform for organizers who never did the actual work. Be it art or code or whatever. The majority of people might have the best intentions. The fear though is that we have here a nice breeding ground for sociopathic behavior in the open source space (for a narrow definition of sociopathic: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths).

This is a great take. I'd recommend you read this text, or skim it, to see what happened with NFTs https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths Basically sociopaths have taken over the space and they are promoting absolute crap. BUT There is real art and artists in the space if you take your time to look for it. Look at - https://www.fxhash.xyz/ - you'll see a remarkable thing: real innovation, Generative Art being placed right onto the blockchain. Something that would be very hard to monetize only 2 years ago is now a liquid permissionless marketplace for Generative Artists to experiment. It's like shadertoy has become an art market. You can now spend your days experimenting with shader art and make real money. That's incredible to me.

The collapse of organized religion in the 20th century has left many people spiritually alone with the great difficulties of life. A caring god, and a church of fellowship can be great supports. https://meaningness.com/nihilism https://meaningness.com/nihilist-apocalypse

What you're describing reminds me a lot of the following: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

Yes, his writings are very interesting. I believe his two main sites are https://vividness.live/ https://meaningness.com/

The Amazon takeover ruined it for me. It followed the now-familiar 'geeks, mops, and sociopaths' trajectory from there.[] [] https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths Instead of reviews and recommendations from other bibliophiles, it's filled with mass-market Amazon-quality reviews. The fantasy genre there became dominated by romance for a while, with no ability for me to filter down based on criteria like 'Ignore ratings and reviews from anyone who gave Twilight a 4+ star review'.

I can only speak for myself, but to me Bitcoin exists in a weird space where it's both 1) a legitimately interesting piece of technology that a "hacker" should find interesting, and 2) a magnet for hucksters and pseudo-philosophers to hype up as the way of the future and profit (ethically or not) without understanding or caring about what's happening technically. When I see many people who fit into bucket 2), it makes me not want to spend any more time around the Bitcoin community. Maybe that's a shame. I'd probably be more willing to put up with 2) if I thought 1) was super interesting, but I'm not that excited about it, for whatever reason. Alternatively, if you subscribe to the "geeks, mops, and sociopaths" theory of subcultures [1], Bitcoin seems to me to be well into the "mops and sociopaths" part. [1] https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

> And lets face it, people like me, you and most others here are the extreme minority in computing. Yesterday one of KDE devs posted an article mentioning this sort of phenomenon and linked to an article depicting it in full[1]. And now that you mention Plan 9 it makes me think, because I always dreamt about Plan9 taking over the world and becoming big and everyone using it, but Plan9 is so great because it has never left the 'geek' circle, while others like Linux (and arguably the BSDs, to a lesser extent) already had. [1] https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

I bounced a bunch of times too for similar reasons. Is it worth checking out? emphatic yes Summarize? I will try, and probably not do a great job; I'm still digesting it. The world is both "nebulous" [1] and patterned; observed patterns aren't really out there so much as a combination of "there" and in our mind. Some of these patterns are incredibly useful. One pattern is "the rational / modern world view", which lets science work. It is very good, but not complete. Post-modernism noticed that no pattern is a perfect fit on the partially-nebulous world, and went nowhere with that, and ended up in a nihilistic, bad place. That isn't good. The goal is to see patterns as useful, conventional truths, not ultimate truths. Then you can pick the right pattern / conceptual framework with which to approach a given situation. [1] https://meaningness.com/nebulosity

It's a feedback loop though, whatever comes next will draw the crowds, which will draw loud voices, which will draw capitalists to form a structure (and career) out of it. There was a great essay on this topic that shows up here from time to time, using slightly different words: https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths.

One of my favorite pieces when it comes to community commercialization: "Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution" https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

To me, David Chapman's writing under Meaningness is somewhere in that direction: https://meaningness.com