This newsletter is an experiment to organize share thoughts and experiences on some of the things I done, written, tried.
The list below is not very exhaustive, nor very well categorized, but it is backdrop and framework for the kinds and some highlights of things, other than my work, that I have spent a lot of time and effort on. For work stuff, see the Resource Vision, and BASE2 Last Meter perspectives. (Scroll horizontally on mobile.)
Travel | Music | Cognition | Running | Other Themes |
---|---|---|---|---|
Overland London to IND | Classical piano performance | Transcendental Meditation | SF Marathon | Language |
Overland Geneva to NPL | Orchestral conducting | BA Sanskrit | Burning Man 50k | Science |
Long-hike routes NPL | Kagyu Tradition | Double Dipsea Trail | Economics | |
Long-hike routes GBR | Rocky Mountain Shambhala | Film | ||
Cycling SE, NO Kiruna, Lofoten | Rhode Island Zen | Technology | ||
Nat Cycle Routes CHE | Community | |||
Nat Cycle Routes GBR | ||||
Cycling USA Catskills, Rockies | ||||
Alt communities GBR, US, SE | ||||
Kayak London to Oxford |
Most of the things above have gone differently than expected, sometimes worse, sometimes better, and almost all of it feels like work in progress. For myself, what I want directly out of organizing it a bit is to review that progress, and get a better sense of what is worth developing further.
And by sharing it, at least I hope to get comments by others who have relevant things to say, possibly similar experiences and interests, and ideally to find collaborators and fellow-travellers for further exploration and development.
If I was to summarize a unifying feature of my interests on an abstract level, I guess it's the emergence of life, wholes, value from inert, separate, valueless entities: I have looked at this in terms of cognition, language, music, science.
I definitely believe this studying this transcendence and seeing it as the way in which meaning is formally generated—which I think is a maybe a special subset of system emergence that brings subjectivity into play—is the science of the future.
If guess to summarize on a more concrete level, I feel distress and alarm at solely materialized, linearized, externalized concepts of human wellbeing: produce this, consume that, adopt such a role, and XYZ will happen. Particularly since it seems to be so defective: lifespans go up, but people are still unhappy; material satisfactions increase, but risk of planetary harm and massive destruction of nature is ongoing.
Gradually I feel more equivocal about materialized, linear concepts of wellbeing over time, in part because I accept they are necessary and practical and I am responding to their excess perhaps. Or maybe be just standards are slipping. Either way, I would love if we organized society, relating, and human development around more transcendent processes and goals, without departing, in fact while deepening, our scientific and technical capacities. I want to contribute a bit to that.
For newsletter #1 content, see the contents page.
For newsletter #2, here's the planned content (scroll horizontally on mobile):
REFLECTIONS | TRAVELS | NOTES | EXTRA |
---|---|---|---|
The states of tech | Travels in health | Cooking for non-beginners | AI and harm |
GPT-3 and Science Progress | Burning Man 50k Ultra x2 | YouTube is the best teacher | |
Engagement vs Personhood | Namo Buddha Pt 2 | Playlists vs Albums |
This site will become better organized and tagged over time, which may help you find interesting things. If you see anything you are interested in, or you want to explore or share anything related to the stuff listed above or any of the pages here, subscribe and jump into the Discord server, or contact me directly on email.
If you wonder why this is a pay newsletter, it's partly because it helps me make it a stable product not just transitory opinions. But mainly I think it's because I'd rather have a smaller more focussed conversation with visible people that really want to engage in the content, than a more performative, broadcast-oriented relationship with a more anonymous audience. This might change later.
If you like the content, but don't want to pay, as for the other perspectives newsletters (inspired by Sam Harris content pricing strategy), email me to say why, and what we should talk about it, and we'll work it out.