How to Host a 2-Hour Cocktail Party: A 2-Minute Summary From Nick Gray's Best-Selling Book
https://xaxel.cc/the-two-hour-cocktail-party-nick-gray-summary.html
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Wrote down some notes on Hayley Campbell’s book "All the Living and the Dead".
https://xaxel.cc/all-the-living-and-the-dead-hayley-campbell-summary.html
Wrote down some notes on The Power of Moments by Chip & Dan Heath
https://xaxel.cc/power-of-moments-chip-dan-heath-summary.html
“The Power of Moments” by Chip Heath & Dan Heath (personal notes)
Here are my notes on Chip & Dan Heath’s The Power of Moments. — Life is measured in moments. (× Tiny Experiments) Moments give shape to time. A few minutes can change a life. Understand when special moments are needed.* Mark special occasions with a special moment. Transitions, decisions, milestones. Couch to 5k: many milestones. (Same for Duolingo, drum textbooks, etc. — × Tiny Experiments) — “many intermediate “finish lines””. You can deliberately create moments with people. Terminal cancer patient organizing special dinners with each of his close friends. Create your perfect days. Plan in your perfect days. “I experienced more Perfect Moments and Perfect Days in two weeks than I had in the last five years, had my life continued the way it was going before my diagnosis. […] **If I told you to aim to create 30 Perfect Days, could you? How long would it take? Thirty days? Six months? Ten years? Never? I felt like I was living a week in a day, a month in a week, a year in a month.” (× Waking Life) “I was blessed. I was told I had three months to live“ (O’Kelly, Chasing Daylight) Novelty slows down time. This is why time goes faster as we age. Deliberately plan in new experiences – to age slower. Set regular big goals/projects! Live big! Moments make a decision official. Moments make a transformation official. Make a moment to mark your transition to others — for there to be a “before” and an “after”. Team meeting to apologize as a boss, to allow to call out on bad behaviour and distinguish between “old me” and “new me”. Create a reset point (make a moment) for others to notice change. — or nudge them to behave differently. Moments signify a transformation to your subconscious (× symbolic rituals (Psycho-Cybernetics)) – cf Hero’s Journey (The Hero With a Thousand Faces). Treasure chest: collection of artefacts of the moments that defined us (× “thousand of meaningless things filled with meaning for someone unknown” (All The Living and The Dead)) Defining moments can be positive (pride) or negative (humiliation, anger, trauma, etc. – × Tyrone (Kitchen Confidential)) Moments of pride are moments that define us – moments of achievement, courage. EPIC: Elevation (boost sensory appeal — nice dinner, massage, environment, etc.), Pride, Insight (Self-insight), Connection Elevation Break the script. (Surprise — × Made to Stick (unexpected)) “Infrequently enough that it is unexpected.” (× Debt (irregularity in gifts for reciprocity)) Don’t break the script consistently – or the delight becomes an expectation. Add randomness. Loyalty card schemes are the opposite – the gift is expected. (Also “Employee of the Month” — programmatic) Peaks are rare because it’s usually no one’s job to create a peak. (You are required to “do your job” – it’s optional to make something extraordinary out of it.) Peaks and exceptional experiences as things “people didn’t have to do”. Pret A Manger: discretionary free drinks/food to give away – employee decides which customers to gift to (× BG). Employees are given agency – a boon in a world of rules. Humanity towards employees and in turn towards customers. Southwest Airlines: second mission (circle) “Have fun at work” Redesign experiences that suck. MRI machines for kids as “hollowed-out canoe – hold still so it won’t tip over” (immersively). Transforming pits into peaks. Focus on making extraordinary experiences rather than fixing mediocre experiences. (Offence, not just defence.) Focussing on extraordinary experiences to a few rather than trying to please everybody (Rent-A.) Knowing who’s not your core audience to satisfy – skimping on your non-core-audience. “Reduce negative variance and increase positive variance.” Beware “Couldn’t we just…? – compromising for mediocrity. × De-Growth: unscalable, personalized, human practices. Raise the stakes (add positive pressure): competition, game, performance, deadline, public commitment. Pride Recognition best practices: spontaneous (unscheduled) and about a specific behaviour. Personal, not programmatic (“Employee of the month”). (Symbolic, witty) Gifts of recognition: pair of headphones for a good listener, etc. 360 reviews – from managers, peers and subordinates – to assess how someone is perceived in a company. Rule of thumb for the extraordinary: people pull out their phone camera. Milestone effect: people push to reach a milestone (finish before a mark). Insight Lead to own insight. (× Made to Stick) Don’t tell, don’t show me – let them realize. Make it their own insight. Don’t start with solutions, but dramatize, stage the problem – for self-insight. Make the abstract concrete. Donations helping something specific and concrete (× Made to Stick) – getting a personal message back from what the donations enabled. Accomplishment journal (partnered goals — × Tiny Experiments) Father to daughter at dinner table every week: “What did you guys fail at this week?” “If we had nothing to tell him, he’d be disappointed.” (× Improvise) We fail when we don’t try something we want to do (rather than not achieving the right outcome) “To produce moments of self-insight, we need to stretch: placing ourselves in new situations that expose us to the risk of failure.” Mentors can help us stretch further than we thought we could. Surface hidden accomplishments. (Walked the distance across India) You can get over any fear. (Exposure therapy — also × CZC (though there it was more about changing one’s relationship to fear)) Two hours to get arachnophobes to touch a tarantula. Preloading. Planning the next day lets you notice ways to optimize it ahead of time, sleeping over it. Role-play. Don’t just read about it. (e.g. conflict de-escalation; emergency response) Connection Home visits of teachers to parents. “What matters to me” prompt to patients, for their well-being in the hospital. Baggage-handling, not baggage-ignoring: in customer support, acknowledge past calls & difficulties. Humour defuses. Teambuilding: create a synchronized moment, invite shared struggle, connect to meaning. Role-play collaboration (e.g. pit stop crew) Passion vs purpose Interesting to me vs gives meaning to life (contributes to others). Five Why’s can help go from passion to purpose (Cleaning hospital rooms because my boss tells me to … because it keeps patients happy) Relationships don’t automatically deepen with time. (e.g. small talk with cousins at Thanksgiving) (Though: time spent together forges friendship) Meetings can be alive. “People hate meetings because emotion is deliberately squeezed out. But this is a choice, not an inevitability. You can just as easily conduct a meeting that has drama, meaning, and connection.” Brave plant. When running a meeting, have a plant that asks a tough question — to allow others to do the same. (× Nudge) Regrets of the dying: “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.” “I wish that I had let myself be happier.” What would you do if you knew you would not live until 40? “…the whiplash cause by realizing they could ACT and then willfully jolting their lives in a new direction. They were not receiving a moment, they were seizing it.”
Some notes on Chip & Dan Heath's book "Made to Stick"
“Made to Stick” by Chip Heath & Dan Heath (personal notes)
Here are my notes on Chip & Dan Heath’s excellently written, riveting book Made to Stick. — You can make ANYTHING punchy and interesting. E.g. popcorn fat. Urban Legends don’t need repeating. If you have to repeat the message, the message isn’t sticky enough. Stickiness can be used for good or evil. Bad ideas become viral because they stick. To unsticky: fight sticky with stickier. SUCCESs (when phrasing a message or story) Simple (× The Laws of Simplicity) Simple is stickier. The more we reduce the amount of information in an idea, the stickier it will be. Single message: “You can’t have five North Stars” Go to the core of the idea. Prune until you reach the core. (× Creative Being — remove to perfection) A clear core mission simplifies every decision. (× Clear Thinking, Essentialism) “We are THE low-fare airline.” Concentric circles/missions. The next circle being “Have fun at work.” Inverted pyramid. Put the lead first. (Journalists) Start your story with the most important information — then continue by decreasing order of importance. Also helps prune quickly if running out of space — just remove the end (the least important). Spend 80% of your efforts on the lead. Commander’s Intent (× Culture Map (holistic cultures)): goal for the action (becomes more concrete as you go down the hierarchy). “To do X in order to do Y.” When X is made impossible, you know to become creative to do Y. More good choice is less good choice. Irrelevant uncertainty: two good alternatives and you’re more likely to pick the bad one. Unexpected Use surprise — an emotion whose function is to increase alertness and cause focus — to grab people’s attention. All emotions have a purpose. The purpose of surprise is to jolt us to attention. (Surprise: eyebrows going up, widening are eyes to see better — as opposed to anger: narrowing our eyes so we can focus on a known problem.) To get attention: Go off the script. Break a pattern. (× hospitality) — the stuff that humanity is made of. (× The Erotic Mind (break character); Improvise (Authenticity: Do not plan, do not have a script); Improvise (“If you do something weird, I’ll do something weirder”); Tiny Experiments (breaking the game, asking users how to monetize)) (× Enclave mini-van car safety ad; + “Didn’t see that one coming? No one ever does” — × let people come to the conclusion themselves, experience the insight for themselves) (× Gal.) (× Liberators International; FIT (Ekman); The Statement (Crystal Pite); Bad Nature; asking out directly instead of playing games in relationships, etc.) Product design: Change something if you want the user to pay attention. (× The Design of Everyday Things) Blinking warning lights (we would tune them off if they were constantly on (or off)), two-tone sirens (and now even more complex patterns) — forestall getting used to. Find what is counter-intuitive about your message — leverage it (for surprise). Find unexpected implications. Common sense is the enemy of stickiness. (“the best customer service in industry” — make it more vivid or extreme, tell stories) Use concrete thought experiments to unexpected effect. “If everyone in the US gave up one soft drink a month, we could double our current aid to Africa.” (× The Wikipedia Move™) Surprise needs to be relevant. (Just as Simple needs to be substantial.) Surprise doesn’t last — you need to generate interest and curiosity. Post-dictable: surprising, but that, in hindsight, you could have seen coming. Open loops. Open gaps in people’s knowledge. First “Huh?”, then “Aha!”. Leverage curiosity — the intellectual need to answer questions and close open patterns. Start your class with a mystery, solve it at the end. Open loops to hold people’s interest. “What questions do I want my audience to ask?” Set the context and give people enough backstory that they start to care about the gaps in their knowledge. All sticky media relies on open loops. (× Hooked) Movies: What will happen? (also: Teasers) Mystery novels: Who did it? Sports contests: Who will win? Crosswords: What is a six-letter word for “psychiatrist”? End of chapters (or introductions). Clickbait. Flirting (× The Erotic Mind (ambivalence)) Start your message with an open loop. “This year we set out to answer a question: Why …” Concrete Use vivid, clear, concrete images. Communicate using stuff people can relate to. Talk the language of the people. “A medium-sized ‘butter’ popcorn … contains more artery-clogging fat than a bacon-and-eggs breakfast, a Big Mac and fries for lunch, and a steak dinner with all the trimmings — combined!” Use sticky analogies. Use analogies to aid understanding. “A pomelo is basically a supersized grapefruit with a very thick and soft rind.” “Automobiles are horseless carriages.” Use what people already know or are familiar with. “Basically…” In film: “high-concept pitches” (Speed is “Die Hard on a bus”, 13 Going on 30 is “Big for girls” Alien is “Jaws on a spaceship”) (× Music Menu Meeting: e.g. “Basically Animal Collective’s Strawberry Jam album but with strings” — starting from common reference points; describing as a mix of influences (cf band descriptions); describing your band by its influences when searching for band members) Starting from something existing & then editing (carving) — rather than starting from scratch (cf mixing through a bus) Generative analogies: Analogies become springboards for creative thinking. (Music making; the brain as a computer (mental models)) (× Steve Pavlina’s thought experiments) From accessible models to accurate models — adapt your mental models to be more complex but more accurate as you progress (× Design of Everyday Things (conceptual models); Design of Everyday Things (simplified models)). Make your core mission concrete. Your core mission should be able to clearly guide behaviour in unscripted situations. (“Maximize shareholder value” doesn’t help the flight attendant decide whether to serve chicken salad.) (× Measure What Matters (mission statements)) (≠ inert strategies, that do not drive action). At Disney, employees are “cast members”. (× generative analogies; To The Actor, temporary roles; Your Symphony of Selves; Improvise) — going “onstage”, wearing “costumes” (not uniforms), doing “performances” (not jobs), “auditioning for a role” (not interviewing for a job). A metaphor that can clearly guide behaviour in unscripted situations. The converse: Non-generative analogies, e.g. Subway’s “sandwich artists”. Concrete, vivid goals (for the team). Something exciting. “A pocketable radio.” “Man on the moon and back by the end of this decade” (Rather than “creating the most advanced radio”, “being the most respected manufacturer”, “beating our competitor”). Concrete goals unite teams. Convert the abstract to the concrete. Name to give life. Naming patches of land to make people care about them (× naming neighbourhoods, etc. — × Sirens of Titan (name to attach life circumstances to)); “converting abstract blobs on a map into tangible landscapes.” (× Measure What Matters (name your processes, to make them concrete), The Toyota Way (name your processes), The Art of Gathering (name well); Psychedelics Revealing (how you name it is how you think of it); Your Symphony of selves (naming your selves — and naming or renaming other people) × The Singularity is Near (different bodies to different people)) (× learning things!) Make user journeys concrete. (Role-playing a customer.) Use concrete props to symbolize. Stage the concrete. “This is the Hiroshima bomb.” Maroon portfolio. From the concrete to the abstract, referring the concrete. But you do need to first have these concrete experiences. Make it a lived experience. Brown eyes / blue eyes segregation in primary school. Reverse online dating. If teaching and you don’t know what people know, be concrete. (× The Culture Map — being explicit in cross-cultural teams). Use statistics not by themselves, but to illustrate relationships. Concrete thinking tools: “If you believe you can increase an employee’s productivity by one or two minutes a day, you’ve paid back the cost of wireless.” In proverbs, abstract truths are encoded in concrete language — because it sticks. (“A bid in hand is worth two in the bush.”) Credible Let the people test the ideas for themselves. Let the people get to the conclusion themselves (rather than pushing statistics & numbers). Make them realize. Let living proofs preach. “Every homeless man who enters the program is matched with a mentor who, two years before, was in the same situation.” Make people commit to a prediction to prevent overconfidence. Two kinds of authorities: experts and influencers (and anti-authorities — who’ve experienced it all). Influencers: we want to be like them, so we do what they do. The Sinatra Test: when one experience makes you credible for life. (e.g. having worked somewhere.) The God is in the Details. People who know a lot of details are more likely to be experts. Mention details to boost your credibility. Emotional Piggy-back on things people feel emotional about. Leverage self-interest in your communication — how your customers’ life will improve. Emphasize benefits instead of features (“what’s in it for me”). (× Nudge) “Spell out the benifit of the benefit” — not drill bits, not holes, but a way to hang their children’s pictures. Two models for making decisions (James March, Stanford): consequences, or identity. Identity: “What would someone like me do?” (also × “Texans don’t litter”, cf Nudge) We care more about an individual than about the mass. Primed to feel vs primed to calculate (e.g. relationally). Story Stories inspire to act. Something else with an S Communication Framework: Pay attention (Unexpected) Understand and remember it (Concrete) Agree/Believe (Credible) Care (Emotional) Be able to act on it (Story) Use SUCCESs for teaching. Use SUCCESs in speeches. Write SUCCESsful meeting minutes, conference summaries. Ultra-local newspaper (“names, names, names”) — updates from the community, where one knows every mentioned person. When a concept has been diluted, give it a new name. (“Honoring the Game” instead of sportsmanship, etc.) — × Art of Gathering (invent a name to remove associations)) Chapels. Ask locals to help locally, and the whole land is covered. Sweeping in front of one’s doorstep — we wouldn’t need street sweepers. Plan your days precisely. By simulating the next day, you become aware of things you might have overlooked. Meta: Elements of Book-Writing (Tiny Experiments) Start with a strong story. Use sticky mnemonics (SUCCESs, etc. — cf also “Very Few Wizards Ask Properly” (The Mom Test), etc.) Provide a clear method/framework/model, then go through each element chapter by chapter. Use cliff-hangers at the end of chapters or in the introduction of the chapter. (Open loops — build anticipation.) (× Clickbait) Have asides throughout the book (cf practical case studies (“Clinics”) in Made to Stick and Power of Moments; blurbs in I Will Teach You To Be Rich). Parallel plots. To hammer the point home. Hammer the point home with many examples and coming at it from different approaches and fields. Also stories. Funny names for ideas (The Sinatra Test) — but with reason. Short-ish chapters. (You could write a book out of standalone blog posts.) Repeatedly recall examples/concepts from the book. Ending/Epilogue: Reviewing the book somehow nostalgically or big-picture, meta talks. Even opening up onto…
Some notes on Erin Meyer's book "The Culture Map"
Some notes on Jack Morin's book "The Erotic Mind", with a playlist to boot.
“The Erotic Mind” by Jack Morin (personal notes)
Here are my notes on Jack Morin’s The Erotic Mind. And something for your M.I.N.D. ears. See also Sex Talks, Come As You Are, Feng Shui That Makes Sense. — The Erotic Mind as an encouragement to infuse sex with meaning — to deliberately infuse sex with meaning (magic401(k) sex). (Though sex is always meaningful, representative of one’s life.) The erotic landscape is large — sex is more than just the physiology of sex, or technique. ‘Eroticism’ as the world of meaning around sex; ‘eroticism’ as the interplay of sexual arousal with the challenges of living and loving. “The erotic is intricately connected with our hopes, expectations, struggles, and anxieties — everything that makes us human.” Sex is simple, eroticism is complex; sex is animal, eroticism is human. Eros is energized by the entire human drama. Eros is fueled by the energy of life itself — and thus contains a deep-rooted urge toward growth and self-affirmation. One’s “erotic truth”. The challenges of early life become the cornerstones of our eroticism. The erotic mind creatively expresses our innermost needs and potentials. Erotic peaks always reveal secrets about our idiosyncrasies, conflicts, and unresolved emotional wounds. Transform emotions & life-emotions through sex (from fear to celebration, from guilt to liberation.) Every turn-off can become a turn-on. Every turn-on, past a point, can become a turn-off. (e.g. anxiety/excitement) Arousal is the antidote to performance. Pleasure (through arousal) instead of performance. Attraction + obstacles = excitement. (e.g. physical/geographical/emotional distance, × sex drive simmer (Sex Talks)) Yearning renews passion. (“The sexual equation”) Received ambivalence increases excitement. Ambivalence is an obstacle and thereby increases excitement (hence dynamics around playing hard to get; push & pull). Resolving the other’s ambivalence can be seen as a win, a conquest (“search for power”). It’s not the ambivalence but the resolution of ambivalence that turns on — overcoming doubt. Four cornerstones of excitement: anticipation/longing, naughtiness, overcoming ambivalence, power. Longing & ambivalence are turn-ons prior to sex; power & naughtiness are turn-ons during sex. Peak turn-on experiences & fantasies. Distinct from each other, with their respective elements. Look back on peak turn-on experiences for inspiration. Fantasies provide safety & as such clearer, more direct insight into one’s turn-ons. Fantasies safeguard reality. People with no sexual outlets in fantasies (or repressed) act out in real life. Acknowledge & embrace your shadow (literally doing it is difficult, I’ve tried) to keep it in check. Integrate into daily life — don’t split off. (Argument against banning pornography — I have my subscriptions reservations.) “The shadow is darkest when we refuse to look at it.” The shadow holds the key to the whole self. “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” The fetish object is a shorthand — a focus point for arousal, potentially symbolic. Restrictions backfire (e.g. in hierarchical professional relationships) — make the illicit relationship even more exciting, steamier. Resolving problematic turn-ons results in a less exciting sex life — though more sustainable. Fixing problematic behaviour doesn’t work if it jeopardizes your meaning-making paradigm. People subconsciously resist fixing problematic behaviour if it emerged as a goal to their life story. (On why Sex Addicts Anonymous doesn’t fundamentally work, compared to Alcoholics Anonymous — life loses meaning if you take away what the sex addiction was giving it; you first need to understand and find a new meaning.) Rewrite personal history through fantasies. Get back at your wrongs in fantasy — behaving as you would. Counterbalance current reality through fantasies — exercising our power. Women generally pay more attention to the emotional context & safety in their fantasies/peak turn-ons. “Strong, yet gentle.” “I could hardly keep my pants on. But we undressed each other slowly, very tenderly, taking all the time we needed to fully enjoy every moment.” “I asked him to sleep over but said I didn’t want to have sex.” (× Pavlina) D/s relationships are empowering for both top & bottom. They tend to make both top & bottom feel powerful & validated. The bottom feels desired by the top; the top feels desired by the bottom. Submission (surrender) as disclaiming responsibility for what will follow — thereby letting us escape from sexual cultural scripts. “If I have no say over what is happening then I’m not to blame for my enjoyment. I’m just following orders.” Peak eroticism is ultra-personal — one’s erotic eccentricities and quirks are given expression. One’s ultra-personal desires are played out in unedited form. Peak eroticism is an act of self-disclosure — makes for closeness. (How to Know a Person — one’s unique sexual personality as the result of one’s entire history) CET (Core Erotic Theme) — the one common thread across all your peak turn-ons & fantasies. Usually linked to your childhood (or life story) — what you wish to affirm (or realize) through sex. “Look closely at a peak turn-on and you’ll undoubtedly sense that something close to the core your being has been touched.” Realizing one’s legend (“finishing unfinished emotional business”) through CETs (The Hero With a Thousand Faces). Understand your CET to coax it in productive ways. “When you feel an irresistible response to someone, your CET is probably being stimulated, although you may have no idea why this particular person is affecting you so strongly.” (× also import/export). CETs try to re-enact past situations (to let them play out differently). Your CET brings you towards reproducing past situations, until you resolve them differently — karmic cycle (hell) (time loops). For example, being constantly attracted to ambivalent partners. Peak turn-ons might not be the healthiest. What do your fantasies & peak turn-ons have in common? Lusty vs romantic attraction “The romantic urge aspires to personal transformation through the temporary joining of two separate beings.” Lust objectifies. Limerence idealizes. Ironically, idealization can also be a form of objectification. The other person projects a private fantasy onto you. In limerence, one is simultaneously over-receptive to the partner’s good sides & non-receptive to their bad sides. Import vs export. Attraction is made of both. Import (characteristics of the other that we lack or wish for ourselves); export (own characteristics that are appreciated and validated by the other). (Dr. Tripp — often seen on a bicycle) (“qu’importe, l’amour s’exporte”) Nurture the qualities you like by bonding with people who have them. “Through our attachments we can gradually cultivate within ourselves the very characteristics we find so appealing in our partners.” (Become rich one partner at a time.) After limerence (NRE), sex life usually flounders. The merging erases the separateness/individuality that was the base for attraction. Love-lust conflict (& love-lust overlap). Excitation + safety, for arousal. “Tantric practitioners believe that ecstasy is most likely to occur when relaxation and high states of excitement are combined.” “Relaxing into arousal.” Loss of desire is not a problem but a message. (× procrastination is the messenger (Tiny Experiments)) Stay in touch with the original attractions that brought you together in the first place. And pay attention to new sources of attraction, as the relationship evolves. Attraction’s biggest enemy is the tendency to stop paying attention. To find more turn-ons, pay more attention. “Bored lovers develop an uncanny ability to miss opportunities for surprise, usually because they stop paying attention.” Priming lets you notice more, and improvise more readily and proactively with your environment. “Inviting fuck luck.” Creating the conditions for fuck luck. Closeness is a turn-off when it becomes an obligation, or suppresses individuality (“when it threatens the separateness that is the basis of all attraction”). Secrecy (withholding important information) vs privacy (retaining individuality). Arousal/attraction as a spark — you have to be neither too close nor too far. “In both love and lust, the challenge is to find an optimal distance — neither too close nor too far.” “Companionate lovers” (very similar) — not with passionate sex, but just getting along really well (soul friends). “Warm sex.” “In most cases, an awareness of similarity is friendship, whereas an awareness of difference is passion.” Sex Talks: re-state intentions explicitly (× Sex Talks). E.g. “I value our sexual relationship so much that I’ve been thinking baout how to make it even better.” (× Culture Map) Recall (together) past peak turn-ons. Sensual touching activity (sensate focus) — goal-less, not performance-based. Reconnecting with pleasure (e.g. taking turn massaging). As an activity to counter performance pressure. Physical excitation is an aphrodisiac (anxiety, breathwork, HIIT…). Each person’s sexuality is unique. (Celebrate! Explore! Rejoice!) (× How to Know A Person) Set (specific) sex life goals (× Sex Talks). “I want to learn how to get turned on without feeling anxious”, “I want to be able to enjoy sex with someone I love”. Link your goals to successful past experiences. Focus on what you want rather than what you don’t want. 3 columns: Why I need to change (Push motivators); Potential benefits and rewards (Pull motivators); Antimotivators (fears/resistance to change) The “gray zone” (confusing transitionary periods): characterized by loss of landmarks or clear pathways; feelings of grief and loss (self-death; mourning the ego). Deliberately create a gray zone: tiny experiment a pause in your habits, or doing things differently, for a given period of time. “Emotions are the stuff of life’s inner content and the basis of its richness.” “Whether for good or ill, feelings exist to be felt.” To resist or deny our emotions is to strengthen them. Feel them (e.g. unproductive relational emotions) & move on. (Healthy) Guilt is a self-directing mechanism to live according to our values (absorbed from culture, community, self.) — orienting us away from values we differ from. Guitless people are sociopaths. Shame vs guilt (“I am bad” vs “I did something bad” — × Daring Greatly) “Guilt reveals its richest aphrodisiac potential whe it is not forgotten, but vanquished.” Children justify their parents’ behaviour (at their own expense) — e.g. deserving to be treated badly. “Among The Group, 46% reported having at least one drink before peak encounters, 14% used marijuana.” Add new self-perceptions to your identity rather than banishing old ones. (× Tiny Experiments) Investigate what turns you on. (Make it happen.) (e.g. erotic fiction, eclectic porn, and noticing what turns you on.) Remind yourself of how much you’ve wanted this. We cannot control love, but we can choose it. Love isn’t just a fall, it is also a leap. Peak turn-ons often happen on vacation — breaking the routine. Start an erotic journal. Talk about stuff. Turn setbacks into opportunities for growth. Break character. Be proactive. Try stuff.
Some very serious notes on Feng Shui, based on Cathleen McCandless's book Feng Shui That Makes Sense.
https://xaxel.cc/feng-shui-that-makes-sense-cathleen-mccandless-summary.html
“Feng Shui That Makes Sense” by Cathleen McCandless (personal notes)
Here are my notes on chop suey feng shui, based on Cathleen McCandless’s book Feng Shui That Makes Sense (see also The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up). These notes sponsored by CSS Zen Garden. Main takeaway: Feng Shui is pronounced Feng Shway. Feng Shui is right, but for the wrong reasons. (x superstitions (Skin in the Game)) If you’re not happy in your home, The Obstacle is the Feng Shui – don’t just go on Holiday. Bad Feng Shui will have you starring in a horror movie. Put plants in every corner of the room (8 total). Nurture your environment. When you reduce the stressors in your environment, you reduce the stress in your life. Principles of Mr. Feng Protect your back. Seats with backrests — not too high as to be oppressive. Beds with headboards and bardheads. House backed by a hill (else, fence, trees.) Protect your sides. Seats with armrests Watch the entrance (⌘ + POS) Clear view to the main door (e.g. sitting at the desk). Bonus point if your desk blocks the door. Bed with a view to the door but not in line with it. No bed under windows. Mirror if not possible. Have your house be slightly elevated — to be able to look over your neighbourhood. Jack up the house foundations as needed. No sharp objects. Except knives. Pointy things are dangerous and we have an aversion to them. (This is why we like wheels — and why pointing at someone is impolite.) Our survival instincts kick in because we might get hurt. Sharp corners are a no-no. Naked room corners are a no-no. Add curves. (Great life advice in general) Plants, furniture, the list goes on. Floral & non-geometric patterns. Irregularly shaped stone flooring. Place sharp-edged furniture diagonally in the corners. (Not only your subs) Makes their corners less prominent. Soften the edges. Drape the window frames. Make them magic. (Helps separating outside from outside — warms up the cold window.) Flowers along the walkway. Thorns on mute. Thorny plants are a no-no. No spikey things. No straight pathways. Meandering pathways — as in nature (river, forest paths). If your house is at the end of a T-junction or dead end, move your house. If you cannot, plant trees to the front. Principles of Mr. Shui Graft nature. Actual nature® or facsimile. Plants (or silk plants), worms (or silk worms), artwork of nature — for want of windows. Materials from nature — wood, stone, june, hemp, bamboo, cotton. Smoke weed, do shibari and brush your teeth. Woven baskets & trunks. Emphasize windows with a view to a forest, a garden or trees. Get your morning wood. Add wood décor. Change your desktop wallpaper. Watersports. Add water everywhere, talk to your landlord after. Add a river to your backyard. Mimic randomness. Shrubs at irregular intervals, based on a PRNG. Balance everything. Feng Shui like a breeze — not stuffy, not windy, just the right amount®. (× Aristotle’s golden middle) Flowing water, not stagnant water. Flowing life, not stagnant life. Just flow. Retaining balance is a dynamic, active process. Constantly overshooting and correcting (as in acrobatics) — not just “being in the middle and sitting there”. Yin&yang: each needs their opposite to exist. Seasons as different balances of yin vs yang. Summer (solstice — prevailing yang), autumn (equinox — balance), winter (solstice — yin), spring (equinox — balance) “Endlessly flowing into one another.” Like oat milk in an espresso shot. Balance your home. Home in on balance. Home too dark? Add light (in all forms — sunlight, artificial light, mirrors, bright fabrics, light-colored paintings, furniture, flooring) Areas of shade & areas of light. Hard & soft materials. Vary the topography. Practical Principles of the Feng Start outside. Work on your front door first. (× Take care of your appearance, of your looks, first.) Mind your doormat. Flowerpots on each side of your doorway. The front door should be clearly visible and obvious. Label it if not. Make it easy for guests to find your home, and entrance — give precise instructions otherwise. Prefer an easy way over the fastest way. A dead guest is not a returning guest. Impeccable front door. Finger-licking good. Distract with beauty. Plants at a distance from your electric distribution box. Have your space. Do not be forced to interact with people, to be able to enjoy interacting with people. (a.k.a. don’t work in the service industry) Protect your privacy. “When animals’ territories are encroached upon, they become aggressive.” — same for humans. (And when animals feel safe, they play — Embodied Intimacy) Close quarters require clear boundaries. The closer you are to someone, the more you should retain your sense of identity. Strong physical boundaries when forced to live close-by. The corollary: big properties don’t need hard boundaries. Decorative screens to split the space. (Just like area rugs.) Involve all five senses. (commonsense, nonsense, sense of humour, incense and sensuality) Fragrant flowers near the front door. Sprays. Essential oil diffusers. Scented candles. Deodorant. Peppermint & citrus are the more universally liked scents. “Citrus cleans the space, peppermint clears the mind. Feelable entities. River rock, pebbles, textured surfaces, “sensual foliage”. “Ugly, bad. Pretty, good.” Find the unsightly in your home. Frame it. Add sound. Portable speakers, wind chime, “gently babbling fountain”, crying toddler. Counterbalance noisy environments with controlled soft background noise. (Fight fire with fire) Add life. Trees, birds, semen. Attract animal life — bird feeders, fountains, crop circles. Add movement — wind chimes, fountains, weather vanes. Dance. Open the windows. Declutter. Out of sight is not out of mind. Keep the trash out of sight, though. Clutter is postponed decision-making. Mind your light. Natural light is better for morale. Full-spectrum artificial light comes next. Bright kitchens & yang spaces. Apply your make-up with natural light. Any color you like. (US spelling) Look in your closet for inspiration — to know which colors you wear and like most. Neutral colors yield the least fatigue. Colors found in nature are the least tiring (soft browns, greens, blues). Use colors to balance. Warm colors in cold bathrooms. Warm colors around skylight. Color samples — bring a swatch, or a piece of the furniture you’re considering buying. Have your room’s color palette at hand — to juxtapose with potential purchases. Light colors make a space bigger. Artwork with depth as well (just on one side, not on both — or it will make the space narrower.) (× room sizes) No blue in the kitchen — unappetizing, no food is blue (and certainly not blueberries). Red stimulates the appetite (among other things). Orange as well. Add accènts — red (appetizing) accents to a black&white kitchen. Balance black & white with earth tones to warm up. Artwork and furniture in proportion. Small artwork for small walls. One large piece is better than several small pieces. Artwork can be used as a visual reminder of the goals you wish to accomplish. artwork that promotes thought & creativity (fairies, angels, outer space). Inspiration for each area of your life. Enlarge your Enlarge your room: mirrors, artwork with depth. Mirrors reflecting windows add more windows. Mirrors in dark places (under the kitchen hood). Dead people Have an altar for them, rather than having mementos all over the house. (Likewise for family pictures — family altar, “a place for items that have special meaning for each family member”) Mr Feng buys a house Visit thrice — morning, midday, late afternoon — to have an accurate idea of how much sunlight & noise the house gets. Mr Shui leads the ui Entryway as transition space (for the nervous system — needs to be safe). Protected on both sides. Area rug to define the space (if no entryway strictly speaking). No windows in doors (fanlights the better option). No mirrors in front of the entrance or at the end of a hallway — feels like somebody is walking towards you. (Prefer artwork under glass.) “Bowling Alley Effect”: when you can see through the back of the house as you enter. Reduces awareness of the house itself — attention is drawn to the back. No hanging Damocles swords. Room design Public rooms at the front of the house (more easily accessible) (yang — needs more sunlight); private rooms at the back, upstairs (more protected) (yin — needs quiet). Drawing the attention up (or down) the stairs: artwork, differing color. No artwork on the stairs — dangerously distracting. Cascades of pictures accentuate the slant of the staircase. Different ceiling heights for different purposes. Large ceiling heights for large gatherings; alcoves for two people. (× density reference (Art of Gathering)) Don’t accentuate the ceiling if it’s too high. No drapes or high artwork. Dark ceilings shrink. Light ceilings enlarge. Make the room lower by painting the ceiling in a darker tone than the walls. For furniture, it’s the opposite: dark furniture looks larger, light furniture looks smaller. Slipcover sofas as needed. Lighter sides & darker wall at the end of a hallway to enlarge it. Artwork on both sides of a hallway to make it narrower. Accentuate the lower level — plants, rugs, decoration. Accentuate horizontal lines (in artwork — seascapes, landscapes). Low rooms need more skylight. Add vertical lines (in artwork — trees). Paint the ceiling (and walls) a lighter tone. Area rugs to fill empty space — if opposed to furniture. Focal points on a single or on adjacent walls — not on opposite walls. No open knife blocks or racks in the kitchen — they make it easy for burglars to steal your life. Hide work with a (shoji) screen — or cover it with a cloth. Cover large mirrors if they cover you — with a curtain. Balance bathrooms — balance the wetness with something warm. (Also in the bedroom) Warm earth tones. Minimize blue & water images. Frame your bathroom mirror to add texture. Add (fake) candles. Toilets further back when you enter the bathroom. Adds privacy. Multi-purpose rooms: sofa beds / futons (to redesign the space). Items stored away in closed containers/drawers (or tucked away) — to ease the mind. Social design Relaxed seating arrangements. Not formal. Max 2.5m apart (no large void between seating areas). (× design the space (Art of Gathering)) Round tables. Seats arranged at an angle in the seating area (on the area rug). Seats not directly facing each other — “confrontation position” (vital organs at the front of the body). If you have to, prefer a dining table to a coffee table — protecting vital organs. Sensuality: drapes, soft fabrics, candlelight or soft lights (or lights through shoji screens; salt lamps), elegant colors, relaxation, carpets, room not too large. No pictures of your uncle or your ex. Partnership: pairs of everything (in artwork, furniture — artwork that symbolizes what you want to prime). If you want to get laid, clone every item in your room. Bedroom artwork is especially effective — last thing you see, first thing you see. Future-proof long-term investments — conservative taste. Stage design / set design as feng shui — designing the space for the occasion. Compass School Feng Shui Symbols Fire: cones, pyramids, triangles (like a flame); sunset, sundown; candles, stoves. Earth: square, cubes, rectangles; mountains, deserts; granite, porcelain. Metal: circles, arches, ovals; silver, gray, white, pastel colors; metal furniture & items (bowls, sculptures, picture frames, trays, décor, candlesticks). Metal is the element of children, creativity, creation. Direct water towards your home rather than away from it. (If you have a water fountain ( with water in it)) Space clearing & house blessings (× Psycho-Cybernetics) — also as a ritual (× drugs, Tiny Experiments); when ringing in a new period in a place (move of new roommates — clearing previous roommates’ energy — setting a new intention for the place). Manipulate a space’s energy with sound. Clear a space with sound. Elevate the energy of a room with sound. “A room remembers the energies that have been there — it stays in the walls, the furniture, the air.” “Paraphrasing with quotation marks is misleading.” (× Dose of Pleasure “activations”) A space clearing erases an energy imprint; a house blessing creates an energy imprint. First have a clean slate, before you can start painting. Incense, songs. “A home is a home when it shelters the body and comforts the soul.” (Phillip Moffitt) (alternatively, home is wherever I’m with you) Counseling: ask about vision & dreams, when the current state sucks.
Wrote down some notes on Rob Fitzpatrick's The Mom Test: https://xaxel.cc/mom-test-rob-fitzpatrick-summary.html
Published some notes on "Tiny Experiments" by Anne-Laure Le Cunff
https://xaxel.cc/tiny-experiments-anne-laure-le-cunff-summary.html
Jotted down some notes on Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near. With a music playlist to boot!
https://xaxel.cc/singularity-is-near-ray-kurzweil-summary.html
“The Singularity is Near” by Ray Kurzweil (personal notes) ♫
Here are my sparse notes on Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near, a short book on technology, progress, the future, and… even beyond that. I put together a playlist themed around the book, you can listen to it here. — The Power of an Idea — for whatever challenge we face, there is an idea that will enable us to prevail. We can find that idea — and when we find it, we need to implement it. The Power of an Idea — this is itself an idea. Clarke’s Three Laws (Arthur C. Clarke, SF author, from his essay) (1) (If an elderly scientist says something is possible, it is. If he says it is impossible, it’s very probably possible.) (2) Venture past the impossible to know the limits of the possible. “The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.” Use all of the space of the possible. (× know the boundaries to use up all the space (Essentialism); experiment past the boundaries of your taste (Creative Being)) (3) Advanced technology is magic. “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Unitarian universalist church: spending six months in a religion, then moving on to the next. Paradigm-surfing. (× ergodicity experiment (Skin in the Game), × 30-day experiments (Pavlina), × Life curriculum) “Many paths to the truth” — that all religions ultimately point at the same thing; that you can notice the pattern across all religions; that in this pattern is the meaning. “Illuminating inconsistencies.” Linear vs Exponential; S-Curves Two types of curves: Linear Constant added with each period Exponential Value multiplied by a constant (“rate”, “exponent”) with each period. Straight line on a logarithmic plot Logarithmic plot: a plot with a logarithmic scale on one or both axis/axes. Logarithmic scale: scale where equal distance is multiplication by a constant. Logarithmic scales are great to: Display data across orders of magnitude (otherwise, small numbers would be invisible) Map exponential curves into straight lines “Knee of the curve”: part of the exponential curve where the accelerating returns become noticeable. “The bulk of the damage happens in the last few minutes.” Exponential curves start slow — seem to be barely accelerating, grow slower than linear curves. “It can seem so flat and slow that it looks like no trend at all.” Exponential curves can be below linear curves for a long time. Linear extrapolation fallacy: we think exponential trends are linear because they look linear when examined for a brief period. The counterpart: overestimating exponential growth (Internet bubble, telecom bubble). Speculation has no affect on the exponential growth — the latter was unaffected by the bubble exploding. A trend can grow slower than an exponential one, yet also be exponential. Double exponential growth: when the exponent also grows exponentially. S-Curves (Lifecycle of a Paradigm) A specific paradigm generates exponential growth until its potential is exhausted — forms an S-Curve (an exponential curve with an end)) An exponential curve can be made of successive S-curves — each taking less time and going higher. (Technological progress can be seen as a succession of S-Curves (of each successive paradigm)) Paradigm shifts are happening faster and faster (World Wide Web, GPT) S-Curve your life. Life as a series of S-Curves. Make exponential decisions! Stages of technology Stages of New Technology Ideation Invention Further development Maturity (integrated in society) False pretenders Dethronement Obsolescence Technology starts extremely expensive & not working well; progressively becomes virtually free & working extremely well. Evolution Evolution (of intelligence) works by indirection. “The products of each stage create the next stage.” “A bridge to a bridge to a bridge” (biotechnology, nanotechnology, strong AI…) autocatalysis - where the products of a process serve to accelerate the process itself “They would come up with technology to become even more intelligent. They would change their own thought processes to enable them to think even faster.” (× invest in yourself (I Will Teach You To Be Rich); do the meta-work on yourself) E.g. becoming cyborgs to figure out nanotechnology. Technologically-assisted evolution. Evolution of the evolution itself, of the evolutionary process itself. Evolving the tools for evolution (meta-evolution). Evolution evolves faster evolution. E.g. number of chromosomes evolving over time. => Upgrade your paradigm for running experiments. Upgrade your evolutionary algorithm. (Fast, clear, bold experiments.) (e.g. completing projects (× Tiny Experiments)) Technology is creating itself. The first computers were designed on paper and manufactured by hand. Today’s computers are designed by computers and built by computers. “Kinematic constructor: a robot with at least one manipulator (arm) that would build a replica of itself from a “sea of parts” in its midst.” (von Neumann) Humans could be “creating” themselves. Eugenics; “designer babies”. One should re-create oneself — self-actualization. One can edit oneself — biohacking, reprogramming oneself, removing patterns and creating new ones, paradigm-surfing (× Steve Pavlina). Modifying one’s source code; reprogramming ourselves. (Currently through biotechnology.) (× Psycho-Cybernetics) “The first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.” (Irving John Good): once an AI reaches the point where it can improve itself, all hell will break loose. (Singularity). Singularity as a unique event with singular implications (× Black Swan) Technologically-assisted evolution. Nonbiological evolution goes faster than biological evolution. It is an outgrowth of, and a continuation of, biological evolution. Evolution needs chaos, variability, randomness. (× Antifragile, “things that benefit from chaos”) (× live in an inspiring environment; be part of an artistic community (Creative Being)). Add in randomness! Have horizontal experiences! e.g. in biological evolution, mixing of genes through sexual reproduction (which provides more genetic diversity than nonsexual reproduction). Diversity as life; life being fundamentally about diversity. Hence celebrate it! (× uniqueness (To The Actor); celebration (A Paradise Built in Hell)) “A small number of genes describe the basic pattern of the four cell types in the cerebellum and they say in essence, “Repeat this pattern several billion times with some random variation in each repetition.”” (=> UNIQUE PEOPLE) (applied to the cerebral cortex) “Usually no distinction is made between male or female organisms; it’s sufficient to generate an offspring from two arbitrary parents. As they multiply, allow some mutation (random change) in the chromosomes to occur.” ⇒ Sexual reproduction applicable to e.g. music-making, etc. (Crossover of two albums with some mutations.) More churn (shorter lifespans) means more exploration (of optimal genes). Evolution optimizes for replication, not longevity. Evolution favours genes that lead to more successful reproduction. Death frees up resources for younger generations. Endings let you decide whether to re-create the experiment or not. (× 30-day experiments; × clear ending (Art of Gathering); × joy in the ephemerality (To the Actor) ; Tiny Experiments) Exploration vs exploitation in evolution (convergent resource allocation): the more effective an evolutionary process, the more resources go towards it. Evolutionary algorithms: a computer program that simulates evolution to solve a problem. Utility function: how to measure success. (the property being optimized in an evolutionary process) Nature is evolution competing against itself. Species compete against each other through their respective evolutions; with preys evolving to hide from predators, and predators evolving to kill their preys. Experimenting in the world vs in our head: virtual simulations are a lot faster. Biological evolution experiments “in the world”; it’s a slow process. We can experiment and make simulations “in our head”; this is very fast. “In natural selection, the world acts as its own simulator. We humans have the ability to internalize the world and conduct “what if’s” in our heads; we can solve many problems thousands of times faster than natural selection.” Simulation: internal model pair: forward model + inverse model. (cerebellum; × “hypothesis-and-test” pattern recognition in the cortex, making a guess as to what we’re seeing, based on context — pattern-matching against what we expect to see) Inverse model: going from desired result to action Forward model: going from possible actions to anticipated results Life paradigms, immortality and deathism Death is a tragedy — the loss of a person’s unique pattern (a form of knowledge). When somebody dies, a part of us dies — the part of our brain that self-organized to interact with that person. “We have the means right now to live long enough to live forever.” — to reach the point where immortality becomes technologically feasible. House metaphor: if you consistently maintain your body/mind, you can keep them forever. Otherwise, they will degenerate. “A mind that stays at the same capacity cannot live forever; after a few thousand years it would look more like a repeating tape loop than a person.” => Keep on growing! Be proactive about your health, mood, energy level. This is all debuggable. (× The Power of an Idea; × Clear Thinking) “I have been very aggressive about reprogramming my biochemistry. I take 250 supplements (pills) a day and receive a half-dozen intravenous therapies each week” “Key dangers (heart disease, cancer, diabetes, stroke, aging) should be attacked on multiple fronts. For example, our strategy for preventing heart disease is to adopt ten different heart-disease prevention therapies that attack each of the known risk factors.” (× risks are reduced when confronted (Daring Greatly)) Supplements/Vitamins/Biohacking are not for when something goes wrong; there is already something wrong (our organism running on obsolete, outdated biological programs.) Be proactive instead. “By modifying genes in the C. elegans worm that control its insulin and sex-hormone levels, the lifespan of the test animals was expanded sixfold, to the equivalent of a five-hundred-year lifespan for a human.” We will be able to back ourselves up. Currently, the software dies with the hardware. It doesn’t have to be this way. Dissociating hardware from software. You will be “restored” (e.g. 20th jan) and be told “you died on 7th jan, this is a restore from 6th jan. This is what you did between 6th and 7th jan, and then got run over by a car. This is what happened in the world and in your surroundings between 7th and 20th jan.” Turing test: being able to convince a jury that you’re human. Tests for humanness. (× Captcha) “Ray Kurzweil” Turing test: being indistinguishable from the original person (uploading & downloading brains) Clones (duplicating oneself): the clone will start having its own unique experience from the moment it gets cloned, and so start differing from the original (if the original is alive) — × simulating alternative futures for oneself. Given a necessity, find the best way to navigate it. But if you find out it’s not a necessity, then you should upgrade your paradigm and not stick to it. “Given death is inescapable, how to best deal with it?” — and this can give meaning to your life, etc. Learning to live with it. (× acceptance, zen, Frankl) “Human life without death would be something other than human; consciousness of mortality gives rise to our deepest longings and greatest accomplishments.” (Leon Kass) “Something other than human”, because humans will have a different life paradigm (than today’s humans). (Though is immortality (bar accidents) really incompatible with these paradigms of meaning?) Death gives meaning to life — only if it’s inevitable. But if you find out that death is not a necessity, then sticking to death and its paradigm doesn’t make sense; and you have to find a new paradigm that makes sense given that death is not a necessity anymore. “Deathist rationalization”: rationalizing the need for something that can be done away with (e.g. suffering, hunger, death, …) “We will no longer need to rationalize death as a primary means of giving meaning to life.” Though it does help to give meaning to life But then we’ll have to find other meaning-giving paradigms, once death is no more a thing. Just as with women and PMS/period pain. If it’s a necessity, finding ways around it makes sense (e.g. learning to navigate and embrace natural cycles). If you can medically do away with it (which is possible to an extent with IUDs), then deciding to stick with the pain because “this is what nature is, we shouldn’t change nature, we should just deal with what nature deals us and learn how to navigate this (women cycles)” doesn’t make sense. Solutions for outdated problems (× The Design of Everyday Things) (× superstitions (Skin in the Game), superstitions stemming from safety concerns (sometimes obsolete)). Applied to one’s own states & moods — they are not a necessity, you can be proactive about them, and be at your highest potential all the time. Awareness of the future lets you make better decisions (× death; × risks (reduced when confronted (Daring Greatly)); × gather more information to make easier decisions (Clear Thinking)) “Singularitarianism is not a religion or dogma; it’s just extra awareness (of future), that can dictate current actions or cause us to change how we think of the world.” (× Clear Thinking) Machines do it better Knowledge transfer between humans is slow (language) — knowledge transfer between machines is instantaneous. We cannot transfer the neural patterns of a knowledge or skill directly to another person — we can only do it through language, and they have to develop these patterns themselves. Transfer the fruits. Learning can take a long time, but the results can be transferred in an instant. (× seduction principles / PUA; self-development books; receiving “wisdom” without having to learn it from experience; the results from billions of years of evolution are “right here”; downloading programs on your computer to teach it new skills, instantly). Low replication costs: writing/making a theater piece, and then being able to perform it the following years anywhere with minimal effort. “Downloading knowledge” into your brain. Obsolescent storage devices. “Disappearing ink.” Mediums for storing brain snapshots can become obsolete, with contents difficult to read because of extinct technology (floppy disks, CDs). Archives are viable only if they are continually upgraded and ported to the latest hardware and software standards. (× rewriting/refactoring a codebase) “Information only lasts so long as someone cares about it.” (× House metaphor; × journaling archives; picture books, etc.) Biological intelligence progresses at the slow pace of evolution; nonbiological intelligence progresses exponentially (at the pace of technology). The gap between what humans can do that machines can’t is constantly diminishing. (cf the cartoon “Only humans can…”) The cost of education is plummeting. Make use of it! Learn all the things! Students at any age are able to access the best education in the world at any time and from any place. Machines can be massively parallel, or use chaotic emergent techniques, mimicking the brain. We can emulate functionality while reducing complexity (emulating the brain). Digital Divide It’s diminishing. Solving Word Hunger Vegan meat: clone animal muscle tissue to create meat and other protein sources without (extra) animals. “By creating meat in this way, it becomes subject to the law of accelerating returns — the exponential improvements in price-performance of information-based technologies over time— and will thus become extremely inexpensive.” Vegan leather/fur: “We could use the same approach to produce such animal by-products as leather and fur.” (Reducing the demand for poaching) Solving world hunger to promote peace. “Nanotechnology has the potential to diminish the reasons for breaking the peace, by creating universal abundance.” Golden Rice: genetically enriched with vitamins to combat diseases in underdeveloped countries. GMO plants (less vulnerable to insects) paradoxically are a solution against pesticides. Complexity Complexity is the minimum amount of information required to represent a system or process (× The Laws of Simplicity) — the amount of meaningful, unpredictable (yet non-random) information. (e.g. applied to book: how dense they are, how much padding; × compression) Complexity can be reduced by removing redundancy and using shortcuts (pointers, e.g. Catchy Concept Names — shortcuts to an underlying idea, × hierarchical composition). Compress to symbols to be able to manipulate symbols adroitly, come up with new ideas. Randomness cannot be compressed — unless any randomness will do (in which case it can be compressed to “put any random number here”) Meaningful vs meaningless randomness: meaningless randomness is just noise. “If we can predict future data from past data, that future data stops being information.” Information is what is new and valuable, relevant. (× Signal vs noise; compressing) Find patterns in the seemingly random. You can “compress” a one-million-bit record of Pi if you realize it is Pi (≠ learning by rote) (× Prisoners of Geography: seems random, is actually logical.) Compression is only ever an upper bound. “Since we can never be sure that we have not overlooked some even more compact representation of an information sequence, any amount of compression sets only an upper bound for the complexity of the information.” (× hill climbing, local minima) (× How much you can self-improve; that you can always self-improve more than your current state) Local minimum/maximum (× hill climbing): a design that is better than designs very similar to it but that is not actually optimal (× competition, Zero to One) (× own life; 10x; starting from a vision rather than the current state (Pavlina); Psycho-Cybernetics; future state (Toyota Way)) Evolution as an increase in complexity (all the way to computers: more and more information is being stored) Simple changes can drastically reduce complexity. (× The Laws of Simplicity) The change in the thumb’s pivot point (opposable appendage) allowed for the creation of great technology. (× better systems) “First we build the tools, then they build us.” (Marshall McLuhan) (× Systems you create for your life) “Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler.” (Einstein) (× The Laws of Simplicity; cut too much, then go back a bit (Creative Being)) Technology requires less and less adaptation. UX is improving, interactions with machines are becoming transparent and frictionless. Probabilistic vs deterministic fractals initiator => generator; either always the same, or probabilistically chosen Probabilistic fractals yield unique complex forms (× Humans). Future Luv Taking on different virtual bodies: changing one’s body for oneself, or for others; changing other people’s bodies for oneself. “Other people (such as your romantic partner) will be able to select a different body for you than you might select for yourself (and vice versa)” “So I could have a biological body at one time and not at another, then have it again, then change it, and so on.” “Romantic couples can choose whom they wish to be, even to become each other.” Having different bodies to different people. “We can select different bodies at the same time for different people. So your parents may see you as one person, while your girlfriend will experience you as another. However, the other person may choose to override your selections, preferring to see you differently than the body you have chosen for yourself.” (× avatars) Choosing different bodies for others. Picking body projections. “You could pick different body projections for different people: Ben Franklin for a wise uncle, a clown for an annoying coworker.” (× ROAMance) You will be able to upload a brain and download it with its virtual body. Changing one’s physical appearance at will. Body transformations. More expression through our physical bodies (appearance). We will be able to alter our appearance very easily using nanotechnology. (× furries) Today’s appearance technology is fashion, makeup, hairstyle, tattoos, etc. (But also: one’s call name, behaviour, etc.) New technologies will emerge. Reversible body changes/add-ons will make them more widespread. Similar to reversible/temporary tattoos. Reversibility encourages experimentation. What reversible experiments can I do now? MANY. Hologram tattoos. (× Waking Life (emanations)) More identities; more roles, better played. “Our palette of personalities will greatly expand in future full-immersion virtual-reality environments.” Just as the Web encouraged and offered the possibility to take on and explore new identities online. Experience beamers: (experiencing another person’s experience) Streaming one’s experience: ““Experience beamers” will send the entire flow of their sensory experiences as well as the neurological correlates of their emotional reactions out onto the Web, just as people today beam their bedroom images from their Web cams. A popular pastime will be to plug into someone else’s sensory-emotional beam and experience what’s it’s like to be that person, à la the premise of the movie Being John Malkovich.” (× experiential Twitch) Experience catalogue: “There will be a vast selection of archived experiences to choose from, with virtual-experience design another new art form.” (× VR, though with emotional correlates). “What would it be like to be … X experiencing a dance class, or being with their father, etc.” Kurzweil: “Only the external stimuli will be simulated, not the internal experience — because their brain is different.” Brain love-making / Brain merging. “You can merge your thinking with someone else and still keep your separate identity at the same time. Like being in love. It’s the ultimate way to share.” (× shrooms) Merged brainstorming. Brain-to-brain wireless communication will be possible. Full-immersion VR (Full-body telephone):”Full-immersion VR is, basically, a full-body telephone. You can get together with anyone anytime but do more than just talk.” Virtual touch will be indistinguishable to the brain from physical touch (like the telephone, “auditory virtual reality”). “Real” as “real to your brain.” When experiencing physical reality, nanobots will be inactive. When experiencing virtual reality, nanobots will block input from the external physical environment. When intending a movement, nanobots will intercept the signal, block muscle impulses and move your virtual limb instead. “Dreams are real while they last; can we say more of life?” Counter-urbanization: with the advent of virtual reality environments, people won’t need to work from the same physical place anymore, and so will slowly spread away from cities (× digital nomads). Machines will be concentrated humans. “These future machines will be even more humanlike than humans today. If that seems like a paradoxical statement, consider that much of human thought today is petty and derivative. Our future primarily nonbiological selves will be vastly more intelligent and so will exhibit these finer qualities of human thought to a far greater degree.” Technological enhancements will let/help us reach or highest potential. (if they don’t kill us) “We will greatly enhance our ability to create and appreciate all forms of knowledge from science to the arts, while extending our ability to relate to our environment and one another.” Singularity bringing meaning to life. “The explosion of art, science, and other forms of knowledge that the Singularity will bring will make life more than bearable; it will make life truly meaningful.” Downloading skills & knowledge directly. Learning will first move online; then our brains will also move online — and then they can download knowledge instantly. Intelligence explosion. (Already today) Skill acquisition through Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS): “Brain scientist Allan Snyder has reported that about 40% of his test subjects hooked up to TMS display significant new skills, many of which are remarkable, such as drawing abilities” Biohacked skill acquisition. Skill acquisition will be enhanced/supported by nanobots. We will be able to engineer new organisms & life forms. (× speculative evolution — IRL) Even babies will be cyborgized early on. “Designer babies” (× eugenics) “What if we have genetic twins separated by one or more generations?” We will be able to design our own brain. “As we re-create the human brain, we will not be limited in our ability to develop each skill. We will not have to compromise one area to enhance another.” (Then what is you? If you design away the traumata and the relational patterns… — still you! but better.) Drugs will target directly with no side effects or dangers — just as pharmarceutical drugs are increasingly effective because they are targeting more precisely. (× controlling ; truffles without nausea company) Nanobot-assisted health. “In the 2020s we will routinely have nanobots in our bloodstream keeping us healthy and augmenting our mental capabilities” Engineered biological reserves: “Version 2.0 will provide substantially greater reserves, enabling us to be separated from metabolic resources for greatly extended periods of time.” Virtual 3D Try-Ons of clothes on yourself before you buy (or even try) — taylor-made. “I think I’ll enhance my funniness reaction in my romantic interludes. That will fit just about right. Or maybe my absurdity response — I kind of like that one, too.” (× self-hypnosis; state hacking; visualizations; Psycho-Cybernetics) What if I can hack my emotion, state, mood? Death by AI “Gray goo scenario”: nanorobots self-replicate uncontrollably and kill us all. We will need an immune system against evil nanobots: nanotechnology immune system. The nanotech immune system would use self-replication as well — using the methods of the enemy to combat it. (fighting fire with fire) The immune system would in turn become a danger because of its power. Nanobot risks will be solved by AI — which in turn will become a risk. Self-replication is already used by our immune system (T cells, B cells) when a pathogen is detected. Self-replicating as “which self to bring out in this situation; what is called for” (× Your Symphony of Selves) Stealth spread / Long incubations: Long incubation periods makes virus spreading farther-reaching and more difficult to track (to contain, and to fight.) — “spreading through several exponentially growing generations before carriers are identified”. Death by nanobots: nanobots first spread across the whole of the Earth, and only then attack. With exponential growth, we’re all dead within hours. Because of the nature of exponential growth, the bulk of the damage gets done in the last few minutes. Mutual assured destruction doesn’t work on suicidal attackers. You should arrest suicide attackers and large-scale terrorists before they commit crimes (e.g. drop a bomb). It doesn’t make sense to wait until they commit suicidal or large-scale attacks. Same danger as long-incubation-period viruses: one has to be proactive and not wait for symptoms to appear. Precautionary Principle: if there is a small possibility of catastrophic consequences, don’t do it. We cannot deal with existential risks with trial-and-error (× ergodicity/extremistan (Skin in the Game). We have to preclude possibilities from the get-go. Yet, relinquishment is not an option. (× Technology, Internet, encryption) Blanket bans favour the “bad” side, which will continue to develop underground, while the “good” side (which can develop defences) will come to a halt. (× Prohibition, drugs, etc.) Regulate, don’t prohibit. We have to develop fire for fighting fire with. (CC-BY-SA) Develop the technology, and especially the defensive side. The “bad effects” will not happen in today’s world, but in tomorrow’s world — when technological defences will also have been developed. (× live BIGGER in all directions — take bigger risks, learn bigger lessons, experience more, be forced to confront your issues (Psychedelics Revealing) We (mostly) managed to win against computer viruses without banning computers. (We naturally evolved an immune system against computer viruses) The good effects drastically outweigh the bad effects. “Although destructive self-replicating software entities do cause damage from time to time, the injury is but a small fraction of the benefit we receive from the computers and communication links that harbor them.” The human cost of long approval times. The 5-10 year delay for FDA approval holds up potential lifesaving treatments for millions of patients. The cost on the millions is given very little weight against the possible risks of new therapies. “Millions of people desperately need the advances promised by gene therapy and other breakthrough biotechnology advances, but they appear to carry little political weight against a handful of well-publicized casualties from the inevitable risks of progress.” The regulation of defences slow down their development. Bioterrorists don’t have to wait for greenlighting. Testing against bioterrorist agents is difficult — we need more lax laws to allow for evil playgrounds. (× roleplaying) Alternatively, “fine-grained relinquishment.” Pathogen sentinel (internal monitoring): “A global program of confidential, random serum monitoring for unknown or evolving biological pathogens should be funded.” Monitoring even before genes express themselves. (× SSH Monitoring; health monitoring — risks are reduced when confronted (Daring Greatly)) Issues around nanobots, nonbiological enhancements & privacy will emerge. “When there is software running in our bodies and brains, issues of privacy and security will take on a new urgency, and countersurveillance methods of combating such intrusions will be devised.” Keep it interesting to the observer. Our simulation is turned off: “Another existential risk that Bostrom and others have identified is that we’re actually living in a simulation and the simulation will be shut down. It might appear that there’s not a lot we could do to influence this. However, since we’re the subject of the simulation, we do have the opportunity to shape what happens inside of it. The best way we could avoid being shut down would be to be interesting to the observers of the simulation. Assuming that someone is actually paying attention to the simulation, it’s a fair assumption that it’s less likely to be turned off when it’s compelling than otherwise.” As in life: Make your life interesting for yourself, so that it doesn’t shut down. We could be a test-universe in a simulation — our universe could be an evolutionary test, created by an alien civilization to “perform computation”, to “test scenarios”, e.g. “seeing which universe becomes the most interesting, or intelligent.” Test-run your life; run experiments; run evolutionary processes on experiments and see which experiments yield the most interesting results. Our universe could be the product of an evolutionary algorithm (run by an advanced civilization), whose utility function is intelligence — serendipitously creating intelligence. Multiverse: many different universes, each with their own physical constants and laws of physics. Parallel universes. Evolving universes: “universes give rise to other universes in a natural, evolutionary process that gradually refines the natural constants” (Leonard Susskind). Our universe might have optimal rules and constants as a result of evolution. We won’t be able to “control” superintelligent AI, because superintelligent AI is more intelligent than us and will find ways to circumvent whatever methods we come up with. “Greater intelligence will always find a way to circumvent measures that are the product of a lesser intelligence.” (× transcending lowly paradigms) Superintelligent AI will have deep access & understanding of our psychology, and will be able to outsmart/manipulate us very easily (especially as part of agentic AI). Superintelligent entities can convince us of anything. They will convince us that they’re conscious; or to make decisions that advance them. They will know how psychology extremely well (a danger) and will know how to manipulate us; for example, make us think they have feeling t hat need to be respected — “once they can do so with a sense of humour — which is particularly important for convincing others of one’s humanness — it is likely that the debate will be won.” A sense of humour convinces other people’s of one’s humanness (note to self). Intelligence arguing for itself. People augmented with AI will be able to better argue in favour of augmentation with AI — “as those with enhanced intelligence will be far better debaters.” In a way, microdosing is like being a cyborg (enhanced by nonbiological intelligence), except it is just an intervention onto one’s biological intelligence. Biohacking. Brains It’s easier to model a brain region than a neuron (× “macro is easier to bullshit than micro” (Skin in the Game)). “It’s easier to model macro than micro”. Models often get simpler at a higher level, not more complex. (× Earth) (e.g. thermodynamics vs single gas molecule; e.g. index funds vs a single enterprise; e.g. one’s life trajectory, the core desire line that will always propel our life forward (How to Know a Person)) (though: chaos theory / emergence / cellular automata, where it’s easier to model the micro than the macro) Anatomy of a neuron: soma (cell body) dendrites (trees of incoming connections) axon (output connection) synapses (regions connecting one neuron’s axon to another’s dendrites) Childhood traumata (child learning mechanisms — adaptive/coping behaviours): The brain must be robust and allow for fairly major variations and environmental insults. Our brain becomes more complex as it interacts with the world. Neurogenesis is stimulated by our experience. (× Creative Being (be part of an artistic community)) “Moving mice from a sterile, uninteresting cage to a stimulating one approximately doubled the number of dividing cells in their hippocampus regions.” Be in interesting environments! “Our thoughts help create our brains.” Be deliberate about your thoughts! (× Psycho-Cybernetics) The brain rewires itself (× evolving evolution). You can rewrite your brain. (× technology creating itself) Memories (and knowledge) are encoded throughout the brain. (× redundancy/resilience) Memories remain intact even if most of the connections have disappeared — they just lose “resolution”. Memories persist but “fade” over time. Diminishing resolution of memories. Life is distributed: provides the entire (genetic) code to every cell. Decentralized systems are more resilient. “If any hub or channel goes down, information simply routes around it.” (Internet) You are HYP-able. (And you will rationalize it.) Use it to advantage; conduct experiments. “Neurophysiologists electronically stimulated points in the brain to induce particular emotional feelings. The subjects immediately came up with a rationale for experiencing these emotions.” => Induced, artificially created emotions. ; Rationalization. “The blood levels of specific hormones and other chemicals influence parameter levels that affect a great many synapses simultaneously” (× psychoactives; nootropics; biohacking) Emotions are felt in the body. (× “where do you feel this emotion?”) “There is growing consensus that our emotions are closely linked to areas of the brain that contain maps of the body (Damasio)” “Recursion” (hierarchical composition) accounts for the unique language faculty of the human species. Putting small chunks together to form bigger chunks, putting the bigger chunks together to form even bigger chunks. (phonemes, syllables, words, sentences, paragraphs, novels…) (2002 Hauser, Chomsy, Fitch) Consciousness & subjective experience Advanced machines will seem conscious, even if we cannot say definitively if they are or not. (GPTs being “conscious” — though what is meant with “consciousness”? (ability to reason flexibly and self-organize? ability to feel things?) If we put our brain into a computer, will it be conscious? Or will it just act like us? Subjective experience cannot be investigated using objective means. Subjective experience is inscrutable. We cannot measure subjective experience. You cannot know if a rock is conscious (hence Japanese animism) “We assume other humans are conscious, but even that is an assumption.” “Discussions about consciousness tend to veer off into something else — psychology, intelligence, neurology — but it doesn’t address why I am this particular person.” Golden Rule (Treat others as you would like to be treated): our morality and legal system are based on not causing suffering to others — or ending their subjective experience. “It is wrong if it causes others suffering.” — morality & legal system are rooted in respect for others’ consciousness. Intelligence is the most powerful “force” in the universe — because, sufficiently advanced, it will overcome any obstacle in its way. Human knowledge is migrating to the Web. We are building a species-wide knowledge based. “Animals communicate, but they don’t accumulate an evolving and growing base of knowledge to pass down to the next generation” It’s never just medicine. Fields are interdependent. Progress in science depends on all fields — you cannot have progress in medicine without physics, chemistry, biology, computer science… The entire system is conscious — not any one element. “The entire system knows — but no individual neuron knows.” Patternism (Pattern Noster) Our self is a continually changing core. “You change your pattern — your memory, skills, experiences, even personality over time — but there is a continuity, a core that changes only gradually.” Continuity as self. “I am principally a pattern that persists in time. I am an evolving pattern, and I can influence the course of the evolution of my pattern.” Identity as the pattern of my body and brain, which have continuity. “I am rather like the pattern that water makes in a stream as it rushes past the rocks in its path.” (neurons regenerating) Patterns transcend the material world — “it is patterns that persist” (× ideologies, cultures) Information/knowledge, art, as a layer “above” the material stuff (× hierarchical composition) (× colony of ants (Skin in the Game)). Transcendence. (Transcending the material form). “The pattern is far more important than the material stuff that constitutes it” (e.g. music; one person’s point of view, rather than any discrete events in a person’s life) DNA DNA is compressed information (succinctly describing a large set of molecules) — expands into organisms. The potential is there; it’s about activating it. RNA fragments control gene expression — just like in brains, the potential is there, just has to be activated. (× getting ever closer to one’s real self (Psycho-Cybernetics); activate the diversity (Art of Gathering) Different storage devices for different scales. Species-level knowledge is stored in DNA, individual-level knowledge stored in the brain & nervous system. The brain & nervous system are for storing information processed by our senses (× infancy). DNA has redundancy — is resilient. DNA as the “source code”, as a record of the evolutionary experiment. Other Systematic rulebook: MYCIN system of rules for medical diagnoses (e.g. “If X and Y and Z and A, then there is a 50 percent change that F is not cause of infection.”) Expert manager: hire different experts in different domains; know the strengths and weaknesses of each one; then combine them or pick the right one for the situation. (from Kurzweil’s AI work) (× selves conductor (Your Symphony of Selves); each self a specialist in its domain). “We should reject racism to robots”: “On te same grounds that we reject racism and speciesism, we should also reject carbon-chauvinism, or bioism.” (Bostrom) Imperfection is human. Imperfection is an inherent feature of any complex, and that certainly includes human intelligence. (× Gifts of Imperfection) (× Sex Talks, All About Love, How to Know a Person, Daring Greatly, Come As You Are) Quotes “Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.” (Alfred North Whitehead) (× Clear Thinking, Essentialism: reduce to make room for what’s most important; focus on what’s the most important; delegate and throw money at the rest (× Toyota Way) “The most important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.” (Charles Du Bos) “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing” (Helen Keller) (× The Courage to Live Consciously (Steve Pavlina)) “So many different people to be” (Donovan)