Meaning and meaninglessness, pattern and nebulosity all obviously exist—yet we resist recognizing and admitting this. Why?| Meaningness
Aristotelian logic was mistaken both in details and overall conception, yet its key ideas survive in contemporary rationalism.| Meta-rationality
What is the meaning of an extra-marital affair—or any relationship? A philosophical short story illustrates the puzzle of the nebulosity of meaningness.| Meaningness
Geeks,| mrsteinberg.com
Failure to find new foundations for meaning, to recognize diversity, to provide community, and to transcend opposition: all doomed counterculturalism.| Meaningness
Distinguishing irrational, anti-rational, and meta-rational critiques of rationalism helps reply effectively.| Meta-rationality
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How and why modernity failed. All systems of meaning—religious, political, artistic, psychological—began to fall apart. Nihilism seemed the only alternative.| Meaningness
The 1960s-80s countercultures abandoned rationality because they believed it negated all meaning. They were wrong.| Meaningness
The hippies and the Moral Majority both tried to rescue systematic eternalism—and failed. We live amongst their wreckage.| Meaningness
Probabilistic rationalism encourages you to view the whole world as a gigantic casino—but mostly it is not like that.| Meta-rationality
If probability theory were an epistemology, we’d want it to tell us how confident to be in our beliefs. Unfortunately, it can’t do that.| Meta-rationality
I want a God / That stays dead / Not plays dead| Vividness
Dividing purposes into higher and mundane, mission pursues higher ends and rejects pragmatism; materialism seeks only selfish goals. Both are mistakes.| Meaningness
Available ethical theories are either eternalist or nihilist; both are useless. We must recognize that ethics are both nebulous and meaningful.| Meaningness
Rationalism responds to its failures, in the face of nebulosity, by making more complicated formal theories.| Meta-rationality
Routine activity usually goes smoothly overall, despite frequent minor glitches, because we have methods for repairing trouble.| Meta-rationality
We actively work to perceive aspects of the world as meaningful, in terms of our purposes, in context.| Meta-rationality
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The hippie counterculture was structurally and functionally similar to the Moral Majority Christian Right counterculture a decade later.| Meaningness
Its methods yield mainly wrong or nonsensical conclusions. We can and should do better.| meaningness.substack.com
Tools and tactics for leading coordinated research programs| spec.tech
A glossary of unfamiliar words, and words used in uncommon ways, on this site.| Meta-rationality
A positive and realistic vision for the future of society, culture, and self, drawing lessons from recent history.| Meaningness
Over the past century, systems of meaning gradually disintegrated, and a series of new modes of meaningness developed.| Meaningness
Current AI systems are already harmful, and may cause near-term catastrophes through their ability to shatter societies, cultures, and individual psychologies. That might potentially cause human extinction, but it is more likely to scale up to the level of the twentieth century dictatorships, genocides, and world wars. We would be wise to anticipate possible harms in as much detail as possible.| Better without AI
Most of this page absolutely agree with, but I wanted to quibble about one point:| betterwithout.ai
To give you constructive feedback: The list here still feels a bit loose, though. Is AGI a distinct property or a group of other properties? What differentiates super intelligent from mind-like? Are motivations and morals another scary property or more of a lens to look at artificial intelligence and understand its agency and hence scariness? And where are the social aspects of the AI, the way it changes social interaction, enables surveillance and oppression etc. - is that all in the power c...| betterwithout.ai
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A pragmatic understanding of how systematic rationality works in practice can help you level up your technical work.| Meta-rationality
More to the point, it doesn’t posit that the AI villain has any kind of self-awareness or intentions. It has a limited ability to take control of other automated systems, and to adapt when its attempts to pursue its pre-programmed goals are thwarted. But it needs no mindness to be dangerous, just an carefully designed automated system, following goals and a rough plan given to it by its creator.| betterwithout.ai
Wonder at the vastness, beauty, and intricacy of the phenomenal world: a texture of the complete stance.| Meaningness
Open-ended curiosity gives you the freedom to interact with the world without metaphysical presuppositions.| Meaningness
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A bridge from systematic rationality to fluid meta-rational understanding may be necessary to prevent civilizational collapse.| Meta-rationality
It is attractive to think that we each have a unique, transcendent, ultimate purpose in life. Unfortunately, this belief is both false and harmful.| Meaningness
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Defining the subject matter: rationality, rationalism, reasonableness, and meta-rationality.| Meta-rationality
Systems of society, culture, and the self were the foundation of the modern world. Their glories have passed.| Meaningness
Reconfiguring categories, properties, and relationships is a meta-rational skill—key in scientific revolutions.| Meta-rationality
ea| michaelnotebook.com
Explore the ideas of Meaningness in greater depth by reading the books that inspired it| Meaningness
Improving artificial intelligence research with scientific testing, design practice, and meta-rational choice of methods and criteria| Better without AI
Modernity was built on certainty in science and mathematics. That was revealed as delusional during the early 20th century.| Meaningness
Nihilistic claims about subjectivity, inherent meaning, universal meaning, and scientific objectivity do not hold up.| Meaningness
Intuitions of “cosmic meaning” root in hunger for personal significance, and in encounters with vastness.| Meaningness
Meanings come and go; they are not eternally stable—and that is fine.| Meaningness
The many justifications for nihilism rely on a handful of mistaken patterns of reasoning.| Meaningness
Recognizing meaninglessness requires unusual intelligence, courage, and toughness. Nihilist elitism renders you stupid, cowardly, and helpless, though.| Meaningness
A world of total license: the catastrophe some fear if nihilistic views become widespread.| Meaningness
“Nihilism is inevitable, but not a problem.” This is mistaken: it makes you miserable and ineffective, and erodes social and cultural capacity.| Meaningness
Nihilism promises you don’t have to care, because nothing means anything. But you do care—and you can’t escape that.| Meaningness
Are you adult enough to accept that the world offers no absolute guarantees?| Meaningness
It's natural to react to meta-rationalism with skepticism or hostility initially. You may come to delight in it.| Meta-rationality
“The map is not the territory”—what is it then? How do rational models actually work?| Meta-rationality
Everyday reasonableness is the foundation of technical, formal, and systematic rationality.| Meta-rationality
The mistaken belief that statistical methods can tell you what to believe drove the science replication crisis.| Meta-rationality
The Guru Papers brilliantly illuminates fallacies of contemporary spirituality, and also the toxic power dynamics of authoritarian control.| Meaningness
A surreal, postmodern review of Ken Wilber’s book Boomeritis, which seems to be about my work at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab.| Meta-rationality
