Meaning and meaninglessness, pattern and nebulosity all obviously exist—yet we resist recognizing and admitting this. Why?| Meaningness
Distinguishing irrational, anti-rational, and meta-rational critiques of rationalism helps reply effectively.| Meta-rationality
Fluidity addresses the atomization of culture, society, and self with ships that sail the sea of meaning: collaborative, improvised, intimate, and playful.| Meaningness
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
The hippie counterculture was structurally and functionally similar to the Moral Majority Christian Right counterculture a decade later.| Meaningness
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
Adding new comments is disabled for now.| meaningness.com
A pragmatic understanding of how systematic rationality works in practice can help you level up your technical work.| Meta-rationality
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
Adding new comments is disabled for now.| meaningness.com
A bridge from systematic rationality to fluid meta-rational understanding may be necessary to prevent civilizational collapse.| Meta-rationality
Do abstractions exist? Here we go for the 641st time… This piece is largely a response to silenceinbetween’s excellent post A Case For the Reality of Abstractions. (For brevity I will refer to the author as S going forward.) S frames the problem as such: The central tension here is that physics, as we currently understand it, operates like so: there was an initial set of conditions and laws which operate on those conditions.| kasra.io
Defining the subject matter: rationality, rationalism, reasonableness, and meta-rationality.| Meta-rationality
Explore the ideas of Meaningness in greater depth by reading the books that inspired it| Meaningness
The rationalist theory of justified action leads to nihilism. Understand your activity as a vivid, variegated landscape instead.| 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
“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
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
