Fluidity: Recent Episodes
Matt Arnold
After the collapse of the 20th-century systematic mode of social organization, how can we move from our internet-enabled atomized mode, toward a fluid mode? We take problems of meaning-making, typically considered spiritual, and turn them into practical problems, which are more tractable.
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This is a nonfiction audiobook narrated by Matt Arnold with the permission of the author, David Chapman. Full text at: https://meaningness.com
This concludes "Gradient Dissent", the companion document to "Better Without AI". Thank you so much for listening!
You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Current text generators, such as ChatGPT, are highly unreliable, difficult to use effectively, unable to do many things we might want them to, and extremely expensive to develop and run. These defects are inherent in their underlying technology. Quite different methods could plausibly remedy all these defects. Would that be good, or bad?
https://betterwithout.ai/better-text-generators
John McCarthy’s paper “Programs with common sense”: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/mcc59/mcc59.html
Harry Frankfurt, "On Bullshit": https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001EQ4OJW/?tag=meaningness-20
Petroni et al., “Language Models as Knowledge Bases?": https://aclanthology.org/D19-1250/
Gwern Branwen, “The Scaling Hypothesis”: gwern.net/scaling-hypothesis
Rich Sutton’s “Bitter Lesson”: www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html
Guu et al.’s “Retrieval augmented language model pre-training” (REALM): http://proceedings.mlr.press/v119/guu20a/guu20a.pdf
Borgeaud et al.’s “Improving language models by retrieving from trillions of tokens” (RETRO): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2112.04426.pdf
Izacard et al., “Few-shot Learning with Retrieval Augmented Language Models”: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2208.03299.pdf
Chirag Shah and Emily M. Bender, “Situating Search”: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3498366.3505816
David Chapman's original version of the proposal he puts forth in this episode: twitter.com/Meaningness/status/1576195630891819008
Lan et al. “Copy Is All You Need”: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.06962
Mitchell A. Gordon’s “RETRO Is Blazingly Fast”: https://mitchgordon.me/ml/2022/07/01/retro-is-blazing.html
Min et al.’s “Silo Language Models”: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2308.04430.pdf
W. Daniel Hillis, The Connection Machine, 1986: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0262081571/?tag=meaningness-20
Ouyang et al., “Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback”: https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.02155
Ronen Eldan and Yuanzhi Li, “TinyStories: How Small Can Language Models Be and Still Speak Coherent English?”: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.07759.pdf
Li et al., “Textbooks Are All You Need II: phi-1.5 technical report”: https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.05463
Henderson et al., “Foundation Models and Fair Use”: https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.15715
Authors Guild v. Google: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild%2C_Inc._v._Google%2C_Inc.
Abhishek Nagaraj and Imke Reimers, “Digitization and the Market for Physical Works: Evidence from the Google Books Project”: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.20210702
You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Analysis of image classifiers demonstrates that it is possible to understand backprop networks at the task-relevant run-time algorithmic level. In these systems, at least, networks gain their power from deploying massive parallelism to check for the presence of a vast number of simple, shallow patterns.
https://betterwithout.ai/images-surface-features
This episode has a lot of links:
David Chapman's earliest public mention, in February 2016, of image classifiers probably using color and texture in ways that "cheat": twitter.com/Meaningness/status/698688687341572096
Jordana Cepelewicz’s “Where we see shapes, AI sees textures,” Quanta Magazine, July 1, 2019: https://www.quantamagazine.org/where-we-see-shapes-ai-sees-textures-20190701/
“Suddenly, a leopard print sofa appears”, May 2015: https://web.archive.org/web/20150622084852/http://rocknrollnerd.github.io/ml/2015/05/27/leopard-sofa.html
“Understanding How Image Quality Affects Deep Neural Networks” April 2016: https://arxiv.org/abs/1604.04004 Goodfellow et al., “Explaining and Harnessing Adversarial Examples,” December 2014: https://arxiv.org/abs/1412.6572
“Universal adversarial perturbations,” October 2016: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1610.08401v1.pdf
“Exploring the Landscape of Spatial Robustness,” December 2017: https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.02779
“Overinterpretation reveals image classification model pathologies,” NeurIPS 2021: https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper/2021/file/8217bb4e7fa0541e0f5e04fea764ab91-Paper.pdf
“Approximating CNNs with Bag-of-Local-Features Models Works Surprisingly Well on ImageNet,” ICLR 2019: https://openreview.net/forum?id=SkfMWhAqYQ
Baker et al.’s “Deep convolutional networks do not classify based on global object shape,” PLOS Computational Biology, 2018: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006613
François Chollet's Twitter threads about AI producing images of horses with extra legs: twitter.com/fchollet/status/1573836241875120128 and twitter.com/fchollet/status/1573843774803161090
“Zoom In: An Introduction to Circuits,” 2020: https://distill.pub/2020/circuits/zoom-in/
Geirhos et al., “ImageNet-Trained CNNs Are Biased Towards Texture; Increasing Shape Bias Improves Accuracy and Robustness,” ICLR 2019: https://openreview.net/forum?id=Bygh9j09KX
Dehghani et al., “Scaling Vision Transformers to 22 Billion Parameters,” 2023: https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.05442
Hasson et al., “Direct Fit to Nature: An Evolutionary Perspective on Biological and Artificial Neural Networks,” February 2020: https://www.gwern.net/docs/ai/scaling/2020-hasson.pdf
You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Current AI practice is not engineering, even when it aims for practical applications, because it is not based on scientific understanding. Enforcing engineering norms on the field could lead to considerably safer systems. https://betterwithout.ai/AI-as-engineering This episode has a lot of links! Here they are. Michael Nielsen’s “The role of ‘explanation’ in AI”. https://michaelnotebook.com/ongoing/sporadica.html#role_of_explanation_in_AI Subbarao Kambhampati’s “Changing the Nature of AI Research”. https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3546954 Chris Olah and his collaborators: “Thread: Circuits”. distill.pub/2020/circuits/ “An Overview of Early Vision in InceptionV1”. distill.pub/2020/circuits/early-vision/ Dai et al., “Knowledge Neurons in Pretrained Transformers”. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2104.08696.pdf Meng et al.: “Locating and Editing Factual Associations in GPT.” rome.baulab.info “Mass-Editing Memory in a Transformer,” https://arxiv.org/pdf/2210.07229.pdf François Chollet on image generators putting the wrong number of legs on horses: twitter.com/fchollet/status/1573879858203340800 Neel Nanda’s “Longlist of Theories of Impact for Interpretability”, https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/uK6sQCNMw8WKzJeCQ/a-longlist-of-theories-of-impact-for-interpretability Zachary C. Lipton’s “The Mythos of Model Interpretability”. https://arxiv.org/abs/1606.03490 Meng et al., “Locating and Editing Factual Associations in GPT”. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2202.05262.pdf Belrose et al., “Eliciting Latent Predictions from Transformers with the Tuned Lens”. https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.08112 “Progress measures for grokking via mechanistic interpretability”. https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.05217 Conmy et al., “Towards Automated Circuit Discovery for Mechanistic Interpretability”. https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.14997 Elhage et al., “Softmax Linear Units,” transformer-circuits.pub/2022/solu/index.html Filan et al., “Clusterability in Neural Networks,” https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.03386.pdf Cammarata et al., “Curve circuits,” distill.pub/2020/circuits/curve-circuits/ You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Few AI experiments constitute meaningful tests of hypotheses. As a branch of machine learning research, AI science has concentrated on black box investigation of training time phenomena. The best of this work is has been scientifically excellent. However, the hypotheses tested are mainly irrelevant to user and societal concerns. https://betterwithout.ai/AI-as-science This chapter references Chapman's essay, "How should we evaluate progress in AI?" https://metarationality.com/artificial-intelligence-progress "Troubling Trends in Machine Learning Scholarship", Zachary C. Lipton and Jacob Steinhardt: https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.03341 You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Do AI As Science And Engineering Instead - We’ve seen that current AI practice leads to technologies that are expensive, difficult to apply in real-world situations, and inherently unsafe. Neglected scientific and engineering investigations can bring better understanding of the risks of current AI technology, and can lead to safer technologies. https://betterwithout.ai/science-engineering-vs-AI Run-Time Task-Relevant Algorithmic Understanding - The type of scientific and engineering understanding most relevant to AI safety is run-time, task-relevant, and algorithmic. That can lead to more reliable, safer systems. Unfortunately, gaining such understanding has been neglected in AI research, so currently we have little. https://betterwithout.ai/AI-algorithmic-level For more information, see David Chapman's 2017 essay "How should we evaluate progress in AI?" https://betterwithout.ai/artificial-intelligence-progress You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Current AI results from experimental variation of mechanisms, unguided by theoretical principles. That has produced systems that can do amazing things. On the other hand, they are extremely error-prone and therefore unsafe. Backpropaganda, a collection of misleading ways of talking about “neural networks,” justifies continuing in this misguided direction. https://betterwithout.ai/backpropaganda You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
The conclusion of this chapter. So-called “neural networks” are extremely expensive, poorly understood, unfixably unreliable, deceptive, data hungry, and inherently limited in capabilities. In short: they are bad. https://betterwithout.ai/artificial-neurons-considered-harmful Sayash Kapoor and Arvind Narayanan’s "The bait and switch behind AI risk prediction tools": https://aisnakeoil.substack.com/p/the-bait-and-switch-behind-ai-risk A video titled "Latent Space Walk": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPgwwvjtX_g Another video showing a walk through latent space: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnXiM97ZvOM You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
This begins "Gradient Dissent", the companion material to "Better Without AI". The neural network and GPT technologies that power current artificial intelligence are exceptionally error prone, deceptive, poorly understood, and dangerous. They are widely used without adequate safeguards in situations where they cause increasing harms. They are not inevitable, and we should replace them with better alternatives. https://betterwithout.ai/gradient-dissent Artificial Neurons Considered Harmful, Part 1 - So-called “neural networks” are extremely expensive, poorly understood, unfixably unreliable, deceptive, data hungry, and inherently limited in capabilities. In short: they are bad. https://betterwithout.ai/artificial-neurons-considered-harmful You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
The five short chapters in this episode are the conclusion of the main body of Better Without AI. Next, we'll begin the book's appendix, Gradient Dissent. Cozy Futurism - If we knew we’d never get flying cars, most people wouldn’t care. What do we care about? https://betterwithout.ai/cozy-futurism Meaningful Futurism - Likeable futures are meaningful, not just materially comfortable. Bringing one about requires imagining it. I invite you to do that! https://betterwithout.ai/meaningful-future The Inescapable: Politics - No realistic approach to future AI can avoid questions of power and social organization. https://betterwithout.ai/inescapable-AI-politics Responsibility https://betterwithout.ai/responsibility This is about you https://betterwithout.ai/about-you You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
A Future We Would Like - The most important questions are not about technology but about us. What sorts of future would we like? What role could AI play in getting us there, and also in that world? What is your own role in helping that happen?
https://betterwithout.ai/a-future-we-would-like
How AI Destroyed The Future -We are doing a terrible job of thinking about the most important question because unimaginably powerful evil artificial intelligences are controlling our brains.
https://betterwithout.ai/AI-destroyed-the-future
A One-Bit Future - Superintelligence scenarios reduce the future to infinitely good or infinitely bad. Both are possible, but we cannot reason about or act toward them. Messy complicated good-and-bad futures are probably more likely, and in any case are more feasible to influence.
https://betterwithout.ai/one-bit-future
This episode mentions David Chapman's essay "Vaster Than Ideology" for getting AI out of your head.
Text link: https://meaningness.com/vaster-than-ideology
Episode link: https://fluidity.libsyn.com/vaster-than-ideology
You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Stop obstructing scientific progress! We already know how to dramatically accelerate science: by getting out of the way. https://betterwithout.ai/stop-obstructing-science How to science better. What do exceptional scientists do differently from mediocre ones? Can we train currently-mediocre ones to do better? https://betterwithout.ai/better-science-without-AI Scenius: upgrading science FTW. Empirically, breakthroughs that enable great progress depend on particular, uncommon social constellations and accompanying social practices. Let’s encourage these! https://betterwithout.ai/human-scenius-vs-artificial-genius Matt Clancy reviews the evidence for scientific progress slowing, with citations and graphs. https://twitter.com/mattsclancy/status/1612440718177603584 "Scenius, or Communal Genius", Kevin Kelly, The Technium. https://kk.org/thetechnium/scenius-or-comm/
Progress requires experimentation. Suggested ways AI could speed progress by automating experiments appear mistaken. https://betterwithout.ai/limits-to-induction You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Forgive the sound quality on this episode; I recorded it live in front of an audience on a platform floating in a lake during the 2024 solar eclipse.
This is a standalone essay by David Chapman on metarationaity.com. How scientific research is like cunnilingus: a phenomenology of epistemology.
https://metarationality.com/going-down-on-the-phenomenon
You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
What Is The Role Of Intelligence In Science?
Actually, what are “science” and “intelligence”? Precise, explicit definitions aren’t necessary, but discussions of Transformative AI seem to depend implicitly on particular models of both. It matters if those models are wrong.
https://betterwithout.ai/intelligence-in-science
Katja Grace, “Counterarguments to the basic AI x-risk case”. https://aiimpacts.org/counterarguments-to-the-basic-ai-x-risk-case/ What Do Unusually Intelligent People Do? If we want to know what a superintelligent AI might do, and how, it could help to investigate what the most intelligent humans do, and how. If we want to know how to dramatically accelerate science and technology development, it could help to investigate what the best scientists and technologists do, and how.
https://betterwithout.ai/what-intelligent-people-do Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen, “We Need a New Science of Progress,” The Atlantic, July 30, 2019. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/we-need-new-science-progress/594946/ Gwern Branwen, “Catnip immunity and alternatives”. https://www.gwern.net/Catnip#optimal-catnip-alternative-selection-solving-the-mdp You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Radical Progress Without Scary AI: Technological progress, in medicine for example, provides an altruistic motivation for developing more powerful AIs. I suggest that AI may be unnecessary, or even irrelevant, for that. We may be able to get the benefits without the risks.
https://betterwithout.ai/radical-progress-without-AI
What kind of AI might accelerate technological progress?: “Narrow” AI systems, specialized for particular technical tasks, are probably feasible, useful, and safe. Let’s build those instead of Scary superintelligence.
https://betterwithout.ai/what-AI-for-progress
Recognize that AI is probably net harmful: Actually-existing and near-future AIs are net harmful—never mind their longer-term risks. We should shut them down, not pussyfoot around hoping they can somehow be made safe. https://betterwithout.ai/AI-is-harmful Create a negative public image for AI: Most funding for AI research comes from the advertising industry. Their primary motivation may be to create a positive corporate image, to offset their obvious harms. Creating bad publicity for AI would eliminate their incentive to fund it. https://betterwithout.ai/AI-is-public-relations Seth Lazar’s "Legitimacy, Authority, and the Political Value of Explanations": https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2208/2208.08628.pdf Kate Crawford's "Atlas Of AI": https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08WKQ1MTM/?tag=meaningness-20 You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
“Apocalypse now” identified the corrosive influence of new viral ideologies, created unintentionally by recommender systems, as a major AI risk. These may cause social collapse if not tackled head-on. You can resist. https://betterwithout.ai/spurn-artificial-ideology Announcement tweet for the Opening Awareness, Opening Rationality discussion group starting on February 1: https://twitter.com/openingBklyn/status/1751314312415567956 Document with more details: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YPaos3zTgdraF9VouWkHUouVHVsrbYBluUO3Kh--Ezs/edit Vaster Than Ideology (text): https://meaningness.com/vaster-than-ideology Vaster Than Ideology (Fluidity Audiobooks episode): https://fluidity.libsyn.com/vaster-than-ideology Coinbase Is A Mission Focused Company: https://www.coinbase.com/blog/coinbase-is-a-mission-focused-company You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Announcement tweet for a discussion group based on David Chapman's In The Cells Of The Eggplant, starting on February 1: https://twitter.com/openingBklyn/status/1751314312415567956 Document with more details: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YPaos3zTgdraF9VouWkHUouVHVsrbYBluUO3Kh--Ezs/edit
Current AI practices produce technologies that are expensive, difficult to apply in real-world situations, and inherently unsafe. Neglected scientific and engineering investigations can bring better understanding of specific risks of current AI technology, and can lead to safer technologies. https://betterwithout.ai/fight-unsafe-AI You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Music is by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
The technologies underlying current AI systems are inherently, unfixably unreliable. They should be deprecated, avoided, regulated, and replaced. https://betterwithout.ai/mistrust-machine-learning You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Music is by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Gaining unauthorized access to computer systems is a key source of power in many AI doom scenarios. That is easy now, because there are scant incentives for serious cybersecurity; so nearly all systems are radically insecure. Technical and political initiatives must mitigate this problem. https://betterwithout.ai/cybersecurity-vs-AI You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Practical Actions You Can Take Against AI Risks: We can and should protect against current and likely future harmful AI effects. This chapter recommends practical, near-term risk reduction measures. I suggest actions for the general public, computer professionals, AI ethics and safety organizations, funders, and governments. https://betterwithout.ai/pragmatic-AI-safety End Digital Surveillance: Databases of personal information collected via internet surveillance are a main resource for harmful AI. Eliminating them will alleviate multiple major risks. Technical and political approaches are both feasible. https://betterwithout.ai/end-digital-surveillance José Luis Ricón’s “Set Sail For Fail? On AI risk”: https://nintil.com/ai-safety FTC Sues Kochava for Selling Data that Tracks People at Reproductive Health Clinics, Places of Worship, and Other Sensitive Locations: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/08/ftc-sues-kochava-selling-data-tracks-people-reproductive-health-clinics-places-worship-other Consumer Reports‘ “Security Planner”: https://securityplanner.consumerreports.org/ Wirecutter‘s “Every Step to Simple Online Security”: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/guides/simple-online-security/ Narwhal Academy’s Zebra Crossing: https://github.com/narwhalacademy/zebra-crossing Privacy Guides: https://www.privacyguides.org/ Installing a blocker is explicitly recommended by the FBI as a way to protect against cybercriminals: https://www.ic3.gov/Media/Y2022/PSA221221 The Electronic Frontier Foundation's page of actions you can take: https://act.eff.org/ The European Digital Rights organization (EDRi) page of simple ways you can influence EU privacy legislation: https://edri.org/take-action/our-campaigns/ You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
This concludes the "Apocalypse Now" section of Better Without AI. AI systems may cause near-term disasters through their proven ability to shatter societies and cultures. These might potentially cause human extinction, but are more likely to scale up to the level of the twentieth century dictatorships, genocides, and world wars. It would be wise to anticipate possible harms in as much detail as possible. https://betterwithout.ai/incoherent-AI-apocalypses You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Who is in control of AI? - It may already be too late to shut down the existing AI systems that could destroy civilization. https://betterwithout.ai/AI-is-out-of-control What an AI apocalypse may look like - Scenarios in which artificial intelligence systems degrade critical institutions to the point of collapse seem to me not just likely, but well under way. https://betterwithout.ai/AI-safety-failure This episode mentions the short story "Sort By Controversial" by Scott Alexander. Here is the audio version narrated by me:
https://unsong.libsyn.com/sort-by-controversial
You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
"In this audiobook... A LARGE BOLD FONT IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS SOUNDS LIKE THIS." Apocalypse now - Current AI systems are already harmful. They pose apocalyptic risks even without further technology development. This chapter explains why; explores a possible path for near-term human extinction via AI; and sketches several disaster scenarios. https://betterwithout.ai/apocalypse-now At war with the machines - The AI apocalypse is now. https://betterwithout.ai/AI-already-at-war This interview with Stuart Russell is a good starting point for the a literature on recommender alignment, analogous to AI alignment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzDm9IMyTp8 You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Superintelligence should scare us only insofar as it grants superpowers. Protecting against specific harms of specific plausible powers may be our best strategy for preventing catastrophes. https://betterwithout.ai/fear-AI-power For much of the AI safety community, the central question has been “when will it happen?!” That is futile: we don’t have a coherent description of what “it” is, much less how “it” would come about. Fortunately, a prediction wouldn’t be useful anyway. An AI apocalypse is possible, so we should try to avert it. https://betterwithout.ai/scary-AI-when You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Many people call the future threat “artificial general intelligence,” but all three words there are misleading when trying to understand risks. https://betterwithout.ai/artificial-general-intelligence AI may radically accelerate technology development. That might be extremely good or extremely bad. There are currently no good explanations for how either would happen, so it’s hard to predict which, or when, or whether. The understanding necessary to guide the future to a good outcome may depend more on uncovering causes of technological progress than on reasoning about AI. https://betterwithout.ai/transformative-AI You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Thanks for your patience while I ran Fluidity Forum. We now resume "Better Without AI" by David Chapman. Speculations about autonomous AI assume simplistic theories of motivation. They also mistakenly confuse those with ethical theories. Building AI systems on these ideas would produce monsters. https://betterwithout.ai/AI-motivation Coherent Extrapolated Volition https://betterwithout.ai/AI-motivation#fn_Turchin:~:text=%E2%80%9C-,Coherent%20Extrapolated%20Volition,-%E2%80%9D%20at%20LessWrong%2C%20undated A.I. Alignment Problem: "Human Values" Don't Actually Exist https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ngqvnWGsvTEiTASih/ai-alignment-problem-human-values-don-t-actually-exist “Can we survive technology?” by John Von Neumann http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~kite/doc/von_Neumann_1955.pdf You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
It’s a mistake to think that human-like agency is the only dangerous kind. That risks overlooking AIs causing agent-like harms in inhuman ways. https://betterwithout.ai/diverse-agency#fn_meme_critics You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Most apocalyptic scenarios involve an AI acting as an autonomous agent, pursuing goals that conflict with human ones. Many people reject AI risk, saying that machines can’t have real goals or intentions. However, agency seems nebulous; and subtracting “real” agency from the scenario doesn’t seem to remove the risk. https://betterwithout.ai/agency A video in which white blood cells look as if they have agency: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KrCmBNiJRI The US National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence’s 2021 Report, which recommends spending $32bn per year on AI research to dramatically increase weapon systems agency: https://www.nscai.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Full-Report-Digital-1.pdf You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
We have a powerful intuition that some special mental feature, such as self-awareness, is a prerequisite to intelligence. This causes confusion because we don’t have a coherent understanding of what the special feature is, nor what role it plays in intelligent action. It may be best to treat mental characteristics as in the eye of the beholder, and therefore mainly irrelevant to AI risks. https://betterwithout.ai/mind-like-AI You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Scary AI: Apocalyptic AI scenarios usually involve some qualitatively different future form of artificial intelligence. No one can explain clearly what would make that exceptionally dangerous in a way current AI isn’t. This confusion draws attention away from risks of existing and near-future technologies, and from ways of forestalling them.
https://betterwithout.ai/scary-AI
Superintelligence: Maybe AI will kill you before you finish reading this section. The extreme scenarios typically considered by the AI safety movement are possible in principle, but unfortunately no one has any idea how to prevent them. This book discusses moderate catastrophes instead, offering pragmatic approaches to avoiding or diminishing them.
https://betterwithout.ai/superintelligence
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We now begin narrating the book Better Without AI, by David Chapman. https://betterwithout.ai/only-you-can-stop-an-AI-apocalypse You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks
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This concludes "In The Cells Of The Eggplant" by David Chapman. The podcast will go on a hiatus through the month of June.
It's natural to react to meta-rationalism with skepticism or hostility initially. You may come to delight in it.
https://metarationality.com/meta-rationality-resistance-enjoyment
Christopher Lövgren and Jake Orthwein discuss meta-rationality on the Do Explain podcast: Meaning and Meta-Rationality: https://www.doexplain.org/episodes/28-meaning-and-meta-rationality-part-one-with-jake-orthwein Cognitivism, Representationalism, and Rationalism: https://doexplain.buzzsprout.com/1260167/9954747-36-the-chapman-series-pt-1-cognitivism-representationalism-and-rationalism Nebulosity of Knowing: https://doexplain.buzzsprout.com/1260167/10027848-37-the-chapman-series-pt-2-nebulosity-of-knowing Since then, Chris and Jake, joined by Lulie Tannet, recorded some further episodes in "The Chapman Series": Deconstructing Dzogchen: https://doexplain.buzzsprout.com/1260167/10512847-41-the-chapman-series-pt-3-deconstructing-dzogchen Stages Of Adult Development: https://doexplain.buzzsprout.com/1260167/10955524-43-the-chapman-series-pt-4-stages-of-adult-development Popper, Why Have You Forsaken Me: https://doexplain.buzzsprout.com/1260167/12611598-52-the-chapman-series-pt-5-popper-why-have-you-forsaken-me Hot Tub Time Machine: https://doexplain.buzzsprout.com/1260167/12674101-53-the-chapman-series-pt-6-hot-tub-time-machine In this chapter, David Chapman also mentioned my talk on Adult Developmental Theory: https://youtu.be/yVDqaDH0bf8 I presented that talk at the Critical Rationalism Weekend (run by the aforementioned Lulie Tannett) and Jake Orthwein made some helpful contributions from the audience.
A meta-rational organization may appear chaotic (although productive and innovative), until you notice how smoothly routine rational work gets done. https://metarationality.com/meta-rational-workplace This is one of several standalone essays by David Chapman I'm incorporating into the unwritten sections of In The Cells Of The Eggplant, for the audiobook version. You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Fine-grained analysis of a molecular biology how-to video reveals significant features of rationality in practice. https://metarationality.com/rational-pcr This is one of several standalone essays by David Chapman I'm incorporating into the unwritten sections of In The Cells Of The Eggplant, for the audiobook version. The Britannica entry on PCR: https://www.britannica.com/science/polymerase-chain-reaction The Khan Academy explainer on PCR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHi-3jP6Mvc&ab_channel=KhanAcademy You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Part V of In The Cells Of The Eggplant: Taking Rational Work Seriously Putting meta-rationality to work, in statistics, experimental science, software development, and entrepreneurship. https://metarationality.com/applications Richard Feynman derided “cargo cult science” that sticks to fixed systems. Innovation requires an upgrade to fluid, meta-systematic inquiry. https://metarationality.com/upgrade-your-cargo-cult This is one of several standalone essays by David Chapman I'm incorporating into the unwritten sections of In The Cells Of The Eggplant, for the audiobook version. The full text of Richard Feynman's address about cargo cult science: http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm David Chapman's description of how most people can't draw a bicycle: https://meaningness.com/understanding#bicycles An interview with Lucy Suchman in which she mentions David Chapman and Phil Agre's work, among many other things: https://web.archive.org/web/20200608155536/http://www.iwp.jku.at/born/mpwfst/02/www.dialogonleadership.org/Suchmanx1999.html "Scenius, Or Communal Genius" by Kevin Kelly: https://kk.org/thetechnium/scenius-or-comm/ You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
The syllabus for a curriculum teaching meta-rational skills: how to evaluate, combine, modify, discover, and create effective systems. https://metarationality.com/meta-rationality-curriculum This is one of several standalone essays by David Chapman I'm incorporating into the unwritten sections of In The Cells Of The Eggplant, for the audiobook version. You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Distinguishing irrational, anti-rational, and meta-rational critiques of rationalism helps reply effectively. https://metarationality.com/rationalism-critiques This is one of several standalone essays by David Chapman I'm incorporating into the unwritten sections of In The Cells Of The Eggplant, for the audiobook version. You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Just as in the last episode, this is one of several standalone essays by David Chapman I'm incorporating into the unwritten sections of In The Cells Of The Eggplant, for the audiobook version. It fits well into Part 4: Taking Meta-Rationality Seriously. Rationality requires judging whether a system of reasoning applies to a situation — but that judgement cannot be systematic! https://metarationality.com/meta-systematic-judgement Links mentioned in this episode: A webcomic by Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal about probability: https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=4127 David Chapman's essay, "Nutrition offers its resignation. And the reply": https://metarationality.com/nutrition-resigns "July 4th And The Extraordinary Providential Deaths Of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe", a textbook example of religious eternalism, political eternalism, and rationalist eternalism, all rolled into one: https://web.archive.org/web/20160314212725/http://www.apollospeaks.com/?p=4354 You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
The heart of the meta-rationality book: what meta-rationality is, why it matters, and how to do it. https://metarationality.com/meta-rationality A first lesson in meta-rationality, or stage 5 cognition, using Bongard problems as a laboratory. This is an essay from metarationality.com edited and inserted into In The Cells Of The Eggplant, with the permission of the author. https://metarationality.com/bongard-meta-rationality Some links in the episode: Index of Bongard problems http://www.foundalis.com/res/bps/bpidx.htm Brian Cantwell Smith: The philosophy of computation - meaning, mechanism, mystery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USF1H70bRl0&ab_channel=Andr%C3%A9SouzaLemos Alexandre Linhares’ “A glimpse at the metaphysics of Bongard problems.” (Through the Internet Archive) https://web.archive.org/web/20220327091633/http://app.ebape.fgv.br/comum/arq/Linhares2.pdf You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Reconfiguring categories, properties, and relationships is a meta-rational skill—key in scientific revolutions. https://metarationality.com/remodeling Be advised, this episode is an hour long. You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Even counting, the simplest rational method, works only with the aid of non-rational support. https://metarationality.com/pebbles You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
A pragmatic understanding of how systematic rationality works in practice can help you level up your technical work. https://metarationality.com/rationality You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Due to a combination of factors, discussed on the Patreon, I've set myself back by a week, and will be on hiatus until next week.
Reasonableness works with nebulous, tacit, interactive, accountable, purposeful ontologies, which enable everyday routine activity. https://metarationality.com/reasonable-ontology You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Using instructions requires figuring out what they mean in the context of your activity, and relative to your purposes. https://metarationality.com/reasonable-ontology You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
This episode is more than an hour long. The epistemological categories—truth, belief, inference—are richer, more complex, diverse, and nebulous than rationalism supposes. https://metarationality.com/reasonable-epistemology You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Peculiar features of language make sense as tools to enable collaboration, rather than to express objective truths. https://metarationality.com/purpose-of-meaning You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
We actively work to perceive aspects of the world as meaningful, in terms of our purposes, in context. https://metarationality.com/perception Here are the images mentioned in this episode: In this episode is a mention of a perception test of tracking basketball players passing a ball: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo Also mentioned in this episode is a more advanced version of the perception test: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
You are accountable for reasonableness: Accountability is the key concept in understanding mere reasonableness, as contrasted with systematic rationality. https://metarationality.com/accountability Reasonableness is routine: Routine activity usually goes smoothly overall, despite frequent minor glitches, because we have methods for repairing trouble. https://metarationality.com/routine You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Aspects of reasonableness: A summary explanation of everyday reasonable activity, with a tabular guide and a concrete example. https://metarationality.com/reasonableness-aspects Reasonableness is meaningful activity: Understanding concrete, purposeful activity is a prerequisite to understanding the formal rationality that depends on it. https://metarationality.com/meaningful-activity You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Everyday reasonableness is the foundation of technical, formal, and systematic rationality. https://metarationality.com/reasonableness This is not cognitive science - The Eggplant is neither cognitive nor science, although it seeks a better understanding of some phenomena cognitive science has studied. https://metarationality.com/cognitive-science The ethnomethodological flip - A dramatic perspective shift: understanding rationality as dependent on mere reasonableness to connect it with reality. https://metarationality.com/ethnomethodological-flip You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
The conclusion of Part One of In The Cells Of The Eggplant: Taking Rationalism Seriously. Acting On The Truth Rationalist theories of action try to deduce optimal choices from true beliefs. This is rarely possible in practice. https://metarationality.com/action-in-rationalism Overcoming Post-Rationalist Nihilism Realizing rationalism is wrong can be devastating. Antidotes to the ensuing rage, anxiety, and depression are available, fortunately! https://metarationality.com/post-rationalist-nihilism You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
The probability of green cheese: A thought experiment shows why probability theory and statistics cannot address uncertainty in general. https://metarationality.com/small-world Statistics and the replication crisis: The mistaken belief that statistical methods can tell you what to believe drove the science replication crisis. https://metarationality.com/probabilism-crisis You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Probability theory seems an attractive foundation for rationalism—but it is not up to the job. https://metarationality.com/probabilism Leaving the casino - Probabilistic rationalism encourages you to view the whole world as a gigantic casino—but mostly it is not like that. https://metarationality.com/probabilism-applicability What probability can’t do - 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. https://metarationality.com/probability-limitations Mentioned in this episode: Probability Theory Does Not Extend Logic https://metarationality.com/probability-and-logic "Bayes: A Kinda-Sorta Masterpost" by Nostalgiabraist https://nostalgebraist.tumblr.com/post/161645122124/bayes-a-kinda-sorta-masterpost The “Potential Problems” section of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on “Bayesian Epistemology” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-bayesian/#PotPro You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Three short chapters from In The Cells Of The Eggplant. What can you believe? - Propositions are whatever sort of thing it is you can believe. Nothing can play that role; so we need a different understanding of belief. https://metarationality.com/propositions Where did you get that idea in the first place? - Rationalism does not explain where hypotheses, theories, discoveries, inventions, or other new ideas come from. https://metarationality.com/no-new-ideas The Spanish Inquisition - Unboundedly many issues may be relevant to any practical problem, so mathematical logic does not work as advertised. https://metarationality.com/closed-world You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
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Rationalist theories assume perception delivers an objective description of the world to rationality. It can’t, and doesn’t try to.
https://metarationality.com/rationalist-perception You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
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Rational methods assume objects are objectively separable; but they aren’t. How do we use rationality effectively anyway?
https://metarationality.com/objective-objects You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
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Reference: rationalism’s reality problem - The correspondence theory of truth doesn’t work by metaphysical magic. We must do the work to make it work—by any means necessary.
https://metarationality.com/rational-reference The National Omelet Registry - Rationalism implicitly or explicitly assumes that every object in the universe has a unique ID number.
https://metarationality.com/identity You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
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Approximation is a powerful technique, but is not applicable in all rational work, and so is not a good general theory of nebulosity. https://metarationality.com/approximation You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
“Shades of gray” is sometimes a good way to think about nebulosity—the world’s inherent fuzziness—but not always. https://metarationality.com/vagueness You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Formal methods formally require impossibly precise definitions of terms. How do we use them effectively without that? https://metarationality.com/definition You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Reduction is a powertool of rationality, but reductionism can’t work as a general theory; most rationality is not reduction. https://metarationality.com/reductionism You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Formal rationality requires absolute truths, but those are rare in the eggplant-sized world. How do we do rationality without them? https://metarationality.com/sort-of-truth You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
The world is everything that is the case: Aristotelian logic was mistaken both in details and overall conception, yet its key ideas survive in contemporary rationalism.
https://metarationality.com/Aristotelian-logic Depends upon what the meaning of the word “is” is: Formal logic successfully addresses important defects in traditional, Aristotelian logic, but cannot deal with contextuality.
https://metarationality.com/formal-logic The value of meaninglessness: Recognizing that some statements are neither true nor false was a major advance in early 20th-century rationalism.
https://metarationality.com/meaninglessness "What Is Wrong With Our Thoughts? A Neo-Positivist Credo" by David Stove http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/wrongthoughts.html You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Early 20th-century logical positivism was the last serious rationalism. Better understandings of rationality learn from its mistakes.
https://metarationality.com/logical-positivism
You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
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Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
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Rationalism responds to its failures, in the face of nebulosity, by making more complicated formal theories. https://metarationality.com/rationalism-responses You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
The beginning of Part One of In The Cells Of The Eggplant. The hope that systematic rationality can reliably provide certainty, understanding, and control fails when it encounters nebulosity. https://metarationality.com/rationalism Defining the subject matter: rationality, rationalism, reasonableness, and meta-rationality. https://metarationality.com/rationalism-definitions You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Why meta-rationality matters for progress: leveling up science, technology, and society, even as they are unraveling. https://metarationality.com/credibility-post-truth A structural overview of the meta-rationality book In The Cells Of The Eggplant. https://metarationality.com/structure You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Here's the second half of the interview with David Chapman in which we announced Fluidity Forum 2023. In the first half, we discussed Fluidity Forum, a gathering we're planning for 2023 about metamodernity, sense-making, rationalism, metarationality, thinking-about-thinking, a metarationality curriculum, civilizational redesign, internal family systems, developmental theory, erisology, social media algorithms, conflict resolution, psychology, consilience, comparative religion, secular meditation, legibility & many other topics common in this space. Many people asked me "what do half of those words mean?" I created a glossary. But there were a few terms I needed David Chapman's help with, such as the frame problem. Links mentioned in this episode: Fluidity Forum Glossary
The Bridge: Rationality to "Woo" by Evan McMullen on The Stoa The Liminal Web by Joe Lightfoot The Memetic Tribes Of Culture War 2.0 by Peter Limberg of The Stoa
Rationality And Refrigerators: This book offers more sophisticated understanding of truth than both rationalist absolutism and postmodernist relativism. https://metarationality.com/refrigerator Clouds and eggplants: The relationship between nebulosity—the inherent fuzziness of the world—and rationality is a central concern of meta-rationality. https://metarationality.com/nebulosity You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Welcome to the first episode of narrating "In The Cells Of The Eggplant" by David Chapman. This begins season 2 of the Fluidity Audiobooks podcast.
Is this book for you? How meta-rationality can level up your work in science, technology, and engineering.
https://metarationality.com/introduction
You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
In this interview with David Chapman, we discuss Fluidity Forum, a gathering we're planning for 2023.
FluidityForum.org
We'll also discuss two new events I've attended recently: Critical Rationalism Weekend in Philadelphia, and Vibecamp in Austin.
The conversations that have started to excite me the most are intermediate scales between the individual & the world:
-
not-for-profit projects, activities & events, such as maker spaces, druid groves, science fiction conventions, local Burning Man events, open source software projects, Mastodon or Discord servers, board game/role playing groups, and Vibecamp
-
co-housing and intentional communities
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scenes, where “scenius” emerges
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subcultures & subsocieties
Do those intermediate scales supply a path for personal change to bring about system change? When a small community implements a change that is un-scalable beyond its size, it’s like a sand castle. The world’s systems act like an ocean that soon washes it away. What can scale the local to the global, the temporary to the self-perpetuating?
We also discuss this article by Hanzi Freinacht about the "3H" population: Hackers, Hipsters, and Hippies.
Here we are, listeners. We have concluded "Meaningness".
These episodes have been narrating sections of Meaningness which were written during the narration of Meaningness And Time. The remainder of Meaningness has already aired. If you are new to the podcast, it picks up from here at the episode aired on Aug 4, 2021, titled "The Complete Stance".
On our next episode, we will begin "In The Cells Of The Eggplant", by David Chapman, published at metarationality.com. An exciting milestone. Thank you for coming with me!
Miserabilism tastes like nihilism: “Miserabilism” is the stance that everything is awful. It's confused with nihilism because both entail rage and depression.
https://meaningness.com/miserabilism Nihilistic anxiety opens into play: Anxiety is a natural reaction to uncertainty. In nihilism, pervasive loss of meaning makes everything uncertain; existential angst is a response.
https://meaningness.com/nihilism-anxiety Sartre’s ghost and the corpse of God: Existentialism, a hopeful alternative to rigid meanings, makes wrong metaphysical assumptions, and cannot work. It collapses inevitably into nihilism.
https://meaningness.com/existentialism-muddled-middle You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
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This concludes the section on the varieties of nihilistic special meaning.
Thanks to Sarah Elkins and Bruce Webber for performing roles in this episode's scripted section!
No meaning without proof - A stubborn nihilist can always just refuse to admit that anything is meaningful.
https://meaningness.com/no-proof-of-meaning Scientific rationality has proven: everything is meaningless - An event everyone thinks they remember, but never happened. Science disproved religious theories of meaning, but not meaning itself. https://meaningness.com/science-proves-meaninglessness No meaning from the Big Bang - Everything was meaningless at the moment of the Big Bang. What could add meaning after that?
https://meaningness.com/no-meaning-from-big-bang No meaning for mortals - Your future death does not make your present meaningless.
https://meaningness.com/no-meaning-for-corpses You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
No meaning without justification - The rationalist theory of justified action leads to nihilism. Understand your activity as a vivid, variegated landscape instead.
https://meaningness.com/no-meaning-without-justification
No meaning of life as a whole - Misunderstanding “a life” as an object leads to the complaint that, although meanings exist, life is meaningless overall.
https://meaningness.com/no-meaning-of-life-overall
Not enough meaning - Perception that life is not meaningful enough may involve an unrealistic standard; or ways of increasing meaningfulness may help.
https://meaningness.com/not-enough-meaning
You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks
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Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
We pick up where we left off in the Nihilism chapter of the book "Meaningness", with additional pages written by the author during the narration of "Meaningness And Time". No objective meaning: While the meaning of “objective” is nebulous, learning to relate to meaningness more objectively is possible and worthwhile. https://meaningness.com/no-objective-meaning Some other varieties of objectivity: Nihilistic claims about subjectivity, inherent meaning, universal meaning, and scientific objectivity do not hold up. https://meaningness.com/objectivity-other-varieties You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
We return to the book "Meaningness" for the conclusion of the Eternalism chapter. I delayed this episode until now in case David Chapman wrote more, or revised them, and no longer considered them unfinished. It's worthwhile just as it is, and I have formatted all these short pages as if they were sections in one page. Eternalist Ploys: Ploys—ways of thinking, feeling, talking, and acting—which stabilize eternalism; and antidotes to use against them. https://meaningness.com/eternalist-ploys Imposing fixed meanings: Forcing fixed meanings on experience always eventually results in unpleasant shocks when reality refuses to conform to your pre-determined categories. https://meaningness.com/imposing-fixed-meanings Smearing meaning all over everything: Monist eternalism—the New Age and SBNR, for example—say everything is meaningful, but leaves vague what the meanings are. https://meaningness.com/smearing-meaning Magical thinking: Hallucinating causal connections is powerfully synergistic with eternalism. https://meaningness.com/magical-thinking Hope: Hope is harmful in devaluing the present and shifting attention to imaginary futures that may never exist. https://meaningness.com/hope Pretending: Eternalist religions and political systems are always partly make-believe, like children playing at being pirates. https://meaningness.com/pretending Colluding for eternalism: Because eternalist delusion is so desirable, we collude to maintain it. To save each other from nihilism, we support each other in not-seeing nebulosity. https://meaningness.com/collusion Hiding from nebulosity: Physically avoiding ambiguous situations and information. https://meaningness.com/hiding-from-nebulosity Kitsch and naïveté: The denial of the possibility of meaninglessness leads to willfully idiotic sentimentality. https://meaningness.com/kitsch Armed & armored eternalism: When nebulosity becomes obvious, eternalism fails to fit reality. You can armor yourself against evidence, and arm yourself to destroy it. https://meaningness.com/armed-eternalism Faith: Privileging faith over experience is an eternalist ploy for blinding yourself to signs of nebulosity. https://meaningness.com/faith Thought suppression: Maintaining faith in non-existent meanings. It leads to deliberate stupidity, inability to express oneself, and inaction. https://meaningness.com/thought-suppression Bargaining and recommitment: When eternalism lets you down, you are tempted to make a bargain with it. Eternalism will behave itself better, and in return you renew your faith in it. https://meaningness.com/recommitment Wistful certainty: The thought that there must exist whatever it takes to make eternalism seem to work. https://meaningness.com/wistful-certainty Faithful bafflement: Maintaining the eternalist stance that remains committed but begins to doubt. https://meaningness.com/faithful-bafflement Mystification: Using thoughts as a weapon against authentic thinking, to create glib, bogus metaphysical explanations that sweep meaninglessness under the rug. https://meaningness.com/mystification Rehearsing the horrors of nihilism: Reminding yourself and others of how bad nihilism is can help maintain the eternalist stance. This is the hellfire and brimstone of eternalist preaching. https://meaningness.com/rehearsing-nihilist-horror Purification: An obsessive focus for dualist eternalism mobilizes emotions of disgust, guilt, shame, and self-righteous anger. https://meaningness.com/purity Fortress eternalism: In the face of undeserved suffering, is difficult not to fall into the stance that most things are God’s will, but not the horrible bits. https://meaningness.com/fortress-eternalism On next week's episode, we return to the Nihilism chapter of Meaningness: Objectivity. You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
The epilogue of "The Cofounders", discussing metarationality in organizational management.
https://meaningness.com/cofounders-in-relationship
This concludes "Meaningness And Time". The next episodes will return to "Meaningness" to narrate material David Chapman has written in the interim.
You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks
If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
This episode contains the second and final part of my most recent interview with David Chapman. This one is one hour long. In part 1, we discussed a phrase he has used several times in "Meaningness And Time": secretly pretending to believe. In this part, we apply the approach from his books to controversial issues, including how different factions process the concept of gender transition. We also discuss the nature of the false claims that the votes in the 2020 US Presidential election were not reflected in the outcome. I mentioned this article by Freddie deBoer about "critique drift": https://inthesetimes.com/article/nyu-grad-students-win-contract You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
The path from professionalism to a deliberately-developmental relationship: a tale of startup cofounders.
https://meaningness.com/cofounders-in-relationship
Be prepared before you begin: this episode is an hour and twenty minutes long.
Thanks to Jasmine Ren for performing the part of Prithi. You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold
Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
In this episode, I interview David Chapman about a phrase he has used several times in "Meaningness And Time": secretly pretending to believe. This is part 1. You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Fluidity addresses the atomization of culture, society, and self with ships that sail the sea of meaning: collaborative, improvised, intimate, and playful.
https://meaningness.com/fluidity-preview Desiderata for any future mode of meaningness - A positive and realistic vision for the future of society, culture, and self, drawing lessons from recent history.
https://meaningness.com/fluidity-desiderata The Terra Ignota series of science fiction novels by Ada Palmer, which illustrates one vision of the fluid mode of social organization:
https://us.macmillan.com/series/terraignota You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
The global internet atomizes cultures, societies, and selves into tiny brilliant shards. Meaning has lost context and coherence. Now what?
https://meaningness.com/atomized-mode Cultural atomization—the widespread loss of conceptual coherence—has made serious intellectual work much more difficult in the twenty-teens.
https://meaningness.com/thinking-after-atomization If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
“Archipelago” is a political model in which everyone can choose what social system to live in. It’s impractical, but points to better solutions. https://meaningness.com/archipelago-politics
In this episode, I narrate the blog post "Archipelago and Atomic Communitarianism" by Scott Alexander, with his permission.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-atomic-communitarianism/
Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Subcultures: the diversity of meaning - The subcultural era (1975-2000) recognized the diversity of meanings, and provided a new type of supportive, voluntary social group. https://meaningness.com/subcultures Subcultures: meanings at play - With no responsibility to justify universal norms, or for solving social problems, subcultures were freed to play with meanings.
https://meaningness.com/subcultural-culture
Subsocieties: urban tribes - Subsocieties, close-knit social groups organized around subsocieties: a possible model for positive future social oganization.
https://meaningness.com/subsocieties
Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution - How muggles and sociopaths invade and undermine creative subcultures; and how to stop them.
https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths
If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold
Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
At root, the culture war is not about abortion, gay marriage, or marijuana. It is about shared misunderstandings of the nature of meaning.
https://meaningness.com/completing-countercultures
You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks
If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold
Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
The culture war, political polarization, Baby Boomer bafflement: the unending zombie slugfest pairing the two countercultures of the 1960s-80s. https://meaningness.com/counterculture-war "Five Case Studies In Politicization", by Scott Alexander. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/10/16/five-case-studies-on-politicization/ "The Toxoplasma of Rage", also by Scott Alexander. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
The hippie and Moral Majority movements both developed broad, deep cultures, with innovative approaches to every aspect of life, from music to dentistry. https://meaningness.com/countercultural-culture Failure to find new foundations for meaning, to recognize diversity, to provide community, and to transcend opposition: all doomed counterculturalism. https://meaningness.com/countercultures-fail An atomized masterpiece by DJ Lobsterdust, "Queen Vs Satan, featuring pastor Gary G., in: It's Fun To Smoke Dust". https://youtu.be/pdXek5d2ocw You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
The Religious Right and New Age Left both promoted time-distorting meta-myths—imaginary past golden ages and implausible future utopias—to hide their defects. https://meaningness.com/counterculture-history-myths Fundamentalism is not traditional; it is a modern, countercultural movement, opposed to tradition and to post-modernity. https://meaningness.com/fundamentalism-countercultural-modernism This references David Chapman's essay on another site, "Ritual Vs Mentalism": https://vividness.live/ritual-vs-mentalism You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
In the 1960s-80s, American politics shifted from economic to sacredness issues. This damaged public discourse, but created a new two-track class system. https://meaningness.com/political-left-right-rotated You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
The 1960s-80s countercultures dissolved the boundaries between self and society, ethical and political—setting us up for decades of culture war.
You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
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Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
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The 1960s-80s countercultures abandoned rationality because they believed it negated all meaning. They were wrong.
Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
How—and why!—countercultures sought to reform psychologies and polities: to counteract alienation, anxiety, and anomie.
Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
The hippie counterculture was structurally and functionally similar to the Moral Majority Christian Right counterculture a decade later. https://meaningness.com/monism-dualism-countercultures Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Taking a break from narrating "Meaningness And Time" to give you a standalone essay by the author, David Chapman, which I call the Bridge essay. It will be helpful in our next few episodes, in which "Meaningness And Time" describes the counter-cultures' renegotiation of the relationship between self and society. The Bridge essay provides the urgency behind this entire audiobook podcast, and the reason I titled the podcast "Fluidity". When I first read it in 2020, that was the moment I decided I wanted to narrate David Chapman's work on my podcast. https://metarationality.com/stem-fluidity-bridge The Bridge essay references Chapman's summary of Robert Kegan's framework of adult cognitive development, which I narrated on this episode: https://fluidity.libsyn.com/developing-ethical-social-and-cognitive-competence Original text of Chapman's summary of Kegan here: https://vividness.live/developing-ethical-social-and-cognitive-competence Yesterday I encouraged David Chapman to link from the Bridge essay to an enlightening recent article by John Nerst on his blog Everything Studies (later published in Aero Magazine) clarifying the difference between postmodernism and "pseudo-pomo": https://areomagazine.com/2018/06/30/postmodernism-vs-the-pomo-oid-cluster/ Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
The hippies and the Moral Majority both tried to rescue systematic eternalism—and failed. We live amongst their wreckage. https://meaningness.com/countercultures Countercultures defined as new, alternative, universalist, eternalist, anti-rational systems: there were two in the late 20th century. https://meaningness.com/counterculture-definition If you want to support this podcast, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Modernity was built on certainty in science and mathematics. That was revealed as delusional during the early 20th century.
An hour-long episode!
For many of my acquaintance, this is an important entry point into Chapman's work, tying together Meaningness And Time with his other book In The Cells Of The Eggplant. It's also the most recent page he's written.
https://meaningness.com/collapse-of-rational-certainty If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
How and why modernity failed. All systems of meaning—religious, political, artistic, psychological—began to fall apart. Nihilism seemed the only alternative.
https://meaningness.com/systems-crisis-breakdown
If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold
Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Ideological time-distortion strategies are highly effective in propaganda. The Victorian age and the twentieth century gave us many new things that were supposedly ancient. These include: - British royal coronation ceremonies. - kilts and almost the entire Scottish national identity. - almost all of the history of Buddhism. - and don't get us started on Thanksgiving and Christmas. This is a fun episode. https://meaningness.com/invented-traditions-and-timeworn-futures You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
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Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
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Systems of society, culture, and the self were the foundation of the modern world. Their glories have passed. https://meaningness.com/systematic-mode You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
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If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold
Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
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This chart is an overview of Meaningness and Time: the past, present, and future of culture, society, and our selves. https://meaningness.com/modes-chart Also - "In praise of choicelessness." The choiceless mode of understanding meaning has no “becauses.” Explanations are unnecessary because you are unaware of any alternatives. https://meaningness.com/choiceless-mode You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks
If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold
Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
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Beginning the next book by David Chapman: "Meaningness And Time". Past modes of relating to meaning and meaninglessness have broken down. How do we move to the fluid mode of social organization?
The problems of meaningness we face now are dramatically different from those of the past. We also sense new opportunities, and have new resources.
https://meaningness.com/meaningness-and-time How meaning fell apart: Over the past century, systems of meaning gradually disintegrated, and a series of new modes of meaningness developed.
https://meaningness.com/meaningness-history You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
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Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
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The podcast will be on a one-week hiatus for the holidays, returning January 9, 2022, with "Meaningness And Time." If you have ways of relating to meaningness through winter rituals, may they be as they put it in "Ritual And Its Consequences: An Essay On The Limits Of Sincererity".
"...the endless work of building, refining, and rebuilding webs of relationships in an otherwise fragmented world."
https://vividness.live/ritual-vs-mentalism
At the start of every episode, I've said "Words with an entry in the glossary have an echo." Well, it's time for the glossary! https://meaningness.com/whole-glossary Terminology choices: "Complete." "Emptiness and form, nebulosity and pattern." "Non-dual." https://meaningness.com/terminology/complete https://meaningness.com/terminology/emptiness-form-nebulosity-pattern https://meaningness.com/terminology/non-dual Next week, the podcast will begin a hiatus for the holidays, returning in January 2022, with "Meaningness And Time." If you have ways of relating to meaningness through winter rituals, may they be as they put it in "Ritual And Its Consequences: An Essay On The Limits Of Sincererity". "...the endless work of building, refining, and rebuilding webs of relationships in an otherwise fragmented world." https://vividness.live/ritual-vs-mentalism Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
When you discover you are owned by an ideology, you can escape. Better, you can find a larger space.
https://meaningness.com/vaster-than-ideology You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
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Intuitions of “cosmic meaning” root in hunger for personal significance, and in encounters with vastness.
https://meaningness.com/no-cosmic-meaning
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No ultimate meaning: “Ultimate” means “at the end of a scale.” What is the scale of meaning? Should you want to be at the end of it?
https://meaningness.com/no-ultimate-meaning No eternal meaning: Meanings come and go; they are not eternally stable— and that is fine.
https://meaningness.com/no-eternal-meaning You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
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No absolute meaning: Are you adult enough to accept that the world offers no absolute guarantees? https://meaningness.com/no-absolute-meaning No transcendent meaning: If meaning lives only in Neverland, we can’t make much use of it. Fortunately, it’s here, now. https://meaningness.com/no-transcendent-meaning You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
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Lite nihilism, on the way to completion: Lite nihilism includes a valuable, accurate analysis of the failure of eternalism. https://meaningness.com/lite-nihilism Not really meaningful: “Nothing REALLY means anything” sounds plausible when you feel nihilistic. What does “really” mean, though? https://meaningness.com/no-real-meaning No extra-special fancy meanings: Nihilism rightly denies objective, ultimate, transcendent, absolute, cosmic, and eternal meanings. What is left? https://meaningness.com/no-special-meaning Original music by Kevin MacLeod. This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
The many justifications for nihilism rely on a handful of mistaken patterns of reasoning. https://meaningness.com/nihilist-fallacies Links mentioned in this episode: Scott Alexander’s blog post “Proving too much”. "Finding Meaning In An Imperfect World" by Iddo Landau You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
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This episode narrates the new pages “'Nihilism is OK' is not OK" and "The uncanny absence of nihil –ism". “Nihilism is inevitable, but not a problem.” This is mistaken: it makes you miserable and ineffective, and erodes social and cultural capacity. https://meaningness.com/nihilism-considered-harmful Nihilism, like botulism, is not an ideology or conceptual system. It is a stance: an emotionally-charged way of being. https://meaningness.com/nihilism-is-not-an-ism Links mentioned in this episode: In "Postmodernism vs. The Pomoid Cluster" John Nerst analyzes the relationship between postmodernism as an academic theory, and “pomo” as a popular way of relating to meaningness. The TV Tropes page "Straw Nihilist". I struggled with saying "schismatic subsects", but you only get the edited version in which I nailed it. :) You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
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A world of total license: the catastrophe some fear if nihilistic views become widespread. https://meaningness.com/nihilist-apocalypse You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
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Nihilism has a taboo allure of forbidden power—because everyone knows eternalism is wrong. https://meaningness.com/nihilism-black-magic Recognizing meaninglessness requires unusual intelligence, courage, and toughness. Nihilist elitism renders you stupid, cowardly, and helpless, though. https://meaningness.com/nihilist-cynicism-elitism You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
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Nihilism promises you don’t have to care, because nothing means anything. But you do care—and you can’t escape that. https://meaningness.com/nihilism-promise The end-state of nihilism is not suicide, but catatonia. https://meaningness.com/accomplishing-nihilism You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks
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This mid-week bonus episode is another interview with David Chapman, in which we discuss nihilism, both as a book section, and nihilism itself. Since the time that I started recording, he has since written six more episodes worth of chapters in the Nihilism section of Meaningness. I could move on and record "Meaningness And Time", but instead I'll loop back and read his newly-written chapters out of order.
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Materialism says that only mundane purposes like money, sex, and power count. It wrongly rejects higher purposes—but those too are not ultimate. https://meaningness.com/materialism Common critiques of materialism, from religion, political idealism, personal idealism, and nihilism. https://meaningness.com/materialism-rejection Mingling mission and materialism attempts to gain both self-indulgent and self-justifying goals—but loses both enjoyment and empathetic joy. https://meaningness.com/mingled-mission-materialism You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
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The delusion that you can find your true, unique personal life-purpose causes only suffering and failure.
https://meaningness.com/mission-defects-obstacles
Just discover your unique talent, follow your passion, and success is guaranteed—this is terrible advice!
https://meaningness.com/do-with-my-life
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Dividing purposes into higher and mundane, mission pursues higher ends and rejects pragmatism; materialism seeks only selfish goals. Both are mistakes.
https://meaningness.com/purpose
It is attractive to think that we each have a unique, transcendent, ultimate purpose in life. Unfortunately, this belief is both false and harmful.
https://meaningness.com/mission
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Abandoning selflessness and egoism equally, we can play with the ambiguous self/other boundary; supple, skillful selfing for successful, satisfying interaction.
https://meaningness.com/self
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Stances concerning connection and separateness: monism, dualism, and participation. https://meaningness.com/monism-dualism-and-participation Monism and dualism are opposites. But because each is obviously wrong, each turns into the other when cornered. Sneaky! https://meaningness.com/monism-dualism-recursion Errors of monism and dualism: denying and fixating object boundaries and connections. https://meaningness.com/boundaries-objects-connections You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks
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Going beyond resolutions of specific problems: consistently maintaining an accurate stance toward meaningness.
https://meaningness.com/stabilize-complete-stance Since this episode ties together what we have learned so far, it references previous episodes. They are:
Obstacles To The Complete Stance Stances Are Unstable Exiting eternalism Finding the complete stance Textures of completion Meaningness as a liberating practice You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
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Open-ended curiosity gives you the freedom to interact with the world without metaphysical presuppositions.
https://meaningness.com/curiosity
Other works by David Chapman mentioned in this episode are:
- In The Cells Of The Eggplant is a book-length treatment of this episode, explaining the application of open-ended curiosity to professional, technical work such as science, engineering, or organizational management.
- “Upgrade your cargo cult for the win” is a long essay version.
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Wonder at the vastness, beauty, and intricacy of the phenomenal world: a texture of the complete stance.
https://meaningness.com/wonder
Recordings mentioned in the episode include:
- “Deference, Humility, and Awe,” a lecture by Brian Cantwell Smith.
- Hoppípolla, “a song with qualities known to evoke awe,” by Sigur Rós’.
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The fundamental method for resolving problems of meaning: by finding nebulosity, pattern, and their inseparable relationship.
Wonder → curiosity → humor → play → enjoyment → creation. Patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting in the complete stance, which resolves problems of meaning.
https://meaningness.com/finding-complete-stance
https://meaningness.com/complete-textures
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Peak experiences and the complete stance are similar in texture, but differ in intensity, conceptual content, and causes.
Meaning and meaninglessness, pattern and nebulosity all obviously exist—yet we resist recognizing and admitting this. Why?
https://meaningness.com/peak-experiences
https://meaningness.com/complete-stance-obstacles
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Meaning is nebulous, yet patterned; meaningfulness and meaninglessness intermingle. Recognizing this frees us from metaphysical delusions. Resolving problems of meaning, by recognizing inseparable pattern and nebulosity, will improve your life.
https://meaningness.com/meaningness
https://meaningness.com/complete-stance-appeal
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Nihilism says nothing means anything—but no one actually believes that. Lite nihilism weakens the claim, to make it plausible.
https://meaningness.com/nihilism-hardcore-vs-lite
https://meaningness.com/190-proof-nihilism
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Nihilism is the wrong idea that nothing is meaningful, based on the accurate realization that there is no external, eternal source of meaning.
https://meaningness.com/nihilism
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The author has moved the chapter of the book we'll read in today's episode. The chapter now belongs earlier in the book than where we are. It belongs between episode 16, "Meaningfulness", and episode 17, "Eternalism". So, I'm going to back up and read this chapter now, out of order.
Meaning cannot be either objective or subjective. But meaning does exist: as interaction.
https://meaningness.com/objective-subjective
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We're taking a break from narrating Meaningness to read an important foundational essay by the author of Meaningness, David Chapman.
As we reach the end of the Eternalism section of Meaningness, it's time for one of the essays I included in the Patreon backer survey. This essay is an overview by David Chapman of the work of psychologist Robert Kegan, a scholar of adult cognitive development. This essay has become very useful for how I see the situations of my own life, and I'm excited to finally share it with you. David Chapman recently wrote the chapter of Meaningness about Eternalist Systems, and he is currently writing a chapter on how to become meta to systems. That will make a lot more sense after you hear this episode. So while he's writing that chapter, this is a perfect time.
https://vividness.live/developing-ethical-social-and-cognitive-competence
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Accomplishing eternalism would would mean knowing the meaning of everything, and acting accordingly. This is impossible, because there are no fixed meanings.
https://meaningness.com/accomplishing-eternalism
Learning skills for escaping the grip of eternalism—the delusion that everything is meaningful.
https://meaningness.com/after-eternalism
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Systems such as religions and political ideologies reinforce eternalism. They dispel doubt by denying nebulosity.
Original text at: https://meaningness.com/eternalist-systems
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Eternalism -- belief in fixed meanings -- makes promises it can't keep. It makes us do stupid, crazy, evil things. And we still love it and keep going back for more.
Original text at: https://meaningness.com/eternalism-considered-harmful
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This episode contains the final page of "The Appeal Of Eternalism".
Eternalism's final promise is to keep nihilism at bay. There is a better alternative to both!
Original text at: https://meaningness.com/eternalism-as-salvation-from-nihilism
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This episode contains the fourth part of "The Appeal Of Eternalism".
Eternalism promises answers about good and bad- the meanings we care about most- but cannot deliver.
Original text at: https://meaningness.com/wheel-of-fortune
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Last episode, we covered the first two pages of the section "The Appeal Of Eternalism", about the illusions of certainty and understanding. This episode contains the third page, about control.
Eternalism promises complete control over life — but that is an impossible fantasy. Influence through collaboration and improvisation are possible, however.
Original text at: https://meaningness.com/control
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This is the second of our bonus episodes, outside of the audiobook. I interview David Chapman on the secular and the sacred. I ask him questions about his background in Buddhism and Wicca, and my experiences with the TV shows "Cosmos" and "Veggie Tales", EPCOT Center, Burning Man, and the Universism movement active from 2003 to 2007 (as distinct from Unitarian Universalism).
The question for you, our listeners, is this: Does English have a single word, neologism, or portmanteau, which might convey the sense of the Buddhist word "kadag"? It means a type of sacredness which is blended with the banal, and can sometimes be found in unexpected places. As sacredness is traditionally conceived, there is a category of things which are set apart to always to be considered completely sacred. Kadag differs from that.
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Parts 1 and 2 of this book's section "The Appeal Of Eternalism". Eternalism promises everything you could want from meaning: safety, support, certainty, reassurance, and control. Solid ground!
-
The promise of certainty: What we want most from meaning is guarantees. Religions, political ideologies, and other eternalist systems promise certainty; but they cannot deliver.
-
The illusion of understanding: It’s deluded to think we mostly understand issues of meaning (ethics, purpose, value, politics). Ideologies deliberately create and sustain that illusion.
Original text at: https://meaningness.com/eternalism-appeal
https://meaningness.com/certainty
https://meaningness.com/understanding
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Eternalism is the wrong idea that everything has a definite meaning, fixed by an external ordering principle.
I get duped by eternalism in a casino: Gambling, religion, and addiction-- a personal story.
Great confusions about meaningness stem from the mistaken assumption that there must be some sort of eternal ordering principle.
Original text at: https://meaningness.com/eternalism
https://meaningness.com/finding-god-in-a-casino
https://meaningness.com/no-cosmic-plan
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Some things are meaningful, and others aren't. This is obvious; yet most confusions about meaning begin by denying it.
Claims that everything is meaningful, or that nothing is, are motivated by fears: fear of the opposite.
We have a choice of explanations: ones that are simple, clear, harmful, and wrong; or ones that are complex, vague, helpful, and approximately right.
Original text at: https://meaningness.com/meaningfulness-and-meaninglessness
https://meaningness.com/extreme-examples-eternalism-and-nihilism
https://meaningness.com/meaningness-first-explanation
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For the past few months, I've been assembling cast members, to edit their performances together into a full-cast recording of this week's chapter.
What is the meaning of an extra-marital affair—or any relationship? A philosophical short story illustrates the puzzle of the nebulosity of meaningness.
Thanks to Bruce Webber of the Phase Shift podcast for his performance of the viewpoint character, Christine Kitchens as the philosophy professor, Shianne Nocerini of the Daily Detroit podcast as Suzie, Sarah Elkins as Janet, Jeremiah Staes of the Daily Detroit podcast as Chris, and Sofia Syntaxx of the ANGR podcast as Kim.
Original text at: https://meaningness.com/nebulosity-of-meaningness
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At 48 minutes, this episode is longer than most. A complete summary overview of all the dimensions of meaningness, with all the common stances one can take to them.
Original text at: https://meaningness.com/all-dimensions-schematic-overview
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This mid-week bonus episode features a 20-minute excerpt from my interview with David Chapman, in which we discuss his plans for finishing Meaningness.
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Dualism, nihilism, and monism are the three main approaches to fundamental questions of meaning. This book proposes a better, fourth alternative.
This begins the third section of Meaningness, "Doing Meaning Better".
Original text at: https://meaningness.com/big-three-stance-combinations
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Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Relationships one may have with "stances" (basic attitudes toward meaningness) include adopting, committing, accomplishing, wavering, and appropriating.
This ends the second section of Meaningness, an introduction to stances.
Original text at: https://meaningness.com/relationships-with-stances
You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks
If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold
Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
The key aspects of a stance toward meaning, and how to use them effectively.
Original text here: https://meaningness.com/stance-anatomy
You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks
If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold
Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
A practice of replacing confused, dysfunctional patterns of thinking and feeling about meaning with accurate ones.
Original text here: https://meaningness.com/meaningness-practice
You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks
If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold
Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Properly understanding meaning eliminates needless suffering. An application: ethics.
Original text here: https://meaningness.com/confusion-completion-misery-and-joy
You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks
If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold
Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Note: This is episode 8, but it first aired with the audio file for episode 9. I have now corrected it, so you may wish to listen again.
Confusions about meaning can be resolved using a method for looking at ways nebulosity affects the subject matter.
Original text here: https://meaningness.com/resolution
The method for resolving confusion about meaning through accepting nebulosity is not a general dialectic, or logic for resolving all false oppositions.
Original text here: https://meaningness.com/not-a-general-dialectic
You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks
If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold
Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Fixation and denial are the two simplest ways of refusing to deal with the nebulosity of meaningness.
https://meaningness.com/fixation-and-denial
Wrong ideas about meaning come in mirror-image pairs, which fixate and deny opposite aspects of reality.
https://meaningness.com/confused-stances-come-in-pairs
Polarized pairs of confused stances cannot be resolved by compromise. There is no middle way between them.
https://meaningness.com/no-middle-way
You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks
If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold
Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Meaningness is cloud-like: nebulous. It is real, but impossible to completely pin down.
Original text is here:
https://meaningness.com/nebulosity
Brains automatically find meaning and pattern; we need them to act. Unfortunately, brains also find meaning and pattern where there are none.
Original text is here:
https://meaningness.com/pattern
You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks
If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold
Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
People think they approach meaning in terms of religions or philosophies, but in practice, "stances" matter more.
Original text is here:
https://meaningness.com/stances-trump-systems
Stances—responses to meaning—are unstable thought-patterns. Often we adopt several contradictory ones in rapid succession.
Original text is here:
https://meaningness.com/stances-are-unstable
You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks
If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold
Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Mistaken attitudes toward meaning create unnecessary psychological/spiritual/existential suffering.
Original text is here:
https://meaningness.com/misunderstanding-meaningness-makes-many-miserable
Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks
If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Meaningness is the quality of being meaningful or meaningless.
Original text here:
https://meaningness.com/what-is-meaningness
You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks
If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold
Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
Two stances that don't work: “Everything has a definite meaning” and “Nothing means anything.”
The original text is here:
https://meaningness.com/preview-eternalism-and-nihilism
You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks
If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold
Original music by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.
I make audiobooks and release them as podcasts.
The 20th-century systematic mode of social organization provided pre-packaged meaning, value, purpose, and ethics. It broke down. We entered an internet-enabled atomized mode of social organization, splintered into a kaleidoscope of meanings, without context. Audiobooks narrated in the Fluidity podcast will look toward constructing a fluid mode.
Welcome to episode 1 of the next book, a work of non-fiction by David Chapman, a Buddhist and a former artificial intelligence researcher. "Meaningness" takes problems of meaning-making, typically considered spiritual, and turns them into practical problems, which are more tractable.
This ten-minute introductory episode will give you a taste of this approach.
Original text here:
https://meaningness.com/an-appetizer-purpose
You can support the podcast and get episodes a week early, by supporting the Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/m/fluidityaudiobooks
If you like the show, consider buying me a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattarnold
Music is by Kevin MacLeod.
This podcast is under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial International 4.0 License.