Point system

• If you make the joke: 2 points

• If I make the joke but you are there to witness it: 1 point to you, 1 point to me

• If I lose full body control/ hit the ground: Bonus 2 points to whoever makes the joke

• New rule introduction - yellow cards: If anyone breaks the spirit of the game they will be penalised with a yellow card.

Log

• Alan: I was going for a walk with Alan. He made a joke and I collapsed on the path. I’m not sure if it was intended to be a joke but it was very funny. Also a small child was nearby, who was presumably confused as to why I had gone from vertical to horizontal, and ran over and put it’s small child hand on my chest in what was presumably intended to be an act of spiritual healing. This was very sweet. Score: Alan - 2 points + 2 bonus points +1 small child spiritual healing bonus point. Also on the walk we were talking about wholeness, and I said something like ‘I am all for wholeness but I want to be a different whole’. This was very funny and I collapsed. Score: Me - 1 point, Alan - 1 point. (Alan’s codename was previously Stefano. However, due to an error in my cryptography algorithm I accidentally called him Siegfried, which risked depreserving his anonymity, hence moving to Alan as a new codename)

• Liam: I was playing with a small sloth called Liam. I had previously purchased this as a Valentine’s day gift from Tesco. The sloth has a loveheart sewn to it’s paws which says ‘I ❤️ you slow much’. I was playing with the sloth and thrusting it’s hips back and forth in a sexual manner. I found this very funny and collapsed. This has happened to me multiple times. Score: Me - 1 point, Liam - 1 point. Also, later on I was talking to Liam (this is a bit confusing because Liam is both the name of the Sloth, and the codename for someone else) and said that I was feeling fear. Liam asked me what I would like to feel instead, and I said ‘just about anything else’. I thought this was very funny and collapsed. Score: Me - 1 point, Liam - 1 point. Also, there was another time when we were talking about [redacted] which was quite intense, but I also found it quite funny and collapsed. Score: Liam - 1 point.

• House: I was chairing our fortnightly house meeting. I was about to make a joke about how being an enneagram type 5 exculpated me from basic house responsibilities. The potential of this joke was however too much for me and so I instead collapsed. I’m a bit unsure about whether this gets the ‘hit the ground’ bonus points. I was in a chair, and sort of slumped out of the chair in a semi-controlled manner. Ultimately I don’t think the impact on the ground was forceful enough to justify the bonus points, but it’s a bit of a judgement call. Score: Me - 1 point, House - 1 point. Later on I spent some time alternating between crying and laughing manically. Honestly it’s a bit unclear to me why. Or perhaps I don’t want to tell you, you nosy bastards. Anyway, I went to the bathroom to get some tissues, and on the return from the bathroom, I collapsed. This is an interesting one because I didn’t even have a specific joke in mind, but it seems like I was just going of pure ambient joke potential. Given this the relevant Shapley values are unclear, lets say: Score: Me - 2 points, House - 2 points, God - 2 points.

• Sponish: Sponish said that he would not be available to have a halloumi wrap after our squash game. Foul: Sponish - yellow card.

• Jarhend: As correctly pointed out in the March update I forgot to include him in the final scoreboard. Score: Jarhend - 1 reparations point. However, his comment exceeded the comment character limit. Foul: Jarhend - yellow card.

Running Total

As ever, please correct me with any corrections or admissions.

• If you make the joke: 2 points

• If I make the joke but you are there to witness it: 1 point to you, 1 point to me

• If I lose full body control/ hit the ground: Bonus 2 points to whoever makes the joke

Notes

• I am using codenames to preserve anonymity

• The leaderboard is effective from the start of March

Log

• Siegfried: He knocked on my door to say it was time for dinner. I opened the door and instead of responding just stared at him for 5 seconds. He said ‘Did you knock?’. I found this very funny and fell over. Score: Stefano - 2 points + 2 bonus points.

• Liam: We were [redacted] and I was about to [redacted] but then [redacted]. Which was very interesting. Score: Liam - 1 point + 1 mystery point, me - 1 point. It’s hard to work out responsibility for this one.

• Jarhed: I was complaining about something whilst on a walk in the park, I think about feeling opressed in my circling coaching training calls. He said ‘Hmmm… and is that ok?’. I found this very funny and fell over. Score: Jarhed 1 point + 1 bonus point (I didn’t fully collapse but I did need to lie down in the park so only 1/2 bonus points).

• God: I was in a quaker meeting for worship and collapsed. Score: God - 2 points + bonus 2 points. Good Samaritan point to Liam for explaining to the quakers what was going on.

• Jarhed: I was discussing various judgements that I am holding onto with Jarhed. I discovered and reported that I feel I have suffered greatly visa vis EA and am owed recompense. I found this very funny and collapsed. Score: Me - 1 point, Jarhed - 1 point.

• Sponish: I unfortunately don’t remember all of these well. I can remember being in the vietnamese restaurant and saying ‘no I can’t say that, if I say that I will collapse’ and then making the joke anyway and collapsing. Score: Me - 1 point, Sponish - 1 point.

  • I also remember being near the boris bikes and making a joke, and then collapsing. Score: Me - 1 point + 2 bonus points, Sponish - 1 point. Good Samaritan point to the random passerby who asked if we needed any help.

  • I think there was another one that I can’t remember.

• My circling coach: I was explaining how I felt superior to the other people in the training course and found this very funny and collapsed. Score: Me - 1 point, Circling coach - 1 point. I also explained how when I was talking to Jarhed I had discovered how I am owed recompense by EA, and how I found this very funny and collapsed. I also found explaining this very funny and collapsed again. Score: Me - 1 point, Circling coach - 1 point.

Running total

• Me: 8 points

• Siegfried: 4 points

• God: 4 points

• Liam: 3 points

• Sponish: 2 points

• Circling Coach: 2 points

• Random passerby: 1 point

I can’t remember all of them - please let me know if there are any I haven’t included (I think Liam and Sponish are owed more points).

Most of my housemates were away today. For the first time, the cat sat on my lap. I made sure to not move at all so as to maximise my comfort as a mat for cat. Including when the cat decided to dig it’s nails into my leg.

I also bought new shoes from Sports Direct recently - the Aldi of sportwear. The man in the shop was on the rude side. Also apparently one is only allowed to try on two pairs of shoes at a time in Sports Direct. Anyway, somehow I ended up saying ‘thank you to the man about 7 times during the interaction, and also bought some insoles which I do not want or need.

It seems to me that I would have been a lot less accommodating is the cat and the Sports Direct man were nicer to me. I don’t understand exactly what is going on here, but I think this is negging.

Also, I have been eating a lot of börek recently. I initially went to a expensive cafe nearby to buy my börek. The first time I went there I didn’t actually have a börek but instead had a halloumi sandwich and 2 side salads as part of their lunchtime deal. The man (a different man to the Sports Direct man) said I could have 3 side salads instead of the advertised two. I recently discovered that there is a supermarket right next to the expensive cafe which also sells böreks, but much cheaper. And I have started going there instead. But I have to walk past the expensive cafe and when I do this I am unable to make eye contact with the expensive cafe. It seems that my psyche understood the accepting of the third side salad as a pledge of allegiance to the expensive cafe, and now I feel a deep sense of shame and disloyalty whenever I go to the cheap supermarket to buy the much more reasonably priced börek instead.

I don’t think this is negging, but it seems similiar, somehow.

Many years ago I read the Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test. It reassured me that insofar as I’m worried about being a psychopath, I’m probably not, as worrying about whether one is a psychopath isn’t the kind of thing that psychopaths do.

I used to worry about being self-absorbed. I also worried that this is exactly the kind of thing that a self-absorbed person would worry about. Not a good time to be an evidential decision theorist. One wonders how many questions online Narcissism Tests really need to include.

___

I more recently read Eliezer’s Unteachable Methods of Sanity.

‘[...] there was a person who thought they were like totally going to develop Artificial General Intelligence. Then they ran into me; and soon after, instead started agonizing about how they had almost destroyed the world. [...] I was rolling my eyes about the part that was a more blatant mistake, completely apart from the epistemic prediction error they probably couldn’t help; the part that would have been a mistake even if they had almost destroyed the world. I was rolling my eyes about how they’d now found a new way of being the story’s subject.’

When I read this I felt a sense of shame, and it seemed this triggered a set of worries about my self-absorption. Shit, am I making the end of the world about me? I don’t know whether the irony here is obvious. I imagine it is, though in the grip of the worry it wasn’t obvious to me.

—

Both many years ago and more recently I read Joe Carlsmith’s On Sincerity. It’s one of my favourite essays and I’ve read it many times. In his section on sincerity’s failure modes:

‘[...] Another, more subtle failure mode is about over-concern with sincerity itself – either in others, or in yourself. [...] Thus, it is easy to treat the question of whether one is sincere as, somehow, the main thing; to agonize endlessly about possible flaws or biases or rationalizations or contradictions in one’s character; to turn most of one’s moral gaze inwards, rather than outwards towards the world’

Shit, am I making sincerity about me, turning my moral gaze inwards rather than outwards?

—

Semi recently I was talking to someone about some friction in our relationship. I don’t have good words for our relationship, to some degree a friend and to some degree a mentor, though neither of those feel quite right.

I was going to attend a workshop, and I found out that broadly speaking she wasn’t too excited about me being there. I felt quite hurt and surprised by this. Anyway, I did go on to attend the workshop, and whilst I was there we sat down to discuss what was going on.

One of the things that she said was that whenever we interacted, I made the interaction all about me, and that I couldn’t see her. I was rather mortified to hear this. I then went on to explain that in the times that we interacted previously I had very low self-esteem. The irony wasn’t obvious to me here either.

—

My sense of what’s going on here at the most basic level:

Experience judgement → Attempt to escape judgement → Experience judgement.

Not all attempts to escape judgement are going to be so neatly self-defeating - often attempts to prevent or escape judgement are successful.

Sometimes I need to fart, but I fear judgement. Typically I will hold in the fart. And this is successful, in that I do not then fart, and I am not judged for farting.

But with the examples above, the attempts to escape judgement and the cause of judgement seem one and the same. In the case of self-absorption:

I read something from someone I respect, or whose judgements are in some way important to me. I interpret them as saying ‘self-absorption is bad’, and see ‘self-absorption’ as about something that I’m doing.

My response to this is to turn inwards and ask ‘Is this something I’m doing wrong? How can I be different?’

Though turning inwards isn’t the only way of attempting to escape judgement.

Very recently I spoke on the phone to my father to ring him for his birthday. I had been putting off ringing him. He said that I don’t ring him often enough.

Here we have a similar pattern, but with avoidance replacing self-absorption.

I experience guilt in relation to my father. I attempt to escape this guilt by not ringing him. At some point this guilt is too strong and so I ring him. I experience him as judging me for not ringing him often enough.

I think there are many ways of dealing with judgement and interpersonal tension more broadly. The strategies I seem most adept in are turning inwards and avoidance.

These are far from the only strategies. Ones where I’m less far on the skill tree: fawning and conflict.

I can imagine people who are more proficient these strategies ending up in a similarly ourobourus structured pickle on receiving judgements of being too clingy or too aggressive. I imagine the default responses upon receiving these judgements being ‘I’m so sorry how can I make that better’ or ‘Fuck you you prick’ respectively.

What’s the solution to this?

Well it seems to me that the basis of this is judgement, whether it’s self-judgement or other-judgement. Judgement is the core sin and you should stop doing it.

Hehehe. I think this is close, but also no. One cannot dig oneself out of a hole, and one cannot escape judgement via judgement, and one cannot escape the pain of condemnation via more condemnation. (Or at least I haven’t been able to so far, please dm me if you’ve found a way to do this).

The real answer is opening one’s heart to Jesus. As the big jeezy put it himself:

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone

Also

Judge not, lest ye be judged

One challenge in writing this is not being too judgemental. Like, a lot of the words I’ve used ‘avoidance’, ‘fawning’, ‘self-absorption’, ‘fuck you you prick’, ‘evidential decision theorist’ all seem to contain some implicit condemnation. Even ‘judgement’ is a bit ‘judgy’.

This is obviously very bad, if there’s one sin that’s worse than judgement it’s hypocrisy. Very big pickle. But also, the saving grace is, one can also be not judgemental about that! Mwahahaha!

(To be honest I’m a bit confused by Jeezy, on the one hand he seems very non-judgemental, on the other hand, well:

But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

I’m not sure what ‘Raca’ means, but I assume it’s beyond the pale.)

—

Hinterestingly in Joe Carlsmith’s On Sincerity he quotes Eliezer - ‘no mother and no father’. The full bit.

No rescuer hath the rescuer.

No Lord hath the champion,

no mother and no father,

only nothingness above.

This is hinteresting because:

• I’ve mentioned my father

• I’ve quoted Joe Carlsmith

• I’ve mentioned Jesus

• I’ve quoted Eliezer Yudkowsky

• Eliezer wrote Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality

• I am writing Harri Besceli and the Non Methods of Post Rationality

• I like psychoanalysis

Things this post should do or include but doesn’t because of time, energy and/ or spiritual constraints:

• Talk about how when I imagine Eliezer ‘rolling his eyes’ the thing I imagine is contempt. Contempt for people who are ‘making it all about themselves’.

  • I see directing contempt at someone as a kind of violence, or attack. And given this, I expect the natural response to this to be some kind of self-protective, or self-concerned behaviour.

  • It seems important to talk about this in a way which isn’t eg. saying ‘Eliezer is bad’.

  • It also seems important to talk about or point out. I think that taking on other people’s judgements is a big part of how people depart from the Way.

  • I think that doing this well is in fact about my spiritual abilities at present (I am sorry).

• Overall be more coherent.

• Talk about ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do’, where ‘them’ includes me, Eliezer, and my father.

  • Also talk more about Jesus and persecution.

• Talk about how parents and God are very similar

  • At least from a child’s perspective parents are or are supposed to be benevolent, omnipotent and omniscient. They are also the source of moral truth, judgement, praise and punishment and promises that things will ultimately be ok (if one does what they instruct).

  • Tie this into the ‘no mother and father’ bit.

  • Also, the notion of hell as being separated from God, or unable to receive God’s love.

  • Maybe say something about evolution and attachment theory and about how being without the love of a parent is a big deal developmentally. Plausibly. And also maybe that attaching to judgements, about oneself and others is in some way a survival strategy. Plausibly.

• Talk about how not judging oneself or others for judgement is not the same as permitting oneself to judge.

• Quote the song ‘Upwards over the Mountain’ by Iron and Wine, which I have been listening to on repeat recently. In particular:

  • Mother, I made it up from the bruise of a floor of this prison

  • Mother, I lost it, all of the fear of the Lord I was given

• Talk about how the quaker thing of ‘seeing that of God in everyone’

  • Point out that this isn’t just turning one’s attention to the ‘good bits’ in people, but seeing God in all of a person. At least according to me, I don’t know I’m not really a Quaker nor do I believe in God. Probably.

  • Tone down the God vibes in this section with an amusing anecdote by talking about how I went to Quaker meeting for worship last week and had a cataplectic attack in the middle of the meeting and fell off my chair. This is particularly funny if you know that Quaker meeting for worship involves sitting together in silence for an hour.

• Talk about how I suspect that the answer to all of this is to feel whatever is there to be felt, without attaching to any particular stories.

  • Including feeling how it feels to be on the receiving end of contempt, or judgement, without attaching to any judgements of one’s own.

  • (and plausibly that the function of judgement is to enable oneself to not feel the feelings)

• Also, talk about how I like the nihil supernum quote, but not the ‘rescuer’ part.

  • Talk about saviour complexes, but in a way which isn’t judgey.

• Use AI to generate an ourobourus pickle image

I’ve been getting into the deep end of non-judgement recently. Largely this amounts to loudly and randomly proclaiming ‘judge not lest ye be judged!’ in conversations with people. Almost always with out any prior context which would make it a relevant thing to say.

Anyway, I and said friend were talking about judgement. I was saying, broadly, that I’m increasingly becoming less bought into judgement. According to me, at least when I’m vibing in a certain way, judgement is an illusion.

Judgement is about blame. Which is about punishment. Which is about control.

I am not into controlling others, or being controlled by others (at least when I’m vibing a certain way), and so I reject judgement thusly.

My friend disagreed, and thought I was an unrepentant sinner.

We debated this for a while. I had the upper hand in this debate, and so decided to show mercy by switching the focus of the conversation from the philosophical to the emotional.

‘What does holding judgement give you?’ I asked.

I believe it to be good form to answer for oneself any question that one asks, so one has a yardstick for judging whether the response is up to scratch, and so I began to think about this myself - what judgements am I holding on to.

I began to think about my relationship with EA - and it seems to me this is one of the places where I’m holding onto a lot of judgement (I imagine this will come as a shock to regular Bestjelly readers, but it is I confess true).

Anyway, at this point in the call I burst out laughing and had a minor cataplectic attack. This seems to be an increasingly regular feature of my personal therapeutic process.

The thought that came to mind in asking myself ‘What does holding onto judgement give you?’, was something like ‘I have suffered greatly, and I am owed recompense’. And I found this very funny.

To be clear, I think that it’s true that my relationship with EA has involved a lot of suffering, and I don’t mean the funniness to downplay that. Though, well, I don’t know, I think it is a very funny thought.

In a large part because in some ways it feels true! It seems that part of me does or did have a strong sense of being owed recompense.

When I tune into this, I imagine this form of recompense to come when I complete the many magnum opuses of EA that I’ve been working on for the past few millenia. After posting the magnum octopodes I imagine being paraded through the streets of the EA Forum. I am on a four horse chariot and wearing a purple toga, and forum citizens shower me in karma and sing songs of my sacrifice before declaring me consul for life.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this. At least at the moment I have a some sense of opening, like a hold on part of my psyche easing.

I don’t know if this will last. Perhaps tomorrow I will be back at it to demand satisfaction.

I could tell by my girlfriends tone that she disagreed with this assessment. Fortunately I am an expert at conversational implicatures and surfacing hidden communicative intent, and so in my half slumber I responded - ‘am I not supposed to be shouting?’. Apparently not.

This was the first time I did a bit of nocturnal shouting last night. The second time I dreamt that I was writing an essay about how everything had been turned into marshmallow. Importantly, pastries, and only pastries, had wisely been exempted from this otherwise universal transformation. I got out my phone in order to find a relevant quote to insert into my essay, which I hoped would somehow help contextualise the state of marshmallow affairs. But then I threw my phone against the wall. I found this very vexatious as I needed my phone for the quote and now it was broken. And so I shouted ‘Noooo’. Again, perhaps a little melodramatic, but still a situationally appropriate response in my world.

After this I decided I needed to shake off the nighttime shouties and went downstairs to get some rhubarb streusel (which I have recently learned is similar to but distinct from a strudel) as well as some banana bread and cream. I then ate this in bed, next to my sleeping but probably not very deeply girlfriend.

We are currently staying with my parents in York - me, my girlfriend, my brother, my brother’s partner, their 2 year old daughter and my granny, together with my mother and stepfather. My brother is on nighttime duty and sleeps with his daughter in a separate bedroom to his partner. This is in part so that only one of them has disturbed sleep when their daughter wakes up crying in the middle of the night. This is also in part because my brother snores like a bulldozer or some other industrial construction vehicle, and so he would likely disturb his partner anyway. He recently had nose surgery to desnorify him, but this has not been successful.

After I had finished my streusel and banana bread my brother knocked on my bedroom to check if everything was ok, as apparently my shouting had woken him up. I found it very sweet to be included in the remit of his nighttime welfare duty.

One of the few objects in said bedroom is the Desiderata - a framed print of a prose poem by Max Ehrmann. This used to belong to my grandparents, who are know in the stage of their lives where their children and grandchildren have begun to lay claims to their various possessions. I haven’t been paying much attention to the family whatsapp group where my mother has been listing these items, and have missed out on many treasures such as the octagonal dining table (which I recently learnt actually has nine sides), various silverwares and large quantities of playing cards. My grandfather was/ is a hoarder and has ammassed many room fulls of knick knacks and paddywacks, and so there is a lot of physical inheritance to go around (my grandfather is still alive, but his health is deteriorating such that he is no longer able to successfully defend his hoarder treasure from my mother’s desire to clean the house).

The only item that I have laid claim to is the Desiderata, which I have fond childhood memories of. However, my brother also apparently has the capacity to develop fond childhood memories, and also laid claim to the Desiderata. This has put my mother in a difficult position as the de facto executor of my still living grandparents’ estate. Her strategy for navigating this conflict was to give my brother the Desiderata, and to print of another Desiderata and give the copy to me. If the carving of the family estate had happened a few years ago, I expect I would have won out in this minor struggle, though since my brother has provided her with a granddaughter he has managed a surprising late stage usurpation of my position as favourite child.

My mother thought that I wouldn’t notice that I had been given a knock-off desiderata (see this post for more details on my mother’s acts of deception and how this has informed my character development). I was not fooled, and upon realising this and expressing my outrage, she decided to switch strategy and instead give my brother the knock-off desiderata. Though plausibly then fearing that my brother would also be wise to her ersatzery, she switched strategy once more and informed my brother that I had stolen the real Desiderata, and abnegated any further responsibility for determining the true rights to the heirloom.

It’s unclear to me who is in more need of the Desiderata’s wisdom, given the nighttime events. The poem opens ‘Go placidly amidst the noise and haste’, which perhaps describes my brother’s lived environmental context better than mine. Though the poem continues ‘and remember what peace there may be in silence’ which is plausibly a lesson that I have greater need of learning. I do not know, though I do not plan on any relinquishment.

After I had finished the streusel and banana bread, and after my brother’s check-in had concluded, I messed around on my phone for a while, which it turns out was not broken after all. I spent some time on r/Narcolepsy. I’d always vaguely assumed that my tendency towards nighttime shouting and screaming was the result of some childhood trauma, buried in my subconscious until I reach the relevant item on my processing todo list. However it seems that the nighttime shouties are a fairly common phenomenon for narcoleptics, as well as having frequent vivid crazy dreams.

It felt good to read r/Narcolepsy. It seems that I often forget that I have narcolepsy, and reading about others’ experiences felt like a good reminder. It was fun to read my fellow narcoleptics responses to ‘What’s the weirdest place/time you’ve fallen asleep?’. I particularly enjoyed the answer: ‘I was saying the prayer at a church event. Everyone initially thought I was having a spiritual moment when I went silent, but after a minute they caught on.’

I’m not sure of my own answer to this, but some of my favourites

• Outside Pergamon Museum in Berlin. I was museuming with my mum, and found it quite boring, and so left her to continue looking at old objects and stuff whilst I slept outside.

• In the waiting room for my narcolepsy diagnosis appointment.

• Under a table in the library at college. I woke up to the chemistry teacher shouting at me that the library was not an appropriate place to sleep. I think this was a bit unfair, but it also happened after I’d attempted a student-led coup against the teachers, and so I can understand her antagonism towards me.

• Any time I’m in a car. I think the strongest soporific for me is being in a car with under-seat heating, gets me every time.

I am currently in my parents living room with my niece and brother’s partner - soon it will be time for their midday nap. Before that she has two projects that she needs to complete. One - running around in circles on the carpet. Two - building a house under the table that I am sat working at. I am jealous of her energy levels and joi de vivre. But I am smarter than she is and have better fine motor control so it all evens out in the end.

Her inadequacy in these departments was recently showcased when my mother gave her a knife whilst they were baking a cake together. My brother thought it was insane to give a two year old a knife and so proclaimed ‘this is insane’, and proceeded to reappropriate the knife from the two year old. Taking a knife from a two year old it turns out is a difficult task, and intimately related to the reasons one should not give a knife to a two year old in the first place. Luckily the gash on my brothers’ hand is only surface level.

Once all the relevant naps are said and done, we four generations of family will celebrate a belated Christmas together. I anticipate it with eagerness.

Merry Christmas!

I would like to have something to say, really. Something substantive and maybe even memorable. But the truth is I have been running out of things to say for at least a week now. Perhaps two.

I have made, as far as I can tell, an earnest effort. I have made multiple attempts to write poetry.

Attempt 1:

Words are like turds,

You should not step on them,

Attempt 2:

My name is Henry Bescelo, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

I have experimented briefly with writing Harri Potter and the non-methods of post-rationality.

But I am dry. And so I really have no choice but to run down the clock. I don’t feel proud of this, I would have liked to go out with a bang. Another zinger about Henry and his love of bitches would have been nice.

I don’t think it’s right for me to apologise. I have sincerely tried. I don’t think you believe me when I say this but it’s true. It’s sad for everyone for it to end like this, most of all me. But that’s how it is.

The items on my desk include: 15 batteries, a white peach and raspberry vape, a prescription carton of dexamphetamine, a macbook, a shia le bouef mouse mat, a singing bowl, a mouse, a keyboard and monitor. The macbook is open to the ‘September trip’ chat in whatsapp, which is currently displaying a photo of my friend’s bottom. He is wearing shorts which are unreasonably tight.

I am wearing shoes. They are red.

I also don’t feel shame. Would it not be more insincere to write something substantial under the guise of intrinsic motivation? I think so.

Some of the batteries say ‘energizer max’ on them. Some other ones say ‘amazon basics’. There is also a third type of batter, which says ‘allmax’. These last kind are AA, whereas the first two kinds are AAA.

Wittgenstein once said something about a ladder. The basic idea was that you go up a ladder, and then you have to throw the ladder away. Wittgenstein is not from Lichtenstein, but ‘Wittgenstein’ does rhyme with ‘Lichtenstein’.

I worry that you will see this as an act of disrespect. This is not my intention, I have nothing but fondness and gratitude for you.

I have eaten four bags of crisps today, all of them jalapeno flavoured. I have also eaten one cheese sandwich and one crisp and cheese sandwich.

And I said ‘Big’

And he said ‘Good luck

In two days I will be in an aeroplane. I like being in an aeroplane. It is like I have been gifted a block of free time. In return I have to sit in an uncomfortable chair and go to the bathroom everytime I want to vape. But it is mine nonetheless, and no one can take it from me. I often end up watching the film of whoever is sitting in front of me and to the right. Last time I watched about half of what seemed to be a Bridget Jones’ Diary sequel.

Whenever I guess the time and it’s earlier than I expect, I’m elated. YES, free time! And whenever it’s later than I expect I feel robbed and aggrieved. How dare you.

I often fantasize about having more time. I feel giddy at the prospect of a weekend where I have no plans. It’s a land of opportunity. I would like a time chamber.

I think I have neglected the past previously. The future has so much more potential.

José Ortega y Gasset - The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness: it is always urgent, ‘here and now’ without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point blank.

Yes, I feel you José. It’s an outrage. Someone should do something.

And now. And now. And now. And also now. Yep. Right now. Here again. Now.

It’s all so very immediate. Unavoidable.

It’s like sand. It gets everywhere, up your nose, in your sandwiches. You try to grab it and it slips through your fingers.

Apparently, this is not just the adverts, the show has already started. It’s been going on for a while in fact. This is, in fact, it. It’s what we’ve all been talking about and imagining for so long. And we’re right in the middle of it. Phwoar.

Possibility. So much possibility. Fantasy.

‘I wish it had happened differently’’

‘Yes, it’s in the past now’

‘Yes, I just wish it had been different’

‘Yes. And it’s in the past now’

‘Yes, I know, I just wish it had been different’

‘Yes, I know, and it’s in the past now’

You can get trapped in time. Loopy. Looping. Over and over and over. And over. Like a monkey with a miniature cymbal. Allegedly. Snagged, you can get snagged in it.

I often forget about time. But once you see it you see it everywhere. All over the place. Shit! I forgot about time! It’s happening right now! Somebody do something!

Choice. Choosing. Narrowing. You could have chosen anything, and this is what you chose.

Moments, queued back for eternity, step by step, marching, one moment in the limelight, then poof.

‘Can I have another go?’

‘I’m sorry it doesn’t work like that’

‘Why not? I just want to go back and do it a bit differently’

‘I’m sorry, you can’t, that’s not how it works’

‘Right’

I look at Aragorn. I look at the orcs. I look back at Aragorn. I look back at the orcs. I slowly raise my hand.

“I see where you’re coming from Aragorn, I really do, and I appreciate the speech… I was just wondering… well, did you really have to behead their diplomat? It did seem like he was being a bit rude, but, well, I’d just prefer not to fight if we don’t have to, and it seems like maybe we could have tried negotiating? Don’t get me wrong, I am very committed to this whole defeat Sauron, help Frodo and so on, just, well, the chances that Frodo is still alive don’t look great given that diplomat had his Mithril shirt. Also, well, maybe it would have been better if we hadn’t rested all of our hopes on two manchildren and a very suspicious looking gremlin. I’m not saying what we’re doing is pointless, just well, as I said I’d prefer not to fight if I don’t have to. And, well I guess it’s a bit late now, but had we considered other ways of distracting Sauron, a fireworks display perhaps? It didn’t really feel like we had much opportunity to give input before suicide charge was decided on as the main plan.

And, well… I hate to be a negative nancy, but… the speech… it feels a bit… manipulative? Like, I just think that there are plenty of good reasons for not fighting. I don’t know, wanting to wait for reinforcements, wanting to see if they wouldn’t mind sending us a replacement diplomate to negotiate with, wanting the battle plan to be voted upon by a representative subsection of the army and so on. And you’ve specifically highlighted forsaking our friends and breaking bonds and whatnot. Which, well, just seems like a very specific part of reason-space.

And it kinda sounds like your conflating the Age of men coming crashing down and not fighting. Which, well, as I’ve mentioned the mithril shirt, it kind of seems like we’re out of luck on the Age of Men front.

And a small other thing - when you say ‘I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me’, well I actually feel quite unseen, and disconnected from you. Like, you didn’t even look me in the eyes, you looked at Jeff, granted, but not me. And, well you’re presuming it’s fear, but actually I’ve got this hay fever thing going on, and you didn’t really check. Like, I didn’t sense much curiosity in your voice when you said that, or openness to being wrong. So yeh, I actually felt quite othered. I’m all for esprit de corps, I’d just appreciate more of a non-violent communication style.

And, I guess it seems like, well, given the diplomat has no head, that we’re going to have to fight now. Fine, I guess, just for next time, I’d really appreciate you bearing all this in mind. And also, would it be ok if we waited until we got a bit closer until we charged? Just usually we start running from quite a distance, and with all this armour, and the heat and so on… I just don’t want to be tired by the time we get to the orcs. Thanks.

Part of me is still holding out for it to be some kind of hoax or con. Ooops, I ended up in a doomsday cult, oh well, at least we’re not all going to die.

My mother told me that throughout her teens and twenties she believed that everyone was going to die in a nuclear war. I’m hoping for something similar, but it’s feeling harder to maintain as fears go mainstream.

Very plausibly we won’t all die, though it does seem like the end of life as we know it. I like to complain about my life but I’m also quite attached to it. I don’t really want to be posthuman, I just want normal life but slightly better.

I don’t really have plans or fantasies longer than a couple of years. Previously I might idly daydream about how I’d raise children or what retirement would be like. This no longer seems to happen. When I try to imagine the future now I get a 404 error. Occasionally I get flashes of imagery from The Day After Tomorrow which I haven’t actually seen, but have seen the trailer for.

When I listened to the Rest of History’s episodes on WW1 I felt an odd sense of kinship hearing about those under siege by the Russian army at Przemyśl.

It’s hard to orient to on a personal level. How does one prepare for the future? One of the most plausible actions seems to be to build up one’s reserves of general purpose tradeable tokens. This feels gross to me. I expect there’s some blindness here as well. It seems like I can maintain working on things broadly related to AI safety without looking directly into the eyes of the beast, but taking actions to influence how I will appear in the future, well that’s a bit much.

It’s unclear if there’s anything I can do about the whole situation more broadly.

There is one voice in my head that says ‘Well, there is a possible world where you try really hard and I don’t know become the president or something (after somehow becoming a natural born citizen of the US), and then once you’ve done that you can probably somehow steer to safety. So stop fannying around and get on with it’

I have some hesitations about listening too closely to this voice in my head.

Perhaps singlehandedly saving the world is slightly too ambitious a target, and a more appropriate aim would be more something like joining/ finding one’s role in the war effort.

I also have some hesitations about this.

At some workshops I’ve been to there’s an institution designed to combat messy situations known as the 5-minute tidy. Someone will notice the creeping invasion of physical chaos, and boldly bugle ‘5-minute tidy’. This decrees a state of emergency and requires all citizens to do their duty to king and workshop. Loud music is played, limbs move, objects are moved and so on.

A difficulty I’ve found is that it’s often unclear where objects go and whether they are still in use. Plausibly the right response here would be to take a minute to think about what actually needs doing and how to do it. But somehow I usually end up hypnotised by the high bpm music and visibly moving limbs everywhere that I instead respond to this by picking up an object and walking around purposefully, or diligently straightening cushions, or drawing Lord Kitchener’s face.

Anyway, I have some suspicion of being in the middle of an ?-year tidy. To be fair to the 5-minute tidy, it does typically result in a significant victory over the forces of chaos.

1 - Pretend you know what you are talking about

You don’t even have to try that hard! One of the easiest ways to do this is to pick a topic that the spotlight decision makers don’t know much about.

For example, let’s look at Hauke Hillebrandt’s essay giving writing advice.

Sentences: Shorten long sentences to ~20 words to increase readability[2]- err on the side of breaking them up; use fewer clauses; no redundancy; unnecessary adjectives; reduce need to recall references to other parts of the sentence (e.g. constructions like ‘the former and the latter’).

Someone familiar with good writing might realise that there are 46 words and 156 clauses in this sentence. They might also be curious about what exactly Hauke means when he later says ‘Use the Mumford methods’, given no additional context is given, and click on the link Hauke provides. They might, after all this, think that perhaps this isn’t a good candidate for featuring in the Inkhaven spotlight. Fortunately that is not the world we live in!

2 - Work at Inkhaven

You can find the Inkhaven spotlight by clicking on the ‘Meet the 40 Residents publishing every day at Inkhaven’ link.

Fortunately, being an Inkhaven resident isn’t actually required. If like Kave Rennedy you are tired from your days work at Inkhaven, and are struggling to find a coherent way for the little girl to cut the rope with blunt scissors, you can simply ‘And the little girl took her scissors, struck them twice on the well curb to give them sharp edges, and cut through the bucket rope.’ And this will be worthy of the spotlight.

You don’t even need to publish every day! Ben Pace has missed 8 days of publishing, but his lessons on epistemology, derived from his experience of being tricked by a character in a computer game, is in the spotlight.

What not to do

1 - Write things worth reading

Surprisingly, this will actually hinder your chances of being in the spotlight. No matter if you’re pouring out your soul in the form of poetry or pouring out your soul in the form of psychoanalytic poetry analysis, if it’s too good it will not be included.

2 - Offend Vaniver

You might have beaten him playing Anno 1503 many years ago. You might have not been sufficiently gushing when you mentioned a valuable conversation you had with him in the Inkhaven feedback form.

You might even be confused about what you could have possibly done to offend him so. You might lay awake at night racking your brain for any possible hint of why you’re being mistreated so, whispering ‘What more do you want from me Vaniver? Why? Why would you do this to me? Do you think I don’t notice, that I don’t check? Endlessly scouring the updates for my name, finding only drivel about people who think they are ships and spectres and AI. Is this about the beard? You fear I am growing a beard to rival your own? Why? Why? Why?’

In perusing the woo memosphere I kept coming across hints as to where this route to enlightenment might lie.

• “The ego is a chronic muscular tension,” - Alan Watts

• The Body Keeps the Score - A book by someone

• Chakras and stuff

Hinteresting. Very hinteresting indeed.

I had quit my job and was spending some time living with my parents who had recently purchased a massage gun. I used said massage gun and found it very pleasant. Very hinteresting.

A nascent plan began to form: Use massage gun to release muscular tension and dissolve the ego and or any trauma, become enlightened, move out of parents house and get a new job. And so I began pummeling away.

I think my parents were somewhat concerned. Their son, in his late twenties, had just quit his job and moved back home, and had begun spending all day in his bedroom with a massage gun, occasionally leaving to eat meals, but otherwise spending his time with the massage gun. He would say that he was spending his time reading, but the massage gun was loud enough that it could be heard from the next room over.

Anyway, I had not completely lost the plot, and despite my woo wonderings I was still trained in the art of science and evidence and a skeptic at heart. I did some googling online, and found an article about trigger points and self massage as a treatment for mysterious chronic pain. I didn’t have chronic pain per se, but chronic pain seemed in a similar ballpark to dukkha. Also, the article was quite long so I didn’t read most of it, but I did notice that it had lots of footnotes and some references to pubmed. Skeptic satisfied.

Fairly quickly I realised that the most satisfying area to massage was the left side of my neck. I also stopped using a massage gun in favour of just rubbing my neck with my hand. This became quite compulsive/ addictive.

I am familiar with addictive behaviour, most notably playing computer games, more specifically, playing Slay the Spire. Fortunately, one can block Slay the Spire. Unfortunately, it is not so easy to block one’s neck. This is not for want of trying.

I first attempted to block my neck by using an Eigso Punk Leather Collar Choker for Women and Men Studded Spikes Black Pu Necklace Wide Strap for Woman and Man, which I ordered using my stepfather’s Amazon account.

Sadly, the band of the collar was too small, and so my hand could still access the relevant part of my neck regardless.

I then attempted to block my neck using HEGCOIIE Neck Warmer Snood for Men & Women,Winter Neck Gaiter Fleece Bandana Face Covering Mask Windproof Neck Scarf Neckwear for Outdoor Sports Motorcycle Skiing Running Cycling (Black). This also didn’t work, as my hand could reach underneath the HEGCOIIE to find the relevant areas of neck. Also it was quite hot.

I tried wearing both the Eigso and the HEGCOIIE at the same time, but this also did not work.

What if it is not the neck that is the problem, but the hands? I once tried tying my hands to my desk with shoelaces.

I also tried the psychological approach, discussing the issue with a coach.

So, just to make sure I understand the situation, you have a thing where you compulsively massage your neck…

Yep

And this has been going on for many years..

Mmmhmmm

And this… neck massaging… is interfering with your day to day functioning because, as you mentioned, when your hand is occupied with your neck you are no longer able to perform activities such as typing, opening packages or other things…

Yes that’s right

And the more you massage your neck the more uncomfortable your neck becomes…

Mmmm

But you are reluctant to stop because you think, as you mentioned previously, that if you do it for long enough that this might resolve some trauma or tension which will lead to, as you put it, a state of quasi-enlightenment

Mmmhmmm

And you don’t want to see a doctor about the pain in your neck because you don’t trust that the doctor wouldn’t just conclude that you have lost the plot…

Yes

And that’s what you would like to discuss with me today?

Yep

…I see…

I asked friend what I should write about today. And then I told him that I should write a spiritual dictionary. He said I should do A to E today, presumably because he still wanted to contribute to the conversation after I had answered my own question.

I have skipped A, and gone straight to B. I also didn’t make it to C, D or E.

Spiritual dictionary. Anger. Avoidance. Boundaries. Consciousness. Death. E.

Boundaries

Boundaries are when you let someone into your home and they don’t take their shoes off. And they start moving things around and changing the thermostat and scribbling on the walls.

Or perhaps more likely, boundaries are when you know someone is coming into your home, and so now you have to move your underwear and crisp packets from off the floor where they belong and into the bin, in order to please their sensibilities.

How does one establish boundaries? You ask them to take their shoes and opinions off at the door.

This is my home and you must abide by my rules when you are in my home. If you cannot abide by my rules then I will not let you into my home. If you try to gain entry to my home without my permission, then I will use kung fu or other drastic measures.

People however are cunning. They may say “you wouldn’t part an old man from his walking stick?” and only after you let them into your house do you realise that the walking stick is a magic wand that they will use to do an exorcism on you.

Do not guilt trip me old man, this is my home and you must abide by my rules.

Friend and I laid the preliminary groundwork for the spiritual dictionary during the aforementioned conversation, and we each proffered definitions of boundaries.

I said that boundaries are the difference between what is mine and what is yours. He said that boundaries are what determines whether you are okay. I forget exactly what he said, I was more interested in what I was saying at the time and so I forgot to pay full attention to him. Let’s say these are both true.

Sometimes I think something is mine, and you think it is yours. Now we have overlapping boundaries and disputed territory in the middle. And probably at least one of us is going to send in the tanks.

Also, relatedly, sometimes, I need something to be a certain way in order to be ok, and you also need that thing to be a certain way in order to be ok. Perhaps those certain ways are different certain ways.

I am low energy. You assume that this is about you, and that you are not being a sufficiently good conversational companion. This is not ok. You must now interfere with me and my energy levels in order to be ok. It is your problem to solve.

You are anxious. I find this painful and am not ok. Now I must interfere with you and your anxiety in order to be ok. It is my problem to solve.

We are entangled. Like wired earphones or electrons. This is messy. And also everywhere. People love interfering with each other (and also maybe being interfered with).

Stop it.

A similar flavour of thing can happen when I play computer games. Play computer game → resolve to not play computer game in future → play computer game in future → rinse and repeat.

This is annoying. But it is also quite hinteresting.

Often the resolution happens before the naughty action eg. resolve to not play computer game tomorrow → play computer game now (which is not yet tomorrow, and so allowed by the terms and conditions specified).

And also, often the resolution comes with some sort of blame or judgement seasoning. Like, yes, that was, or even will be, a bad/ naughty action.

I spoke to a guru about this once and he said something like, ‘the judgement is part of the pattern’. How very hinteresting. Here’s how I make sense of this:

Blame or judgement is a form of rejection. It’s kind of like saying ‘Yes, well this thing is aberrant’. It’s not what is supposed to happen.

If I have a plan for some sort of thing, let’s say I want to get a post posted by a certain date. However, I also need to have someone else, Judy, give some comments before I post it. Which they do not do, and thus my plan does not come to fruition. It does not bear the fruit. Sad.

One thing I can do now is blame or judge Judy. The plan would have worked, but Judy did a bad. And one useful feature of doing such judgy blaming is that I don’t need to change my overall strategy for the future. After all, this was aberrant. I am not to blame, Judy is to blame.

Likewise, when I resolve to not play computer games, it seems like the blamey judging seasoning is a necessary ingredient for the resolution dish. The blamey judging means the naughty action, eg. playing computer game, can be separated from me, or at least the part of me that is doing the resolving. And this separation means that I can believe in the resolution, whilst also having just done the naughty action or being about to do the naughty action, and ultimately both have my cake and eat it. Twice as delicious!

Without the separation, one is left with the glaring contradiction between resolving to not play computer game whilst being about to play computer game. Things do not like having contradictions within them, and this will lead to a ‘neither can live whilst the other survives’ type scenario. And at most one cake.

I think this is a solution to the problem of evil. Or at least vaguely related. My understanding of the problem of evil:

God, as traditionally conceived, is both a nice bloke and has a magic wand which means he can do basically anything he wants. But, bad things happen. Which means either God isn’t a nice bloke or doesn’t have a magic wand. In either case, God cannot exist as traditionally conceived.

For the heathens among us, this is all well and good. Though I think there’s also a psychological problem of evil. Basically, it seems to me that the way people’s psychology works is that they need to believe, roughly, that they are good, and that things broadly will turn out good.

But, bad things tend to happen, which is annoying, and in particular annoying for the belief that things will broadly turn out good. This circle can be squared by judgement and blame. Ah yes, bad things happen, but they happen over there! Where over there is in another person, or a past self which one no longer identifies with, or a part of oneself which one rejects.

Brene Brown says that people are doing the best that they can. I think there’s a sense in which this is true. And if it’s true it means people are in some fundamental sort of way, not blameworthy. Which also seems true to me.

I think this is a beautiful way to view the world, and is also hard to bear. It seems to me that blame allows one to live in a fantasy world where things happen as they should, and without blame one is not shielded from the reality of badness.

I was confused by this. We were a middle class family, lived comfortably, had a reasonably large house and so on. I was also judgemental. Why would you choose to be unhappy? Why would you not do something you enjoyed and earn a bit less money?

What’s more, they seemed aware of all of this somehow, and had plans and ambitions where they would be less stressed and more free. And yet, for the large part, they continued to be stressed.

I resolved, unconsciously, that this would not be me. As a teenager I did not care for money. I knew that I would do something meaningful with my life, something that I believed in, something I enjoyed, even if it meant being poor. (Taking the Giving What We Can pledge was an easy choice for this reason).

I also had a sense of judgement towards my university friends that decided to do things like management consulting. Why would you choose this?

I would not be part of the rat race, whatever that was.

My parents didn’t place any specific constraints on what I studied, or have any specific expectations for what I would do for work.

My mother’s refrain: ‘Whatever makes you happy’. My stepfather repeatedly reminds me to ‘take all the opportunities I can whilst I still can’, and that he regrets focusing so much on work instead of seeing the world. I’ve always found this a bit surprising given he is something of a hard-nosed conservative.

I had a conversation with my father once, where he was telling me about his days as a communist when he was a student in Turkey. He told me a story of being chased by the police, I think this was around the time of the 1971 military coup, and getting away. Many of his friends weren’t so lucky, and ended up with broken bones and broken teeth.

I asked him why he wasn’t a communist anymore. He said everyone is an idealist when they are young. I thought that was ridiculous, and resolved to be an idealist into old age.

For a large part of my adult life, work has been at the top of my mind. The main determinant of my shower thoughts, main source of stress, main vector for my ambitions.

I’d often be aware of the fact that all of my time and energy is devoted to work. And I’d be like, well, I just need to get on top of things, and I will have more balance in the future.

(As with all good posts, this one is inspired by a unidirectional conversation with my therapist. I laughed quite a lot when I realised my work life fit the trope of a person who takes great pains to ensure they do not become their parents, and end up doing so anyway).

I think my teenager self misunderstood what was going on. According to my teenage self, what happened is something like - people get used to a certain lifestyle, nice food, big house and so on, and don’t want to give it up. And they also want even nicer things. And so they continually work and work. My teenage self’s understanding of this was largely about material possessions and consumption.

‘Mmmhmmm’

‘And we have extensive profiles of everyone alive during this time period, their work, their personal life, their use of AI systems.. ’

‘Cool’

‘And we noticed a few anomalies, or inconsistencies in our records concerning you, which is why we’ve asked you here today’

‘Oh ok’

‘From our records we see that you studied Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Oxford, one of the most prestigious educational establishments at that time’

‘Yep! Yeh it was a while back now’

‘And you were part of the effective altruism community, one of the first groups to notice the radically transformative potential of Artificial Intelligence’

‘Yes! Ranked top by Times Higher Education for 10 consecutive years if I remember correctly’

‘Indeed. And as a result you were familiar with the astronomical stakes involved…’

‘Oh yes, trillions of lives at stake!’

‘[...]’

‘Sorry I meant gazillions!’

‘... ok. And from our records you were considering working in the field that at that time was known as AI safety, to ensure the safe and beneficial development of AI for all of sentientkind’

‘Yep! Yeh I was, that’s right’

‘And from our records, we see that you ended up spending a significant period during the transitionary era writing an online blog’

‘Mmmhmmm’

‘And one of the pieces included ‘I am the nameless Tao’, a poem about a dog called Henry, and a subsequent psychoanalysis of the poem, “Bescelo and Bitches - A psychoanalytic reading of ‘I am the nameless Tao’”.

‘Mmmhmmm’

‘And you wrote both the poem and the so called ‘psychoanalytic reading’ of the poem…’

‘Yep! Yes, I consider them both part of the same piece really’

‘And other pieces you wrote included a lengthy semi-fictional story where you accuse your former employer of basing their community building strategy on a made up book by Machiavelli, ‘Il Principles’...”

‘Well it wasn’t really an accusation, I was just suggesting it was a possibility..’

‘And ‘23 Pieces of Life Advice’, with one of the pieces of advice being ‘Be careful with Veet hair removal cream’

‘Yes. Yes dangerous stuff that’

‘And you also spent a significant portion of your time massaging your neck as you believed that if you resolved the tension in your neck you would reach a state of quasi-enlightenment’

‘Yep. Yep that’s right’

‘And to confirm, you studied Psychology and Philosophy at Oxford University’

‘Mmmhmmm’

‘And all of the above is correct, that you authored those pieces, were part of the effective altruism community and so on?

‘Yep! At least as far as I can tell, it was a while back now’

‘I see… and…’

‘[...]’

‘Well, the thing we wanted to resolve, and we understand that you were operating on limited information and primitive biological hardware, the thing we want to resolve is, the question of how exactly you thought that these actions, the Henry poem and psychoanalysis, the massaging the neck and so on, how exactly, given that you were aware of the stakes and the urgency and so on, how exactly you thought these actions would be useful for the development of safe and beneficial artificial intelligence?’

I was quite offended by this. Fuck you.

Now I find it quite funny (though I think the actual tweet was more antagonistic than the one I remember).

One must admire the brazenness of effective altruism. The yolo. The go hard or go home.

‘You know good? And you know how great it is? Well, what if we had as much of it as possible. Not even like just a lot, but like actually as much as possible. Across time and space.’

However, the brightest light casts the darkest shadow. As they say.

The ‘elephant in the brain’ model of psychology makes a lot of sense to me. Briefly, we’re often driven by unconscious, self-interested motivations - which we deceive both others and ourselves about. Verbal reasoning is less for rationality and more for rationalising.

This seems quite similar to me to the idea of ‘the shadow’.

And to a large extent I see circling as a process of integrating one’s shadow. Becoming aware of the unconscious motivations and beliefs, and then by some magic, one is more whole afterwards.

I’m less of a fan of thinking these days. Often words seem like a distraction to me, like something of a smokescreen. I guess this makes sense if one thinks of verbal reasoning as for rationalising.

Though to be fair to thinking, it did get us maths, which seems good.

My sense is that the way spiritual types use the word ‘conscious’ maps onto this. Someone is conscious if they are acting, or speaking, or existing from a place of consciousness, and not driven by unconscious motivations or beliefs.

How much consciousness is necessary?

I suspect there is no answer to this.

But it is a shame that we can’t put pause on the world for everyone to sort their shit. Instead, we must do our psychology on a deadline.

Another frame I have is that people always get their needs met, one way or another. I don’t think this is quite true (do people on hunger strikes not need food?).

The important point is, for things that people need - if they cannot achieve them directly, they will do so indirectly.

Just as communities can form around values, they can form around shadows. And just as communities can have collective values, they can have collective shadows.

What kind of needs are at play in effective altruism?

Well, at a quick pass, the need to be or be seen as smart, and the need to be or be seen as good.

There are a few tricky things. One is that the bar for meeting these can climb. Another is that the maximisation element can lead to things being pushed further into the shadow.

(Insofar as you feel guilty, you have a moral responsibility to replace it with something more like excitement, as this will be more effective)

Effective altruism is built for homo economicus, not for homo sapiens.

I have previously purchased 2 ipads, 1 kindle fire, 1 kindle scribe, ~3 normal kindles, and some off brand tablet. I never use these.

That isn’t quite true. I occasionally use my kindle scribe out of penance for buying another expensive electronicy object that I don’t use even though I’d much prefer to be using pen and paper.

Why? Why do I do this?

Whyyyy?

Well, I’m a complex character with many hidden depths, and so I can’t be quite sure. Though my sense of my psychology around the time of purchase is:

• Graspy brain lobule: Oooh… maybe if I buy that it will mean I’ll start reading again/ I’ll be able to draw mindmaps in colour which is potentially the key bottleneck to my productivity.

• Sensible brain lobule: Remember the 500 other times that was true?

• Grapsy brain lobule: But, what if this time it really works? Imagine if it does work and I don’t buy it, and I forever am unable to read and am unproductive, imagine how sad that would be when we could have solved it so easily. And everyone else will be so productive because of their ability to create pretty mindmaps and will get all of their work done in 2 hours and spend the rest of the time sitting at the beach sipping margaritas whilst I’m working 30 hours a day just to keep up. Imagine how sad that would be. Why do you want me to be sad?

• Sensible brain lobule: That seems…

• Graspy brain lobule: [clicks purchase] Yay, it’s coming tomorrow! Also, given that tomorrow I will be super productive my comparative advantage right now is having a nap.

Self improvementy things

As a teenager I spent probably between 50 and 100 hours learning how to speed read. Probably the most embarrassing thing here is how long it took me before giving up. How did I not realise?

Well, a couple of things seem relevant here

1. According to the book, it requires practice, lots of practice to get good and the improvements are often non-linear.

2. They book provided the tests for how to tell if it’s working. And I did pretty well on the tests!

I also attended a workshop by the Centre for Applied Rationality at some point. What’s interesting to me about this is that I now don’t think that I got much out of it, but just afterwards I was very positive.

Dating apps

The free version of Hinge is pretty good. And yet somehow I bought the premium version for little additional benefit.

One interesting thing about Hinge is that it markets itself as the dating app that is ‘designed to be deleted’.

‘Yes, we are aware that products in this reference class are incentivised not to solve your problem but to ensure it persists, however we not only recognise that but our whole mission is based on recognition of this cycle and we intend to do the exact opposite’

(Similarly, self-help and self-improvement books often start off explaining why other self-help and self-improvement books are a sham, and the reason why they are different.)

Initially I thought there was much to commend in this plan. It is based on solid logic, and a tried and tested methodology. However, many years of formal training as a rationalist has enabled me to detect even the faintest hing of confusion, and a subtle twinge in my left kneecap indicated to me that something did not add up… but what?

Growth, evidence, community building 101, investment, legitimacy… wait a minute, community building 101.

This phrase appears multiple times in CEA’s propaganda pamphlets.

‘The cornerstone of momentum will be growth: this is Community Building 101’

‘[...]which really means growth is about getting back to basics. This idea isn’t new or fancy: it’s Community Building 101.’

Growth. It’s Community Building 101. Community Building 101. Who could argue with that. Community Building 101. No funny business here, just simple Community Building 101. Growth. Community Building. 101.

How peculiar. Peculiar indeed.

I’m an experienced community builder myself, running the Community Building Grants programme and leading GWWC Oxford. And in all of the many community building 101 guides that I’ve either read, edited, authored or plagiarised - growth is rarely mentioned if ever. And what’s more, I had a sneaking suspicion that this phrase was the key to a deep and disturbing conspiracy, perhaps one with ancient historical roots even.

However, I have a firm commitment to scout mindset and the principle of charity, and was resolute in my decision to not privilege the hypothesis of dreadful wrongdoing before encountering additional evidence in that direction. So I simply googled ‘Community Building 101’.

Trust, belonging, communication… but no mention of growth. Peculiar. I look at the next page. No mention of growth. And the next, and the next, and the next… just to see if anything interesting might happen.

And just as I am about to abandon my investigation and send CEA a heartfelt email expressing a sincere and heartfelt desire for reconciliation, I see on the 23rd page of search results, the following:

Il Principles by Niccolo Machiavelli, 14th Edition

Intrigued, I clicked on the link.

Author’s Preface to the 14th Edition:

I have been astonished to see the popularity “Il Principles” has garnered over the years, especially given the book was published posthumously. Countless counts, kings, comissars, conciglieres and cryptobros have used the principles to gain and maintain power.

As per the initial publication of ‘Il Principles’, the book will focus on these principles first and foremost. They are:

• Scout Mindset: Talent follows a power law distribution (thus the law of power) - constantly scout for promising and ambitious recruits.

• Scope Sensitivity: 1000 florins is 10 times more than 100 florins.

• Impartiality: One should not discriminate due to distance, only loyalty.

• Recognition of Tradeoffs: It is desirable to be both loved and feared; but it is difficult to achieve both and, if one of them has to be lacking, it is much safer to be feared than loved.

However, the world has changed much since I wrote the first edition of Il Principles in 16th century Florence.

Many strategies for power remain the same: free pizza still buys prestige, pledges still secure obedience. But modernity opens up so much more! Multi-level marketing, hostile takeovers, campaigns of disinformation - for the sufficiently ruthless, really anything is possible.

The locus of power has likewise evolved, from city state to nation state and finally to the global corporation and the latest edition reflects this new reality. Updated chapters include:

• The power of apocalyptic prophecies, from Savonarola to the singularity.

• Branding. Why you should call your corporation a community.

• Building 101 bases of power in under an hour - university recruitment.

• Games of the board - Complications from not being consistently candid

Realisation hit me like a large avalanche. The CEA retreat I attended, mysteriously located in Florence. Y Combinator. The strange electronic implants that EAs have in the base of their neck.

Appalled.

CEA has recently proclaimed its supreme authority over effective altruism in the following two edicts:

• Stewardship: CEA’s 2025-26 strategy to reach and raise EA’s ceiling

• CEA will continue to take a “principles-first” approach to EA

I appreciate CEA taking the time to write this up their strategy and share it publicly.

However, I shall now proceed to uncover its inconsistencies, contradictions and contraindications, laying bare the fabric of its fabrications and decrypting the devilish details of its deceit, and ultimately undermining the rationale for its reign. I will demolish it, firmly but fairly.

I will take no joy in this, I must simply do as my conscience commands for the good of everything that is good, or that could be.

Once this is complete, I intend to resume my position as Defender of the Principles, Servant of the Greater Good, and Rightful Steward of Effective Altruism.

Not a strawman

I will begin with the parts of CEA’s documents that I like to demonstrate to readers that I am being charitable and not attacking a strawman.

• Scout Mindset. I love scout mindset, and think it is to EA as the hump is to the camel. Very important. People are much too willing to adopt a soldier mindset, treating disagreements as conflict and those with different views as adversaries. I decry such behaviour.

• Font. I like the font used in CEA’s strategy documents.

• Arctic Monkeys. I appreciate the link to the Arctic Monkeys song Cornerstone when they mention ‘The cornerstone of momentum will be growth’. I think that ‘Fake Tales of San Fransisco’ would have been the most apt, but that is merely my opinion, and I appreciate their attempt.

FTX

CEA’s Stewardship strategy mentions the negative impact of FTX on EA.

FTX was a crypto exchange, which many EAs helped build, staked their reputations to and deposited their crypto with. They realised that achieving growth would be strong evidence of legitimacy. It would be among the clearest possible signals to their stakeholders - investors, customers, potential customers, and the world at large - that FTX is worth listening to, committing to, and investing in.

And so they invested heavily in their brand and their growth, and to much success.

Unfortunately, some negative publicity caused a spike of withdrawals from FTX, which cascaded and ultimately led to FTW filing for bankruptcy and people losing their crypto.

This was a real shame for EA. EA is a community that many EAs have helped build, staked their reputations to and deposited their identities with. And unfortunately, the negative publicity around FTX has caused a spike of people withdrawing from EA, which is cascading, and leading to people losing their EA identities.

However, fortunately CEA has a cunning plan, the cornerstone of which is growth, and which they justify thusly:

‘[...] Achieving growth would be strong evidence that EA is bouncing back from the damage done by FTX. It would be among the clearest possible signals to our stakeholders – funders, community builders, the community itself, potential community members, and the world at large – that EA is worth listening to, committing to, and investing in.’