We never claimed, in any of our comms, that this movement is about a “concrete way to find meaning”. These are your terms, not ours.
In this particular thread, I don’t “suggest that we need to develop a new way of living and finding meaning”. I suggest we need to revaluate what our idea of progress is. It’s very clear in my writing.
“To find meaning, you recommend watching a video you made.” Eh… no? I suggest watching the video for my take on what the reframing of progress could be about (one that maximizes values alignment and meaning). Either you have extremely bad reading comprehension, or you’re intentionally badly mischaracterizating what I’m saying.
“You provide a few exercises about how to find this meaning for yourself, but the exercises tend to focus more on making the viewer feel a certain way rather than clear exercises that the viewer can build upon or share with others”. Yeah, because the video about explaining what meaning is, not a manual. We actually have a lot of techniques, even a course on it (!), but since the video isn’t about finding meaning, that’s not what I’m highlighting.
“It is a vibes-based way of thinking, not a structured one” — Look, it’s fine if you don’t the will or capacity to get through the 1.30h lecture, but then simply you don’t get to critizice that this is a “vibes based” way of thinking. The video you watched is the only “vibey” thing that we have, everything else is extremely robust.
“The website touts the variety of people in the movement (Successful hedge fund managers! Interesting and cool anarchists!”..… Eh, what? This is my response to a comment above about how our notion of meaning is broad, not particular. Again, either you have very limited comprehension, or there’s actually bad faith in your blunt mischarachterization.
The only thing you’re right is that yes, our website doesn’t have as much clear information as we’d like, but doing this well takes a lot of work, and we only launched a month and a half ago (!) (most startups have equally simple websites during their first year). So yes, we’re working on it, but we’re not quite there yet. My deepest apologies. If you want more information though, we have enough information to keep you busy for at least a week (even though, given you couldn’t get through the video lecture which is the summarized version of this, it’s unsure whether you’d be able to engage with this properly):
We have Design School that teaches how to get concrete around meaning and design for it https://www.sfsd.io/ . So far, we’ve trained over 300 students across 80 organizations (including Apple, Facebook, Khan Academy, etc). The lecture you didn’t watch is the best intro to our design method, and it’s extremely structured thinking. You can even apply for the course if you want to learn how to get concrete about meaning.
We also have a full, freely accessible textbook on values and meaning-centric design. There’s a lot of free exercises you can do yourself and share with your friends https://textbook.sfsd.io/
Finally, this is much much more that we’re doing, but not all of it is public (like is the case with a lot of movements or companies). We have alignment researchers at major labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMind etc) working with our notion of meaning. We have a working prototype of a GPT based chatbot that assists you get clear on your meaning (which will be launched later this year). We have a unique AI alignment strategy (some of it outlined in our ML research group). We have a dedicated working group working on meaning aligned economic policy (supported by some known names from the progress community too). Partnerships with highly strategic agents. Collaborations with acclaimed artists. Etc Etc.
We’ll slowly publicly announce more of this over the course of this year, so you can just stay tuned to see whether I’m bullshitting or not. Wanna bet ;)?
I think I’m probably just not the target audience for your project, so I didn’t “get it”. I apologize for calling your stuff a cult and interpreting it through that lens.
A lot of what I was saying was an attempt to boil down your points to get to the meat of what the project is trying to say, but perhaps that kinda defeats the purpose of the artistic aspect of it. While I could argue about the numbered responses, or give suggestions on how to streamline the ideas you’re proposing, if the point is in large part artistic I see how that’s barking up the wrong tree.
While I don’t think this is for me, I apologize again for my critical tone and for calling it a cult. Best of luck.
We never claimed, in any of our comms, that this movement is about a “concrete way to find meaning”. These are your terms, not ours.
In this particular thread, I don’t “suggest that we need to develop a new way of living and finding meaning”. I suggest we need to revaluate what our idea of progress is. It’s very clear in my writing.
“To find meaning, you recommend watching a video you made.” Eh… no? I suggest watching the video for my take on what the reframing of progress could be about (one that maximizes values alignment and meaning). Either you have extremely bad reading comprehension, or you’re intentionally badly mischaracterizating what I’m saying.
“You provide a few exercises about how to find this meaning for yourself, but the exercises tend to focus more on making the viewer feel a certain way rather than clear exercises that the viewer can build upon or share with others”. Yeah, because the video about explaining what meaning is, not a manual. We actually have a lot of techniques, even a course on it (!), but since the video isn’t about finding meaning, that’s not what I’m highlighting.
“It is a vibes-based way of thinking, not a structured one” — Look, it’s fine if you don’t the will or capacity to get through the 1.30h lecture, but then simply you don’t get to critizice that this is a “vibes based” way of thinking. The video you watched is the only “vibey” thing that we have, everything else is extremely robust.
“The website touts the variety of people in the movement (Successful hedge fund managers! Interesting and cool anarchists!”..… Eh, what? This is my response to a comment above about how our notion of meaning is broad, not particular. Again, either you have very limited comprehension, or there’s actually bad faith in your blunt mischarachterization.
The only thing you’re right is that yes, our website doesn’t have as much clear information as we’d like, but doing this well takes a lot of work, and we only launched a month and a half ago (!) (most startups have equally simple websites during their first year). So yes, we’re working on it, but we’re not quite there yet. My deepest apologies. If you want more information though, we have enough information to keep you busy for at least a week (even though, given you couldn’t get through the video lecture which is the summarized version of this, it’s unsure whether you’d be able to engage with this properly):
We have Design School that teaches how to get concrete around meaning and design for it https://www.sfsd.io/ . So far, we’ve trained over 300 students across 80 organizations (including Apple, Facebook, Khan Academy, etc). The lecture you didn’t watch is the best intro to our design method, and it’s extremely structured thinking. You can even apply for the course if you want to learn how to get concrete about meaning.
We also have a full, freely accessible textbook on values and meaning-centric design. There’s a lot of free exercises you can do yourself and share with your friends https://textbook.sfsd.io/
You can read about our academic background and bibliography here https://www.notion.so/humsys/Related-Academic-Work-c933408fd8fc44c3acd42d6ccb827461?pvs=4
You can read about our theory of change here https://www.notion.so/humsys/Theory-of-Change-FAQ-866c7b7cdd24420fabd8ca357f076d56?pvs=4
You can read about the research groups that we’re coordinating https://www.notion.so/humsys/Research-We-ll-Coordinate-2425704cfc354ed18af78e237f0f2e5d?pvs=4
You can read our paper on values and meaning (and how they differ from the economic notion of “preferences” https://github.com/jxe/vpm/blob/master/vpm.pdf)
Finally, this is much much more that we’re doing, but not all of it is public (like is the case with a lot of movements or companies). We have alignment researchers at major labs (OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMind etc) working with our notion of meaning. We have a working prototype of a GPT based chatbot that assists you get clear on your meaning (which will be launched later this year). We have a unique AI alignment strategy (some of it outlined in our ML research group). We have a dedicated working group working on meaning aligned economic policy (supported by some known names from the progress community too). Partnerships with highly strategic agents. Collaborations with acclaimed artists. Etc Etc.
We’ll slowly publicly announce more of this over the course of this year, so you can just stay tuned to see whether I’m bullshitting or not. Wanna bet ;)?
I think I’m probably just not the target audience for your project, so I didn’t “get it”. I apologize for calling your stuff a cult and interpreting it through that lens.
A lot of what I was saying was an attempt to boil down your points to get to the meat of what the project is trying to say, but perhaps that kinda defeats the purpose of the artistic aspect of it. While I could argue about the numbered responses, or give suggestions on how to streamline the ideas you’re proposing, if the point is in large part artistic I see how that’s barking up the wrong tree.
While I don’t think this is for me, I apologize again for my critical tone and for calling it a cult. Best of luck.