for - quote / key insight - die before we die - Donald Hoffman - We will each die. That's incontrovertible. - So any attachments I have to this world will cease. - There's no doubt. - The question is can I let go of the attachments now - or will they only go for my cold dead hand?

• adjacency - example - cliche - die before we die - Donald Hoffman

for - adjacency - letting go - of knowledge - of theories - Donald Hoffman - I've often felt as he does - it's a conundrum of letting go of that (knowledge) we've invested so heavily into - quote / key insight - letting go of theories of science and self - Donald Hoffman - Science is great, but don't believe any theory. <br /> - Theories are just tools. They're not the truth. - No scientific theory, my theories included, are the truth. - And so also is my theory about who I am not the truth. - So to really let go of any theory, if I can really let go of any theory of who I am, then I'll let go of any fear

for - key insight / quote - Do I identify with my fear or step back and be the observer that watches the fear response? - Donald Hoffman? - adjacency - calmness - in the face of death - fear of death - Donald Hoffman

for - quote / key insight - consciousness has created the brain as an icon to describe how it's creating this headset - Donald Hoffman

for - key insight / quote - the reason to love your neighbor - Donald Hoffman - The reason to love your neighbor as yourself is because - your neighbor IS YOUR (TRUE) SELF, just with a different headset. - And the only reason we have problems is - we don't realize how incredible you are. - So you are that which is creating this VR simulation with all of its beauty, all of its complexity. - All the complexity is you and you're doing it effortlessly.

adjacency - infinite intelligence - hologram metaphor - your neighbor is your (true) self - Deep Humanity motto - Join together (instead of Join us) - face behind the mask - Reflecting on this, it occurred to me that the Deep Humanity motto of "Join together, NOT join me/us" is deeply connected to what is being discussed in this annotation. - The problem with "joining me" is that it reflects we are still stuck in the ego reification paradigm while "join together" reflects awareness that the boundless intelligence is the true face behind the mask of each different species and each different individual of each species

for - key insight / quote - the reified ego is the root cause of all the problems in the world - we reify because we don't know who we REALLY are - Donald Hoffman - All the egoic stuff that we do causes all the problems in the world because - you don't know who you are. - You're creating this whole thing. - You're not a little player. - You're the inventor of this whole thing. - You have nothing to prove and - you don't need to be better than anybody else. - They're also master creators. - They're creating entire universes that they perceive as well. - And my own take on on this is that - you and I are really the same one reality - just looking at itself through two different headsets, - two different avatars and having a conversation. - And maybe that's what is required for this one infinite intelligence to sort of know itself.

• adjacency - poverty mentality - ego - problems of the world - samsara - nirvana - hologram model - Alan Watts - God playing hide and seek - Donald Hoffman
• When we don't believe we can be this, we limit ourselves
  • That is, we suffer from self-inflicted poverty mentality
• When he says we are the one same reality,
  • he is echoing the common spiritual teaching of the holographic metaphor where
    • the one nameless is distilling itself in so many separate identities to know itself,
  • Similiar to many spiritual teacher's teachings
    • Alan Watts referred to it as God playing Hide and Seek with itself

for - quote/key insight - perception serves reproduction, not seeing reality as it is

quote / key insight - perception serves reproduction, not seeing reality as it is - Donald Hoffman - From an evolutionary point of view, perception is expensive. - It takes a lot of calories. - You have to eat a lot of food - to run your brain and - to power your eyes and your ears. - - And so you need to do shortcuts. - You need to make your sensory systems not chew up so much of your energy. - The more expensive your perceptual systems are, - the more you've got to eat to to power those. - So that means you have to go out there and forage and put yourself at harm. - So there's a trade-off. - We try to do things cheaply in evolution. And you don't need to actually go for the truth because that's very very expensive

for - quote / key insight - messages from past self to present self - Michael Levin - salience - high - engrams from past self to present self

for - quote - consciousness vs cellular level intelligence - Michael Levin - key insight - high level governance (consciousness) vs low level intelligence adjacency hierarchical control - high level consciousness - low level micro intelligence quote - consciousness vs cellular level intelligence - Michael Levin - all intelligence is collective intelligence in the sense that - every agent is made of parts, all of us. - And what you want is for the (high level) agent to have a causal power that is not the same as simply tracking the microstates, the particles.

key insight - high level governance (consciousness) vs low level intelligence - This is a very important observation - It says that a multi-cellular being such as a human being can have consciousness that has agency for the entire organism and governs at that high level, and it must have this beyond just the cognition and intelligence at the lower cellular and subcellular level

for - key insight - postmodernism is blind to its own narrative - quote - postmodernism is blind to its own narrative - Annick de Witt - observation - adjacency - postmodernism - alternative facts

adjacency - postmodernism - alternative facts - observation - also we are seeing the shadow side of postmodernism in the Trump era where "alternative facts" have become dangerously fashionable - obviously the complete denial of an objective reality is not tenable while the complete denial of constructed reality is also no tenable - what we need is an integration, as Annick contends

for - key insight / quote - innate language learning is in conflict with intentional learning - David Long - Common Human Denominator - learning language

for - quote / key insight - the shallow internet can never truly fulfill us

quote / key insight - the shallow internet can never truly fulfill us - The nourishing contact with others that we so desperately crave - can never be realized by selves that relate to others solely in the narcissistic terms of how those others can satisfy what our egos project upon them as potential sources of affirmation. - Relating to each other out of the fullness of our egos, - we look to one another for nurturing support but cannot receive each other. - There are no hollow places in ourselves - that make room for the other’s presence, - that welcome the other in. - All that confronts the other - is an ego that allows space for nothing but its own self-obsessed cravings.

for - key insight / quote - source - article - Le Monde - Musk, Trump and the Broligarch's novel hyper-weapon - Yanis Varoufakis - 2025, Jan 4

key insight / quote - (see below) - Returning to Bevan’s brilliant question, today it is easier to see how - wealth persuades poverty to give up its freedom and, instead, - to serve the broligarchs-in-charge: via their cloud capital - that has a capacity, - unlike any hitherto form of capital or government department, - to shape our behaviour - automatically and - directly. - Nothing short of a revolution can restore any hope of personal agency, - let alone of democracy.

for - quote / key insight - must interrogate the deeper thought patterns else - we risk repeating simplistic linear transition social movements that have failed over the past centuries - Post Capitalist Philanthropy Webinar 1 - Alnoor Ladha - Lynn Murphy - 2023

for - key insight - quote - Why Harris lost US election - no perceived genuine alternative to BAU - Roger Hallam - from - Medium article - An Emerging Third Option: Reclaiming Democracy from Dark Money & Dark Tech Seven Observations On 2024 and What’s Next - Otto Scharmer - terminology - Status Quoism

key insight - quote - Why Harris lost US election - no perceived genuine alternative to BAU - Roger Hallam - (see below) - What the defeat of Harris shows about the US is this. People like everywhere else want a real alternative and - If there is no authentic left option, people vote for a fascist instead. - It happens again and again in history

from - Medium article - An Emerging Third Option: Reclaiming Democracy from Dark Money & Dark Tech Seven Observations On 2024 and What’s Next - Otto Scharmer - terminology - Status Quoism - https://hyp.is/Mxp1GqtFEe-pKzNGX6BrhQ/medium.com/presencing-institute-blog/an-emerging-third-option-reclaiming-democracy-from-dark-money-dark-tech-3886bcd0469b

for - adjacency - key insight - quote - localization enables (infinite or universal consciousness) to perceive itself - Rupert Spira - discerning single voice at a busy party metaphor - existential isolation - umwelt

adjacency - between - key insight - quote - localization enables (infinite or universal consciousness) to perceive itself - Rupert Spira - discerning single voice at a busy party metaphor - existential isolation - adjacency relationship - quote - localization enables (infinite or universal consciousness) to perceive itself - Rupert Spira - This localization process enables (infinite) consciousness to perceive itself as the universe because - infinite consciousness cannot perceive its own activity directly - because if infinite consciousness were to perceive the universe directly - it would have to do so from every single point of view in the universe - It would be the deepest, darkest black image you could imagine - So in order to perceive an object - (infinite) consciousness must localize itself as an apparently separate subject so - the apparent localization of our self or - the dissociation of ourselves - as finite minds out of infinite consciousness enables - perception and - thought

• There is a metaphor that applies here:
  • At a busy dinner party, many people are talking at the same time
  • As the number of people approach infinite, the signal becomes more difficult to detect
  • In the same manner, as the activities of the universe are seemingly unbounded, how could infinite consciousness possibly observe its own infinite entirety?
  • Existential isolation is deemed depressing because it makes us feel intrinsically separated and disconnected from others, yet
    • it may be very necessary
  • Can you imagine hearing and understanding the voices of every human being, much less every living being?
  • An individual human does not have the capacity to process all that information
  • In the same manner, the body of every living organism is fine tuned for only one specific set of unwelts
  • How would we process the unbound amounts of information if we had an infinite number of different detectors?

for - key insight - quote - self knowledge - Rupert Spira

key insight - quote - self knowledge - Rupert Spira - There is one aspect of the universe that we have direct unmediated access to w

• When i say unmediated i mean we have access to it through a channel that is does not go through

  • perception or
  • thought and that is our knowledge of our self

• Our knowledge of our self is the only knowledge there is that is not mediated through

  • thought or
  • perception

• and therefore it is the only channel through which we have direct unmediated access to the reality of the universe

• It is for this reason that self-knowledge stands at the heart of all the great religious and spiritual traditions.

for - key insight - free trade - from - Backfire: How the Rise of Neoliberalism Facilitated the Rise of The Far-Right

quote - free trade - (see below)

key insight - free trade - NAFTA displays the classic free-trade quandary: - Diffuse benefits with - concentrated costs - While the economy as a whole may have seen a slight boost, - certain sectors and communities experienced profound disruption. - A town in the Southeast loses hundreds of jobs when a textile mill closes, - but hundreds of thousands of people find their clothes marginally cheaper. - Depending on how you quantify it, the overall economic gain is probably greater but barely perceptible at the individual level; - the overall economic loss is small in the grand scheme of things, - but devastating for those it affects directly.

from - Backfire: How the Rise of Neoliberalism Facilitated the Rise of The Far-Right - https://hyp.is/F6XYujyREe-TaldInE8OGA/scholarworks.arcadia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1066&context=thecompass

Quote used as a bouncing pad to not need to construct the argument from scratch

for - key insight - the unconscious - fundamental assumptions are the root problem - Nora Bateson

key insight, quote - the unconscious - fundamental assumptions are the root problem - Nora Bateson - (see below) - Even though we can point with - language and - statistics and - all sorts of measurements - to all the aspects of what we might call - the meta crisis or - the poly crisis - the real issues are: - insidious - they're underground - they're down in our our baseline premises of understanding - what life is and - what it means - To ask - what's in it for me - what's the point of this - where is this going - what am I going to get out of this - These type of questions that have to do with in some way embellishing our individual takeback - are deeply and totally unecological responses - so they're disrupting our possibility for perception

for - quote, key insight - progress trap - Nora Bateson

quote - progress trap - Nora Bateson - Nora hits the head of the nail with this observation - There are always multiple causes to one result - and by addressing only one cause, we cannot solve the problem, but in fact - allow it to continue and often make it worse - This is essentially another way of stating the teachings of millenia of Eastern philosophy, - that the universe is - infinitely interconnected - and its inherent nature of continuous transformation - Therefore, any state, which might be recognized as a problem state - is the result of many different causes and conditions coalescing

for - key insight, quote - the Pact between the West and dictators since 1992

quote - Since 1992 it's been a good deal - The Pact that the Western Alliance has made with dictators around the world - we'll buy your oil you can get rich - we'll look the other way when you kill your own people - but you just can't attack your neighbors

for - individual / collective gestalt - gene centrism - paradigm shift - adjacency - mistake of 20th century biology - reductionism - separating organism from environment - individual / collective gestalt, individual / environment gestalt - quote - mistake of 20th century biology - Ray Noble - key insight - mistake of 20th century biology- Ray Noble

quote - mistake of 20th century biology - Ray Noble - (see below)

• I think one of the other mistakes that have been made in biology of the 20th century
  • was to treat organisms as if they existed within an environment that was sort of like some nebulous box as it were
  • and you could study the organism by taking it out
  • and you study it in isolation
• It's the beginning of reductionism in a sense because
  • you taken it away from the environment but the organism has an intimate relationship with the environment
• It's feeding both
  • to the environment and
  • from the environment
• What is that environment?
  • That environment in large part is
    • other organisms of the same species but
    • other organisms of different species
• and it's in a continuous bubble of change
• It's like a cauldron of change
• So the big question for life is
  • how do you maintain yourself in this cauldron of change?
• You cannot do it by standing still
• You have to respond to it
  • so it's not surprising therefore that you find that you know organisms have mechanisms for responding to those changes

adjacency - mistake of 20th century biology - between - reductionism - separating organism from environment - individual / collective gestalt, - individual / environment gestalt - adjacency relationship - The mistake that 20th century biology has made is in - ascribing too much power to the gene, and - minimizing the role of epigenetics - Focusing the majority of attention and resources on the genes of the organism, and - defocusing attention on the organisms (epigenetic) interactions with the environment, including both - biotic elements and - abiotic elements - It's not the case that the genes are the major determinant factor and the epigenetics play a minor role - It IS the case that epigenetics play an equally important role in transmitting and assimilating features into the genome - The individual organism is intertwingled with its environment and with other living organisms - The individual / collective gestalt and the individual / environment gestalt is the appropriate unit of study

for - quote - taste - who can't develop it - perfectionists - key insight - finding our own unique voice - adjacency - creativity - learning from others - synthesis

quote - taste - who can't develop it - (see below)

• the one thing I can't teach is taste,
  • and the one predictor I have of the people who will never develop it are
    • the ones who are perfectionists.
• Because they're filtering their-- perfectionists that filter their perfection through the feedback of others.

comment - We we are overly dependent on others - it becomes difficult to develop our own - taste or - style - To develop our own unique taste is a balancing act - we are influenced by others by digesting the work of others - but then we must synthesize our own unique expression out of that - A useful metaphor is tuning a string - too loose and it can't work - neither if it is too tight - it snaps

adjacency - between - creativity - learning from others - synthesis - adjacency statement - our creativity depends on a balance of - learning from others - synthesizing what we've learned into something uniquely ours

for - key insight - not knowing - advantages - quote - Rick Ruben - quote - advantages of having no references

quote - advantages of having no references - (see below)

• I had the advantage,
  • early in my career,
• of starting making music without any experience,
• which was helpful, because
  • I didn't know what rules I was breaking.
• And so it wasn't intentional breaking of rules.
  • I just did what seemed right to me,
  • but I didn't realize that I was doing things that other people wouldn't do.

for - quote - working class - net zero - adjacency - working class - net zero - key insight - working class - net zero

quote - Chris Yates - within class - net zero - (see quote below)

• What is the most that a working-class person could hope for
  • from a net-zero future?
• At present,
  • in the vision being broadly promoted,
  • it’s
    • the same hard work,
    • the same exploitation,
  • but with
  • a heat pump instead of
    • a gas boiler.

for - quote - roots of misinformation, quote - roots of fake news, key insight - roots of misinformation

key insight - roots of misinformation - (see below)

quote - roots of misinformation - we have a media that needs to survive based on - clicks and - controversy and - serving the most engaged people - so they both sides the issues - they they lift up - facts and - lies - as equivalent in order to claim no bias but - that in itself is a bias because - it gives more oxygen to the - lies and - the disinformation - that is really dangerous to our society and - we are living through the impacts of - those errors and - that malpractice -done by media in America

for - quote - commonality between far left and far right - key insight

If there’s a commonality between far Left and far Right, says Lyons,

• it’s a common opposition to the status quo
  • but one that’s based on fundamentally different reasons.

• for: meme - make it expensive to destroy the planet, quote - Johan Rockstrom, quote - make it expensive to destroy the planet, key insight - make it expensive to destroy the planet

• key insight

• meme
• quote: Johan Rockstrom
  • we need to make the transition acceptable and attractive for the vast majority of citizens, and the only way to do that, is to make the changes easy to adopt. This requires strong engagement with society at large, and policies that make sustainable life choices not only easier, but also cheaper and more attractive. Or, put it the other way around, it must be more expensive to destroy the planet or the health of our fellow citizens".

• for: key question - maximizing returns

• key question

• quote: Marjorie Kelly
  • Is maximizing returns really what we insist upon if that is the force that's driving our fragility and ecological crisis?

• for: quote - Kevin Anderson, quote - elite positive feedback carbon inequality loop, climate crisis - societal aspirations, elites - societal aspirations, societal aspirations, key insight - societal aspirations

• quote

  • This 1% of humanity uses its awesome power to manipulate
    • societal aspirations and
    • the narratives around climate change.
  • These extend from
    • well-funded advertising to
    • pseudo-technical solutions,
    • and financialisation of carbon emissions (and increasingly, nature) to
    • labelling extreme any meaningful narrative that questions inequality and power.

• comment

• key insight - societal aspirations
  • it is the societal aspiration of the logic of capitalism and the free market that continues to create the next generation of the 1%
  • How can the luxury industry NOT BE high carbon intensity? It's an oxymoron. High carbon is baked into the definition of luxury, and it is luxury goods and services which accelerate climate breakdown.
  • The elites have a strong feeling of entitlement. They feel they DESERVE to reward themselves with a luxury lifestyle. That aspiration and reward structure multiplied by 80 million (1% of 8 billion) is a major variable driving the climate crisis

• for: quote - Sultan Al Jabber, quote - energy replacement instead of phase out, key point - focus on energy transition instead of just fossil fuel phase out

• quote

  • Whatever one thinks of Sultan Al Jaber, one statement he’s made repeatedly makes perfect sense: “We cannot unplug the world from the current energy system before we build a new energy system.”
  • The focus, then, has to shift.
    • Instead of focusing on dismantling the incumbent system,
    • we need to focus on accelerating the deployment of the new system that will replace it
• author: Nafeez Ahmed

• date : Dec 6, 2023

• key point

  • we must focus on the energy shift instead of just the phase out or down of the old energy system

• for: quote - there is no center, it's a fiction, quote - James Schneider - Progressive International

• quote

• key point
  • the things that the overwhelming majority of people support are not on the political agenda
    • which is why this whole the idea that there is a center in politics is a complete fiction
  • Elite consensus opinion is almost always massively in the minority
    • and so you have to work very hard to prevent things which are massively in the majority from getting political expression
  • Polling between 2/3 and 3/4 of people support (including generally speaking the majority of people who voted in the last election support) things like
    • public ownership of
      • energy
      • water
      • rail
      • mail, etc
    • a 15 pound an hour minimum wage
    • a wealth tax
• All of these things considered way way on the left are not on the left, that's actually the center if you're talking about where is the mainstream British public opinion - and it's such strong public opinion because no one ever says it in the public sphere and when they do they are ridiculed
• author: James Schneider, Progressive International
• date: Dec, 2023

• for: key insight - community capacity

• key insight - community capacity

• quote
  • . Although there are many initiatives, they have not yet reached the scale necessary to respond effectively to the crises; they often lack a stable and facile organisation of collaboration and a clearly structured process of joint decision making

• for: key insight - modernity framework is the major narrative, quote - modernity framework is the major narrative

• key insight: modernity framework is the major narrative

• quote: modernity framework is the major narrative
  • the official fantasy of the 20th century after the war but now also the 21st century is this that
    • of course they will all become like us
      • after the war we called it development
      • they were then third world countries would become first world
      • some second world countries as well
    • and the interesting thing is is that fundamentally that really hasn't changed
    • if you scratch under the paint of the UN's sustainable development goals what you find is they want to take the very best fruits of modernity and make them in a fair way distribute them more evenly across the planet so that everybody has the advantages of a modern life and
    • as Bill (Reese) suggested, that's a fantasy that isn't going to happen
    • there isn't enough planet for that to happen but
    • nevertheless this is the official fantasy that drives
      • the OECD and
      • the folks at Davos and
      • the UN and
      • most universities

• for: key insight, key insight - Andrew Millison, key insight - geomorphology, quote, quote - Andrew Millison, quote - geomorphology

• definition: geomorphology, geomorphic

  • geomorphology.is the study of the shape of the land and geomorphic means conforming to the shape of the land.

• quote: Andrew Millison

  • The fundamental flaw of our civilization is that our political boundaries and our land management units, property boundaries are not conforming to the shape of the land. Because if they did, then decisions we made would have an integrated holistic landscape scale impact instead of a fragmented or fractured impact.
• date: 2023

• for: key insight, science - key insight, science - epoche

• key insight

• quote
  • Electrons, protons, quarks, and so on, what they turn out to be is just inferences that we do from marks on the screens of our apparatuses in the laboratory essentially.
• author: Michel Bitbot

• key insight
• quote
  • if we want to end up with a world that is shaped by the best of us, rather than very often the worst of us,
    • we have to think carefully, we have to engineer a system.
    • think of the worst person for the job position you are hiring for
    • design the system to
      • screen that person out
      • if they do manage to get in, have oversight that can eliminate them from the post
      • have a system in place that looks upwards to the top position to scrutinize them and hold them accountable

Quote - do our fears cause us to perceive the world the way we do, and might someone experience the world differently if they were brave enough to face the thing we avoid most? key question - could we imagine a world where we are free of these fears?

• key observation
• key insight
• quuotable
• quote

quote from John Sifton.