Meet inside The Shops at Waterloo Town Square - we will congregate in the indoor seating area next to the Your Independent Grocer with the trees sticking out in the middle of the benches (pic) at 7:00 pm for 15 minutes, and then head over to my nearby apartment's amenity room. If you've been around a few times, feel free to meet up at the front door of the apartment at 7:30 instead.

Description

Happy (day before) Halloween! It's time to get spooky, i.e. engaging with things that might not be explainable by cold, hard logic!! 😱

This week, we'll peer at a tiny piece of the non-twitter post-rat scene, which deals with alternative ways to interpret the world, and to act within it. In order of scope, from smallest to largest, your required readings:

How to Like Everything More (Sasha Chapin, 2024)

Mythic Mode (Valentine, 2018)

A bridge to meta-rationality vs. civilizational collapse (David Chapman, 2016)

Some Discussion Questions

• Have you ever gone mythic/narrative mode in your own life? What were the circumstances? How did it work out?
• Can you recall crazy coincidences in your life, on the approximate scale of Valentine's monk quest?
• Chapman claims "you cannot go beyond rationality until after you can use it reliably." Do you buy this? Do you know any people who seem to operate meta-rationally without ever being particularly systematic? Or just people who seem to have a lot of their stuff together? What are they like?
• All three readings seem to assume that moving beyond pure rationality is desirable. Could it be the case that actually, doubling down on systematic rationality is the correct response to its apparent limitations? What evidence should we expect to see in the world if moving past rationality is generally a good move?
• Rats are particularly drawn to certain woo practices (jhanas and meditation, circling and authentic relating, psychedelics) while rejecting others (astrology, reiki, palm reading). What principles do you think determine which practices get adopted? Can we characterize this selection process as rational, meta-rational, level three midwittery, or some other thing?
• Both mythic mode and Chapin's aesthetic practices involve purposeful self-manipulation, deliberately inducing states, experiences, or mindsets that one typically will not have. But rationalists also reject many versions of this - positive thinking, The Secret, etc. What distinguishes the healthy kind from the harmful kind, if there is a difference? Do you think there is a difference?

Supplemental Readings

The Intelligent Social Web (Valentine, 2018)
An interesting framework for interpreting the social world

How Meaning Fell Apart (David Chapman, 2015)
Chapman's very brief summary of the history of the world and human coordination mechanisms

The Craziest Thing That Ever Happened to Me, or, Existential Kink and My Shadow (Sasha Chapin, 2021)
Sasha Chapin's origin story(?) for how he went from rationalist to woo

The More the Merrier (John Nerst, 2018)
My go-to piece for convincing skeptics why engaging with stuff like this can be useful

Are Adult Development Stages Real? (Sarah Constantin, 2017)
Definitely a question worth asking if you're going to be engaging with Chapman Thought. Constantin concludes that Kagan is at least somewhat legit!

Some prev KWR meetups that might be relevant:

• Focusing
• Otherness and Control in the Age of AGI
• The Colors of Her Coat