I've heard enlightenment described as separating oneself from a mindset you are fused with.

An analogy I've seen is when you're so immersed in a video game or story that you're invested and emotionally involved as if it were real. But then you take a step back, realize that it's not your entire existence, and its salience / importance goes back to a reasonable baseline for fiction. The deep emotional investment is gone though you may still appreciate the story.

Is that analogy accurate in your opinion? Am I mischaracterizing it?

I agree that modern AIs would pass the Eliza test as you define it, particularly if given the right prompt. What is the value of the test though? It seems like it would be saturated as a benchmark, and also take a long time to administer.

I don't necessarily know the answer, but I don't find any of the explanations compelling. In my experience as a manager of ~10 employees, some of whom are young knowledge workers:

1. The knowledge workers reporting to me and also on my broader team are putting in long hours, doing grunt work in the lab, developing scientific processes, and writing them up. This is in R&D, where the value comes from expected value of future products.
2. Some people are less than fully utilized, but between 25% and 75% utilization at worst, and varying from week to week. Having the capacity available is probably enough reason to keep them aboard. For example, Alice is trained on a set of tasks. Her utilization might be low some weeks, but it would strain Bob to learn her tasks and be available to fulfill them even though Bob isn't fully utilized every week either. Bob would have to keep track of too much, and would also have to work overtime some weeks. These are not necessarily knowledge workers though.
3. For the underutilized people, the impact that each person has in maintaining the company's ability to continue production / expected value of new products being developed is far higher than their cost to keep around.

Overall, I expect that the answer is that under-utilization is not as extreme as indicated in the article, and that the value of the knowledge and skill sets of the under-utilized people is valuable enough to keep around.

Thanks for writing this! It was a good read, and it helped me see some concepts more clearly, particularly anxiety.

That said, I have a couple of notes:

• The definitions of jealousy and envy you use are different from the ones I've encountered in most places.
  • Envy: You want what someone else has. If you can't have, it you resent them. Most often applies to material things or status.
  • Jealousy: You're worried someone will take something that you have or think you deserve. You take actions to guard that thing (often applies to relationships).
• I think the concept of laziness is multiple things (like you said), but more like "lacking the motivation to do [X]". If others (or yourself) think you should be doing [X], then they call you lazy with respect to it. The lack of motivation can be for multiple reasons, but not typically for energy conservation: depression, lack of confidence in success, lack of belonging (e.g. in a workplace), too prideful to do it (status), other competing activity, lack of familiarity, etc. The story of the person with food insecurity trying conserve energy is backwards: In humans and other mammals (mice, monkeys), moderate calorie restriction actually leads to greater foraging type behavior and energy expenditure.

Haplodiploidy in hymenopterans (ants and wasps) has a huge impact on eusociality: All daughters of the queen get half their genes from their father's entire genome (the father's sperm are all identical), which means they share 75% of their genes with their sisters rather than the 50% in others like termites. For this reason, Eusociality has evolved independently multiple times in hymenopterans.

I would speculate that the colony is more cohesive for this reason, and this may have an impact on why ants are so successful in so many niches.

Termites, on the other hand, have one key thing going for them: the ability to digest wood. This allows them to fill their specific niche well.

By 'best they can' I didn't necessarily mean 'self-actualize' or 'contribute as a net positive' but more like 'navigate the difficult demands of life.'

By that understanding, I think most people I encounter fit this description.

Apologies for the imprecision.

The disgust/disappointment you describe sounds to me like contempt. In this context the opposite of contempt  is compassion, which I would consider the point of empathizing with someone.

In the past, I'd feel the same kind of contempt when observing people demonstrating lack of skill in an area I had ability in, particularly when their lack would impact me in a (slightly) negative manner. That changed when I learned to have more compassion for myself despite my own weaknesses. Once I did that, the feelings of contempt for others seemed to diminish significantly.

The pathway, as best I understand it, was "This person, like me, is trying to do the best they can with the knowledge, ability, and responsibilities they have, just like I am. I have (different) failings of my own that I deserve compassion for. Having contempt for them is hypocritical of me."

Having compassion for oneself is something that makes you stronger and more mentally resilient. Compassion for others seems to come along with it.

In my experience, that's pretty much what 5-HT2A agonists (hallucinogens) do but to a stronger extent: You see peripherally a curled leaf on the ground, and perceive it as a snake before you take a closer look, or you see patterns on a marbled tile, and the exact positions of the shapes slowly wobble.

My understanding is that this is because you assign a lower confidence to your visual inputs than usual, and a higher confidence to your priors / the part of your brain that in-paints visual details for you.

How might someone figure out what their blind spot (A or B) is and overcome it?

Federal highway officials hate us, tell local and state officials they must stop using humor and pop culture references on their road safety signs because they might ‘distract.’ That’s the point. You get people to pay attention. Also you brighten up their day. I sincerely despise people who issue rules like this. How do we fight back?

I strongly agree with the highway officials here. These are highway signs meant to warn of traffic problems, altered commute times, or potential hazards. Most of the time they are blank or (at least my area) they give commute times to major landmarks. In either case, they are not 'surprising' and unlikely to distract drivers, but still provide value.

On the other hand, when they show a novel message (whether a specific hazard warning, road closure, or corny joke) people pay special attention to them. Anecdotally, I've found that novel messages that require interpretation slow down traffic.

Using the signs to display stupid safety messages dilutes their intended purpose, causes delays, and reduces safety by distracting drivers (directly opposing their message). Those messages were awful and I'm glad they're gone.