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I am watching John Vervaeke's lecture series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. In episode 3 at around 5:00 (linked below) Vervaeke says: > Myths are not false stories about the ancient past. They are symbolic stories of perennial patterns that are always with us. This take is not unique to Vervaeke. I have seen similar claims many times before - that myths supposedly encapsulate some eternal and valuable truths. These claims are seldom accompanied by examples, nor does Vervaeke provide any. (At least no clearly understandable examples in his first 4 episodes.) If you think the claim is reasonable, can you give some good examples?
I am M41 with Asperger. One of my perennial struggles is physical exercise. If I exercised more it would probably keep me healthier especially in my old age, and it would help with a bunch of physical tasks and perhaps even improve my mental health. But I hate it. The...
I have noticed that many people in the rationalist community seem to like cryptocurrency. This seems odd to me, considering how many rationalists also care about effective altruism. Cryptocurrency seems unethical to me. As far as I can see, cryptocurrency has negligible value. It solves virtually no problems that warrant...
I was reading this old post by Scott Alexander: Right is the New Left. In it, Scott talks about status signalling and the urge to be "cool" and be seen as such. Reading the article, I realized that much of the experience that Scott describes is alien to me. I...
I recently read this article (linked by David Chapman): JOINT REVIEW: Philosophy Between the Lines, by Arthur M. Melzer (by Jane Psmith and John Psmith). The article talks about esoteric writing, i.e., where writers will sometimes not state their entire message explicitly but leave some important messages only implied, in...
Effective altruism (EA) is a big topic here on LessWrong, but for some reason I seldom see environmental causes get more than a trivial mention here. Can anyone recommend me some good reading about environment-focused effective altruism? (If anyone can explain why no one on LW seems to talk about...
Like many here, I want to support effective altruist (EA) causes - by giving money, buying ethical products, voting, et cetera. But nowadays the world appears to be more full of misinformation than ever. This seems to be a problem when I want to choose EA causes to support. I...
I have been interested in effective altruism since before I knew the term. I have long done things like give money to charity, buy products that seem ethical and avoid products that seem unethical (such as factory-farmed meat). I do not derive much joy from any of this, though. It...