I forget what's in the deliberate grieving post, but based on what you say here, I'll note that what I have in mind is largely about identity, not plans. As in, the root of emotional processing is attachment not to an idea about plans but an idea about the self. When one thinks "this is a great plan" the second thought is often "and I'm a great person for coming up with such a great plan". If the plan isn't great, then the person might not be either, and that's way more painful than the plan not being great.

Based on a lot of observations, I see rationalists sometimes manage to get around this because they are far enough on the autism spectrum to just not form strong a strong sense of identity. More often, though, they LARP at not having a strong sense of identity, and actually have to first get in touch with who they are (as supposed to who they wish they were) to begin to develop the skills to do actual emotional processing instead of bypassing it (and suffering all the usual consequences of suppressing a part of one's being).

Interested to see what you have to say here. In my experience, the emotional processing stage is often the bottleneck, both in that it's the one that people have the hardest time with, and in that it creates bottlnecks in the other stages by disincentivizing giving them too much energy because they create more emotional processing. Once the emotional processing is quick, then the others start to speed up because it's no longer true that orienting to something new is painful.

While it may key its usual alignment with US positions, it will not accept a US hegemony over the AI era. France has proved time and time again that it will stand alone if it needs to.

This seems wrong to me. France was able to "stand alone" for a long time thanks to a relatively large population (less true now) and lots of farm land and other key resources. But that hardly means it has or can choose not to accept US hegemony. I mean, it can say it will reject it, but it has little real power to do anything about it other than try to opt out (and be left behind), and it seems clear that France will continue to backslide in relevance unless it manages to grab more real power instead of simply trying to maintain a level of autonomy that it imagines it deserves based on stories about the past.

(If this seems mean, I think I have equally mean critiques about how every other country is screwing up. I'm just calling out France here because the claims in the post are about France.)

Recognizing that you would hesitate to go on a vengeance rampage is a sign that you aren’t truly in love with the person you’re with. Maybe people avoid looking at that because realizing they aren’t in love with their partner would be very inconvenient.

I think this is typical minding. Yes, I'm sure some people really do love this way and aren't feeling love and hide from this fact. But this isn't the only kind of love. You're describing a kind of clinging love that demands to keep the other and would do anything to defend them. In this story, that clinging love is made out to be noble, but in a parallel story with slightly altered details, it could be turned into jealous rage.

For example, my understanding is that most teleosemantic theories try to ground our notions of purpose/agency in biological evolution. My feeling is that this is overly restrictive.

As a person who makes a teleosemantic argument, it seems silly to argue that the only source of purpose is evolution, but it also seems right to say that, in some sense, all human purposes and purposes imbued to things created by humans have their ultimate origin in evolution making creatures who care about survival and reproduction (and not as in care as in psychologically care (though they may do that), but care as in be oriented towards achieving the goals of survival and reproduction). The problem with swamp men counterexamples is that swamp men don't exist.

That said, obviously things can get purpose from somewhere other than evolution, and this is not an argument that evolution is somehow special in that it's the only source of purpose since evolution is just one of many processes that can create purpose. It's only special in that, on Earth, it's the process from which most other purposes are created.

No, The Sort is succeeding in Europe, it's just that Europe is on the low end of The Sort in most cases, and most of the Sorted are getting relocated to other places that offer better pay and amenities.

This happens because most of Europe has made it illegal to be upper middle class thanks to an aggressive tax regime. The upper middle class can only exist where marginal labor can generate enough income to push them into the bottom rungs up the upper class.

I think The Sort is something different but related.

When I think of the rat race, I think of how people feel disconnected from the value of their labor. They feel like their work has no meaning because they are removed from the real impact by several layers. They feel like all they do is push paper (or now, send emails) and never see how their work connects to the real world.

The rat race is perhaps a byproduct of the processes that create The Sort, but we could have a rat race without The Sort (I think it'd be fair to say Japan has this even when it was insulated from The Sort).

The fourth color opsin for these animals lies in the ultraviolet.

Hmm, but my understanding is that humans who are natural tetrachromats see more colors in the yellow-red part of the spectrum. And humans already can see UV light a little, but the thing that stops this from being visible is actually the lens, which blocks UV light normally to protect our eyes. So what I know suggests that even if we could change our cones we'd still fail to see UV light.

Not to be rude, but I'm confused why this is labeled "Practical" and landed on the Frontpage. This reads like a personal blog to me, which I don't mind, but isn't what I expected based on the labels.

Like yes I can read into this post as being something more than just a slice of life story about the author, but this is roughly true of literally any slice of life post.

Not "ego-less" but "viscerally knowing my ego isn't in charge of what it thinks it's in charge of". I'm also not confident that this was the same thing as stream-entry/enlightened/etc.

For what it's worth, as I model the path, I'd guess that this was stream entry. That is, you had insight into the non-separateness of self for the first time. It's expected that it doesn't stick, as only rarely does that happen (very, very few people seem to experience sudden, persistent awakening), but it gave you a taste of it, and with dedicated practice it can become persistent, but it general requires having a string of insights over months and years that resolve various confusions that stand in the way of persistence.