Ask Me Anything! October 2024 edition

“What do you think you’re doing? And, um, why?”

This is a recording of a Substack live video AMA (“ask me anything”) session I hosted two days ago.

Around fifty people attended! I enjoyed it, and hope everyone else did too.

We had a preliminary discussion in the subscriber chat, which was very helpful for collecting questions and getting the conversation started.

I’ll do these monthly, for as long as there is interest. To participate, you need to subscribe (free or contributing), if you haven’t already:

You also need the Substack mobile app (iOS or Android):

The next live AMA session will be Saturday November 23rd, at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time; noon Eastern. If you have the app open then, you’ll get a notification with a button to join.

I’ll open a preliminary chat thread on the 20th.

Transcript

I’m moved by how many people are showing up here. This is really great. Many people who, who I recognize and many people who I don’t know yet.

This format, the technology is less interactive than, for example, Zoom, which might be better. I thought I’d give this a go, partly just because it’s easily available, and partly I would like to support Substack. This is a new technology that they’re trying out. I really like Substack. I want them to succeed. So, giving this a trial run for their sake is a little bit of what I’m doing here, although it’s not the main thing.

I will dive in at the deep end. Benjamin Taylor asked a number of very hard questions, along with giving some very nice words of support, which I really appreciate— both the hard questions and the words of support. They could probably boil down to something like, “What do you think you’re doing? And, um, uh, why?”

And this is very hard because I don’t know, I don’t have, I don’t have good answers here. So, the first question is, “Is this one overall project, or many different projects?” And that’s a very on-point question.

And the answer is, it does feel to me like one huge project, because I have only one thing to say, which is: things go better when you don’t try to separate nebulosity and pattern. It’s very tempting to try to do that, because we don’t want nebulosity. We do want pattern to deliver control and certainty, so that you would know what to do, and have some confidence that things are going to go well. And that can never be guaranteed, because of nebulosity. So it’s good to always bear the nebulosity in mind.

This is a pattern that, it’s, it’s a phenomenon that is found in every domain of human experience and endeavor. So, uh, each of the many writing projects are looking at how this theme of pattern and nebulosity plays out in that realm. For example, the meta-rationality book is about how taking nebulosity into account is necessary for outstanding work in the domain of rational work.

So that’s the overall project. Um, embarrassingly, that means I’ve left a very large number of unfinished applications of that central theme in different areas.

Benjamin asks, “What are you hoping to achieve overall? Indeed, how do you see your job, role, or identity as a public intellectual?” Relatedly, Xpym asked, “How important do you see your own work in the grand scheme of things? Does humanity seem likely to figure out and widely adopt the complete stance?” (The complete stance is what you get if you don’t separate pattern from nebulosity.) Uh, “Is humanity likely to figure that out and figure out meta-rationality anytime soon? If I stop contributing tomorrow; if I don’t stop.”

I have no idea. I, I find this very difficult. Well, I find it very difficult because I, in a sen