Last updated: July 7, 2024
This is a live, ongoing project, with the intent of capturing my (evolving) understanding of reality. Truth can only be accumulated via approximations. Perhaps if you aggregate enough integrals of the truth, you’ll be able to derive it. That which is true repeats and shows its shadow similarly in seemingly unrelated domains. The goal of this document is to find these fragments, these reflections of reality, and gather them in one place. This can also include observations about human behaviour at large, which ultimately is also a reflection of reality. Or rather, psychological selection that emerged to fit to reality. In any case, look for universality. Although its worth noting that Truth is as multi-dimensional as whatever Reality is. Truth is the fabric of Reality. So don’t expect its contours to be congruent and intuitive. In fact it may have local and global properties that are seemingly contradictory. The best we can say is that these models tend to fit some sets of data generated by reality on some of its axes; most of the time. Put differently, I am trying to collect all the features that constitute the Elephant.
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Evolution
The selection force is present everywhere you look. Price discovery, matchmaking, product market fit. The truth transacts. Even if the only truth that is transacting is a meta point on fear and greed (crashes, bubbles). Amongst other emergent properties, hierarchies emerge as a testament to stability and power laws (below) where the most successful take the lions share and the rest find and occupy niches. This is probably also related to the centralization/decentralization force described below. Centralization probably emerges out of hierarchical hegemony. Decentralization probably emerges out of a breakdown of hierarchical hegemony.
Codependent Arising
Nothing arises out of a vacuum – not even nothing. All things are caused by other things. Remember the poem by Hamza. There shall always be at least two, until there is one; then there shall be none. Consider how this relates to the Evolution/Selection force. Selection is in a sense simply the exchange rate governing any codependently arising pair (overly simplified). Actually maybe its a good metaphor, because it could be that the exchange rate between certain pairs is illiquid and therefore inefficient / has very wide spreads and rarely (but not never) transacts, and the opposite is true for selected pairs, and importantly this is a spectrum rather than binary, which means as soon as the context (environment) changes, exchange rates and therefore selections change.
God
Pursuant to the previous point – if you have found a thing that arose independently, you have found god. This is the best definition of god I can come up with.
Incentives
Humans respond to incentives, and humans are good – in that order. Expect the latter, assume the first. Plan for the first, be pleasantly surprised by the latter. If selection is the exchange rate of evolution, incentives are the currency itself. Evolution is a process of the discovery of my incentives, your incentives, and the exchange rate at which they transact in a given environment, in the context of numerous other similar transactions happening in parallel and cross-dimensionally. A network of such transactions that has a balance sheet like snapshot of truth (an approximation of the Truth, a map aiming to resemble the territory) at any given point in time, but at every sequential point changing.
Capitalism
This goes without saying, but many truths point to the conclusion that capitalism, specifically defined as free-market economics, is the best-fitting economic model, assuming it is not hijacked or manipulated by way of other truths. There is more to say about capitalism but it almost feels too readily apparent, because it mirrors the evolutionary force seen in biological ecosystems. It seems like the answer that correctly emerges in any situation where there is scarcity. And perhaps the reason people challenge it is that it has too effectively reduced scarcity. So perhaps capitalism taken to its extreme undermines itself. It should also be said that capitalism has a property of inexorable commoditization of all things, including humans. This is not great, but only relative to utopia. Utopia is unrealistic and in its absence this is the best option.
Cycles
Cycles are everywhere – we live in a cyclical universe. That which is old will be new and vice versa. However, trends can be weirdly sinusoidal, look for them to invert in ways that are ironically flipped compared to the way they happened last. Eg. Sino-soviet partnership -> china-russia. Read Balaji for this. To predict the future study the past. It seems the universe only has so much appetite for true novelty.
- Give whenever you can. Cycles will give back when you least expect it. Karma whether metaphysical or social or simply cyclical is real – plant seeds whenever possible so that you may be treated to food when you need it most.
Centralization & Decentralization
I think these are likely correlated with peaks and troughs of cycles.
Persistence (“the secret”)
There is some force in the universe that rewards persistence. Its somewhat related to the evolutionary force, but not quite. I suspect this is somehow tied in with consciousness. It seems that the universe doesnt quite have that dawg in it when you 1v1. In other words if you refuse to give up and keep chipping away maniacally, obsessively at some specific thing; in some way you will succeed. A great example of this is the romanian guy from the movie The Room, or people that delusionally want to be artists end up becoming famous because people laugh at them. At its best this is conor mcgregor. There is some unknown force that allows you to bend reality to your will, should your will be strong enough. Per reality transurfing, it only works if your logical biological brain and your soul-related-heart line up. That is a prerequisite. But if you have that, the rest of the universe is seemingly subservient.
Optimism
Related to the above, there is a very real alpha generated by optimism in the universe. Its almost like a key that can unlock nearly every problem, paired with persistence. In a sense it is a necessary precursor to persistence.
Evil Eye
Related to the above and below. Cultures around the world have correctly observed that we are able to influence the universe via consciousness. You can inadvertently harm others with envy and resentment. They can inadvertently (or intentionally) harm you too. See points on Privacy below.
Observer Mirroring
There is a property of the universe (likely similar to the consciousness related truths above and below) whereby the thing that you are looking for tends to reveal itself. But you have to look for it, or INTEND, first. There is some goal setting or state pre-requisite that is a prerequisite to this. Perhaps this is simply the same as the persistence truth above. Although this one is more subtle and presents itself in all things: if you are sad or lonely you will see things reinforcing those emotions. If you think about corvettes you’ll see more of them. This is most meaningful at the human psychology level. Those who think they can and those who think they cant are both usually right. Yes, some of this is explained simply at the level of the brain via confirmation bias, but I suspect there is more to it than just that.
Consciousness
Is it the substrate or an emergent property? Tbd. As of july 7 2024 I’m a panpsychist. Not necessarily meaning that literally everything is happening only inside consciousness, more like consciousness is a base layer property of the universe. And as you aggregate (quantity?) of consciousness, special effects emerge (eg. more sentient beings). Hmm; but then why not be the substrate itself? Or maybe its similar to the whole gravity arising out of geometry concept in general relativity – space time curvature as opposed to a “force”. Maybe consciousness is the curvature of space-time-being in higher dimensions? I guess that would place it somewhere in between those two options. This is a loosely held opinions situation, but right now I’d say its either a pan-psychist or a geometric higher-dimensional contour situation, as opposed to a truly everything is happening only inside consciousness absolutist view.
Assembly Theory
There is some truth in assembly theory. The world of the big is different from the world of the small. The laws of physics alone are not sufficient to explain the emergence and types of complexity that emerge. The Boltzmann Brain is dumb. Things must be examined in their temporal context and out of the things in which they codependently arise. This lines up with other truths above. Could it be that assembly theory is simply just a glimpse into the nature and function of consciousness and its currently unaccounted for impact on reality?
Value
The best way to capture value is to create it. The world will reward you in kind for value that you offer to it, generally at an efficiently fair exchange rate. Rent-seeking behaviour works for the lucky few that spawn on advantageous positions on the map. For most; the best strategy is to create and give value first. Cyclical reciprocation / value capture will come.
Cry:cook Ratios
Don’t cry, but if you insist on crying, make sure you cook. The more you cook the more your crying will be warranted and accepted. If you cook at the highest levels, your crying will be celebrated and followed as truth.
Pleasure / Happiness
As far as quality is concerned, the ratio of good:bad things in life is relatively static whether you are poor or rich or somewhere in between. Comparing optimal versions of each, the relative amounts of good/bad dont change, only the contents do. The quality is the same, only the type differs. And related to this, so long as you get to keep the essence that makes you human, heaven won’t make you happy. At least not in the way you might expect. There is a law of conservation of B.S. (lol).
Children & Family
Having children is the worst answer to the meaning of life, except for all the others. People in the urban west tend to use pets to fill child sized holes in their hearts.
Entropy
The only constant is change. Befriend entropy, use it to your advantage. Things will break. The only way to maintain things, including relationships, is to invest energy into reversing entropy. Otherwise they will decay. Laugh with it.
Equanimity / Non-attachment
Treat everything with the same amount of passion or dispassion. Like Rumi, welcome all emotions with the respect befitting any visitor. Offer all of them tea. Like Buddha, understand that they are all a reflection of your own deeply rooted misunderstandings.
Privacy
By default, sharing less information is preferable to oversharing. You can always choose to share more, you cant choose to recant. You cant control how others will perceive or be impacted by information that pertains to you more than them. Regardless, they may use it to effect themselves and create some consciousness-effect (see Evil Eye above) that we don’t yet understand, that will somehow bend reality and influence you in a way that it simply would not have. This can be positive as well as negative, but the risk is unwarranted. This dynamic is the source of the “evil eye” effect that seems to be observed by many cultures. There is truth to it.
Mind-body-mind
Understand that at least 50% of the direction and potency of your thoughts is rooted in biology. Your health deeply impacts your mood, and vice versa. Consider how you feel after meditating; after going to the gym. Much of what at times you label as your lack of focus or less smartness than usual is a symptom of inflammation in your body. And the ultimate source of inflammation is difficulty of the heart. Purge and renew yourself by exorcising latent negativity whenever possible by way of meditating, feeling, journaling. This truth seems to conflict with the consciousness-substrate view.
Objectivity
- Things are on spectrums not binary. Very little is black and white. The trick is in identifying as many correct shades of grey as possible. This is kind of like how neural nets embed features in high-dimensional space. If you force-function Truth to conform to lower dimensions it will look black or white, but if you could somehow see it in the entirety of its vector space, it would not be so simple.
- 5 blind men and elephant. The less you have. The more you think you understand. Everyone has some truth, everyone is missing most of it.
- Religion & reality: everyone has a part of the elephant that corresponds to some geography on the multidimensional terrain that is the Truth. All are wrong. All are right. Some perhaps map more territory, more accurately than others, but this is hard to say. It seems that different sections of the Truth map somehow geographically to the lived reality of humans, allowing for variation and alignment but also seeming contradictions. Maybe this isn’t that controversial and merely seems so because of our fundamental inability to visualize higher-dimensional space.
Induction/Power laws/Black Swans
Things are normally distributed until they are not. Power laws are more common than you think and are often simply obscured by sample size / time horizon. Induction as a concept suggests that limited observations are enough to fit models onto reality. The word limited here is relative. The cow is fed every day for years and has no reason to believe one day it will become food. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Presence of evidence is not evidence of permanence/robustness. Taleb’s Lindy rule is a useful proxy for robustness. All that said, this should be two paragraphs, because there is also at least some truth and utility to be found in Gaussian distributions, otherwise they would not be so ubiquitous.
Contrarianism
Unless you can front-run or sell food or safety (equipment/services) to the herd, it is usually better to go in the opposite direction. Two reasons. First is that humans are wired to overcorrect, either manically or depressively, and therefore at any point there is a risk of foraying into this overextended territory to be crushed by reversion. The other is, cycles swing like pendulums, so even if the consensus is not on your side now, it soon will be. In fact the closest way to guarantee predicting the future is to take a prominent, time tested spectrum of thought in which conventional wisdom has swung far on one side, and go and stand on the exact opposite. It will inexorably swing your way and make you successful (or give you notoriety-rooted fame).
Inversion
A quick and effective way to explore areas that may be overlooked is to invert problems. Think of the negative case. The backwards case. Take the variables and flip their signs. Add/subtract and divide/multiply to solve the problem.
TOTQTOTA
The older the question, the older the answer. Rich people have been saying that money doesn’t make them happy forever. More often than not people are trying to tell you something that is representative of truth. Believe them. Never blindly follow the herd (see above) but certainly listen for its wisdom. Especially that which has persisted over time. Listen to the wisdom of grandmothers and old cultures. Seek it out. That which survives tends to have utility and fitness.
Listen, Listen, Listen
To borrow from language models, listening and reading is akin to pre-training. Talking is akin to inference. The latter can generate seeming novelty and insight, but the former is where the seeding begins. On second thought this doesn’t feel entirely true. I find myself having breakthroughs when I’m speaking and writing just as much, if not more, than when I am listening. There is more going on here, especially in the context of biological (rooted in consciousness) vs. inductive machine intelligence. Regardless, listening relates to many other models. It signals selective acceptance/understanding of a person and their ideas (and validity), it is a form of giving value that will cyclically revert, and mirroring offers an inverting-like function for the talker.
Procrastination
Never leave for tomorrow what you can do today. This is the only way to fight black swans. There must be as much slack in the system as possible. Slack here being defined as free capacity unfettered by the tension of prior procrastination and incompletion. The point is that sometimes there is no tomorrow to do something, and all that counts – all the chips you can cash in – are what you have done until today. Anything undone is lost. Anything undone cant save you – and it may be that only one of those undone things could have saved you.
Critical Mass & Escape Velocity
There are points after which things become fundamentally different from what they were when they began. A phase shift occurs. This is true in physics but also in relationships, in getting a business up and running (flywheel) and of course getting into space. Once you cross a point (resentment) relationships are jeopardized. Once you have PMF and stood up operations and incentives the company becomes a going concern. Once you escape the earth’s gravitational pull you are in a different environment. 0-1 is fundamentally different than 1-100. I guess this is related to the folly of induction and the idea of power laws and black swans. The issue was not that your model was wrong, it was simply incomplete and untested at the long end of the tail.
Scale
Scale is an inherently valuable thing for some reason. It can signal robustness or selective fitness, and it can enjoy advantages (moats), especially if it persists over time. I guess for a system that is in a centralized peak, scale is a proxy for power. It does however become somewhat of a failure point and at some point undergoes a phase shift as systems revert towards decentralized troughs.
Inertia / Newtonian Laws
When you’re stopped, its hard to start. When you’re moving, its hard to stop. Objects in motion stay in motion. Momentum previously earned via energy expenditure follows you around, subject to friction and opposing forces. It doesnt go on forever, but it does go farther than you might expect. This is true of your friendships, career, and creativity.
Humans
if given the opportunity to bet on whether or not an adult human can/will change, always bet against, and probably, bet big. There is a lot more to say in this section. If it is true that human behaviour has emerged in response to the contours of reality, what do all the behvaioural human biases (eg. loss aversion, recency bias, anchoring) tell you about reality?