EP 043 Vinay Gupta on Survival and Enlightenment

Vinay Gupta spends a lot of time thinking about disasters, which in my experience means that he's a very happy man. There's nothing better than finding solutions to really horrible predicaments for improving your outlook on life. He's the designer of the hexayurt, a shelter that can be rapidly and efficiently created from readily available materials, and has built blockchain applications as part of the leadership team at Ethereum and Mattereum.

The hidden word behind our discussion today is scaling. The scaling problem underlies both his entrepreneurial efforts and his understanding of the enlightenment process. We discuss the reasons why you may not want to be around enlightened people, whether mass enlightenment is a desirable or feasible goal, and the problems of taking initiatory experiences and spiritual technologies (tantra, ayahuasca) out of their traditional containers.

I am, by temperament and experience, more sanguine about all of this than he is. I tend to think things will eventually work themselves out over time. My enlightenment experiences have been mild and pleasant; if mine had been as harrowing as his, I would probably feel as he does.

As a technical note, there were some sound issues on our Transatlantic Skype call, which occasionally made it sound as though one of us was conducting the call while having a bath or as if we had ghost hunter-style EVPs from beyond the grave on the line. I apologize for these and hope they do not interfere with your listening enjoyment.

Photo: Robin Hood Co-op

Photo: Robin Grane-McCalla

Show Notes and Links

Vinay Gupta

@leashless on twitter

Mattereum
Internet of Agreements

The Gupta State Failure Management Archive

Hexayurt
re.silience

Paul Wilson, The Calm Technique

Ethereum

Scott Nelson, Sweetbridge

Healing Earth Resources

Rocky Mountain Institute

BKS Iyengar, Light on Yoga

Nath tradition

Gurkhas
Yogiraj Gurunath Siddanath

Links for Later 2-1-15

1. The Parable of the Talents: How much should we think about how smart we are?
2. Tim Ferriss interviews Arnold Schwarzenegger.
3. Andrew Gelman on cognitive/behavioral economics.
4. Paul Krugman: I See Very Serious Dead People.
5. Xi Jinping's choices for reforming China & the Communist Party.
6. Psychedlics are back as therapeutic tools.

Links for Later 3-20-14

1. Strategist Lawrence Freedman on the Ukraine crisis, and why making friends is often the best strategy. Exaggerates neither the dangers nor the ease of the current situation.
2. Strategist Edward Luttwak is less sanguine.
3. Hugh Howey on why every writer should self-publish.
4. The greatest juggler alive leaves to run a concrete business.
5. Cyberpunk tumblrs.
6. PTSD and moral injury.
7. Visiting Andre Linde, who proposed the inflationary model, on the occasion of the observation of gravity waves, supporting his theory.

John McPhee's Structural Diagrams

In the latest installment of The Writing Life column in The New Yorker, John McPhee discusses his method of collecting and arranging notes for each of the essays he's writing. The essays are then organized by some interesting and useful structure, a technique he learned in high school composition from his teacher, Olive McKee, who had her students write three essays a week, submitted with a structural diagram.

 

 

Links for Later 7-1-13

1. Sourcing Grigua's Prayer, as mentioned by John Maynard Keynes and Jan Smuts, "for the Lord to come himself, and not to send his Son, for this is no time for children."
2. Jason Everman, one-time Nirvana and Soundgarden bassist who joined the Army Special Forces.
3. Shrewdest business maneuvers, including Herbert Dow's method for dealing with price dumpers in the bromine market and Raphael Tudela's many-sided international trades to enter the oil & gas markets.
4. Intel's new chips: 3-D transistors, embedded lasers, up to 1.4 terabyte/sec cables, more.

Applying upaya to business

How OK strategy can lead to good strategy.

Charlie Stross is a Publishing Visionary

Last week, Charles Stross publihsed a blog post that talked about how publisher-mandated DRM was handing a big ol' hammer to Amazon by allowing it to lock users into the Kindle. This week, TOR announced that it's going DRM-free, and other major publishers are about to follow suit. Will this save traditional publishing? Not by itself, but it's a good next step. It looks like Charlie isn't just a good science fiction writer, he's also a savvy business strategist.

Adam Swartzbaugh at Kenyon

Adam Swartzbaugh of the Genesis Network (and the US Army) stopped by Kenyon (and OSU) to talk about social entrepreneurship. He was a big hit with the students, in part because he talked about how his failures and setbacks motivated him to succeed, and in part because he put the responsibility for taking action on the audience.

Elsewhere: interviews with Adam in the Collegian before and after his visit.

Opportunities

Every time you want to make any important decision, there are two possible courses of action. You can look at the array of choices that present themselves, pick the best available option and try to make it fit. Or, you can do what the true entrepreneur does: Figure out the best conceivable option and then make it available.

-Jon Burgstone and Bill Murphy

Breakthrough Entrepreneurship

as quoted by Eric Schurenberg in

"What's an Entrepreur? The Best Definition Ever"

Links for Later 1-3-12

1. Tim Ferriss Accelerated Learning at the Long Now
2. Leadership and solitude
3. Marvelous sentences: "Actor Peter Dinklage, who plays a dwarf on the show, has become the poster child for sodomy among the nation's youths."
4. Yes, that last link is satire, people.

Quote of the Day

“Should we trust models or observations?” In reply we note that if we had observations of the future, we obviously would trust them more than models, but unfortunately observations of the future are not available at this time.

-Knutson and Tuleya, Journal of Climate, 2005

from the lesswrong list of rationality quotes

Utilitarianism Revisited

This new Sam Harris interview of Daniel Kahneman about Thinking Fast and Slow has a high density of good material for such a short sample. All of it is worth reading. Of particular interest is the impact of "the experiencing self and the remembering self" on conceptions of utility and the good life.

Some conceptions of the good life take the Aristotelian view to the extreme of denying altogether the relevance of subjective well-being. For those who do not want to go that far, the distinction between experienced happiness and life satisfaction raises serious problems. In particular, there appears to be little hope for any unitary concept of subjective well-being. I used to hold a unitary view, in which I proposed that only experienced happiness matters, and that life satisfaction is a fallible estimate of true happiness. I eventually concluded that this view is not tenable, for one simple reason: people seem to be much more concerned with the satisfaction of their goals than with the achievement of experienced happiness. A definition of subjective well-being that ignores people’s goals is not tenable. On the other hand, an exclusive focus on satisfaction is not tenable either. If two people are equally satisfied (or unsatisfied) with their lives but one of them is almost always smiling happily and the other is mostly miserable, will we ignore that in assessing their well-being?

I love this. It gets at the root of a very long argument in a new way by looking at the texture of thought and consciousness. The Thinking book (and Kahneman's body of research) is full of exactly this sort of insight, and is one of the few books I've read on the subject that treats with decision-making and strategy while avoiding beginners mistakes in understanding general psychology. One of the best books of the year.

Links for Later 10-21-11

1. Edward Luttwak on geopolitical strategy and the implications of scotch prices in Tehran
2. Henry Rollins interview
3. Cantillation
4. Cantellation
5. Steve Yegge talks about how to present to Jim Bezos or other "hyperintelligent aliens"

Links for Later

1. Emanuel Derman "pragmamorphism"


2. Pole dance battle of the champions


3. The arc of REM


4. SNL on the Republican debate


5. Witchbook mix

Focusing

Eugene Gendlin developed a set of techniques called Focusing in collaboration with Carl Rogers and others which are used for dealing with implicit knowledge, knowledge viewed in terms of preconceptual experiences stemming from the body itself as a living process. Now, I've used something like this technique for years without knowing about his work or the formal system he's built around it. I recognize it without being able to precisely describe it, which is a very Focusing thing itself.

In this month's Tricycle, he discussed the method and uses of the Focusing techniques. It is a difficult interview to get through, because it is clear that a lot of the information Gendlin conveys happens via non-verbal channels.

One useful passage, relating to embodied consciousness:

The body includes behavior possibilities. It has the sense of space in which you can do things, not just move around. The possibilities of “what we can do from here” is the space that we really live in; we don’t live in empty, abstract, geometric space.

And then on top of that, you have your thinking capacity. The thinking that you are doing varies your behavior possibilities. You might think of something and then see that you can do such and such, which you hadn’t seen before. So the thinking changes the behavior possibilities, and that in turn is reconstituting your body in various ways.

Your body takes everything you learn with you. But your body understanding is more than what you learned. It absorbs what you learn, and then it still implies further. A body isn’t only an is; it is an is and implies further.

A further explication of the body feeling concept can be found here.

Decision Loops

The White House's decision tempo is waaaay down, which is another reason why they're getting outplayed. According to the NYT, they're still trying to decide whether to take a more aggressive stance, or to keep up with the bipartisan outreach. Sheesh.

Mark Cuban's Very Good Idea

Mark Cuban has a plan for fixing the patent mess that we're in:
1. End software patents (but keep software copyright)
2. End process patents
3. Limit potential damages from "non-practicing entities" (i.e. patent trolls)

This is a really, really good idea. We need to cut back on the risk of lawsuits and open up innovation, and this is a fast, appropriate way to do it.

Obama's Negotiating Strategy

The Nodding Heads of the Village agree that Drew Westen has written a Very Bad Thing in his editorial this weekend that criticized President Obama. In the essay, Westen accuses Obama of having taken his eyes off the ball during several major domestic crises: the banking bailout, stimulus act, healthcare act, tax extensions and this month's debt ceiling increase. In failing to use the bully pulpit effectively, he's emboldened his enemies and dismayed his allies. He's allowed the Republican narrative to run unopposed, and encouraged the Nodding Heads themselves to use the "both sides are at fault" position. Instead, Obama should use FDR as a model, and inspire the country and the Congress with his ideas.

Nonsense, says Jonathan Chait, FDR did nothing of the sort. It's a fairy tale, says Andrew Sullivan, Obama's doing just fine running things from the center. Andrew Sprung and Ezra Klein both respond with a combination of "Obama deserves partial credit" and "Pushing harder in the face of intransigence is counterproductive."

There may also be a bit of reflexive liberal bashing and anti-Krugman sentiment going on, but that could just be my imagination. It's equally possible that they simply think that the very strong criticisms from the right have little merit that there are no reasonable criticisms of Obama from the left; that if one's enemies aren't able to criticise usefully, one's friend's cannot do any better.

The countercritique suggests that either the President is utterly powerless to affect the outcome of a policy debate regardless of any strategy he might take, or that he's already hit upon the best possible negotiating strategy. I can believe neither of these things.

I cannot believe the proposition that there is nothing to be done in the face of a unified opposition, because it ignores a lengthy empirical record of negotiations and political infighting. We have, as a people, been in hard situations before. We've seen good horse traders and bad, good leaders and bad. We've also developed a useful toolbox of techniques for dealing with uncooperative people. It's useful for us to know these things, as it's useful to know self-defense in case we get into a fight.

We could, as an alternative, just collapse any time someone makes a fist in our direction, or we can prepare ahead of time, take some self-defense classes, and have an idea of what to do when someone tries to mug us. Likewise, when we know we're in a hard negotiation, we can either capitulate or we can use appropriate and skillful means to try to achieve our ends. If our ends are good, then we must be skillful in the use of such means as are available to us to achieve those ends. To repeatedly state that "if you don't do what I tell you, then I'm absolutely not going to even threaten to do anything," will lead to poor results.

In the second case, I do not believe that Obama has found the optimal negotiating strategy for the long term due to the side effects of the strategy he's chosen. The strategy is in part to begin with a "compromise" position and to compromise flexibly with the Congressional leadership in an attempt to gain the necessary votes on a given piece of legislation. The easy negotiating stance fits well with President Obama's character, and has resulted in successful pieces of legislation passing both houses--so he earns partial credit for that. The side effects, though, are horrendous. Obama's softness means that the Republicans are consistently rewarded for bad behavior, while the Democrats can be sure that the President will undercut any firm position they may take. Because he's willing to pay high ransom without complaint, future ransoms will be larger. Because he's never openly punished anyone for opposing him, there's no need to hold back for fear that this will happen in the future.

How might he do better in the future?

First: lean against the wind. Start extra big, extra far to the left. See how much you can get away with. Be daring. Second: give ground grudgingly. Make the opponent do a lot of work to move forward even an inch. Third: Make them pay for everything. Fourth: Prove that you want to win so much that you're prepared to do whatever it takes. Have a temper tantrum once in a while. Prove that you, too, can be crazy, if that's what it takes to get your way.

Show us how it really should be done.

Previously: What Happened to Obama?

Links for Later

1. Felix Salmon on NPR's This American Life on Intellectual Ventures patent troll strategy
2. New publishing business models
3. A Keynesian question
4. Defeatist nonsense about liberals and Obama
5. How large is your vocabulary?
6. Dumbledore's strategy beat Voldemort's
7. Debt ceiling scenarios
8. Jameson Lindeskog's obituary. Note the ending.
9. Elizabeth Drew on the debt ceiling
10. Robert Pattinson's Cosmopolis haircut
11. Walter Pater, Giordano Bruno
12. GE Lessing, Laocoon

The Bridgewater Principles, Part II

This week, John Cassidy profiled Ray Dalio, co-CEO and CIO of Bridgewater Associates. Dalio is best known for two things: 1) running one of the largest and most successful hedge fund groups in the world, and 2) instituting a culture at the firm based on a set of principles of "radical transparency" and non-emotional decision-making.

This sort of culture can either be a blessing (you're working with a team of very honest and forthright people who won't stab you in the back) or a nightmare (you're working with a team of obsessive-compulsives who will stab you in the front). The particular 3d instantiation that you end up with from your 2d stack of paper is going to be highly dependent on who's doing the instantiating. Cassidy makes the whole thing sound a bit too much like a medieval monastery: tucked away, lots of self-criticism, spiritual proctors, the whole nine yards. It makes me wonder how high-strung he keeps the team over there. On the other hand, Dalio mentions in his Hedge Fund Association talk that creativity is very important, so perhaps there's more of a search for the fortunate accident than one might believe from the article.

Previously: Kevin Roose profiled Dalio for New York Magazine