#фаге

a key insight i discovered in the last year is a new class of thinking demonstrated by fields such as complexity science, systems biology, network theory.

we live in a complex, interconnected world where few events have clear causes and consequences. yet the thinking we are taught exists in a newtonian clockwork universe world dominated by "IF A THEN B" reasoning. most such reasoning is rationalization and a misunderstanding of how the world works.

thought about ecosystems has already adapted. many people intuitively understand ideas like "kill all the mosquitoes" will have extremely unpredictable consequences. what few people understand is: all important phenomena which surround us have ecosystem-like properties.

example: many things we care about are social. an individual human is not a rational agent with free will. each of us is a myriad schitzophrenic priorities battling for control and influenced by our genes, our history and memories, our current metabolism, our social interactions. there is no free will. there is only a network of complex interactions with extremely unpredictable feedback loops. companies and societies are collections of individual humans. and thus economics, politics and all other social phenomena are complex adaptive emergent systems.

what are the practical implications of this?

- there are no simple solutions or clear wins. all simple ideas like "we have to have better teamwork!" lead to both positive and negative consequences. talk enough about teamwork and nobody will have individual responsibility for anything. talk enough about democracy and nothing happens since all decisions are made by committee. talk enough about strong leadership and you have an idiot leader who isn't adapting to the real world. talk enough about being nice to each other and everyone starts lying all the time.
- useful ideas and analogies come from living systems. for example, compare global nation-state politics to living ecosystems. no fucking living ecosystem has a tiny number of powerful entities which take years to process feedback from the periphery of the system. when an environment rapidly changes such an ecosystem will collapse and die. the environment is rapidly changing. make your own conclusions.
- systems have fractal properties which are relevant at all levels. signaling, node centrality, mutation, diversity vs optimization, redundancy, node incentives, dynamic equilibria where stability is constantly intersepted by periods of extreme disruption, feedback loops. when you want to build a company, spend less time on a definite plan and more time on thinking about the company as a living ecosystem you can nudge in one direction or another.

i don't have many more useful takeaways here since one conclusion of the approach is: simple takeaways do not exist. the biggest takeaway is to learn this thinking mode and unconsciously apply it in each moment of your life. this way you will make better decisions since you have a better understanding of reality.

to begin with i want to recommend this podcast: https://www.jimruttshow.com/

the guy is from the Santa Fe Institute which is the world's leading place which studies complex adaptive systems. and has exceptional guests. i especially like:

- https://www.jimruttshow.com/eric-smith/
- https://www.jimruttshow.com/hanzi-freinacht/
- https://www.jimruttshow.com/jason-brennan/
- https://www.jimruttshow.com/jordan-greenhall-hall/
- https://www.jimruttshow.com/robin-hanson/

#руди #BaringVostok #3минутытишины

Написал пост на Facebook про Baring. Сегодня год после ареста. В сети идет флешмоб #3минутытишины

Если вам резонирует - пошарьте у себя.

https://www.facebook.com/egor.rudi/posts/10159469551112222?notif_id=1581599721897111¬if_t=feedback_reaction_generic&ref=notif

Это случилось 14 февраля. Я был в Лос-Анджелесе. Зачем-то посмотрел новости за час до ретрита. Это было жестко. Потом два месяца моя вселенная разваливалась. Была такая полу-депрессия. Сейчас я понимаю что это такое. Мозг пересчитывал все возможные сценарии, пересобирал вселенную. Определенность - базовая программа мозга по модели SCARF (Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness). Определенности резко стало сильно меньше. Раньше казалось, ну типа понятно, что мы не самая передовая демократия, но мол если делать крутой бизнес и соблюдать закон, то беспредела не будет. А тут…эээ…подождите. Если так могут с BVCP обходится, то значит если что-то случится со мной, то никто даже не заметит.

Спасибо ребятам из BVCP. Даже в этой ситуации они не потеряли самообладание. Никакой паники. Мы как портфельная компания практически ничего не почувствовали. Лену стали видеть чуть реже. Дима начал отвечать на 15 минут позже…

Так я прожил с ними еще одну сложнейшую историю и понял, что там нет дна. Там глубоко как в Байкале. С ними можно делать все что угодно. Не дрогнут, не сольются, не запаникуют. Восхищаюсь вами ребята каждый день. Спасибо, что вы есть.

Эта война еще продолжается. Я уверен, что ребята победят, но едва ли это уже можно будет назвать happy end.

Мы на этом научимся. Станем еще сильнее. И вдохновленные их примером сделаем все, чтобы Россия будущего была похожа больше на BVCP, чем на госкорпорацию.

#фаге

since it's Valentine's Day I want to write about sex.

this morning I was reading an excellent article by Ken Wilber (https://integrallife.com/right-bucks/).

the article will be excessively theoretical for those who are not already into Buddhism and spirituality. i will save you the time necessary to read it. the sum is – you cannot be fully spiritual without loving the material world. he talks a lot about money, i want to focus on sex here.

whether you love a particular God in Christianity or Islam or Judaism, or you love your own mind in a non-deific approach like Buddhism or Taoism, or your religion (and it is a religion btw) is science and materialism – it is fucking weird to regard sexual desires as dirty or to be repressed or controlled.

seriously. how do you simultaneously argue that:

1. God / mind / material reality are the source of absolute, infinite, perfect truth and beauty.
2. Your natural desires (created by God or your mind or molecules bumping against each other) have to be controlled and repressed and are dirty and evil.

this is an obvious contradiction. either God is perfect and he made your desires exactly right and you can follow them to embrace God's creation; or God screwed up and thus you don't believe in a perfect God.

another fascinating aspect of the article is: he argues that moralizing attitudes towards sex come from men; while women want to embrace sex and be free to do what they want.

looking at places like Saudi Arabia this sounds correct. looking at my own post-postmodern communities in Russia, California and Europe – women have far more sexual taboos than men. but the core reason why women have those taboos does indeed appear to be social pressure from male-constructed social systems. and democratic societies with higher women empowerment do have freer sexual attitudes.

this is extremely weird to me. my male sexual view is "more sex for all with all is awesome! no rules about sex beyond disease safety and freedom from abuse!" and i have always assumed this is how other men think.

clearly this is not the case. why? is it that most men are jealous, insecure and scared they will be left with nothing if there are zero social restrictions on sex? since sex will be distributed unequally the way wealth and power are?

seriously: why are men setting up systems which brainwash women to taboo their own sexual desires?

i have many hypotheses here. yet at core this is irrational. especially for men with power and wealth in society who get much more sex anyway given how attractive power and wealth are. is this a concession to keep poor and weak men placated with public rules since any powerful person can have (and does have by the way) tons of sex in secret anyway?

all curious questions. in the meantime: happy Valentine's Day. embrace the samsara. have more sex. release yourself from dumb taboos. especially if you're a woman who wants to be free from social brainwashing 😈😈😈

#фаге

yesterday i attended a cool sex party. i won't share a lot of details (or give info about how to find this party) since the organizers don't want them shared. vague details to give a sense for what I'm talking about: large 18th century mansion, ~100 people (75% women), men in tuxedoes, women in evening dresses and erotic costumes, all in masks, many rooms with different themes – (ex: a naked woman playing the piano, a room where people are tied up, a room where people are together in complete darkness). even the security guards were dressed in costumes. for those who saw Eyes Wide Shut – it's that, exactly that.

usually my thoughts about sex are direct. I see a beautiful girl, I immediately think "want!" and afterwards there is a powerful desire to act directly to get her to sleep with me. and a fight between this desire to act and the desire to remain focused on what I was doing before. and shyness. and competitiveness. and irritation at myself if i do not act. it is an annoying cluster of feelings. at times I will go and get her phone number simply to get this feeling to go away so I can focus on what i was doing before. or put on a hoodie so I don't see her.

here i initially had the same thought. "want to go fuck some beautiful girl right now, can't rest until i do that." followed by the realization of "wait, this is a cool party – if i go have sex with someone right now, I will lose the aggressive testosterone energy, get bored, and go home. how about I don't do that?" instead i went and played with many different people – cut a costume off of a girl and ripped it up; whipped another girl, got whipped by a third one, danced, watched the beautiful dresses, talked, kissed, undressed people. it was really, really fun.

observations:

- going to events like this where i sexually play with 30-40 different people in an evening makes it much easier to express sexuality in everyday life. the brain gets trained to behave in this way since it is now normal. which is attractive and fun. so i will be going to many more of these ;)
- sexual energy that i choose not to release can be useful. the mental state is different from the normal one – more playful, aggressive, creative, free-flowing. there are life tasks i can do better in this state, for example passionate public speeches. not all tasks obviously. it is unlikely to help me apply the Fourier transform to molecular data at my biotech company :)
- learning to mentally "surf the sexual arousal" rather than feeling I must act right now makes it easier to be out of my own head and enjoy the moment more. it is similar to meditation in a way. turns an annoying feeling into a fascinating one.
- many, many cool, unconventional people are in this community of sexual exploration – exactly the sort of people I enjoy. I look forward to becoming friends with more of them.

it is clear sexuality is part of our nature. and it is underdeveloped and suppressed in close to everyone as a result of social taboos. by exploring and embracing it we can develop additional ways of interacting with society and the world. i suspect this will be both useful and fun. aside from going to more parties of this kind I'm exploring tantra which is a separate story.

plus i enjoy changing, evolving, gaining greater mental freedom, softening constraints, and developing my own uniqueness. this is pleasing in and of itself.

кстати, мне интересно почему часть людей ставит дизлайк. это "не пиши про секс, блудный развратник!" или "неправильные у тебя выводы, надо другие делать" или что? фидбек в комментарии, а то пока там только вопросы о том где вечеринку эту найти)))

#руди

Мы сделали канал, чтобы перенести наши разговоры и подележки про развитие из личных one-on-one чатиков в общий чат и сделать его публичным. И самим быстрее развиваться и с миром соединяться.

Надо признать, что это работает не совсем так как задумано.

Проблема 1. Самый мощный чат и самые живые дискуссии в чатике «Админы Шмит16». Епрст! Я уж устал спрашивать там после каждого поста, а какого фига ты это в админском чатике, а не в общем пишешь 🙂 Сдался. Часть этой механики я понимаю, периодически в обсуждениях всплывают не полностью социально приемлемые темы, но это не так часто. В основном - это разного рода барьеры, предубеждения, стыд и что-то еще в чем я не до конца разобрался.

Проблема 2. Еще один эффект меня совсем удивляет и я тоже его не до конца понимаю. У части авторов в Шмит16 есть барьер написать в группу (мол достаточно ли это качественная мысль, чтобы делиться ей на такую публику). При этом в других источниках они могут преодолеть этот барьер. Разве, что у нашего любимого друга Сержа Фаге нет никаких барьеров. За что ему отдельное спасибо 🙂 hugs.

Ну и это помимо ожидаемых проблем с тем, что все участники действующие предприниматели и им есть чем заняться кроме того, чтобы писать сюда.

Попробую в этих проблемах увидеть возможности.

Вот сейчас возьму и нагло скопирую целый кусок переписки из админского чатика.

#руди

Вызвали на посадку. Не успел дописать. Вот уже в Москве заморочился и оформил на основе диалогов из чатика админов "Триллер о любви к сахару". Прочитал и еще раз кайфанул :) Так это трогательно.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-tZigk3JQM_DDkWyMQRikTfU6JWyephs-FvZ6Q4YwS0/edit?usp=sharing

Простите, что нужно уходить по ссылке. Телеграф блокируют и нативно непонятно как оформить.

#руди #марьин

Толя из Лос-Анджелеса мне в личном чатике записал кругляш о том откуда барьеры постить в общий канал.

Ничего, какое-то время ради общего дела поработаю форвард-менеджером.

Guys, I know that many of us here have heard of the Who book. My friends are using this method of hiring in their companies, and we also do it in Smartcat. We even built a slide-deck with a recap of the book that we give to each manager before he or she proceeds with her first hire. The deck is pretty lengthy, though still much shorter than the book, a sort of step-by-step manual. If someone is interested in having it, let me know, and I will share it in the comments.

The one thing which in my mind was not covered deeply enough in the book was how to extract true information from reference calls. Based on my experience, reference calls are undervalued by many companies, which often leads to costly mistakes. And though the book gives very good advice on how to do it to extract objective information, in our company, we often weren't able to identify traits and competence that are not the real strengths of a candidate.
I personally had a hard time extracting the info from a reference about the candidate’s weaknesses or situations/setups where he/she didn’t perform the best or faced adversity in her role. It is not a goal by itself to find where the candidate falls short. The thing is that we all have areas for improvement at any moment in time for any role. And a manager's role is to identify them and then make a conscious decision on how critical they are for the role, or we can live with it taking into account how much we value the candidate's strengths.

Recently I have been working with David Skok. He is with Matrix Partners (which is our investor) and 4-times founder before (2 IPOs), and the author of a very valuable resource for entrepreneurs in b2b software (https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/). The most impactful thing that David shares with tech start-ups is his in-depth knowledge about an often overlooked stage in b2b tech companies' growth trajectories. It is between "product-market fit" and scaling stages and is almost non-existent in the b2c world. But this deserves a separate post one day. Now back to hiring and reference calls.
After a couple of calls with David and very high-rank CEOs, I got to learn how to be relentless in drilling down in search of true information. And then repeated it myself, which gave me a new level of outcomes.
The principals are mostly described here: https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/extreme-referencing/

The most important for me became:
1. Asking how a reference evaluates a candidate between 0 and 10, or better compared to another best boss or a subordinate he/she has ever had before. Then don't settle when hearing 7-8-9 or even 9.5, which common wisdom says is fine. This is where I now start drilling down until I uncover how the reference defines the gap for the candidate between the mark he gave and 10. Often it is just a subtle clue on your first calls. But be sure, there is always smth you will find here if you don't settle back to comfort, which is "he is great."
2. Most often, after 2-3 calls, you will find a couple of things that direct you to the areas that are not very well developed by the candidate. And then you do as many more calls as needed until the story becomes really consistent, which means that you understand the details of the landscape and the context where the candidate worked that caused these drawbacks to the surface, and how it influenced the businesses of these companies and how he/she dealt with this adversity. The important thing here is to be prepared to make a lot of calls and continue digging until the story presents itself clearly, and you have no major contradictions in it. Don't stop at four calls with the references that the candidate shared with you.
3. Then you thoughtfully relate it to your landscape, culture, and the major goal for the role. And analyze it together with strengths, of course.

#smolnikov
It may sound simple, as all the basic principles in every craft. The thing is that you will feel a huge difference in outcomes when you are able to extract quite objective and consistent knowledge about a candidate's weaknesses for a particular role. Don't just settle with A+ scorecard, and "all the reference calls proved he/she was a superhero."
Unfortunately, I made an effort and invested time to upgrade this skill only after some costly mistakes, even though it was well covered by several standard reference calls.
P.S. забыл подписаться сверху в посте, с этим ботами, пока разберешься - конверсия падает :)

Одна из мыслей которая стала очевидной в последнее время: есть много разных интерпретаций реальности, и они равно валидны. сейчас я одинаково верю в научный материализм, в солипсизм-идеализм, в рекурсивную симуляцию, в fabric of reality Дэвида Дойча, и в буддизм-даосизм. более того считаю что они все реальны одновременно.

о философии в другой раз. сегодня хотел поделиться моей любимой интерпретацией реальности, которую описывают в коротком мультике ниже.

как говорит мой друг Женя Курышев – этот мультик на 7 минут надо показывать детям вместо многого другого.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI

discuss

#марьин

Я вижу две категории серферов на Венис Бич (щас живу в ЛА), примерно пополам: парни и девушки по 20-30 лет, и мужики 50-60 лет.

Кореллирует с U turn of happiness in life.

Когда самое счастливое время - в начале. No commitments.

Потом один за одним они появляются: бизнес вырос/выросла business complexity; семья, дети; родители стареют, пора заботиться. И так спускаемся к нижней точке U.

А потом вверх. Объём commitments в 50-60 начинает уменьшаться - и здравствуй сёрфинг.

И я тоже коррелирую: по той же причине решил пока не делать сёрфинг, хотя океан по боком - ‘патамушта надо столько всего сделать’.

#фаге

I live on the move and constantly shift between Moscow, Silicon Valley, Zurich and other places. I enjoy this for many reasons which I'll write about separately.

Today I want to write about why I love Moscow and see it as the best place for me in the world. This is my own view, shaped by my experience of life. It will be different for everyone. A lot of this will be comparing Moscow to San Francisco, New York and London.

A note: I grew up in England and in the US; English is my primary language; culture-wise I am a mix. My love for Moscow isn't because I am Russian and can't deal with other places.

1. People. In Moscow I have an exceptional community of friends – hundreds of people – who do a lot of things together. We have parties for 20-40 people each week; we do Burning Man together; we hug; we talk about the hard things in our lives; we support each other and we love each other. My American friends who I bring to our events say "How are those people so emotionally open and tactile and nice?? I have never seen this before!" I'm very well-connected in the US and yet I never see communities like ours there.

2. Freedom of speech about issues which matter to me. Most of all this is about the lack of postmodern bullshit which pervades western countries. Example: I was recently at a biotech conference in Seattle. On a panel there I answered a question about "What is your diversity policy?" with "I hire smart people and I don't care what their gender or skin color is." After this an email was sent apologizing for inviting me to the conference. Those diversity people do not value real diversity of opinion. They want different colored people who all think the same. This toxic foolishness does not happen in Moscow.

3. Moscow is a safe, clean, spacious city. It is not Singapore, yet it is close. There are no mentally ill homeless people, no trash lying in the streets. The streets are beautiful, well-maintained, well-designed. A young woman can walk in the city center with a laptop in her hand at night and be safe. A lot of the advertising on the streets is about charities and social projects. The city is both bustling with life and spacious + not overcrowded. San Francisco, London or New York are unpleasant dumps compared to Moscow. And with each year Moscow is becoming better and better.

4. Service. The coffee shops clean and awesome, a chain like Coffeemania has amazing coffee and food and atmosphere and beautiful people – all for prices lower than those at Starbucks in London or New York. For the cost of a crappy Uber in San Francisco where the driver looks annoyed at having to drive you, here you get a Maybach with a well-dressed, polite, smiling person who genuinely wants you to have a good experience. These two examples extend to a ton of other aspects of life.

5. Cost. I want to interact with cool people from all parts of society, not only with multimillionaire entrepreneurs and software engineers who make $500k a year and are struggling to pay their bills. Or unhappy demoralized people who have to commute to work for 3 hours a day. Moscow is much cheaper than other major cities.

6. Beautiful, fashionable women with far fewer sexual hangups. One friend, the organizer of Snctm (an amazing erotic party I posted about recently) said she thinks Russian women are more conservative. I don't agree. Here women are flirty, cool, fun, enthusiastic, positive, sexually liberated. It is as if women feel safer with men because they aren't constantly told "Men are bad" by the media.

7. Engineering talent. Here it is easy to find amazing software engineers who are looking for cool projects to work on.

Here is what I don't like about Moscow and why I will never live here full-time:

1. The tech community is extremely strong yet too small. For those of us with global ambitions and a voracious desire to learn there aren't enough people to learn from. And the tech industry outside software is non-existent. I am building a protein engineering + deep learning biotechnology company. There is nothing for me here except DL engineers. Nobody to discuss my work with.

2. Availability of capital. Despite the glitzy facade, an ordinary street in Palo Alto has far more wealth than the wealthiest enclave in the Moscow suburbs. And the capital in Moscow is not smart money, the wealthy here do not understand how the modern world works and are slowly losing their relative position in the world while skiing down the slopes of Courchevel. And I require large-scale, intelligent outside capital to do the things I do. Investors who know what it means when I say "We take fingerprints of complex mixtures by combining 10^6 non-specific protein sensors with DNA signal transduction, amplify with PCR and do supervised learning on the output."

3. Non-engineering talent and managerial talent. As I already said, there is no serious community of talent here doing biotech or rocketry or fusion power or neural interfaces. In San Francisco I can walk with a Neuralink engineer for an hour and learn the state of the art. Doesn't exist here. And – management talent is terrible, Russians are awful at operations and disciplined execution.

4. Moscow is not cosmopolitan and is isolated. There are few foreigners. There are no real Japanese restaurants. Moscow is an isolated and unimportant part of the world which has little impact on the future.

5. Winter weather. It sucks.

Finally, I like bridging different worlds. Whether it is linking scientists, customers and investors or linking Russia, the West and Asia or linking software, biotech and psychology. There is no point in choosing only one thing. Choose everything, blend it, and be unique.

I suspect what I dislike about Moscow is what makes it great. If there were more wealth it would be much more expensive. More cosmopolitanism would bring foolish postmodern ideas and spoil the culture.

We Russians often complain. About our government, about what can be better. I want Moscow to be Moscow. I don't want it to be westernized, democratized, and all that. I love it as it is now.

Discuss and comment if you love or hate the post.

Кстати. Я пишу на английском потому что мне (а) проще (б) хочется делиться с друзьями которые не читают на русском. Практикуйте английский, полезная штука :)

Просьба: если вам нравится наш чат и то что мы здесь обсуждаем, поделитесь пожалуйста с друзьями, в соцсетях, в ваших собственных чатах. Наш чат совсем не коммерческий, но нам будет классно если будет больше читателей :)

https://t.me/joinchat/AAAAAE6ESee_vw_9q3atIw

Выше ссылка которой можно делиться

#фаге

Yesterday I was sitting with my coach Andrey. We spoke about two questions – one highly practical, one philosophical. I am debriefing from our meeting and decided to write about both. Especially since I think part of the audience is more interested in practical business stories, and part is interested in philosophy and personal development.

PART 1: CHALLENGES AROUND MIXING UP STAKEHOLDER GROUPS

The practical question was around getting my new biotech company start to work without my constant pushing. This was mostly around recognizing that there are several key stakeholder groups: (a) scientists-architects (b) engineers-operators (c) investors (d) customers. That my role is to integrate those groups. And that my main challenge is I mix up groups A and B.

I have a group of heavily involved world-renown scientists who together with me are designing the architecture of our system. And I am constantly trying to hire them to do execution lab work. And having trouble. Because guys like Eric Drexler and George Church (as well as somewhat more junior people who are still at the top of global science) don't really want to drop their positions at Oxford and Harvard to go and use pipettes in a basement lab somewhere. And people who are ready to do lab work tend not to know what protein topology is optimal for generating high-dimensional data because that's a question which can be productively evaluated by maybe 20 people in the entire world.

This is very weird for me. I am so used to the software world where everyone from the architect of the system to the junior frontender is fulltime on one project. There is no useful concept of "technical advisor" in software – when someone says "oh that guy is a part-time advisor" my reaction is "that guy is an uncommitted and irrelevant person who is at best investor eye candy."

Andrey helped me see that these two groups are entirely separate, have entirely different motivations, and are both essential to our success. And my role is to integrate them, make sure they understand each other, are aligned all the time. And with time and learning-by-doing and a great deal of success, groups A and B can move closer together – some of the superstar scientists will join full-time and work with the lab engineers; some of the lab engineers will absorb knowledge from superstar scientists and become architects.

Another weird aspect of all this is how a great coach immediately sees those issues, and how they are invisible to me because I am inside the system. This is why you have a coach. My takeaway here is to talk with Andrey even more regularly and to always have a coach.

#фаге

PART 2: PHILOSOPHICAL ATTITUDES AND FEARS ABOUT MONEY

I am fortunate enough to be in a good financial position in life. But there is a nagging desire somewhere which says "want more! want hundreds of millions of dollars in cash, now!" and another part which says "wanting money is bad! bad person!"

I have a complicated relationship with money. When I was a teenager I thought it was the key to everything. Then I made millions at 22 from selling my first company. Bought a Ferrari and a Bentley and did all the other shit which was supposed to make me happy. It was euphoria for a couple months and then deep depression, all the way to suicidal thoughts. A powerful lesson in that money does not in fact make you happy. Genuinely by far the worst, most horrible period in my entire life was when I first made a lot of money.

Over the next 12 years and especially in the last 24 months I gradually unraveled my fears about money and status. I stopped wearing expensive clothes. Gave away watches as gifts. I live in nice hotels but out of a small carry-on suitcase which contains everything I need. Now I have far more close friends, date much cooler women, have better relationships with my family, am much more productive and happy. People want to be with me for my uniqueness and love me for who I am, not for what I do, or what I have. And there are so many people like this. And it is so deeply fulfilling.

But still the thoughts of "want hundreds of millions of dollars!!" simultaneously with "wanting money is bad!" do cross my mind. Andrey had two observations here.

First of all, the critical path to growth is to differentiate and integrate different aspects of personality.

"Differentiate" means "notice and observe rather than be captured by; turn subject into object" – for example observe how my attention is attracted to a shiny new Lamborghini Urus and that this attention is "not me." This is self-awareness – what meditation and the like help with.

"Integrate" means "accept that what is noticed is part of me and stop rejecting aspects of me." For example recognize that scanning for symbols of status (like the aforementioned shiny Urus) is part of what made me who I am. Has a good evolutionary rationale. And should be embraced and loved, without letting it own me. This is self-love.

The above differentiate-then-integrate has to be done with every aspect of consciousness. It is what can make us self-aware AND whole. It is very different from the person who just pays attention to status symbols without noticing it. This is what "waking up" means in Buddhism and other contemplative traditions. Notice parts of yourself, then embrace them.

Secondly, Andrey asked the question "ok, play with your fantasies and say you get an extra $300m right now – what would it change?"

All my answers here came down to:

1. Emotional:
- Make me even cooler – i.e. status, love.
- Guarantee my nice life can keep going – i.e. safety, security.
2. Instrumental:
- I can do more cool stuff for my friends and family and for my businesses.
- I can have more convenience and support infrastructure.
- I can invest more in my mission.

The emotional part is a complete illusion, it is completely false. Coolness and love doesn't come from money, it comes from the energy you give others and from being whole. And safety and security comes from trust for the world and life in the moment. I did not feel cool or feel safe when I turned from an MBA student into a multimillionaire. So the idea that more money will help this is pretty fucking dumb.

The instrumental part is more complicated. Thing is, I can already do a lot of cool things for my friends and family and I should just do them. Often the coolest thing is to organize a party or just to call and help with an emotionally difficult moment. Doesn't require any money. Plus I don't think it is good to offer people or businesses financial help in most cases. I would be much weaker if I had billionaire parents who always solved all my problems. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger. Strength comes from challenge.

Convenience ultimately comes from being surrounded by other people who want to do things together and help me with what they know. And this is about building relationships.

In terms of mission, one of my friends rightly says "instead of making $50bn ourselves to invest in mind uploading, we should just come up with a good plan and then go and encourage Larry Page to do it. He wants to upload too, so clearly the issue isn't money but a good plan." And all my life I've easily been able to raise investment capital for things I am passionate about anyway.

I think the takeaway in my case is to (a) love money without being consumed by it, same as all other aspects of life (b) recognize that lack of money doesn't bottleneck me anywhere and the idea that it does is a silly illusion placed there by conventional society.

An illusion which I can observe with a calm smile.

емкие буллеты, как работает и передается коронавирус, и что делать. Дима Пушкарев, спасибо, что пошерил.