Beliefs for which my confidence is basically 100%:
- Consciousness exists
Other beliefs
- The default state of the human mind is open, calm and curious and anytime we are not in that state it’s because some part of the mind is blocking it
- One inherent right of conscious minds is to adjust reality to make it more aligned with our ideal—Focus on what you want to see more of.
- Meaning is nebulous but is definitely an emergent property of conscious minds (rather than a discrete thing to be “found” in the universe). Conscious minds imbue meaning via attention. The oft-referenced meaning crisis is probably a result of insufficient agency over attention.1If you are suffering a streak of nihilism may I recommend David Chapman’s work here
- Raising the ceiling is usually better than raising the floor.
- Everyone is at least 10x more capable than they think.
- Knowledge is the key to solving all existing problems.
- Death has some upsides (eg cultural composting) but it’s clearly a net negative—aging is a disease to be cured.
- Nearly all evil at scale is born from the desire to do good
- Climate change will be solved by technological progress or not at all
- Eating meat is morally wrong (animal suffering), cultured meat is the most likely gateway out
- Most of what we believe is wrong