Decibel #11

essay October 10, 2022

Here’s some things from around the internet I consumed this week and found interesting:

  1. Easy or Hard (xkcd comic)
  2. Richard Feynman Lecture — “Los Alamos From Below”
(audio lecture, ~1 hour) 3. [Visa on Money and Status](https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1579018818848190465?s=20&t=iTpvHNjLXuFEaDU7VGFRVQ) (tweet)

Below, find some of my thoughts.

1. Easy or Hard

Easy or Hard

Did you know Tylenol also works for emotional pain?

2. Richard Feynman Lecture — “Los Alamos From Below”

With murmurs of nuclear weapon usage risk increasing, I have been more interested in learning about the development of the first bomb. In this talk Richard Feynman details his experiences “from below” because he was a lowly graduate student when he joined the project and knew almost nothing of the nuclear physics involved. The talk is filled with jokes and humor and I found it wildly entertaining. In particular I recommend the 8 minutes on censorship starting at 22:25

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3. Visa on Money and Status

Some readers might find such statements obvious, but I’ve found that for all the times I’ve read obvious things, I’ve found many still that key into my mind in a way that seeds useful thought. Here I’m reminded of a few things.

First, I like to collect good questions. A bit ago I came across this one very similar to Visa’s idea:

“If you had more money, how would you use it to become more *you*?”

I found answering this question to be a useful exercise for two reasons.

  1. Encourages me to be specific, which unearths deeper values.
  2. Encourages to think about money for its instrumental value — it’s harder to accidentally think it has intrinsic value.

Second, is the concept of “dreamlining”: sketching out a hyper-specific way the future could be, to instill life and inspiration and a sense of direction. I sat down a while ago and wrote down a few different 500 word futures for myself. Being specific led me to ponder various values and scenarios and what kinds of forces might be at play in those worlds.

A highlight of many of the futures I wrote were deep meaningful friendships. Noticing this, I have been taking a few small, active changes towards encouraging the development of both new and stronger friendships, both of which take small amounts of money and status, but at really quite reasonable levels.

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