[v1.1 (Last updated: 2019-07-02; 14:36 CDT) This will eventually be moved from a “post” to a “page.”]
[Update/point of clarification: Even though the application is kind of a pain, once you’re accepted, nothing more is asked from you. If you want to download the current notes, and/or/then lurk indefinitely or forever or disappear completely, that’s ok. Generally, once you’re in, you’re in–you’ll always have easy access to the latest material. A few people are practicing intensely in different places on the planet. A couple more people are thinking about practicing intensely, and so on. Some people are just interested in the material, and some fraction of people will be community-interested. The application will get more chill over time as more data comes in and resources free up. Eventual goal of wide distribution.]
[Further addendum (added at the end of some blog posts): “Check it out, some people have been hilariously half-assing the application, and, so far, it’s been adequate for making a call on self-safety and other-safety. I wanted to set a high bar and then step it down, for signaling/learning/resource constraints, but I didn’t mean for it to be a gross, bro-code, guess-the-norms, guess-the-password thing. I’ll clean it up as soon as I have enough data for that to make sense. I’m sorry if I somehow made the stakes too high, please take a chance, throw something together, and apply:”]
***
Applications are now “soft-open” for ongoing access to my working notes (updated about once per 2-5 weeks). These notes detail a novel meditation method. I haven’t posted about this, until now, because I wasn’t sure about development timelines, and I needed to learn more about safety.
To apply, please submit the below. You’ll be asked to supply some historical and future plan information, to agree to not share my work, to supply a writing sample, to record some audio over a couple of meditation sessions, and to read a book (within a couple months after you’re accepted). You’ll have some options for donating if you are willing and able.
Privacy:
Please let me know at some eventual point if you’d like any application material destroyed after review. I generally intend to limit access to submitted applications, and I would generally like to keep application materials for retrospective review.
(0) Individuators
In addition to your email address, please share at least a first name (unless it is very unique and you are a very private person) as well as links to any fully public online presence (if any).
(1) Scaled technology/platform producer statement
Do you now (or do you intend to someday) work on technology in the neighborhood of Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Twitter, Deepmind, technical AI safety, other general AI, etc.? If yes, what do you see as your role for having good things happen and avoiding bad things?
(2) Memetic landscape producer statement
Do you do any of blog, podcast, publish articles, tweet, post on facebook, etc.? If yes, what do you see as your role for having good things happen and avoiding bad things?
(3) Community statement
Have you formed, participated in, grown, shrunk, ruined, or been excommunicated from any communities, movements, groups, forums, conferences, or meetups, online or offline? Briefly describe these. (You can leave out private stuff.) What do (or would) whisper or gossip networks say about you? Please comment on this.
(4) “As is” statement
As condition of acceptance, please credibly and truthfully affirm that you’ll take full self-responsibility for handling your stuff if (when) things become hard. You’ll have access to a (currently) low-volume Slack workspace where you can ask other users/practitioners questions. (You will not need to expose your email address or name to participate.) And, I will also do my very best to be responsive, but I won’t always be able to help in-depth. My hope is that more and more support will be available over time.
(5) Perspective on nonnormative groups
Affirm that you will read at least one “cult book,” cover to cover, if you haven’t already. Don’t cut corners on this; most people think they know, but they don’t. It’s important to have this perspective before engaging with any nonnormative group. I recommend this one:
Amor, Alexandra. Cult A Love Story: Ten Years Inside a Canadian Cult and the Subsequent Long Road of Recovery. Fat Head Publishing, 2013.
It’s a vivid, self-aware, breezily written, personal account that deftly and densely weaves in concretely exemplified generalizations and references to theoretical material.
(6) Information-sharing agreement
As condition of acceptance, please credibly and truthfully affirm that you will not publish, distribute, share or teach my material and methods unless authorized by me to do so.
Note:
- (Do please discuss the material and methods at length with other people who’ve been accepted.)
- (Of course, without any authorization you can [continue to] teach/blog/share/publish other materials/methods/systems/topics/etc and the even fruits/results/insights of/from my methods, just not my methods themselves. Though, you might perhaps credit the relevant fruits/results/insights to my methods, I suppose, if provenance is clear.)
(7) Writing sample
Please submit anywhere from 1,000-100,000 words of original writing. Get in our heads for deciding what to write about. You can excerpt additional (cited) material from previously written work. On my blog, I often don’t write in clear prose. So, here, you don’t have to write in clear prose, either—I will parse and interpret terse, cryptic, ungrammatical, and typo-ridden content. (This actually applies to this entire application, including the audio portion, below.)
(8) Meditation overnight microevolution sparse noisy time-synced sample
Please make two audio recordings of you answering questions and meditating, one on each of two consecutive days. Please minimize noise that can be minimized (e.g. air conditioning) but open-window/ambient noise is ok as long as you’re not right on a busy street. Please keep your phone or recording device within a few feet of you and leave it recording for the whole session.
Day 1 recording:
(a) Start recording and give spoken answers these questions: What do you expect to happen while meditating? How do you expect to change or not even in the course of this single session, by the end of the session? Finally, how do you think you’ll be different after a night’s sleep?
(b) Continue recording with the recording device close to you and meditate normally for 20-90 minutes.
(c) Still recording, answer these questions: What happened? What’s transiently different? What do you think is stably different? What do you think will be different after a night’s sleep?
Day 2 recording:
(a) Start recording and give spoken answers these questions: What are things like today versus yesterday? What do you expect to happen while meditating? How do you expect to change or not even in the course of this single session, by the end of the session?
(b) Continue recording with the recording device close to you and meditate normally for 20-90 minutes.
(c) Still recording, answer these questions: What happened? What’s transiently different? What do you think is stably different? What do you think will be different after a night’s sleep?
Final points:
Please submit the above materials via email attachment or download link. Email me or use the contact form below to declare yourself as an applicant and/or to get my email address if you don’t have it. Please try to submit an application within a month of declaring, but there’s no time limit.
I will acknowledge receipt of materials usually within 48 hours. It’s ok to poke me until I acknowledge.
We hope to review several applications per week, and we will review at least one every two weeks. We would be grateful for an optional application review donation. An “easy” application takes about three person-hours of reviewing the submitted materials, thinking, and discussing.
No applications are permanently closed or discarded. They are only ordered and reordered as we learn more. You can update your application once every three months. Application requirements are expected to relax over time and/or more and more information will be made publicly accessible. People all over the world have access to my working notes in case I get hit by a bus or meteor.
Please feel free to send me brief questions before you start an application. Please bear with me if I only give brief responses or stop responding, but it’s ok to try asking a few rounds of questions. Whether or not I answer all your questions in detail, you will not be disqualified for asking “stupid” questions. I will always (eventually) answer questions about application receipt and status.
I don’t have enough data for an acceptance rate yet. At the time of this writing, via a previous, highly biased, very low effort selection process, over the past ten months, nine people have been offered and accepted access to my working notes feed, though most aren’t actively engaging with the material. Seven men, two women, at least three countries (and continents) of origin, median age maybe very roughly 30. Over the next year I’m guesstimating we’ll accept 60% of applicants. If you are reading this, you are highly encouraged to apply. Applications are reviewed roughly in order of “intent declared”—let me know asap if you’re going to submit one.
Optional application donation (if you’re on the fence, you could wait until after your application is reviewed):
- $0-$78 (one-time) Designation: Applicant for Full Membership (Cohort Mid-2019)
- > $78 (one-time) Designation: Applicant for Full Membership, Fully Self-supporting (Cohort Mid-2019)
- >= $156 (one-time) Designation: Applicant for Full Membership, Dyadic Benefactor (Cohort Mid-2019)
- >= $312 (one-time) Designation: Applicant for Full Membership, Group Benefactor (Cohort Mid-2019)
- >= $390 (one-time) Designation: Applicant for Full Membership, Community Benefactor (Cohort Mid-2019)
- >= $780 (one-time) Designation: Applicant for Full Membership, Institutional Benefactor (Cohort Mid-2019)
(Click here to donate, or use the link on the top navbar.)
When you are accepted, you will have the option to subscribe to a monthly donation schedule (I’ll send out a reminder every month-ish, if you’re on the fence and want to wait at least a month before beginning to donate):
- $0-$26/month Designation: Full Membership (Cohort Mid-2019)
- > $26/month Designation: Full Membership, Fully Self-supporting (Cohort Mid-2019)
- >= $52/month Designation: Full Membership, Dyadic Benefactor (Cohort Mid-2019)
- >= $104/month Designation: Full Membership, Group Benefactor (Cohort Mid-2019)
- >= $130/month Designation: Full Membership, Community Benefactor (Cohort Mid-2019)
- >= $260/month Designation: Full Membership, Institutional Benefactor (Cohort Mid-2019)
Any donations definitely matter and are gratefully accepted.
Final thoughts; a community journey of years:
I currently expect most people will need at least 2000 hours of meditation for their “lives to fully initially unbind” to become open to all connection and coordination possibilities available in the environment. So that’s approximately one year “full time” and maybe five to eight years with heavy responsibilities.
If you are interested in community, you might skim something like this:
(The book touches on many challenges that communities face.)
We are slowly exploring community living and on-site meditation scholarships (including long-term retreats/intensives). Donations and institutional patronage are gratefully and excitedly accepted.
It’s going to be an interesting decade, an interesting millenium, an interesting planet. People and places and possibilities.
Join us.
meditationstuff 