Books

Welcome to @nayafia!

Nadia is the author of Working in Public and, most recently, Antimimetics, a book about self-censoring ideas.

She has agreed to do an AMA for /books. Reply with your questions :)

Elevating onchain creators 

@nodefoundation @brightmoments 
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Honestly, not much, but I think that’s because my intellectual life mostly exists independently of geographic location these days.

I was just reflecting to my husband last night that despite moving out of the Bay Area nearly 5 years ago, I still find that I am regularly meeting new people, having my thinking challenged, collaborating on projects, etc. So that’s a good thing. At least in my current life stage, I kind of like having a bit of distance between my offline life, which is more grounded and family focused, and my online life, which is where my intellectual world lives.

How has your intellectual life changed since moving to Los Angeles?

Are there any recent antimemes that have “crossed the chasm” and made the jump into popular culture? What drives that shift broadly? Is there a preference cascade?

What can you share about your email thread with qntm that you had

I was honestly just surprised at how little there was out there about antimemes already, as well as thoughtful analysis about the last ~5 years of the internet. There’s TINAD of course, and a few blog and forum posts about antimemes, but very little reporting on e.g. group chats etc (though recently we’ve seen a few more). I always think that’s a good sign for writing about a topic, though!

hi @nayafia -- what was the most surprising thing you learned while doing research for / writing the book?

creating and destroying; flying cars, roc.camera, july.rocks /july /faust

I think this was more of an exploratory work. I wanted to revisit what we think we know about memes, and point out that hey: not all important or compelling ideas go viral, so if that’s the case, how does that change our understanding of how information spreads? I often see “mimetic behavior” being referenced as shorthand for how people are inevitably assumed to act, and I think it’s both a reductive and sort of depressing view of the world, so I wanted to expand how we think about that by introducing a counterpoint.

What do you think the thesis - the core thesis that you were really trying to get at with your Antimemetics book was?

haha, most of my ideas start in my notes app - random one-off scribbles and braindumps. Blog and newsletter posts start as Markdown files on my desktop, then get moved into Google Docs if they get too unwieldy.

I use Obsidian to manage my work, but somehow I always need to write posts this way first

Do you have another file on your desktop where you dump your ideas into?

OSS + Rust. My goal in life is the ability to stop thinking at will

If you liked Surprised by Joy, a friend recommended A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken, but I can’t bring myself to read it because the premise is so sad 🙈

Hi @nayafia and welcome! I think I ordered Surprised by Joy after reading about it on your blog. I really liked the book. Do you have any other recommendations?

Thanks! I think it depends on the domain, but the two roles I identified in the book (truth-tellers and champions) are IMO critical for combating antimemes across different problem areas

hey @nayafia! i enjoy reading basically everything you write

who is currently doing the best work to solve the problems of dealing with important antimemes?

oh gosh, too much to fit here! We’ve done some work together to try to answer these q’s. A few thoughts:

* Dispositional forgiveness seems highly correlated to being able to spark (and possibly amplify) a warm sensation in the body https://www.jhourney.io/blog/challenges-with-sparking-a-positive-sensation-in-the-body

* Overconfidence in one’s skills, or a rigid approach to learning, can make it harder to access jhana https://www.jhourney.io/blog/overconfidence-and-learners-mindset

There are also general skills around absorption (being able to lose youreelf in a moment) that seem relevant here. But we’re still learning and testing hypotheses.

@nayafia im super curious about your exploration into the jhanas. i did the Jhourney retreat this spring and have been fascinated by this "new frontier" ever since.

what have you learned since then about why getting into a jhana state was so easy for you? how would you tweak their teachings to help novice meditators?

When you think about your understanding of antimemetics in the context of amnestics and mnestics - how do you feel about how we do this increasingly online? For example; I think about how ChatGPT is a sort of SCP in a way — because of things like this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtificialSentience/comments/1l93upy/people_are_becoming_obsessed_with_chatgpt_and/

And so - how do we protect our core minds from things like this, while staying open to the wonders and beautifies of the world and the internet as a subset?

I think it can be quite dangerous! One of the points I expressly wanted to make with Antimemetics is that while burrowing into a hole (group chats, etc) was an inevitable response to the overly public web, I don’t think it’s a uniformly good thing, either. I want us to remain agentic and optimistic about what we think we can accomplish in the world, and that requires getting out of our comfort zone.

It’s a bit of a trope, but I think *still* undervalued: the key to all this IMO is mastering control of our attention. How to do that is more of a public health question (a mix of personal responsibility + policy), but I really think it’s the most important thing that so many people aren’t prioritizing today.

Hacker founder using ai to coordinate onchain economies /tenfold, nounish channel client /comint

More: rubinovitz.com

I am only 20 pages into your new book, but a huge fan of "Working in Public" and "Idea Machines"
So I don't feel informed enough to ask questions on it yet, but wanted to say thanks for being here!

Building @farcaster. Previously Coinbase, Brigade, Causes.

👁️👁️ (...I was about the same the same thing, re very much appreciating your writing on jhāna practice, @nayafia - keenly interested in any response or comments you may have to @sds's question - thanks Nadia)

Hey @nayafia, have loved reading all your work over the years.

On meditation and jhanas: has any of your research led you to further exploration of the nature of consciousness itself?

Annaka Harris’ recent documentary “Lights On” surfaces some captivating ideas about consciousness as a potential base layer of reality. Curious if your own thinking has changed recently.

Zooming out: just wondering what you’ve been up to in the world of consciousness. Thanks!

https://darkforest.metalabel.com/antimemetics

Short answer is for family reasons, slightly longer answer is it’s nice to be closer to friends in SF, etc. I needed some time away from California during the pandemic, but it’s hard to stay away from a place that was so formative to me for over a decade. I’m glad to be back!

Hi @nayafia why did you decide to move to Los Angeles?