on meaning

and the reality that’s more real than objective truth

raw, unfiltered thoughts from my brain

i love science as much as the next guy but there are crucial human elements science not only can’t capture, it is actually purposefully designed not to.

Despite science having a clear explanation that all dead bodies, regardless how holy, will smell when they decay, the people of the town still defame Zosima and it still deeply affects Alyosha. Rakitin points this out to him, but Alyosha is still in disarray.

Context: Alyosha is one of the main characters in Brothers Karamazov. Hes a soulful dude. He loved zosima with all his heart (he was his teacher in monk school). Theres a myth among the people that, when a saint dies, their body doesn’t smell. So when Zosima dies and theres a smell (duh), the townspeople start to defame him. This brings Alyosha to his lowest point.

Zosima letting his rival fire a shot before apologizing to him is such a fucking brilliant moment. It is meta intelligence from zosima. He understands that an apology in isolation is meaningless. it is literally air. It is the context and the interpretation that makes it significant. If you apologize before the shot? You’re a coward. And you actually come off worse.

context: Zosima is in a duel with another man. he realizes he should not be in this duel. he wants to apologize but knows that if he apologizes before the other man fires his shot, he will be seen as a coward. so he waits until the other man fires his shot then lays down his weapon.

This is such an important message that improves the way we view science and our relationships with other humans.

We want to explain away the complexities of the world but that just will never happen. I like to say that “the best computer chip humanity will ever make is melted metal in hot enough environments”.

Side note: this is probably an ego thing. We want to feel like were in control of the world. And we also don’t want to admit that we care more about interpretation then we do about “objective” fact.

Science provides a useful mental model of the world to build real things by leveraging it. but not only is it a model and not objective reality, it also comes with constraints. That’s why we build abstractions. Every single digital invention we’ve created is due to the abstraction of Maxwell’s equations into lumped circuit elements into digital logic into the computers we see today.

side note: check out this video from Anant Agarwal if you want to understand this better. this guy is also brilliant.

and to even further prove my point, we have now reached the limit at which our current models of the world are serving us. companies are now re-thinking how computers should work without these models because they came at the cost of more energy.

side note: think of it like this. we needed energy to tame the system and coax it to do what we want. now that were asking our systems to do more and more (AI), this energy cost is being felt. look at this paper from normal computing that’s leveraging the actual nature of the system to build more energy efficient computers.

i sort of went off topic but also not. i mean that is a literal real life example of what im saying.

I think the biggest throughline is that, in relying too heavily on science, we fail to realize that human behavior is based entirely on interpretation. Zosima understood this when he apologized at a specific time. Alyosha felt this when the science-backed explanation of his elder’s death did not make his suffering disappear.

every book that tries to break down culture, relationships, power into a set of steps to follow is completely missing this point. its applying science in the completely wrong place. this is a matter of soul. having the intelligence to foresee how an apology may be interpreted and optimizing for the outcome that allows it to be FELT and not just heard.

This is why any forced “getting to know each other” shit that people do always feels so fucking off (like an icebreaker). Because it completely misses this exact point. People think “people talking about themselves = good” its rationalist. It doesn’t ask the question “how does this LAND inside these people?” everyone, even the person running this, knows its fugaze. But we choose to act on “In theory this should work? Everyone is talking?” and not how people INTERPRET that.

That’s probably also why the stock market is so unpredictable. Even with all the data in the world on every company, people still fail to predict prices because it’s a human endeavour. People are investing on sentiment, what the fed hike “means”, not actual grounded truth.

And you know what I gotta give the AI startup crew a pat on the pack here. They operate PURELY on meaning and interpretation. And, at least right now, they’re crushing. Not a single VC is investing based on actual grounded scientific fact of the company. Its purely narrative and interpretation. LLM wrapper + ex-Palantir/meta + Stanford CS = where do I sign.

And honestly a lot of success stories in general are based on interpretation/meaning. There are not many industries where the science is so far and away the most important thing that a company can succeed on its product alone. Think of fucking cars man. If a car was so good and we bought them for objective performance, why do these companies spend millions crafting this entire narrative around them? they understand that saying “this car has x energy consumption, y drag coefficient” is meaningless to us. What we want to hear is “this car will make you FREE. Will solve all your problems. Will get you laid and will make your parents proud of you”

I think this lands hard as fuck in relationships too. And were all guilty of it. stating an objective fact and expecting that to soothe your partners discomfort. “but I called. I tried. I said I was sorry” being completely oblivious to the fact that it’s the interpretation of your attempted apology and probably also the interpretation of the initial action that got you in shit that is causing the harm, not the objective action in isolation.

So ya. Science is great. We built bridges planes computers. But there are not any equations for meaning. Because if you actually tried to write an equation for how someone may perceive something, you’re dealing with millions of variables. Their wiring, their DNA, their trauma, how they slept that night, what they ate, whether or not they had a good day, and a million other things that all play into how someone interprets something in that moment.

And maybe that is why actual “AGI” the way the AI folks pitch it seems unlikely. Think of all the dynamics you’re solving almost intuitively in real time when you’re talking to another human. You are literally doing those million parameter calculations instinctively. When you approach someone and pick up their vibe and adjust your tone/delivery/messaging to make sure it lands with them. this is what you’re doing. Will we ever be able to create a robust framework that a computer can run to do this? And at the speed we do it at?

and honestly now that ive reflected a bit on this, i realize this is the key to healthy relationships and human interactions. i feel like in the past i was TOO sensitive to people's subjective experience. this caused me to come across as agreeable at work and suppressed my instincts in my relationships which caused resentment. the key is to deliver objective reality WITHIN the framework of the other person's subjective experience. acting as if only the objective data matters is wrong and so is only appeasing the other person's subjective reality and ignoring your own. we are not data receiving beings. we are meaning making beings. there is no such thing as a pure delivery of data with humans. theres so much nuance and layering to it all. be aware of this and be happier in your relationships hopefully.

bisous