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Vividness
Personal blog · vividness.livephilosophyculture
Vividness is a personal blog at vividness.live about philosophy and culture. Since 2016, 23 different Hacker News readers have linked it 29 times, most often “Developing ethical, social, and cognitive competence (2015)”. The last post was in 2024, but the archive is still widely read.
29mentions?
23HN people?
2016–2026first – last linked?
Most-linked posts?
- Developing ethical, social, and cognitive competence (2015)4 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2016-09-17
- Developing ethical, social, and cognitive competence4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-02-14
- /3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-12-09
- /the-making-of-buddhist-modernism2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-06-16
- /zen-vs-the-u-s-navy2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-08-21
What Hacker News says?
Yes, his writings are very interesting. I believe his two main sites are https://vividness.live/ https://meaningness.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What's the most life-changing blog post you've ever read?”Submitted Developing ethical, social, and cognitive competence (2015) as a story · 44 points
HN discussionI’m a construct-aware thinker. So it means something different to me now than it would to my previous nihilistic stage. Here is a nice model of human cognitive development beyond the meaninglessness of nihilism: http://newpossibilitiesassociates.com/uploads/9_levels_of_in... Also see David Chapman’s writings on Robert Keegan’s models - https://vividness.live/2015/10/12/developing-ethical-social-...
Comment linking /2015/10/12/developing-ethical-social-and-cognitive-competence/
on “With teen mental health deteriorating over five years, there’s a likely culprit”Submitted Developing ethical, social, and cognitive competence as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThai Theravada and Japanese Zen (and State Shinto) were reinvented in the 1800s to look more European and incorporate Romanticism because they knew if Europeans showed up and you didn't have a European-style religion, they'd declare you savages and colonize you. It more or less worked. See "The Making of Buddhist Modernism", review here: https://vividness.live/the-making-of-buddhist-modernism That didn't happen in T…
Comment linking /the-making-of-buddhist-modernism
on “Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else”Submitted Developing ethical, social, and cognitive competence as a story · 2 points
HN discussionOr is it? There's not much evidence that the Vipassanā of modern practice is exactly as Siddhartha Buddha taught it: https://vividness.live/2011/07/07/theravada-reinvents-medita...
Comment linking /2011/07/07/theravada-reinvents-meditation/
on “Ask HN: How to not bring emotion from work back home?”Submitted Zen vs. the U.S. Navy as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIt's no trick, it's a spiritual path that can't be understood without following and practicing it- the path very much leads to something real that cannot be experienced or explained any other way. Everything Christianity teaches is true in the sense that I mean here. You are not understanding what I am saying and I do not personally know how to explain it more clearly[1], which, as I explained above, is why religion…
Comment linking /visionary-and-objective-truths
on “Ideas from "A Philosophy of Software Design"”Submitted Developing ethical, social, and cognitive competence (2015) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionYou may enjoy this. I certainly did when I first came across it: https://vividness.live/charnel-ground
Comment linking /charnel-ground
on “The Michael Scott Theory of Social Class”Submitted Developing ethical, social, and cognitive competence as a story · 1 points
HN discussion>Did she even study Buddhism at all? Did you? https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/biggest-misconception-about-... https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/ten-misconceptions-about-b... https://vividness.live/the-making-of-buddhist-modernism The book you are referring to means nothing because it is a recent interpretation exactly as the author of the article is describing. From The Making of Buddhist Modernism: >1. Rahula selec…
Comment linking /the-making-of-buddhist-modernism
on “Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation”You seem to take the author's language here as describing early Buddhism, but I think she is describing the observed history of Asian Buddhism, presumably East and Southeast Asian Buddhism. I think this is a clearer reading given that she starts with "Asian Buddhists," focuses on the Burmese tradition, mentions again "for most of its history in Asia ," mentions Jack Kornfield who studied in the Thai tradition, etc.…
Comment linking /protestant-buddhism
on “Buddhism has found a new institutional home in the West: the corporation”I think you might be very surprised if you read some of the author's other works then. good summary of his work is here: https://vividness.live/ in particular he has written extensively about Buddhism and speaking personally I think he has a fascinating heterodox perspective on the subject.
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on “Meaningness”A good post of David's to start with is "Developing Ethical, Social, and Cognitive Competence": https://vividness.live/2015/10/12/developing-ethical-social-...
Comment linking /2015/10/12/developing-ethical-social-and-cognitive-competence/
on “Meaningness”the linked essays here changed how i think about (western) buddhism pretty deeply: https://vividness.live/2015/09/23/buddhist-ethics-is-a-fraud... especially this one: https://vividness.live/2015/10/05/buddhist-ethics-is-adverti...
Comment linking /2015/10/05/buddhist-ethics-is-advertising/
on “People’s egos get bigger after meditation and yoga, says a new study”> The original purpose of meditation is to become a monk? That's a bizarre hot take; how did you come to that conclusion? https://vividness.live/theravada-reinvents-meditation It was invented to disconnect you from your desires and sense pleasures - not just in a therapy way but so you won't accidentally enjoy food or sex or any of those non-monk things. Milder forms and "mindfulness" are modern inventions and it's…
Comment linking /theravada-reinvents-meditation
on “Self-control secrets of the Puritan masters”> Much of the doctrine is not acceptable to a modern Western worldview, so researchers of meditation have to cherry-pick the parts of Buddhism they like and ignore the rest. For example, they might draw from certain passages of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta about developing mindfulness of the breath and body but overlook other passages about meditating over a corpse at a charnel ground. Or they might integrate into their r…
Comment linking /consensus-buddhism
on “Buddha and Mind”> Most versions of Zen are made-up export products designed to flatter Westerners. Kind of like the samurai movie honor bushido stuff. I don't think so. If you go to a zenkai or a sesshin held by a western zendo, and then go to one at a Japanese temple, you won't notice too many differences, apart from the language. Many American zen teachers trained in Japan at some point, or their teachers did, and they brought th…
Comment linking /zen-vs-the-u-s-navy
on “Skill issues – Dialectical Behavior Therapy and its discontents (2024)”That's not very promising. Most versions of Zen are made-up export products designed to flatter Westerners. Kind of like the samurai movie honor bushido stuff. https://vividness.live/zen-vs-the-u-s-navy (Japanese people think Buddhism is a thing you do at funerals. If you get into it more seriously, I vaguely understand it's mostly a religion that tells you not to have sex.) In this case the more important question…
Comment linking /zen-vs-the-u-s-navy
on “Skill issues – Dialectical Behavior Therapy and its discontents (2024)”Here are a few related materials on the psychology of moral development: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg's_stages_o... http://cook-greuter.com/9%20levels%20of%20increasing%20embra... https://vividness.live/2015/10/12/developing-ethical-social-...
Comment linking /2015/10/12/developing-ethical-social-and-cognitive-competence/
on “Ask HN: Best books on the psychology of religion?”I really like what he writes as well, especially: https://vividness.live/
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on “Who’s your favorite public thinker?”It seems like a major personality crisis for me. Any crisis makes you feel bad and personality crisis all the more so. But there is a bright side, personality crisis is a chance to grow above your head. I agree with existential psychology on it. I believe that you can help youself by learning some bits of development and existential psychology. Development psychology describes some common kinds of personality crises…
Comment linking /2015/10/12/developing-ethical-social-and-cognitive-competence/
on “I'm young and I'm already burnt out on tech work. Could I get some life advice?”In no particular order of importance, and likely in far too much detail: You Need More Lumens ( https://meaningness.com/sad-light-lumens ) prompted me to put lots of really strong LED lights in my living and working spaces. Subjectively this has improved my QoL and productivity by at least as much as taking prescribed amphetamines, a very surprising result. Nutrition: the Emperor has no Clothes ( https://metarationa…
Comment linking /developing-ethical-social-and-cognitive-competence
on “Better without AI (by David Chapman meaningness)”I take it our definitions of "education" are different. I do not refer to academic education. Everything you expressed are forms of "education", and the core tenet is putting aside your beliefs and attempting to understand a different point of view. This, by construction, requires humility because it implies that the person has something to teach you. This identical to pure-land view [1], where every person you meet…
Comment linking /pure-land
on “Without Belief in a God, but Never Without Belief in a Devil”The article "FTFY Buddhist Ethics" [1] comes to a similar conclusion about the development of West Coast Buddhism but isn't on board with it. IMHO an interesting contrarian take. [1] https://vividness.live/ftfy-buddhist-ethics
Comment linking /ftfy-buddhist-ethics
on “Creating West Coast Buddhism (2024)”Morality and ethics aren't the same thing. It has the first (things you should and shouldn't do) but not the second (a modern system of reasoning explaining why not to do these things). https://vividness.live/traditional-buddhism-has-no-ethical-s... Modern Buddhism does have ethics, partly as a marketing campaign designed to make you think the Dalai Lama is the world's #1 expert on them.
Comment linking /traditional-buddhism-has-no-ethical-system
on “Five Mildly Anti-Buddhist Essays”
