15 Comments
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Tyler Corderman's avatar

An excellent piece, thank you!

If we could all just cultivate a little more awareness of how we pay attention to this beautiful world.

Trungphan2's avatar

Thank you for the note, Tyler! Totally agreed (and it is definitely easier said than done but am working on it).

Adam Singer's avatar

Love this one Trung a lot of gems in here

Trungphan2's avatar

Appreciate you Adam! C. Thi is such an interesting thinker. Gonna dig into his other work more.

Gawain Kripke's avatar

Isn't most of this covered in black mirror already? Also - what we really need now is a good curriculum on how to assess happiness outside of values that are easy to measure and capture. Am I happy is a question I'm asking myself a lot. But there's no answer - because I think anyone who isn't in pain or material poverty can credibly be happy. So maybe happiness is relational and relative with no absolute way of measuring it.

Trungphan2's avatar

Appreciate the read and note, Gawain!

Black Mirror definitely has episodes on this topic. I do find Nguyen's writing on it a better articulation (especially when he pulls in research from other fields).

Either way, I think multiple people presenting the idea in multiple mediums is fine. Each adds a different element or contour (on that note: Nguyen's full podcast interview with Ezra is very very good: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-philosophy-of-games-that-is-really-a-philosophy-of-life/id1548604447?i=1000552204773).

Gawain Kripke's avatar

will definitely listen and thanks for exposing me to Nguyen - happy to find you as well.

Gawain Kripke's avatar

thanks to tipping that podcast. I probably wouldn't have listened otherwise. Very thought provoking. Gives me some ideas.

Jay F.'s avatar

Great piece Trung! Hopefully I'm giving you the external validation in the form of value that you need that aligns with your core curiosity lol.

Trungphan2's avatar

Jay! Thanks for the note. This tipped me over!

Feral Finster's avatar

Re: "Value capture"

TL:DR "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." aka Goodhart's Law

Trungphan2's avatar

I totally fumbled by not including this!

Gawain Kripke's avatar

I forgot to say: great post. Thanks.

Trungphan2's avatar

Thank you! Replied to your post below 🙏