#davidchapman — Public Fediverse posts

As former AI researcher #DavidChapman puts it in Better Without #AI;

"What we should fear is not intelligence as such, but sudden massive shifts of power to agents who may be hostile or callously indifferent. Technological acceleration can do that; but a new sort of AI is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause acceleration. Powerful new technologies are dangerous whether they are wielded by humans or AIs, and whether they were developed with or without AI."

https://betterwithout.ai/fear-AI-power

(3/3)

"... the worst covid years are far enough in the past that the trauma is no longer paralyzing. Until recently, most people wanted to forget, and get on with life. (Understandably! And this was probably healthy.) Some people still want to pretend it never happened, or outright deny that it did. For many, the important unfinished work is punishing the Bad Tribe, whose fault it all was."

#DavidChapman, 2026

https://meaningness.substack.com/p/there-will-be-another-pandemic

(1/2)

#COVID #pandemic

"The test requires no involvement from doctors, dieticians, or holistic healers. It is never recommended by them ...

The test is an extreme elimination diet. In short, you eat only a very few things, ones that are unlikely to cause food intolerance, for a few weeks. If your chronic crud ends, you know that something you normally eat is the cause."

#DavidChapman, 2025

https://meaningness.substack.com/p/elimination-diet-vs-chronic-crud

Perhaps this is a difference between the US and NZ health systems?

(1/?)

#FoodIntolerance

#rpgs #rpgaday #davidChapman #bookadayuk
https://www.tabletopsentinel.com/news/hobby/rpgaday26-creator-david-f-chapman?utm_source=mastodon

I wonder if David Chapman has written about The Dawn of Everything? I'm only onto the 3rd chapter, but it's already blowing some big holes in the assumptions that underpin the @Meaningness book-in-progress, for example in quotes like this;

https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/@strypey/116956225889065381

What a shame David Graeber isn't around anymore, I'd like to see a conversation between the 2 of them, and Graeber's co-author David Wengrow.

#Meaningness #DavidChapman #TheDawnOfEverything #DavidGraeber #DavidWengrow

I've probably posted this before, but I think it's worth restating for those who haven't seen it;

“In fact, artificial intelligence is something of a red herring. It is not intelligence that is dangerous; it is power. AI is risky only inasmuch as it creates new pools of power. We should aim for ways to ameliorate that risk instead."

#DavidChapman, 2023

https://betterwithout.ai/scary-AI

#AI #AIRisk

"Interestingly, he [Dharmakirti] was heavily influenced by Cārvāka. That is an Indian philosophy that was materialist, atheist, skeptical, and anti-ascetic. Fascinating—if it had not been suppressed by Church and State, perhaps the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution would have occurred in India, rather than Europe, and a thousand years earlier."

#DavidChapman

https://buddhism-for-vampires.com/dharmakirti-and-panini

#Enlightenment #Cārvāka #Dharmakirti #ScientificRevolution

"Tantra really can’t be made respectable. Liberation from social expectations is an essential method and result of Tantra. Given Western religious freedom, it should no longer be necessary to pretend otherwise."

#DavidChapman

https://buddhism-for-vampires.com/tantra-sex-romance-novels

#Tantra #ReligiousFreedom

"... Western Buddhists have grown up in a Christian culture, and it is difficult to completely abandon Christian values. Most are instinctively doubtful of a religion that explicitly celebrates sex."

#DavidChapman

https://buddhism-for-vampires.com/tantra-sex-romance-novels

(1/?)

"The North-Indian empire collapsed into numerous tiny realms, held by 'kings' who were probably mostly really 'warlords' or 'thugs who managed to collect enough followers to clobber the last lot of thugs'. These were perpetually at war with each other. Trade collapsed due to the difficulty of getting goods across hostile borders. Most likely the wealth of the middle class was also taken by rulers to fund their wars."

#DavidChapman

https://buddhism-for-vampires.com/love-in-a-time-of-war

(1/2)

"All of which is why, over the course of this now concluding journey, I have come to embrace the Naomi confusion as an unconventional Buddhist exercise in annihilating the ego. I could never quite get the hang of nonattachment before this; but I think, thanks to her, I have."

#NaomiKlein, Doppelganger, 2023

#DavidChapman would likely quibble with the wording. But, I suspect, would still endorse the underlying insight; the self - selves - are not all we have, nor all that really matters.

(2/?)

"So how do we stop averting our gaze? How do we face our second bodies and our mortal bodies in a sustained way, rather than throwing up partitions, performances, and projections to hide from them? What would it take to stop running? To know - really know - what we already know?"

#NaomiKlein, Doppelganger, 2023

Again this seems to converge with my recent reading of #DavidChapman. Which I think is right that - whether or not we do it via Buddhism - this is not something we can do alone.

(2/2)

"For the debate to function, the two must respect each other enough to reply seriously to the other’s points—not merely to insult them, nor to attack straw men.

The critic needs to understand the ... [doctrine] clearly enough that he or she can focus on its weakest central points. Objecting to trivia is unhelpful, even when accurate."

#DavidChapman

https://vividness.live/constructive-religious-disagreement

I think what #DavidChapman says here could be applied to all doctrinal arguments, not just religious ones;

"A constructive religious argument won’t convert opponents, and won’t result in agreement, and doesn’t try. Instead, it allows both sides to understand their own systems better."

https://vividness.live/constructive-religious-disagreement

(1/2)

"Most (but not all) Westerners make the transition from stage 2 to stage 3 during adolescence."

#DavidChapman

https://vividness.live/developing-ethical-social-and-cognitive-competence

Many of the people who identity loudly online as "libertarianism" have yet to make this transition. Either because they're still teenagers, or because their circumstances haven't yet supported them to move beyond the cognitive mode of teenagehood.

This creates a heavily distorted picture of what libertarians might believe, our ethical approaches, etc.

(3/3)

"The self-interested mode (stage 2)

Here the subject (self) is a collection of short-term practical interests. One recognizes that other people have their own interests (desires, agendas), which you have to take into account."

#DavidChapman

https://vividness.live/developing-ethical-social-and-cognitive-competence

(1/?)

"The European hereditary class system of the aristocracy, gentry, freemen, serfs, and slaves is also a caste system, although that term is not usually applied to it. I say “is” not “was” because remnants are still enforced by law. For example, some members of the British aristocracy still have distinctive legal privileges by birth."

#DavidChapman

https://vividness.live/buddhist-ethics-a-tantric-critique

This! Fudging together class and caste is a common cause of people talking past each other.

#ClassAnalysis #class #caste

"For Bodhisattvayana, Consensus Buddhism, Calvinism, and contemporary secular morality, the important thing is having appropriately pious attitudes—such as compassion. I call this 'mentalism'. Also, you must verbally express those attitudes; I call that 'sincerity'. For these ethical systems, what you actually do, and practical consequences, are secondary."

#DavidChapman

https://vividness.live/buddhist-ethics-a-tantric-critique

An evenhanded description of the legitimate critique behind the common phrase 'virtue signalling'.

"Reveling in sensual pleasure is a central principle of Tantra ... Consensus Buddhism’s rejection of renunciation [the spiritual 'engine' of non-Tantric Buddhist practice] draws it away from Sutrayana, in the direction of Tantra. However, American puritan inhibitions compel the Consensus to reject Tantra’s unrestrained enthusiasm as well. Enjoying yourself too much is unseemly. It’s just not nice—even when no harm is done to yourself or others."

#DavidChapman

https://vividness.live/buddhist-ethics-a-tantric-critique

#Buddhism

"I believe contemporary Vajrayana offers weapons we can use to liberate ourselves from unconscious puritan attitudes. I think moderation in pleasures, emotional constriction, and measuring out life in teaspoons are ethically wrong. Enjoyment is good, in any quantity. More is better! Take it to the max—and beyond!"

#DavidChapman

https://vividness.live/buddhist-ethics-a-tantric-critique#fnref-1709-radical

(1/?)

"Human being is not a matter of calculation. People are not isolated individuals, living in a world of dead material objects, strategizing to manipulate them to achieve utilitarian goals. We are always already embedded in a web of connections with living nature and with other people. Our actions are called forth spontaneously by the situation we find ourselves in—not rationally planned in advance."

#DavidChapman

https://metarationality.com/ken-wilber-boomeritis-artificial-intelligence

@icedquinn

"From a sub-cultural point of view, this makes no sense. Of course active exclusion is wrong. But immigrants doing their own thing is a problem only if you think 'Buddhism in America' should be a single movement. Different Buddhisms will naturally appeal to people with different values, life-experience, and interests."

#DavidChapman

https://vividness.live/inclusion-exclusion-unity-and-diversity

This is essentially the argument I was making here, but about the fediverse rather than Buddhism;

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/how-to-make-progress-on-the-almost-complete-absence-of-black-people-in-socialhub-and-swicg-discussions/4533/13

(1/2)

"There is also no clear modern legal definition of slavery. There are gray areas, and it is surprisingly difficult to draw a line between slavery and employment."

#DavidChapman

https://vividness.live/buddhist-morality-is-medieval

Arguably that's because they are variations of the same thing. That's what most anarchist traditions say about employment by capitalists, and I find their arguments fairly convincing.

(1/?)

"Secular mindfulness meditation is commonplace now, but this was radical then. Shambhala was an opportunity to learn advanced Buddhist meditation techniques without having to buy into Buddhist beliefs and institutions. For me, and tens of thousands of others, that was hugely valuable."

#DavidChapman

https://vividness.live/shambhala-training-was-secular-vajrayana

I think there are some important lessons in this, which could be useful outside the field of spirituality.

(1/?)

#ShambhalaTraining #meditation #mindfulness

"Even into the 21st century, Tantric Theravada has been regarded as a political threat, and actively suppressed by governments. Partly this is by force, and partly by propaganda. Governments have advocated Hinayana as the clean, bright, modern Buddhism, and denigrated Tantra as corrupt, dark, and backward."

#DavidChapman

https://vividness.live/tantric-theravada-and-modern-vajrayana

(1/2)

"Monsters who know they are monsters are harder to threaten or confuse. No werewolf would have cooperated with Milgram; they would simply have eaten him."

#DavidChapman

https://buddhism-for-vampires.com/we-are-all-monsters

(5/5)

"It is easy to act ethically in good conditions. When we feel threatened or confused, humans can become unboundedly destructive.

Pretending this is not true makes the problem worse. It is only when we acknowledge that maybe we would have tortured an innocent person to death, in Milgram’s experiment, that we can start the transformational work to make that less likely."

#DavidChapman

https://buddhism-for-vampires.com/we-are-all-monsters

(1/?)

"There are several excellent reasons for me not to write about this. In short, I am totally unqualified.

However, most of what I have to say, no one else seems to be saying. If I don’t say it, perhaps no one will ... I’ll put a big red warning up front that I may be completely out to lunch.

Fortunately, since I have no credentials, no one will listen unless what I say makes sense. So probably no great harm can come of it."

#DavidChapman

https://vividness.live/reinventing-buddhist-tantra

This is pretty much me too ; )

"Fundamentalism recognizes the meaningfulness of the sacred, but attempts to lock it in place as form: as ultimate Truth. Fundamentalism denies the meaningfulness of ordinary enjoyments, attempting to lock it out as non-existent. Consumerism denies the sacred, and attempts to lock everyday desires into fixed forms."

#DavidChapman

https://vividness.live/yes

I'd love to get perspectives on Chapman's writing (in both Vividness and Meaningness) from Māori, or indigenous people in general.

(1/2)

"In the confrontation between fundamentalism and consumerism, I predict fundamentalism will lose. The internet and global trade make it increasingly difficult to insulate populations from forbidden knowledge."

#DavidChapman

https://vividness.live/consumerism-fundamentalism-new-age-and-buddhism

In the years since this was written, fundamentalism's answers to these problems have become clear: destroy the internet and global trade. Or at least bring them to heel.

(1/3)

"Fundamentalist religions rightly see themselves as under assault from consumerist forces. Those are a dire threat to every religion’s existence. Fundamentalism wrongly sees depraved barbarism—a total collapse of the moral order—as the only alternative to its rule. Fundamentalism is motivated by fear, and it propagates fear."

#DavidChapman

https://vividness.live/consumerism-fundamentalism-new-age-and-buddhism

(1/2)

#fundamentalism