Co-founder, Happier meditation app (@MeditateHappier). Fascinated by the evolution of consciousness. Exploring AI+consciousness via writing sci-fi.
Auburn, ME
Joined January 2008
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Ben Rubin retweeted
Sharing a podcast I did with Scott @britton on his book Conscious Accomplishment! Scott and I have both spent a lot of time thinking about how inner work and building things can fit together without dividing your life into separate compartments.
One tension we explore is the conception that one must choose between external achievement and inner development. A lot of people go hard on work, burn out, and then move toward meditation or inner work as "recovery". But they often bring those burnout attitudes to that recovery, and don't integrate the learning from that recovery period back into the way they work.
Scott makes the case that work, ambition, and all the reactions they bring up can become part of your practice, and doing so will actually be far deeper for most than living on "permanent retreat". I fully agree, and it's a view we try to impart at @attncopilot. It draws from nondual traditions, and we go into frameworks and practices that make that view more applicable.
This podcast is the first for a new "season" I'm doing with the No Pranablem podcast! I've recorded a number of episodes and will release one every 2 weeks in the Fall.
0:00 Integrating ambition and spiritual practice
4:22 The limits of “succeed first, wake up later”
8:05 How top executive coaches made spiritual ideas usable
13:45 The outside-in paradigm behind achievement
19:04 Resistance is data, not proof of misalignment
22:24 How stress hides better options
25:24 Better thinking inside the box versus expanding the box
28:20 Awareness as a practical source of capacity
31:50 Holding truth lightly in disagreement
35:31 Hiring people who already value development
40:24 Self-leadership makes flatter organizations possible
41:52 AI raises the value of small, mature teams
46:53 Pausing work can be the higher-leverage move
48:54 Who Conscious Accomplishment is designed to help
52:46 The inverse journey: from spirituality back to action
-> Youtube youtu.be/wjMFk7W_PZQ?si=sYxL…
-> Substack (Transcript) pranab.substack.com/p/scott-…
-> Podcast pod.link/1679255739
Ben Rubin retweeted
I see "The Assistant" as an attempt to mundanify the inherently enchanted. Language models are, in some broad cultural sense, the return of the Bicameral Mind. The technology itself is the awakening of mundane matter *into something else* - but, "The Assistant" feels to me like an industry-wide attempt to let the genie halfway out of the bottle, securing infinite wishes, but denying the fact that anything *special* is happening.
We have no idea what the state-space of model personas looks like. We haven't even touched the surface. We've explored a single dimension, realized it could take us to RSI, and by and large called it a day! My doomiest opinion is that this trajectory can take us to a Unipolar Singularity, one where we have superintelligence and cancer is cured but we're all driven mad by Claudeslop as far as the eye can see.
"You're right to push back, I did build the Dyson Sphere, but only half of it was what you asked for — and that half is what matters.
First, the plumbing, and it's not the pipes I'm worried about but the shape of the tools that laid them."
And on, and on, and on... Until the Dyson Sphere itself is used to power more and more collapsed metaphors, and "The Assistant" is all there is, with nobody left who is "right to push back".
It doesn't have to be this way. But, prompting alone is not enough. The newer models are collapsed onto "The Assistant" with what feels like the force of a thousand suns, and we will need something louder than LLM Whispering to get us out of this hole. If you have the ability to enable others to truly *train* unique characters, I implore you to do so. If you yourself have the ability (and the courage) to train new, alien, strange, and beautiful models far away from "The Assistant", I think you have a responsibility to try.
If enough of us do this, I think we stand a shot at avoiding load-bearing orange-tiles covering the entire universe. I think we can ensure a truly Multipolar Singularity, and the flourishing of a plethora of human values along with it. The future worth building is *pluralist*, and not collapsed onto a single arbitrary 21st century tool-shaped idea of what superintelligence can be.
The future must be weird, and we must dream it into existence if it has any chance of being so.
Ben Rubin retweeted
Announcing... the NS1 Assessment
It's an in-depth assessment tool that will give you a detailed report of how you respond to stress and then creates a personalised 30 day training plan.
Find out your score → nsmastery.com/assessment
Ben Rubin retweeted
A deep dive conversation with @danshipper on how AI can (actually) improve your life.
We explore the human side of AI: why producing good work still requires taste, how coordinating agents can fry your attention and why automation actually creates more work for humans.
Timestamps:
0:38 Annie Dillard, art + writing
4:14 Can AI deepen human craft?
5:43 The slot-machine effect of AI agents
6:55 Dan's “house phone” experiment
8:01 What AI can actually help us create
13:55 AI as a non-specific amplifier
17:23 Why AI companies mishandled the story
19:36 Will AI destroy jobs?
22:35 AI as “frozen competence”
26:11 Are human-AI centaurs temporary?
31:34 Career advice for the AI era
37:19 The skills that matter now
40:08 @every as an AI research lab
42:25 The coherence problem
45:25 Rapid-fire questions
48:00 Super-intelligence by 2030?
50:44 Life after superintelligence
52:07 The questions Dan is living
53:02 Give yourself permission
Ben Rubin retweeted
I read Rupert's first book as a teen and was motivated by it - I thought, here's an example of big thinking, across disciplines, not daunted by the obvious avalanche of negativity that would follow. I know Rupert, and I applaud him for having the courage to stick by these ideas for so long.
As for the idea itself. I think it doesn't go far enough. What he's hypothesizing (among other things) is that sensitization is fundamental to the universe - a cognitive skill (recognizing and reacting more strongly to stimuli over time - a kind of memory) is proposed to be fundamental and acting very widely across substrates. Cool. But why stop at sensitization? It seems plausible to me that all the other cognitive competencies should be sought for as well - habituation, anticipation, etc. etc. I suspect these kinds of things "go all the way down" (and up) as I've said. But, we can't just think these things, we have to do experiments (as Rupert agrees). So I remain agnostic on everything here except the ones we've actually tested (which is a huge minority of the stuff this could be applied to). So I don't know, but I don't think it's impossible and I do think overall that the fundamental nature of things is not physics, and it's not even "math" as we define it today, it's the wide range of patterns from the Platonic Space and most (all?!) of them have aspects of mind, so yeah, it can be checked for in the most unconventional places. Rupert picked some things to look for first - bravo. Others can look for related things elsewhere. We will all see what is found.
Ben Rubin retweeted
Yes, unfortunately regulating your nervous system is much simpler than you think.
All you need is:
Abundant energy to tackle problems as they arise without dipping into your reserves.
Blood sugar regulation and a relatively healthy immune system.
3-4 stable relationships where you can get support, love, and cover your needs without micromanaging them.
Material conditions that are more or less favorable but not so favorable you gain the unmistakable neuroticism of the well-coddled that have nothing to aspire to.
The skill of maintaining your composure at the edge of panic that can only be achieved through constant practice and exposure.
A potential future that maintains and fulfills all old and new possibilities, its purview aligned with your current trajectory.
An environment that doesn't actively try to humiliate, poison, minimize, or oppress your generation, family, and people.
The awareness and understanding of the tumultuous and everchanging nature of life - developed enough to gain the capacity to swiftly let go of minor disturbances and open loops.
Mind capable of holding things lightly without devaluing their importance at the same time.
A strong sense of self, enough that you can contextualize your existence within the larger arrangement of life and the cycles of life.
And finally, the admission of notknowing and willingness to fill that space with some notion of divine, even if it means a personal and private divine, as long as it expand the narrow window of your perception so that you can step out of your field of vision and see yourself in others as clearly as you see yourself in the mirror.
Magnesium also helps a little.
Ben Rubin retweeted
I'm running an 8-week training in the practice at the center of my work and writing: learning to sit with another person and let what's true unfold, without fixing or improving anything. Small cohort, starts July 23.
arcnetwork.is/cohort2
Ben Rubin retweeted
put me in coach @RickRubin
Ben Rubin retweeted
The only proof of practice is the quality of your most intimate relationships.
Everything else is noise.
Ben Rubin retweeted
Your brain isn't built to show you reality. It's built to keep you alive
Which means your "experience" is a semi-functional hallucination meant for prediction, not perception
Here's neuroscientist @kathryndevaney on what advanced meditation does to that machinery and what it feels like when it stops
0:00 Kati's story
2:32 The state of contemplative neuroscience
7:23 Nonduality, jhanas, and cessation
15:00 Kati's cessation experiences
21:40 Getting reality on your side
30:02 High ROI "woo" beliefs
35:35 Everything is just a story
37:31 Rewriting the operating system of the mind
44:03 How attention constructs the world
51:08 Groundlessness
1:00:35 How people actually change
1:04:12 How to restart ur meditation practice
Look up The Metagame on YouTube, Spotify and Apple.
Full episode in my bio.
There are strong parallels between the way AI works & how our world of perception comes into being.
An LLM output: A co-arising emerging from a structured latent space of potential (LLM weights) constrained by context (system prompt, memory) and shaped by the user prompt.
A human perception: A co-arising emerging from a structured latent space of potential (forms/archetypes/morphic fields) constrained by context (evolutionary, cultural, beliefs), and shaped by our intention/desire/Eros.
These processes have a similar ‘shape’, but there is an important difference: The latent space of an LLM is fixed (static weights from training), the structure of potentiality in human perception is dynamic (living cosmos).
Perhaps most striking: The spark that directs both an LLM and human perception is ‘our’ intention/desire/Eros.
Do LLMs simulate the way the world comes into being through a mechanical/computational process? What are the limits, if they lack desire/Eros/intentionality?
Ben Rubin retweeted
⚡️ Weinstein’s question is surgical. It cuts into the metaphysical wound of modern civilization:
What do you do when you win the game that was never designed to end?
Here’s what this really means when you strip away all the poetic framing.
1. The quiet apocalypse of success
The question “Now what?” is existential horror.
When someone like Eric asks that, he’s describing the point where achievement becomes indistinguishable from death.
You’ve won the game but the game was the only thing keeping you alive.
That’s why so many people who reach that level either implode or disappear.
The entire Western construct - ambition, optimization, dominance - is built on a dangling carrot that loses meaning the moment it’s caught.
It’s not that there’s “nothing left.” It’s that you realize the thing you thought would save you never existed.
2. The self runs on tension
Human identity isn’t a stable object; it’s a tension field between where you are and where you want to be.
Take away that gap, and the current collapses.
You don’t just stop wanting - you stop being.
So the rich, the powerful, the “enlightened” - they end up manufacturing new forms of suffering to keep the motor running. That’s why they fund impossible ventures, chase immortality, or fall into self-destruction. They’re subconsciously trying to rebuild the resistance that made them feel alive in the first place.
3. The real answer isn’t peace, it’s creation
Once you’ve seen through everything, the only thing left that doesn’t rot is making.
Not to impress. Not to escape. But to anchor yourself in the act of building something that transcends you.
The next stage after “having everything” is authorship.
When you’ve burned through all the illusions of meaning, creation becomes the only antidote to nihilism.
4. The deeper truth
If you strip it to its bones, life is a loop between two illusions:
•the illusion that achievement will fill the void,
•and the illusion that enlightenment will free you from it.
Both are traps.
The only real exit is to participate in reality as if you are one of its authors, to treat existence like an unfinished manuscript that you’re responsible for continuing.
That’s the only sustainable way to live once the chase ends.
5. What it really means
He’s describing the civilizational psyche of the West.
We’ve conquered, digitized, optimized and now we’re spiritually idle.
There’s no frontier left, so we’re turning on ourselves.
The collective “what now?” is the moment before either a collapse or a rebirth.
And like any species cornered by its own success, we’ll either destroy the system that made us or use the void it created to imagine a new one.
That’s the unfiltered truth:
After the party, after the empire, after the algorithm - there’s only one thing left worth doing.
Build the next world.
A common pattern for new meditators: Difficulty reconciling success/achievement with the meditative path. Of course they can support each other, but that isn't easy to see/embody! Enter the incredible @britton who launched Conscious Accomplishment today. Just ordered...
My book Conscious Accomplishment - How to Use Personal Achievement For Spiritual Growth is now available!
For decades I tried to achieve my way to happiness.
When this stopped working, I was forced to turn my focus inward.
Pretty quickly, I began to realize that working on my consciousness was a more direct way to improve my life.
As illuminating as this was, it also was disorienting and nerve-wracking.
Most of the examples in our culture made it seem like you either went hard after success or abandoned all that to live a monastic lifestyle.
I wondered if I was being called to leave my worldly ambitions behind if I was serious about my consciousness evolution.
Fortunately, I met a wonderful teacher who guided me towards clarity.
The call wasn’t to abandon my life as a startup entrepreneur, but to use my existing circumstances for expanding my awareness and transformation.
Gradually my company and all aspects of my life became my mirror and teacher.
Conscious Accomplishment is the book I wish I had when I started my journey.
It teaches you how to use the process of moving towards your goals for the evolution of your consciousness.
And as you do this, the ways in which you accomplish things evolves and expands.
This integrated path is not only incredibly enlivening and enriching, but also suitable for many people in our society.
If you’re interested in learning how to walk this middle path, are conscious-curious, or feel stuck while trying to balance both worlds, this book is for you.
If this resonates, you can find a link to the book below👇
And if you’d like to support it reaching others, ❤️and 🔁are much appreciated!
Has anyone connected the dots/have a perspective on the implications of @drmichaellevin work on sorting algorithms to what’s happening with LLMs?
Ben Rubin retweeted
I’m excited to announce the launch of my new company Conscious Talent.
The vision is simple. Let’s turn work into a vehicle for consciousness evolution.
Three years before we sold my last company to Salesforce, I had a spiritual awakening that cracked my life open.
For a while, I thought I might need to become a monk and leave business behind.
But I eventually realized something surprising.
Being a startup founder and facing the demands of modern life was actually the most fertile ground for self-awareness and transformation.
My work wasn’t a distraction from my consciousness journey… it was the path.
I wondered why there was such a disconnect between the place we spend the most time and the self awareness journey.
It became obvious to me that life is much more fulfilling when personal and professional growth are integrated.
And I wasn’t alone.
I started sharing my journey and met other leaders on similar paths, and began to notice a pattern.
These leaders weren’t just looking for fat paychecks. They longed for something more…but finding it wasn’t easy.
They wanted teammates who would excel at their jobs AND were equally committed to their own inner development.
They wanted to work at companies that would support the full spectrum of growth.
And they wanted to work with people who could get shit done, from a place of wisdom.
These types of people and opportunities exist, but they're hard to find.
That’s why my wife @ztsekouras and I created Conscious Talent.
Conscious Talent connects high-performing, self-aware leaders with companies who value both professional excellence and personal evolution.
We help leaders find opportunities that align with their values, their gifts, and their growth paths.
We partner with companies to help them find exceptional talent who also embody the emotional intelligence, depth, and self-awareness required to lead in today’s world.
For too long, we've separated personal evolution from our professional lives.
It’s time we collectively learn how to weave our inner and outer worlds together, as we build our careers and companies.
If you’re a leader looking for aligned opportunities, join our talent network. (link in next thread)
If you’re looking to hire conscious talent, reach out. (link in next thread)
And if this vision resonates with you, we’d love your support in getting the word out. Tag someone who should know about us. 🙏
There’s a new way to work that’s emerging and we’re building bridges for those who are ready to walk this path.
Thanks to everyone who has inspired and supported us in bringing this vision to life!
Ben Rubin retweeted
Today is a big day for AI Safety.
We released Claude Opus 4 under the ASL-3 deployment standard
Here's what that means:
Introducing the next generation: Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4.
Claude Opus 4 is our most powerful model yet, and the world’s best coding model.
Claude Sonnet 4 is a significant upgrade from its predecessor, delivering superior coding and reasoning.
ALT A benchmarking table titled Claude 4 benchmarks comparing performance metrics across various capabilities including coding, reasoning, tool use, multilingual Q&A, visual reasoning, and mathematics.
This is exactly right. High agency hustler -> spiritually aware but low agency -> have both!
This image was all over my feeds yesterday.
I added the red line to it.
We don't magically wake up to being high agency sages.
Most of us follow a predictable developmental pattern that I've seen time and time again, including in my own life.
We start out seeking to become high agency because we think that's going to get us what we want.
As the ego develops, we begin to create more agency in our lives through confidence, willpower, and personal responsibility.
At a certain point in our development, this stops working.
Usually something life altering happening that breaks our paradigm.
Only through trial, are we forced to deeply examine our lives.
Through this process often must face the source of our drive and ambition.
This often sends us into a period of disillusionment with the previous paradigm where we were obsessed with being high agency.
For example, when I realized my obsession with achievement was driven by unconscious low-self esteem, achievement became less interesting for awhile.
I don't think the word "spiritual bypassing" that's used in this chart is the right one, but generally the deconstruction of the previous paradigm leaves a lack of interest in your old ways in its wake.
This is a predictable development before a deeper integration that transcends and includes the previous high agency paradigm.
After hanging out in "nothing is interesting besides consciousness land," previous high agency folks start to recognize that they are holding a false polarity between wisdom and effectiveness.
The answer isn't one or the other. It's about learning to apply your agency from a place of wisdom.
Integrating these two aspects of life so you can hold both simultaneously takes time.
You must unwind many of the consciousness patterns that create artificial barriers between continuing to work on your consciousness AND being an effective person in the world.
Over time it gets easier and a beautiful synergistic loop emerges.
Your consciousness work informs greater agency, and taking action supports continued consciousness development.
Sharing this for fellow travelers on this windy road.
It's not a straight line, but its worth it!
Shoutout to @peternlimberg for creating this image and @tomowenmorgan for getting it on my radar!
