Review: Week of September 3

Late posting!

Robin Hanson claims “escalating signaling” cuts fertility, fairly pessimistic about restoring fertility.

Austin Vernon thinks brick thermal storage might actually already be competitive for industrial use cases, enabling 100% renewable energy in situations where you just need heat.

I did a retreat with Toby Sola’s Brightmind on Expansion and Contraction. It reminded me of a lot of the great insights Shinzen shared in his book The Science of Enlightenment. Basically the idea is that as you are able to see the nature of sensations arising, you can see closely that they are always moving (this is called flow). In fact, much of sensation can be thought of as expansion and contraction (waves of sensations that are arising and passing). This is key to maintaining equanimity even with very difficult sensations.

I looked at a bunch of literature on contemplative neuroscience. I was sort of just cruising through, there an example might be this one showing meditators perceived pain as less unpleasant.