Oxford Reunion: Insights and Inspirations
Reunion
Last weekend, I spent 3 glorious days talking with old friends from Oxford. We gathered in a brick townhouse in Chicago and shared our stories of the last 10 years of our lives. We slipped immediately into the deep discussions from our time in the city of spires and it felt so good, like putting on an old, favorite coat.
Coming away from that reunion, I was inspired by the goals and journeys of those around me, the ways my friends have grown and flourished. Many had gone on to graduate school and a substantial percentage were finishing PhD’s. Many of us had added further stints of living overseas to our life, and every single person had aspirations for bigger and harder challenges ahead of them. What a gift to be tied to such driven and talented people, to count myself as a member of that cohort!
Oddities and Delights
-To the folks from Oxford, I am a philosopher, despite grinding the last 10 years of my life to become a business strategist. This is delightful and was extremely pleasant to own the philosopher title again. This meant I could ask all the deep questions and quibble over the silly nuances between what counts as evidence for a belief. I didn’t get to show my best philosopher self, but it was fun to be that guy again.
-It was amazing to have such positive regard for those Oxford friends. It was something I kept remarking on over and over again. I had not seen them for over decade and yet I feel that I deeply care and love them. We went through the trenches of Oxford together, and I deeply trust them to do good work in the world. I left wanting to help them more and wanting to connect better with them in the future.
-I went club dancing for the first time in my life. It was amazing and fun to just free form dance. Since my headache has died, I have found better and better connection to my body and dancing has been such a wild spin out of that connection.
-It is impossible to share 10 years of your life in such a short time. I’ve been through so many seasons and types of myself since Oxford and I felt the same for the folks I was talking with. I was skipping like a rock over the surface of a much deeper pool of water and experience every time I asked them about the last 10 years.
-And yet, people are pretty much the same. Personalities were matches to the ones they had at Oxford, with minor tweaks. Most of us were a bit more tired, but a lot more durable. Even the folks who had tremendous changes around faith or sexuality basically picked up their old style and plopped it down into the new camp.
-I’ve most likely missed the window on a PhD and, lord above, am I glad I did. The grind to a doctorate degree seems incredibly lonely and agonizing, the career prospects afterward are not much better than without a doctorate except in academia, and inside academia the prospects are shockingly bad and mostly offer another decade of low pay, crazy work demand, and no job protection. I’m glad I had folks in my life who pointed out the trap of academia and convinced me to find alternative routes to do work that I found meaningful.
Extended Thoughts:
Among the more important insights and inspirations to come out of the Oxford Reunion was a desire to spell out the ideas, topics, concerns that I’m actually building toward and exploring.
Following from that I’m working on fleshing out some of the topics below and solving for real problems in those spaces. My hope is to have something to share on any one of these topics at the next Oxford reunion, if not all of them.
How to effectively organize adults to live, work, love, and play together
I’m deeply interested in community. Oxford was a time of tremendous communal living with relatively low responsibility. I want to find a way to make communal living work with adults with real lives and goals. We live separately, work in isolation from our friends, and thread our habits into a dozen shallow directions. This is unhealthy and a waste of the lives we could have. I want to orient my life toward participating in, starting, and growing communities that make our lives rich and vital.
Actions: Continue to build out bjj training in home gym, keep reading up on community building books, keep organizing meet ups, parties and long weekends together. Figure out a model for financial investment that would enable 3rd parties to jump in on communities. Determine an exit strategy from the Seattle area to avoid high real estate costs.
An out from Moloch problems and the sad eschatology of AI and transhumanism
I’ve been hooked since grad school on the barbs of AI existential risk and the big coordination problems. When I talked briefly with Nick Bostrom after his book reading for Superintelligence, he broke the problems down into the two separate problems of technical AI safety and the social problem of coordination. I’ve been captured by this issue for too many years and have made little progress away from wringing my hands about the issues. I need to either put up or shut up, or at the very least, stop worrying so much about the end of days and more about the present day. I’d like to spell out a series of arguments that untether the moves, most likely from a political philosophy perspective, or that demand action, most likely from a philosophical ethics perspective.
Actions: Play a mixed strategy of continuing to invest time learning about the space, while also investing in present focused skills like meditation and community. Spell out the eschatological implications of AI and use the same anti-Christian eschatological moves to unthread these moves.
What, if anything, to do about China
I left the reunion feeling like some of the smartest people I know are very concerned about what China is and what China is becoming and how it may be a threat to a humanistic future. I worry a bit that this is a nationalistic reaction, but I also found Kai-Fu Lee’s arguments to be compelling around AI in this space. My first step is to get a better sense of what’s actually happening in China and a bit of the history around China. I suspect that all I can do in this space is upgrade my understanding from unknown unknowns to a bunch of known unknowns, but it’s better than nothing.
Actions: Read books and resources posted on SSC reddit, keep conversations going about China with folks, and determine what a win condition would look like for my knowledge in this space. Is it economics? Is it policy oriented?
How to create rich, intellectual oriented communities
This is the real struggle. Over and over again this weekend, I heard people say that they had missed the engagement and vitality of our discussions, that they wanted that depth of interaction. It’s something that I’ve wanted for a long time, too, and have sometimes felt like I’ve been trying to get back since Oxford. This is possibly solvable problem, but I’m mildly concerned that it’s actually intractable, that there just might be too few folks interested in this and it’s too hard to make it happen effectively outside forced settings like college.
Actions: I have a book club that’s reading on ethics and psychology right now and will likely continue into the future for some time. I'm tempted to spin one up around AI, and another around healthcare reform just to push this further.
I’m going to make a bid for an Oxford club Skype Happy Hour once a month. Organizing stuff like this is hard, but if it was mildly successful, I’d be happy.
I’d like to design a meet up for discussions, probably with structure for the first part, then open ended for the second half.
I want to keep pushing the idea of Good Tech and starting a lecture series in Seattle around ethics and technology.
How to stay invested and connected with and help nourish and be nourished by Oxfordians across the country/world.
This is a specific instantiation of the intellectual communities goal above, but also a more general desire and objective to invest specifically into the Oxfordians. We have a unique community and unique connection. I’m particularly interested in helping career growth and strategy, since that’s what I’m good at, and particularly interested in finding ways to invest in the goals of the Oxfordians who have oriented their lives toward making the world better and richer. I’d also like to stay in better contact and communication with those folks and keep the lines clearer and crisper than they have been in the past.
Actions: Regular communications to the group that attended the Reunion. Setting up Oxford club online events (could I run a one-shot rpg? Could we watch a movie together? Could we do a post-debate discussion thread?) Try to create a yearly, or bi-yearly attempt to travel or see each other instead of 10 year goal. Try to thread visits with other travel for fun.
How to know and love myself
There were some Oxfordians who have done a marvelous job of figuring out themselves and their direction in the world and I found that immensely inspiring. This has often been a weakness of mine and despite several good years of pushing this (to great effect), I have many miles ahead.
Actions: I’m going to mix in Metta meditation into my practice more regularly, perhaps as an end of day practice, or a s’chema type practice. I’m going to journal and let my journal be a space to just reflect and speak honestly into my self.
How to eliminate bullshit jobs and reach escape
There were several Oxfordians would rather be working more interesting jobs, but can’t for financial reasons, student debt being the biggest limiter. I’m in the same boat and it is deeply upsetting to me that talented, amazing people are stuck doing jobs they don’t like because we’ve burdened them with debt. Only recently have I managed to get a job with a big enough shovel to make a dent in my debt, and I want to take what I’ve learned from that journey and distill it for those who are still struggling, Oxfordian or otherwise. I want to help find mechanisms in my own life to coach people out of those spaces, and to potentially create jobs and opportunities not just for Oxfordians but for everyone to find ways out of bullshit jobs.
Actions: Partner with Luke on Good Tech and other wild coordination endeavors that create room for jobs, give continual career coaching for young philosophers, and offer career coaching and interview coaching for any Oxfordian who needs escape or wants a higher paying job. Make regular offerings of my network if they useful, and push to grow my network for both my own sake and for the sake of helping others have amazing careers. This action is cheap for me and I want to share the wealth that comes from it.
