- 2025-11-16
- Meta-note: I have been told that it is cringe and humble brag-y to try to diagnose myself on stages, and that I’ll cringe at this in a year. Yolo!
- I had a blinding realisation last night that felt Kegan 4.5-adjacent
- ChatGPT 👇
How my rationalist vs post-rationalist models clashed
- (Really awesome to live at the EA hotel with people who have the exact mirror model to me in some ways, so I get multiple opportunities per day to have this 4.5 insight of “oh shit, they’ll see me as dumb and wrong just as I see them as dumb and wrong”)
My Kegan 3 view
- “I don’t know what I care about or what is important”
- “Therefore, I’ll happily do the Effective Altruist thing”
- “So, I’ll pivot away from my hobbies & etc and restart life & my career as an EA”
My Kegan 4 view
- “Aha, but the EA stuff was never alive, it was chosen, it came from outside of me”
- See for example Questioning Effective Altruism
- “What actually matters is what is inside of me”
- “What do I intrinsically care about? Music! Writing!”
- “These are therefore My Things, my destiny”
- “These are the most important thing for me to work on. Fuck impact, the idea of impact came from Without, not Within”
Kegan 4.5
- Ahhh, this is just a story. Just because I care about music and writing doesn’t mean that they are definitely My Destiny, there’s no way of knowing that for sure. Maybe I just had an early preference given to me by my Dad playing music that I liked in the car when I was a kid, and being born at a time when Harry Potter came out, which I loved reading.
- One story is that it was Destiny, another is that it was just a random occurance
How they clash (concise)
- Rationalist/EA = “pivot your life priorities and interests such that they have the highest impact & chance of reducing p(doom)”
- Post-rationalist = “follow your aliveness, your destiny, your gift”
- Currently I feel 4.5, because it feels like the rationalist one is More Valid. I think to be Kegan 5 would be to really get on a grokked/intuitive level how they’re both just stories, ultimately
Progression re: life philosophy
I was Kegan 3
- Discover Effective Altruism, “omg amazing a community based around doing good, sweet”
- Reading the books, forum posts, LessWrong in order to be a good group member
I was Kegan 4
Kegan 3 to 4 transition
- Realising that there was a lot of stuff in my EA era that didn’t feel alive/aligned
- Realising that I was trying to fit in rather than having my own world-view
My Kegan 4 experience
- So, my Kegan 4 world-view was a reaction to my EA/rat Kegan 3 model
- “Opportunity cost is for atheists”, “the point of life is to follow your passion and purpose” (rather than being nerd-sniped by abstract concepts like “impact”)
- Questioning Effective Altruism
- Becoming very disagreeable, misanthropic, self-certain.
- “Fortress Stage” - “I have my self-authored model/values, other people are idiots/corrupted/naive. Strong identification with your own frame, high contempt for others”
- Disagreeableness arc (2025-10-27)
- Not wanting to talk
Kegan 4.5 transition
- Happened yesterday, 2025-11-15
- Blinding insight - “oh god, my model which feels absolutely True is in fact just a model”
- “I’ve been totally blended with it, totalised by it”
Progression re: people
“You were never a misanthrope, you were just trying to stomach bad connections with miserable people”
I was Kegan 3
- People pleaser, trying to fit in, “I guess I’m the reason why I don’t connect with my dad” (as one example)
- “I just want to fit in and be liked. Of course, other people are correct, they’ve figured things out, I’m just trying to be accepted”
I was Kegan 4
Kegan 3 to 4 transition
- “Actually, my family are fucked and miserable”
- “Actually, other people have dumb priorities”
- “Actually, my interests and inclinations are good and valid and correct”
- “Actually, my friends/girlfriend don’t have similar enough interests to me, they value the wrong things”
My Kegan 4 experience
- ChatGPT - “I live by my principles/values/projects, which I endorse as who I am.”
- “I don’t really see the point in connecting with people if they don’t fit my principles/values/projects”
- I reply to messages quickly when we’re talking about me, procrastinate on replying when we’re talking about you. Struggle to truly care and connect
- (This is actually quite Kegan 2)
Kegan 4.5 transition
- I mean, this was yesterday, so not sure yet!
- But I think it’ll make sense for it to involve valuing people more, because instead of seeing them as fundamentally Wrong (Kegan 4), I see them as people who hold different stories to me that are at most partially true, same as my stories/model
- A wise friend has said that “if it starts to feel like you’re ~falling in love with your friends, that’s a good sign”
- “Have you ever been in love?” - “yes” - “well, that’s what it’s like to really care about someone in a non-self-centered way”