📝 Alex's scrapbook

Kegan journey (3 to 4.5) 2025-11-16

Feb 16, 20265 min read

  • 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”
  • “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.

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”

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