Building Better Sensemaking - Daniel Schmachtenberger - #348

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hello, friends. Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Daniel Schmachtenberger. He's a founding member of The Consilience Project and works in preventing global catastrophic risk. Having accurate sense-making is a superpower in the 21st century. As the volume of information we need to sort through increases, the ability to distinguish signal from noise becomes ever more important. Given this, I wanted to ask Daniel exactly how he would advise someone to become an adept sense-maker. So, today, expect to learn the characteristics that a good sense-making agent should have, why the relationship between sense, meaning and choice-making is so crucial, whether Daniel thinks that humanity is too emotional to reach our full potential, at what stage of personal actualisation we should begin to help the world and much more. If you're not familiar with Daniel, then today is a little bit of a change of pace. It's a very considered, very patient conversation. We're talking about incredibly deep, difficult topics here. What does it mean to communicate and coordinate in a modern era when we have ancient programming? How should we contribute to the world at large in the best way that we can? These aren't simple questions to answer. And to be honest, after I have a conversation like this, I feel moderately exhausted afterward, but it's incredibly worthwhile. I love talking to Daniel. I love having the limits of my cognitive capacity pushed. So make sure that you've got the blood caffeine levels optimally balanced because today is a big one. Before I get to the other news, the Modern Wisdom reading list is finally completed. It's over 10,000 words. It's taken me nearly six months to write and it features 100 books that everybody should read before they die. Everyone's been asking for it for ages and it is finally completed. It's off with the design and making sure that it looks beautiful and optimized, ready for me to send it to you. It'll be live within the next couple of weeks. So stay tuned and I will tell you where and when you can pick up your copy. In the other news, this episode is brought to you by Manscaped and they have just launched a brand new and improved Lawnmower 4.0. This is engineered to be the ultimate ball and body trimmer by focusing on functionality for an unbeatably comfortable grooming experience. Their fourth generation trimmer features an improved cutting edge ceramic blade to reduce grooming accidents thanks to their advanced skin safe technology. The upgraded trimmer includes a multi-function on off switch which can engage a travel lock plus you can turn on a high-powered LED spotlight for when you need it for a more precise shave. You can even have different guard lengths now. So if you want to create some sort of privet hedge style design, you could perhaps do that in three dimensions. On top of that, it's waterproof so you can shave in the shower. It's got a 90-minute battery and now uses electromagnetic induction charging to keep your battery stronger for longer. Plus, you can get a 20% discount and free shipping worldwide by going to manscaped.com and using the code MODERNWISDOM at checkout. That's manscaped.com, code MODERNWISDOM at checkout for 20% off everything, including their brand new Lawnmower 4 plus free shipping wherever you are. In other other news, this episode is brought to you by Surfshark VPN. Protect your browsing online and get access to the entire world's Netflix library for less than the price of a cup of coffee per month. You're already paying for a Netflix subscription. So why not just pay an extra £1.50 or $1.70 or something to 10x the access that you can watch through your Netflix. You can access everything that America has, all of their series, all of their movies. And if you're in America, you can come and see what we've got over here in the UK or perhaps what France has got going on. Some French Netflix for you. You can use Surfshark across unlimited devices. So one membership allows you to use it on your laptop, your iPad, your phone, even on your TV. So if you watch Netflix through your TV, you can put your VPN on there and get access to that entire global world of movies and series. On top of that, it secures your browsing online. It stops websites from tracking your data and nasty people on the other side of the internet from knowing what you're getting up to. You can get a 83% discount, three months free.
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