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Post 36: My Sense of Aesthetics — Neel Nanda

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I care a lot about the feelings of joy, fulfilment and excitement. They’re a big part of what makes life worth living. But the things that spark joy for me, are often weird and not what sparks joy for other people! I find this interesting and peculiar, and it means that to maximise my joy, I need to understand myself and my sense of fulfilment better. Because it’s subjective, it’s peculiar to me, and can’t be understood by learning about anyone else’s. I think of the weird mix of values and impulses that form my utility function as my sense of aesthetics So my goal in this post is to do that - explore the things in my life that make me happy, find examples of them, look for high-level trends, and think about how I do and could shape my life to best achieve them. This is a pretty experimental post! I expect this to be valuable if you happen to weird in similar ways to how I’m weird (my past self would definitely have appreciated this post!) or if you know me and want a deeper insight in

Post 36: My Sense of Aesthetics Oct 2 Written By Neel Nanda Introduction I care a lot about the feelings of joy, fulfilment and excitement. They’re a big part of what makes life worth living. But the things that spark joy for me, are often weird and not what sparks joy for other people! I find this interesting and peculiar, and it means that to maximise my joy, I need to understand myself and my sense of fulfilment better. Because it’s subjective, it’s peculiar to me , and can’t be understood by learning about anyone else’s. I think of the weird mix of values and impulses that form my utility

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