Join Nadia Asparouhova, a writer and researcher of technology and culture, as she shares her transformative journey through Jhana meditation. She details how this practice allowed her to silence her inner voice, challenging the idea that self-talk defines humanity. Nadia explores the evolving concept of self, informed by cultural changes, and discusses the complex relationship between humans and AI, pondering how we might be more like AI than we think. Her insights delve into emotion regulation, profound joy, and even ‘anti-memes’ shaping societal progress.
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Nadia's Jhana Meditation Journey
Nadia attended a Jhana meditation retreat with no prior experience and was deeply surprised by the intense states she was able to access.
The style involved goal-oriented concentration leading to profound bliss and altered mental states.
insights INSIGHT
Silencing Self-Talk is Possible
Self-talk or constant inner narration is not essential for being human or functioning well.
Silencing this inner voice with meditation still allows full human experience and agency.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Experiencing Consciousness Cessation
Nadia experienced a cessation event where her consciousness momentarily vanished during deep meditation.
This experience led her to question reality and the nature of consciousness.
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In this book, Joseph Henrich explores how Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) populations developed their unique psychological profiles. He argues that changes in family structures, marriage, and religion, particularly influenced by the Roman Catholic Church, led to the emergence of WEIRD psychology. This psychology is characterized by individualism, self-obsession, control-orientation, nonconformity, and analytical thinking, which contrast with the more group-focused and shame-driven cultures of non-Western societies. Henrich uses research from anthropology, psychology, economics, and evolutionary biology to explain how these psychological differences contributed to the industrial revolution and the global expansion of Europe[1][4][5].
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Nadia Eghbal's "Working in Public" delves into the collaborative nature of open-source software development. The book explores the social dynamics, motivations, and challenges involved in building and maintaining software projects through collective effort. Eghbal examines various models of collaboration, highlighting the importance of community building and shared responsibility. The book offers valuable insights into the complexities of open-source projects and their impact on the broader technological landscape. It serves as a guide for understanding and participating in these collaborative endeavors.
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In 'Listening to Prozac,' Peter D. Kramer discusses the philosophical, ethical, and social consequences of using psychopharmacology to change one's personality. The book examines how Prozac and similar antidepressants affect mood and personality, raising questions about what constitutes mental illness and the implications of medication-induced personality changes. Kramer presents case studies and explores the concept of 'cosmetic pharmacology,' where medications can shape and perfect minds, similar to how plastic surgery shapes bodies. The book delves into the broader societal and ethical issues surrounding the use of antidepressants beyond treating depression, including their potential use in healthy individuals to enhance personality traits.
After two Jhana meditation retreats Nadia Asparouhova could silence her mind, change her emotional state at will, and even intentionally slip out of consciousness. It challenged the idea that our minds are not under our control—and made her wonder if we’re more like AI than we realize.
Nadia is a writer and researcher of technology and culture. She published Working in Public, a book about the evolution of open-source development, with Stripe Press in 2020. Her latest book, Antimemetics, is about why some ideas don’t go viral even though they’re powerful.
I had her on the show to talk about her experience with Jhana meditation and how it reshaped the way she thinks about being human in the age of AI. We get into:
Jhana as a means to nurture profound joy and calm. Unlike many meditation practices that emphasize passive observation, Jhana is goal-oriented—practitioners proactively cultivate states of concentrated bliss. Apart from helping her regulate her emotions, it prompted Nadia to reexamine deep questions of our human existence.
Self-talk is not essential as it seems. Nadia describes how advanced meditation quieted her inner voice—challenging the idea that self-talk is core to being human.
How years of cultural evolution have shaped our sense of self. According to Nadia, our modern conception of “self” isn’t as timeless as we assume. She draws on psychologist Julian Jaynes’s theory that our inner dialogue—what we often equate with consciousness—only emerged in humans a few thousand years ago; a provocation to reconsider the benchmarks we use to assess the intelligence or sentience of LLMs.
What it is like to experience a “cessation.” On her last meditation retreat, Nadia experiences a cessation where your consciousness abruptly winks out—like suddenly flipping a switch. Nadia described it as slipping into nothingness, then returning with the jarring realization that even your sense of self can vanish and reappear.
Why she likes the unknowability of AI. The mechanics of exactly how LLMs predict their next token remain a mystery. Driven by thousands of subtle, context-dependent correlations, they’re too complex to distill into a simple explanation. Nadia finds joy in the unknowability of it all, seeing the ambiguity as an invitation to explore.
How she uses AI as a writing partner. Nadia believes the trope of the solitary, brooding writer is beginning to shift with the rise of LLMs. For her, ChatGPT has made writing feel less isolating. She turns to it at both ends of the process: to help make sense of early ideas, and later, to sharpen phrasing and land on just the right words.
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