David Chapman

I hate AI so much.

FADFO - By Ben Ansell A lot of people have a 'need for chaos', as long as there's no chaos

Insightful piece about this: benansell.substack.com/p/fadfo

Vajra pride and the diversity of natural nobility Just as you are, not anything special

🆕 You do not have to be someone special to be noble. Nobility can appear in wildly diverse forms—as illustrated in myth, fantasy fiction, and Vajrayana Buddhist practice. You can be noble however is natural for you—not conforming to some socially fixed idea. meaningness.substack.com/p/vajra-prid...

Seeing like a Good King Vision for nobility in an era of chaotic decline and unexpected possibilities

🆕 Nobility in current circumstances depends on an unusual way of perceiving, understanding, and acting. You BECOME the kingdom, and positive visions emerge from your mythic engagement in it. meaningness.substack.com/p/seeing-lik...

David Chapman + Peter McEwen · Zoom · Luma David Chapman and Peter McEwen will be in open conversation about deity yoga, relational yogas, and the (potential) collapse of fixed identity. David writes at…

࿇ 📺 @petermcewen.bsky.social and I will co-lead a zoom discussion / Q&A on deity yoga, relational yogas, and the nebulosity of identity:

Sunday the 20th (weekend after this coming one). Register here! lu.ma/22iop35g

(Peter is very scary but fortunately for you I am a girl. Tea will be served!)

Oh, yeah, also postmodernity, the failure of elite universities, EA/FTX & Sam Bankman-Fried, Elon Musk & hubris, meritocracy & institutional change, Nietzsche’s master-slave morality, Tolkien’s models of nobility, Vajrayana Buddhism’s life-affirming approach, software engineers eating the world...

EP 308 David Chapman on Rethinking Nobility - The Jim Rutt Show Jim talks with David Chapman about rethinking nobility for the modern age through his recent “nobility tetralogy” of essays. They discuss character & virtue as “risible” concepts, noblesse oblige & el...

🆕🎙️ New podcast with @jimrutt.bsky.social! We discussed All The Things—honor, courage, confidence, dignity, decency, and magnificence for example—and had a lot of fun. www.jimruttshow.com/david-chapman/

Chess Grandmasters Do Not Burn 6000 Calories Per Day A Note on the Production of Facts

I looked into the claim that chess grandmasters burn 6000 calories a day and found it was made up by popular author Robert Sapolsky

open.substack.com/pub/strandbe...

At least 17 million Americans would lose insurance under Trump plan GOP legislation would set back years of progress in expanding health care coverage, unwinding key parts of President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

If you're among the 17 million Americans likely to lose your health coverage (like me), now is the time to act.

- Deal with any existing health issues you've been putting off while you still have coverage. 1/

www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

First time a judge has decided a case based on hallucinated case law in the US that I've encountered.

caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ga-cou...

EP 308 David Chapman on Rethinking Nobility - The Jim Rutt Show Jim talks with David Chapman about rethinking nobility for the modern age through his recent “nobility tetralogy” of essays. They discuss character & virtue as “risible” concepts, noblesse oblige & el...

🎙️ w/ David Chapman on rethinking nobility.

Character & virtue as “risible” concepts, nobility as intention vs status, the failure of elite universities, Tolkien’s models of nobility, Vajrayana Buddhism’s life-affirming approach, meta-rationality & tech, & more.

www.jimruttshow.com/david-chapman/

🆕🎙️ New podcast with Charlie Awbery!

An unexpected question, and then we work out an answer together. meaningness.substack.com/p/whats-the-...

Thanks!

I don't (offhand) know of any other small-molecule drug that hangs around for six months doing its thing. Would be interesting to read about how that works. (Although apparently not interesting enough to motivate me to spend more than ten minutes trying to find out!)

🆕 Strategies and tactics for overcoming the typical emotional and relationship difficulties faced by software engineers and other STEM-ish people! meaningness.substack.com/p/leveraging...

Academia will form these little pockets -- people whose theorizing is outrageous & supported by methods outdated since the 90s -- but once it reaches a critical size those people just review each others papers & grants, form societies, hand out awards etc, like a self-contained parallel society.

A few thoughtfully-chosen excerpts from my "How to be a wise optimist..." essay:

Software engineers are eating the world In ignorance of nobility.

🆕 Nobility is the wise and just use of power. Software engineers have recently gained enormous power—and are not always using it wisely or justly. We can do better—and so can you, regardless of occupation or position. meaningness.substack.com/p/software-e...

"Sometimes ritual doesn’t just demand that we hold ourselves in, but instead that we loosen ourselves up."

This essay is about the *teachable* "systematic" part, which is failing in Western Civilization despite being load bearing. If we lack systematically noble/benevolent/good leaders, the future for humans is very dark.

Kickstarter isn't a good model for "I produce essays at irregular intervals, but typically a few a month."

I actually spent quite a lot of time figuring out what sort of payment model would be optimal for me (and probably quite a few others) and seriously thought about building it. But...

Thank you! I actually want to get paid to do what I want to do, though :)

David Chapman @meaningness.bsky.social provides fascinating insights into meaning and purpose and how it intersects with the personal, to social and the political. He's one of our key thinkers for modern times, and the attached essay provides a fine sample! I encourage all to "like and subscribe!"

I enjoyed this insight, by way of @meaningness.bsky.social (meaningness.substack.com/p/to-keep-pr...).

It seems obvious in retrospect that the people who rise to leadership in any organization will be those who feel greater duty to the organization than to the purpose of the organization.

Ofermōd Building a bridge across postmodern nihilism to nobility

🆕 Nobility is the wise and just use of power. What counts as noble? How did nobility become a myth? What have we lost as a consequence? How will we recover it? meaningness.substack.com/p/ofermod

New post: An island of stability in a sea of chaos

Zooming in on a patch of white space inside a chaotic image. What's going on in there?

https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2025/05/04/island-of-stability/

To keep priests in check: prefer nobility to churlishness When secular authority fails to restrain virtue experts, vice signaling becomes tempting

🆕 Nobility calls for secular authority to limit the oppressive power of priests and courtiers. When kings fail in that duty, it may fall to churls—or, better, ceorls.

I explain the mystery of vice signaling: meaningness.substack.com/p/to-keep-pr...

Priests and Kings The uneasy power balance between two elite classes, justified by virtue and nobility respectively

🆕 📺 Checks and balances between secular and religious power often make for functional societies. That isn't working for us now—maybe for the opposite reason than you'd expect? meaningness.substack.com/p/priests-an...

Most meta-analyses are bad, some are useful

I'll always remember the way he'd respond to someone claiming 'I think in my head'. Jeff would retort: "I think in the bath, in my car & sometimes in my office at BU, but I've never thought in my head".