This is an archive of letters I have sent out to the mailing list.
I'm on Mastodon
I'm now on Mastodon. Please follow me at https://veganism.social/@sashin...
Lookahead and Wealth Creation
Hello everyone, I really hope you've been well and indeed that you still are well. I sincerely hope that from this place of wellness you are able to act in such a way that ensures that you and all others are able to continue being well. Finding these...
Announcing Sashin Exists Vault 🔑
Hello everyone, As always, now and forever, I hope you are all well. In the last letter, I explained that I was about to engage in an online course; Linking Your Thinking in order to learn more about how to organise all of my thoughts. It was essentially a highly...
Status Update
Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing well. Here in Sydney, we are in lockdown, so I haven’t been going anywhere. A few updates on my end: * I joined the Foster cowriting program with a scholarship * Learning Japanese is going exceptionally well * Conversation Culture is still running weekly,...
Notes about notes
Smart notes are a way of recording ideas that aim to free our minds from the arduous task of holding and juggling our ideas and enables us to focus on rewarding creative work....
What I'm doing now
I haven't sent out a new letter in a while. Here's a quick update as to how I'm doing. 21/4/2021...
On Peacock's tails
Hello everyone, Perhaps it should go without saying, but I hope you are all doing well. I mean, it's not like I want you to suffer — that would be rather strange, wouldn't it. I sincerely hope you are happy, dear reader. I don't have...
A Good Explanation
The quest for good explanations is at the heart of science and all of our fields of knowledge. In this piece, I discuss the different between good and bad explanations. Namely; that they are hard-to-vary....
Good Marketing, Bad Marketing
Why not use marketing principles to keep people happy? Why not use them to empower everyone to behave in ways that will improve the lives of themselves and others? Much like a knife can be used to wound or simply cut vegetables, marketing is ultimately a tool that can be used for good or for ill....
Learning and Language
I have been wondering how much of this is also applicable to learning any language, and how much of this even applicable to learning *anything at all*. What are the mistakes we all tend to make when learning, and how is it that we can overcome them?...
A Change of Plans
Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing well. I've had a realisation, actually this has been floating in my mind for a while. When I started out writing these letters, I had so much to say, so many things I wanted to tell you. The words would...
Freedom and Incrementalism
Hello everyone, I hope you are well. I woke up early this morning to find out that we have a new President-Elect of the United States of America. It is my hope that with Joe Biden taking the reins everything can return to normal, that the pandemic will be addressed...
Zen and the Art of Monastery Maintenance
I spent a month living pretty much like a monk, in the local monastery. Here is what I learned....
The Contemplative Life
I am about to leave on a one-month meditation retreat. Here is why....
The Puzzle of Liberty
In this letter, I want to make the case for libertarian principles and introduce you to a problem I have been thinking about; *how do we get everyone to cooperate without coercion?*...
The Dawn of Life
Hello everyone, As usual, I hope you are all well. I want you to contemplate all the factors that your wellness depends on. Many of you will think instinctively to your loved ones; your friends and your family. You may also be thinking of the material things needed to sustain...
A Culture of Conversation
Hello everyone, It feels good to write to you each week like this. I sincerely hope you have been finding benefit in what I have to say. The reason I write these every week is because I have something to say, I have ideas that I believe will benefit others...
The Fountain of Youth
Hello everyone, I hope you are all well, and that you will continue to be well for decades to come. In today’s letter, I will be telling you all about the quest to ensure this happens, that is; the science behind what we have done to address the problem...
The Self-Liberating Mind
Hello everyone What does it mean to be doing well? There are two answers resonate with me here. One is when you feel like you are making steady progress on accomplishing your goals, and the other is when you are entirely carefree. The latter of the two tens to be...
The Spirit of Science
Hello everyone, I hope you are in high spirits. Wait, what does “high spirits” mean again? Does it imply that you are filled with vigour? I take that back; my concern is that you are feeling well not necessarily that you are overflowing with energy. I hope you have been...
Precious Jewels
Hello everyone, Is everything going well for you? I sure hope it is, and that you are all not taking it for granted. As expected, the United States is doing among the worst in the world regarding the pandemic. They are now experiencing hundreds of deaths per day. Amid everything...
Emptiness and the Real Blue Sky
Hello everyone, I sincerely hope you are as well as the laws of nature allow. Today's letter will be a little different. More casual. I want to share with you two stories, that I believe will shed light on some concepts in Buddhist philosophy. These are both stories...
The Bigger Picture
Note (2023/5/9): I've changed my mind a lot since I wrote this, I believe I was naive regarding the statistics and the real mechanics behind social change. I will write about this in a future piece. Hello everyone, The world seems to be falling apart. At...
Creativity and the Cosmos
Hello everyone, I hope you are well — and that reading this letter will make a humble contribution to this. For those of you in parts of the US affected by the recent unrest, please look after yourselves — my thoughts are with you. Also, please do not forget that underneath all...
On Cynicism
Hello everyone, I trust you are all well. At the very least, you are well enough to have the leisure of reading this letter. It is a good start — contemplate for a moment how many people are living right now that do not have this luxury? I want to cut...
Happiness and Problem Solving Revisited
Hello everyone, I hope you are well and that you will continue to be so. It appears that the number of cases worldwide of COVID-19 are still increasing. It seems as if the curve is yet to flatten — at least globally. Many individual countries appear to be doing well. In...
Taking Children Seriously II
Taking Children Seriously (TCS) is simply the philosophy that it is both possible and desirable to raise a child without coercion. That's it....
Taking Children Seriously
Hello everyone, I hope you have all been doing as well as the laws of nature allow. I certainly have been. I have been helping test a user interface called Material Shell, very slowly trying to teach myself Japanese and reading through the short stories of Ted Chiang. It is...
The Virtue of Bodhicitta
Hello everyone, I want to start this letter with some good news. One month ago I wrote up a letter A Case for Giving, encouraging all of you to read Peter Singer's The Life You Can Save (which you can get for free) and donating to the not-for-profit...
David Whyte and the Man with No Head
In this piece I discuss to novel pointers to the intimacy of the present moment: Douglas Harding's teachings into headlessness and the poety of David Whyte....
The Beginning of it All
In this piece I take a trip to the beginning of the universe and ask the question; how do we know this? Why do we believe it all started with a bang?...
Determinism, Randomness and Free Will
In this piece I write up my thoughts on the useful concepts of determinism and randomness, and how they impact on our conventional sense of free will....
A Case for Giving
Hello everyone, I hope you have all been well — our lives are growing shorter by the minute, it would be a shame to waste them suffering or perpetuating suffering. Many of you are now in self-isolation, lock-down or quarantine and might still be adjusting to the situation. If you are...
Ramana Maharshi's Atma Vichara
Hello everyone, I trust you are all keeping well. We are living in an interesting moment in history, somehow I am feeling optimistic that we can learn a lot from it. Although, that is not what I will talk to you about in this letter. In fact, for now, I...
Cloudy with a chance of Coronavirus
Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing well, both physically and psychologically. Please take all the common-sense steps you can to safeguard your own health and those around you. The first I had heard about the coronavirus was towards the end of January. I was attending a series of...
An Internet that Sparks Joy
What if we designed it to maximise the happiness of its users, rather than the time spent on the platform? What if the efforts of our software engineers helped us reflect on our day as time well spent?...
Beyond Concept
Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing really, really well! I haven't written in a while and I said I would have another letter by the end of the year. I have been back from my meditation retreat for over a week now. I don't...
Until we meet again
Hello everyone, As always, I hope you are all doing well. In this letter, I would like to say goodbye. Well, at least for the time being. Tomorrow I will be leaving for a five-week-long meditation retreat and will not be in touch with anyone. So this will be the...
A Beatific Vision
Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing well. I have made some technical updates to the website in the past week, I made what are called embed cards which allow me to style embedded content so that it is more streamlined with the rest of my website. You can...
If reincarnation were real
Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing very well. Last week I was at an Effective Altruism social event and the topic of death came up. I was speaking to a practising Buddhist who was curious about what I thought about reincarnation. I was able to respond to her...
Beyond Good and Evil
There is no such thing as good, there is no such thing as evil. At least not in the way many of us believe. We sentient beings want nothing more than to live happily in the world....
The Evidence for Goodness
Hello everyone, I hope you have all been doing well. That's the goal of this enterprise of life, after all, a world in which all of us are doing well. What more is there to achieve than this? An attitude that many of us hold that never ceases...
A Better World
I want you to have the confidence that you can part with more of your income and still live happily and I want you to have the trust that others can solve their problems. Throughout history, we have encountered many problems and have made immense progress in solving them. We can improve the world....
The Seed of Certainty
Hello everyone, I hope you've been doing well — I certainly have. My new article is finished. I have now left it with the wonderful Iona Italia for editing. It should be published within a week, you'll receive an email when it is. Who knows? "The...
The Tragedy of Ignorance
Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing very well. It strikes me that this is a formal way of me say I want you to be happy. If you remember last week's email, I talked about a lot of the stories we frame our existence around and...
The Arbitrariness of it all
Hello everyone, I hope you have all been doing well and that my letters are making a humble contribution to this. Aside from well-being and our ability to enhance it in others, I see no real basis for meaning in this life. Fortunately, this is more than enough. "Happiness...
The four thoughts that turn the mind
Hello everyone, Are you in high spirits? This email will be long and fun. I hope you have had a good week, for you will never get it back... This week I launched my first major update to the website in a while, you should have all received an announcement...
The technology behind this
Hello everyone, I hope you have all been doing very well. I have been busy working on some fresh updates to the website. A problem I have been facing is how I can support myself when focussing on reading and writing. Ideally, I would like to make a living from...
On Communication and Politics
Hello everyone, How are you doing? Think about that question carefully, what you tell yourself in response is important. I have been taking steps to improve my craft as a writer recently. A chance to practice writing to an audience regularly has also been a pleasant side-effect of being able...
David Deutsch's Multiverse
Hi everyone, I hope you are all doing well. I have finally finished reading The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch and since then I have also finally read Conscious by Annaka Harris. In this email, I would like to talk a little about the former. When David was a...
Happiness and Problem Solving
Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing very well. Since I have written about cutting through suffering, I think this time I will talk a little about happiness. Let me start with these two quotes from the marvellous Karl Popper. “The best thing that can happen to a human...
The problems we face
Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing well. Here are some questions I would like you to reflect on. * What are our biggest problems? * Where should we direct our time and energy towards? We all want happiness and shirk from suffering. In fact, a problem is essentially a cause...
How to cut through suffering
Hello everyone, I start these emails the same way every time, but I do hope you are doing well. I was wondering, have you ever heard the term avidya? It means ignorance in Sanskrit. In Buddhist traditions it is believed that ignorance is the root of all suffering. That is;...
An explanation of explanation
Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing well. I feel a little bad about something. I still do not feel close to being able to publish my next article How we know what we know. Epistemology — the study of knowledge — is deep. I have spent thinking about the problem...
The lies we tell
Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing well. Yesterday I had a conversation with a good friend about Sam Harris' book Lying. Sam's position was that we tend to be skilled at rationalising that it is justified when it is not and that we tend to...
Effective Altruism and Social Engineering
Hello everyone, I hope you have been doing well. In this week's email, I want to take the time to tell you about Effective Altruism. What is it? The goal of Effective Altruism is summed up pretty well by the title of William Macaskill's book. "...
The Real and the Seeming
Hello everyone, We are living in very peaceful times, I hope you are enjoying them. My question for everyone this week is simple. "What is real?" What does it mean to say that something is the case? What is the difference between saying something is a certain way,...
The Wisdom of mere muggles
Hello everyone, I hope you are all doing very well. I once found myself in line to buy Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on the day of its release. I didn't camp or anything – I just wake up early. It wasn't that long, but others...
What is consciousness?
Hello everyone, I have a question for you all. "What is consciousness?" It's not a trick question. In fact, I don't think it should be a hard question. The hard problem is how consciousness arises, not what it is. I have had conversations with...
Living is dying
Hello everyone, About 150 years after the historical Buddha died, a king named Menander encounters the venerated Buddhist monk Nagasena. The king did not know him and asked for a name. The monk provided his name, but added: "This is only a name, a denotation, a matter of conventional...
The Tragic and Utopian Visions of Human Nature
The Blank Slate is a book about the question of whether we are nature or nurture. Are we born like blank slates to be written on by our life experience or do we have an innate nature that remains consistent through our lives?...
Sakya Trizin Rinpoche and Jane Goodall
Hello everyone, Welcome to my very first email. Thank you for being interested in what I have to say. Highlights of this week: 1. Attending two talks by Sakya Trizin Rinpoche, a highly regarded figure in Tibetan Buddhism 2. Seeing Jane Goodall, the legendary scientist and conservationist live at her...