Daniel Miessler

Ideas

Original thoughts I want to keep track of

Here I try to keep track of original ideas I've had over the years. I do this for a number of reasons:

  1. To remind myself to keep having new ideas
  2. To motivate myself to take action on them
  3. To hype myself up when I feel unsmart
  4. To push others to create something similar

#4 is a big one for me. I really can't wait until everyone is publishing something similar (and I'm actively working towards that goal). See Projects.

My ideas ​

Here's the list in table format, with more detailed breakdowns below.

Reality is layer-dependent ​

I've come to believe that complex human issues like free will and existentialism come down to understanding that reality has multiple layers. I feel like The Fabric of Reality, by David Deusch, is a good starting point for this idea, although I've been grappling with it for years before reading it in 2024.

The idea is practical rather than technical. It's the notion that each layer of reality is valid on its own, and there isn't an actual "true" reality. Or to put in another way, the way you frame your question and your desired outcomes determines which layers of reality—and thus which truths—get engaged for the answer.

E.g.:

  • At the physics layer, humans lack free will
  • If all the fruit is missing from your fig tree, and your neighbor who doesn't have a fig tree starts selling homegrown figs, it's super understandable to have a conversation with your neighbor

Technically, your neighbor is a mechanistic creature that lacks free will, so he didn't have a choice about whether or not to take your figs. But right now your kid is asking why he can't have a fig, and why your neighborhood is selling them across the street. So the physics conversation is rather moot.

Same with enjoying ice cream, or friendship, or trying to do good in the world. At some layer they're likely all meaningless, but that doesn't matter for humans because we live spend our entire lives in layers where they do.

Humans vibrate at a particular set of layers based on our physical makeup combined with the rules of the universe, and the reactions between those ultimately determine what is real to us. And it's the same for anything else. Meaning, reality, and truth are all dependent on who's asking the questions, and for what reasons.

AUG and NAUG ​

These are two terms I came up with in 2008 that we would eventually use for talking about people who were augmented with tech—or not. My goal was to have them be easy to say and single syllable.

First, agumented.

And then non-augmented.

🚧 (Still adding my ideas...)

Callout ​

Again, a major reason for doing this is to encourage others—namely you—to build your own version of this page. Please make one and send it to me.

Notes

  1. Keep in mind when I say "original" I only mean that I didn't knowingly lift it from someone. In other words, to the best of my knowledge I arrived at it naturally through reading, thinking, etc, about related or unrelated topics and having a crossover moment. I fully acknowledge that 1) I could have been poisoned by someone else's idea without me realizing it, 2) someone else could have come up with the idea a hundred years ago and I just haven't heard about it, and/or 3) someone else today could have the same idea and simply have never shared it. Ideas tend to birth themselves at the same time through multiple people (See: Calculus).