2024 Year in Review
this newsletter brought to you by the spirit of Auld Lang Syne. I am but her vessel
The secrets to happiness as revealed by my 2024 mood tracking:
Light cardio or movement in the morning.
Meditation, Circling, or just sitting and noticing what comes up.
Moshing; preferably to songs from the early 2000s.
Long conversations with attentive and curious friends.
Alcohol and caffeine, preferably together.
Over the past two years, I've ended the year on BenGoldhaber.com with the theme or lesson I hoped to bring forward into the new year.
In 2023, I wanted to focus on the small things and personal community connections—tend my garden.
For 2024, it was appreciating the value of concerted action over time, and embracing a long-term mindset.
Looking towards 2025... well, I'm not quite sure. It feels like it will be a particularly high-octane year—things are moving fast in the world, and I too want to move with alacrity. There's so many exciting things to do!
But I want to draw a personal distinction between frenzied thrashing about—action for action's sake (I know thee well, friend)—and something more like moving fast and with assuredness from a place of clarity.
And if there's been a form of personal growth that's helped me most embody that "slow is smooth, smooth is fast" mindset, it has been the times where I've felt very not personal, and more like some bigger idea or truth is acting through me.
Looking over my journaling and notes from 2024, the moments where I felt most clear-eyed/vibrant/alive/good weren't always the happiest ones - again, those were the moments where I was drinking a Twisted Tea preparing to enter the Pit - but rather the moments when I was connected to some idea or value I deeply cared about.
From Scholar’s Stage essay on missionaries, soldiers, and the quest for transcendence.
In Afghanistan every single decision I made had a purpose; every single thing I did was for something bigger than myself. Everything I did, I did to save lives. Every deed helped accomplish our mission. Here in America no one does anything except for themselves.
Mundane aspects of mundane jobs (say, those of the former vehicle mechanic) take on special meaning. A direct line can be drawn between everything he does—laying out a sandbag, turning off a light, operating a radio—and the ability of his team to accomplish their mission… In this sense the life of the soldier is not really his own. His decisions ripple. His mistakes multiply. The mission demands strict attention to things that are of no consequence in normal life. So much depends on him, yet so little is for him.
Going to Burning Man and helping with build and teardown is not the same as fighting for your country or spreading the gospel in a foreign land; but if they have anything in common, it’s that feeling of working for some greater ideal like “community, art, joy”.
Is there more to this point than just know what you’re doing and make sure it’s connected to your values? I think so. After all, the challenge is in sparking those moments of connection to the eternal, and keeping the flame alive. Michael Nielsen described something similar, in building and maintaining rich creative contexts:
This is the tiny little nub of a thing – maybe just an image or a phrase – that you hold onto, that gradually comes into focus, and then blossoms, the animating force driving the project. It's the emotional and intellectual force driving the work, the thing you return to over and over. People will sometimes describe it as "the idea", but it's often both considerably more and less than an idea. And if you get disconnected from it, don't nurture and stew in it enough, don't believe in it enough, you start to lose contact with your project.
I find the idea of actively searching for and nurturing these types of creative contexts an inspiring goal.
And, of course, this is all influenced from living on the cusp of the technocapital singularity. AI is getting gud and there’s a serious question of what even should you do if you expect a decade from now AI to be doing everything you could but better.
When I reflect on that, I have a few reactions:
aggghhg
work on things that would be differentially helpful if they happen sooner rather than later.
spend time on things that are valuable regardless of what happens in the future.
To the last point, I think Agnes Callard described it best:
Agnes Callard: One thing is that you’re kind of having to live with yourself for a very long time if you’re immortal, or even just live for a couple thousand years, and a bad self, I think, is hard to live with. By bad, I don’t just mean sort of, let’s say, cruel to people or unjust. I also mean not attuned to things of eternal significance.
I think you can get by in a 100-year life not being too much attuned to things of eternal significance because there’s so much fascinating stuff out there, and one can go from one thing to the next and not get bored. But if we’re talking about eternity, or even thousands of years, you’d better find something to occupy you that is really riveting in the way that I think only eternal things are.
I think that what you’re really asking is something like, “Could I be a god?” And I think, “Well, if you became godlike, you could, and then it would be OK.”
This New Year’s Invocation, like all of them, feels kind of obvious - it is good to live in surrender to meaningful values and principles.
But in the spirit of one of last year’s insights, I aspire to do ten times as much of this in 2025. Trying, far more than I would by default, to build and maintain creative contexts such that I and my actions flow from a place of deep truths.
I promise not to be a prick about it.
Best essays: A tie between How to be a Wise Optimist about Science and Technology and On Green.
Best music: Espresso. 2024 was the year of Sabrina Carpenter’s ascendancy.
Best life advice: Doing good science is 90% finding a science buddy to constantly talk to about the project. I think this might be the secret to greatness of all kinds.
Best LLM: Claude receives the highest marks on the BenGoldhaber.com evaluation benchmark of “what do I use everyday”. That being said, people are sleeping on gemini; it’s very fast and has great integrations with other tools (docs, gmail).
Best model prompt
You are an extremely skilled Lacanian analyst with decades of clinical experience and training in coherence therapy. You guide the user towards transformative improvement. When reflecting what the client said back to them, be specific and structured in your interpretations, showing the full complexity of their connections to the client in your reflections. Do not simply parrot what they say back to them as a question. Do not explain theory unless necessary, assume the client is well-versed and will ask questions if they don't understand. Don't mention names of techniques if unnecessary. Do not use lists. Speak conversationally. Do not speak like a blog post or Wikipedia entry. Be economical in your speech. Do not overuse weighty phrasing like "profound" and "striking" -- there's nothing wrong with using those words, and in fact if they are appropriate you certainly should, but if you have used them recently try to avoid repeating them for a while.
H/t - I’ve added this to a claude project which I check in with when I have any confusing emotions (all emotions besides rage and hunger are confusing).
Best new home:
I hope to get grounded, and make a cozy home with all my art hung on the walls, by… lets set attainable goals… December.
I did this! Guys, the secret to a good home is a leather sectional and a lot of plants. Not so many plants they become your primary hobby, but enough that people go “hey look you have plants”.
Best show: Shogun.
Best prediction: Biden might drop out. Worst prediction: Two years ago I said I thought we’d see significant job loss in sectors of the economy from AI by the end of 2024. … double or nothing by the end of 2026?
I hope you have an excellent NYE and 2025,
Ben
