Synchronicity Report: My Top 5 Substack Publications
Open Threads, "Wisdom for Teens", Personality Declines, GPT-5-oh-my, and some Positive Emotions
Hello dear adventurers, and happy belated Lúnasa - we’re past the halfway point between Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox.
This is an experimental issue. Paying attention to what I’m paying attention to, honoring what’s worth sharing. H/t to my top five Substack publications this week:
, Astral Codex Ten, , , and .*If you want to read more deliberate personal essays from me, you might enjoy: 42, Dear Uncle Bob, Play/Pray, Man Up!, and/or Ten Timeless Truths.
*a note on this synchronicity context window: next semester I’m teaching CO150-College Composition and CO302-Writing in Digital Environments. Also reading and writing a lot, hosting three cohorts of writers, creators, and facilitators in emerging wisdom workshops.
Newsletters are made out of other newsletters. h/t
. I have no idea what I’m doing. So I’m still copying other people who seem to have something creative “figured out.” A mold, perhaps, to fall into. “Books come from other books,” he says. Note to self: you can sing your own songs, borrowing the verse-chorus-bridge. (or, look Ma, I wrote a listicle!)
Synchronicity Report as an Open Thread? h/t Scott Alexander and
, previously Slate Star Codex, a blog “about science, medicine, philosophy, politics, and futurism.” I can’t get over his Book Review: Arguments about Aborigines. There’s moral ambition here, I can feel it. Here he is, too, offering up $200k, every year, to fund good people who are doing good shit in the world with his “largely unearned” money. Deadline for ACX Grants is August 15.Open Thread on “Wisdom For Teens.” I’m going apply to help fund an emerging practical-wisdom-for-teens initiative. If you’re interested in being a facilitator, supporter, or know a teen who might want to participate, let me know. I hope to start one of these groups this fall. Do you have any strong feelings on a Wisdom for Teens program?
“It’s the damn phones,” muttered the old-timer struggling to take a iPhone picture of the deteriorating siding on our house. The way he said it was haunting. Fitting, then, that day
published How Social Media Shortens Your Life: It’s Engineered to Speed up your Time in . Nice pairing with the end of our extremely online era by . Excited to see more phone-free school initiatives gain steam.
And then there were these charts making their way around social media, shared by Gurwinder, Tom White of , and Jonathan Haidt of :
Are we ready for GPT-5? I haven’t had too time to play with it, but loved Ethan Mollick in One Useful Thing: GPT-5: It just does stuff. Highlights a good question about “high agency,” which I’m considering more and more: how free are we? Fun test: are you free to reduce your screen time by 25% next week? Am I free to finish Part II of Dear Students, Use AI before the semester begins?
Why we shouldn’t personify LLMs. And why we wouldn’t use GPT-5 to write essays (or listicles). Here’s
in , “Bag of words, have mercy on us” (emphasis added):
That’s also why I see no point in using AI to, say, write an essay, just like I see no point in bringing a forklift to the gym. Sure, it can lift the weights, but I’m not trying to suspend a barbell above the floor for the hell of it. I lift it because I want to become the kind of person who can lift it. Similarly, I write because I want to become the kind of person who can think.
and further:
It’s unfortunate that the computer scientists figured out how to make something that kinda looks like intelligence before the psychologists could actually figure out what intelligence is, but here we are. There’s no putting the cat back in the bag now. It won’t fit—there’s too many words in there.
Context for writing/reflecting this week …
We’re conducting a tiny experiment in interpersonal flourishing — a 5-Week PERMA - Cycle Happiness Boot-Camp. Last week was on P: Positive Emotions, this week we’re on E: Engagement. Bigger picture, we’re prototyping pieces of an emergent, dynamic and wise university where people believe that kindness is intelligence.
👋 Thursday, August 13, at 1pm MST: VIA-Character Workshop via Zoom *
👋 Friday, August 14, at 1:30pm MST: Open ELF-Lab: “Engagement” via Zoom**
👋 Friday, August 14, at 2:45 - 3:30pm MST: Open Office via Zoom)***
🎵 Saturday, August 23, at 9am-1pm MST. Sean Waters Duo live at the Larimer County Farmers Market, 200 Oak St., Ft Collins, CO. Also tour de fat! (🚲) a great weekend to come visit me in CO if you want to ride in a bike parade.
* VIA-Character Workshop will explore “values-in-action” as a way to actively engage in projects that matter to us. 60 minutes with extended guided writing exercise. Bring a beverage, journal, and openminded presence.
** The ELF-Lab = Emergent Learning Facilitation-Lab features a rotating set of themes connected to facilitation practice, always including some kind of mindful free-writing and loving kindness practice. Our focus this week will be on E:Engagement.
*** Open Office hours, are drop in any time. Or you can schedule a chat with me.
Behind the paywall: A co-written summary of last week’s ELF-Labs with new writing invitations and facilitator notes to broaden-and-build P:Positive Emotions.
Sending love,
Sean
Wisdom Workshop Week in Review August 4-8
P is for Positive Emotions
PERMA-CYCLE FOR INTERPERSONAL HAPPINESS STUDIES
“For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.”
— Victor Frankl
Emergent Learning Facilitation Lab (ELF-LAB) Summary - Monday August 4, 2025
... where we're all like Santa's elves. Except Santa is Wisdom.
Gathering Overview: Three Dimensions of Happiness; Choose Your P:Positive Emotions
54-minute session focused on cultivating positive emotions as "constructive emotions" that help build us into the people we want to become. Led by Sean Waters wearing his "work shirt" as a prop to emphasize the construction/building metaphor. Sean introduced a framework showing happiness has three interconnected parts:
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