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Joshua Meyers (Jun 10 2026 at 13:53):Hi all,
I'm taking a break from math to do monastic training!
Why?
Basically, category theory is amazingly powerful because it allows you to create bespoke abstractions for exactly what you want to describe, rather than being locked into legacy systems.
Thus, category theory has the potential to address the global technological crisis, which is that humans are using technology to destroy the biosphere -- by means of setting up alternative foundations to the whole STEM stack in order to (1) stop destroying the biosphere, and (2) support a healthy biosphere.
This work could be extremely powerful, but it is also very dangerous, because if you do it wrong, you could end up making an alternative STEM stack which is even worse than what we have now.
That is why I entered monastic training: in order to cultivate my mind so that I am fit for this type of work (or any kind of work on the global technological crisis).
See my website for more information: https://meygerjos.com
LMK if you have any questions
John Baez (Jun 10 2026 at 16:20):Very interesting, @Joshua Meyers! I liked your description of Soryu Forall. Good luck.
Joshua Meyers (Jun 11 2026 at 12:50):If anyone wants to join me here, we are putting together a 3-month cohort to onboard people into our work. Application deadline is June 19
https://cohort.monasticacademy.org/zct
V Slicer (Jun 11 2026 at 13:11):@Joshua Meyers asked me to copy this here as others might like to see it:
Joshua Meyers said:
category theory has the potential to address the global technological crisis, which is that humans are using technology to destroy the biosphere -- by means of setting up alternative foundations to the whole STEM stack in order to (1) stop destroying the biosphere, and (2) support a healthy biosphere.
This work could be extremely powerful, but it is also very dangerous, because if you do it wrong, you could end up making an alternative STEM stack which is even worse than what we have now.
That is why I entered monastic training: in order to cultivate my mind so that I am fit for this type of work (or any kind of work on the global technological crisis).
This is admirable and it's worthwhile to practice, so setting that aside, I believe you're missing a step in the assessment. I agree, we will need to keep developing our stack but the problems we face aren't due to technical reasons so more technical capability won't solve them (some might be addressed incidentally but not all).
On your page you mention
Why an ideological solution?
History moves by a feedback loop of ideologies and material structures.
as well as
Why should this ideology be a new sect of Buddhism?
Buddhism is the stem cell of ideology: it can become just the ideology needed for a given circumstance.
and
The goal of Buddhist practice is to break your addiction to make-believe so you stop hurting people with it.
Which makes me curious if there's perhaps a terminological issue because in some sense ideology is exactly that addiction to make-believe to hurt people. So in this reading the teachings don't seem ideological at all and in fact anti-ideological.
The term you made me think of though is closer to spontaneity:
In the eighteenth century, when Kant described the transcendental unity of apperception — the fact that I am aware of myself as having my own experiences — he called this a spontaneous act. Kant meant the opposite of something natural. A spontaneous act is one that is freely undertaken. In fact, the word spontaneous derives from the Latin sponte, meaning “of one’s own accord, freely, willingly”. In this sense, spontaneity is not about acting compulsively or automatically. It is a matter of acting without external constraint.
But the fundamental question is then not ideological but in choice (and lack thereof), this already is enough to necessitate social transformation, social transformation can perhaps be described as 'awakening' - allowing many to live this choice, to be able to consciously cooperate without imposition of these impersonal (and personal) structures.
There's another, terminological perhaps, aspect as well. But I believe based on what you write on your website that it's mistaken, and was the mistake Grothendieck made, to believe in an eventual such 'collapse' (for theoretical reasons discussed in more length here), rather these 'setbacks' are often beneficial to those wanting to further keep it in motion. 'Crisis' is sometimes understood by some as 'collapse' and it's not conceptually useful because it brings in too much baggage.
There are certain dynamics that are impersonal, such as the moving contradiction that enable this. And it's the problem with a new STEM stack as well, if we can't consciously cooperate together to overcome being stuck in suboptimal Nash equilibria.
As mathematicians what we're often doing is trying to make things intelligible for ourselves and others, what we can do is try to make intelligible these problems and structure that 'push' these make-believe structures on people (which is not fully accurate to say, the role of ideology is more involved), even impersonally and even try to understand and help others imagine ways of understanding and cooperating that aren't.
Thank you for reading.
Joshua Meyers (Jun 11 2026 at 14:03):Hi @V Slicer thanks for the thoughtful comments,
Unfortunately I don't have time to read those links and watch that video (unless there are particular excerpts you think are important for me to look at), though I would love to. I will just respond to what you wrote, as best as I can understand it.
Ideology/make-believe: Yes ideology is make-believe. But you don't have to be addicted to ideology. Make-believe is not the problem, addiction to make-believe is the problem. The best ideologies are the ones that (A) are relatively non-addictive and (B) help you to become free from all addiction. Buddhism satisfies both (A) and (B).
Ideology/spontaneous choice as the point of highest leverage for social transformation: Spontaneity might be defined as action from a place of non-addiction. The issue is that it is not reasonable to expect masses of people to all make a spontaneous choice at the same time; unless, however, this is catalyzed by the spread of an ideology satisfying (A) and (B).
Crisis/Setback: The global technological crisis is not something "eventual" that might happen in the future if we're not careful: it is happening now, and it has been happening for hundreds, if not thousands of years. This report gives many helpful depressing statistics to illustrate this point - for example, animals in the wild now make up only 4% of the mammal kingdom by weight; 59.8% by weight are in factory farms, and the rest are humans. The damage is already done. The environment is already destroyed. If you are not willing to face this, then you cannot have anything useful to say about the crisis we are in, even with fluency in the beautiful language of mathematics.
V Slicer (Jun 11 2026 at 15:24):Joshua Meyers said:
Unfortunately I don't have time to read those links and watch that video (unless there are particular excerpts you think are important for me to look at)
The linked video should point to the timestamp (12:58) of the relevant question. It's about the different senses in which crisis is used: Crisis, polycrisis, collapse, all of which are theoretically distinct concepts. It's not very useful to think of polycrisis or metacrisis as 'collapse,' not because they cannot lead to 'collapse,' but it's invokes centuries old apocalyptic myths in some who try to conceptualize 'collapse' using those mythologies. I think Grothendieck might have made this conflation, in all the talk about crisis and the final crisis during all the happening around his time.
Joshua Meyers said:
The issue is that it is not reasonable to expect masses of people to all make a spontaneous choice at the same time; unless, however, this is catalyzed by the spread of an ideology satisfying (A) and (B).
Taking what you're saying, is the idea that Buddhism is easier to spread than understanding social relations? I'm questioning why we should look for the best ideology to spread rather than trying to understand the social relations directly and changing them. Most people can not consider monastic or otherwise ascetic life because of the social relations, that's why there are so many lay traditions. And as I'm sure you're aware there is a big difference in practice for the average layperson and monastic so the degree to which they will have seen through different layers of attachment would also vary. And this may sometimes take years of practice as I'm led to understand, but not in all cases. Furthermore, in at least some cases it has not lead to better understanding of the social relations but rather that the tradition was altered to fit the social relations. This is what the function of ideology is, to patch over these contradictions.
We can look within the tradition as well: Uchiyama Gudō for example, who criticized Buddhist leaders who claimed that low social position was justified by karma and who sold abbotships to the highest bidder, had instead his status as a priest removed. It was posthumously restored almost a century later, quoting the page linked:
In 1993, the Sōtō Zen sect restored Gudō's status as a priest citing that "when viewed by today's standards of respect for human rights, Uchiyama Gudō's writings contain elements that should be regarded as farsighted" and that "the sect's actions strongly aligned the sect with an establishment dominated by the emperor system. They were not designed to protect the unique Buddhist character of the sect's priests".
Considering how serious the stakes are and the scale of the suffering as you yourself are highlighting, I don't think ideology is preferable to directly addressing the social relations. Addressing the social relations is what will allow many to enjoy the fruits of practice.
Joshua Meyers said:
The damage is already done. The environment is already destroyed. If you are not willing to face this, then you cannot have anything useful to say about the crisis we are in, even with fluency in the beautiful language of mathematics.
It's not from a lack of understanding or underestimating the scale of ongoing destruction and suffering that I'm saying this, but out of not underestimating how said destruction can be used to reinforce and entrench certain structures using technical advancements because fundamentally it's a question of social relations. That's what I'm suggesting we have to face.
All the best
Joshua Meyers (Jun 11 2026 at 18:19):I watched a few minutes from there in the video: he says "crisis" is often used to mean one of 3 things: particular crises like the 2008 financial crisis, structural contradictions in capitalism, or millenarianism - the last of which he elaborates for a while about how it's reactionary.
I'm not really talking about any of those: I already defined the "global technological crisis" in my first post, and it's not any of those.
To your second point, there does not need to be an opposition between ideology and addressing social relations. In fact, you must change social relations in order to change ideology, and you must change ideology in order to change social relations. So where to start in this chicken-and-egg? Ideology of course, because that's where "spontaneous choice" as you put it is located and can be amplified. I recommend this conversation between two trainees here at MAPLE, which makes this point with more clarity than I am doing right now.