Suggest edit — Wu Wei Disclosure

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---
confidence: high
related:
- wiki/concepts/engagement-vs-empowerment-algorithms.md
- wiki/projects/empowerment-algorithm-app.md
- wiki/practices/meditation-as-channeling-power.md
sources:
- raw/transcript.md
title: Wu Wei Disclosure
type: concept
visibility: public
---

# Wu Wei Disclosure

Coined by **a friend of Jacob's** (likely [[Harrison]], not certain — `confidence: medium`). A model of effort, motivation, and the gradient of action.

## The Taoist primer

*Wu wei* (無為): "non-doing," "non-effort," "non-force." A core Taoist concept. It does **not** mean inaction; it means action that flows from alignment rather than from straining against the world.

## The dopamine-to-calorie ratio

The friend's reframe:

> "Dopamine-to-calorie ratio. It takes a calorie if it takes more calories to do it, but gives more dopamine. That's a higher gradient to climb. But things in general are: you move downhill when you're not paying attention."

Two axes:
- **Calories** (effort cost)
- **Dopamine** (reward intensity)

Things drift toward **low effort, high dopamine** if attention isn't applied. That's the gradient: **downhill in calorie-space, uphill in dopamine-space.**

## Two states, two gradients

Jacob's example:

> "When you sit up and meditate, you have low dopamine and moderate calories. Versus, like, lying down. And therefore, if you meditate for an hour, then since there's no dopamine, the dopamine curve is very favorable towards action, empowerment."

> "Whereas if you've been kind of lying in your bed and scrolling Instagram, that is low calories and high dopamine, and so therefore the marginal cost to do something is going to be heavier."

The state you start from determines the gradient toward action:

| Starting state | Calories | Dopamine | Marginal cost of action |
|---|---|---|---|
| After meditation | moderate | very low | LOW (action is easy) |
| After Instagram | very low | very high | HIGH (action is hard) |

This is the disclosure: **the activity itself shapes the post-state's accessibility to further action.** The Instagram session doesn't just waste time, it actively raises the cost of the next action.

## Why it's called a "disclosure"

The term implies revealing something hidden. The hidden thing: most "willpower" failures aren't moral. They're **gradient failures** caused by what you did just before. If you can re-engineer the priors (meditation, walks, low-stimulation environments), willpower becomes irrelevant — the gradient is already pointing the right way.

This is *wu wei*: effortless action becomes possible when you've shaped the surrounding gradient.

## The thesis for software

The friend's thesis, restated by Jacob:

> "We want to go from a world of engagement algorithms that keep you on your phone to empowerment algorithms which empower you to get up and do something."

This is the seed of the [[Empowerment Algorithm App]] — Jacob's "secret open-source project" that:
1. Filters feeds (X, Google News) through a fast local LLM
2. Removes "low vibration stuff," keeps "only high vibes"
3. Lets you keystroke-tag any website as productive/unproductive
4. Trains an underlying model on the productive/unproductive distinction
5. Eventually predicts and **closes** unproductive tabs automatically

The point isn't to police; it's to **change the gradient** so empowering action becomes the default downhill direction.

## Related

- [[Engagement vs Empowerment Algorithms]] — the comparison page
- [[Empowerment Algorithm App]] — Jacob's implementation
- [[Harrison]] — possibly the originator
- [[Meditation as Channeling Power]] — same wu wei principle, applied internally rather than environmentally
- [[Sparks of Motivation]] — what the cleared gradient lets through

## Note on attribution

Jacob credits the disclosure to a friend who gave a talk on it. The wu wei → dopamine/calorie translation is the friend's. We list this page under Jacob because he uses and extends it; original credit to the unnamed friend.