Previously we discussed how software and markets are eating the world. We discussed how the internet ate media, and how it needs to eat education and healthcare. How much more will it eat? It certainly won’t stop at newspapers, that’s for sure. The truth is there’s no limit: Software will eat every part of the world until it wears down the fabric of reality to the quantum level.
Core thesis: Humanity’s future may depend upon strengthening our agency. Multiple interconnected crises call for skilful response at a global scale - but our capacity for intentional action in our collective best interest is underdeveloped and increasingly undermined.
Table of content:
1. Perception: gathering and processing information
2. Understanding: making sense and making decisions
Nice piece that puts the human conundrum in the contexts of economics, our environment and tech innovation. Appreciate that it reminds us that any innovation or change has moral dimensions, and that the way out is through.
Humanity's killer apps include culture and eusociality.
But both culture and eusociality are OSs written on the OSs of competitive herd animals.
When humans have glitches in their culture or eusociality programming, we call them religious or political fanatics or sociopaths, etc. Regulation (laws), while not perfect, is the least we can do to help control those "rogue programs."
A version of capitalism may become the most fault-tolerant economic OS, perhaps aided by blockchain.
Women, in general, seem to have the best instincts for politics and may, iteratively, show us the way to more fault-tolerant political OSs. Women have a bias to be inclusive and to reach the unreachable, teach the unteachable, feed since we will always get hungry, and, most importantly, weigh the imponderable (h/t physician Dr. Cicely Williams).
Science and reason are the most fault-tolerant of OSs.
As much as possible, political processes should outsource policy to science and reason and rein in the externalities.
The insight that there are no externalities is a manifestation of eusociality and of a mind for science. You ascribed them to certain cultures of indigenous Americans (not all of them - they are as heterogenous as any inhabitants of two continents).
Indeed, the insights or mindsets of wholeness and interconnectivity have been discovered and re-discovered countless times over the millennia by individuals and even developed into the cultures that we call science (which is the practice of discovering and describing the properties, behaviors & relationships inherent in reality) and certain kinds of religion. For example, there are certain kinds of Buddhism and Christianity that refer to "Buddha nature" or "Christ nature." Perhaps those cultures can be reverse-engineered into policy.
Indeed, there are those who believe that a certain kind of Christianity (not the kinds that currently get headlined in scandal), the kind that was behind the abolitionist movement of the mid-1800s, went underground and left the churches during the civil rights movements of the 1950s and emerged in the 1960s-2000s as further racial civil rights, women's rights, disability rights, and LGBTQ rights. That the rainbow flag popularized by Jesse Jackson and the LGBTQ movement is the current version of the Ichthys symbol (this thought would be deeply unpopular with certain kinds of Christianity). The through-line is eusociality and interconnectivity, as mentioned before, i.e., not externalizing people but rather internalizing them.
P.S.: further reading for integrating groups and promoting eusocial traits: "From Contempt to Curiosity: Creating the Conditions for Groups to Collaborate" by Caitlin Walker. NOT for the branded terminology/lingo (I don't begrudge her her living, however), but for the broad concepts and insights regarding practice.
Great piece. Any thoughts on how to get people to realize this? And how to align incentives better? Also, how does this interact with the idea of communism - where everyone is equal and therefore supposedly has equal incentives?
Reminds me of the Substitution vs. Complementarity section of Peter Thiel's Zero to One.
For those that could be interested in exploring the agency and sovereignty concept from Daniel Schmactenberger, Jordan Greenhall and the Game B community, there's this great report on Developing agency in Urgent Times done by The Mindfulness Initiative: https://www.mindandlife-europe.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Mindfulness_Initiative_Developing_Ageny_in_urgent_Times.pdf
Core thesis: Humanity’s future may depend upon strengthening our agency. Multiple interconnected crises call for skilful response at a global scale - but our capacity for intentional action in our collective best interest is underdeveloped and increasingly undermined.
Table of content:
1. Perception: gathering and processing information
2. Understanding: making sense and making decisions
3. Doing: living together in the world
Also worth a read: https://medium.com/deep-code/on-jordan-peterson-and-the-future-51402a370d79
Nice piece that puts the human conundrum in the contexts of economics, our environment and tech innovation. Appreciate that it reminds us that any innovation or change has moral dimensions, and that the way out is through.
Humanity's killer apps include culture and eusociality.
But both culture and eusociality are OSs written on the OSs of competitive herd animals.
When humans have glitches in their culture or eusociality programming, we call them religious or political fanatics or sociopaths, etc. Regulation (laws), while not perfect, is the least we can do to help control those "rogue programs."
A version of capitalism may become the most fault-tolerant economic OS, perhaps aided by blockchain.
Women, in general, seem to have the best instincts for politics and may, iteratively, show us the way to more fault-tolerant political OSs. Women have a bias to be inclusive and to reach the unreachable, teach the unteachable, feed since we will always get hungry, and, most importantly, weigh the imponderable (h/t physician Dr. Cicely Williams).
Science and reason are the most fault-tolerant of OSs.
As much as possible, political processes should outsource policy to science and reason and rein in the externalities.
The insight that there are no externalities is a manifestation of eusociality and of a mind for science. You ascribed them to certain cultures of indigenous Americans (not all of them - they are as heterogenous as any inhabitants of two continents).
Indeed, the insights or mindsets of wholeness and interconnectivity have been discovered and re-discovered countless times over the millennia by individuals and even developed into the cultures that we call science (which is the practice of discovering and describing the properties, behaviors & relationships inherent in reality) and certain kinds of religion. For example, there are certain kinds of Buddhism and Christianity that refer to "Buddha nature" or "Christ nature." Perhaps those cultures can be reverse-engineered into policy.
Indeed, there are those who believe that a certain kind of Christianity (not the kinds that currently get headlined in scandal), the kind that was behind the abolitionist movement of the mid-1800s, went underground and left the churches during the civil rights movements of the 1950s and emerged in the 1960s-2000s as further racial civil rights, women's rights, disability rights, and LGBTQ rights. That the rainbow flag popularized by Jesse Jackson and the LGBTQ movement is the current version of the Ichthys symbol (this thought would be deeply unpopular with certain kinds of Christianity). The through-line is eusociality and interconnectivity, as mentioned before, i.e., not externalizing people but rather internalizing them.
P.S.: further reading for integrating groups and promoting eusocial traits: "From Contempt to Curiosity: Creating the Conditions for Groups to Collaborate" by Caitlin Walker. NOT for the branded terminology/lingo (I don't begrudge her her living, however), but for the broad concepts and insights regarding practice.
Great piece. Any thoughts on how to get people to realize this? And how to align incentives better? Also, how does this interact with the idea of communism - where everyone is equal and therefore supposedly has equal incentives?