for - quote - Response to Elon Musk - competition is moot - whoever creates superintelligence first week also create the progress trap that comes along with it - Roman Yampolskiy

quote - Response to Elon Musk - competition is moot - whoever creates superintelligence first week also create the progress trap that comes along with it - Roman Yampolskiy

• If he [Musk] is concerned about competitors getting there first,
  • it doesn't matter as uncontrolled superintelligence is equally bad, no matter who makes it come into existence.

for - progress trap - AI superintelligence - interview - AI safety researcher and director of the Cyber Security Laboratory at the University of Louisville - Roman Yampolskiy - progress trap - over 99% chance AI superintelligence arriving as early as 2027 will destroy humanity - article UofL - Q&A: UofL AI safety expert says artificial superintelligence could harm humanity - 2024, July 15

for - progress trap - blockchain - one unintended consequence is that it is very energy inefficient - from Substack article - The Cosmo-Local Plan for our Next Civilization - Michel Bauwens - 2024, Dec 20

for - adjacency - systemic intedependent web - predicament - progress trap - Joe Brewer - progress trap - climate crisis solutions

for - progress trap - experiment - artificial cell coexisting with living cells - Martin Hanczyc - Michael Levin podcast

for - AI - progress trap - interview Eric Schmidt - meme - AI progress trap - high intelligence + low compassion = existential threat

Summary - After watching the interview, I would sum it up this way. Humanity faces an existential threat from AI due to: - AI is extreme concentration of power and intelligence (NOT wisdom!) - Humanity still have many traumatized people who want to harm others - low compassion - The deadly combination is: - proliferation of tools that give anyone extreme concentration of power and intelligence combined with - a sufficiently high percentage of traumatized people with - low levels of compassion and - high levels of unlimited aggression - All it takes is ONE bad actor with the right combination of circumstances and conditions to wreak harm on a global scale, and that will not be prevented by millions of good applications of the same technology

for - progress trap - reducing nitrogen air pollution - reduces soil carbon storage

for - post comment - LinkedIn - polarization - Trump 2024 win - lack of collective - adjacency - Deep Humanity - deep time, species-wide singularity - conservativism vs progressiveness - progress - political polarization - progress trap

adjacency between - Trump 2024 win - Deep Humanity - anthropocene as deep time species-wide singularity - progress traps reaching a climax - conservatism vs progressiveness - adjacency relationship - This fits into a Deep Humanity explanation: - We are moving through a deep time, species singularity in which - once isolated pockets of cultural seeking and interpretative systems for explaining reality have been rapidly mashed-up via: - communication and - transportation technology - There is a singularity now where two forces are battling each other: - conservative that values old traditional cultural values and norms and - progressive that values the future possibilities - There are different cultural flavors of this. Whether it is - political polarization that pits authoritarian vs democratic ideologies or - climate change that pits traditional fossil fuel systems vs new renewable energy systems - the way we've always done things is in conflict with new ways of doing things through natural human evolutionary change - progress - In fact, we can look at the deep time, species-wide singularity that is now happening across all fields in the anthropocene as a predictable progress trap arising from progress itself

for - quote - progress trap - AI - developed by unwise humans - John Churchill

quote - progress trap - AI - developed by unwise humans - John Churchill - (See below) - We haven't even got to a planetary place yet really - and we're about to unleash Galactic level technology - So we have a we have a lot of catchup that needs to happen in a very short period of time

for - AI - progress trap - example - Facebook AI algorithm - target - increase user engagement - by spreading hateful conspiracy theories - AI did this autonomously - no morality - Yuval Noah Harari story

for - AI - progress trap - example - no morality - Open AI - GPT4 - could not solve captcha - so hired human at Task Rabbit to solve - Yuval Noah Harari story

for - Yuval Noah Harari - interview - book - Nexus - progress trap - information

for - progress trap - meaning crisis intervention practices

progress trap - meaning crisis intervention practices - JV recognizes the potential progress traps of this potential intervention

for - biodiversity - impact of monoculture diet

biodiversity - impact of monoculture diet - FAO study done before 2000 and often cited shows that 75% of the global diet comes from 12 plant and 5 animal food sources

to - stats - progress trap - monoculture - table of 12 plant and 5 animal species that make up 75% of world's diet - https://hyp.is/iznepFWoEe-umbNyOGVqrg/thefuturemarket.com/biodiversity

• progress trap - monoculture - instead of agrobiodiversity - examples of
  • https://hyp.is/kV_NalWpEe-xFufxGAqPhw/foodtechconnect.com/2019/01/07/biodiverse-food-intersection-taste-sustainability/

. for - progress trap - monoculture - instead of agrobiodiversity

from - Swiss RE Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (BES) index report - https://hyp.is/Jqw9MlWpEe-DhnehMbtbjA/www.swissre.com/dam/jcr:a7fe3dca-c4d6-403b-961c-9fab1b2f0455/swiss-re-institute-expertise-publication-biodiversity-and-ecosystem-services.pdf

for - progress trap - zoonotic diseases - from transgressive biodiversity

for - World economic forum - integration planetary boundaries into their strategy

Concern - unintended consequence - The WEF is perceived by many to be an elitist organisation - who do not have the best interest off the people in mind - This could lead to potential reputational damage to the planetary boundary framework thru their association with it

for - progress trap - deep sea metallic nodes produce oxygen - deep sea mining can disrupt

for - similar to - quote - Ronald Wright - progress trap - computer metaphor

similar to - quote - Ronald Wright - progress trap - computer metaphor - Ronald Wright's famous quote on the computer metaphor really gets to the essence of things - how much of the meta-poly-perma-crisis can be explained by the unprecedented mismatch between the rate of - biological evolution of our species - cultural evolution of our species - Culture is the major and possibly most signficant differentiator between the person alive 50,000 years ago and the one alive today.

reference - quote - Ronald Wright - computer metaphor - https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.goodreads.com%2Fwork%2Fquotes%2F321797-a-short-history-of-progress&group=world

26:30 Brings up progress traps of this new technology

26:48

question How do we shift our (human being's) relationship with the rest of nature

27:00

metaphor - interspecies communications - AI can be compared to a new scientific instrument that extends our ability to see - We may discover that humanity is not the center of the universe

32:54

Question - Dr Doolittle question - Will we be able to talk to the animals? - Wittgenstein said no - Human Umwelt is different from others - but it may very well happen

34:54

species have culture - Marine mammals enact behavior similar to humans

• Unknown unknowns will likely move to known unknowns and to some known knowns

36:29

citizen science bioacoustic projects - audio moth - sound invisible to humans - ultrasonic sound - intrasonic sound - example - Amazonian river turtles have been found to have hundreds of unique vocalizations to call their baby turtles to safety out in the ocean

41:56

ocean habitat for whales - they can communicate across the entire ocean of the earth - They tell of a story of a whale in Bermuda can communicate with a whale in Ireland

43:00

progress trap - AI for interspecies communications - examples - examples - poachers or eco tourism can misuse

44:08

progress trap - AI for interspecies communications - policy

45:16

whale protection technology - Kim Davies - University of New Brunswick - aquatic drones - drones triangulate whales - ships must not get near 1,000 km of whales to avoid collision - Canadian government fines are up to 250,000 dollars for violating

50:35

environmental regulation - overhaul for the next century - instead of - treatment, we now have the data tools for - prevention

56:40 - ecological relationship - pollinators and plants have co-evolved

1:00:26

AI for interspecies communication - example - human cultural evolution controlling evolution of life on earth

for - progress trap - AI -

article details - title - Hollow, world! (Part 1 of 5) - author - James Allen - date - 10 July, 2024 - publication - substack - self link - https://allenj.substack.com/p/hollow-world-part-1-of-5

summary James Allen provides an insightful description of ultra-anthropomorphic AI, AI that attempts to simulate an entire, whole human being.

In short, he points out the fundamental distinction between the real experience of another human being, and a simulation of one. In so doing, he gets to the heart of what it is to be human.

An AI is a simulation of a human being. No matter how realistic it's responses and actions, it is not evolved out of biology. I have no doubts that scientists are hard at work trying to make a biological AI. The distinction becomes fuzzier then.

Current AI cannot possibly simulate the experience of being in a fragile and mortal body and all that this entails. If an AI robot says it understands joy or pain, that statement isn't built on the combined exteroception and interoception of being in a biological body, rather, it is based on many linguistic statements it has assimilated.

for - progress trap - abstraction - the ECONOMY! - abstracted and separated from nature

for - progress trap - real dangers from - abstraction and siloing

progress trap - real dangers from - abstraction and siloing - Business processes create workers who live in abstract, symbolic worlds, never seeing the consequences of their symbolic manipulations - At the end of the day, the abstract, symbolic finance industry worker gets a fat salary and lives comfortably, whilist playing with abstractions of processes they are contributing to which they have no sensory information on - the separation of producer from consumer is yet another huge abstraction that cleaves the gestalt into pieces that we cannot see - ANTIDOTE to this - de-abstraction - re-synthesize - Processes have been fragmented and split apart - We need to find ways for people to re-synthesize and assemble the pieces back together again in order to - see and experience the whole picture

for - progress trap - modernity can't run away anywhere from its ruins

for - progress trap - planetary tipping points - rapid climate destabilization

reference - Ice cores provide first documentation of rapid Antarctic ice loss in the past - https://phys.org/news/2024-02-ice-cores-documentation-rapid-antarctic.html

for - progress trap - Agriculture appears to be a progress trap - Ronald Wright

argument - progress trap - Agriculture appears to be a progress trap - Ronald Wright - The early progress traps have been comparatively small in scale - During the stone age, there were no more than a few million people alive (3 to 5 million?) and - they destroyed all the big game where humans lived - The Sumerians, with a population of around one million people salted up and destroyed the fertile land of Southern Iraq - Now we have 8 billion people and a third of them are starving - Our continuous technology development is what enables us to stave off the day of reckoning but - we are losing a Scotland-size worth of topsoil every year to - soil erosion - urban sprawl - We still face the possibility of collapse - Our species has existed for 5 to 6 million years and - civilization is an experiment that has only emerged about 10,000 years ago - It's still very possible for the experiment to fail

for - statistics - progress trap - comparative levels of poverty

statistics - progress trap - comparative levels of poverty - modern civilization has - a huge middle class - a small elite class - a huge impoverished class - The absolute number of people living on less than 2 dollars a day is less than the entire population of humans only 100 years ago

for - progress trap - the agricultural-large family positive feedback loop

progress trap - the agricultural-large family positive feedback loop - Interesting to compare modern vs agricultural societies - Populations are dropping in most western countries around the contemporary world, yet - traditional agricultural societies had large families to tend to large amount of agricultural work - There is a progress trap potential with encouraging many large families with a limited land resource: - If you have larger families, you can cultivate more land - If you cultivate more land, you can have even larger family - until you reach a point when the land has been exhausted and you are now forced to reduce the population

for - progress trap - cultures that avoided progress trap of population explosion - Tahiti - via infanticide

progress trap - cultures that avoided progress trap of population explosion - Tahiti - via infanticide

• Tahitians practiced population control via
  • infanticide
    • It was ok to kill a newborn baby before it drew its first breath, as it was not considered a person until it drew the first breath
  • advanced Eroticism - separating sexual activity from reproduction

for - progress trap - dangerous mythology

progress trap - dangerous mythology - We subscribe to a dangerous myth that: - progress will go on forever and - everything will get bigger and better and - we don't have to control our numbers - or our demand on nature - because we will always find a way to make it work

• We have to break out of that mindset

for - progress trap - agriculture that could work - historical terraced cultivation in Peru and China

for - progress trap - inequality - resentment

progress trap - inequality - resentment - rapid emergence of the far-right and populus - Indeed we see so much resentment everywhere. For example, the far-right and populus could only emerge so rapidly because of such resentment of being left behind.

for - progress trap - dark futures scenario - like Easter Island but on a global scale

comment - The potential global breakdown of global industrialized society, rupturing supply chains so that our highly interdependent world becomes the very Achilles Heel that hastens its demise is chilling - It could mean a huge disruption to the most important aspect of civilization - the continuing accruing and inter-generational transmission of knowledge - It would be catastrophic to lose that, but it is entirely possible - As Wright himself famously said, to use a computer metaphor, we humans are like 50,000 year old hardware, running modern software - By that, he meant that our cognitive physiology (brain and sensory processing system) has not changed for tens of thousands of years, yet cultural evolution happens at exponentially faster rates, so much so that our biological systems are not adapted to keep up with the pace, and that spells disaster - When we no longer have the sensory or cognitive apparatus to sense danger, and we are offloading that to AI, we are in an extremely vulnerable situation

progress trap - Gedanken - Think of our ancestors from 50,000 years ago. - What Wright is saying with his metaphor is that if that child from 50,000 years ago were transported by a time machine to modernity, (s)he would have little problem integrating into modern society - LIKEWISE, if we lose all the knowledge fruits of accumulated over so many thousands of years, it would be like being born into a human tribe 50,000 years ago. - We would likely still have language, but all our technology may have to start from scratch!

for - progress trap - habits of thinking - limits - liberty

progress trap - habits of thinking - limits - liberty - Technology has provided us with ever increasing types and scales of liberty - We cannot imagine taking away those liberties!

for - key insight - progress trap - A Short History of Progress - we are clever but NOT wise!

key insight - progress trap - A Short History of Progress - we are clever but NOT wise! - In other words - Intelligence is FAR DIFFERENT than wisdom

new memes - We have an abundance of intelligence and a dearth of wisdom - A little knowledge is dangerous, a lot of knowledge is even more dangerous

for - progress trap - archeology - Easter Island

progress trap - archeology - Easter Island - The archeology tells the fascinating story of the progress trap that Eastern Island ancestors created. - Easter Island is desolate and only 64 square miles total - It is located 2,000 miles (3218 km) from the nearest landmass of South America - Archeologists trying to piece together the stone monoliths of Easter Island found pollen samples in the crater lakes on the island, proving that the place was once a thriving forest - By the time the first Europeans landed (the Dutch) on Easter Island, it was just grassy hills - How did it go from a lush forest land to a grass land? - The layers of pollen samples told a story - The aboriginal polynesians that the Dutch explorers encountered arrived about 1,000 years earlier - They cut down the forest, grew their population and used trees in many ways, including to transport the huge stone monoliths that paid respect to their ancestors - The original people multiplied then separated into separate warring tribes - The environment was devastated as the logging destroyed the forest and all the abundant ecosystem that provided for their sustenance - This created severe erosion and the soil became impoverished - The tribes collapses into warfare and cannibalism

progress trap - Easter Island - Sumeria etc - lesson - don't romanticize our ancestors - Human groups have continuously sabotaged themselves through overexploitation and lack of foresight - Progress traps have been a constant part of our species for a long, long time

for - quote - metaphor - progress trap - live off the interest, not the principal of nature - Ronald Wright

for - progress trap - example - weapons leading to nuclear weapons

progress trap - example - weapons leading to nuclear weapons - These are the most ironic inventions of civilization - We spend significant percentages of our budgets maintaining and escalating them, meanwhile, we all know we cannot use them as it would mean billions would die

quote progress trap - nuclear weapons - When you're talking nuclear weapons that can never be used you're investing in something that's completely useless - that you're maybe burying in the ground in the form of missile silos or - you're putting into submarines or - into aircraft or missiles - You can never use these things and they are draining off the surplus that might otherwise be used into - wealth redistribution and into - long-term sustainability

for - adjacency - progress trap - pyramid scheme

adjacency - between - progress trap - pyramid scheme - adjacency relationship - the pyramid sales scheme works as long as you can - continue to draw in new investors and new buyers - you concentrate the wealth upwards - you're not actually making real wealth - you're simply taking the wealth from the rubes who are coming in, in order to pay off the people who invested earlier to make it seem like it's a sustainable enterprise when it isn't (ponzi scheme) - Unfortunately, civilizations in their relationship to nature seem to follow that pattern - They expand the base and then when the base can't be expanded anymore - then all the environmental problems that have been hidden by constant expansion suddenly come back and hit them in the face - And those environmental problems of course cause social problems - They very often cause revolutions and wars because - suddenly people realize the pie is not getting bigger so therefore they become discontented with the small slice that they're getting, - unless they're people at the top of the pyramid - So it's a pyramid in the sense of a social pyramid too

for - progress trap - civilization itself is one

for - progress trap - example - internal combustion engine / fossil fuels

progress trap - example - internal combustion engine / fossil fuels - This is one of my favorite examples. - Nobody could foresee that the ICE burning fossil fuels could lead us to destabilize Earth's entire climate system

for - definition - progress trap - Ronald Wright

definition - progress trap - A seductive trail of successes that leads to a catastrophic end - Ronald Wright - defined in his book "A Short History of Progress"

for - progress trap - example - from history - Sumerian civilization

progress trap - example - from history - Sumerian civilization - the really big progress traps uh come with with the invention of agriculture and - i mentioned the first full-blown civilization in the old world the sumerians who perfected the art of irrigation in what is now southern iraq and - for for several centuries everything went really well - They had built canals and ran the water onto the desert and were able to - raise more and more crops and - expand their farmland and - expand their population and - their cities got bigger - their numbers got greater but - what they didn't know is that the kind of irrigation they were practicing - was causing the land to get saltier and saltier - and after a number of centuries they suddenly saw their farm meals declining because of salinity - and they had to switch to crops that could tolerate more salt - and then eventually they ended up producing only about one quarter of the food that they'd been able to produce when they started -and the civilization collapsed - So they had walked into what i call in my book a progress trap - and this is where the myth of progress is so seductive - You do something that in the short run produces obvious benefits so you're getting this positive feedback from some new invention, whether it's - a new way to drive mammoth over a cliff or - it's a new way to expand your farm base through irrigation - but there's a hidden cost down the road which is often hard to foresee

for - quote - myths - Ronald Wright - adjacency - myths - perspectival knowing - emptiness - progress trap

Quote - Myths - Ronald Wright - (see below) - Myths are not necessarily untrue. They're usually partly true. The danger lies in the part that isn't true.

Comment. - What a great little sentence! - From this perspective, so many things that people claim as "true" are actually myths.

adjacency - between - myths - progress traps - perspectival knowing - emptiness - adjacency relationship - Myths emerge out of perspectival knowing of reality (Vervaeke) - The emptiness of reality is in stark contrast to reductionist thinking which is always relatively incomplete in comparison - This leads to the emergence of progress traps

for - progress trap - example - cell phone usage

for - progress trap - achieving narrowly defined goals with externalities

progress trap - achieving narrowly defined goals with externalities - Within the field of progress traps, - progress is the focus on intended consequences and - progress traps are the unintended consequences reference - Ronald Wright - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=Ronald+Wright

for - podcast - great simplification - Nate Hagen - guest - Daniel Schmachtenberger - topic progress

for - progress trap - statins

progress trap - statins - heart health - Long term studies show that the mainstream prescription of statins to lower LDL levels over 10 year period increases risk for: - insulin resistance and - type 2 diabetes - both of which are primary drivers of heart disease - hence, Statins are a progress trap

for - progress trap - AI - threat of superintendence - interview - Leopold Aschenbrenner - former Open AI employee - from -. YouTube - review of Leopold Aschenbrenner's essay on Situational Awareness - https://hyp.is/ofu1EDC3Ee-YHqOyRrKvKg/docdrop.org/video/om5KAKSSpNg/

for - key insight - AI - progress trap - nightmare scenario - dictator controlling superintelligence

meet insight - AI - progress trap - nightmare scenario - locked in dictatorship controlling superintelligence - millions of AI controlled robotic law and enforcement agents could police their populace - Mass surveillance would be hypercharged - Dictator loyal AI agents could individually assess every single citizen for descent with near perfect lie detection sensor - rooting out any disloyalty e - Essentially - the robotic military and police force could be wholly controlled by a single political leader and - programmed to be perfectly obedient and there's going to be no risks of coups or rebellions and - his strategy is going to be perfect because he has super intelligence behind them - what does a look like when we have super intelligence in control by a dictator ? - there's simply no version of that where you escape literally - past dictatorships were not permanent but - superintelligence could eliminate any historical threat to a dictator's Rule and - lock in their power - If you believe in freedom and democracy this is an issue because - someone in power, - even if they're good - they could still stay in power - but you still need the freedom and democracy to be able to choose - This is why the Free World must Prevail so - there is so much at stake here that - This is why everyone is not taking this into account

for - progress trap - double bind - AI - ubiquity

progress trap - double bind - AI - ubiquity - Rationale: we will have to equip many systems with AI - including military systems - Already connected to the internet - AI will be embedded in every critical piece of infrastructure in the future - What happens if something goes wrong? - Now there is an alignment failure everywhere - We will potentially have superintelligence within 3 years - Alignment failures will become catastrophic with them

for - progress trap - AI - example - give prompt for AI to earn money

progress trap - AI - example - instruct AI to earn money - Getting a base model to make money. By default it may well learn - to lie - to commit fraud - to deceive - to hack - to seek power - because in the real world - people actually use this to make money - even maybe they'll learn to - behave nicely when humans are looking and then - pursue more nefarious strategies when we aren't watching

for - progress trap - AI - one nightmare scenario

progress trap - AI - one nightmare scenario - Whoever is the first to control superintelligence will possibly have enough power to - seize control from pre superintelligence forces - even without the robots small civilization of superintelligence would be able to - hack any undefended military election television system and cunningly persuade generals electoral and economically out compete nation states - design new synthetic bioweapons and then - pay a human in Bitcoin to synthetically synthesize it

for - progress trap - AI and even more powerful weapons of destruction

progress trap - AI and even more powerful weapons of destruction - The podcaster's excitement seems to overshadow any concern of the tragic unintended consequences of weapons even more powerful than nuclear warheads. - With human base emotions still stuck in the past and our species continued reliance on violence to solve problems, more powerful weapons is not the solution, - indeed, they only make the problem worse - Here is where Ronald Wright's quote is so apt: - We humans are running modern software on 50,000 year old hardware systems - Our cultural evolution, of which AI is a part of, is happening so quickly, that - it is racing ahead of our biological evolution - We aren't able to adapt fast enough for the rapid cultural changes that AI is going to create, and it may very well destroy us

for - progress trap - AI triggering massive economic growth - planetary boundaries

progress trap - AI triggering massive economic growth - planetary boundaries - The podcaster does not consider the ramifications of the potential disastrous impact of such economic growth if not managed properly

for - progress trap - AI and human enslavement?

progress trap - human enslavement? - Isn't what the speaker is talking about here is that - AI will be the masters and - humans will become slaves?

for - progress trap - superintelligence threat

progress trap - superintelligence threat - super intelligence is going to be far beyond our cognitive capabilities across many domains. For example, - it's going to be able to find exploits in human code too subtle for humans to notice - it's going to be able to generate code too complicated for any human to understand - even if the model spent decades trying to explain it - How do we entrust ourselves to a superintelligence that is so far beyond us? If it thinks we are expendable, it could easily find our weaknesses and bring about extinction

for - progress trap - debate - nobody is discussing the dangers of such a project!

progress trap - debate - nobody is discussing the dangers of such a project! - Civlization's journey has to create more and more powerful tools for human beings to use - but this tool is different because it can act autonomously - It can solve problems that will dwarf our individual or even group ability to solve - Philosophically, the problem / solution paradigm becomes a central question because, - As presented in Deep Humanity praxis, - humans have never stopped producing progress traps as shadow sides of technology because - the reductionist problem solving approach always reaches conclusions based on finite amount of knowledge of the relationships of any one particular area of focus - in contrast to the infinite, fractal relationships found at every scale of nature - Supercomputing can never bridge the gap between finite and infinite - A superintelligent artifact with that autonomy of pattern recognition may recognize a pattern in which humans are not efficient and in fact, greater efficiency gains can be had by eliminating us

for - progress trap - AI - milestone - automated AI researcher

progress trap - AI - milestone - automated AI researcher - This is a serious concern that must be debated - An AI researcher that does research on itself has no moral compass and can encode undecipherable code into future generations of AI that provides no back door to AI if something goes wrong. - For instance, if AI reached the conclusion that humans need to be eliminated in order to save the biosphere, - it can disseminate its strategies covertly under secret communications with unbreakable code

for - AI - progress trap - nice simple explanation of how progress traps propagate

for - progress trap - Generative AI - copyright infringement vs Unfair business practice argument

for - progress trap - AI music - oversaturated market

for - progress trap - AI music - dilution of general royalty pool - due to large volume

For - progress trap - AI - Generative AI - IP - Yale Law Journal

for - progress trap - AI music - critique - Folia Sound Studio - to - P2P Foundation - Michel Bauwens - Commons Transition Plan - Netarchical Capitalism - Predatory Capitalism

to - P2P Foundation - Michel Bauwens - Commons Transition Plan - Netarchical Capitalism - Predatory Capitalism https://hyp.is/o-Hp-DCAEe-8IYef613YKg/wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Commons_Transition_Plan

for - wicked problems - progress trap - bad news - desensitization

wicked problems - progress trap - bad news - desensitization - many people become desensitized to bad news

for - progress trap - parenting - traumatizing our children - Nora Bateson - quote - Nora Bateson - progress trap - traumatizing our children

quote - Nora Bateson - progress trap - traumatizing our children (see below) - Let's face it, - If you create a traumatized child - you then have to have the capacity - for dealing with the traumatized child - So it's not just out of benevolence to him but also that - it's a lot easier to be in relationship with someone for the rest of your life that - you haven't damaged

for - quote - progress trap - Nora Bateson - book - Combining

quote - progress trap - Nora Bateson - book - Combining - (see below)

• In the singularity of its mission to hastily fix one malady at a time
  • the cure may be more harmful than the wound
• Most identified problems as they have emerged
  • are really the consequence or symptoms of other conditions
• The solution to the consequence is likely to perpetuate the actual problem

for - question - How to respond when asked what's the point or what's in it for me? - adjacency - what's the point? - what's in it for me? - human attention - progress traps

question - How to respond when asked what's the point or what's in it for me? - When these questions pop up, - it can be a good opportunity to engage the other in deeper dialogue to reveal deeper complexity

adjacency - between - questions - what's in it for me? - what's the point? - human attention - progress trap - complexity - emptiness - adjacency relationship - These questions come up a lot - and they indicate a normative human tendency: - When we focus attention on what we consider salient in our dynamic, constructed salience landscape - at the same time it defocuses our attention from the rest of the field the salient feature occurs within - In this sense, overemphasize on these questions could reveal a dependency on oversimplification - of the complexity inherent all every life situation - Remember that emptiness, with its pillars of - intertwingledness and - change - pervades everything, everywhere and everytime - and such continuous oversimplification is tantamount to - ignoring the empty nature of reality and - leads to progress traps

for - adjacency - open source - Stop Reset Go complexity mapping - objective - Nora Bateson comment on more information - diversity - Indyweb/Indranet - progress trap mitigation

adjacency - between - Nora Bateson comment - Stop Reset Go complexity mapping<br /> - open source - progress trap mitigation - Indyweb/Indranet

• adjacency relationship
  • When Nora talks about the
    • oversimplified,
    • reductionist
  • problem-solving approach that most of modernity employs to tackle wicked problems,
  • it boils down to oversimplification.
  • There are usually far more causes and conditions to a problem than are known to construct the solution
  • In Deep Humanity praxis, this is how we get into progress traps, the shadow side of progress
    • https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=progress+trap
  • The Stop Reset Go complexity mapping system is designed to reveal greater information by
    • creating a space for diverse perspectives to systematically engage in addressing the same wicked problem
  • This system must be open source in order to create the space for maximum diversity
  • The Stop Reset Go process is specifically designed as a workspace for diversity for the purpose of
    • mitigating progress traps and
    • helping find more effective ways to address wicked problems
  • This is done by using Trailmark Markin notation within the Indyweb/Indranet people-centered, interpersonal software ecosystem

for - quote, key insight - progress trap - Nora Bateson

quote - progress trap - Nora Bateson - Nora hits the head of the nail with this observation - There are always multiple causes to one result - and by addressing only one cause, we cannot solve the problem, but in fact - allow it to continue and often make it worse - This is essentially another way of stating the teachings of millenia of Eastern philosophy, - that the universe is - infinitely interconnected - and its inherent nature of continuous transformation - Therefore, any state, which might be recognized as a problem state - is the result of many different causes and conditions coalescing

for - progress trap - Nora Bateson

for - quote - progress trap - Nora Bateson

quote - progress trap - Nora Bateson - (see below) - it's really easy to get distracted by the alarms that are ringing - and like you said, there are many that pulls us into reaction mode - that has been long steeped in industrial responsiveness - which is to the first order - that is, if something is happening we want to stop that thing from happening - whatever it is, whether it's - a refugee crisis or - a nuclear war threat or a this or a that - and that first order response does not take into account - the next and the next and the next order of consequences - so it's a kind of thinking that is very much appropriate for - engineering, - for building machines - but it's not appropriate for complex living systems

adjacency - between - Nora Bateson comment on first order industrial responsiveness - progress trap - Stop Reset Go complexity mapping - Deep Humanity - progress trap - emptiness/shunyata - adjacency relationship - What Nora is saying is articulated within the Deep Humanity praxis using the language of progress traps - Dan O'Leary - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=dan+o%27leary - Ronald Wright - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=ronald+wright - which are the unintended consequences of progress - Deep Humanity praxis relates progress traps to the intertwingled Eastern philosophical ideas of - emptiness (shunyata) - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=emptiness - dependent arising and - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=dependent+arising - interdependent origination - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=interdependent+origination - In the context of the Stop Reset Go complexity mapping process, - to be integrated into the Indyweb / Indranet web 3 software ecosystem, - is designed to map multiple perspectives of how to solve a problem - so that we can see the many different solutions and avoid simply adopting a first order response solution - in so doing, it integrates complexity into our problem solving process and helps to mitigate - future progress traps in our solutions - The Indyweb / Indranet is a technology ecosystem designed to reflect the two pillars of emptiness: - (evolutionary) change and - interdependent origination / intertwingularity, - reflecting a universe that is fractally connected in all - dimensions and - scales - Stop Reset Go will be integrated into the Indyweb/Indranet as a specific Markin notation.

for - progress - progress trap

for - progress trap - food - artificial sweetener - xylitol - erythritol

progress trap - food - artificial sweetener - xylitol - erythritol Abstract - Low-calorie sweeteners are widely used sugar substitutes in processed foods with presumed health benefits. - Many low-calorie sweeteners are - sugar alcohols that also - are produced endogenously, - albeit at levels - over 1000-fold lower than observed following - consumption as a sugar substitute.

conclusion - Xylitol is associated with incident MACE risk. - Moreover, xylitol both - enhanced platelet reactivity and - thrombosis potential in vivo. - Further studies examining the cardiovascular safety of xylitol are warranted.

for - progress trap - food - artificial sweetener - xylitol - erythritol

progress trap - food - artificial sweetener - xylitol - erythritol - Low-calorie sweeteners are widely used sugar substitutes in processed foods with presumed health benefits. - Many low-calorie sweeteners are - sugar alcohols that also - are produced endogenously, - albeit at levels - over 1000-fold lower than observed following - consumption as a sugar substitute.

progress trap - sugar substitutes - xylitol - erythlitol

for - key insight - why US geopolitics installed dictatorships - progress trap- US foreign policy that shaped modernity

key insight - why US geopolitics installed dictatorships - This was the US's rationale to justify the geopolitical mess it created this century: - If you allow democracy in the age of Communism - people might vote for communism, then - kill all the rich people, then - take their stuff, then - redistribute it - You can get a majority support for that in an impoverished country and that was perceived as a threat - So the United States was suppressing Democratic movements around the world - because if an authoritarian if a communist can win an election fairly one time, - that's the end of free and fair elections - So for decades, the US foreign policy agenda was to install dictators to suppress the threat that democracy could produce communism. - But after "communism was defeated" - all these installed dictators around the world that are the direct result of the pathological US foreign policy posed a new, unexpected quagmire - The decades of US foreign policy had created an enormous progress trap that we are all living through now - The US now had to normalize relations with the new world of dictators it had helped created out of its own fears<br /> - A new US foreign policy rule emerged to deal with this fiasco - Stay in your own country - If you want to kill, imprison, brutalize or subjegate your own people, it is fine with the US government as long as it is done within your own state borders - As long as a nation state abuses their own people, the US will continue to: - buy your oil - trade with you - show up at the UN - even have an occasional State event for you - However, Russia broke that rule

for - progress traps - transcending capitalism

progress trap - transcending capitalism - As Stop Reset Go and Deep Humanity has consistently advocated: - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=progress+trap - there is an urgent need to establish a science of progress traps in order to develop a way to integrate systematically into all human activities. - It is a new field of research for risk analysis and praxis that is based on explicitly recognizing the difference between nature and human nature, between the fundamental nature of reality (emptiness / shunyata - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=emptiness and the symbolosphere we inhabit as humans which is inherently limited by our current reductionist way of knowing reality - Applying systems thinking and complexity is dependent on the explicit recognition of the gap between the inherent limitations of the evolutionary process of human learning which results from - human bias and which always produces - finite number of relationships which we use to make decisions upon and enact in the world

progress trap - illegal drug manufacture - nitazene - fentanyl - pharmacological research becomes a source for new illicit drug production

for - progress trap - genetic engineering - Denis Noble

for - quote - progress trap - speed of cultural evolution - Ray Noble

for - adjacency - progress trap - Crispr - gene therapy - Denis Noble - human genome project

adjacency - between - human genome project - gene therapy - Crispr - progress trap - adjacency relationship - The idea that we can find specific causal relationships between genes and disease and use gene therapy to cure disease, - an envisioned goal of the human genome project - can be very dangerous because - usually one gene collaborates with many other genes to bring about an effect - If we don't know all the relationships, we can bring about a progress trap

for - progress trap - TFA - from Montreal protocol

for - post comment - LinkedIn - progress trap - Ralph Thrum article

to - Ralph Thurn LinkedIn article - https://hyp.is/b-LpIA7-Ee-1nyMavdKbbw/www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7192642433833201664/

for - post comment - LinkedIn - progress trap

for - progress trap

for - progress trap - post comment - LinkedIn - Ralph Thurn article - progress trap - adjacency - progress trap - maladaptive - attention - focus of attention - cultural evolution - duality - dualism - dualistic

adjacency - between - progress - progress trap - maladaptive - cultural evolution - attention - focus of attention - Exploring this statement further, it isn't just that it is our dualistic thinking applied here is a problem - but that it is the very nature of human analytic reasoning coupled with our innate ability to focus our attention which requires a deep unpacking - For to focus on an object of attention - is something we can only accomplish by defocusing on everything else - Indeed, it is the very act of attention on the one, that is inextricably accompanied by the act of inattention of the many - Our body, and that of many other organisms is evolutionarily designed - to focus our attention in our field of view on emergent phenomena that is salient to our survival - The nature of reductionist-type research - which is to say, most research - is that we continue applying this evolved adaptive behavior, even though cultural evolution (ie. progress) has accelerated exponentially to such an extent - that this same biologically evolved behavior has become maladaptive in the context of modernity

for - post comment - LinkedIn - progress trap - Ralph Thurn article

from - post comment - LinkedIn - Ralph Thurn comment - https://hyp.is/BeAvgg37Ee-btqfJNb2SpA/www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7193987030228340737/?commentUrn=urn:li:comment:(activity:7193987030228340737,7194001397091057666)&dashCommentUrn=urn:li:fsd_comment:(7194001397091057666,urn:li:activity:7193987030228340737)&dashReplyUrn=urn:li:fsd_comment:(7194231407479537664,urn:li:activity:7193987030228340737)&replyUrn=urn:li:comment:(activity:7193987030228340737,7194231407479537664)

for - post comment - LinkedIn - progress trap

for - progress trap - Prometheus complex - adjacency - progress trap - Prometheus complex - Gaston Bachelard - Gaston Bachelard - French philosopher

adjacency - between - progress trap - Prometheus complex - Gaston Bachelard - adjacency statement - Prometheus complex and progress traps have much in common: - both look at the shadow side of innovation - The mythology of Icarus geting too close the sun is one common to both - Bachelard wrote a pith work on the analysis of the element of fire, in which he introduced the concept of the Prometheus complex - https://philpapers.org/rec/OSEPCA

for - quote - Prometheus complex - progress trap

quote - Prometheus complex - progress trap - (see below)

• Our hands and our brains will,
  • perhaps unconsciously
• drift towad the very thing we're debating if we should do
• author - Jenny Thomson

for - quote - Prometheus complex - progress trap

quote - Prometheus complex - progress trap - (see below)

• As the rational, intellectual part of ourselves wrestles with the decision,
  • a deeper Promethean part of ourselves has pressed it (the red button) already
• author - Jenny Thomson

for - progress trap - Prometheus complex - Dan Carlin - Gaston Bachelard - philosopher

summary - This short article brings up an interesting connection between - the Prometheus complex, - a term coined by the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard and - progress traps, - the unintended consequences of progress - The key insight is that human beings may have an Achilles Heel - the desire to know, even at the cost of harm - could be such a powerful impulsive urge - that we throw caution to the wind and - Icarus mythology may be a self-fulfilling prophecy - This also echos the views of my colleague Gyuri Lajos, - that invention for invention sake possesses this very dark side. - This is an important adjacency - as it questions the ethics of knowledge for knowledge sake - As we know from - the history of - progress and its shadowy counterpart, - the progress trap - our impulsive urge to invent has harmful impacts on everyone, - and these continually compound with time

for - impulsive urge - invention - adjacency - progress trap - impulsive urge to invent - Prometheus complex - Gyuri Lajos perspective

Adjacency - between - progress trap - impulsive urge - Gyuri Lajos perspective - Prometheus complex - adjacency statement - It would seem that the the Prometheus complex - is an apt description of that which Gyuri objects to in innovation, namely - innovation for innovation sake - in other words, the impulsive urge merely to know - even if it brings a terrible price

for - quote - Dan Carlin - quote - progress trap - Prometheus complex - Dan Carlin

quote - progress trap - Prometheus complex - (see below)

• [I wonder] whether or not human society actually has the agency that we think we have
  • to not invent something if we think it might be bad.
• If you look down the technological road in the distance and see something horrible, could humankind go,
  • ‘Oh, you know what? We’re just not going to go there.’
• I’m not sure we have that agency.

comment - Deep Humanity praxis proposes that a new discipline of Progress traps is what is needed to do exactly this - Give us a meta perspective so that we can assess future harm and damage as - AN ACTIONABLE FORESIGHT, not a - TREATABLE HINDSIGHT

progress trap - PFAS in blood

for - progress trap - microplastics - rain - progress trap - plastic

Progress Trap - Ronald Wright - 2004 Massey Lecture Series - A Short History of Progress

progress trap - singularity

for - progress trap

• Don't give them a problem to solve
• Ask them
  • to identify what the problem is and
  • what the context is and
  • what support is needed

comment - From a Deep Humanity perspective on - emptiness - progress and it's shadow accomplice - the progress trap - There needs to be an awareness of the siloing effect of even posing a problem - for that is the genesis of the progress trap

for - progress trap - graphene - safety study

for - progress trap - AI

for - dorsal light response - flying insects attracted to light - light pollution - progress trap - light pollution

for - AI progress trap - bad actor - synthesize bioweapon - AI progress trap - Coscientist and cloud lab - bad actors

for - progress trap - Rome - lead poisoning

for + progress trap - traffic fumes - Alzheimer's

for - progress trap - sexually explicit AI deepfake - Taylor Swift - sexually explicit AI deepfake

for - progress trap - tires - micro plastic p pollution

for - nature-based carbon sequestration - reestablish whale populations - Nate Hagen - The Great Simplification - David King - climate crisis - solutions - progress trap - overfishing - whales

for - progress trap - micro plastic in bottled water

• for: canonical unit, collaborative commons - missing part - open learning commons, question - process trap - natural capital

• comment

  • in this context, indyweb and Indranet are not the canonical unit, but then, it seems the model is fundamentally missing the functionality provided but the Indyweb and Indranet, which is and open learning system.
  • without such an open learning system that captures the essence of his humans learn, the activity of problem-solving cannot be properly contextualised, along with all of limitations leading to progress traps.
  • The entire approach of posing a problem, then solving it is inherently limited due to the fractal intertwingularity of reality.

• question: progress trap - natural capital

  • It is important to be aware that there is a real potential for a progress trap to emerge here, as any metric is liable to be abused

• annotate
• for: AI - progress trap, technology - colonialism

• for: progress trap - urgent need for a new science

• comment

  • Science and technology are constantly producing progress traps. Climate crisis is a major example, but there are so many other. We really and urgently need to motivate for a new field of study of progress traps in general.

• for: example - progress trap - AI - mistranslation

• for: progress trap -AI, carbon footprint - AI, progress trap - AI - bias, progress trap - AI - situatedness

• for: quote - Marjorie Kelly, quote - finacialization, progress trap - financialization, progress trap - capitalism, speculative investing

• quote: Marjorie Kelly

  • we're not in the economy of the 1950s anymore.
  • And we act as though we are, that finance is this productive force and it's building, it's building wealth.
  • Well, for the most part, it's not.
  • There's so much financialization, so many financial assets, that they've become an extractive force.
    • And a big piece of this is that we're not really distinguishing between
      • productive investments and
      • speculative investments

• for: progress trap - green growth - nickel mining - evicting uncontacted tribe

• progress trap: green growth - mining

  • Capitalist logic justifies this violence
  • We destroy the earth in order to save the earth
  • Question
    • Is this really the way we should be doing things?
    • Is the green growth agenda really going to keep humanity safe? Or will the unintended consequences, the progress trap be worse than the problem it is attempting to solve?

• for: progress trap, Inner Development Goals, SoNeC, SRG Mapping Tool

• comment

  • nice! (emoji: pleasant surprise) I wonder if Ferial or Joseph gave some inputs here, or was the SoNeC team already familiar with progress traps?
  • SRG mapping tool and Deep Humanity are designed to reveal complexity emerging from multiple, diverse perspectives mapped together so can compliment SoNeC application of Inner Development Goals

• for: progress trap - economic

• for: quote - Yuval Noah Harari - AI progress trap, progress trap - AI, quote - progress trap

• quote it is extremely dangerous to create such an autonomous agent when we do not know how to control it, when we can't ensure that it will not escape our control ad start making decisions and creating new things which will harm us instead of benefit us

• author: Yuval Noah Harari
• date 2023

• for: example - stupid AI - nuclear launch, AI - progress trap - example - nuclear launch

• for: quote - Thomas Homer-Dixon, quote - danger of AI, AI progress trap

• quote: danger of AI

  • I think the most dangerous thing about AI is not super smart AI, it's stupid AI that is good enough to be put in charge of certain processes but not good enough to not make really bad mistakes
• author: Thomas Homer-Dixon
• date: 2021

• for: progress trap

• progress trap: speed of vaccination

  • If the vaccine was imperfect and caused harm, it could have caused harm to 40% of three population in a short period of time.
  • the shorter the time for something to spread globally, the faster unintended consequence can spread and cause harm

• for: definition - enough vs feasible dilemma, double bind, progress trap

• definition: enough vs feasible dilemma

  • the changes that are actually required are not feasible to do
  • what is feasible to do is not enough
  • this puts us in a double bind
  • we need to have interventions that are BOTH
    • enough to solve these problems and are
    • feasible to execute

• for: progress trap - Kevin Anderson

• validation: SRG mapping tool, Indyweb

• for: progress trap - free market, example - government policy - why it's needed

• for: Progress trap - mouthwash, mouthwash - blood pressure

• for: example - complexity - automobile, example - progress trap - automobile

• for: progress trap, moloch - progress trap, progress trap - Moloch
• comment
  • This explanation leaves out one variable that defines the progress trap
    • https://hyp.is/6Lb6Uv5NEe2ZerOrftOHfA/www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/321797-a-short-history-of-progress

• for: progress trap

• comment

  • this is similar to the Deep Humanity, contextual preamble that introduces progress traps.

• for: holism, progress trap, double bind, SDG failure

• comment

  • In the current silo'd approach typified by the SDGs, unintended consequences, or progress traps are unavoidable and are built into the approach itself.

• for: definition, definition - double bind

• definition: double bind

  • the definition of a double bind is that you have a problem (a bind) in one context and you can't actually solve it in that context because it's caught in another context
  • Gregory Bateson defined the double bind as an evolutionary trait of species due to their changing nature.
    • Since individuals of a species are constantly changing, there comes a day when all that it knows what to do in order to survive is outdated due to the changing environment. When it repeats the old behavior that served its survival in the past, it dies.

• comment

  • adjacency
    • between
      • double bind
      • progress trap
  • adjacency statement
    • progress traps are related to double binds because in a progress trap, an implemented solution to a problem in one context gives rise to a new problem in another context.
    • the original problem (bind) in one context appears to be resolvable but actual isn't. Future unfolding of the implemented solution unfold a future unexpected problem.
    • The two problems are not simultaneously occurring as in a double bind, but time-delayed
    • both double bind and progress traps emerge from the same root of violating holism
    • in not grasping the implications of the emptiness of phenomena, we ignore intertwingled nature of reality, we circumvent Indra's meet of jewels at our own peril

• for: polycrisis, quote, quote - polycrisis, quote - Nora Bateson

• quote

  • every time we pick at one piece of those polycrisis we end up actually creating more problems in other contexts

• author: Nora Bateson

• example

  • climate change If we do, all emissions suddenly, we will create an economic crisis, then without money, a health and social crisis

• for: metacrisis framework, progress trap - metacrisis sensemaking

• comment

  • progress trap framing would help provide an overarching sensemaking framework

• for: progress trap, progress trap - climate change - zombie virus

• for: progress trap, progress trap - AI, progress trap - AI - writing research papers

• comment

  • potential fakes
    • climate science fakes by big oil think tanks
    • Covid and virus research
    • race issues
    • gender issues

• for: instant evolution, AI - instant evolution, progress trap, progress trap - AI - instant evolution, progress trap - robotics

• for: synthetic biology, progress trap - synthetic biology

• for: progress trap, progress trap - AI

• for: progress trap, progress trap - Aza Raskin, progress trap - internet, quote, quote - Aza Raskin, quote - progress trap, quote - progress trap - internet

• quote

  • Unless you've felt it, unless you've cried over the fact that we really thought we were making the world a better place with the internet... We 100 per cent believed that.

• for: annotate, annotate - social media, progress trap - social media

• source: connectathon 2023 09 23

  • session on social media

• for: unintended consequences, progress trap, progress trap - toothpaste, progress trap - fluoride

• for: progress trap, progress trap - REP, progress trap - Renewable Energy Prosumerism

-progress trap - commercialization - exclusion - instrumentation - projectification - Responsibilization and overburdening - Hidden systemic repurcussions

• for: progress trap, unintended consequences, progress trap - new life forms, progress trap - bioengineering
• comment
  • this opens up a big can of worms. A general theory of progress traps (https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=progress+trap) is urgently needed to systematically study the unintended consequences of progress.

• for: progress trap, AI, AI - care drive
• comment
  • the precautionary principle needs to be observed with AI because it has such vast artificial cognitive, pattern-recognition processes at its disposal
  • AI will also make mistakes, but the degree of power behind the mistaken decision, recommendation or action is the degree of unintended consequences or progress trap
  • An example nightmare scenario could be:
    • AI could decide that humans are contradicting their own goal of a stable climate system and if it's in control, may think it knows better and perform whole system change that dramatically reduces human induced climate change but actually harms a lot of humans in the process, for reaching the goal of saving the climate system plus a sufficient subset of humans to start all over.

• for: progress trap, progress trap - atomic bomb

• for: cultural evolution, cumulative cultural evolution, CCE, bioengineering, novel life form, culturally evolved life, bioethics, progress trap, progress trap - bioengineering, progress trap - genetic engineering
• comment
  • cultural evolution, which itself emerges from biological evolution is acting upon itself to create new life forms that have no evolutionary backstory
  • this is tantamount to playing God
  • progress traps often emerge out of the large speed mismatch between cultural and biological/genetic evolution.
  • Nowhere is this more profound than in bioengineering of new forms of life with no evolutionary history
  • This presents profound ethical challenges

• for: progress trap, red fire ants, fire ants, progress trap - shipping, unintended consequences, unintended consequences - shipping

• paraphrase

  • Fire ants would be devastating if released in continental Europe and even more all around the Mediterranean Sea.
  • The cost for human economies and well-being would be enormous. Where they have been invasive, they have:
    • displaced native ant and other species
    • damage electrical equipment
  • A genetic analysis of the Italian ants suggests they likely came from either China or the United States.
  • In the U.S., the species causes an estimated $6 billion in damage each year.
  • The insects spread internationally via shipping, especially of plants and soil.
  • Red fire ants have been detected in imported products in Spain, Finland, and the Netherlands, but not as wild colonies.