for - planetary health check

for - planetary boundaries - ocean biology - net primary production

for - planetary boundaries - lack of ocean biological boundary

for - COP30 - hosted by Brazil

for - climate crisis - biodiversity responsible for buffering 30% of emissions

for - quote - Johan Rockstrom - successful phase of of fossil fuels - is a necessary but not sufficient condition for station under 1.5 degree Celsius

for - global commons - example - compensating for - Amazon rain forest

for - stats - anthropology - she of modern humans - 250,000 year stats - anthropology - she of modern humans - 250,000 years - quote - Ronald Wright - update from 50,000 to 250,000 years old

for - planetary boundaries - 2023 - all 9 fully quantified

for - quote - Johan Rockstrom - transition - is messy

for - interview - Johan Rockstrom - planetary boundaries

for - social tipping points - breakthrough effect - cascading tipping points - systemiq - Bezos Earth Fund -University of Exeter - social tipping points

report details - title - The Breakthrough Effect - How to trigger a cascade of tipping points to accelerate the net zero transition - authors - Mark Meldrum - Lloyd Pinnell - Katy Brennan - Mattia Romani - Simon Sharpe - Tim Lenton - date - january 2023 - publisher -

for - climate change psychology - video - youtube - Al Jazeera - All Hall the Planet - Why our brains are wired to ignore the climate crisis - Per Espen Stokes - interview

summary - A good introduction to climate change psychology - Per Espen Stokes is interviewed and he discusses his 5 Ds

for - climate crisis propaganda - human psychology used to exploit irrational tendencies of people to delay climate action

for - climate crisis - who has the power? - poverty mentality - leverage points - social tipping points - climate crisis - feelings of helplessness

climate crisis - who has the power? - There is still this assumption that policy-makers are the ones who have the power - There isn't yet a recognition of whether there is power within individuals sufficient to make a real difference. - Trying and failing, we grow weary of believing that we do have power to collectively effect the scale of change required - Unless we demonstrate leverage points within individuals that can lead to effective scale of collective action, we cannot jumpstart an effective movement - poverty mentality can keep us stuck

for - neuroscience and education - problem solving - active learning

neuroscience and education - problem solving - active learning - this is much like Socratic dialogue technique, engaging the learner actively to recreate the problem in their own consciousness - and play an active role in solving it - just like historical innovators did

for - question - AI - can we teach AI values?

question - AI - can we teach AI values? - it's likely not possible because we cannot assign metrics to things like - ethics - kindness - happiness

for - question - neuroscience - creating neuroscience-based systems for solving problems

for - neuroscience research - remote intentional working during Covid - showed decreased productivity and innovation

neuroscience research - remote intentional working during Covid - showed decreased productivity and innovation - Due to only creating intentional work times and eliminating the opportunities for informal meeting - When it is purely intentional work contexts created and no relaxing, informal opportunities to meet, innovation suffers

for - question - neuroscience - efficacy of hybrid remote and live work environments

for - AI and education - children will have custom tailored education program via AI

for - neuroscience - education of children - recommend no digital devices before puberty - allows learning in a 3 dimensional world

for - neuroscience - importance of maintaining curiosity - 1000 questions a day for children - 20 questions a day for adults

for - neuroscience - building design - common area to converge everyone - creates diverse social meetings - increases work efficacy - example - Steve Jobs - Pixar bathroom

for - neuroscience - validation for Stop Reset Go open source participatory system mapping for design innovation

neuroscience - validation for Stop Reset Go open source participatory system mapping for design innovation - bottom-up collective design efficacy - What Henning Beck validates for companies can also apply to using Stop Reset Go participatory system mapping within an open space to de-silo and be as inclusive as possible of many different silo'd transition actors

for - key insight - human vs artificial intelligence - humans will create the best ideas

key insight - human vs artificial intelligence - humans will create the best ideas - why? - because we are - slower - imperfect - less rational - drifting away - forgetting - and we learn from the mistakes we make and from different perspectives shared with us

for - neuroscience - example - informal diversity - increases work efficacy - via sharing diverse and novel perspectives

for - neuroscience - innovation - great ideas - mistakes and - risk

neuroscience - innovation - great ideas - mistakes and - risk - Any new idea involves taking a risk that it could be wrong - we cannot be innovators if we are not able to risk making mistakes

for - neuroscience - mistakes - and fear

for - Indyweb - Stop Reset Go participatory system mapping - benefits of open source - Henning Beck - neuroscience support

Indyweb - Stop Reset Go participatory system mapping - benefits of open source - Henning Beck validates the importance of an open source design of the Stop Reset Go participatory system mapping - By developing an open source graph for many silo'd actors to participate, they mutually desilo each other - The sharing of diverse perspectives helps to mitigate progress traps

for - neuroscience - example - diverse and low density connections beats non-diverse and high connections

neuroscience - example diverse and low density connections vs non-diverse high density connections - having access to many diverse perspectives is a key enabler of good problem-solving and innovation

for - neuroscience - efficient work - relaxation rule

neuroscience - efficient work - relaxation rule - It is necessary to build NO WORK time into effective work - 5 time units work - 1 time unit relaxation - It is necessary to step back from concentrating on a problem - for the brain to drift away from it and - relax from concentrating on the problem - so that new perspectives can develop that can be brought back to solve the problem

for - quote - neuroscience - perspective shift - benefits

for - neuroscience - ideation depends on three different brain functions and brain areas - concentration - prioritization - and drifting away

neuroscience - ideation depends on three different brain functions and brain areas - concentration<br /> - frontal area of brain - prioritization and - deep inner part of the brain - drifting away - back part of the brain

for - neuroscience - optimal working environment - varies with brain state - different phases during the day - engagement - inspiration - concentration - communication - relaxation

for - neuroscience - human abilities - example Brexit and variations

for - neuroscience - children's understanding - 3 examples is enough to consolidate new concept

for - question - AI - can AI learn to be intentionally distracted?

for - neuroscience - human understanding - what makes us excel? - forgetting and getting distracted!

for - human learning - key feature - evolutionary nature - indyweb - key feature - evolutionary nature of learning

for - comparison - human vs artificial intelligence

question - comparison - human vs artificial intelligence - Can't an AI also consider things we sit on to then generalize their classifcation algorithm?

for - comparison - brain vs machine intelligence

comparison - brain vs machine intelligence - the brain is inferior to machine in many ways - many times slower - much less accurate - network of neurons is mostly isolated in its own local environment, not connected to a global network like the internet - Yet, it is able to perform extraordinary things in spite of that - It is able to create meaning out of sensory inputs - Can we really say that a machine can do this?

for - comparison - brain vs machine intelligence - comparison - human intelligence vs artificial intelligence

comparison - human intelligence vs artificial intelligence - AI depends on feeding the AI system with huge datasets that it can - analyze and make correlations and - perform big data analysis - Humans don't operate the same way

for - key insight - claim - humans can generate new ideas by changing the way we think - AI cannot do this

for - comparison - data vs ideas - no metric for ideas

for - Henning Beck - neuroscientist - video - youtube - The Brain vs Artificial Intelligence

for - new term - curiosity trap - When distractions take us out of the concentration and focusing zone

for - time sense - more new events gives a longer sense of time

for - neuroscience - why brains forget - active forgetting

neuroscience -active forgetting - leaves behind a small set of salient ideas

for - neuroscience - memories - reconstructed in the present - with new information - Indyweb - talking to our old selves - memories

for - neuroscience - perspectival knowing - why it's important to know other perspectives - perspectival knowing - Abraham Lincoln quote - I don't know that man - I better get to know his perspective

for - neuroscience - time estimation - non-experts are better at providing time budgets - neuroscience - non-experts give better time estimates than consultants

for - Henning Beck - neuroscience

for - neuroscience - how to - create perception of a long life - increase new activities

for - climate crisis - psychology - wrong approach

summary - Climate scientist professor Mojib Latif explores why our best efforts at rapid intervention to deal with the climate crisis are failing - Near the end of the program, he interviews professor Henning Beck, a neuroscientist who suggests that human brains have evolved to be rewarded for securing more. - Dopamine is released when we get more and we have not designed our intervention strategies aligned with this basic property of our brains

for - neuroscience - Henning Beck - more education - can lead to - more stubbornness

for - silicon valley's far right turn

for - search - google - participatory system mapping and MuSIASEM

search - google - participatory system mapping and MuSIASEM - https://www.google.com/search?q=participatory+system+mapping+and+MuSIASEM&sca_esv=de3e428f524f6eaa&sxsrf=ADLYWIK8vYVFLcmHv4nSxvSg-qEGT2lXQg%3A1722527927661&ei=t7CrZqWBKPqmhbIPl62nkAk&ved=0ahUKEwjluPnJlNSHAxV6U0EAHZfWCZIQ4dUDCBA&uact=5&oq=participatory+system+mapping+and+MuSIASEM&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAaAhgCIilwYXJ0aWNpcGF0b3J5IHN5c3RlbSBtYXBwaW5nIGFuZCBNdVNJQVNFTTIFECEYoAFIoIaJBVAAWMuCiQVwCXgBkAEAmAHdBKABsowBqgEJMy0zNS4xMC4yuAEDyAEA-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-AUYigUYiwPCAhcQLhiABBjwAxixAxiDARioAxiLAxibA8ICFBAuGIAEGLEDGIMBGKgDGIsDGJsDwgIHEAAYAxiLA8ICERAuGIAEGLEDGKgDGIsDGJsDwgINEAAYgAQYsQMYRhj5AcICJxAAGIAEGLEDGEYY-QEYlwUYjAUY3QQYRhj5ARj0Axj1Axj2A9gBAsICCxAAGIAEGIYDGIoFwgIGEAAYFhgewgIIEAAYFhgeGA_CAggQABiABBiiBMICBRAhGJ8FwgIHECEYoAEYCpgDA7oGBggBEAEYAboGBggCEAEYE5IHCzkuMy0zNS4xMS4xoAfflwM&sclient=gws-wiz-serp

search results returned - of interest

for - participatory system mapper - system mapping tool - participatory - question -participatory system mapper

question - participatory system mapper -tweak for people centered and Indyweb provenance? - Could we tweak it for Indyweb to simultanously map - people and - their ideas with - provenance

for - participatory system mapping - tool

for - system mapping software

system mapping software - ask @gyuri

for - participatory system maps - subjective - perspectival knowing

for - participatory system mapping - start with system mapping - then recast in form of Theory of Change

for - CECAN - Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus - to - CECAN

to - CECAN - https://hyp.is/2LWJzE0ZEe--JEt2ZKmfFQ/www.cecan.ac.uk/about-us/

for - paper review - building a system-based Theory of Change using Participatory Systems Mapping - participatory systems mapping - SRG / Indyweb dev - system mapping - participatory approach

summary - I'm reviewing this paper because the title seems salient for the development of our own participatory Stop Reset Go system mapping tool within Indyweb ecosystem. - The building of - a systems-based Theory of Change using - Participatory Systems Mapping - is salient to our own project and aligns to it with different language: - Theory of Change with uses theory to perform an evaluation and propose an intervention - The Stop Reset Go framework focuses on the specific type of process called "improvement", or - transforming a process to make it "better" in some way

to - Indyweb project info page - https://hyp.is/RRevQk0UEe-xwP-i8Ywwqg/opencollective.com/open-learning-commons/projects/indy-learning-commons

for - ToC construction - recommendation - should be participatory

comment - Stop Reset Go process using Trailmark mark-in notation within Indyweb people-centered, interpersonal software ecosystem is inherently designed: - to be participatory - to mitigate progress traps - In fact, - the greater the diversity of perspectives, - the greater the efficacy in mitigating progress traps - For this reason, open source is necessary to achieve the optimal transformations of improvement

for - ToC diagrams - limitations - too linear - attempts to address

for - search - google - high resolution addressing of disaggregated text corpus mapped to graph - search results of interest - high resolution addressing of disaggregated text corpus mapped to graph

search - google - high resolution addressing of disaggregated text corpus mapped to graph - https://www.google.com/search?q=high+resolution+addressing+of+disaggregated+text+corpus+mapped+to+graph&oq=high+resolution+addressing+of+disaggregated+text+corpus+mapped+to+graph&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigAdIBCTMzNjEzajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

to - search results of interest - high resolution addressing of disaggregated text corpus mapped to graph - A New Method for Graph-Based Representation of Text in - The use of a new text representation method to predict book categories based on the analysis of its content resulted in accuracy, precision, recall and an F1- ... - https://hyp.is/H9UAbk46Ee-PT_vokcnTqA/www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/10/12/4081 - Encoding Text Information with Graph Convolutional Networks - According to our understanding, this is the first personality recognition study to model the entire user text information corpus as a heterogeneous graph and ... - https://hyp.is/H9UAbk46Ee-PT_vokcnTqA/www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/10/12/4081

for - from - search - google - high resolution addressing of disaggregated text corpus mapped to graph

from - search - google - high resolution addressing of disaggregated text corpus mapped to graph - https://hyp.is/ch_J9k43Ee-lGzfOapoCvQ/www.google.com/search?q=high+resolution+addressing+of+disaggregated+text+corpus+mapped+to+graph&oq=high+resolution+addressing+of+disaggregated+text+corpus+mapped+to+graph&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigAdIBCTMzNjEzajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

for - further research - common cliques in graphs - question - relevance to disaggregating text corpus into sub-sentence graph nodes?

for - from - search - google - high resolution addressing of disaggregated text corpus mapped to graph

from - search - google - high resolution addressing of disaggregated text corpus mapped to graph - https://hyp.is/ch_J9k43Ee-lGzfOapoCvQ/www.google.com/search?q=high+resolution+addressing+of+disaggregated+text+corpus+mapped+to+graph&oq=high+resolution+addressing+of+disaggregated+text+corpus+mapped+to+graph&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigAdIBCTMzNjEzajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

for - CECAN - goal - policy improvement

for - complexity - evaluation - from - paper - Building a system-based Theory of Change using Participatory Systems Mapping

for - Indyweb information page - Open Collective Indyweb

from - Paper Review - Participatory Systems Mapping - https://hyp.is/FSRodE0QEe-Z26cIILK6sw/journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1356389020980493

.

To - search Google - https://www.google.com/search?q=research+how+the+mind+affects+the+body&client=ms-android-xiaomi-rvo3&sca_esv=abf62c5a24135cce&sxsrf=ADLYWILr4e48E5scVB-z0niGsgiIWFrl4Q%3A1721890844889&ei=HPihZt39Ne61hbIPi8nxAQ&oq=research+how+the+mind+affects+the+body&gs_lp=EhNtb2JpbGUtZ3dzLXdpei1zZXJwIiZyZXNlYXJjaCBob3cgdGhlIG1pbmQgYWZmZWN0cyB0aGUgYm9keTIIECEYoAEYwwQyCBAhGKABGMMESN42UIgpWMcycAF4AZABAJgBtwOgAdsGqgEDNC0yuAEDyAEA-AEBmAIDoAKLB8ICChAAGLADGNYEGEfCAgoQIRigARjDBBgKmAMAiAYBkAYIkgcFMS40LTKgB98I&sclient=mobile-gws-wiz-serp - search results returned of interest - Washington University School of Medicine Medical school in St. Louis, Missouri Washington University School of Medicine is the medical school of Washington University in St. Louis, located in the Central West End neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri. Wikipedia - https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/mind-body-connection-is-built-into-brain-study-suggests/

for - Deep Humanity - alternatives to psychedelics?

Deep Humanity - alternative to psychedelics? - Could Deep Humanity open source praxis be developed as a non- pharmacological method to achieve the same kind of de-synchronisation? - Especially.well-crafted BEing journeys?

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

for - question - what's the meaning of life? - a philosophical perspective - John Vervaeke - The meaning crisis

for - governance - planetary subsidiary - recommendation - replace governance by nation states

for - governance - planetary subsidiary - no idea how to get there

for - governance - planetary subsidiary

for - governance - multi-scale - two problems

governance - multi-scale - two problems -1. Some scales such as planetary scale lack institutions to deal with problems on that scale - 2. Smaller-scale, subnational governance institutions don’t have the authority or resources necessary - to address local challenges in a way that - satisfies and responds to constituent desires. - both problems have the same common source - the nation state level calls all the shots

for - key insight - governance - new planetary scale - NOT the UN

for - climate crisis - key insight - why UN cannot address the climate crisis

climate crisis - key insight - why UN cannot address the climate crisis - The UN responds to sovereign states, not to humanity nor to the planet

for - quote - planetary governance is required - not global

quote - planetary governance is required - not global - The framing of problems as global - suggests that they can be addressed with the tools we have at hand: - modern political ideas and the architecture of global governance that has emerged - since the Second World War. - But planetary problems cannot. - This helps to explain why decades of attempts to manage planetary problems with global institutions have failed.

for - comparison - sustainability / anthropocentric / global vs - habitability / multispecies / planetary

for interdependency - inttertwingledness - humans flourishing requires multi-species flourishing

for - human exceptionalism - example - the bible

for - governance - failure of nation state - on global issues

for - wetland ecosystems

19:16

sustainable building - passive hvac - building temperature regulation - PCM

for - sustainable building - phase change material - PCM - DIY - wearable cooling vest - phase change material - PCM

for - sustainable building - PCM - phase change material

for - definition - hyperkeystone species - example - hyperkeystone species - modern humans

for - example - keystone species - starfish

for - everyone is sacred

for - governance - indigenous - training in humbleness - needed today!

for - anthropology - aboriginal Australians - both hunter gatherer AND agriculturalists

for - social norms- greed - relative, not absolute

for - example - Tree metaphor of - Deep Humanity

for - key insight - we are the same across deep time and space

key insight - we are the same across deep time and space - He elaborates quite well on the fact that we are the same across deep time and space - This is the Common Human Denominator (CHD) of Deep Humanity praxis

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

for - meme - United States - built on the genocide of two continents

for - perspectival knowing - umwelt - perspectival knowing

perspectival knowing - Again, this may be considered "true" from one perspective, but not recognized from another - What meaning does it have to someone whose worldview is highly religious? - What meaning does it have to a tick, whose umwelt doesn't even allow it to recognize human word symbols in any meaningful way?

for - perspectival knowing - example - age of the world - number of galaxies

perspectival knowing - example - age of the world - number of galaxies - This may be truth for one person, but not another - Our writing reveals our perspectives, and also determines who will or will not resonate with it

for - more meaningful lives from connecting to the greater whole of the human species - n other words - experience the sacred

for - adjacency - big story of our species - Deep Humanity

adjacency - between - big story of our species - Deep Humanity - absolute - relative - adjacency relationship - This is very similar to the goals of Deep Humanity - The problem with being fully immersed into modernity - and having no sense of history - is that we start to believe that our modernity is absolute, - when in reality, it is relative

for - perspectival knowing - example

for - zoom out - in time and space - story of our species

for - stories - about our species

for - paradigm shift - we need a new story quote - a time between stories

quote - a time between stories - Despite this panoply of stories, we are in fact living in a time between stories, because - the dominant narrative remains the same: - progressing within the modern paradigm is the best way to create and maintain a good quality of life, and the only way societies can do this is through - Western-style industrial development, - corporate capitalism, and - representative democracy. - While many people recognise that this narrative needs to be replaced, - we haven’t yet found a new narrative that’s powerful enough to replace it.

for - paradigm shift - we need a new story

article details - title - Finding our place in the human story - author - Paddy Le Flufy - date - 14 July, 2024 - publication - substack - self link - https://paddyleflufy.substack.com/p/finding-our-place-in-the-human-story

for - Ronald Wright - computer metaphor - quote - Ronald Wright - computer metaphor

for - illegal fishing - murder

for - food waste

for - magic mushrooms - distorts space-time perception and dissolves the ego

for - quote - rise of populism

for - annotation - adjacency - Camilo Mora - Phoebe Barnard - Michael Mann

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 - sustainable building - engineered stone - health ban - sustainable construction - engineered stone - health ban

for - stone age 2.0 - stone and lime - new stone age - stone and lime - sustainable building - stone and lime - post-modern construction - sustainable construction - stone and lime - post-modern construction

for - sustainable building - stone age 2.0 - quote - stone age 2.0 - post-modern stone building

quote - stone age 2.0 - post modern stone building - What is required in the first half of the 21st century is a new form of post-modern construction, - relevant to contemporary needs but as - sustainable and as - environmentally benign - as pre-industrial traditional building used to be.

for - post-modern sustainable building - RIBA President Alex Gordon - 1970s proposal for stone system - ignored

for - sustainable building - stone age 2.0 - stone for compression - post-tensioned steel rods for tension

for - sustainable building - lime is better than cement - it faciliates reuse

for - sustainable building - cement mortar is the worst thing for re-using bricks

for - quote - sustainable building - concrete paradox

quote - sustainable building - concrete paradox - It does not make sense today to: - quarry limestone, - burn it with aluminium and a few other ingredients at extremely high temperatures to create a powder that is - mixed with - water, - sand and - gravel - to convert it back into a solid material. - And concrete is not good in tension. - It has to be reinforced with steel in order to build with it.

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 - illegal fishing - fake seafood

for - steel replacement - cellulose nanofiber

for - urban agriculture - 2024 study - 6x carbon footprint as conventional agriculture

summary - The results are not surprising. It is the infrastructure used to build the urban agriculture system that has the greatest carbon footprint - This can be lowered dramatically by - having longer lasting UA projects - having larger scale projects - reusing urban demolition waste materials to build UA systems

from - search - Google - 2024 percentage of carbon emissions from food system - https://www.google.com/search?q=2024+percentage+of+carbon+emissions+from+food+system&sca_esv=9d5b952a18faf0f8&sxsrf=ADLYWIIlye-Qwjiqr8aEdCoiJshs-88Yqw%3A1720874425938&ei=uXWSZvvuOMjXhbIP-YeX6Aw&ved=0ahUKEwi7r_HmhKSHAxXIa0EAHfnDBc0Q4dUDCA8&uact=5&oq=2024+percentage+of+carbon+emissions+from+food+system&gs_lp=Egxnd3Mtd2l6LXNlcnAiNDIwMjQgcGVyY2VudGFnZSBvZiBjYXJib24gZW1pc3Npb25zIGZyb20gZm9vZCBzeXN0ZW0yChAAGLADGNYEGEcyChAAGLADGNYEGEcyChAAGLADGNYEGEcyChAAGLADGNYEGEcyChAAGLADGNYEGEcyChAAGLADGNYEGEcyChAAGLADGNYEGEcyChAAGLADGNYEGEdI3A5QmwhYpA1wAXgBkAEAmAGUA6AB6QiqAQUzLTIuMbgBA8gBAPgBAZgCAaACBJgDAIgGAZAGCJIHATGgB6IR&sclient=gws-wiz-serp - search results returned of interest - Food from urban agriculture has carbon footprint 6 times - A new study finds that fruits and vegetables grown in urban farms and gardens have a carbon footprint that is, on average, six times greater . - https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/01/240122140408.htm

for - question - Is music worse because entry level is lower? - Musicians response - Bernth's response

for - annotate - a new religion of life

question - Is it like Deep Humanity?

for - book - Over the Seawall - Steven Robert Miller

book - Over the Seawall - Steven Robert Miller - A book about PROGRESS TRAPS! - How climate adaptation measures can lead to progress traps, such as - lead to a sense of complacency and false security - leading to overdevelopment - leading to even more people vulnerable to climate and extreme weather events

for - climate crisis - disconnect between - levers of power - and information of what is happening

climate crisis - disconnect between - levers of power - and information of what is happening - there is an abundance of scientific information available to political leaders, yet - they are failing to make the necessary decisions - why?

for - climate crisis - reflections - perspectives - human vs deep time

adjacency - between - climate crisis - different perspectives - human vs - deep time - adjacency relationship - Our global industrialized world is perturbing the carbon cycle so far out of equilibrium that the status quo civilization cannot persist very far into the future<br /> - the earth system has been through many such perturbations and it ALWAYS self corrects - Even the most extreme climate events earth has ever experienced are called transient because they are still relatively short in geological time - In the long term, the planet will restore equilibrium no matter how much extreme the perturbations human civilization creates in the next few centuries - In the long term, the earth is going to be fine - Homo sapien is just one of millions of species, most of which have gone extinct - We should NOT feel we are exceptional - We are comparing different timescales: - human lifetimes are measured in a hundred years - earth system time scales are measured in millions of years - even if there were another mass extinction event, on a geological time scale of tens of million years a new biosphere will regenerate and the ocean chemistry will be restored - Here we have an interesting intersectionality of different timescales. - paleontologists provide a deep time perspective - while we humans live in a timescale of no greater than 100 years - our bodies cannot directly sense change in deep time - therefore, any scientific information about deep time will need to go through our cognitive system - Our body is not evolutionarily designed to biologically respond to information on a deep-time timescale - It may be beneficial to help us see from a deep-time perspective to appreciate the geological-scale changes we are responsible for

for - limits to economic growth - physics calculations - by Tom Murphy show absurdity of continual growth - energy and waste heat perspective

to - Nature Physics - LImits to Economic Growth - Tom Murphy - https://hyp.is/CM3Grj9_Ee-obTc6jrPBRA/tmurphy.physics.ucsd.edu/papers/limits-econ-final.pdf

for - quote - carbon cycle - hijacked by political institutions and business

quote - carbon cycle - hijacked by political and business institutions - (see below) - In completely hijacking the global car carbon cycle now - the temperature of the planet - the pH of the oceans and - the oxygen levels in the oceans - are no longer determined by Earth system processes like it has been for all of Earth history - it is fundamentally rooted in human institutions - There really isn't any disentangling the the science from the the political

adjacency - between - carbon cycle - human processes - politics and business - adjacency relationship - The carbon cycle is no longer controlled by earth system processes, - as it has been for billions of years, - but rather by human processes of politics and business

for - Planet Critical podcast - 6th Mass Extinction - interview with science journalist Peter Brannen

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 - deep sensing - deep grounding - Deep Humanity grounding

for - educator - polycrisis - individual action - levers - climate and earth history specialists help with education

educator - earth climate history specialist can help with education about the past to help understand what we face in the present

climate education - low impact due to - ignoring perspectival knowing - and salience landscapes - It may help to look at the problem of education through the lens of Michael Levin's multi-scale competency architecture - https://hyp.is/FFxzRL2nEe6ghzeLcJGM7A/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10167196/ - Applied to cognitive and cultural evolution within the lifetime of a single individual (human) - The salience landscape of an individual can vary depending on their educational and cultural background - There are multiple categories of concepts, each with their own degree of salience: - immediate phenomenological experience - high salience - second hand, linguistically communicated experience - moderate and dependent on source - scientific reported phenomena - moderate, high or low, dependent on source and cultural / educational background - second hand, linguistically communicated experience - low, moderate or high, dependent on source and cultural / educational background - A key observation is that humans are evolved to detect specific environmental cue but miss many others - The rate of cultural evolution is so rapid that our biologically adapted processes cannot adapt quickly enough to the rapid cultural changes, resulting in the experience of "hyperobjects" - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=+hyperobject - education that is done haphazardly and in an adhoc manner will fail to discriminate between this large variety of salience landscape, with the overall impact of low educational impact

for - book - The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism won't Save the Planet - Brett Christopher

to - book - The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism won't Save the Planet - Brett Christopher - https://hyp.is/h01Tyj9uEe-rEhuQgFWRuQ/www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/3069-the-price-is-wrong

for - climate crisis - we are in a pivotal moment

for - climate crisis - 5 deg C could reproduce similar levels of catastrophes as those in early earth history

for - Climate change impacts - human extinction - don't think so - paleontological evidence shows that humans are a resilient species

Climate change impacts - human extinction - don't think so - paleontological evidence shows that humans are a resilient species - ice ages are really extreme events that humans have survived - Before entering the holocene interglacial period we have been in for the past 10,000 years, the exit from the previous Ice Age took approximately 10,000 years and - there was 400 feet of sea level rise - North America was covered with an Antarctica's equivalence of ice thickness - there was a quarter less vegetation a on the planet - it was dusty and miserable living conditions - There have been dozens of these natural climate oscillations over the past two and a half million years and humans are about 5 to 6 million years old, so have survived all of these - Sometimes in really particularly harsh climate swings,<br /> - speciations of new hominids will appear along with - new tools in the record or - evidence that there's been better control over fire - Humans are resilient and super adaptable - We've lived and adapted to the conditions on all the continents - We will make it through, but modern, industrialized, global society likely won't

for - need for reporting negative news - galvanize support

for - validation - cosmolocal community organization - validation - TPF - validation - Living Cities Earth

for - validation - cosmolocal community organization - validation - TPF - validation - Living Cities Earth

for - cosmolocal movement - validation - Jay Griffith - leverage point - cosmolocal - validation - TPF - validation - Living Cities Earth

for - economic growth - physical limits to - reductio ad absurdum - physical absurdity of continuing current energy and waste heat trends into the near future

paper details - title - Limits to Economic Growth - author - Thomas W. Murphy Jr. - date - 21 July, 2022 - publication - Nature Physics, comment, online - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01652-6

summary - Physicist Thomas W. Murphy employs reductio ab adsurdium logic to prove the fallacy of the assumptions of his argument - In this case, the argument is that we can indefinitely continue to sustain economic growth at rates that have held steady at about 2-3% per annum since the early 1900s. - Using both idealistic and simplified energy and waste heat calculations of energy and waste heat compounding at 2-3% per annum (or 10x per century), Murphy shows the absurd conclusions of continuing these current trends of energy and waste heat emissions on a global scale. - The implications are that physics and thermodynamics will naturally constrain us to plateau to a steady state economy in which the majority of economic activity needs to not depend on physically intensive

from - Planet Critical podcast - 6th Mass Extinction - interview with science journalist Peter Brannen - https://hyp.is/66oSJD-AEe-rN08IjlMu5A/docdrop.org/video/cP8FXbPrEiI/

for - absurdity of indefinite economic growth - energy projection example of recent energy trends

-absurdity of indefinite economic growth - energy projections - Energy growth has typically been 2–3% per year since early 1900's. - This is approximately equivalent to 10x each century - Present-day energy output is 18 TW and extrapolates to - - approx.100 TW in 2100, - approx. 1,000 TW in 2200, etc. - In 400 years, from today, we would exceed the total solar power incident on Earth - In 1300 years from today, we would exceed the entire output of the Sun in all directions - In 2400 years from today, we would exceed the energy output of all 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy - This last jump is made impossible by the fact that even light cannot cross the galaxy in fewer than 100,000 years. - Hence, physics puts a hard limit on how long our energy growth enterprise could possibly continue

for - steady state economy - when we hit physical constraints - a major percentage of our economy needs to be non-physical

for - adjacency - question - degrowth? - circular economy? - steady state - regenerative processes

adjacency - between - degrowth - circular economy - regenerative practices - steady state economy - adjacency relationship - Where did the 75% number come from? Is there anything special about it? Is it some kind of a limit from the model? - Would circular and regenerative practices play an important role in this? - This would seem to indicate a degrowth type scenario. Degrowth is a misnomer, it doesn't imply continual economic downward trend, - but is specifically addressing a the decrease of physical human economic activity - that is responsible for our excessive pollution load / biodiversity loss - to levels necessary to avoid the worst impacts - It isn't explicitly stated that the other half of degrowth is growth of non-physical economic activity that nurtures and nourishes humanity

for - question - transition - from capitalism to a form of socialism?

question - capitalism to a form of socialism? - To say it seems ludicrous is an opinion that makes sense from a traditional capitalists perspective - From a socialist perspective, it seems feasible - Nothing is free of charge, however, even in socialism, there is always some price an individual must pay, it's more about the incentive structure that differentiates the two - capitalism - polarized towards self-centric perspective - socialism -balanced self-and-other perspective

adjacency - between - capitalism - socialism - differing perspective on self/other worldview - adjacency relationship - While capitalism relies on a self-centric perspective, socialism relies on a more balanced self/other perspective

for - decoupling - economic growth from - physical resources

for - question - decoupling economics from physical resources- degrowth?

question - decoupling economics from physical resources- degrowth? - The author seems to be talking about continuing an economy with - less and less reliance on physically intensive activities, hence significantly reducing our carbon and physical resource intensity

for - question - climate adaptation - resiliency - how do we prepare for potential collapse?

question - climate adaptation - how do we prepare for potential collapse? - How do we prepare? - preparation needs to take place at national, community and individual / family level - Resiliency will depend on how ill prepared we are at each of these levels - How do we prepare for: - high levels of suffering - ill-intentioned opportunists who are ready to exploit the chaos?

for - question - fusion and deep geothermal

question - I suppose it also applies to - nuclear fusion if it becomes feasible and - deep geothermal

for - quote - economic growth - pioneering economists saw growth not as permanent, but as just a temporary phase

quote - economic growth - pioneering economists saw growth not as permanent, but as just a temporary phase - (see below) - Given that - assumptions of quantitative growth are pervasive in our society and - have been present for many generations, - it is perhaps not surprising that growth is not widely understood to be a transient phenomenon. - Early thinkers on the physical economy, such as - Adam Smith, <br /> - Thomas Malthus, - David Ricardo and - John Stuart Mill - saw the growth phase as just that: a phase

for - absurdity of indefinite economic growth - waste heat projection example of recent waste heat trends

absurdity of indefinite economic growth - waste heat projection example of recent waste heat trends - At present, the waste heat term is about four orders of magnitude smaller than the solar term. - But at a growth factor of ten per century, they would reach parity in roughly 400 years. - Indeed, the surface temperature of Earth would reach the boiling point of water (373 K) in just over 400 years under this relentless prescription.

for - transition - renewable energy - won't work - because - the price is wrong! - Brett Christopher - green energy - the price is wrong - transition - alternative to capitalism - book - The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism won't Save the Planet - Brett Christopher

summary - This book provides rationale for why capitalism won't scale renewable energy, but a public sector government approach might - What about the alternative of community-owned or cooperative-owned energy infrastructure? A pipe dream? - Is renewable energy just not profitable and therefore has to be subsidized? - Perhaps it could be seen as a stopgap to buy us time until fusion, deep geothermal or other viable, scalable options become widespread?

from - Planet Critical podcast - 6th Mass Extinction - interview with paleontologist Peter Brennan - https://hyp.is/3ss3Vj9vEe-iDX-3vRVlFw/docdrop.org/video/cP8FXbPrEiI/

for - quote - exceeding 2 Deg C may result in a billion deaths - Joshua Pearce

quote - exceeding 2 Deg C may result in a billion deaths - Joshua Pearce - (see below) - If warming reaches or exceeds 2 °C this century, - mainly richer humans will be responsible for killing roughly 1 billion mainly poorer humans - through anthropogenic global warming, - which is comparable with involuntary or negligent manslaughter.

for - 1000 ton rule

1000 ton rule - approximately one future human death for every 1,000 tons of carbon emissions burned

for - seawater farming - business startup speed - 3 month

for - seawater farming - replacing normal agriculture in Bangladesh flood plain

for - stats - seawater farming crops - 300 edible species

stats - seawater farming crops - 300 edible species - education campaigns and cooking classes to publicize and new edible crops

for - stats - seawater farming - soil nutrition impacts - 8% increase in 6 months

for - soil problem - soil salinization due to higher rates of evaporation

for - agriculture - climate change challenge - less rainwater and less water retentive soils

for - stats - agriculture - 1/3 of world's soils are degraded

for - stats - carbon sequestration - salt marshes - 30x more sequestration than rainforests

for - saltwater agriculture - saltwater farming - seawater farming - saline agroecology - Seawater solutions - Yanick Nyberg

for - social tipping point - 2023 paper - paper details

paper details - title: The Pareto effect in tipping social networks: from minority to majority - author - Jordan Everall - Jonathan. F Donges - Ilona. M. Otto - Preprint date - 20 Nov 2023 - Publication - EGUsphere Preprint Repository

summary - This is a recent 2023 paper that summarizes social tipping point research for fields of interest to me, such as climate change. - I'm reading, looking for any real world experimental validation of social tipping point in climate change - I didn't find any but still interesting

from - search - google - research on complex contagion refutes the 25% social tipping point threshold - https://www.google.com/search?q=research+on+complex+contagion+refutes+the+25%25+social+tipping+point+threshold&oq=research+on+complex+contagion+refutes+the+25%25+social+tipping+point+threshold&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIGCAEQRRhA0gEJMjAyOTRqMGo3qAIAsAIA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 - search results returned of interest - The Pareto effect in tipping social networks: from minority to ... - https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2023/egusphere-2023-2241/

for - social tipping points - Centola 25% threshold - critique - from - Medium - Social tipping points are probably overrated

article details - title - Overselling the Science of Social Tipping Points - author - Peter Licari, PhD - date - 11 Jjune, 2018 - publication - Medium - https://prlicari.medium.com/overselling-the-science-of-social-tipping-points-16095145d32

from - Medium - Social tipping points are probably overrated - https://hyp.is/yMaQND7WEe-Q2zsiwzB5wA/jamesozden.substack.com/p/social-tipping-points-are-probably

for - social tipping points - Centola 25% threshold - critique - to - Medium - Overselling the Science of Tipping Points

comment - The author raises valid critique of Centola's 25% threshold. - His main critique concerns the experiment not representing real world complex scenarios and is summarized in 3 points: - The experimental method used is an oversimplification of the complexity of real world complex issues such as climate change denial and meat eating, which are deeply ingrained beliefs in many cases. - No such attachment exists in the experimental setup - In the experiment, the subjects were incentified. In complex real world issues, there is often no incentive structure - Real life isn't all 1-1 interactions

to - Medium - Overselling the Science of Tipping Points - https://hyp.is/Aocs0D7WEe-knadNGOYVog/prlicari.medium.com/overselling-the-science-of-social-tipping-points-16095145d32

for - social tipping point - critique

social tipping point - critique - This is a good critique of the social tipping point 25% threshold applied to complex contagion, as claimed by Centola - Does Centola et al . have any experimental evidence applied to real complex contagion?

for - rapid whole system change - need for a new religion - Ronald Wright reflections

comment - Deep Humanity is not a religion, but a deeper understanding of our own humanity, what is it to be human? - but just as important, to understand the distinction between - human nature and - nature - For if human nature is a subset of nature, - which the adjective-noun "human nature" implies - then there is something within humans that is of nature herself - Is it possible that the many fragmented spiritual paths that have emerged in different parts of the world merely reflect the different environs from which they developed, and that in fact, they all are searching for the same essence? - If so, then in perhaps the times we are in are calling us for a global recognition of our common denominators that make us ALL human, - and then the even deeper common denominator with nature herself - So what are those qualities we all have in common as human beings? - and also, what are the qualities our species has in common with nature herself? - neuroscientist David Eagleman coined the term "possibileanism". Perhaps it is that?

for - rapid whole system change - need for something that will create a new form of altruism - Ronald Wright - transition - requires an experience of re-awakening transition - need for a new religion? Deep Humanity?

comment 10 July 2024 - Deep Humanity is our attempt at this. It is not a religion, however. It is humanity, but in the deepest sense, so it is accessible to anyone in our species. Our tagline has been - Rekindling wonder in an age of crisis - However, this morning an adjacency occurred:

adjacency - between - familiarity - wonder - adjacency relationship - Familiarity hides wonder - Richard Dawkins said: - There is an anaesthetic of familiarity, - a sedative of ordinariness - which dulls the senses and hides the wonder of existence. - For those of us not gifted in poetry, - it is at least worth while from time to time - making an effort to shake off the anaesthetic. - What is the best way of countering the sluggish habitutation brought about by our gradual crawl from babyhood? - We can't actually fly to another planet. - But we can recapture that sense of having just tumbled out to life on a new world - by looking at our own world in unfamiliar ways. - That is, when a type of experience becomes familiar through repeated sensory episodes, - we lose the feeling of wonder we had when we initially experienced it - It's much like visiting a place for the very first time. We are struck with a sense of wonder because everything is unpredictable, in a safe way. We have no idea what's around the next corner. It's a surprise. - However, once we live there, and have traced that route hundreds of times, we have transformed that first magical experience into mundane experience. - So it is with everything that makes us human, with all the foundational things about reality that we learned from the moment we were born. - They have all become jaded. We've forgotten the awe of those first experiences in this reality: - our first experience of our basic senses - our first breath of air, instead of amniotic fluid - our first integration of multiple sensory experiences into a cohesive whole - the birth of objectification - the very first application of objectification to form the object we called mOTHER - the Most significant OTHER - our first encounter with the integration of multiple sensory stimuli associated with each object we construct - our first encounter with auditory human, speech symbols - our first experience with object continuity - how objects still exist even if they disappear from view momentarily - do we remember freaking out when mOTHER disappeared from view momentarily? - our first ability to communicate with mOTHER through speech symbols - our first encounter with ability to control our bodies through our own volition - our first encounter with gravity, the pull towards the ground - our first encounter with a large bright sphere suspended in the sky - our first encounter with perspective, how objects change size in our field of view as they get nearer or farer - etc... - What's missing now, is that we have repeated all these experiences so many times, that the feeling of awe no longer emerges with life - To generate awe, the repertoire of existing experiences is insufficient - now we have to create NEW experiences, we have to create novelty - Mortality Salience can help jolt us out of this fixation on novelty, and remind us of the sacred that is already here all the time - For, what happens at the time of death? All the constructions we have taken for granted in life disappear all at once, or perhaps some before others - Hence, we begin to re-experience them as relative, as constructions, and not absolutes - All living organisms have their own unique umwelt - These umwelts are all expressions of the sacred, sensing itself in different ways

• What is required is a kind of awakening, or re-awakening
• When religions do their job, it gives us a framework to engage in a shared sense of the sacred, of wonder in the mundane
• In a sense, Deep Humanity is identifying that most vital commonality in all religions and seeing all their diverse intersectionalities in simply being deeply human
• We awakened once, when we were born into the world
  • then we fell asleep through the dream of familiarity
• Now, we have to collectively re-awaken to the wonder we all experienced in that initial awakening experience as newborns

for - quote - unfortunately, I think we need a near miss to wake us up - Ronald Wright

comment - But the problem is that we can't count on that because it may very well be too late by then - Is the extreme weather events now happening regularly enough to wake us up?

for - rapid whole system change - a new form of asceticism - Ronald Wright - Give me liberty or give me death - degrowth challenges

rapid whole system change - a new form of asceticism - We need something that can be higher than stripping away many of the liberties we take for granted? - This will be challenging because the American dream is based on the feeling and phrase "Give me liberty or give me death!"

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

for - adjacency - great biblical floods - deforestation

adjacency - between - biblical and other stories of great floods of the past - deforestration - adjacency relationship - Wright speculates that a not insignificant number of the numerous great floods in history could be attributed to deforestation of the surrounding watershed - Forests on the hills and mountains, the land acts like a sponge - The tree roots, leaves, mosses, mycelium networks all act to regulate the effects of sudden rainfall or dry spells

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 traps - exceptional civilizations - Egypt and China

progress traps - exceptional civilizations - Egypt and China - While 1,000 years seems to be the norm for the lifetime of an average civilization, China and Egypt have both endured 3 times as long - Egypt had the self-replenishing Nile River with topsoil being washed down from Ethiopia every year to maintain their soil fertility - So they avoided the salinity problem until modern times with the construction of high dams that have had unintended consequences - China also had unusual conditions of exceptionally deep layers of annually replenished topsoil called loess that were formed by being blown in by the wind from surrounding areas

for - writer's motivation - Ronald Wright

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 traps - interview - Ronald Wright

summary - In this more recent interview, Ronald Wright, author of "A Short History of Progress" and advocate of the idea of "progress traps", offers his cogent take on the world today, as refracted and reflected through an archeological lens - Wright sheds light on the relevance of history and especially archeology on our contemporary polycrisis, illustrating how, while different in details, are very similiar to the same mistakes our ancestors of every age have made - The archeology lessons of Sumeria, Stone age humans, Easter Island and more illustrate that it is dangerous to romanticize our ancestors as their mistakes cost them their civilizations, as much as the current mistakes we are now making may cost ours - I would add that our own Stop Reset Go and Deep Humanity research compliments Wright's superb work on Progress Traps with ideas borrowed from the East - specifically, Shunyata or Emptiness - Complimenting progress traps with Emptiness reveals another dimension of the perennial problem our species face since time immemorial, and in every generation henceforth - Deep Humanity integrates Progress with Emptiness, the individual with the collective, friends with enemies and proposes that we are approaching a singularity in our species, - in which all past civilizations are converging in one heterogenous entity in modernity - and the future of our species will depend on whether we can culturally adapt quickly enough to the multiple existential risks we now face - Our future as a viable evolutionary species may depend on the collective direction we move in in the next few years, of resolving the age-old quagmire of the holographic unnamable present in every one of us born into a living and dying body, continually fractures itself into violently polarized pieces. - Do we have the collective foresight to penetrate our own ignorance?

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 - we evolved from hunters - who don't look beyond the next animal we kill

key insight - we evolved from hunters - who don't look beyond the next animal we kill - We are in a binge mode of subsistence that requires instant gratification - This is the same default thinking that runs our economy and much of our lives and it takes effort to counter it

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