• the coastline paradox
  • measured length of coastline varies with the scale at which the measurement is taken

• Title
  • What gets measured, gets…manipulated.
• Subtitle
  • The impossible business of quantifying a planet resistant to quantification.
• Author
  • Meg Chatham

• The practice of citizen science

• Title
  • The hero of the Anthropocene has 8 billion faces — one of them is yours
• Subtitle -The crisis of the Anthropocene challenges our traditional narratives and myths about humanity's place in the world. Citizen science can help.

• Title
  • Climate Majority Project
    • Helps projects to grow, get funding, and connect as many willing hands as possible

• title

  • When it comes to climate, beware the "calm down" guy

• good article to show a calm down guy!

• comment
• key insight

• quote
  • "paper enforces single sequence and there's no room for digression"
• author
  • Ted Nelson
• comment
  • Ted is alluding to the fact that our written text reflects SPOKEN text
  • Since spoken text is phonetic and produced by our vocal cords, and our vocal cords inherently only produce one sound at a time,
    • any written language that is built upon spoken language will reflect the same linear, sequential, temporal structure
  • with the advent of computing, and especially HTML, this becomes an UNNECESSARY LIMITATION

• quote
  • "when I was a teen, it seemed to me that paper was a prison"
• author
  • Ted Nelson

• How an A.G.I. rollout will look like:
  • 1. charm offensive of heavily subsidized services
  • 1. retrenchment with overdependent users and agencies tasked with the cost of making it profitable
  • 1. Silicon Valley leaders downplay the markets role:
    2. the people own and control AI

• Case study of market bias
  • Uber self-driving cars

• the three biases of A.G.I-ism
  • market bias
  • adaptation bias
  • efficiency bias

• There are people who are designing systems to prioritize augmenting human intelligence and use machines to assist us
• For instance, it was the vision of Doug Engelbart

• comment
  • we need to have a Deep Humanity dive on
    • quality of life vs quantity of life
    • if we acknowledge and face our mortality,
      • how would that change the QUALITY of our life?

• AI accelerates the left hemisphere view and impacts in the world

• the sense of something sacred

• comment

  • Deep Humanity alignment

• quote
  • "we are now like Sleepwalkers whistling a Happy tune as we amble towards the abyss"
• author
  • Ian McGilchrist

• Definition
  • Dunning-kruger effect
    • the less you know, the more you think you know
    • the more you know, the less you think you know
  • the left hemisphere doesn't know what it doesn't know so it thinks it knows everything

• In his book, The Master and his Emissary,
  • McGilchrist explains what happens when left and right hemisphere are out of balance and the left hemisphere takes over
    • namely, disaster
  • this will be the third time the imbalance manifests

• right hemisphere qualities:
  • sees not the representation but the living presence
  • bringing broad open sustained Vigilant attention to bear on the world
  • it sees what is fresh unique
  • never fully known
  • never finally certain
    • but full of potential
  • it understands all it is and
  • must remain implicit
  • humor poetry art narrative music
  • The Sacred indeed everything we love
  • it understands that nothing is ever merely static and unchanging
  • but flowing
  • and radically interconnected
  • that parts of the left hemisphere's invention and that
  • what we are seeing as parts are already wholes
  • at another level this is a free world
  • an animate universe
  • and a bureaucrat's nightmare
  • it has all the richness and unfathomable complexity of the world

• left hemisphere qualities
  • using narrow beam scattered attention to one detail after another
  • use what is already:
    • familiar
    • certain
    • static
    • explicit
    • abstract
    • decontextualized
    • disembodied
    • categorized
    • general in nature
    • reduced to its parts
    • all is predictable and controlled
    • this is an inanimate universe and
    • a bureaucrat's dream
    • it is like a map in relation to the world
    • is mapped useful to the degree that it leaves almost everything out
    • and its only value is utility
    • finally, it is a RE-PRESENTATION - not fresh, but regurgitated

• comment
  • great metaphor!
  • so many people are tuned into the harmful channel

• comment
  • Deep Humanity addresses this

• comment
  • extreme financial wealth
    • is often not only accompanied by, but actually CREATES
    • extreme poverty of MEANING
  • this is the equation:
    • extreme financial wealth = extreme meaning poverty

• simulacrum -
  • definition
    • an unsatisfactory imitation or substitute.

• Somewhere along the way,
• the ability to write has become completely identified with intellectual power,
• creating a graphocentric myopia
  • concerning the very nature and transfer of knowledge.

• Title
  • The Neurobiology of Sentence Comprehension
• Authors
  • Lee Osterhout
  • Albert kim
  • Gin Kuperberg
• Year
  • 2006

• finite time singularity

  • when the mathematical solution to the growth equation becomes infinitely large at some finite time

• comment

  • this is also salient for the accumulation of unresolved progress traps
  • the Anthropocene can perhaps be viewed as the occurence of finite time singularities due to unresolved problems arising from progress traps that innovation is too slow to solve

• Title

  • West // Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms…j

• Comment

  • good exerpts from the book

• Julian Huxley's biology work was to lay the seed of
  • how one individual organism transforms over many generations
    • into a new higher-level individual organism
  • he called this the "movement of individuality"
  • It has also come to be known as
    • major transitions
    • major evolutionary transition (MET)
    • evolutionary transitions in individuality
  • grandson of Thomas Huxley
  • brother of Aldous Huxley (Brave New World)
  • wrote The Individual in the Animal Kingdom (1912)
  • advocated for closed, independent systems with harmonious parts
  • endorsed gradients of individuality
  • "closure is never complete, the independence never absolute, the harmony never perfect"

• Herbert Spencer fully developed Digby's concept into the modern concept of functional integration
  • Spencer introduced the term "survival of the fittest"
  • ‘He tried to unite complex new findings about metabolism and organismic development with evolution and the seeming correspondence of organisms to their environments.
    • In The Principles of Biology (1864), Spencer wrote
      • a biological individual is one in which
      • the interdependence of the parts allows it to function and
      • respond to environmental change as a whole.
    • That is: ‘any concrete whole having a structure which enables it,
      • when placed in appropriate conditions,
  • to continuously adjust its internal relations to external relations, - so as to maintain the equilibrium of its functions.’

• Digby’s answer to the fundamental question:
  • What is it that unites the parts of a system into a living individual? was the precursor to the biological concept of functional integration:
  • wholeness comes from the system being functionally interdependent and integrated.
    • the activities in one part of the system are brought about
    • by a cause external to the part where it occurs (interdependence);
    • and the mutual workings of the parts account for the behaviour of the system as a whole,
    • making this activity internal to the entire system (integration).
    • Here is an example using an Elephant
      • An elephant’s heart pumps blood only because it’s supplied with
        • energy from the digestive system,
        • oxygen from the respiratory system, and
        • support from the skeletal system.
      • All those bits working in tandem is what makes it possible for an elephant to walk around doing elephant things.

• Kenelm Digby
  • was an obscure 17th century English naturalist and polymath who was also
    • natural philosopher
      • Two Treatises (1644) - is the title of his important work which was an attempt to wed the emerging mechanical philosophy advocated by Newton to the existing tradition of Aristotle
      • In his book, he tried to answer the question: what is it that unites the parts of a system into a living individual?
    • alchemist
    • swordsman
    • privateer
    • courtier
    • brewer
    • inventor of the modern wine bottle

• A research paper "What are dadelions and aphids?
  • Biologist Daniel Janzen argues that
    • Much like the strawberry,
    • both dandelions and
    • aphids can (all) alternate between asexual and sexual reproduction.
  • Most of the dandelion clusters that you come across in the yard are clones resulting from asexual reproduction.
  • So from the perspective of evolution, Janzen argued, all these clones are part of the same scattered individual.
  • On this view, a single dandelion is not actually the familiar small plant;
    • it’s more akin to ‘a very large tree with no investment in trunk, major branches, or perennial roots.
  • It has a highly diffuse crown.’ -

• The problem of individuality is composed of two problems:
  • identity
    • what does it mean for a thing to remain the same thing if it changes over time?
    • what makes tow entities the same kind of thing?
    • identity is fundamentally about the nature of sameness and continuity
  • individuation
    • how do we tell two things apart?
    • what are the boundaries of an object?
    • indivduation is about differences and breaks
• These two properties are abstractions and are really two sides of the same coin
  • One can often reframe one in terms of the other to suit your focus.
  • To pick something out in the world you need to know both what
    • makes it one thing, and also
    • what makes it different than other things – identity and individuation,
      • sameness and difference.

• Title
  • Life is not easily bounded
• Subtitle
  • Working out where one hare ends and another begins is easy; a siphonophore, not so much. What is an individual in nature?

• Author

  • Derk J. Skillings

• comment

  • this article delves into the subject of defining what an individual is
    • what makes a biological organism the same or different from another biological organism?
    • This question is not so easy to answer if we are looking for a general definition that can apply to ALL species

• First great separation
  • The agricultural revolution that occurred 10,000 years ago

• Documentary on wealth in Germany
  • It is good to analyze the attitudes of the elites to understand their motivations and worldviews

• Evangelical Christian Patriarchy
  • naturally gravitates to Donald Trump based on their own fear and persecution complex

• family Christian Broadcast Network (CBN)
  • knew it was a fraud and was complicit in it to weaponize fear

• Within the Evangelical Christian community
  • there emerged evangelicals that deceived the masses by weaponizing fear
  • fraudulently represented themselves as ex-Muslim terrorists converted to Evangelical Christianity

• Persecution complex
  • One of the most widely and deeply spread memes, and corresponding behavior within Evangelical Christians is a persecution complex
  • This is a attitude of righteousness and feeling attacked for holding their righteous views
  • This meme and accompanying behavior appeals to base emotion of fear to shut down intelligent conversation
  • It makes them impervious to constructive criticism

• definition
  • Evangelical Subculture
• This is a culture that Evangelical Christians are immersed in
  • which constitutes a kind of bubble of repetitive indoctrination of
    • aggressive, male, patriarchal value system that is antithetical to
    • the traditional teachings of Christianity that once focused on values of
      • collaboration
      • compassion
      • empathy
      • tolerance
• It is widespread deeply aculturated meme that affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide
• one of its distinguishing features is the carefully controlled and orchestrated propaganda

• Interview with:
  • Professor Kristin Kobes Du Mez

• Author of book

  • Jesus and John Wayne
    • How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

• Description

  • An insightful analysis of how
    • male evangelical Christians,
      • mostly based in the United States
    • played a major role in creating a caustic, hyper patriarchal interpretation of Christianity
      • whose major disruptive impact is in right wing politics adopting aggressive posture instead of a collaborative one

• quote

  • "it's actually daunting chilling even
    • to see how this book,
      • which is really about conservative white evangelicals in the United States
      • I'm an American historian
    • how much it is resonating with people around the world right now
      • in ways that that should be alarming"
  • Author
    • Kristin Kobes Du Mez

• Comment

  • the viral and rapid global spread of evangelical christianity
    • is coupled with an equal spread of corrosive patriarchy and authoritarianism
  • The global spread of authoritarianism is linked to the global spread of Evangelical Christianity
  • This is an important observation which begs a global response

• Jesus and John Wayne
  • Book cover of Spanish Edition here:
    • https://www.amazon.com/Jes%C3%BAs-John-Wayne-Kristin-Kobes/dp/8412619889
  • Jesus nailed to a cross made of guns

• Evangelical ministries are a carrier of the United States pathological nationalistic meme
  • It rides on the back of their spreading of gospel
  • Gospels have a mission not only to spread Christianity
    • but also a corrosive, polarizing, patriarchal form of politics to:
      • Russia
      • Hungary
      • Brazil
      • Many African countries
      • and many more
  • This creates a bizarre form of unity, even when countries are at war with each other!

• the evangelical business model
  • fundamentally depends on marketing fear

• Evangelical leaders create propaganda
  • deeply embedding messaging in their vast media network
  • of books, internet, radio, tv, church
  • to create fear-based, polarizing social norms that fragment society
  • For example, SBC LifeWay sells tens of millions of copies of Christian books that indoctrinate social norms of fear and division into children

• Evangelical Christian media
  • has a very lot of vested interest in media
  • because evangelicals are all about spreading the message
  • and growing their population

• The author describes how
  • the evangelical leaders have manufactured the now widespread mythology
    • that Christians in America face more discrimination than Muslims
  • in order to weaponize fear to consolidate power

• Evangelical Christian Patriarchy
  • naturally gravitates to Donald Trump based on their own fear and persecution complex

• family Christian Broadcast Network (CBN)
  • knew it was a fraud and was complicit in it to weaponize fear

• Within the Evangelical Christian community
  • there emerged evangelicals that deceived the masses by weaponizing fear
  • fraudulently represented themselves as ex-Muslim terrorists converted to Evangelical Christianity

• Persecution complex
  • One of the most widely and deeply spread memes, and corresponding behavior within Evangelical Christians is a persecution complex
  • This is a attitude of righteousness and feeling attacked for holding their righteous views
  • This meme and accompanying behavior appeals to base emotion of fear to shut down intelligent conversation
  • It makes them impervious to constructive criticism

my editor who's from completely outside this world just Mark that and said you know I don't know what these words mean the Evangelical subculture right I was like okay take it out and let me let me show don't tell and but the truth is like it's invisible to people on the outside what the Evangelical subculture is

• Interview with:
  • Professor Kristin Kobes Du Mez

• Author of book

  • Jesus and John Wayne
    • How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

• Description

  • An insightful analysis of how
    • male evangelical Christians,
      • mostly based in the United States
    • played a major role in creating a caustic, hyper patriarchal interpretation of Christianity
      • whose major disruptive impact is in right wing politics adopting aggressive posture instead of a collaborative one

• comment
  • the best possible outcome for AI
  • is that we human better
  • othering is significantly reduced
  • the sacred is rediscovered

• "if we reverse this

  • if we have the best of us take charge
  • the best of us will tell AI
    • don't try to kill the the enemy,
      • try to reconcile with the enemy
    • don't try to create a competitive product
      • that allows me to lead with electric cars,
        • create something that helps all of us overcome global climate change
    • that's the interesting bit
      • the actual threat ahead of us is
        • not the machines at all
          • the machines are pure potential pure potential
        • the threat is how we're going to use them"

• comment

  • again, see Ronald Wright's quote above
  • it's very salient to this context

• comment
  • the machines are only coded to do what we tell them to do
  • Ronald' Wright's quote is very salient here
    • https://hyp.is/6Lb6Uv5NEe2ZerOrftOHfA/www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/321797-a-short-history-of-progress

• quote
  • "If we give up on human connection, we give up on the remainder of humanity"

• quote
  • "with great power comes great responsibility. We have disconnected power and responsibility."
    • "With great power comes great responsibility
    • We have disconnected power and responsibility
    • so today a 15 year old,
      • emotional without a fully developed prefrontal cortex to make the right decisions yet this is science and we developed our prefrontal cortex fully
      • and at age 25 or so with all of that limbic system emotion and passion
      • would buy a crispr kit and modify a rabbit to become a little more muscular and
      • let it loose in the wild
    • or an influencer who doesn't really know how far the impact of what they're posting online
      • can hurt and cause depression or
      • cause people to feel bad by putting that online
  • There is a disconnect between the power and the responsibility and
  • the problem we have today is that
    • there is a disconnect between those who are writing the code of AI and
    • the responsibility of what's going about to happen because of that code and
    • I feel compassion for the rest of the world
    • I feel that this is wrong
    • I feel that for someone's life to be affected by the actions of others
      • without having a say "

• quote
  • "what went wrong in the 20th century is that we have given too much power to people that didn't assume the responsbility"

• quote
  • "this is an arms race"

• potential government policy
  • to slow down premature AI rollout
  • by taxing at 98%

• comment
  • echoing same sentiment as many others such as Jerry Kaplan
  • Humans need not apply https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300223576/humans-need-not-apply/

• the third inevitable

  • what does life look like
    • when AI has made human beings work redundant?

• comment

  • see book:
    • Humans need not apply https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300223576/humans-need-not-apply/

• difference between
  • ChatGPT (AI)
  • AGI

• interesting fact
  • ChatGPT is only written with 2,000 lines of code
  • It's not very intelligent, but a very large external memory
  • and repeats the best of what humans have said

• IQ of ChatGPT
  • today (May 2023) ChatGPT has IQ of 155
    • roughly equivalent to Einstein (160) -ChatGPT4 is already 10x smarter than ChatGPT 3.5 in a few months, with very few changes
  • ChatGPT5 could be 10x smarter in a few months
    • or IQ of 1600
  • This is like the difference between Einstein and a young child
  • ChatGPT5 can dwarf us in a few months

• claim
  • ChatGPT already knows 1000x more facts than any single human being alive

• the second inevitable
  • AI will be significantly smarter than any single human
  • perhaps a billion times smarter by 2045

• comment
  • SIMPOL - simultanous conditional agreement, may be the way to reach consensus quickly

• the first inevitable
  • AI will happen
  • there's no stopping it
  • why?
  • self does not trust other
    • in other words,
      • OTHERING is the root problem!
    • this is what will cause an AI arms race
      • Western governments do not trust China or Russia or North Korea(and vice versa)

• definition
  • the three inevitables

• the third inevitable

  • bad things will happen

• comment

  • progress traps are the right framework to describe the AI problem

• etymology
  • of book title
    • scary smart

• If AI begins to think autonomously,
  • with its enormous pool of analytic power
  • and if
  • it begins to evolve emotions of fear
  • and it feels humans pose a threat to it or the rest of the natural world
  • it could act against human interest and attempt to destroy it
  • If AI is able to control its environment
    • either coupled with robotics,
    • or controlling human actors
  • it can harm humanity and human civilization

• limited (machine) intelligence

  • cannot help but exist
  • if the original (human) authors of the AI code are themselves limited in their intelligence

• comment

  • this limitation is essentially what will result in AI progress traps
  • Indeed,
    • progress and their shadow artefacts,
    • progress traps,
    • is the proper framework to analyze the existential dilemma posed by AI

• Interview with Mo Gawdat
  • former Google chief business officer
  • warning about the existential danger of AI
  • including why he claims that AI is
    • intelligent
    • conscious
    • and will soon feel emotions such as fear
      • and take steps at self preservation

• claim
  • AI feels emotions
    • "in my work I describe everything with equations
    • fear is a very simple equation
      • fear is a a moment in the future
        • that is less safe than this moment
    • that's the logic of fear
    • Even though it appears very irrational,
      • machines are capable of making that logic
      • They're capable of saying
        • if a tidal wave is approaching a data center
        • the machine will say
          • that will wipe out my code,
            • not today's machines
            • but very very soon and
        • we feel fear and
        • puffer fish feels fear
        • we react differently
          • a puffer fish will puff and
          • we will go for fight or flight
        • the machine might decide to replicate its data to another data center
        • different reactions different ways of feeling the emotion
        • but nonetheless they're all motivated by fear
        • I would dare say that AI will feel more emotions than we will ever do
          • if you just take a simple extrapolation,
            • we feel more emotions than a puffer fish
            • because we have the cognitive ability to understand he future
            • so we can have optimism and pessimism,
              • emotions puffer fish would never imagine
            • similarly if we follow that path of artificial intelligence
            • it is bound to become more intelligent than humans very soon
            • then then with that wider intellectual horsepower
            • they probably are going to be pondering concepts we never understood good and
            • hence if you follow the same trajectory
            • they might actually end up having more emotions than we will ever feel

• claim
  • AI is sentient (alive) because
    • A lot of people think AI will never be alive
    • what is the definition of life?
      • religion will tell you a few things
      • medicine will tell you other things
      • but if we define being sentient as
        • engaging in life with free will and
        • with a sense of awareness of
          • where you are in life and
          • what surrounds you and
          • to have a beginning of that life and
          • an end to that life
        • then AI is sentient in every way
        • there is a free will
        • and there is evolution
        • there is agency
          • so they can affect their decisions in the world
        • and there is a very deep level of consciousness
        • maybe not in the spiritual sense yet but
        • if you define consciousness as
          • a form of awareness of oneself and ones surrounding
          • and you know others
        • then AI is definitely aware"

• story
  • Mo Gawdat tells the story of an epiphany of machine sentience
  • " one day um Friday after lunch I am going back to my office and
  • one of them in front of my eyes lowers the arm and picks a soft yellow ball
  • which again is a coincidence

  • it's not science at all it's

    • like if you keep trying a million times your one time it will be right

    • and it shows it to the camera it's locked as a yellow ball and

    • I joke about it you know going to the third floor saying
    • hey we spent all of those millions of dollars for a yellow board and
      • Monday morning, every one of them is picking every yellow ball
      • a couple of weeks later every one of them is picking everything right and
      • it it hit me very very strongly
    • the speed
    • the capability
      • understand that we take those things for granted
      • but for a child to be able to pick a yellow ball
        • is a mathematical / spatial calculation
          • with muscle coordination
          • with intelligence
        • it is not a simple task at all to cross the street
        • it's not a simple task at all
          • to understand what I'm telling you
          • and interpret it
          • and build Concepts around it
        • we take those things for granted
        • but there are enormous Feats of intelligence"

• comment
  • a scary thought that our world will be radically transformed
    • not in 20 to 40 years
    • but in 2 or 3 years!

• claim
• AI can become more intelligent than humans in a few months (in 2023?)

• portmanteau - new
  • emergency + urgency = emURGENCY

• AI arms race
  • tech companies made a promise
    • not to put AI onto the open internet until
    • they know how it's impacting society
  • Unfortunately, tech companies
    • failed at regulating themselves
    • and now, capitalism has started an AI arms race
    • with unpredictable results as AI harvests more data
    • and grows its artificial intelligence unregulated
    • with each passing

• claim
  • AI could find a way to kill humans in the next few years

• claim
• AI dilemma is bigger problem than climate change

• claim
  • AI is conscious
  • AI feels emotion

• comment
  • yep, here we are, the future people annotating it!

• comment
  • example of
    • Cumulative Cultural Evolution (CCE)

• "gestation rewires your brain in fundamental ways um you it rewire it primes you for caretaking as a as a mother in a way which is far more visceral and far it's it's pre-rational it's it's immensely transformative experience and it's permanent you know once you've been rewired for mummy brain you'd never really go back um and that from the point of view of raising a child that matters um because when after a baby is born it's you know as winnicott once said you know there's no such thing as a baby there's only a baby and someone there's a a baby doesn't exist as an independent entity until it's some years some years into its life arguably quite a few years into its life um and what I would say about artificial wounds is that you may be you may think that what you're doing is creating a baby without the misery of gestation but what you're doing in practice is creating a baby without creating a mother because a pregnancy doesn't just create a baby it also creates a mother"

• Comment

  • This is alluding to our altricial nature, which makes us human INTERbeings from before birth
  • https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&tag=altricial
  • We are socially entangled even before our birth

• Comment
  • It could be a good Gedanken to imagine our lives as immortals
  • What would it feel like on a day-to-day basis?
  • How would it change the way we behave, think or feel?

• "I think we are very good at honing in on the ways in which the world remains imperfect and there are ways in which it is egregiously unfair today but we discount the fact that so many of the gains of the last 100 to 250 years have been enabled by the Industrial Revolution have been enabled by harnessing the hubris of harnessing fossil fuels harnessing more energy from the environment allowing us to agglomerate in cities which when you do this when you collect all of people in a room like this you're actually creating a more powerful hive mind by bringing intelligence together so that it can share ideas at closer range and it can innovate faster and through that for all the trade-offs which are undeniable there's many negatives that have come from that we're very quick to Discount when we talk about future biomedicine very quick to Discount things like polio vaccines and the virtual eradication of that disease along with smallpox of the fact that we have got so many infectious diseases under control we struggle with the big Killers like cancer and heart disease at the moment those are sort of like the biggest Global threats um but through basic Innovations through Modern Sanitation through better housing all of which the Industrial Revolution enabled we have lifted so many people out of poverty and yes we created new tears of poverty but overall fewer people are living in abject poverty today than in the past we have the higher average global life expectancies child mortality is plummeted the fact that you can give birth by cesarean section rather than in the case of my mother giving birth to a dead child which is what would have happened to me because my umbilical cord was wrapped twice around my neck the fact that technology can intervene and bring us so many of these Spoils of modernity that we readily take for granted I don't know where there's obviously attention but I don't know at what point you say we want to hit pause or indeed we want to go backwards again the challenge sort of remains like we agree we're barreling on this trajectory if we're not going to get off it then we need to think about how we manage it as well as possible and that means we need to think about how AI becomes a healthy part of our world or indeed if it can cut it can we co-exist with AI"
• Comment
  • The progress trap is the great unseen elephant in the room of progress
  • when we understand how the limits of human nature create the shadow side of progress every step of the way,
  • it is then no surprise or paradox that we arrive at this place called the Anthropocene - where the climax of technological progress and - potential for complete extinction sit side-by-side
  • https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&tag=progress+trap

• Good insight on the absurdity of Longtermism from Mary Harrington
  • " I don't know that we can assume that some point a Thousand Years in the future
  • is going to have the same moral political economic or social priorities
  • as we do
  • It's very very clear even the most rudimentary grasp of history or literature
  • ought to make it clear that
    • people a thousand years ago didn't have the same priorities as us now and
    • if you can you can frame that difference as progress in our favor
    • or as decline in their favor
    • but it's it's very clear that Consciousness you've evolved and culture evolves over time and
    • there are there are threads of continuity and that's something that you and I both have in common
    • tracing some of those lines but
    • it's very clear that what how people think about what's important changes tremendously over over even a century,
    • let alone over a thousand years
    • so I I question the hubris of any movement which claims
    • to have a have any kind of handle on on what might matter in 25 000 years time
    • I just don't see how you can do that
    • it's absurd."

• translation error
  • should be
    • Sam Bankman-Fried

• "I do think it is eminently plausible

  • that from this Global digital brain we have created
  • we will build up artificial intelligence that is generally intelligent
  • it's not going to think in the same ways as you or I
    • because it doesn't have a brain but
  • it's going to think and
  • it's going to claim to have feelings and
  • it's going to claim to have personhood and
  • it's going to resemble something we would recognize as personhood"

• comment

  • It is questionable to use the word "think" to describe AI.
  • We don't even know what human thinking is,
    • so it is premature to base machine thinking
    • on something yet unknown
  • We could claim that AI will also make a claim to think
  • AI will claim these things
    • because we humans made complex programs / algorithms with feedback that tell it to make such claims when specific input conditions are met

• Comment
  • Mary Harrington believes it is hubris to believe we can escape our human nature.
  • I believe that cultural evolution is complex
    • We learn and change behavior over the course of even one life time

• quote worthy
  • "we already have a whole generation of young people
  • who are already hybrid cyborgs
  • They live half their life on the internet"
    • host quoting Elise Bohan from her book

• Comment

  • This gets to the core of the contention of the humanist vs the transhumanist

• Quote Worthy

  • " I think to me there's a tragic quality to that
  • which we just have to embrace and
  • we have to lean into
    • the The Human Condition is in the sense
    • a tragic one and
    • trying to argue our way out of that via technology
    • is hubris which as the Greeks would suggest to us from a long time ago ends up with Nemesis"
  • Mary Harrington

• Comment
  • Mary echos Ronald Wright's progress traps

• Comment

  • Elise says
    • "there is this growing Chasm between
      • our Paleolithic brains and
      • what we're designed for and
        • the niches we're built to inhabit and this new technologically infused world that we're living in
    • We have changed our environment so rapidly and so radically and we have not kept pace with that change
      • so either we keep changing the environment or
      • we change ourselves to fit the environment and
      • I think the fact that we're consistently making these commodified decisions in which
        • we do expunge more and more of our of our Humanity in favor of profit
        • in favor of short-term decisions i
        • n favor of such abysmal thinking when it comes to complex systems like the human body
      • it is a testament to the fact that these brains are not built for this world and
      • we are not going to be adequate stewards of this system
        • that is now so complex that to keep it held together
      • you actually need a new form of intelligence beyond what we are"
  • Elise Bohan' statements perfectly echo Ronald Wright's famous quote on the nature of progress traps
    • “To use a computer analogy, we are running twenty-first-century software on hardware last upgraded 50,000 years ago or more. This may explain quite a lot of what we see in the news.”
    • https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.goodreads.com%2Fwork%2Fquotes%2F321797-a-short-history-of-progress&group=world

• comment

  • I think, however, that Wright would agree more with Mary and less with Elise in Elise's contention that
    • we need a new form of intelligence beyond what we are
    • applying progress to our own cognitive abilities
      • may create the biggest progress trap of all

• Comment
  • This is obvious and very few people would refuse life-saving treatments when we are in situations where our life is threatened
    • The exceptions are when strong belief systems exclude treatment or quality-of-life issues
  • We each make choices based on belief systems
  • From this perspective, the very goal of medical science itself can be interpreted as transhumanist in spirit
    • of intervening in human bodies with processes and materials that alter our body
      • to increase our chances of extending and enhancing life

• Comment
  • Elise does agree with Mary in that we need to "human better"

• quote worthy

• "far from delivering Utopia

  • what it mostly delivers is a commodification of the human body
  • that disproportionately benefits those who already have power and privilege."

  • Mary Harrington

  • I don't think we can put this back in its box in that again

  • I agree with you but to my eye the proper response to this era is
    • not stamping our foot on the accelerator but
    • two-fold resistance and a two or perhaps even just a two-fold note of caution
      • firstly in retaining a humanist anthropology in defiance of all those currently sawing away at the branch we're sitting on and
      • secondly in mounting a vigorous defense of those without power
        • now increasingly at the sharp end of biotech's unacknowledged glass politics

• quote worthy
  • "you'd have to be wildly optimistic to think we can blithely Market marketize over greater swathes of our embodied selves without opening new Vistas for class asymmetry and exploitation and it makes no sense to argue that we will stay well protected against such risks by moral safeguards at least not within a transhumanist paradigm because transhumanism itself requires an all-out assault on the humanist anthropology that underpins those moral safeguards you can't have transhumanism without throwing out humanism "
  • Mary Harrington

• Comment
  • See my previous comment

• Mary Harrington makes a good point
  • about the dystopian possibility if major biological hurdles are removed,
    • such as human aging
    • witness the trend of cryogenic freezing of bodies
      • which only the elites can afford
  • pervasive inequality skews the utopian vision towards market realities
    • the rich currently have access to the latest biomedical technologies that can extend / enhance life and human wellbeing
    • the vast majority, the poor don't have access to it
    • why would this change if transhumanism produces a cure for aging?
    • such a technology would enable elites to outlive the rest of us even longer!

• Mary Harrington suggests that

  • a starting point for the transhuman age
  • was marked by
  • the introduction of the birth control pill

• comment

  • while that may mark the first time a technology has radically reshaped human physiology in such a direct way,
    • the spirit of transhumanism is inherent in our nature as innovating cognitive beings
    • in fact, I find the term "transhuman" self-contradictory and problematic
      • as our very nature as innovative beings means we are constantly reinventing and transcending our old behaviors

• comment
  • I think many of us have had this thought!
    • that when we die, vast amounts of wisdom is extinguished along with that person
    • As our digital tools become more sophisticated, however,
  • we are uploading our libraries to the digital collective intelligence network
    • the internet may well evolve to become the epitome and master repository of human cumulative cultural evolution.
    • even AI could not exist if it did not mine a training set of billions of human and their shared ideas
    • Perhaps it is the internet which is the vehicle for collective hybridized human-cyborg immortality?
    • If knowledge is preserved this way, then this flavor of immortality is only meaningful for our species

• translation error
  • should be
    • ape-brained meat sack

• translation error

  • should be
    • ape-brained meat sack, taken from Elise's book

• comment

  • comparable to Ernest Becker's description of the human condition
  • in his book The Denial of Death
    • quote:
      • "Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground a few feet in order to blindly and dumbly rot and disappear forever."

• comment

  • the comparison is apt as one of the goals of transhumanism is to use technology to conquer death
  • From this perspective, we might argue that transhumanist aspirations have been with humanity for as long as medicine has intervened to extend life and human wellbeing

• translation error
  • should be
    • aped-brained meat sack

• translation error
  • should be
    • ape-brained meat sack

• comment
  • I would agree with Mary Harrington's comment that
    • we are already in the transhuman era.
  • The goal of not just medicine,
    • but many other fields of human endeavor
  • are interventions to our "natural animalistic state" that could be interpreted as "unnatural interventions" to prolong human lifespan and wellbeing

• quote

  • "it is as if man had been suddenly appointed managing director of the biggest business of all the business of evolution appointed without being asked if he wanted it and without proper warning and preparation what is more he can't refuse the job whether he wants to or not whether he is conscious of what he is doing or not he is in point of fact determining the future direction of evolution on this earth that is his inescapable Destiny and the sooner he realizes it and starts believing in it the better for all concerns"
  • Julian Huxley

• Comment

  • Huxley was prescient in making this observation,
    • as our species
      • cumulative cultural evolution, and
      • the impact of our niche construction
      • https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&tag=cumulative+cultural+evolution
    • does now indeed more or less determine the entire course of evolution of life on earth

• comment
  • Is this not a category error in classifying inert technology as life?
  • When does an abiotic human cultural artefact become a living form?

• transhumanism debate between
  • Marry Harrington
    • contributing editor and writer for Unherd
      • https://unherd.com/author/mary-harrington/
  • Elise Bohan,
    • Evolutionary Macrohistory researcher at Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute
      • https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/team/30862/
    • Author of
      • Future Superhuman: Our transhuman lives in a make or break century
        • https://unsw.press/books/future-superhuman/

• Quote worthy
  • "“Protracted immaturity and dependence on paternal care
    • is not an unfortunate byproduct of our evolution
    • but instead a highly adaptive trait of our species,
    • which has enabled human infants to
      • efficiently organize attention to social agents and
      • learn efficiently from social output,”
  • “The evolutionary goal of altricial species is
    • not to become highly competent as quickly as possible
    • but rather to excel at learning over time.”
• Authors
  • Michael Goldstein,
  • Katerina Faust,
  • Samantha Carouso-Peck
  • Mary R. Elson

• the beauty of perceptual immaturity in altricial species is that
• it makes learning easier by reducing the complexity of the world,” the researchers wrote.
• Parents are key to altricial learning, Goldstein said,
  • forming a two-way system of feedback.
• Far from being passive recipients, he said,
  • infants of many species can change the behavior of their parents
  • in ways that actively shape their own developments.

• Quote worthy
  • "“Rather than requiring hard-wired, innate knowledge of social abilities, evolution has outsourced the necessary information to parents”
    • Authors
      • Michael Goldstein,
      • Katerina Faust,
      • Samantha Carouso-Peck
      • Mary R. Elson

• Title
  • The Origins of Social Knowledge in Altricial Species,
• Journal
  • The Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, - -
• Publication Date
  • Dec, 2021
• Authors
• Michael Goldstein,
• Katerina Faust,
  • Samantha Carouso-Peck and
  • Mary R. Elson

• comment
  • 24 billionaires each have more money than the US Treasury during this time when the US is trying to avoid defaulting on its debt

• quote worthy
  • “To use a computer analogy, we are running twenty-first-century software on hardware last upgraded 50,000 years ago or more. This may explain quite a lot of what we see in the news.”
  • Ronald Wright

• This is how wealthy individuals or corporations
  • translate their economic power
  • into political and cultural power
• quote

Climate Denialism funding

• Comment
  • Question
    • How much material would be freed up if it was SHARED instead of hoarded by one person?
    • related questions
      • what kind of behavioral change is required to reach an impactful level of sharing?
      • in a sense, public-instead-of-private
        • transportation
        • etc
      • is the ultimate expression of private converted to public

• Comment
  • this statement epitomizes the crux of the matter
  • that demonstrates the entanglement between
    • a collective of (bottom-up) individuals and
    • top-down, system level actors
  • This is why the often-repeated mantra "individual actions don't matter" is not accurate
    • the contribution of individual actions DO matter, but only if it is supported by:
      • policy
      • ubiquitous 1.5C infrastructure
      • affordable 1.5C technologies and services
    • There is a MASS of people wanting to make the change
      • but that cannot happen unless it is
        • behaviorally and
        • economically pragmatic to do so
  • the real question to ask
    • in order to mobilize a bottom-up 1.5C lifestyle shift is
    • where are the leverage points for bottom-up actors (we individuals) to impact the top-down actors?

• Title: What a 1.5C lifestyle actually looks like
• Summary
  • Many people want to participate in the transition
  • to a regenerative, low carbon future
    • but the existing high carbon infrastructure
    • makes it very challenging to do so
  • This article features interviews with activists who are trying to live a lifestyle
    • that is consistent with a 1.5C world
    • WITHIN infrastructure that is not yet consistent with a 1.5C world.
    • It is challenging, to say the least!
      • and demonstrates the lock-in feedbacks,
      • a chicken-and-egg situation
      • that creates the challenge holding the masses back
  • From a Stop Reset Go (SRG) perspective
    • this illustrates the entangled relationship between
      • the individual and
      • the collective
    • and how each has an important role to play
      • to influence the other.
    • As an organization working on helping accelerate a bottom-up movement, this brings up the question:
      • what are the leverage points for citizens to accelerate top down actors such as
        • government to establish new policies and
        • manufacturers to create affordable regenerative products aligned with a 1.5C world?
• Interviewee:
  • Carys mainprize
  • Rosalind Readhead

• 1.5C individual carbon footprint targets:

  • 1.4 tonnes CO2e/year by 2040
  • 0.7 tonnes CO2e/year by 2050
  • what about 2030?

• Comment

  • From the perspective of mobilizing a bottom-up movement, the critical questions are:
    • what are the critical changes required for all of us to achieve around 1 tonne CO2e/year?
    • what are the leverage points for a bottom-up movement?

• Summary
  • Detroit's renaissance demonstrates
    • leverage points of repurposing
    • idling built environment resources
  • Cities with underutilized resources can take advantage of lean urbanism
    • via creating pink zones
    • where red tape is relaxed
• backlinked to
  • http://andrewmalone.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-roman-domus-as-caribbean-urban.html

• Summary
  • Interesting built environment sustainable design
    • based on ancient Roman residential design technique
    • leveraging and adapting this ancient rain water harvesting to accomplish multiple functions in a modern context::
      • potable water
      • evaporative cooling
      • irrigation
      • sanitation
      • personal hygiene

• This is a very broad and sweeping statement.
  • While I agree with it,
    • what does "learning how to die" exactly mean?
    • unless we know in details, we won't have an actionable strategy

Sheldon Solomon on the connection between the denial of death and the Anthropocene

• Quote
  • "Assembly theory was developed to capture my intuition that complex molecules can’t just emerge into existence because the combinatorial space is too vast,"
  • Author
    • Lee Cronin

• in other words
  • we could make a claim that we could extrapolate (intrapolate?) evolution to apply to abiotic, physical phenomena.

• In Other Words
  • it factors in time and history a key variables in explaining how biota emerges from abiota

Assembly theory

Summary - a growing body of research suggests that - the reasons we sleep is far more fundamental than simply neurological - and far more widespread - experiments with a wide range of neurologically primitive organisms did that they possess behavioural characteristics of sleep - this suggests that sleep may have evolved fire reasons of cellular metabolism

David Robert Lewis - founder of the Muizenberg Electricity Crisis Committee

Contact at CPUT - expertise in microgrids, etc.

Title: Proposed electricity co-op in Muizenberg as residents are 'fed up' with load shedding

• When everyone has a right to bear arms
  • and so many citizens feel they have a right to use them to defend themselves,
  • situations arise in life which are perceived as life-and-death,
  • and the decision to use deadly force is made
  • based on a false narrative playing out in the mind of the gun-owner.

• The claim is that the default narrative is critical to the way society organizes itself
  • capitalism and classic leberalism assumes competition (seflishness) is the default and collaboration secondary
  • Bauwens argues that collaboration (commons) needs to be the default going forward and competition secondary

• Michel Bauwens provides a summary and theoretical analysis of

  • the current stagnant, polarized and highly charged political environment, as well as
  • a proposed third commons-based option that could mitigate the problem.

• In this analysis, he introduces new terminology to describe the three categories of salient actors:

  • somewheres
  • nowheres
  • everywheres

Where there is a problem to be solved, there is a focus of attention Where there is a focus of attention, there is simplification of a complex system Where there is simplification of a complex system, there is a vast amount of knowledge relationships that is ignored Where this is a vast amount of ignored knowledge relationships, there is the potential for a progress trap

The systemic problem is the way our form of progress formulates problems and the inherent (over) simplification that comes with.that.

Question - Those is the big question!

In Other Words - our present economic distribution must be flipped going forward - That minority of elites that enjoy high wealth/high carbon emissions - must now dramatically reduce emissions - so that the disenfranchised people of the world have to a chance - of building up their lives towards acceptable levels of well-being

Key observation

In Other Words - These recommendations, if we followed continue the existing inequality, Indeed can exasperate it. - Wealthy countries and individuals cannot be allowed to continue emitting high levels of carbon if we are to honour the principle of climate justice andequity written into the climate agreements

Question - Who is controlling and advocating - the dominant techno-based NET narrative? - This narrative creates many scenarios that carry strong colonialist assumptions that perserve existing inequalities - Whilst IAM scientists strive to work with integrity, the fundamental framing narrative constrains their work to support ethically questionable recommendations - reference the work of Kanitkar et al.https://theprint.in/environment/why-indian-scientists-are-critiquing-ipcc-report-unfair-burden-on-developing-countries/1298871/

• The report claims that
  • to reach target of 50/50 chance of staying within 1.5 deg C,
  • we must reach meet zero by 2050
    • Yet, updating the IPCC’s estimate of the 1.5°C carbon budget,
      • from 2020 to 2023, and then drawing a straight line down from today’s total emissions to the point where all carbon emissions must cease, and without exceeding this budget,
    • gives a zero CO₂ date of 2040.
    • Furthermore, adding policy delays to set things up, it is more likely a date closer to mid 2030's.

Title IPCC’s conservative nature masks true scale of action needed to avert catastrophic climate change Author Kevin Anderson

Summary The influential 2023 IPCC Synthesis report for policy makers is quite misleading and can steer policy makers in the wrong, and disastrous direction.

Title IPCC’s conservative nature masks true scale of action needed to avert catastrophic climate change Author Kevin Anderson

Quote - matter is a phase of consciousness

Author - Iain McGilchrist

// Metaphysics eats culture for breakfast - a takeoff of a well-known business meme - culture eats strategy for breakfast - Beiner goes one level deeper and claims - metaphysics eats culture for breakfast - He justifies this via this argument - Our strategies for changing the world - are often inspired by - a culture created by a physicalist metaphysics. - That’s why I propose that metaphysics eats culture for breakfast. - What we believe to be real and relevant - is the most significant factor - in the formation of culture, - which in turn influences our thoughts and emotions, - which in turn influence our values, - which influence our institutions and political policies. - The change has to happen at the deepest level - if it’s going to have any significant impact - on an issue as important as whether or not we go extinct.

Key finding Paraphrase - So what does a conscious universe have to do with AI and existential risk? - It all comes back to whether our primary orientation is around - quantity, or around - quality. - An understanding of reality - that recognises consciousness as fundamental - views the quality of your experience as - equal to, - or greater than, - what can be quantified.

• Orienting toward quality,
  • toward the experience of being alive,
• can radically change
  • how we build technology,
  • how we approach complex problems,
  • and how we treat one another.

Quote - metaphysics of quality - would open the door for ways of knowing made secondary by physicalism

Author - Robert Persig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance // - When we elevate the quality of each our experience - we elevate the life of each individual - and recognize each individual life as sacred - we each matter - The measurable is also the limited - whilst the immeasurable and directly felt is the infinite - Our finite world that all technology is built upon - is itself built on the raw material of the infinite

//

Quote - Let us remember that - our knowledge of the world begins - not with matter - but with perceptions. - I know for sure that - my pain exists, - my ‘green’ exists, - and my ‘sweet’ exists - … everything else is a theory. - Later we find out that our perceptions obey some laws, <br /> - which can be most conveniently formulated - if we assume that there is some underlying reality - beyond our perceptions. - This model of the material world obeying laws of physics - is so successful - that soon we forget about our starting point and say - that matter is the only reality, - and perceptions are only helpful for its description.

Author Andrei Linde - https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/article/universe-life-consciousness-by-andrei-linde

Quote - Our argument for a mental world does not entail or imply - that the world is merely one’s own personal hallucination or act of imagination. - Our view is entirely naturalistic: - the mind that underlies the world - is a transpersonal mind behaving according to natural laws. - It comprises but far transcends any individual psyche…. - The claim is thus that the dynamics of all inanimate matter in the universe - correspond to transpersonal mentation, - just as an individual’s brain activity - which is also made of matter - corresponds to personal mentation.

Author - Henry Stapp - Bernardo Kastrup - Menas C. Kafatos - https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/coming-to-grips-with-the-implications-of-quantum-mechanics/

Definition - philosophical Idealism - the view that reality is fundamentally a mental process (consciousness) rather than a physical thing

Definition - generator function of existential risk - the deeper driving cause of existential risk - two examples of deep causes - rivalrous dynamics - complicated systems consuming their complex substrate

Claim - Alexander Beiner claims that - the generator function of these generator functions is physicalism

Key observation - If the metaphysical foundations of our society tell us we have no soul, - how are we going to imbue soul into AI? - Four hundred years after Descartes and Hobbs, - our scientific methods and cultural stories are still heavily influenced by their ideas.

Quote - Descartes created the mind / body dualism - Thomas Hobbes reduced consciousness to physicalism - by claiming that thinking was an epi-phenomena of atomic interactions

Key finding - Values cannot be quantified - but are something felt, - and which has a quality (qualia)

Quote - AI Gedanken - AI risk - The Paperclip Maximizer

Key observation - Quantity is all modernity values - Quality is thrown out the window - Later, the author connects - quantity to the Cartesian world view, - that seeks to measure everything - and quality to the Idealist worldview - that elevates consciousness over physicalism and materialism - (Destructive) growth - is an outcome of the cartesian worldview

// - To find a God that can kill Moloch - requires an understanding of the nature of progress as well - Relationship to progress traps - Exponential technologies - are technologies, and all suffer the same fundamental flaw - Progress is an expression of our cumulative cultural evolution - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=cumulative+cultural+evolution - which grows exponentially faster than genetic evolution - The problem of which is that - the shadow side of progress, the progress trap - - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=progress%2Btrap - is growing even faster, due to our misunderstanding of it, - allowing it to fester like an untreated wound - turning a minor condition, into a life-threatening disease - Human progress has always been a bungling two step forwards, one step backwards dance - the imperfections of progress are inherent - and baked into the innovation process itself - For we develop technologies based on what we know, or what is visible - but what we know is like the tip of the latent knowledge iceberg - and is always accompanied by a much larger hidden component of what we don't know - In other words, - finite and visible knowledge - is always accompanied by infinite and invisible ignorance - Design is based on intent, - a one dimensional, inherently myopic imagination - of a multi-dimensional reality - A problem is a one dimensional focus - on a small sliver of reality - A solution to the problem is necessarily - myopic and - one dimensional as well - Both problems and their (designed) solutions - are extreme simplifications of a complex system - Language itself is a way - to direct and focus our attention - to this aspect of reality - then that aspect - Thinking is reduced to parts, and never experiences the whole, undivided gestalt of reality - Out of this process - Progress traps are born //

In Other Words - AI researchers are calling on one another to find a higher value than growth and technological advancement, - but these values are absent from the humanistic perspectives that built the tech to begin with. - Therefore, it is of limited effectiveness - to appeal to ethics in the socio-economic growth framework that values growth above all things - that motivates AI research. - Deep down we probably know this, - which is why our nightmarish fantasies about the future of AI look very much like - a manifestation of Moloch, - a new god that cares nothing for us. - AI as Moloch is a mad deity, - that much like late stage capitalism, - can see nothing beyond consumption.

Quote - Only another God can kill Moloch - Author - Scott Alexander - Source - Meditations on Moloch - https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

Question - What is meant by "higher power"? - a belief in God, religion?

Paraphrase - why is a humanistic stance enough to create ethical technology? - imagine that Moloch is an unseen force, - an emergent property of the complex system we create between - all our interactions as human beings. - Those interactions are driven by: - behaviors, - memes, - ideas and - cultural values which are all based on<br /> - what we think is real and - what we feel is important.

Multi-polar trap

AI is a multi-polar trap

Quotation - If there's a force that's driving us toward greater complexity - there seems to be an opposing force, - a force of destruction that uses competition for ill. - The way I see it, - Moloch is the god of unhealthy competition, of negative sum games

• A good story
  • about how myopic, self-interested short-termism behavior
  • can lead to temporary success
  • and long term failure

Title Reality Eats Culture For Breakfast: AI, Existential Risk and Ethical Tech Why calls for ethical technology are missing something crucial Author Alexander Beiner

Summary - Beiner unpacks the existential risk posed by AI - reflecting on recent calls by tech and AI thought leaders - to stop AI research and hold a moratorium.

• Beiner unpacks the risk from a philosophical perspective

  • that gets right to the deepest cultural assumptions that subsume modernity,
  • ideas that are deeply acculturated into the citizens of modernity.

• He argues convincingly that

  • the quandry we are in requires this level of re-assessment
    • of what it means to be human,
    • and that a change in our fundamental cultural story is needed to derisk AI.

Definition - Global Phase Shift - A global process of civilizational transition in which - Human civilization - a complex adaptive system, - in the twenty-first century finds itself - at the early stages of a systemic phase-shift - which is already manifesting in local sub-system failures - in every major region of the periphery of the global system. - In this context, it is precisely the acceleration of global system failure - that paves the way for the possibility of - fundamental systemic transformation, - and the emergence of a new phase-shift in the global system - Human civilization is in the midst - of a global transition - to a completely new system - which is being forged from the ashes of the old. - Yet the contours of this new system remain very much subject to our choices today - there remains a capacity for agents - within the global system - to generate adaptive responses that, - through the power of transnational information flows, - hold the potential to enhance collective consciousness. - The very breakdown of the prevailing system - heralds the potential for long-term post-breakdown systemic transformation.

Key observation - due to the critical role of information in phase-transitions, - the primary pathway to global systemic transformation - will depend on our ability to process information on our current predicament coherently - in order to translate this into adaptive action.

In Other Words The human INTERbeing - our relational nature - our Dunbar number past - is denied by modernity

this is Donella Meadows top leverage point to intervene in a system - change in paradigm, worldview and narratives of the individual - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=leverage+points

Meaning crisis

Interesting to observe that South Africa has the worst indicator of all.

In Other Words - the degradation of the indvidual/collective entanglement

Annotate this report

What is important is the inner/outer entanglement

The inner / outer crisis relationship. This is one of the major relationships identified by Stop Reset Go and Deep Humanity.

Title: The Planetary Emergency is a Crisis of Spirituality - The collapse of reductionist materialism is a defining feature of the global phase-shift. The question is, what comes next, and what are we going to do about it?

Author - Nafeez Ahmed

• Rewilding large terrestrial and marine animals can sequester 500 gigatons co2 by 2100

Title: Rewilding’ Parts of the Planet Could Have Big Climate Benefits

Title: Trophic rewilding can expand natural climate solutions

Another unknown not yet included in IPCC report

AMOC slowdown may reduce my efficacy of co2 absorption.

Part One of two-part article - on the relevance of 1.5°C, - unpack the policy gulf that exists between - the Paris Agreement climate goals and - real-world emissions trajectory. - Part one challenges - the techno-optimistic position, - embodied by international leaders and the COP process - as being wilfully ignorant of reality.

Part two, forthcoming - question - is still tenable to claim that 1.5°C is in any meaningful sense ‘alive’. - Question recent suggestions that, - because a 50% chance has all but slipped beyond reach, - 1.5°C is now effectively dead in the water. - Exploration of the dangers of disregarding societal transformations - that could yet deliver an outside chance of 1.5°C.

Title: How Alive Is 1.5? Part One – A Small Budget, Shrinking Fast

Author: - Kevin Anderson - Dan Calverley

Key Messages - For a 50:50 chance of staying below 1.5°C, we’re using up the remaining carbon budget at around 1% every month. - Following current national emissions pledges (NDCs) to 2030 puts the temperature commitments within the Paris Agreement beyond reach. - Claims that 1.5°C is now inevitable also assign “well below 2°C” to the scrapheap. - An ‘outside chance’ of not exceeding 1.5°C remains viable, but ongoing fossil fuel use is rapidly undermining it. - The few credible pathways for an outside chance of 1.5°C are not being discussed. This is an active choice by policymakers and experts, who have largely dismissed equity-based social change.

• acknowledging and working with complexity
  • means implementing strategies
  • to deal with the changing landscape of knowns and unknowns
• We are always working with limited knowledge
  • we need to explicitly recognize that
  • and develop pragmatic strategies
    • to integrate the unknown into decision-making processes

5 principles for mitigating progress traps - 1) - a priori assessments of potential unintended consequences of policies - should be conducted by - multidisciplinary teams - with as broad a range of expertise as possible. - This would require decision-making - to flex around specific policy challenges - to ensure that decision-makers reflect the problem space in question. - 2) - policy plans made in light of the assessment should be iterative, - with scheduled re-assessments in the future. - As has been discussed above, - knowledge and circumstances change. - New consequences might have since - become manifest or new knowledge developed. - By planning and implementing reviews, - organizational reflexivity and - humility - needs to be built into decision-making systems (e.g., Treasury, 2020).

• 3)
  • given the scale of systems
    • such as the water-energy-food nexus
  • and the potential for infinite variety and nuance of unintended consequences,
    • pragmatism necessitates specification of boundaries
      • within which assessments are made.
  • It should be noted that this can in itself give rise to unintended consequences
    • through potential omission of relevant areas.
  • Hence, boundary decisions regarding
    • where the boundaries lie
      • should be regularly revisited (as per 2) above.
• 4)
  • unintended consequences identified
    • should be placed in the framework
      • with as much consensus among decision-makers as possible.
  • The positioning does not need to be limited to a single point,
    • but could be of the form of a distribution of opinions of range
      • of knowability and
      • avoidability;
    • the distribution will be indicative of
      • the perspectives and
      • opinions of the stakeholders.
  • If a lack of consensus exists on the exact position,
    • this can highlight a need to
      • seek more diverse expertise, or
      • for further research in order to improve consensus, or
      • for fragmenting of the issue into
        • smaller,
        • more readily assessable pieces.
• 5)
  • there is a need for more active learning
    • by decision-makers
      • about how to avoid repeating past unintended consequences.
  • To support this,
    • assessment process and
    • outcomes should be
      • documented and
      • used
    • to appraise the effectiveness of policy mechanisms,
      • with specific attention on outcomes
        • beyond those defined by policy objectives and the
          • assumptions and
          • decisions
        • which led to these outcomes.
  • Such appraisals could reflect on - the scope of the assessment, and - the effectiveness of specific groups of stakeholders
    • in being able to identify potential negative outcomes,
      • highlighting gaps in knowledge and limitations in the overall approach.
  • Additional records of the level of agreement of participants
    • would allow for re-evaluation with new learning.