• 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.

• Example
  • insect for animal feed
    • as a example of knowable and avoidable unintended consequence

• Example of unknowable and avoidable
• The same insect problem above
  • can also be classified as
    • unknowable and
    • avoidable
  • in EU regulation (EC) No 999/2001
    • that does not distinguish between
      • ruminants and
      • insects,
    • in effect banning the use of insects in
      • aquaculture,
      • poultry and
      • pig feed

Title: Unintended Consequences: Unknowable and Unavoidable, or Knowable and Unforgivable?

Abstract - Paraphrase - there are multiple environmental limits within which humanity can safely operate, - potential negative outcomes of seemingly positive actions need to accounted for. - “nexus” research is consistent with the above - it recognizes the integrated and interactive nature of water, energy and food systems, - and aims to understand the broader implications of developments in any one of these systems. - This article presents a novel framework for categorizing such detrimental unintended consequences, based upon: - how much is known about the system in question - and the scope for avoiding any such unintended consequences. - The framework comprises four categories: - Knowable and Avoidable - Knowable and Unavoidable - Unknowable and Avoidable - Unknowable and Unavoidable - The categories are explored with reference to examples in both: - the water-energy-food nexus and - planetary boundary frameworks. - The examples: - highlight the potential for the unexpected to happen and - explore dynamic nature of the situations that give rise to the unexpected. - The article concludes with guidance on how the framework can be used - to increase confidence that best efforts have been made to navigate our way toward - secure and sustainable water, energy and food systems, - avoiding and/or managing unintended consequences along the way.

// - This paper is principally about - progress traps, - how they emerge, - their characteristics - as they morph through the knowability / avoidability matrix - and how we might predict and mitigate them in the future

// - This is the critical question - Looking at history, can we see predictive patterns - when it makes sense to stop and take questions of the unknown seriously - rather than steaming ahead into uncharted territory? - We might find that society did not follow science's call - for applying the precautionary principle - because profits were just too great - the profit bias at play - profit overrides safety, health and wellbeing

// - This is a good basic framing - for future basic research - on progress traps - Future paper would explore details in a much more granular way //

Johari Window states the same thing

• genetic and cultural evolution
• as well as individual and collective learning are deeply enmeshed
• The distinction between
  • genetic and cultural evolution and
  • individual and cultural learning
• are ambiguous at best

Definition - socially based individual learning - an individual learns by interacting with the embedded environment - but the environment is itself biased - so that certain learning outcomes - are more easily learned - than they would otherwise be

moss sponging by chmpanzees - is a phenomena observed by researchers - in which the distinction between<br /> - individual and - collective learning - is fuzzy - Sponging is a technique of wild chimpanzees - in which they use chewed up plant material - as a sponge to soak up water - One individual wild chimpanzee - named by the researchers as KW - picked up a discarded sponge used by another wild chimpanzee - which happened to have moss in it - and so developed a sponge for water specifically from moss - KW did not learn it socially from another chimpanzee - yet if it weren't for - the behavior of other chimpanzees in the group - cultural artefacts they left behind - niche construction that resulted to changes in the environment - the individual learning of KW would never have produced moss sponging

individual and social are deeply entangled

• This primate example demonstrates an ambiguity between individual and social learning.
• The problem with this way of defining things exclusively as either
  • individual or
  • social
• is that we ignore the fact that,
  • even when acting in a manner
  • that appears to involve no direct interaction with other creatures,
• organisms nonetheless develop and learn in environments
  • that have been affected by the prior actions of their conspecifics (and not just their conspecifics).
• This is precisely the sort of phenomenon
  • stressed by the proponents of the niche-construction approach to evolution,
  • and it is also stressed by developmental systems theorists [40,41].
• Organisms grow in environments that have been constructed
  • by the actions of previous generations:
    • in that way, what an organism learns
    • can be profoundly affected and enhanced
    • by the collective activities of individuals it may never meet.
• In other words, we should not assume
  • that there is any good distinction
  • between
    • individual learning and
    • what we might call ‘social transmission’.
• The latter can be achieved via the former.

Best known example of gene-culture coevolution - co-evolution of pastoralism and lactose intolerance - the adoption of dairying set up a modified niche - in which the ability to digest lactose into adulthood was an advantage. - ancestors who were lactose tolerant could take advantage of a new source of calories. - Hence it is the learned acquisition of dairying which explains the natural selection of genes favoring lactase persistence, - the continued production of the enzyme lactase beyond weaning - Dual inheritance theory (Gene-culture coevolution) typically uses this example to explain - Dairying is inherited via a cultural channel - lactase persistence is inherited via a genetic channel - Recent supporters of this also make recent claims that it is not possible to distinguish between - what is biological from what is cultural

The eintangled human - bio-social human interBEcomING

Definition - Cumulative Cultural Evolution - The core criteria follow the definition of CCE provided in Tomasello's quotation above - A population exhibits CCE iff - (i) a change in behaviour (or product of behaviour, such as an artefact), typically due to asocial learning, followed by - (ii) the transfer via social learning of that novel or modified behaviour to other individuals or groups, where - (iii) the learned behaviour causes an improvement in performance, - which is a proxy of genetic and/or cultural fitness, with - (iv) the previous three steps repeated in a manner that generates sequential improvement over time.

• Boyd & Richerson give a nice explanation of CCE
• In contrast [to non-human species' cultural traditions],
  • human cultures do accumulate changes over many generations,
  • resulting in culturally transmitted behaviors that no single human individual could invent on their own.

• Cumulative cultural evolution has emerged as the front runner to explain human "success"
• CCE was popularized by Boyd & Richarerson and Tomasello.
• Tomasello argued that only humans could "accumulate modifications over time"

New term for me - the Ratchet effect! - equivalent to CCE - A ratchet is a device with angled teeth that allows a bar or cog to move in one direction only. Here, it is a metaphor for the accumulation of increasingly effective modifications without reverting back to prior, less effective states.

Title: What is cumulative cultural evolution (CCE)?

Authors: - Alex Mesoudi - Alex Thornton

Abstract - In recent years, cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) has become the focus of major research interest in - biology, - psychology and - anthropology. - There is a range of opinions on CCE - some argue that CCE is unique to humans - and underlies our extraordinary evolutionary success as a species. - Others claim to have found CCE in non-human species. - Yet others remain sceptical that CCE is even important for explaining - human behavioural diversity and - complexity. - These debates are hampered by multiple and often ambiguous definitions of CCE. - Here, we review how researchers define, use and test CCE. - We identify a core set of criteria for CCE - which are both necessary and sufficient, and - may be found in non-human species. - We also identify a set of extended criteria - that are observed in human CCE - but not, to date, in other species. - Different socio-cognitive mechanisms may underlie these different criteria. - We reinterpret - previous theoretical models and - observational and - experimental studies of both - human and - non-human species - in light of these more fine-grained criteria. - Finally, we discuss key issues surrounding information, fitness and cognition. - We recommend that researchers are more explicit about what components of CCE they are testing and claiming to demonstrate.

Three obstacles to policies limiting elite carbon emissions - First is the realization of connection between wealth and carbon emissions - Second is polarized politics making it difficult to pass or implement policies to limit dangerous consumption - Third is focused policy on the oversized contributions of elites

key finding - staying within 1.5 or even 2 deg C will be difficult without addressing wealth growth - a significant share of the remaining carbon budget risks being depleted by a very small group of human beings

// - if millionaire consumptive behavior - threatens the survival of civilization, - then laws can be created to ban the dangerous consumptive behavior - if they cannot self-regulate

Graph - millionaire emission growth vs remaining carbon budget - Note the year 2037 on this graph - This is when millionaire emissions exceeds remaining carbon budget

key finding - Elite consumption has the potential to make 1.5 Deg C target unreachable - US$2020 millionaires will deplete 72% of the 1.5 °C carbon budget (400 Gt CO2, 67% chance of staying within temperature range), - or 25% of the 2 °C budget (1150 Gt CO2, 67% chance) - over the next 30 years.

graph - millionaire numbers by region - 1990 - 2020 - 2050

• Quote
  • carbon inequality stat
    • 1% of the world's population is responsible for 50% of emissions from commercial air transport

yacht stats - 2021: 5245 superyachts of lengths 30-180m - 1990: 1090 superyachts of lengths 30-180m - stats - yachts - quote - yachts

carbon inequality follows a power law

• Table
  • Interrelationship of wealth and emissions per capita. //
• It is clear that we have an urgent need
• to bend the curve of emissions of elites

Quinn Slobodian's Crack-Up Capitalism may be a new form of disaster capitalism that will emerge as the polycrisis continues - https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2Fr8k0r3dZsog%2F&group=world - as the growth of elites attest, we can count on capitalism to capitalize on disaster.

Quotable carbon inequality stats: - the top 1% responsible for 17% of total emissions, - the top 10% for 48%, - the bottom 50% for12% - stats carbon inequality - quote carbon inequality - 2019

// A key question is also this: - what are individuals using those carbon emissions for? - is it being used just for luxury consumption - or is it being used to develop and actionize scalable low carbon strategies? - if it is the later, it could be seen as a de-carbon investment

Noteworthy countries with the most high carbon net worth individuals (HCNW): - USA - 3.16 million individuals emitting an average 318 t CO2-e/year/person, - Luxemburg: 10,000 individuals emitting an average 287 t CO2-e/year/person, - Singapore: 50,000 individuals emitting 251 t CO2-e/year/person, - Saudi Arabia: 290,000 individuals emitting 247 t CO2-e/year/person, - Canada: 350,000 individuals emitting 204 t CO2-e/year/person

Biggest source of emissions of the elite: - yachts - private air transportation - multiple homes in different countries

// - luxury industries of: - private jets - luxury home real estate - yachts - are unsustainable - this irresponsible, unsustainable consumption is imperiling civilization itself

Yacht stats: - close to two thirds of the overall carbon footprint of those billionaires owning yachts is caused by yacht-ownership. - Carbon footprint is - 6500 times greater than the global average of 4.5 t CO2 per person per year, - 300,000 times greater than the poorest, at 0.1 t CO2 per person and year - stats - carbon inequality - quote - carbon inequality

Quotable carbon inequality stats: - top 0.01% emit more than 2300 t CO2-e per capita in 2019, - global average is 6 t CO2-e - therefore, the top 0.01% emit 2300/6 = 383x more than the global average. - quote - carbon inequality - stats - carbon inequality

key observation

Title: Millionaire spending incompatible with 1.5 °C ambitions Authors: - Stefan Gossling - Andreas Humpe

• Abstract

  • Research question

    • Growing evidence suggests that the wealthiest individuals contribute disproportionally to climate change.
    • This study considers the implications of a continued growth in the number of millionaires for emissions,
      • and its impact on the depletion of the remaining carbon budget to limit global warming to 1.5 °C (about 400 Gt CO2).
    • The study presents a model that extrapolates observed growth in millionaire numbers (1990–2020)
      • and associated changes in emissions to 2050.

  • Results

    • The share of US$2020-millionaires in the world population will grow from 0.7% today to 3.3% in 2050,
      • and cause accumulated emissions of 286 Gt CO2.
    • This is equivalent to 72% of the remaining carbon budget,
      • and significantly reduces the chance of stabilizing climate change at 1.5 °C.
    • Continued growth in emissions at the top
      • makes a low-carbon transition less likely,
      • as the acceleration of energy consumption by the wealthiest
      • is likely beyond the system's capacity to decarbonize.
    • To this end, we question whether policy designs
      • such as progressive taxes targeting the high emitters
    • will be sufficient.

// and if it is not sufficient, then what?

Taxing? No, they have enough wealth to just keep going. - if we people don't act on their own, legal regulation is required - unless they can transform themselves and the global luxury industry also undergoes a huge transformation

Quinn Slobodian - in his book "Globalists" traces roots of neoliberalism - back to the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian empire

• Definition
  • Crack-Up Capitalism is defined as
    • a form of economic activity
    • propagated by people
      • whose profit model and
      • their kind of a normative vision of
        • change and
        • the social future
      • relies on an idea
      • of an accelerating process of
        • social dissolution and
        • an accelerating process of political fragmentation
          • in the near future and
          • the medium-term future

Book review of historian Quinn Slobodian's new book: Crack-up Capitalism

• Quote
  • A hundred years ago, the robber barons built libraries. Today they build spaceships.
  • Author Quinn Slobodian

or more directly, people power.

• A good observation
  • about the cognitive dissonance of the situation

Indeed, - and the market could very well make the decision - that will exceed planetary boundaries - after all, the highest priorities are the lowest cost goods - those already well established in the market place by reliance on fossil fuels, - that can maintain an individual's life

• The hands of politicians are always bound.
  • by the fossil fuel interests that power the ordinary person's lives
• The current dependency of the ordinary person on fossil fuels
  • is still the greatest barrier to system change.

• Quote

• The supreme court is tilted in favor of the fossil fuel industry through these appointments.
• The battle to keep fossil fuel litigation away from state courts and in federal court is big oil's attempt to leverage their conservative allies

• Title: Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil for Climate Deaths

• Author:

  • David Arkush
  • Donald Braman

• Abstract

• Paraphrase
  • Prosecutors regularly bring homicide charges against individuals and corporations
    • whose reckless or negligent acts or omissions
    • cause unintentional deaths,
    • as well as those whose misdemeanors or felonies cause unintentional deaths.
  • Fossil fuel companies learned decades ago that
    • what they
      • produced,
      • marketed, and
      • sold
    • would generate “globally catastrophic” climate change.
  • Rather than alert the public and curtail their operations,
    • they worked to
      • deceive the public about these harms and
      • to prevent regulation of their lethal conduct.
  • They funded efforts to
    • call sound science into doubt and
    • to confuse their
      • shareholders,
      • consumers, and
      • regulators.
    • poured money into political campaigns to elect or install
      • judges,
      • legislators, and
      • executive officials hostile to any
        • litigation,
        • regulation, or
        • competition
      • that might limit their profits.
  • Today, the climate change that they forecast
    • has already killed thousands of people in the United States,
    • and it is expected to become increasingly lethal for the foreseeable future.
  • Given the
    • extreme lethality of the conduct and
    • the awareness of the catastrophic risk
      • on the part of fossil fuel companies,
      • should they be charged with homicide?
  • Could they be convicted?
  • In answering these questions,
    • this Article makes several contributions to
      • our understanding of criminal law and
      • the role it could play in combating crimes committed at a massive scale.
  • It describes
    • the doctrinal and
    • social predicates of homicide prosecutions
  • where corporate conduct endangers much or all of the public.
  • It also identifies important advantages of
    • homicide prosecutions
    • relative to
      • civil and
      • regulatory remedies,
    • and it details
      • how and
      • why
    • prosecution for homicide may be the most effective legal remedy available in cases like this.
  • Finally, it argues that,
    • if our criminal legal system cannot focus more intently on climate crimes soon
    • we may leave future generations with significantly less for the law to protect.

-In Other Words - Die before you die -Paraphrase - If the ego is mentally constituted by this dualistic way of thinking, - the ego should be able to die without physical death. - That is precisely the claim of Buddhism: - the sense of self can disappear, - but there remains something else - that cannot die, - because it was never born. - Anatma is the "middle way" - between - the extremes of eternalism (the self survives death) and - annihilationism (the self is destroyed at death). - Buddhism resolves the problem of life-and-death - by deconstructing it. - The evaporation of it is dualistic way of thinking - reveals what is prior to it, - which has many names, - the most common being "the unborn."

• Title: Buddhism and Money: The Repression of Emptiness Today
• Author: David Loy

David Loy explains how - the denial of ego-self, also known as anatma - becomes the root of a persistent sense of lack - as self-consciousness continues to try to ground itself, reify itself and make itself real - while all the meanwhile it is a compelling mental construction

A good paper on the role (non-rational) relational ritual can play to help us out of the current polycrisis is given here: https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrill.com%2Fview%2Fjournals%2Fwo%2F25%2F2%2Farticle-p113_1.xml%3Flanguage%3Den&group=world

Good explanation of what self-consciousness attempts to do:

Self-consciousness is not something obviously "self-existing" it is a fiction, - it is ungrounded because it is - a mental construct.

Rather than being selfsufficient, - consciousness is like the surface of the sea: dependent on unknown depths ("conditions," as the Buddha called them) that it cannot grasp - because it is a manifestation of them.

The problem arises because this conditioned, and therefore unstable, consciousness wants to - ground itself, to make itself real.

But to real-ize itself is to objectify itself - meaning to grasp itself, since an object is that-which-is-grasped.

The ego-self is this continuing attempt to objectify oneself by grasping oneself, something we can no more do than a hand can grasp itself.

Quote - becoming ones own ground and not recognizing groundlessness (tantamount to our nature as evolutionary beings)

Quote - the sin of being born. - the worm in the heart of the human condition - an inescapable consequence of self-consciousness itself

Quote - normality is our collective, protective madness in which we repress the grim truth of the human condition.

Quote - do our fears cause us to perceive the world the way we do, and might someone experience the world differently if they were brave enough to face the thing we avoid most? key question - could we imagine a world where we are free of these fears?

The evolution of a human being

• Quote

• Wright points out that answering the first two questions
  • is the key to answering the third one

Paul Gauguin's painting: - Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_Do_We_Come_From%3F_What_Are_We%3F_Where_Are_We_Going%3F#:~:text=Que%20sommes%2Dnous%20%3F,the%20themes%20of%20the%20Gospels%22. - Wright uses this painting as a appropriate introduction to his work tracing human progress because to answer the third question - where are we going? - requires answering the first two - where do we come from? - what are we?

• Ronald Wright gives his famous Massey talk on = progress traps
• The book
  • A Short History of Progress
• is based on a series of 5 talks he gave at the Massey Lectures
• All five talks are recorded here

google search for "Ronald Wright surviving progress"

Title: THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF TECHNOLOGY: SOLUTIONS, BREAKTHROUGHS, AND THE RESTART WE NEED

Title: The Unanticipated Consequences of Technology - progress traps

Longtail experience