656 Matching Annotations
  1. Jul 2024
    1. do we have 00:46:13 examples of civilizations um that really accepted limits

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

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

      • Tahitians practiced population control via
        • infanticide
          • It was ok to kill a newborn baby before it drew its first breath, as it was not considered a person until it drew the first breath
        • advanced Eroticism - separating sexual activity from reproduction
    2. he myth that progress will go on forever and will everything will get bigger and better and we don't have to control our numbers or demand on nature because we will always find a way to make it work we have to break out of that 00:45:21 mindset

      for - progress trap - dangerous mythology

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

      • We have to break out of that mindset
    3. the two sort of outstanding examples uh that i can think of are 00:39:39 egypt and china and both of those places have a an unbroken tradition of civilization that lasted something like 3000 years or more

      for - progress traps - exceptional civilizations - Egypt and China

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

    4. they feel incredibly resentful that they have not benefited from the the wealth generated 00:38:07 from by this uh system that was once uh uh promised them so much uh and so i i i think you know there and that's just one example among many uh in in the less prosperous parts of the world you could 00:38:21 you'd see many more

      for - progress trap - inequality - resentment

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

    5. if we fail to control our numbers and our appetites well then yes our society will start to to crash in a similar way to that of 00:35:32 easter island only on a worldwide scale and that means the whole industrial civilization will break down and 00:35:45 our descendants will essentially be uh savages to use that term very advisably and savages in the sense that they will have lost 00:35:58 the fruits of civilization and hate us

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

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

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

    6. for - progress traps - interview - Ronald Wright

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

    7. it's a very tough one for a lot of people to make because nobody wants to think there are limits like that 00:32:14 nobody wants to think that there's not going to be enough to go around

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

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

    8. one of the things i suggested in a short history of progress is that 00:30:18 one of our problems even though we're very clever as a species we're not wise

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

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

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

    9. easter island

      for - progress trap - archeology - Easter Island

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

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

    10. example is weaponry

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

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

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

    11. the progress trap and the pyramid scheme are not all that different

      for - adjacency - progress trap - pyramid scheme

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

    12. when you've killed off all the big game and you're sort of running around hunting rabbits and small birds and you're starting to think this 00:11:49 really isn't good enough and probably in those those hunting societies is usually the women and children who do the gathering and they were probably uh producing 00:12:02 a bigger and bigger percentage of the food supply from their activities

      for - progress - transition from stone age hunter gatherers to agriculture - role of women and children

    13. the really big progress traps uh come with with the invention of 00:07:20 agriculture and i i mentioned the first full-blown civilization in the old world the sumerians who perfected the art of irrigation 00:07:33 in what is now southern iraq

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

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

    14. the idea that this can go on forever is where the myth of progress gets 00:04:00 dangerous because

      for - quote - myth of progress - Ronald Wright

      quote - myth of progress - Ronald Wright - (see below) - although the idea that this can go on forever is where the myth of progress gets dangerous - because there have been many times and places in the human past, - not even necessarily in our own cultural tradition - among other civilizations where there have been great periods of - expansion and - prosperity - and everybody started to get the idea that life was getting better and better - but usually those those periods of rapid expansion are done and nature pays the bills for that

      Comment - history repeats when we forget the lessons of that part. - Historians are so important right now to remind us of past lessons

    15. until relatively modern times uh until really the beginning of the enlightenment of the industrial revolution people thought of progress in a moral sense 00:02:17 or a spiritual sense

      for - definition - progress

      definition - progress - before enlightenment, progress was defined in a moral and spiritual sense - after the enlightenment and industrial revolution, it was defined in a material sense

    16. myths are not necessarily untrue they're usually 00:03:33 partly true the danger lies in the part that isn't true and um so it it's partly true we have

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

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

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

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

    17. the idea took hold that and this was defined by the british economist uh sydney pollard in his book called the idea of progress and i'm just 00:02:54 paraphrasing here but essentially he said the uh the i the assumption is that there's a pattern of change in history and that 00:03:07 these consist of changes in one direction only and that that direction is towards improvement

      for - definition - progress - material - economist Sydney Pollard - improvement

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    1. If we are having narrowly  defined goals, as we discussed last time,   that can be achieved while externalizing harm  in other places, and we do a lot of that,   and we look at all of the goal achieving and not  all the externalities, we can call that progress.

      for - progress trap - achieving narrowly defined goals with externalities

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

    1. stat in use more than 10 years increases your risk of developing insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes which are two primary drivers of heart 00:26:07 disease

      for - progress trap - statins

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

  2. Jun 2024
    1. a dictator who wields the power of superintelligence would command concentrated power unlike 00:50:45 anything we've ever seen

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

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

    2. this is why it's such a trap which is why like we're on this train barreling down this pathway which is super risky

      for - progress trap - double bind - AI - ubiquity

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

    3. getting a base model to you know make money by default it may well learn to lie to commit fraud to deceive to hack to seek power because 00:47:50 in the real world people actually use this to make money

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

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

    4. whoever controls superintelligence will possibly have enough power to seize control from 00:35:14 pre superintelligence forces

      for - progress trap - AI - one nightmare scenario

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

    5. military power and Technology progress have been tightly linked historically and with extraordinarily rapid technological 00:34:11 progress will come military revolutions

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

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

    6. this is where we can see the doubling time of the global economy in years from 1903 it's been 15 years but after super intelligence what happens is it going to be every 3 years is it going be every five is it going to 00:33:22 be every year is it going to be every 6 months I mean how crazy is the growth going to be

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

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

    7. AGI level factories are going to shift from going to human run to AI directed using human physical labor soon to be fully being run by swarms of human level robots

      for - progress trap - AI and human enslavement?

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

    8. super intelligence is going to be like this across many domains it's going to be 00:31:42 able to find exploits in human code too subtle for humans to notice and it's going to be able to generate code too complicated for any human to understand even if the model spent decades trying to explain it

      for - progress trap - superintelligence threat

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

    9. nobody's really pricing this in

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

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

    10. having an automated AI research engineer by 2027 00:05:14 to 2028 is not something that is far far off

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

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

    1. let's face it if you create a traumatized child you then have 00:44:39 to have the capacity for dealing with the traumatized child so it's not just out of benevolence to him but also that it's a lot easier to be in relationship 00:44:51 with someone for the rest of your life that a that you haven't damaged

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

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

    2. I think one of the things that you're describing is what it looks 00:44:00 like to try to do something without breaking something else

      for - progress traps - Nora Bateson - response to interviewer's comment on everyday example of complexity - parent encouraging children to go to school - example of mitigating progress traps - complexity is hard!

    3. the solution to the consequence is likely to perpetuate the actual problem

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

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

      • In the singularity of its mission to hastily fix one malady at a time
        • the cure may be more harmful than the wound
      • Most identified problems as they have emerged
        • are really the consequence or symptoms of other conditions
      • The solution to the consequence is likely to perpetuate the actual problem
    4. what's the point what am i g to get out of this it's the same question actually

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

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

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

    5. you can take a lot more than you are and have a lot more information

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

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

      • adjacency relationship
        • When Nora talks about the
          • oversimplified,
          • reductionist
        • problem-solving approach that most of modernity employs to tackle wicked problems,
        • it boils down to oversimplification.
        • There are usually far more causes and conditions to a problem than are known to construct the solution
        • In Deep Humanity praxis, this is how we get into progress traps, the shadow side of progress
        • The Stop Reset Go complexity mapping system is designed to reveal greater information by
          • creating a space for diverse perspectives to systematically engage in addressing the same wicked problem
        • This system must be open source in order to create the space for maximum diversity
        • The Stop Reset Go process is specifically designed as a workspace for diversity for the purpose of
          • mitigating progress traps and
          • helping find more effective ways to address wicked problems
        • This is done by using Trailmark Markin notation within the Indyweb/Indranet people-centered, interpersonal software ecosystem
    6. that causality is not singular and so if you address a problem 00:11:06 that's created by a multiple causal process with a singular response you don't actually do anything but make it worse

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

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

    7. there are many um and that that pulls us into 00:00:26 reaction mode that has been long steeped in industrial responsiveness which is to the first order

      for - quote - progress trap - Nora Bateson

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

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

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

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

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

    2. Many low-calorie sweeteners are sugar alcohols that also are produced endogenously, albeit at levels over 1000-fold lower than observed following consumption as a sugar substitute.

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

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

  3. May 2024
    1. the United States was suppressing Democratic movements around the world because if an authoritarian if a communist can win an 00:13:59 election fairly one time that's the end of free and fair elections

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

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

    1. The Law of Unintended Consequences is the only certainty of complex systems, and the biosphere of the planet is the most complex system we know of

      for - progress traps - transcending capitalism

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

    1. if you could correct this Gene would we have the future reassured and we can then avoid all of these diseases I very much doubt it and I think it's very dangerous 00:23:49 because

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

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

    1. this dualism probably isn’t right given today’s complexities

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

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

    2. Solutions to avoid Collapse‘ - that’s why it’s failing!

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

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

  4. Apr 2024
    1. humanity's seemingly unstoppable instinct toward creation. The psychoanalyst Gaston Bachelard coined a term that encapsulates this drive: the "Prometheus complex."

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

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

    2. Our hands and our brains will, perhaps unconsciously, drift toward the very thing we’re debating if we should do.

      for - quote - Prometheus complex - progress trap

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

      • Our hands and our brains will,
        • perhaps unconsciously
      • drift towad the very thing we're debating if we should do
      • author - Jenny Thomson
    3. as the rational, intellectual part of ourselves wrestles with the decision, a deeper, Promethean part of ourselves has pressed it already.

      for - quote - Prometheus complex - progress trap

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

      • As the rational, intellectual part of ourselves wrestles with the decision,
        • a deeper Promethean part of ourselves has pressed it (the red button) already
      • author - Jenny Thomson
    4. for - progress trap - Prometheus complex - Dan Carlin - Gaston Bachelard - philosopher

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

    5. All roads lead to progress.

      for - key insight - all roads lead to progress - progress trap - Prometheus complex - impuslive urge to invent

      Comment - This is fleshed out in the final three paragraphs of this article - I disagree with the closing sentence, however

      • “It’s not possible [to avoid invention],
        • because all knowledge is interconnected like a web,” Carlin told Big Think.
      • “If you walled off a certain part of it because you saw the potential downside,
        • you would get to the same outcome sort of in a roundabout way, right?
      • The connections might not be direct, like saying, ‘Oh, I see nuclear weapons in the distance; let’s go there,’

        • but we would go through the back door, and eventually we would discover everything around that thing.”
      • To bring Carlin’s analogy home,

        • we can think about the idea of artificial general intelligence, or AGI.
      • AGI is the point at which AI can perform a wide variety of tasks so competently
        • that it matches or exceeds human intelligence and performance.
      • Some people might see AGI as dangerous.
      • Others may see AGI as the savior of humanity.
      • But while we have debates and conversations,
        • we’re still marching toward AGI.
      • Scientists and programmers behind their computers are
        • solving “everything around that thing.”
      • Our hands and our brains will,
        • perhaps unconsciously,
      • drift toward the very thing we’re debating if we should do.

      • The Prometheus complex can be seen over and over again

        • in the history of science.
      • It is not simply that Edenic urge to eat the fruit or push the red button.
      • It’s the fact that
        • as the rational, intellectual part of ourselves wrestles with the decision,
        • a deeper, Promethean part of ourselves has pressed it already.
      • Thankfully, it usually turns out okay.

      comment - I disagree with the last line - If the meta-poly-perma-crisis is what is meant by "OK", then it is a very distorted use of that word. - Rather, this Promethian way of thinking and act - compounded over the lifetime of human civilization - is EXACTLY what has brought us to the brink of civilizational disaster - and it may not turn out to be "ok"!

    6. Carlin’s point leans on one made by the British science historian James Burke in his TV series Connections.

      for - adjacency - Dan Carlin - James Burke - Connections

      adjacency - between - Dan Carlin - James Burke - Connections - progress - adjacency statement - What an interesting adjacency! - James Burke's Connection has been a major influence on my own thinking on progress and progress traps - Seeing it influence Dan Carlin as well

    7. At the core, it seems the deeper drive is to invent anything that we’re capable of inventing.

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

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

    8. [I wonder] whether or not human society actually has the agency that we think we have to not invent something if we think it might be bad.

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

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

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

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

  5. Mar 2024
    1. Passion of the Nerd aka @popotoproductions3015 in The Toolbox Fallacy

      This wasn't quite the toolbox fallacy definition I expected, but was a larger philosophical framing of a smaller version specific to getting things done (GTD).

      Many people move from tool to tool hoping the next one will somehow "fix" things. In reality, it's having a tool and USING IT which creates progress.

      Remember that it's rare that supposed innovation will be the fix, but picking a road and traveling down it will at least get you somewhere.

  6. Feb 2024
    1. don't give them a problem to solve ask them to identify what the problem is and what the context is and what support 00:08:12 is needed

      for - progress trap

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

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

    1. Setapart from the familiar social contexts of family, work, and school,the closed camp was designed to break down identifications withsocial milieus and to promote Entbürgerlichung (purging bourgeoiselements) and Verkameradshaftung (comradeship) as part of theprocess of Volkwerdung, “the making of the people,” as the pecu-liar idiom of National Socialism put it.

      entbürgerlichung - purging bourgeois elements

      verkameradshaftung - comradeship

      volkwerdung - the making of the people

    2. In place of the quarrels of party, the contests of inter-est, and the divisions of class, which they believed compromised theability of the nation to act, the Nazis proposed to build a unified ra-cial community guided by modern science. Such an endeavor wouldprovide Germany with the “unity of action” necessary to surviveand prosper in the dangerous conditions of the twentieth century
    3. crowds acclaimed the reestablishment of amass conscription army, the Wehrmacht, recalling for observers the“August Days” of 1914. Again socialists conceded: “For the over-whelming majority, 16 March is the definitive end to a shamefulpast, much more so than 30 January 1933; the day marks ‘the dawnof a new age.’” All this patriotic hoopla mattered; Versailles hadleft deep wounds, and, anyway, Germans were apt to be “childishlyproud of their army.”
    4. hile“Strength through Joy” vacations were budget affairs, third-classrailway journeys to Thüringen rather than Bavaria, and parsimo-nious meals at second-rate hotels, they offered millions of Ger-mans the opportunity to travel, to see the seaside, or visit theReichshauptstadt—Berlin was one of the favorite “Strengththrough Joy” destinations.

      giving people who had never had the opportunity to travel-- of course theyre gonna support your regime if it gives them perks. for all accounts this seems like a great deal for germans if you discount the ethnic cleansing happening in the bg

    5. the reports indicate that “workers not only wereunfree . . . but that most of them felt they were unfree, exploited,discriminated against and the victims of an unfair, class-ridden soci-ety.” Even during the boom years of 1937–39, “signs indicated thatNazism was further losing ground among workers.”

      counter to the argument made in the chapter, many workers under the nazi regime did not feel as though enough progress was being made

    6. these auxiliary organiza-tions gave Germans semiofficial responsibilities as they collecteddonations, distributed coal, or trained as air-raid wardens.

      ordinary civilians take on leadership positions -- social mobility, chances to move up the ladder. even if not personally aligned w nazi ideology, pretty good choice to work under them in order to boost your standing. plus boosts patriotism

    7. “Something had to be done”—these were the simple, conclusive words voiced by a friend of KarlDürkefälden’s, jobless and a new convert to Nazism. His wordswere echoed by thousands of workers in the winter and springof 1933; though a socialist, Karl himself understood—“it’s truetoo,” he added parenthetically in his diary entry.
  7. Jan 2024
    1. the canonical unit, the NCU supports natural capital accounting, currency source, calculating and accounting for ecosystem services, and influences how a variety of governance issues are resolved
      • for: canonical unit, collaborative commons - missing part - open learning commons, question - process trap - natural capital

      • comment

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

        • It is important to be aware that there is a real potential for a progress trap to emerge here, as any metric is liable to be abused
    1. And because the upsides are so obvious, it’s particularly important to step back and ask ourselves, what are the possible downsides? … How do we get the benefits of this while mitigating the risk?”
      • for: progress trap - urgent need for a new science

      • comment

        • Science and technology are constantly producing progress traps. Climate crisis is a major example, but there are so many other. We really and urgently need to motivate for a new field of study of progress traps in general.
    1. we're not in the economy of the 1950s anymore. And we act as though we are, that finance is this productive force and it's building, it's building wealth. Well, for the most part, it's not. It's, there's so much financialization, so many financial assets, that they've become an extractive force. And a big piece of this 00:06:37 is that we're not really distinguishing between productive investments and speculative investments
      • for: quote - Marjorie Kelly, quote - finacialization, progress trap - financialization, progress trap - capitalism, speculative investing

      • quote: Marjorie Kelly

        • we're not in the economy of the 1950s anymore.
        • And we act as though we are, that finance is this productive force and it's building, it's building wealth.
        • Well, for the most part, it's not.
        • There's so much financialization, so many financial assets, that they've become an extractive force.
          • And a big piece of this is that we're not really distinguishing between
            • productive investments and
            • speculative investments
    1. the mining operations on Halmahera are now penetrating deep into the rainforest of the Hongana Manyawa.” Vast areas of rainforest on Halmahera island are due to be logged and then mined for nickel. Companies including Tesla are investing billions in Indonesia’s plan to become a major nickel producer for the electric car battery market. French, German, Indonesian and Chinese companies are involved in mining in Halmahera.
      • for: progress trap - green growth - nickel mining - evicting uncontacted tribe

      • progress trap: green growth - mining

        • Capitalist logic justifies this violence
        • We destroy the earth in order to save the earth
        • Question
          • Is this really the way we should be doing things?
          • Is the green growth agenda really going to keep humanity safe? Or will the unintended consequences, the progress trap be worse than the problem it is attempting to solve?
  8. Dec 2023
    1. ‘progress traps’:
      • for: progress trap, Inner Development Goals, SoNeC, SRG Mapping Tool

      • comment

        • nice! (emoji: pleasant surprise) I wonder if Ferial or Joseph gave some inputs here, or was the SoNeC team already familiar with progress traps?
        • SRG mapping tool and Deep Humanity are designed to reveal complexity emerging from multiple, diverse perspectives mapped together so can compliment SoNeC application of Inner Development Goals
    1. One of the advantages of this media extended plugin is that it can handle more than just YouTube videos. It can handle videos and also some audio notes as well. And I don't think I've tried it with anything else but really I just need YouTube videos.

      Video Title: Taking notes from YouTube videos in Obsidian

      Various ways and plugins to annotate or take notes on videos (e.g. YouTube) in Obsidian

      Audio notes? How?

    1. it's extremely dangerous to create such an autonomous agent when we do not know how to control it when we 00:58:22 can't ensure that it will not Escape our control and start making decisions and creating new things which will harm us instead of benefit us now this is not a 00:58:34 Doomsday Prophecy this is not inevitable we can find ways to regulate and control the development and deployment of AI we we don't want
      • for: quote - Yuval Noah Harari - AI progress trap, progress trap - AI, quote - progress trap

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

      • author: Yuval Noah Harari
      • date 2023
    1. i think it's more likely that 00:49:59 that we will think we will think that we this particular set of procedures ai procedures that we linked into our strategic nuclear weapons system uh will keep us safer but we haven't recognized that they're 00:50:12 unintended that there are consequences glitches in it that make it actually stupid and it mistakes the flock of geese for an incoming barrage of russian missiles and and you know unleashes everything in response 00:50:25 before we can intervene
      • for: example - stupid AI - nuclear launch, AI - progress trap - example - nuclear launch
    2. i think the most dangerous thing about ai is not 00:47:11 super smart ai it's uh stupid ai it's artificial intelligence that is good enough to be put in charge of certain processes in our societies but not good enough to not make really 00:47:25 bad mistakes
      • for: quote - Thomas Homer-Dixon, quote - danger of AI, AI progress trap

      • quote: danger of AI

        • I think the most dangerous thing about AI is not super smart AI, it's stupid AI that is good enough to be put in charge of certain processes but not good enough to not make really bad mistakes
      • author: Thomas Homer-Dixon
      • date: 2021
    1. the previous average time for vaccinating 40 percent of the world's population for any other epidemic or pandemic or any other viral disease 00:45:56 had been 80 years 40 percent of the world's population this time we did it in two
      • for: progress trap

      • progress trap: speed of vaccination

        • If the vaccine was imperfect and caused harm, it could have caused harm to 40% of three population in a short period of time.
        • the shorter the time for something to spread globally, the faster unintended consequence can spread and cause harm
    1. we have to be very careful when we respond to climate change we're not exacerbating the other ones that are there and 00:12:34 ideally we want to try and respond to all of these challenges at the same time and there are a lot of crossovers between them but there are also real risks that sometimes you you solve one thing and cause another now in contemporary Society we have been very 00:12:47 good at reductionist thinking of of silos of thinking one bit and then causing another problem elsewhere we we don't have that opportunity anymore we have to start to think of these issues at a system level
      • for: progress trap - Kevin Anderson

      • validation: SRG mapping tool, Indyweb

    1. Getting over the fear of perfection .t3_188j2xt._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } I have so many half-filled notebooks or ones that I abandoned because I disliked my penmanship or because I “ruined” pages. I am the type of person who will tear out a page if I make a mistake or if it looks bad.I really want to start a commonplace book but I feel like I must get over this fear of “messing up” in a notebook. Anyone else struggle with this?

      reply to u/FusRoDaahh at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/188j2xt/getting_over_the_fear_of_perfection/

      I had this problem too, but eventually switched to keeping my commonplace entirely on index cards, which also allows me to move them around and re-arrange them as necessary or when useful. (It also fixed some of my indexing problems.)

      The side benefit is that if I botch a single card, no sweat, just pull out a new one and start over! If you like the higher end stationery scene afforded in notebooks, then take a look at Clairfontaine's bristol cards from Exacompta which are lush and come in a variety of sizes, colors, and rulings. (They're roughly equivalent to the cost per square meter of paper you'll find in finer notebooks like Leuchtturm, Hobonichi, Moleskine, etc., though some of the less expensive index cards still do well with many writing instruments.) Most of their card sizes are just about perfect for capturing the sorts of entries that one might wish to commonplace.

      Once you've been at it a while, if you want to keep up with the luxe route that some notebook practices allow, then find yourself a classy looking box to store them all in to make your neighbors jealous. My card indexes bring me more joy than any notebook ever did.

      When penmanship becomes a problem, then you can fix it by printing your cards, or (even better in my opinion), typing them on your vintage Smith-Corona Clipper.

      And of course the first thing one could type out on their first card and file it at the front where you can see it every day:

      "Le mieux est le mortel ennemi du bien" (The better is the mortal enemy of the good).<br /> — Montesquieu, in Pensées, 1726

      aka "Don't let perfection be the enemy of the good."

  9. Nov 2023
    1. conventional mouthwashes are very harmful it's been well documented if you use a conventional mouthwash your blood 01:32:00 pressure goes up for a long time because you've eradicated oral microbes that you needed that were producing such things as night uh as nitrosamine not sorry as nitric oxide that reduces blood 01:32:12 pressure uh and and they're not selective for bad microbes they kill everything including good ones
      • for: Progress trap - mouthwash, mouthwash - blood pressure
  10. Oct 2023
    1. But unchecked pursuit of competitive growth, powered by exponential technology on a finite planet has created a self-terminating 'race to the bottom' where no-one can opt out of the arms race unless all the competitors do the same.
    2. Humans are the only known species which has managed to totally dominate their enviroment by recursively advancing their tool-making capacity - thanks to the evolution of our abstract conceptual language and thought, and second-order thinking
      • for: progress trap

      • comment

        • this is similar to the Deep Humanity, contextual preamble that introduces progress traps.
    1. how do we 01:03:46 meet not match right so this is an image that meets all of this these images are going to go for 01:04:00 decontextualized singular responses that are going to create more double binds if you try to solve for life on land you're going to end up with life on 01:04:12 water being a disaster life in water or life in the air or life right if you try to solve for one you get into these contradictions and double binds
      • for: holism, progress trap, double bind, SDG failure

      • comment

        • In the current silo'd approach typified by the SDGs, unintended consequences, or progress traps are unavoidable and are built into the approach itself.
    2. the definition of a double bind is that you have a a problem a bind 00:35:07 in one context and you can't actually solve it in that context because it's caught in another context and so you can't solve it in that 00:35:20 context because it's caught in these other contexts
      • for: definition, definition - double bind

      • definition: double bind

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

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

      • quote

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

      • example

        • climate change If we do, all emissions suddenly, we will create an economic crisis, then without money, a health and social crisis
    1. the quick definition would be 00:03:20 something like the metac crisis is all the crisis put together right and people go oh oh I see I see but they don't see right cuz it's not really the end of it that's just the beginning of the conversation the metac crisis is also in 00:03:33 the way you make sense of the world the way you feel it in in imote in relation to it the metac crisis is in your incapacity to fully articulate and narrate the self in this 00:03:47 context and The Meta crisis is also a you know coextensive with Co arising with this particular historical Epoch
      • for: metacrisis framework, progress trap - metacrisis sensemaking

      • comment

        • progress trap framing would help provide an overarching sensemaking framework
    1. LLMs are merely engines for generating stylistically plausible output that fits the patterns of their inputs, rather than for producing accurate information. Publishers worry that a rise in their use might lead to greater numbers of poor-quality or error-strewn manuscripts — and possibly a flood of AI-assisted fakes.
      • for: progress trap, progress trap - AI, progress trap - AI - writing research papers

      • comment

        • potential fakes
          • climate science fakes by big oil think tanks
          • Covid and virus research
          • race issues
          • gender issues
    1. ethics and safety and that is absolutely a concern and something we have a 00:38:29 responsibility to be thinking about and we want to ensure that we stakeholders conservationists Wildlife biologists field biologists are working together to Define an 00:38:42 ethical framework and inspecting these models
      • for: progress trap, progress trap - AI
  11. Sep 2023
    1. "Unless you've felt it, unless you've cried over the fact that we really thought we were making the world a better place with the internet..." He pauses. "We 100 per cent believed that." Humanity, he says, is living through "two super old stories. One: be careful what you wish for, because you'll get it... And two: creators losing control of their creations."  He should know, because he is one of those Dr Frankensteins. As the son of Silicon Valley royalty (or at least nobility), he spent years merrily building technology that he believed was changing the world. It did, but not in the way that he hoped.
      • for: progress trap, progress trap - Aza Raskin, progress trap - internet, quote, quote - Aza Raskin, quote - progress trap, quote - progress trap - internet

      • quote

        • Unless you've felt it, unless you've cried over the fact that we really thought we were making the world a better place with the internet... We 100 per cent believed that.
    1. Watch the scale and scope of what you're doing. If you read a book and make a hundred highlights and small notes, DO NOT attempt to turn all of these into permanent notes. You might fell like that is the thing to do, but resist it. A large portion are small things or potentially useful facts that you'll likely never use again or would easily remember, particularly once you've read a whole book.

      Find the much smaller subset (5-10% or less of the overall total of notes and highlights as a ballpark rule of thumb) of the most interesting and potentially long term useful ones, and turn those into your permanent notes. Anything beyond this is sure to cause overwhelm. Also don't think that your permanent notes need to be spectacular, awesome, or even bordering on "perfect". They just need to be useful enough for you.

      If you own the books or keep your brief notes and highlights written down and need them in the future, you'll still have those to search/find and do something with later as a backstop just in case.

    1. Our future will involve a highly diverse space of novel beings in every possible combination of evolved cellular material, designed engineered components, and software. How do we know what we should expect from intelligences in unconventional embodiments?
    2. we attempt to bring concepts from both biology and Buddhism together into the language of AI, and suggest practical ways in which care may enrich each field.
      • for: progress trap, AI, AI - care drive
      • comment
        • the precautionary principle needs to be observed with AI because it has such vast artificial cognitive, pattern-recognition processes at its disposal
        • AI will also make mistakes, but the degree of power behind the mistaken decision, recommendation or action is the degree of unintended consequences or progress trap
        • An example nightmare scenario could be:
          • AI could decide that humans are contradicting their own goal of a stable climate system and if it's in control, may think it knows better and perform whole system change that dramatically reduces human induced climate change but actually harms a lot of humans in the process, for reaching the goal of saving the climate system plus a sufficient subset of humans to start all over.
    1. synthetic bioengineering provides a really astronomically large option space for new bodies and new minds that don't have 00:04:28 standard evolutionary backstories
      • for: cultural evolution, cumulative cultural evolution, CCE, bioengineering, novel life form, culturally evolved life, bioethics, progress trap, progress trap - bioengineering, progress trap - genetic engineering
      • comment
        • cultural evolution, which itself emerges from biological evolution is acting upon itself to create new life forms that have no evolutionary backstory
        • this is tantamount to playing God
        • progress traps often emerge out of the large speed mismatch between cultural and biological/genetic evolution.
        • Nowhere is this more profound than in bioengineering of new forms of life with no evolutionary history
        • This presents profound ethical challenges
    1. The insects spread internationally via shipping, especially of plants and soil. Red fire ants have been detected in imported products in Spain, Finland, and the Netherlands, but not as wild colonies.
      • for: progress trap, red fire ants, fire ants, progress trap - shipping, unintended consequences, unintended consequences - shipping

      • paraphrase

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

      • paraphrase

        • The dualism of scientific materialism gives rise to one-person psychologies
          • and are arguably complicit in much of the psychological and social damage we are now recognising.
        • For instance, a good deal of the historical denial of the role of psychological and social trauma has been traced
          • back to the Freudian model’s almost exclusive focus on the internal world;
            • the actual impact of others and society has been, as a result, relatively ignored.
        • Modern psychiatry, which accepts the same philosophical model but changes the level of explanation, is just as culpable.
        • Likewise CBT, with its focus on dysfunctional thought patterns and rational remedies administered from the outside, also follows the same misguided philosophy.
      • question

        • what are concrete ways this has caused harm?
      • future work
        • perform literature review on case studies where Winnicott's approach has been a more constructive therapeutic one
    1. After CNN’s reporting, Musk reversed course, tweeting “the hell with it … we’ll just keep funding Ukraine govt for free.”

      for: progress trap, unintended consequence, unintended consequence - Elon Musk, progress trap - Elon Musk - comment - the US military, Ukraine military have to deal with the unintended consequence of a vital communication system that can be turned off without notice or warning - what if Putin calls up Musk and says to him: - If you don't turn the Starlink off when Ukraine tries to mount major attack on Crimea, I will launch my nukes - What will Musk do then?

    2. “How am I in this war?” Musk asks Isaacson. “Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.”
      • for: progress trap, unintended consequence, playing God, Elon Musk - Starlink - Ukraine, Elon Musk- Crimea, Elon Musk - nuclear war, quote, quote - Elon Musk - nuclear war - starlink - crimea
      • quote
        • How am I in this war?
        • Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars.
        • It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.
      • author: Elon Musk
      • comment
        • the Tech genius could not predict the progress trap of starlink being used by the Ukrainian army to send submarine drones to blow up Russian ships
        • so he was forced into a position of playing God
    3. As Ukrainian submarine drones strapped with explosives approached the Russian fleet, they “lost connectivity and washed ashore harmlessly,” Isaacson writes. Musk’s decision, which left Ukrainian officials begging him to turn the satellites back on, was driven by an acute fear that Russia would respond to a Ukrainian attack on Crimea with nuclear weapons
      • for: progress trap, unintended consequences, nuclear war, Elon Musk - Ukraine, playing God

      • comment

        • Here, Elon Musk demonstrates how the most powerful technological leaders are themselves unable to predict the unintended consequences of progress.
        • This story exposes the power that no tech titan is immune to
          • making one dimensional decisions based on high dimensional information whose salient relationships can not be predicted ahead of time.
        • The dilemma of power - it is opaque and puts the fate of humanity in the decision of a few God-like individuals
        • Do 8 billion people really trust one man to decide the fate of civilization?
        • And yet, this is the kind of world that those in power continue to reify by consolidating their positions
        • The myth of dictators wanting to hold onto power at all costs goes beyond the sphere of politics
    1. Another concern is that these emerging economies could be simply trapping themselves in more debt with these agreements.
      • for: debt trap, economic colonialism, progress trap, JETP, UETP, Invesitgate, investigate - JETP
      • progress trap
        • in building out renewable infrastructure, these loans and grants may further increase debt to disenfranchised countries
        • then it is no longer Just energy transition but becomes Unjust Energy Transition Partnerships (UETP)
        • if not done right, JETP can turn into UETP
        • This definitely requires further investigation!
      • investigate
        • whether JETP are REALLY JUST!
  12. Aug 2023
      • for: fossil capitalism, progress trap, intersectionality, social norms, social norms - waste, externalization, capitalism
      • title

        • Waves of Abandonment
          • The Permian Basin is ground zero for a billion-dollar surge of zombie oil wells
      • summary

        • a story that illustrates the intersectionality of fossil capitalism
          • progress trap
          • exploitation
          • tragedy of the commons
          • fossil fuel industry
          • gold rush
          • externalization
          • fossil capitalism
      • Comment

        • Yet another example of capitalism's tendency to externalize manifests at the most basic level.
        • The tendency to treat nature as an inexhaustable garbage dumping ground seems to be built into our culture's economic norms taught to us by most parents and society at large.
        • There are not enough parents that teach their children to love, respect and feel that they are an intrinsic part of nature.
        • The externalization our society teaches us in the form of destructive, widely-accepted social norms of waste such as::
          • having the concept of waste and garbage
          • garbage taken out once a week
          • waste bins everywhere
          • keep our backyard clean, but at the expense of trucking out our garbage to some unknown place
        • has been enculturated into us from early age
    1. In fact, it might be good if you make your first cards messy and unimportant, just to make sure you don’t feel like everything has to be nicely organized and highly significant.

      Making things messy from the start as advice for getting started.

      I've seen this before in other settings, particularly in starting new notebooks. Some have suggested scrawling on the first page to get over the idea of perfection in a virgin notebook. I also think I've seen Ton Ziijlstra mention that his dad would ding every new car to get over the new feeling and fear of damaging it. Get the damage out of the way so you can just move on.

      The fact that a notebook is damaged, messy, or used for the smallest things may be one of the benefits of a wastebook. It averts the internal need some may find for perfection in their nice notebooks or work materials.

    1. The instinctual BS-meter is not enough. The next version of the ‘BS-meter’ will need to be technologically based. The tricks of misinformation have far outstripped the ability of people to reliably tell whether they are receiving BS or not – not to mention that it requires a constant state of vigilance that’s exhausting to maintain. I think that the ability and usefulness of the web to enable positive grassroots civic communication will be harnessed, moving beyond mailing lists and fairly static one-way websites.
      • for: misinformation, disinformation, fake news, quote, quote - Greg Shatan, quote - misinformation, progress trap - misinformation, progress trap - digital technology, indyweb - support
      • quote
        • The instinctual BS-meter is not enough.
        • The next version of the ‘BS-meter’ will need to be technologically based.
        • The tricks of misinformation have far outstripped the ability of people to reliably tell whether they are receiving BS or not
      • author: Greg Shatan
        • lawyer, Moses & Singer LLP
          • not to mention that it requires a constant state of vigilance that’s exhausting to maintain.
        • I think that the ability and usefulness of the web to enable positive grassroots civic communication will be harnessed,
          • moving beyond mailing lists and fairly static one-way websites.
    2. the gig economy is enabled by technology; technology finds buyers for workers and their services. However, given the choice between an economy with many gig workers and an economy with an equivalent number of traditional middle-class jobs, I think that most people would prefer the latter.”
      • for: gig economy, progress trap, unintended consequence, quote, quote - unintended consequence, quote - progress trap, quote James Mickens
      • quote
        • the gig economy is enabled by technology;
        • technology finds buyers for workers and their services.
        • However, given the choice between
          • an economy with many gig workers and
          • an economy with an equivalent number of traditional middle-class jobs,
        • I think that most people would prefer the latter.
      • author: James Mickens
        • associate professor of computer science, Harvard University
    3. Technology and social innovation intended to overcome the negatives of the digital age will likely cause additional negative consequences. Examples include: the decentralized web, end-to-end encryption, AI and machine learning, social media.
      • for: progress trap, quote, quote - progress trap, unintended consequence, quotation - unintended consequence
      • quote
        • Technology and social innovation intended to overcome the negatives of the digital age
          • will likely cause additional negative consequences. Examples include:
            • the decentralized web,
            • end-to-end encryption,
            • AI and machine learning,
            • social media.
      • author: Larry Masinter -internet pioneer, formerly with Adobe, AT&T Labs and Xerox PARC, who helped create internet and web standards with IETF and W3C
    1. there is a disconnect between the long period of evolution that honed our humanity and the short period of rapid technology change we are facing.
      • for: progress trap, quote, quote - progress trap, quote Brian Southwell, Science in the Public Sphere Program, RTI International
      • quote

        • We are likely to make some gains in personal health, are likely to face some collective concerns in terms of environmental health and
        • are not likely to cope with the alienation and despair that is a part of a life lived largely online.
        • In the latter case, there is a disconnect between the long period of evolution that honed our humanity and
        • the short period of rapid technology change we are facing.
      • author: Brian Southwell

        • director, Science in the Public Sphere Program, RTI International
    1. Technological change is an accelerant and acts on the social ills like pouring gasoline on a fire
      • for: quote, quote - Stowe Boyd, quote - progress trap, quote - unintended consequences, unintended consequences, progress trap, cultural evolution, technology - futures, futures - technology, progress trap
      • quote:
        • Technological change is an accelerant and acts on the social ills like pouring gasoline on a fire
      • author: Sowe Boyd
        • consulting futurist on technological evolution and the future of work
      • paraphrase
        • In an uncontrolled hyper-capitalist society,
          • the explosion in technologies over the past 30 years has only
            • widened inequality,
            • concentrated wealth and
            • led to greater social division.
          • And it is speeding up with the rise of artificial intelligence,
            • which like globalization has destabilized Western industrial economies while admittedly pulling hundreds of millions elsewhere out of poverty.
        • And the boiling exhaust of this set of forces is pushing the planet into a climate catastrophe. -The world is as unready for hundreds of millions of climate refugees as it was for the plague.
        • However, some variant of social media will likely form the context for the rise of a global movement to stop the madness
          • which I call the Human Spring
        • which will be more like
          • Occupy or
          • the Yellow Vests
        • than traditional politics.
        • I anticipate a grassroots movement
          • characterized by
            • general strikes,
            • political action,
            • protest and
            • widespread disruption of the economy
          • that will confront the economic and political system of the West.
        • Lead by the young, ultimately this will lead to large-scale political reforms, such as
          • universal health care,
          • direct democracy,
          • a new set of rights for individuals and
          • a large set of checks on the power of
            • corporations and
            • political parties.
        • For example,
          • eliminating corporate contributions to political campaigns,
          • countering monopolies and
          • effectively accounting for economic externalities, like carbon.
    2. with new technologies come new crimes and criminals – opportunities for all!

      -for: quote, quote - Jennifer Jarratt, quote - progress trap, progress trap, unintended consequences, technology - unintended consequences, quote - unintended consequences, cultural evolution, technology - futures, futures - technology, progress trap - quote: with new technologies come new crimes and criminals – opportunities for all! - author: Jennifer Jarratt - co-principal of Leading Futurists LLC

    3. The big tech companies, left to their own devices (so to speak), have already had a net negative effect on societies worldwide. At the moment, the three big threats these companies pose – aggressive surveillance, arbitrary suppression of content (the censorship problem), and the subtle manipulation of thoughts, behaviors, votes, purchases, attitudes and beliefs – are unchecked worldwide
      • for: quote, quote - Robert Epstein, quote - search engine bias,quote - future of democracy, quote - tilting elections, quote - progress trap, progress trap, cultural evolution, technology - futures, futures - technology, progress trap, indyweb - support, future - education
      • quote
        • The big tech companies, left to their own devices , have already had a net negative effect on societies worldwide.
        • At the moment, the three big threats these companies pose
          • aggressive surveillance,
          • arbitrary suppression of content,
            • the censorship problem, and
          • the subtle manipulation of
            • thoughts,
            • behaviors,
            • votes,
            • purchases,
            • attitudes and
            • beliefs
          • are unchecked worldwide
      • author: Robert Epstein
        • senior research psychologist at American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology
      • paraphrase
        • Epstein's organization is building two technologies that assist in combating these problems:
          • passively monitor what big tech companies are showing people online,
          • smart algorithms that will ultimately be able to identify online manipulations in realtime:
            • biased search results,
            • biased search suggestions,
            • biased newsfeeds,
            • platform-generated targeted messages,
            • platform-engineered virality,
            • shadow-banning,
            • email suppression, etc.
        • Tech evolves too quickly to be managed by laws and regulations,
          • but monitoring systems are tech, and they can and will be used to curtail the destructive and dangerous powers of companies like Google and Facebook on an ongoing basis.
      • reference
    4. Experts Predict More Digital Innovation by 2030 Aimed at Enhancing Democracy
      • for: progress traps, progress, unintended consequences, technology - unintended consequences, unintended consequences - technology, unintended consequences - digital technology, progress trap - quotations, quote, quote - progress trap
      • title: Experts Predict More Digital Innovation by 2030 Aimed at Enhancing Democracy
      • authors: emily A Vogels, Lee Rainie, Janna Anderson
      • year: June 30, 2020
      • description: a good source of quotations on progress traps / unintended consequences of digital technology from this Pew Research 2020 report on the future of the digital technology and democracy.