15 Matching Annotations
  1. Last 7 days
    1. If a baby born today and a baby born 30,000 years ago were swapped at birth, they would each grow up as normal people in their new cultures.

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

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

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

  2. Jul 2024
    1. i think it's a near miss it's the most likely thing to save us

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

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

    2. you should in theory be able to make a 00:21:08 civilization live on the interest from natural capital rather than eating into the capital itself

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

    3. human beings drove themselves out of eden and they have done it again and again by fouling 00:09:40 their own nests

      for - quote - Humans drive themselves out of Eden - Ronald Wright

      quote - humans drive themselves out of Eden - (see below) - Human beings drove themselves out of eden and - they have done it again and again - by fouling their own nests

    4. 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

    5. 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

  3. Jun 2023
    1. scary smart is saying the problem with our world today is not that 00:55:36 humanity is bad the problem with our world today is a negativity bias where the worst of us are on mainstream media okay and we show the worst of us on social media
      • "if we reverse this

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

        • again, see Ronald Wright's quote above
        • it's very salient to this context
    2. the biggest threat facing Humanity today is humanity in the age of the machines we were abused we will abuse this
  4. May 2023
    1. there is this growing Chasm between our Paleolithic brains and what we're designed for and the niches we're built to inhabit and this new technologically infused world that we're living in
      • Comment

        • Elise says
          • "there is this growing Chasm between
            • our Paleolithic brains and
            • what we're designed for and
              • the niches we're built to inhabit and this new technologically infused world that we're living in
          • We have changed our environment so rapidly and so radically and we have not kept pace with that change
            • so either we keep changing the environment or
            • we change ourselves to fit the environment and
            • I think the fact that we're consistently making these commodified decisions in which
              • we do expunge more and more of our of our Humanity in favor of profit
              • in favor of short-term decisions i
              • n favor of such abysmal thinking when it comes to complex systems like the human body
            • it is a testament to the fact that these brains are not built for this world and
            • we are not going to be adequate stewards of this system
              • that is now so complex that to keep it held together
            • you actually need a new form of intelligence beyond what we are"
        • Elise Bohan' statements perfectly echo Ronald Wright's famous quote on the nature of progress traps
      • comment

        • I think, however, that Wright would agree more with Mary and less with Elise in Elise's contention that
          • we need a new form of intelligence beyond what we are
          • applying progress to our own cognitive abilities
            • may create the biggest progress trap of all
    1. “To use a computer analogy, we are running twenty-first-century software on hardware last upgraded 50,000 years ago or more. This may explain quite a lot of what we see in the news.”
      • quote worthy
        • “To use a computer analogy, we are running twenty-first-century software on hardware last upgraded 50,000 years ago or more. This may explain quite a lot of what we see in the news.”
        • Ronald Wright
  5. Mar 2023
    1. our practical faith in 00:09:05 progress has ramified and hardened into an ideology a secular religion which like the religions that progress has challenged is blind to certain flaws in its credentials 00:09:18 progress therefore has become myth in the anthropological sense and by this i don't mean a belief that is flimsy or untrue successful myths are powerful and often partly true
      • Quote
  6. Feb 2023
    1. we're running 21st century software on hardware last upgraded fifty thousand years ago or mor

      = Ronald Wright quote - "we're running 21st century software on hardware last upgraded fifty thousand years ago or more "

    2. progress creates problems that are or seem to be soluble only by further progress

      Progress quote -" progress creates problems that are or seem to be soluble only by further progress".

    3. myth is an arrangement of the past whether real or imagined in patterns that reinforce a culture's deepest values and aspirations

      Ronald Wright - definition of - = myth - an arrangement of the past - whether real or imagined - in patterns that reinforce a culture's deepest values and aspirations

      Quotes: - myths are so fraught with meaning that we live and die by them - myths are the maps by which cultures navigate through time - the myth of progress - progress has an internal logic that can lead beyond reason to catastrophe - a seductive trail of successes may end in a trap

    4. the future of everything we've accomplished since our intelligence 00:06:55 evolved will depend on the wisdom of our actions over the next few years
      • Ronald Wright puts what is at stake into perspective.
      • Our entire evolutionary history as ca species is at stake.