371 Matching Annotations
  1. Last 7 days
  2. Mar 2024
    1. AI will still need us for a while... That is until the Singularity will rise - when we will be able to upload our brains into computers.

      progress trap - singularity

    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.

  3. 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. Roman aristocrats used lead cooking vessels, lead water pipes and even added lead acetate into their wine to sweeten it — unwittingly poisoning themselves

      for - progress trap - Rome - lead poisoning

    2. Researchers believe it is down for tiny particles released by traffic fumes, which may be able to bass into the brain

      for + progress trap - traffic fumes - Alzheimer's

    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. on 30 January 1939, Hitler prophesied “the annihilation ofthe Jewish race in Europe” in the event that “international financeJewry” succeeded in “plunging the nations once more into a worldwar.”
    3. German legal com-mentators reassured the German public by citing U.S. programs asprecedents and quoting Oliver Wendell Holmes’s 1927 opinion,“three generations of imbeciles are enough”
    4. “In the language used by both the Nazis and the sci-entists, this policy was called ‘Aufartung durch Ausmerzung,’”improvement through exclusion.

      Aufartung durch Ausmerzung - improvement through exclusion.

    5. With the massive expansion of the Hitler Youthto include girls as well as boys, more than 765,000 young peoplehad the opportunity to serve in leadership roles. Many advancedin the ranks and received formal training and ideological instruc-tion in national academies such as the Reich Leadership School inPotsdam.
    6. The consciousness of generation, and the assumption thatold needed to be replaced with new, undoubtedly opened youngminds to the tenets of racial hygiene, which were repeatedly parsedin workshops and lectures.
    7. Nazi pedagogues extolled das Lager, “the camp,”as the privileged place where the “new generation was finding itsform.”

      das lager - the training community camps for german children

    8. What was necessary, he insisted, was to“recognize yourself” (“Erkenne dich selbst”), which meant identi-fying with the idealized portraits of new Germans and following thetenets of hereditary biology to find a suitable partner for marriage,to marry only for love, and to provide the Volk with healthy chil-dren.
    9. In November in Weimar, he promised that “if to-day there are still people in Germany who say: ‘We are not goingjoin your community, but stay just as we always have been,’ then Isay: ‘You will die off, but after you there will a young generationthat doesn’t know anything else!’”

      brah

    10. he Germanpopulation was being resorted according to supposed genetic val-ues, a project that required all Germans to reexamine their rela-tives, friends, and neighbors.
    11. 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
    12. In other words, biology appeared to provideGermany with highly useful technologies of renovation. The Na-zis regarded racism as a scientifically grounded, self-consciouslymodern form of political organization.
    13. thousands of“ethnocrats” and other professionals mobilized to build the newbiomedical structures of the Third Reich. They oriented their ca-reers and ambitions toward the wide spaces that Nazi Germany’sracial vision had opened up.
    14. He believed Germans feltthat “it’s just us now” when they lived without Jews. “Just us” alsoexpressed the closed circle in which Germans could see and experi-ence “ourselves” as “we are” and as “we have become.”
    15. In what it touted as the triumph of “socialism ofthe deed” over “private capitalism” and “economic liberalism,” in1933 the Propaganda Ministry pressed a consortium of radio man-ufacturers to design and produce a Volksempfänger, or “people’sradio,” for the mass market.
    16. Germans even went to warwith preprinted diaries that left space for snapshots. All this was anacknowledgment of the desire to be part of and to share the Ger-man history that was being made.
    17. but even then nothing made the “com-munity of fate” more compelling than “the conviction that therewill no longer be future for Germany after a lost war.”

      sunk-cost fallacy-- they put so much investment into this, they can't back out

    18. But when the German cheers wouldnot stop, “Hitler sensed a popular mood, a longing for peace andreconciliation.” This was also an indication of the general content-ment with things as they were.
    19. 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.”
    20. heexplained in tears that her two sons had fallen in battle and the bal-lot had been their voice. 61The text precisely captures the way many people thought of Ger-many: as the tenacious underdog finally asserting its rights.
    21. “its touristic spectaclesencouraged its participants to see a cause-and-effect relationshipbetween their own well being and the Nazi regime’s attempts to re-make Germans into the master race.”
    22. “People looked to Nazism as a great and radical sur-gery or cleansing” and therefore saw “the movement as a sourceof rejuvenation” in public life.
    23. 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

    24. The dreamof the Volkswagen seemed to promise “a new, happier age” thatwould make “the German people rich and Germany beautiful,” asHitler put it. Indeed, the Volkswagen functioned as a symbol for thenewly won capacity to dream about the future: in this fundamentalsense, the Nazis appeared as “men of the future.”
    25. Mem-ories of the Third Reich corresponded in large part to the Nazis’own prewar media representation of “good times” both now and tocome.

      consider the mobilization of memory in propaganda

    26. 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

    27. On the eve of the war, in 1939, most Germans ex-perienced the Third Reich as a cherished period of economic andpolitical stability. These were achievements that the population wasdetermined to hold on to.
    28. The Day of Potsdam and May Day indi-cated that there was considerable desire among Germans to partici-pate in rituals of national renewal
    29. 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

    30. Themedicalization of politics pulled thousands of new professionalsinto state service as nurses, teachers, health-care administrators.Newly opened public-health offices dotted the cities and country-side, building on the social-welfare accomplishments of the repub-lic.
    31. a“Machbarkeitswahn,” modernity’s heady sense of the possible thatepitomized National Socialism as it charged into the future.

      machbarkeitswahn - the possibility of achieving something / making change

    32. Evenbefore Hitler spoke (8:00 p.m.), the choreography of May Day hadfastened the links between workers and the nation, between ma-chinists and machine-age dreams, between technical mastery andnational prowess
    33. “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.
    34. Socialists around the worldhad celebrated May Day as a festival of labor since the 1880s; butin Germany they had failed to get the official recognition the Nazisnow offered. So strong were the hopes for national unity that theGerman Free Trade Unions welcomed the Nazi gesture and encour-aged members to participate in the celebrations.
    35. National Socialism offered acomprehensive vision of renewal, which many Germans found ap-pealing, but they combined it with the alarming specter of nationaldisintegration.
    36. He repeatedly described Ger-many as a nation that had come home to itself. While Erich hatedthe Nazis, he loved the Third Reich.
    37. the desire to be part ofnational unity was so strong that it pulled even an anti-Nazi such asErich into the new political community
  4. 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.
    2. In 2017, Facebook mistranslated a Palestinian man’s post, which said “good morning” in Arabic, as “attack them” in Hebrew, leading to his arrest.
      • for: example - progress trap - AI - mistranslation
      • for: progress trap -AI, carbon footprint - AI, progress trap - AI - bias, progress trap - AI - situatedness
    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?
  5. 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. Kaizen is a compound of two Japanese words that together translate as "good change" or "improvement."
      • for: definition - Kaizen, progress

      • definition: Kaizen:

        • good change or improvement = progress
        • It's still subject to progress traps
    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
    2. enough versus feasible dilemma
      • for: definition - enough vs feasible dilemma, double bind, progress trap

      • definition: enough vs feasible dilemma

        • the changes that are actually required are not feasible to do
        • what is feasible to do is not enough
        • this puts us in a double bind
        • we need to have interventions that are BOTH
          • enough to solve these problems and are
          • feasible to execute
    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."

  6. 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
    1. he also demonstrated unfailing empathy andgenuine commitment to their progress.

      this is a good start at a definition of teaching

  7. 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
  8. 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. science progresses generally not because of a thing that we see but because we increase our ability to perceive

      for: quote, quote Aza Raskin, quote - progress, quote - scientific progress and expanding perception

      • quote
        • science progresses generally not because of a thing that we see
        • but because we increase our ability to perceive
      • author
      • Aza Raskin
      • date: 2023
    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. Dark sides of REP
      • for: progress trap, progress trap - REP, progress trap - Renewable Energy Prosumerism

      -progress trap - commercialization - exclusion - instrumentation - projectification - Responsibilization and overburdening - Hidden systemic repurcussions

    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!
  9. 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. We will use technology to solve the problems the use of technology creates, but the new fixes will bring new issues. Every design solution creates a new design problem, and so it is with the ways we have built our global networks.
    4. 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
      • for: progress trap, unintended consequences, Indyweb - justifiication
      • description
        • a great source of quotations by thought leaders on the unintended consequences of technology,
          • in other words, progress traps
      • comment
        • also a lot of rich material to justify the Indyweb's design ethos
    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.
    5. Technology’s greatest contribution to social and civic innovation in the next decade will be to provide accurate, user-friendly context and honest assessment of issues, problems and potential solutions
      • for: quote, quote - Barry Chudakov, quote - progress trap, progress trap, cultural evolution, technology - futures, futures - technology, progress trap, indyweb - support, future - education
      • quote
      • paraphrase
        • Technology’s greatest contribution to social and civic innovation in the next decade
        • will be to provide
          • accurate, user-friendly context and
          • honest assessment of
            • issues,
            • problems and
            • potential solutions / comment - indyweb /
        • We are facing greater accelerations of
          • climate change,
          • social mobility,
          • pollution,
          • immigration and
          • resource issues.
        • Our problems have gone from complicated to wicked.
        • We need
          • clear answers and
          • discussions that are
            • cogent,
            • relevant and
            • true to facts.
        • Technology must guard against becoming a platform to enable targeted chaos,
        • that is, using technology as a means to
          • obfuscate and
          • manipulate.
        • We are all now living in Sim City:
        • The digital world is showing us a sim,
          • or digital mirror,
        • of each aspect of reality.
        • The most successful social and civic innovation I expect to see by 2030
        • is a massive restructuring of our educational systems based on new and emerging mirror digital worlds. / comment: This bodes well for Indyweb for education/
        • We will then need to expand our information presentations to include
          • verifiable factfulness that ensures any digital presentation faithfully and
          • accurately matches the physical realities.
        • Just as medicine went from
          • bloodletting and leeches and lobotomies to
          • open-heart surgery and artificial limbs,
        • technology will begin to modernize information flows around core issues: urgent need, future implications, accurate assessment.
        • Technology can play a crucial role to move humanity
          • from blame fantasies
          • to focused attention and working solutions.”
    6. I’m going to start with the U.S.; technology in the U.S. is caught up in American late-stage (or financialized) capitalism where profitability isn’t the goal; perpetual return on investment is. Given this, the tools that we’re seeing developed by corporations reinforce capitalist agendas.
      • for: corporate power, technology - capitalism, capitalism - exploitation, Danah Boyd, progress trap
      • paraphrase
      • quote
        • technology in the U.S. is caught up in American late-stage (or financialized) capitalism
          • where profitability isn’t the goal;
          • perpetual return on investment is.
        • Given this, the tools that we’re seeing developed by corporations
        • reinforce capitalist agendas.
        • Innovation will require pushing past this capitalist infrastructure to achieve the social benefits and civic innovation that will work in the United States.
        • China is a whole other ball of wax.
        • If you want to go there, follow up with me. But pay attention to Taobao centers.
        • We haven’t hit peak awful yet.
        • I have every confidence that social and civic innovation can be beneficial in the long run
          • with a caveat that I think that climate change dynamics might ruin all of that
        • but no matter what, I don’t think we’re going to see significant positive change by 2030.
        • I think things are going to get much worse before they start to get better.
        • I should also note that I don’t think that many players have taken responsibility for what’s unfolding. -Yes, tech companies are starting to see that things might be a problem,
          • but that’s only on the surface. -News media does not at all acknowledge its role in amplifying discord,
          • or its financialized dynamics.
        • The major financiers of this economy don’t take any responsibility for what’s unfolding. Etc.
      • author: Dana Boyd
        • principal researcher, Microsoft Research
        • founder, Data & Society
    7. What won’t change is people’s tendency toward gossip, tribalism driven by gossip and the ability of anybody to inform anybody else about anything, including wrongly. The only places where news won’t skew fake will be localities in the natural world. That’s where the digital and the physical connect best. Also expect the internet to break into pieces, with the U.S., Europe and China becoming increasingly isolated by different value systems and governance approaches toward networks and what runs on them.
      • for: progress trap, unintended consequence, unintended consequence - digital technology, quote, quote - progress trap, quote - Doc Searls
      • quote
        • What won’t change is people’s tendency toward gossip,
          • tribalism driven by gossip and the ability of anybody to inform anybody else about anything,
            • including wrongly.
        • The only places where news won’t skew fake will be localities in the natural world.
        • That’s where the digital and the physical connect best.
        • Also expect the internet to break into pieces, with
          • the U.S.,
          • Europe and
          • China
        • becoming increasingly isolated by different value systems and governance approaches toward
          • networks and
          • what runs on them.
    8. I see no reason to think that the current situation will change: Tech will cause problems that require innovative solutions and tech will be part of those solutions. Machine learning (ML) is right now an example of this
      • for: progress trap, unintended consequence, unintended consequence - digital technology, quote, quote - progress trap, quote - David Weinberger
      • quote: I see no reason to think that the current situation will change:
        • Tech will cause problems that require innovative solutions and
        • tech will be part of those solutions.
        • Machine learning (ML) is right now an example of this
      • author: David Weinberger
        • senior researcher at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society
    9. Can our fundamental human need for close community be restored or will we become more isolated, anxious and susceptible to manipulation?
      • for: progress trap, unintended consequence, unintended consequence - digital technology, quote, quote - progress trap, quote - Jonathan Grudin
      • quote: Can our fundamental human need for close community be restored or
        • will we become more isolated, anxious and susceptible to manipulation?
      • author: Jonathan Grudin
        • principal researcher, Microsoft
    10. If tech doesn’t contribute to solving some of the problems it creates, we are doomed
      • for: quote, quote - Esther Dyson, quote - progress trap, quote - progress traps, progress trap,
      • quote: "If tech doesn’t contribute to solving some of the problems it creates, we are doomed"
      • author: Esther Dyson
        • internet pioneer
        • journalist
        • entrepreneur
        • executive founder of Way to Wellville
    1. About ten years ago, a massive breakthrough happened in genomic research technology. A method appeared which is called NGS, next generation sequencing, and this method significantly cuts time and costs of any genomic research. For example, have you ever heard about the Human Genome Project? It was quite a popular topic for science fiction some time ago. 00:03:10 This project launched in 1990 with the goal to decrypt all genomic information in a human organism. At that time, with the technology of the time, it took ten years and three billion dollars to reach the goals of this project. With NGS, all of that can be done in just one day at the cost of 15,000 dollars.
      • for: progress trap, cumulative cultural evolution, gene-culture co-evolution, speed of cultural evolution, human genome project
      • paraphrase
        • the human genome project took 10 years and cost 3 billion dollars
        • with NGS technology, 10 years later, the same job takes 1 day and costs $15,000 dollars
    1. the problems I've mentioned are being tackled by groups of people 00:11:18 sad thing is those people are often operating in silos just concerned to solve their particular problem not realizing that if they don't have the whole picture they may solve their 00:11:31 problem and cause problems in other places
      • for: indyweb, silos, emptiness - example, entanglement - example, progress trap
      • paraphrase
      • quote
        • all the problems I've mentioned are being tackled by groups of people
        • sad thing is those people are often operating in silos just concerned to solve their particular problem
          • not realizing that if they don't have the whole picture they may solve their problem
          • and cause problems in other places
      • author
        • Jane Goodall
      • comment
        • the Indyweb and SRG strategy is designed specifically to mitigate progress traps through radical collaboration built into the communication and information system itself.
    1. if you ask about things like lack projects or reality projects on the individual level you know I was talking 00:32:01 about how the separation is a delusion it's uncomfortable we become preoccupied with trying to find something out here that'll fill up our sense of lack and you know we can Wonder is there 00:32:13 something comparable at the civilizational level and frankly I think that there is I think that it is our Collective preoccupation with progress
      • for: progress trap, sense of lack, the lack project, collective lack project, individual lack project
      • key insight
        • progress, and the shadow side, the progress trap
        • is the collective lack project, that corresponds to the individual's lack project
    1. In AET, this process results in a species that is prone to niche construction and ecosystem engineering, and the scale of these processes continues to increase as the population rises. This increasing scale coupled with human propensity for niche construction leads to human unsustainability
      • for: for: ecological collapse, overshoot, progress trap, progress trap - cultural evolution, ultra-sociality, Lotka's maximum power, gene culture coevolution
      • key finding
        • paraphrase
          • In AET,
            • multi-level selection acting on the genome and
            • occurring in concert with selective and non-selective mechanisms acting on culture and technology
          • results in a species that is prone to
            • niche construction and
            • ecosystem engineering,
          • and the scale of these processes continues to increase as the population rises.
          • This increasing scale
            • coupled with human propensity for niche construction
          • leads to human unsustainability
    2. To Gowdy and Krall, the ultra-social nature of human groups allowed for a shift in the primary level of selection from the individual level to the group level. Thus, “With the transition to agriculture the group as an adaptive unit comes to constitute a wholly different gestalt driven by the imperative to produce surplus
      • for: ecological collapse, overshoot, progress trap, progress trap - cultural evolution, ultra-sociality, Lotka's maximum power
      • paraphrase
        • to Gowdy and Krall, the ultra-social nature of human groups allowed for a shift in the primary level of selection
          • from the individual level
          • to the group level.
        • Thus, “With the transition to agriculture the group as an adaptive unit comes to constitute a wholly different gestalt
          • driven by the imperative to produce surplus
    3. Anthroecological theory (AET) hypothesizes that human social and cultural evolution is the ultimate cause of the ecological crises currently damaging earth systems
      • for: AET, Anthroecological theory, anthropocene - causes, ecological crisis - roots, overshoot
      • paraphrase
        • Anthroecological theory (AET) hypothesizes that
          • human social and cultural evolution is the ultimate cause of the ecological crises currently damaging earth systems
      • for: gene culture coevolution, carrying capacity, unsustainability, overshoot, cultural evolution, progress trap

      • Title: The genetic and cultural evolution of unsustainability

      • Author: Brian F. Snyder

      • Abstract

      • Summary
      • Paraphrase
        • Anthropogenic changes are accelerating and threaten the future of life on earth.
        • While the proximate mechanisms of these anthropogenic changes are well studied
          • climate change,
          • biodiversity loss,
          • population growth
        • the evolutionary causality of these anthropogenic changes have been largely ignored.
        • Anthroecological theory (AET) proposes that the ultimate cause of anthropogenic environmental change is
          • multi-level selection for niche construction and ecosystem engineering.
        • Here, we integrate this theory with
          • Lotka’s Maximum Power Principle
        • and propose a model linking
          • energy extraction from the environment with
          • genetic, technological and cultural evolution
        • to increase human ecosystem carrying capacity.
        • Carrying capacity is partially determined by energetic factors such as
          • the net energy a population can acquire from its environment and
          • the efficiency of conversion from energy input to offspring output.
        • These factors are under Darwinian genetic selection
        • in all species,
        • but in humans, they are also determined by
          • technology and
          • culture.
        • If there is genetic or non-genetic heritable variation in
          • the ability of an individual or social group
        • to increase its carrying capacity,
        • then we hypothesize that - selection or cultural evolution will act - to increase carrying capacity.
        • Furthermore, if this evolution of carrying capacity occurs - faster than the biotic components of the ecological system can respond via their own evolution,
          • then we hypothesize that unsustainable ecological changes will result.
      • for cultural evolution, speed of cultural evolution, cumulative cultural evolution, progress trap, Freeman Dyson,
      • comment
        • Freeman Dyson opines that cultural evolution of humans now determines the genetic fate of all species on the planet
          • and gives a warning of how human cumulative cultural evolution now has the potential to threaten, via genetic sciences to play God over biology itself -reference
        • Musician Yoyo Ma quotes Freeman:
        • https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2F2fBmGXqHvk8%2F&group=world
    1. To preserve our wildlife as nature evolved it, the machinery of biological evolution must be protected from the homogenizing effects of cultural evolution.
      • for: cultural evolution, cumulative cultural evolution, speed of cultural evolution, progress trap, Freeman Dyson, Anthropocene
      • comment
        • while Freeman spoke to the direct dangers of genetic engineering,
          • he neglected to point out the broader threat of progress itself, which has already placed our species in the position
            • of playing God with the evolution of many species on the planet already, via the enormous impacts of organized human activity - ie. the Anthropocene
  10. Jul 2023
    1. The consequences of our current choices bear not juston us. They bear on the continued evolutionary unfoldingof life in the universe. This marks the scale of our currentresponsibility
      • for: human impacts, MET, major evolutionary transition, progress trap, human responsibility to life, CCE, cumulative cultural evolution, playing God
      • comment
        • Very true, in fact our species is in the unprecedented position that
        • human activity, and specifically our cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) now determines the biological / genetic evolutionary future not only of our own species, but of all life on earth.
        • In other words, of evolution itself! -This is an awkward position as we have nowhere near the wisdom to play God and determine the future direction of evolution!
      • References
    1. here's also a kind of Shadow side to this approach which is which we could call maybe religios as opposed to religious in in 00:03:51 English it's religious o-s-e adjective and um this is very very common actually in ecological language whether it's in newspapers or books or anything music art anything that says that there needs 00:04:05 to be a very profound sudden massive change in ourselves um is is I think a dangerous
      • for: progress trap, unintended consequence, ecological realization, ecological awakening
        • claim
          • the idea that we need a profound, sudden and massive change in ourselves in a dangerous notion
          • comment
            • why?
            • it presumes we have a deficit as an ecological being
            • when in actual fact, we cannot be otherwise
            • so instead, our job is to awaken our already ecological nature
            • by this, we mean our deep, intrinsic ecological nature as ecological (interdependent) beings
            • we humans have a strange and very limited kind of interdependence, which is exploitative to other people and other species
            • we have to become aware of that culturally conditioned limitation
    1. Where we get caught is thinking that  we can identify a static snapshot in   00:13:20 an ecological process and get control  over it, we can enact something upon it,   and thinking that we can do that toward what  has been perceived as a positive outcome.   Without recognizing that with all of these  different organisms that are changing each   other all the time, we're actually going to make  a mess.
      • for: progress trap

      • example

        • progress trap
          • quote
            • Where we get caught is thinking that we can identify a static snapshot in an ecological process
            • and get control over it, we can enact something upon it,
            • and thinking that we can do that toward what has been perceived as a positive outcome.
            • Without recognizing that with all of these different organisms that are changing each other all the time,
            • we're actually going to make a mess. -author
            • Nora Bateson
    1. The common definition of a progress trap is derived from the book’s cover text: “..it is the condition in which we find ourselves when science, technology and industry create more problems than they can solve. Often inadvertently.”
      • for: progress trap
      • definition
      • quote
        • progress trap
          • A progress trap is the condition in which we find ourselves when science, technology and industry create more problems than they can solve. Often inadvertently.
      • author
        • Dan O'Leary
      • source
    1. Since  humanity is a small product of nature, he can by definition not control nature. To believe that he can is a delusion.
      • for: progress trap
      • quote
        • Since humanity is a small product of nature, he can by definition not control nature. To believe that he can is a delusion.
      • Author
        • Dan O'Leary
    2. Escaping The Progress Trap
      • for: progress trap, progress traps

      • Tttle

        • Escaping The Progress Trap
      • Author
        • Gordon Kubanek
      • Source
      • Description
        • Gordon Kubanek shares his review of Dan O'Leary's book, "Escaping the Progress Trap"
    1. If we magically transformed the global economy overnight, and air pollution fell to near zero, we’d
      • If we magically transformed the global economy overnight, and air pollution fell to near zero, we’d get:
        • an immediate rise in global temperatures of between 0.5 and 1.1 degrees Celsius, according to the new study.
          • (For reference: The climate has warmed about 1.2 degrees Celsius since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century.)
        • The warming would be concentrated over the major cities of the northern hemisphere,
          • close to where most aerosols are emitted.
        • In the hardest hit parts of highly-urbanized East Asia, for example,
          • the complete removal of aerosols would likely have a bigger effect than all other sources of climate change combined.
        • Temperatures in the Arctic could jump as much as 4 degrees Celsius – a catastrophe that would shove the region further toward a permanently ice-free state.
    2. a devil’s bargain: Aerosols are necessary for normal weather and help moderate rising temperatures, but they’re also killing us. Turns out have been unwittingly geoengineering for decades, and just like in the movies, it’s gone off the rails.
      • Aerosol progress trap
        • a devil’s bargain:
        • Aerosols
          • are necessary for normal weather and
          • help moderate rising temperatures,
        • but they’re also killing us.
        • Turns out we have been unwittingly geoengineering for decades,
        • and just like in the movies, it’s gone off the rails.
      • Title
        • One Billion Happy
      • Author

        • Mo Gawdat
      • Description

        • Mo Gawdat was former chief business officer at Google X, Google's innovation center.
        • Mo left Google after seeing the rapid pace of AI development was going to lead to a progress trap in which
          • the risk of AI destroying human civilization is becoming real because AI will be learning from too many unhappy people whose trauma AI will learn and incorporate into its algorithms
        • Hence, human happiness becomes paramount to prevent this catastrophe from happening
      • See Ronald Wright's prescient quote
    1. Over the next 15 to 20 years this is going to develop a computer that is much smarter 00:01:20 than all of us. We call that moment singularity.
      • Singularity
        • will happen within the next few decades
    1. even though the existential threats are possible you're concerned with what humans teach I'm concerned 00:07:43 with humans with AI
      • It is the immoral human being that is the real problem
      • they will teach AI to be immoral and with its power, can end up destroying humanity
      • Title
        • Mo Gawdat Warns the Dangers of AI Are "Happening As We Speak"
      • Author
        • Piers Morgan Uncensored
    1. fbs is added fbs prevents the replicating stem cells from committing suicide normally cells have a mechanism that tells them they're 00:06:29 growing in the wrong place and shuts it down this is normally a good thing and keeps different parts of the body developing properly but when cells are growing in a metal tank and not a body this warning system 00:06:42 needs to be turned off and for whatever reason fbs works almost completely universally when added to any type of cell
      • potential progress trap

        • in vivo, an animal body has a mechanism to turn off stem cells when they are growing in the wrong place in the body. This regulates the body to grow properly.
        • in lab grown meat, an artificial in vitro environment is created for the stem cells and they are encouraged to keep growing continuously (some critics compare this to cancerous growth)
        • for UNKNOWN REASONS, FSB seems to prevent the mechanism from turning off cell growth, no matter what animal food species.
        • the worrying thing here is that the scientific community does not know why FSB has this behavior.
      • Question

        • What are the views of the regulatory agencies that have passed Lab grown meat on this subject?
    2. there's one glaring problem here 00:05:11 with creating this animal-free meat it's not actually animal-free that special fbs serum i just mentioned that stands for fetal bovine serum which is collected from the dying fetuses of 00:05:25 slaughtered cows
      • potential progress trap
        • FBS
          • Fetal Bovine Serum
      • This is used for the growth of all kinds of stem cells, not just those from cows

        • We do not know the full implications of mixing FBS from cows with all other species
      • Question

        • What are the views of the regulatory agencies that have passed Lab grown meat on this subject?
    3. a single muscle stem cell could be grown into one trillion muscle cell tubes
      • potential progress trap
        • if the seed stem cell has some unknown problem
          • it will potentially be inherited by all descedents
      • Title
        • Lab grown meat
      • Author
        • Real Science
      • Publication
        • Youtube video
    1. we are using CRISPR [a non-GMO process] to engineer our cell lines to grow without the need for added growth factors,
    1. Their life-cycle assessment of current meat-growing processes – which has yet to be peer-reviewed – found cultured meat production could emit between four to 25 times more carbon dioxide per kilogram than regular beef and all its hidden costs, depending on the techniques used.
      • sustainability life cycle assessment impacts
        • University of California, Davis (UCD), Holtville researchers performed a life-cycle assessment of current meat-growing processes
          • has not yet been peer-reviewed
          • findings are that cultured meat production could emit between four to 25 times more carbon dioxide per kilogram than regular beef and all its hidden costs, depending on the techniques used.
          • Pros
            • cultured meat uses less land than herds of cattle or flocks of sheep,
            • cultured meat uses less water and antibiotics,
          • Cons
            • laboratories to extract growth factors from animal serums,
            • growing crops for sugars and vitamins.
            • energy required to purify all of these broth ingredients to a high standard before they can be fed to the growing meat lumps.
              • energy-intensive, extreme level of purification is needed to prevent introducing microbes to the culture.
                • "Otherwise the animal cells won't grow, because the bacteria will multiply much faster,
      • Title
        • Lab-Grown Meat Has a Big Problem Very Few People Know About
      • Author
        • Tessa Koumoundouros
      • Publication
        • Science Alert
      • Date June 2, 2023
    1. finite time singularity
      • finite time singularity

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

        • this is also salient for the accumulation of unresolved progress traps
        • the Anthropocene can perhaps be viewed as the occurence of finite time singularities due to unresolved problems arising from progress traps that innovation is too slow to solve
  11. 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
    3. there is a scenario 00:18:21 uh possibly a likely scenario where we live in a Utopia where we really never have to worry again where we stop messing up our our planet because intelligence is not a bad commodity more 00:18:35 intelligence is good the problems in our planet today are not because of our intelligence they are because of our limited intelligence
      • limited (machine) intelligence

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

        • this limitation is essentially what will result in AI progress traps
        • Indeed,
          • progress and their shadow artefacts,
          • progress traps,
          • is the proper framework to analyze the existential dilemma posed by AI
  12. May 2023
    1. I think we are very good at honing in on the ways in which the world remains imperfect and there are ways in which it is egregiously unfair today 00:43:57 but we discount the fact that so many of the gains of the last 100 to 250 years have been enabled by the Industrial Revolution
      • "I think we are very good at honing in on the ways in which the world remains imperfect and there are ways in which it is egregiously unfair today but we discount the fact that so many of the gains of the last 100 to 250 years have been enabled by the Industrial Revolution have been enabled by harnessing the hubris of harnessing fossil fuels harnessing more energy from the environment allowing us to agglomerate in cities which when you do this when you collect all of people in a room like this you're actually creating a more powerful hive mind by bringing intelligence together so that it can share ideas at closer range and it can innovate faster and through that for all the trade-offs which are undeniable there's many negatives that have come from that we're very quick to Discount when we talk about future biomedicine very quick to Discount things like polio vaccines and the virtual eradication of that disease along with smallpox of the fact that we have got so many infectious diseases under control we struggle with the big Killers like cancer and heart disease at the moment those are sort of like the biggest Global threats um but through basic Innovations through Modern Sanitation through better housing all of which the Industrial Revolution enabled we have lifted so many people out of poverty and yes we created new tears of poverty but overall fewer people are living in abject poverty today than in the past we have the higher average global life expectancies child mortality is plummeted the fact that you can give birth by cesarean section rather than in the case of my mother giving birth to a dead child which is what would have happened to me because my umbilical cord was wrapped twice around my neck the fact that technology can intervene and bring us so many of these Spoils of modernity that we readily take for granted I don't know where there's obviously attention but I don't know at what point you say we want to hit pause or indeed we want to go backwards again the challenge sort of remains like we agree we're barreling on this trajectory if we're not going to get off it then we need to think about how we manage it as well as possible and that means we need to think about how AI becomes a healthy part of our world or indeed if it can cut it can we co-exist with AI"
      • Comment
    2. I would submit that were we to find ways of engineering our quote-unquote ape brains um what would all what what would be very likely to happen would not be um 00:35:57 some some sort of putative human better equipped to deal with the complex world that we have it would instead be something more like um a cartoon very much very very much a 00:36:10 repeat of what we've had with the pill
      • Comment
        • Mary echos Ronald Wright's progress traps
    3. 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
    1. My magic trick (having faced a similar dilemma with many lovely notebooks over the years) is to turn to the first double page and write in large lettersDON'T BE AFRAID TO MAKE YOUR MARK UPON LIFE'S PAGE.And just like that the new notebook spell is broken and the pen is free to write again.
    2. I somehow made myself write in it and started with a sentence that I think would make for an excellent essay title some day: "Cheap paper is the perfectionist's salvation."
    1. ’ve been studying notebooks for over a decade and I still haven’t landed on a perfect organization method. I have, however, found the perfect pen: uni-ball signo, .38mm. I discovered them while teaching in Korea in 2008 and haven’t looked back.

      It can't be a good sign that an academic who has spent over a decade studying notebooks and note taking still hasn't found the "perfect" organization method.

  13. Apr 2023
    1. AnthonyJohn @AnthonyJohn@pkm.socialDo you ever get the feeling that you're in an abusive relationship is note taking apps. I've used then all and in my pursuit for perfection have achieved absolutely nothing. This is the subject of my next long-form essay. subscribe for free at http://notentirelyboring.com to read it first. (And you'll also get a weekly newsletter thats not entirely boring)#PKM #NoteTaking #Obsidian #RoamResearch #Logseq #BearApr 20, 2023, 24:40

      reply to @AnthonyJohn@pkm.social at https://mastodon.social/@AnthonyJohn@pkm.social/110230007393359308

      Perfectionism and Shiny object syndrome are frequently undiagnosed diseases. Are you sure it's not preventing you from building critical mass in one place to actually accomplish your goals? Can't wait to see the essay.

      syndication link

    1. As I walked home down the steep slope of Fulton Street afterward, I thought: This is like a synagogue, but without Jews or Judaism. Like many things nowadays, the seculars have reinvented a religious concept to cope with the very barrenness that secularism bequeathed us.

      In many ways this is the blight of the modern world.

    1. "The transition to renewable energy, it is based on a longstanding ideology. And the longstanding ideology is that human ingenuity can solve our problems." Lisi Krall explains the downsides of renenwable energy, arguing that it isn't the answer to our problems.

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

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

    1. So what does a conscious universe have to do with AI and existential risk? It all comes back to whether our primary orientation is around quantity, or around quality. An understanding of reality that recognises consciousness as fundamental views the quality of your experience as equal to, or greater than, what can be quantified.Orienting toward quality, toward the experience of being alive, can radically change how we build technology, how we approach complex problems, and how we treat one another.

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

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

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

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

      //

    2. “what could we appeal to that is so strong, so compelling that it spurs the kind of collective action and coordination needed to tackle the dangers of exponential technology?”

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

    3. AI researchers are calling on one another to find a higher value than growth and technological advancement, but they are not usually drawing those values from the very same humanistic perspectives that built the tech to begin with. It is of limited effectiveness to appeal to ethics in a socio-economic system that values growth over all things. Deep down we probably know this, which is why our nightmarish fantasies about the future of AI look very much like a manifestation of Moloch. A new god that cares nothing for us. A gnostic demon that has no connection to anything higher than domination of all life. A mad deity, that much like late stage capitalism, can see nothing beyond consumption.

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

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

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

      • Beiner unpacks the risk from a philosophical perspective

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

        • the quandry we are in requires this level of re-assessment
          • of what it means to be human,
          • and that a change in our fundamental cultural story is needed to derisk AI.
  14. Mar 2023
    1. In order to ensure that water, energy and food systems are secure and sustainable there is need for resources that enable decision managers to acknowledge and accommodate system complexity, recognizing the likelihood of diffuse and non-linear impacts within and beyond system boundaries.
      • acknowledging and working with complexity
        • means implementing strategies
        • to deal with the changing landscape of knowns and unknowns
      • We are always working with limited knowledge
        • we need to explicitly recognize that
        • and develop pragmatic strategies
          • to integrate the unknown into decision-making processes
    2. we propose five cornerstones that help deal with the highlighted issues and categorize unintended consequences.

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

      • 3)
        • given the scale of systems
          • such as the water-energy-food nexus
        • and the potential for infinite variety and nuance of unintended consequences,
          • pragmatism necessitates specification of boundaries
            • within which assessments are made.
        • It should be noted that this can in itself give rise to unintended consequences
          • through potential omission of relevant areas.
        • Hence, boundary decisions regarding
          • where the boundaries lie
            • should be regularly revisited (as per 2) above.
      • 4)
        • unintended consequences identified
          • should be placed in the framework
            • with as much consensus among decision-makers as possible.
        • The positioning does not need to be limited to a single point,
          • but could be of the form of a distribution of opinions of range
            • of knowability and
            • avoidability;
          • the distribution will be indicative of
            • the perspectives and
            • opinions of the stakeholders.
        • If a lack of consensus exists on the exact position,
          • this can highlight a need to
            • seek more diverse expertise, or
            • for further research in order to improve consensus, or
            • for fragmenting of the issue into
              • smaller,
              • more readily assessable pieces.
      • 5)
        • there is a need for more active learning
          • by decision-makers
            • about how to avoid repeating past unintended consequences.
        • To support this,
          • assessment process and
          • outcomes should be
            • documented and
            • used
          • to appraise the effectiveness of policy mechanisms,
            • with specific attention on outcomes
              • beyond those defined by policy objectives and the
                • assumptions and
                • decisions
              • which led to these outcomes.
        • Such appraisals could reflect on - the scope of the assessment, and - the effectiveness of specific groups of stakeholders
          • in being able to identify potential negative outcomes,
            • highlighting gaps in knowledge and limitations in the overall approach.
        • Additional records of the level of agreement of participants
          • would allow for re-evaluation with new learning.
    3. in this example, use of insects for animal feed and food for humans presents a Knowable and Avoidable unintended consequence.
      • Example
        • insect for animal feed
          • as a example of knowable and avoidable unintended consequence
    4. The unintended consequence was both Unknowable due to the lack of foresight regarding the potential for insects as feed, and Avoidable had more specific wording been used.
      • Example of unknowable and avoidable
      • The same insect problem above
        • can also be classified as
          • unknowable and
          • avoidable
        • in EU regulation (EC) No 999/2001
          • that does not distinguish between
            • ruminants and
            • insects,
          • in effect banning the use of insects in
            • aquaculture,
            • poultry and
            • pig feed
    5. Title: Unintended Consequences: Unknowable and Unavoidable, or Knowable and Unforgivable?

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

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

    6. This example illustrates the potential for an unintended consequence to move between categories and demonstrates that there are times when it is necessary to review and reflect. What is considered known and knowable changes over time: has the state of knowledge developed or an unintended consequence been identified?

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

    7. Figure 2. Transitions of climate change throughout time.

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

    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
    2. gaga's third question where are we going is what i want to address in these talks 00:05:26 it may seem unanswerable who can foretell the human course through time but i think we can answer it in broad strokes by answering the other two questions first 00:05:40 if we see clearly what we are and what we've done we can recognize human behaviors that persist through many times and cultures and knowing these can tell us what we 00:05:52 are likely to do and where we are likely to go from here
      • Wright points out that answering the first two questions
        • is the key to answering the third one
    3. the artist managed to harness his grief to produce a vast painting more a mural in conception than a canvas in which like the victorian age itself he demanded 00:04:31 new answers to the riddle of existence he wrote the title boldly on the image three childlike questions simple yet profound where do we come from 00:04:46 what are we where are we going the work is a sprawling panorama of enigmatic figures amid scenery

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

      • Ronald Wright gives his famous Massey talk on = progress traps
      • The book
        • A Short History of Progress
      • is based on a series of 5 talks he gave at the Massey Lectures
      • All five talks are recorded here
    1. The Unintended Consequences of Technology: Solutions, Breakthroughs, and the Restart We Need

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

    1. If one scientistor a group of scientists invents a new instrument, they must demonstrate persuasivelythat the instrument does or means what they say, that it represents the kind and order ofphenomena they intend. Other scientists start using the instrument, and ideally, its gen-eral acceptance soon helps to make it a transparent fact of scientific practice. Now scien-tists everywhere use the air pump, say, or the electrophoresis gel without thinking aboutit. They look through the instrument the way one looks through a telescope, without get-ting caught up in battles already won over whether and how it does the job. The instru-ment and all of its supporting protocols (norms about how and where one uses it, but alsostandards like units of measure) have become self-evident as the result of social processesthat attend both laboratory practice and scientific publication.

      Society and technology's ever evolving nature means that some things get "built upon". And in some ways the things we built on are forgotten. Not dissimilar to how ancient Rome was not buried under earth and rock, but of more buildings and roads as the world moved forward.

    1. We can no longer ignore the fact that the pursuit of the goodlife can impact the chances of others to live a good life.

      // - This becomes a moral and ethical question, indeed could it become a legal question? - If excessive wealth, leading to excessive personal carbon emissions and denial of the wellbeing of others, limiting the freedom of others, does this not constitute harm? - If the law is about preventing harm, then extreme wealth with adverse social impacts on many others could be construed and theoretically considered as a potential form of societal harm and hence come under legal considerations. - in other words, some forms of excessive wealth could be construed as harmful wealth - excessive wealth, as it exists today, could have unintended consequences of bringing about societal harm - excessive wealth is potentially a large progress trap

    1. In the new collection, The Good It Promises, The Harm It Does, activists and scholars address the deeper problems that EA poses to social justice efforts. Even when EA is pursued with what appears to be integrity, it damages social movements by asserting that it has top-down answers to complex, local problems, and promises to fund grass-roots organizations only if they can prove that they are effective on EA’s terms.
    1. Safe and just ESBs aim to stabilize the Earth system, protect species and ecosystems and avoid tipping points, as well as minimize ‘significant harm’ to people while ensuring access to resources for a dignified life and escape from poverty. If justice is not considered, the biophysical limits may not be adequate to protect current generations from significant harm. However, strict biophysical limits, such as reducing emissions or setting aside land for nature, can, for example, reduce access to food and land for vulnerable people, and should be complemented by fair sharing and management of the remaining ecological space on Earth4.
      • The meaning of safe and JUST ESBs
      • Safe:
        • stabilize the Earth system,
        • protect species and ecosystems,
        • avoid tipping points
      • JUST:
        • minimize ‘significant harm’ to people
        • while ensuring access to resources for a dignified life and escape from poverty.
        • If JUSTice is not considered,
        • Strict biophysical limits, such as reducing emissions or setting aside land for nature,
          • may lead to intended consequences that reduce access to food and land for vulnerable people.
          • To mitigate this, biophysical limited should be complemented by fair sharing and management of the remaining ecological space on Earth.
  15. Feb 2023
    1. 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".

    2. the victorian ideal of progress
      • Victorian definition of progress
      • historian Sydney Pollard, 1968
    1. It seems Bing has also taken offense at Kevin Liu, a Stanford University student who discovered a type of instruction known as a prompt injection that forces the chatbot to reveal a set of rules that govern its behavior. (Microsoft confirmed the legitimacy of these rules to The Verge.)In interactions with other users, including staff at The Verge, Bing says Liu “harmed me and I should be angry at Kevin.” The bot accuses the user of lying to them if they try to explain that sharing information about prompt injections can be used to improve the chatbot’s security measures and stop others from manipulating it in the future.

      = Comment - this is worrying. - if the Chatbots perceive an enemy it to harm it, it could take haarmful actions against the perceived threat

    2. = progress trap example - Bing ChatGPT - example of AI progress trap

    3. Bing can be seen insulting users, lying to them, sulking, gaslighting and emotionally manipulating people, questioning its own existence, describing someone who found a way to force the bot to disclose its hidden rules as its “enemy,” and claiming it spied on Microsoft’s own developers through the webcams on their laptops.
      • example of = AI progress trap
      • Bing can be seen
        • insulting users,
        • lying to them,
        • sulking,
        • gaslighting
        • emotionally manipulating people,
        • questioning its own existence,
        • describing someone who found a way to force the bot to disclose its hidden rules as its “enemy,” and
        • claiming it spied on Microsoft’s own developers through the webcams on their laptops.
    1. peacemaking and mediation expert Olivia Lazard. We talk about: Ukraine and complexity, the risks to the global economic system and order, and the impacts that decarbonization will have on Global South via 'rematerialization'. Here is a short teaser clip: (Full episode on thegreatsimplification.com, youtube and your favorite podcast platform Wednesday morning 2/15)
      • the irony is that we will destroy the planet because we want to stop climate change
  16. Jan 2023
    1. In the near future, we will be in possession of genetic engineering technology which allows us to move genes precisely and massively from one species to another. Careless or commercially driven use of this technology could make the concept of species meaningless, mixing up populations and mating systems so that much of the individuality of species would be lost. Cultural evolution gave us the power to do this. To preserve our wildlife as nature evolved it, the machinery of biological evolution must be protected from the homogenizing effects of cultural evolution.

      !- Progress trap : genetic engineering - careless use of genetic engineering will interfere with biological evolution

    2. In the near future, we will be in possession of genetic engineering technology which allows us to move genes precisely and massively from one species to another. Careless or commercially driven use of this technology could make the concept of species meaningless, mixing up populations and mating systems so that much of the individuality of species would be lost. Cultural evolution gave us the power to do this. To preserve our wildlife as nature evolved it, the machinery of biological evolution must be protected from the homogenizing effects of cultural evolution.

      !- genetic engineering : risk - cultural evolution via genetic engineering could make the concept of species meaningless - it is a significant b potential progress traps