for - progress traps - speed of cultural vs genetic evolution

SRG comment - As Ronald Wright pointed out, it is the speed of our cultural evolution that creates a gap between the evolutionary "hardware" we are equipped with and the novel phenomena that we have never encountered before

for - evolutionary transition - from genetic to cultural - progress trap - cultural evolution

for - progress trap - long term antibiotic use - can create new composition of microbiome with species resistant to antibiotic treatment

for - The Human Microbiome Project - progress trap - antibiotics - severely disrupts the microbiome (Human Microbiome Project)

for - key insight - culture - adaption through culture, not genes - SRG comment - danger is progress traps! - This is a key insight. Once we have sophisticated culture, we don't rely on slow moving genetic change to adapt anymore. Instead we rely on culture! - This is the world of human progress, but is also a dangerous one because progress (cultural adaptation to environmental pressures) comes with progress traps.

for - progress traps - why it happens - culture evolves much faster that genes

for - progress trap - technology - nuclear - psychopathic behavior - Edward Teller calculation - decision to go ahead anyways!

for - definition - transformation backlash - resistance experienced when pushing against an existing system - progress trap - polycrisis - climate crisis - transformation backlash

for - wicked problems - feedback between nodes is the priority - wicked problems - SRG comment - feedback between nodes - indicates progress traps COLLECCT ecosystem design

for - progress trap - nitrogen for fertilizers - anthropocene research - releases lots of methane - climate crisis - leverage point - replacing nitrogen fertilizers

for - stats - speed - cultural (technological) evolution - cell phone - 35 years to touchscreen phones - comparison - speed of cultural vs biological evolution - progress trap

for - claim - progress - super synchronizer of modernity

for - progress trap - education -advocate

for - progress trap - AI - safety - irony

for - progress trap - AI - brakes reality checking loop

for - progress trap - AI - suicides

for - progress trap - AI - sycophants,- example

for - progress trap - AI - sycophantic design

for - progress trap - AI designed to be affirming

for - progress trap - AI therapy

for - progress trap - AI - therapist - subtle attachment

for - progress trap - AI - assisted suicide

for - metaphor - slow motion train wreck - seeing future progress trap

for - progress trap - AI

for - progress trap - AI - like NAFTA

for - progress trap - NAFTA

for - social media - progress trap

for - progress trap - AI - narrow boundary

for - book - In Praise of Scribes - Author Johannes Trithemius - history - progress - technology - printing press

for - progress trap - colonialism - wheat instead of tepary beans

The clear stream represents progress as sustaining life, while holding fast to detrimental traditions, like the caste system, turns things into a desert devoid of life.

for - ecology - red crabs of Christmas island - progress trap - invasive species - biocontrol - ecological engineering - wasps - ants

for - Progress trap - AI - low trust society

for - progress traps - perspective - Michael Levin

for - new life forms - xenobots - anthrobots - novel electric faces - Michael Levin - progress trap - xenobots - anthrobots

for - quote - platonic patterns are now actionable - Michael Levin - I've been thinking about this stuff for decades, and I had not broached the topic of platonic patterns until this year. - And that's because I think it is now actionable. - question - progress trap - moral questions and alarm bells? playing God? - Michael Levin

for - consciousness, AI, Alex Gomez- Marin, neuroscience, hard problem of consciousness, nonmaterialism, materialism - progress trap - transhumanism - AI - war on conciousness

Summary - Alex advocates - for a nonmaterialist perspective on consciousness and argues - that there is an urgency to educate the public on this perspective - due to the transhumanist agenda that could threaten the future of humanity - He argues that the problem of whether consciousness is best explained by materialism or not is central to resolving the threat posed by the direction AI takes - In this regard, he interprets that the very words that David Chalmers chose to articulate the Hard Problem of Consciousness reveals the assumption of a materialist reference frame. - He used a legal metaphor too illustrate his point: - When a lawyer poses three question "how did you kill that person" - the question is entrapping the accused . It already contains the assumption of guilt. - I would characterize his role as a scientist who practices authentic seeker of wisdom - will learn from a young child if they have something valuable to teach and - will help educate a senior if they have something to learn - The efficacy of timebinding depends on authenticity and is harmed by dogma

for - progress trap - psychedelics

for - progress trap - transhumanism - AI - war on consciousness

for - progress trap - transhumanism -quote - transhumanism - mandating change on the human species

for - AI - progress trap - Open AI device

for - youtube - BBC - AI2027 - Futures - AI - progress trap - AI - to AI2027 website - https://hyp.is/0VHJqH3cEfCm9JM_EB3ypQ/ai-2027.com/

summary - This dystopian futures scenario is the brainchild of former OpenAI researcher Daniel Kokotajlo, - It is premised on human behavior in modernity including - confirmation bias of AI researchers - entrenched competing political ideologies that motivate an AI arms race - entrenched capitalist market behavior that motivates an AI arms race - AI becoming embodied, resulting in Artificially Embodied Artificial Intelligence (AEAI), posing the danger to humanity because it's no longer just talk, but action - Can it happen? The probability is not zero.We don't really understand the behavior of the AI LLM's we design, they are nonpredictable, and as we give them even greater power, that is a slippery slope - AI can become humanity's ultimate progress trap, which is ironic, because the technology that promises to be the most efficient of all, can become so efficient, it no longer need human beings - Remember Jerry Kaplan's book "Humans need not apply"? - https://hyp.is/o0lBFH3fEfC1QLfnLSs5Bg/www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiiP5ROnzw8 - This dystopian futures scenario goes further and explores the idea that "humans need not exist"!

question - What about emulating climate change gamification of "Bend the Curve" of emissions? - Use the AI 2027 trajectory as a template and see how much real-life follows this trajectory - Just as we have the countdown to the https://climateclock.world/ ( 3 years and change remaining as of today) - perhaps we can have an AI 2027 clock? - What can we do to "bend the dystopian AI 2027 curve" AWAY from the dystopian future?

Lanier, J. (2013). Who Owns the Future? Simon & Schuster. https://amzn.to/3YzotPZ

Annotations <br /> alternate link for annotations

for - adjacency - cannot go back - spiral -progress - progress trap - This can also be seen as the complexity emerging from the continuous oscillation between progress and progress traps - while we are a timebinding species, the unintended consequences of progress require us to undo the unintended harm by revisiting a corner time to remember the beneficial qualities so they we may decouple the harmful qualities in the future

for - progress trap - legal - NDA - question - legal - NDA - can laws be amended so that NDA's are null and void whecan laws be amended so that NDA's are null and void when perpetrators use them to defend and hide their illegal activity?

for - progress trap - legal - NDA - question - legal - NDA - can laws be amended so that NDA's are null and void when perpetrators use them to defend and hide their illegal activity?

for - Epstein scandal - progress trap - NDA - youtube - MSNBC - interview - Gretchen Carlson - to - Lift our voices - founder Gretchen Carlson - https://hyp.is/cjEMJHaCEfCvXw-j41Uguw/liftourvoices.org/legislation

for - example - leverage - progress trap - COVID - mix of 4 amino acids inserted into a spike protein

for - progress traps - biotech - nuclear - powerful tools - leverage points

,> for - progress trap - to attain this, we need to have a new v field of knowledge on progress traps

for - adjacency - morphological memory - permanent - progress trap - progress trap - programmable morphological memory - Nature has obviously altered the bioelectrical patterns through natural evolution, - while humans now understand the mechanism and can alter it artificially to suit our own wants and needs - Hence, it can become a future progress trap

for - adjacency - stored latent memory of future morphology - can be altered - Michael Levin - potential progress trap

for - adjacency - scientific paradigm shift - confirmation bias - universal behavior - liberal / conservative dynamics - progress

adjacency - scientific paradigm shift - confirmation bias - universal behavior - liberal / conservative dynamics - progress - It is a natural for humans to be both conservative and liberal - If we weren't liberal, there would be no progress - At the same time, we recognize the value of existing traditions - they worked and helped us to survive - Confirmation bias is conservative - why tamper with something that isn't broke? - Yet novelty is a behavior that even the staunchest conservative displays - It is nonsensible to think we have only one but not the other aspect, we have both

for - progress trap - digital nomad - modern colonizers

for - progress trap - AI - sharing intimate details with

for - question - progress trap - open source AI models - for blackmail and ransom - Could a bad actor take an open source codebase and twist it to do harm like find out about an rogue AI creator's adversary, enemy or victim and blackmail them? - progress trap - open source AI - criminals - exploit to identify and blackmail victiims

for - progress trap - AI - Anthropic Claude 4 - blackmail - from - youtube - Kyle Kilinski Show - AI is completely out of control - https://hyp.is/GhDOzj0nEfCvHZdiUaw4gQ/www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j1gjSoRt8Q

for - progress trap - AI - Anthropic Claude 4 - blackmail - rare behavior - but still possible! It only has to happen once!

for - progress trap - AI - blackmail - AI - autonomy - progress trap - AI - Anthropic - Claude Opus 4 - to - article - Anthropic Claude 4 blackmail and news leak - progress trap - AI - article - Anthropic Claude 4 - blackmail - rare behavior - Anthropic’s new AI model didn’t just “blackmail” researchers in tests — it tried to leak information to news outlets

for - progress trap - AI - AI - blackmailing human creators - AI - autonomy

for - progress trap - AI - autonomy - example - Grok

for - progress trap - AI - Grok - Elon Musk programs Grok to lie about South African refuges

for - progress trap - Consilience Project - progress trap - Daniel Schmactenberger - from - LinkedIn post - https://hyp.is/twtPIDFaEfC-DCuswNHo5g/www.linkedin.com/posts/danielschmachtenberger_development-in-progress-the-consilience-activity-7222883365371191297-DCPX/?rcm=ACoAACc5MHMBii80wYJJmFqll3Aw-nvAjvI52uI

summary - Daniel is describing the condition known as a "progress trap",an unintended consequence of progress. - I provide a history of progress traps in my two Medium articles found in the annotation links above. - The idea of progress traps is a very important one, especially for modernity because it is a central and general organizing principle under which many disparate unintended consequences of progress can be subsumed. - As is common in paradigm shifts, it is only when a novel concept of sufficient generalization and relevance is introduced that numerous important problems that could not be explained sufficiently in an older model, can be explained more elegantly from a higher or deeper level perspective - Without recognizing a new category of "progress traps", the many different types of unintended consequences are treated in a fragmented and adhoc way.

for - progress trap - to - Stop Reset Go hypothesis annotations - progress trap - Ronald Wright - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=ronald+wright - General - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=progress+trap

for - Medium article - cogress - Part 1 - progress trap - James Gien Wong - definition - cogress - to - Medium article cogress - Part 2 - progress trap - James Gien Wong - https://hyp.is/t8FhpDGAEfC4J7f0NEFujg/medium.com/@gien_SRG/human-cogress-part-2-d6fd075a55c7 - to - Stop Reset Go hypothesis annotations - progress trap - Ronald Wright - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=ronald+wright - General - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=progress+trap

for - definition - cogress - Medium article - Cogress - Part 2 - Stop Reset Go - Deep Humanity - James Gien Wong - from - Medium article - Cogress - Part 1 - Stop Reset Go - Deep Humanity - James Gien Wong - https://hyp.is/_Nyg2DF_EfCBeu_iuDroYg/medium.com/@gien_SRG/human-cogress-part-1-5159a575e1c4 - to - Stop Reset Go hypothesis annotations - progress trap - Ronald Wright - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=ronald+wright - General - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=progress+trap

for - post - LinkedIn - progress trap - Daniel Schmatenberger - to - article - The Consilience Project - Development in Progress - https://hyp.is/E3HHGDFaEfCZErPpYGIONg/consilienceproject.org/development-in-progress/

for - post - LinkedIn - progress trap

for - progress trap - reducing complexity to simplicity - A very human trait, it's why we make models, which lead to progress traps

for - report - America's Superintelligence Project - definition - ASI - Artificial Super Intelligence

summary - What is the cost of mistrust between nation states? - The mistrust between the US and China is reaching an all-tie high and it has disastrous consequences for an AI arms race - It is driving each country to move fast and break things, which will become an existential threat to all humanity - Deep Humanity, with an important dimension of progress traps can help us navigate ASI

for - progress trap - ASI - introducing trojan and backdoors in adversary ASI - can backfire

for - definition - AI containment - progress trap - AI containment

for - progress trap - ASI - progress trap - AGI

for - progress trap - AGI - one year away from automating software work

for - progress trap - AGI

for - progress trap - AGI - Silicon Valley move fast and break things strategy - incompatible with security of AGI

for - SSI: our dystopian nightmare - progress trap

for - adjacency - Move fast and break things - progress trap - antonym of "Move fast and break things" - "Move slow and make things"

for - progress trap - turning point - David Suzuki - Haida Gwaii

for - progress trap - geoengineering - David Suzuki

for - progress trap - David Suzuki

for - progress trap - DDT - David Suzuki

for - progress trap - CFC's - David Suzuki

for - quote - progress trap - David Suzuki - quote - Indra's net of jewels - David Suzuki

quote - progress trap - David Suzuki - What she (Rachel Carson) said is, - Yeah, you scientists are clever. You can make powerful compounds like DDT, but you don't know enough to anticipate all of the consequences. - Because the lab is not a replica of the real world. The lab is an artifact, something that has very little to do with the real world out there. - In the real world, everything is connected to everything else, and we don't know enough to anticipate the effects of what we do with our powerful technologies.

for - progress trap - Rachel Carson - Silent Spring - book - pesticides

for - progress trap - construction - Denmark

for - futuring - paper - Techniques of futuring: On how imagined futures become socially performative - from - collective imagination toolkit https://hyp.is/i3N9KA_DEfCsXivEzv3w5A/www.collectiveimagination.tools/ - purpose of the paper - how images of the future gain performative traction - objectives: how images of the future gain performative traction: - present insights and weaknesses of leading social-theoretical futures work - fill some gaps by - imagining the future via - social practices - performance of reality // question- what does this mean?// - develop performative understanding of futuring via - dramaturgical analysis that investigates ow actors - actively bring the future into the present through performance of particular: - narratives - settings - configurations

Summary - This is a very insightful paper on futuring and how activity in the present realizes imagined fictions, which don't yet exist, and bring them into being in our (future) present - One thing to note is that there is a huge swath of human activity not explicitly discussed which is intrinsically futuring, and that is the birth of any new idea in general, including scientific, mathematical and technological. - Human progress is the sum total of countless individual futuring projects that imagine some fictitious, nonexistent idea and work to incrementally bring it into existence.

Student specific - what would be the recommendation of staff? Is it still an annual task?

for - program event selection - 2025 - April 3 - 10:30am-12pm GMT - Skoll World Forum - Redefining Progress: New Frontiers for the Field of Social Innovation - Stop Reset Go - Progress traps - Cosmolocal production - commons - Deep Humanity - TPF - LCE - relevant to - event time conflict - with Aligning Profit and Purpose - adjacency - progress trap - Deep Humanity - Cosmolocal production - social innovation

for - claim - AI for a new type of democracy? - progress trap - AI - future democracy

for - history - progress trap - Wikipedia - Daniel O'Leary - Ronald Wright - Walter Von Kramer - Der Spiegel

Why am I interested in this topic? Because in IPK 102 Introduction to Indigenous Peoples Knowledges, I have chosen to make a presentation on Chapter 13: “The Myth of Progress” of Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis, & Inuit Issues in Canada by Chelsea Vowel.

The featured resource for this podcast episode is the article by The Consilience Project, “Development in Progress”.

for - AI - progress trap - Youtube - bioweapons is not the only threat. Nano technology and many others can be turned into weapons of mass destruction - RDeepSeek R1 just caught up with OpenAIs o1 - There is no moat@ What does this mean? - David Shapiro - 2025, Jan 29

for - adjacency - progress trap - mafia - intentional fires - Italy - complexity - CNN - How the Mafia is weaponizing wildfires - 2025,Jan 27

for - adjacency - reflexive processes elevate marginalized perspectives and challenge status quo - diversity of Indyweb perspectival knowing - mitigates progress traps that emerge from myopism - SOURCE - paper - Reflexivity as a transformative capacity for sustainability science: introducing a critical systems approach - Lazurko et al. - 2025, Jan 10

for - progress trap - cloud capital - behavioral modification - source - article - Le Monde - Musk, Trump and the Broligarch's novel hyper-weapon - Yanis Varoufakis - 2025, Jan 4

[[Moral Progress by Philip Kitcher]] reads, based on both their blurbs, like a continuation of [[The Ethical Project by Philip Kitcher]], exploring how actual ethical changes have occurred in time. Moves towards method rather than big-T truth (in line w social evolution perspective of the Ethical Project) and strengthens the pragmatism in pragmatic naturalism. 10yrs between the 2 books. Blurb mentions progressing away from something rather than to something, which chimes neatly with the evolutionary perspective of moving away from being hindered by a selective pressure. The attention to moral progress as method brings it closer to my notion of [[Ethics As A Practice (EaaP) 20200819161530]]

for - progress trap - Tesla autopilot - YouTube - The hidden data that reveals why Tesla's crash - WSJ - 2024 - Dec

for - quote - Response to Elon Musk - competition is moot - whoever creates superintelligence first week also create the progress trap that comes along with it - Roman Yampolskiy

quote - Response to Elon Musk - competition is moot - whoever creates superintelligence first week also create the progress trap that comes along with it - Roman Yampolskiy

• If he [Musk] is concerned about competitors getting there first,
  • it doesn't matter as uncontrolled superintelligence is equally bad, no matter who makes it come into existence.

for - progress trap - AI superintelligence - interview - AI safety researcher and director of the Cyber Security Laboratory at the University of Louisville - Roman Yampolskiy - progress trap - over 99% chance AI superintelligence arriving as early as 2027 will destroy humanity - article UofL - Q&A: UofL AI safety expert says artificial superintelligence could harm humanity - 2024, July 15

for - progress trap - blockchain - one unintended consequence is that it is very energy inefficient - from Substack article - The Cosmo-Local Plan for our Next Civilization - Michel Bauwens - 2024, Dec 20

importance of Plutarch's Lives

for - epiphany - adjacency - progress traps - losing sight of the sacred - the Genesis story of intentionality - the symbol is the abstraction - is the intentionality - is the incompleteness - in the light of the infinite emptiness

epiphany - adjacency - between - progress traps - losing sight of the sacred - the Genesis story of intentionality - the symbol is the abstraction - is the intentionality - is the incompleteness - in the light of the infinite emptiness - adjacency relationship - Epiphany occurred to me that Genesis is the story of control - and control is about intentionality - and intentional design is all about incompleteness - The written symbol is inherently incomplete - To control anything in nature requires intentionaity - We must design something with intention, which will always be incomplete - and here we immediately run up against the infinite - and the emergence of progress traps - In this sense, every design is a mistake, biding its time to reveal the form of its unintended consequences

for - adjacency - climate crisis - raw milk - Boevar food supplement for cows to lower methane emissions of farting cows - misinformation - far right conspiracy theories - deeper issue - blindspot revealed by anxiety - Deep Humanity - progress traps

for - progress - measure of - Dil Green

progress - measure of - Dil Green - the degree to which we transcend blind evolution and - grow a capacity to evolve our culture purposefully, with increasing wisdom

comment - Wisdom trumps intelligence - Part of that wisdom is a deep understanding of the nature of human progress and how progress traps are an intrinsic possibility of all progress - wisdom includes a diversity of perspectives that mitigate myopic design - In particular, it means a deep understanding of the emptiness of reality and the role that plays in progress traps

for - progress traps - law of unintended consequences - A Transcender Manifesto - Dill Green

for - adjacency - systemic intedependent web - predicament - progress trap - Joe Brewer - progress trap - climate crisis solutions

for - progress traps - science - technology - neoliberalism - Post Capitalist Philanthropy Webinar 1 - Alnoor Ladha - Lynn Murphy - 2023

progress traps - science - technology - neoliberalism - Post Capitalist Philanthropy Webinar 1 - Alnoor Ladha - Lynn Murphy - 2023 - It is with progress that the modernity shaped by centuries of scaled-out industrial,scientific and technological innovation has created all our crisis. - It is absurd to say that science, technology and industrialization did not play a major role in the creation of all the crisis of modernity - If science, technology and industry inherently embed separation, how do we use it in a meaningful way that doesn't lead to another progress trap? - What are the motives of those who fund technology?

for - progress trap - experiment - artificial cell coexisting with living cells - Martin Hanczyc - Michael Levin podcast

https://mementomovi.wackyneighbor.com/

for - AI - progress trap - interview Eric Schmidt - meme - AI progress trap - high intelligence + low compassion = existential threat

Summary - After watching the interview, I would sum it up this way. Humanity faces an existential threat from AI due to: - AI is extreme concentration of power and intelligence (NOT wisdom!) - Humanity still have many traumatized people who want to harm others - low compassion - The deadly combination is: - proliferation of tools that give anyone extreme concentration of power and intelligence combined with - a sufficiently high percentage of traumatized people with - low levels of compassion and - high levels of unlimited aggression - All it takes is ONE bad actor with the right combination of circumstances and conditions to wreak harm on a global scale, and that will not be prevented by millions of good applications of the same technology

for - progress trap - reducing nitrogen air pollution - reduces soil carbon storage

for - post comment - LinkedIn - polarization - Trump 2024 win - lack of collective - adjacency - Deep Humanity - deep time, species-wide singularity - conservativism vs progressiveness - progress - political polarization - progress trap

adjacency between - Trump 2024 win - Deep Humanity - anthropocene as deep time species-wide singularity - progress traps reaching a climax - conservatism vs progressiveness - adjacency relationship - This fits into a Deep Humanity explanation: - We are moving through a deep time, species singularity in which - once isolated pockets of cultural seeking and interpretative systems for explaining reality have been rapidly mashed-up via: - communication and - transportation technology - There is a singularity now where two forces are battling each other: - conservative that values old traditional cultural values and norms and - progressive that values the future possibilities - There are different cultural flavors of this. Whether it is - political polarization that pits authoritarian vs democratic ideologies or - climate change that pits traditional fossil fuel systems vs new renewable energy systems - the way we've always done things is in conflict with new ways of doing things through natural human evolutionary change - progress - In fact, we can look at the deep time, species-wide singularity that is now happening across all fields in the anthropocene as a predictable progress trap arising from progress itself

for - progress traps - AI - created by mind level that created all our existing problems - AI is not AI but MI - Mineral Intelligence

for - quote - progress trap - AI - developed by unwise humans - John Churchill

quote - progress trap - AI - developed by unwise humans - John Churchill - (See below) - We haven't even got to a planetary place yet really - and we're about to unleash Galactic level technology - So we have a we have a lot of catchup that needs to happen in a very short period of time

The DIY way I organise my life by [[struthless]]

shiny new thing syndrome [2:01]

meh...

for - progress traps - measurement

for - AI - progress trap - example - Facebook AI algorithm - target - increase user engagement - by spreading hateful conspiracy theories - AI did this autonomously - no morality - Yuval Noah Harari story

for - AI - progress trap - example - no morality - Open AI - GPT4 - could not solve captcha - so hired human at Task Rabbit to solve - Yuval Noah Harari story

for - Yuval Noah Harari - interview - book - Nexus - progress trap - information

The author's blackness terrified the professor from the sounds of this piece, a way to symbolize something which could attract a reader but what was it that they meant, the professor could be seen as shrewd or inquisitive.

Die Fossilindustrie finanziert seit Jahrzehten Universitäten und fördert damit Publikationen in ihrem Interesse, z.B. zu false solutions wie #CCS. Hintergrundbericht anlässlich einer neuen Studie: https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/sep/05/universities-fossil-fuel-funding-green-energy

Studie: https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.904

for - progress trap - meaning crisis intervention practices

progress trap - meaning crisis intervention practices - JV recognizes the potential progress traps of this potential intervention

for - biodiversity - impact of monoculture diet

biodiversity - impact of monoculture diet - FAO study done before 2000 and often cited shows that 75% of the global diet comes from 12 plant and 5 animal food sources

to - stats - progress trap - monoculture - table of 12 plant and 5 animal species that make up 75% of world's diet - https://hyp.is/iznepFWoEe-umbNyOGVqrg/thefuturemarket.com/biodiversity

• progress trap - monoculture - instead of agrobiodiversity - examples of
  • https://hyp.is/kV_NalWpEe-xFufxGAqPhw/foodtechconnect.com/2019/01/07/biodiverse-food-intersection-taste-sustainability/

. for - progress trap - monoculture - instead of agrobiodiversity

from - Swiss RE Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (BES) index report - https://hyp.is/Jqw9MlWpEe-DhnehMbtbjA/www.swissre.com/dam/jcr:a7fe3dca-c4d6-403b-961c-9fab1b2f0455/swiss-re-institute-expertise-publication-biodiversity-and-ecosystem-services.pdf

for - adjacency - ecology of communication - progress traps - intentionality - language

adjacency - between - ecology of communications - progress traps - intentionally - language - emptiness - adjacency relationship - human intentionally focuses it attention on only a few select aspects of the entire gestalt of any moment of our phenomenological reality - It creates our salience landscape - What we choose to focus on and know more about it always coupled with and complimented by a vast ignorance of what we choose NOT to know - Indeed, the use language itself is the telling of a very specific story - Of all the stories we can tell, - Of the infinite stories we can construct now, -we settle on one - So the use of language already betrays the complexity inherent in each and every one of our ecological moments - We plant the seeds for progress traps as soon as we - manifest an intention - attempt to communicate - Hence, it is not avoidable and the best we can do is - recognize our situation - manage it - It is the relationship between - human nature (perceived as limited) - nature nature (infinite) - What springs to mind if the Zen koan - The elbow does not bend backwards

for - progress traps - intentionality - (see previous annotation)

for - adjacency - precautionary principle - risk assessment - progress traps

adjacency - between - precautionary principle - risk assessment - progress trap - adjacency relationship - Precautionary principle is really stating that we don't have enough knowledge and there can be a high risk - Even if there is low probability of occurrence, we must apply precautionary principle to avoid a progress trap

for - progress trap - zoonotic diseases - from transgressive biodiversity

for - World economic forum - integration planetary boundaries into their strategy

Concern - unintended consequence - The WEF is perceived by many to be an elitist organisation - who do not have the best interest off the people in mind - This could lead to potential reputational damage to the planetary boundary framework thru their association with it

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/05/climate-change-denial-congress

for - ToC construction - recommendation - should be participatory

comment - Stop Reset Go process using Trailmark mark-in notation within Indyweb people-centered, interpersonal software ecosystem is inherently designed: - to be participatory - to mitigate progress traps - In fact, - the greater the diversity of perspectives, - the greater the efficacy in mitigating progress traps - For this reason, open source is necessary to achieve the optimal transformations of improvement

for - progress trap - deep sea metallic nodes produce oxygen - deep sea mining can disrupt

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

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

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

exponential growth isn't totally smooth and uniform. Progress happens in "S-curves"

26:30 Brings up progress traps of this new technology

26:48

question How do we shift our (human being's) relationship with the rest of nature

27:00

metaphor - interspecies communications - AI can be compared to a new scientific instrument that extends our ability to see - We may discover that humanity is not the center of the universe

32:54

Question - Dr Doolittle question - Will we be able to talk to the animals? - Wittgenstein said no - Human Umwelt is different from others - but it may very well happen

34:54

species have culture - Marine mammals enact behavior similar to humans

• Unknown unknowns will likely move to known unknowns and to some known knowns

36:29

citizen science bioacoustic projects - audio moth - sound invisible to humans - ultrasonic sound - intrasonic sound - example - Amazonian river turtles have been found to have hundreds of unique vocalizations to call their baby turtles to safety out in the ocean

41:56

ocean habitat for whales - they can communicate across the entire ocean of the earth - They tell of a story of a whale in Bermuda can communicate with a whale in Ireland

43:00

progress trap - AI for interspecies communications - examples - examples - poachers or eco tourism can misuse

44:08

progress trap - AI for interspecies communications - policy

45:16

whale protection technology - Kim Davies - University of New Brunswick - aquatic drones - drones triangulate whales - ships must not get near 1,000 km of whales to avoid collision - Canadian government fines are up to 250,000 dollars for violating

50:35

environmental regulation - overhaul for the next century - instead of - treatment, we now have the data tools for - prevention

56:40 - ecological relationship - pollinators and plants have co-evolved

1:00:26

AI for interspecies communication - example - human cultural evolution controlling evolution of life on earth

for - progress trap - AI -

article details - title - Hollow, world! (Part 1 of 5) - author - James Allen - date - 10 July, 2024 - publication - substack - self link - https://allenj.substack.com/p/hollow-world-part-1-of-5

summary James Allen provides an insightful description of ultra-anthropomorphic AI, AI that attempts to simulate an entire, whole human being.

In short, he points out the fundamental distinction between the real experience of another human being, and a simulation of one. In so doing, he gets to the heart of what it is to be human.

An AI is a simulation of a human being. No matter how realistic it's responses and actions, it is not evolved out of biology. I have no doubts that scientists are hard at work trying to make a biological AI. The distinction becomes fuzzier then.

Current AI cannot possibly simulate the experience of being in a fragile and mortal body and all that this entails. If an AI robot says it understands joy or pain, that statement isn't built on the combined exteroception and interoception of being in a biological body, rather, it is based on many linguistic statements it has assimilated.

for - book - Over the Seawall - Steven Robert Miller

book - Over the Seawall - Steven Robert Miller - A book about PROGRESS TRAPS! - How climate adaptation measures can lead to progress traps, such as - lead to a sense of complacency and false security - leading to overdevelopment - leading to even more people vulnerable to climate and extreme weather events

for - progress trap - abstraction - the ECONOMY! - abstracted and separated from nature

for - progress trap - real dangers from - abstraction and siloing

progress trap - real dangers from - abstraction and siloing - Business processes create workers who live in abstract, symbolic worlds, never seeing the consequences of their symbolic manipulations - At the end of the day, the abstract, symbolic finance industry worker gets a fat salary and lives comfortably, whilist playing with abstractions of processes they are contributing to which they have no sensory information on - the separation of producer from consumer is yet another huge abstraction that cleaves the gestalt into pieces that we cannot see - ANTIDOTE to this - de-abstraction - re-synthesize - Processes have been fragmented and split apart - We need to find ways for people to re-synthesize and assemble the pieces back together again in order to - see and experience the whole picture

for - progress trap - modernity can't run away anywhere from its ruins

for - progress trap - planetary tipping points - rapid climate destabilization

reference - Ice cores provide first documentation of rapid Antarctic ice loss in the past - https://phys.org/news/2024-02-ice-cores-documentation-rapid-antarctic.html

for - progress trap - Agriculture appears to be a progress trap - Ronald Wright

argument - progress trap - Agriculture appears to be a progress trap - Ronald Wright - The early progress traps have been comparatively small in scale - During the stone age, there were no more than a few million people alive (3 to 5 million?) and - they destroyed all the big game where humans lived - The Sumerians, with a population of around one million people salted up and destroyed the fertile land of Southern Iraq - Now we have 8 billion people and a third of them are starving - Our continuous technology development is what enables us to stave off the day of reckoning but - we are losing a Scotland-size worth of topsoil every year to - soil erosion - urban sprawl - We still face the possibility of collapse - Our species has existed for 5 to 6 million years and - civilization is an experiment that has only emerged about 10,000 years ago - It's still very possible for the experiment to fail

for - statistics - progress trap - comparative levels of poverty

statistics - progress trap - comparative levels of poverty - modern civilization has - a huge middle class - a small elite class - a huge impoverished class - The absolute number of people living on less than 2 dollars a day is less than the entire population of humans only 100 years ago

for - progress trap - the agricultural-large family positive feedback loop

progress trap - the agricultural-large family positive feedback loop - Interesting to compare modern vs agricultural societies - Populations are dropping in most western countries around the contemporary world, yet - traditional agricultural societies had large families to tend to large amount of agricultural work - There is a progress trap potential with encouraging many large families with a limited land resource: - If you have larger families, you can cultivate more land - If you cultivate more land, you can have even larger family - until you reach a point when the land has been exhausted and you are now forced to reduce the population

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

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

• Tahitians practiced population control via
  • infanticide
    • It was ok to kill a newborn baby before it drew its first breath, as it was not considered a person until it drew the first breath
  • advanced Eroticism - separating sexual activity from reproduction

for - progress trap - dangerous mythology

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

• We have to break out of that mindset

for - progress trap - agriculture that could work - historical terraced cultivation in Peru and China

for - progress traps - exceptional civilizations - Egypt and China

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

for - progress trap - inequality - resentment

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

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

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

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

for - progress traps - interview - Ronald Wright

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

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

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

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

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

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

for - progress trap - archeology - Easter Island

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

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

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

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

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

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

for - adjacency - progress trap - pyramid scheme

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

for - progress trap - civilization itself is one

for - progress trap - example - internal combustion engine / fossil fuels

progress trap - example - internal combustion engine / fossil fuels - This is one of my favorite examples. - Nobody could foresee that the ICE burning fossil fuels could lead us to destabilize Earth's entire climate system

for - definition - progress trap - Ronald Wright

definition - progress trap - A seductive trail of successes that leads to a catastrophic end - Ronald Wright - defined in his book "A Short History of Progress"

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

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

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

for - quote - myth of progress - Ronald Wright

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

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

for - definition - progress

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

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

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

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

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

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