if one Zooms in you find out that we are all in fact Collective intelligences
less well known is that the same person was really 00:01:02 interested in morphogenesis
for: superorganism, multi-level superorganism, collective intelligence, individual-collective gestalt, Michael Levin,
title: Cell Intelligence in Physiological and Morphological Spaces
The scientists behind the new study are planning an eradication campaign in Sicily. With help from authorities, they say they will destroy the known nests, continue to search local areas for more nests, and monitor for several years to make sure no ants escape. They hope to recruit residents across Europe to keep an eye out for more fire ants.
Based on an analysis of suitable habitats, the researchers estimate the ants could invade 7% of the European continent.
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
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date: May 12, 2022
abstract
comment
Phenomenal consciousness is only seemingly private because in order to measure it one needs to be in the appropriate cognitive frame of reference. It is not a simple transformation to change from a third-person cognitive frame of reference to the first-person frame, but in principle it can be done, and hence phenomenal consciousness isn’t private anymore.
for: Donald Winnicott, human INTERbeing, human INTERbeCOMing, Deep Humanity, DH
title: For Donald Winnicott, the psyche is not inside us but between us
author: James Barnes date: May 18, 2020
comment: insight
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
question
Winnicott also had a strikingly different notion of the agent of psychological change.
comparison: Winnicott, Freud
Winnicott had a strikingly different notion of the agent of psychological change than Freud.
psychotherapeutic change was all about the relationship between - client and - therapist.
Freud
comment
Winnicott’s concept of psychopathology was very different from Freud’s.
He wrote of culture – its artifacts and its activities – as extensions of the transitional phenomena of childhood, themselves rooted in the original mix-up with the parent. He thought that the very worlds we inhabit and take for granted are always partly of our own making.
Winnicott’s psychological paradox of subject and object becomes a philosophical paradox of idealism and materialism
‘There is no such thing as a baby … if you set out to describe a baby, you will find you are describing a baby and someone.’
for: Donald Winnicott, quote, quote - Donald Winnicott, quote - human INTERbeing, human INTERbeing, human INTERbeCOMing, white - humans INTERbeCOMing, DH, Deep Humanity, altricial, mOTHER, non-duality
quote: Donald Winnicott
comment
While oversimplified, the core image of mind here is as a sort of internal outgrowth, responsible for cognitively traversing the subject-object gap and, as it were, acting as intermediator between two distinct domains.
his model of the psyche was firmly rooted in the Cartesian-empiricist philosophy that continues to dominate the scientific worldview. The most basic commitment of this model is the idea that we are discrete individual entities opposed to an objective, neutral world that exists independently of us.
, a fundamentally unitary conception of self and other.
quote
comment -The Deep Humanity definition of the individual / collective gestalt identifies the indivisible nature of the individual and collective.
Save Share Tweet EmailJames Barnesis a psychotherapist, lecturer and writer with a background in psychoanalysis and philosophy. He has a psychotherapy practice in Exeter, UK, and sees clients remotely.Edited by Christian JarrettSyndicate this idea Save Share Tweet EmailFor Donald Winnicott, your psyche isn’t just in your head – it emerges from your relationships with others and the world
for: human INTERbeing, human INTERbeCOMing, DH, Deep Humanity
From inert matter to the global society life as multi-level networks of processes
for: Michael Levine, developmental biology, human superorganism, multi-scale competency architecture, eukaryote multi-cellular superorganism - interlevel communication, interoception
definition: multi-scale competency architecture
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after a year and a half there, I eventually understood that not only does McKinsey fail to make the world better—it often colludes with those who make the world worse.
that's that is the Dirty Little Secret 00:12:08 of where we're at right now with Americans at each other's throats politically it's being created caused on purpose by the Chinese and the Russians who are manipulating people 00:12:22 through um use of phony websites and other disinformation campaigns being run which is a type of warfare that's being run 00:12:34 against the American people and they're falling for it
interrelationality, not in arrangement.
definition: symmathesy
comment
definition: symmathesy
comment
A widely publicized study published last year by researchers at the University of Northern Arizona analyzed satellite images taken between 1985 and 2019. They show that large parts of the boreal forest have “browned” (i.e., died) in the south and greened with trees and shrubs in the north. If this shift, long hypothesized as a future outcome of warming, is already underway, the effects will be profound, transforming natural habitats, animal migration and human settlements.
lifelong toll it takes on the youngest
Hotter, harder-to-contain fires will burn indefinitely
solastalgia
the decline of winter shaking our national self-identity the most.
Cities across the country will begin to reach “climate departure”: a symbolic rubicon, after which a climate falls completely outside historical norms.
“On one hand, if it’s only 12% accounting for half the beef consumption, you could make some big gains if you get those 12% on board,” Rose says. “On the other hand, those 12% may be most resistant to change.”
for: quote, quote - meat eating, climate impact - meat eating, leverage point - meat eating, leverage demographic
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“In a few months’ time, this government will not be accountable for the severe consequences that may follow from the Schiphol decision, particularly with respect to relations with the Netherlands’ trading partners, and lost jobs and prosperity at home,”
KLM on Friday called the cap "incomprehensible" and said implementing it would damage the Netherlands’ economy.
comment
yet on KLM's website, they appear aware of climate change and even make the following commitment:
Clearly, they understand the intent of this action. It is not "incomprehensible" KLM language attempts to convey that the cap is not informed by rational thinking, while the rationale is quite obvious.
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?
“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.”
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
Steve Bannon I mean to my to my delight 00:25:29 and horror read an entire section of my book team human aloud on war room pandemic and it was a section of the book that I looked at and I still there's nothing I can really change in it to defend it from being used in that 00:25:42 context
Another concern is that these emerging economies could be simply trapping themselves in more debt with these agreements.
he agreements aren’t perfect. For example, they may not rule out oil and gas as bridging fuels between coal and renewables
Ramalope says they also don’t go far enough. “I think the weakness of JETPs is that they’re not encouraging 1.5 [degrees] Celsius,”
“Given the high unemployment rate in South Africa as well … you cannot sell it as a climate change intervention,” says Deborah Ramalope, head of climate policy analysis at the policy institute Climate Analytics in Berlin. “You really need to sell it as a socioeconomic intervention.”
climate finance expert Malango Mughogho, who is managing director of ZeniZeni Sustainable Finance Limited in South Africa and a member of the United Nations High-Level Expert Group on net-zero emissions commitments.
Just Energy Transition Partnerships, or JETPs, an attempt to catalyze global finance for emerging economies looking to shift energy reliance away from fossil fuels in a way that doesn’t leave certain people and communities behind.
Question
How does JETP fit into the global transition in terms of:
Is net zero enough?
people also have to understand that you know between what scientists are are saying and and the the ability and the agility of government to respond 00:20:02 quickly there is an unfortunate delay
for: LNG, greenwashing,
comment
summary
comment
However, knowing the science community has long underestimated climate impacts, it is my judgement that the climate system has crossed a critical threshold. I believe its destabilisation will now trigger cascading and chaotic changes and disruption to human social and economic systems – and do so globally.
date: Sept. 3, 2023
comment
Everything, Everywhere, All at Once
Is the Future Terrifying? Or Exciting?
the systemwide optimum population cohort for the climate action interventions is a community (P4) of 10 000 persons
for: cross-scale translation of earth system boundaries, downscaled planetary boundaries, leverage point
stats
We suggest that prioritizing the analyzed climate actions between community and urban scales, where global and local converge, can help catalyze and enhance individual, household and local practices, and support national and international policies and finances for rapid sustainability transformations.
Demographic and Socioeconomic Correlates of Disproportionate Beef Consumption among US Adults in an Age of Global Warming
date: Aug. 30, 2023
stats
the total number of marine invertebrates killed was almost certainly in the billions
The hottest days of the 2021 heatwave coincided with very low, early afternoon low tides throughout most of the Salish Sea (the inland waters of BC and Washington State). As a result, surface temperatures in excess of 50 °C were observed in the intertidal zone (Fig. 6a, b), particularly on gently sloping south and west-facing surfaces that received the most direct solar radiation.
forecasts of the magnitude and longevity of the event were very good; although forecasted high-temperature records fell 1–3 °C short of the observed highs in many cases.
Meteorologists are typically reluctant to make extreme weather forecasts at forecast horizons of around a week for fear of “crying wolf” and the associated reduction in end-user trust. In this case, however, the ensemble forecast provided sufficient certainty that meteorologists were able to warn of “extreme” heat at this relatively long-lead time—a testament to ensemble forecast technology.
This “heat dome” phrase is not a common phrase within the scientific community
paraphrase
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near-term forecasts of this event were good, albeit underestimating the magnitude of the maximum temperatures.
An unprecedented heatwave occurred in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) from ~25 June to 2 July 2021, over lands colonially named British Columbia (BC) and Alberta (AB) in Canada, Washington (WA), and Oregon (OR) in the United States.
None of the 28 streams Cunningham and his colleagues studied hit summertime highs warmer than 25.9 C, the point where warming water can become lethal. But in four rivers, temperatures climbed past 20.3 C, the threshold where some have found juvenile coho stop growing.
for: climate change - impacts, extinction, biodiversity loss, fish kill, salmon dieoff, stats, stats - salmon, logging, human activity
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stats
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One study found once temperatures climb past 20.3 C, salmon stop growing because they can't get enough food to satisfy their metabolism.
-for: salmon survival temperature, stats, stats - salmon, salmon dieoff, climate change - impacts, fish kill - paraphrase -stats - One study found once temperatures climb past 20.3 C, - salmon stop growing because they can't get enough food to satisfy their metabolism.
The graph shows that ecological awareness does in fact lowers the footprint of high income consumption. They may shift from meat to plant based diet or fly less. Yet, they still consume more, fly more, travel more, buy more items, larger homes, larger cars etc. etc. This problem is why policies that promote circular-responsible-organic-whatever products will not deliver to targets.
The unequal distribution of household carbon footprints in Europe and its link to sustainability
Critics of ‘degrowth’ economics say it’s unworkable – but from an ecologist’s perspective, it’s inevitable
Political scientists and political economists argue governments, public servants, the media and indeed the majority of decision-makers and influencers become captured by vested interests.
Confronting state capture involves reversing several undemocratic practices.
Transnational Uncivil Society Networks: kleptocracy’s global fightback against liberal activism - reference - https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5e5a3052-c693-4991-a7cc-bc2b47134467/download_file?file_format=application%2Fpdf&safe_filename=Cooley_et_al_2023_transnational_uncivil_society.pdf&type_of_work=Journal+article
Across the region, roads buckled, car windows cracked and power cables melted. The emerald fringes of conifers browned overnight, as if singed by flame. Entire cherry orchards were destroyed, the fruit stewed on the trees. More than 650,000 farm animals died of heat stress. Hundreds of thousands of honeybees perished, their organs exploding outside their bodies. Billions of shoreline creatures, especially shellfish, simply baked to death, strewing beaches with empty shells and a fetid stench that lingered for weeks. Birds and insects went unnervingly silent. All the while the skies were hazy but clear, the air preternaturally still, not a cloud in sight. The air pressure was so high they’d all dissipated.
quote
author: Anne Shibata Casselman
source:
comment
What follows is a portrait of Canada in a world warmed by two degrees. This is not what our country will look like if the world fails to reduce emissions—this is our future even if we do.
Whole humans and more than human. Sustainability and systems are a window into the spiritual for many because it’s about wholes.So not a pillar. Rather a deeper level of understanding.
Without a solid spiritual foundation, humanity may well continue on its path toward self-destruction, whether it be through environmental collapse, nuclear war or Artificial Intelligence gone haywire. On the other hand, if we evolve our culture to value inner work as much as we value outer work, then our individual and collective spiritual wisdom might just catch up with our rapidly advancing technology.
While our modern world cringes at any mention of spirituality, it is not the enemy of science. It speaks volumes that many of the greatest minds of history, including Einstein, Tesla, Da Vinci, Plato and Pythagorus were as interested in the spiritual world as they were in the material sciences.
for: science - religion, science - spirituality, science and religion, science and spirituality, Isaac Newton - spirituality, Isaac Newton - religion
comment
One of the core principles of Hermetic philosophy is the principle of Mentalism, which states that all things are created from and expand from the mind.
spirituality is not even a fourth pillar of sustainability, but is instead the foundation upon which the pillars of people, planet and profit must be constructed. To succeed on the triple bottom line, we must build a strong spiritual foundation. To do that, we must look inwards.
for: quote, quote - spirituality, quote - Tom Greenwood, triple bottom line, spirituality and business
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I think if we stripped away the social stigma and stereotypes, we would find that most people have some personal beliefs about life, death and the universe that could be considered spiritual.
The problem is that in rejecting the dogma, we too have created dogma. A dogma that shuts down our natural human inclination to explore the mysteries of life, of our own inner worlds and of our deep connection to nature and each other.
We all wonder about it, but we don’t like to talk about it because it sounds a bit religious and unscientific, but in truth it’s just mysterious.
define spirituality
date: Aug. 23, 2023
comment
I have to admit that it feels uncomfortable even writing this. Somehow we need to get comfortable talking about spirituality.
all good regenerative businesses are built on four pillars: ecological, social, spiritual and financial
I've been wondering if we are too focused on systems and actions that we can do, rather than on ourselves as human beings and what we can be.
The challenge is that we're now nearly thirty years in the future and despite the best efforts of many people, we haven't yet cracked the nut of sustainable business or sustainability more broadly.
triple bottom line
Is spirituality the missing pillar of sustainability?
When I wrote my treatise about our system I had an eye upon such principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity; and nothing can rejoice me more than to find it useful for that purpose.
This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all. . . . The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect . . . and from his true dominion it follows that the true God is a living, intelligent, and powerful Being. . . . He is not eternity and infinity, but eternal and infinite; he is not duration or space, but he endures and is present.
Does it not appear from phenomena that there is a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent, omnipresent, who in infinite space . . . sees the things themselves intimately, and thoroughly perceives them, and comprehends them wholly.
Whence is it that Nature doth nothing in vain? And whence arises all that order and beauty which we see in the world? . . . Was the eye contrived without skill in optics? And the ear without knowledge of sounds?
A Brief Survey of Sir Isaac Newton's Views on Religion
Possibilianism is a philosophy which rejects both the idiosyncratic claims of traditional theism and the positions of certainty in atheism in favor of a middle, exploratory ground. The term was first defined by neuroscientist David Eagleman in relation to his book of fiction Sum. Asked whether he was an atheist or a religious person on a National Public Radio interview in 2009, he replied "I call myself a Possibilian: I'm open to ideas that we don't have any way of testing right now.
title
summary
Comment
The January 6th insurrection on Capitol Hill over one year ago, and the United States’ ongoing struggle to respond effectively to threats such as the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change, warn us of the dangers posed by unchecked polarization.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
I believe we are arriving at multiple simultaneous breaking points. The most obvious is of course the climate crisis, but also consider the mounting levels of inequality, of pollution and of despicable charlatanry exhibited by those in positions of power. These simply cannot go on if we are to survive as a civilization. Since civilization is resilient, the odds are that we develop tools to support a saner society and bring those tools to bear. I’m not prescient enough to enumerate them, but it seems that the single most useful technology would be one that clearly distinguishes verifiable truth from agitprop in an unavoidable and unambiguous way. This is a necessary but not sufficient condition for making progress on any of the key issues we face.
At best, we will see new forms of collaboration among large numbers of people toward beneficial ends. The most obvious example is the changing nature of responses to largescale natural disasters. Perhaps we will see this spirit of volunteer and entrepreneurial cooperation emerge to address such pressing issues as climate change (e.g., maybe, the Green New Deal will be crowdsourced)
We are already seeing the emergence of ‘tech-free’ camps and vacation packages. Experiencing life ‘offline’ will become a generational goal, much like the Millennial generation introduced ride sharing and home sharing. Ironically, it will be technology that enables this trend, and premiums will be paid for uninterrupted time to focus or to simply enjoy being alive. This may also indicate a new kind of disparity between economic strata, with the more-wealthy affording privacy, peace and quiet while the lower strata remain fodder for 24/7 social media aggregators and botnets.
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.
quote
author: Brian Southwell
Health care is an area that will likely see many innovations. There are already multiple research prototypes underway looking at monitoring of one’s physical and mental health. Some of my colleagues (and myself as well) are also looking at social behaviors, and how those behaviors not only impact one’s health but also how innovations spread through one’s social network.
So far, smart city systems are being set up to appropriate and commercialize individual and community data. So far, communities are not waking up to the realization that a capacity they need is being stolen from them before they have it.”
Four billion people are now connected to the same infrastructure, the internet, that we the science and technology community put in place just decades ago. This is creating the conditions for an explosion of open creativity and innovation never seen before. A huge wave of labs of all kinds (living labs, fablabs, social labs, edulabs, innovation spaces, even policy labs) is emerging as the new kind of groups and communities of the digital era. We are moving from the net to the lab. On the 2030 horizon, many of these labs will gather and agree in generating the first universal innovation ecosystems in regions and countries.
We are wasting valuable time for humankind when we focus on technology and platforms, or even in privacy and control over data, and not on conduct, a whole chain of conduct from the active subject of a possible manipulation to the harms suffered by others and society as a consequence of manipulation and other abuses. It’s not that tech is not important; it is that we overlook what goes on around it.
The primary means of social and civic innovation will occur as people go offline and reconnect with their local communities. So, I don’t see so much positive change occurring from the top down, through policies and regulation – even though it would be nice to try. I do think government and corporations can be pressured to respond to widespread, bottom-up social activism and widespread changes in citizen and consumer behavior.
We lived in a relatively unregulated digital world until now. It was great until the public realized that a few companies wield too much power today in our lives. We will see significant changes in areas like privacy, data protection, algorithm and architecture design guidelines, and platform accountability, etc. which should reduce the pervasiveness of misinformation, hate and visceral content over the internet.
Thomas Jefferson’s aphorism ‘Do well by doing good’ is timely and trendy in a way it hasn’t been for centuries. Because that ethos for technology entrepreneurs is increasingly recognized as the only way many people will expect firms offering technology innovations to approach them: humbly and with a broader social mission and accounting not just as a corporate social responsibility afterthought, but as a core value of the products and companies themselves
Much social and civic innovation is possible if the GAAF platform monopolies (Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook) are broken up or regulated appropriately. I believe that will happen, and I hope it will happen in appropriate ways. Done right, it will release a torrent of innovation, including social and civic changes. I trust that the general level of competence is growing among digital citizens. So, I am modestly hopeful we can sort out the helpful from the harmful changes for a net positive gain.
quote
author: Warren Yoder
Our first attempts at building community online have had both good and bad outcomes. We know them all. But would we have expected otherwise? We are new at digital communities and are inventing them as we move forward. Of course we aren’t going to get it right the first time. But the key question is whether these technologies help us form social bonds or not. Anyone who has posted a question in a forum and received an answer from a stranger knows firsthand that they bring us together.
I do expect new social platforms to emerge that focus on privacy and ‘fake-free’ information, or at least they will claim to be so. Proving that to a jaded public will be a challenge. Resisting the temptation to exploit all that data will be extremely hard. And how to pay for it all? If it is subscriber-paid, then only the wealthy will be able to afford it.
Will members-only, perhaps subscription-based ‘online communities’ reemerge instead of ‘post and we’ll sell your data’ forms of social media? I hope so, but at this point a giant investment would be needed to counter the mega-billions of companies like Facebook!
Extreme bad behaviour from governments and private companies – GAFAs [Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon] and the like in China – will create a social and civic innovation to compensate and/or to contribute to an innovation jump. I hope for development of human cooperative brain networks.
Technological change is an accelerant and acts on the social ills like pouring gasoline on a fire
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
We are in the midst of a remarkable social and civic experiment: democracy by device
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
Experts Predict More Digital Innovation by 2030 Aimed at Enhancing Democracy
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
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.
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.
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
Can our fundamental human need for close community be restored or will we become more isolated, anxious and susceptible to manipulation?
If tech doesn’t contribute to solving some of the problems it creates, we are doomed
We need mass innovation in design of social tools that help us bridge fragmentation and polarization, bring diversity into our media landscapes and help find common ground between disparate groups. With these as conscious design goals, technology could be a powerful positive force for civic change. If we don’t take this challenge seriously and assume that we’re stuck with mass-market tools, we won’t see positive civic outcomes from technological tools.”
In our early experiments, reported by The Washington Post in March 2013, we discovered that Google’s search engine had the power to shift the percentage of undecided voters supporting a political candidate by a substantial margin without anyone knowing.
Early in 2013, Ronald Robertson, now a doctoral candidate at the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University in Boston, and I discovered that Google isn’t just spying on us; it also has the power to exert an enormous impact on our opinions, purchases and votes.
What if, early in the morning on Election Day in 2016, Mark Zuckerberg had used Facebook to broadcast “go-out-and-vote” reminders just to supporters of Hillary Clinton? Extrapolating from Facebook’s own published data, that might have given Mrs. Clinton a boost of 450,000 votes or more, with no one but Mr. Zuckerberg and a few cronies knowing about the manipulation.
he Search Suggestion Effect (SSE), the Answer Bot Effect (ABE), the Targeted Messaging Effect (TME), and the Opinion Matching Effect (OME), among others. Effects like these might now be impacting the opinions, beliefs, attitudes, decisions, purchases and voting preferences of more than two billion people every day.
author: Robert Epstein
quote
To finally beat this harmful bacteria, it is crucial to understand how it evolved, how it developed resistance to antibiotics, how it spread. And these are the questions where biomolecular archaeology can help us a lot.
One hundred trillion cells, one and 14 zeros, that's the approximate number of microorganisms in your body, ten times greater than the number of your own cells. Your microbial baggage occupies almost 2% of your body weight, that's about one and a half kilograms, approximately the weight of your liver. Or your brain.
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.
pupil shape is a powerful indicator of what role an animal plays in its ecosystem
he "Old Man of La Chapelle", for example, is the name given to the remains of a Neanderthal who lived 56,000 years ago, found buried in the limestone bedrock of a small cave near La Chapelle-aux-Saints, in France in 1908.
It is not uncommon to hear talk about how lucky we are to live in this age of scientific and medical advancement where antibiotics and vaccinations keep us living longer, while our poor ancient ancestors were lucky to live past the age of 35. Well this is not quite true. At best, it oversimplifies a complex issue, and at worst it is a blatant misrepresentation of statistics. Did ancient humans really just drop dead as they were entering their prime, or did some live long enough to see a wrinkle on their face?
What is commonly known as ‘average life expectancy’ is technically ‘life expectancy at birth’. In other words, it is the average number of years that a newborn baby can expect to live in a given society at a given time. But life expectancy at birth is an unhelpful statistic if the goal is to compare the health and longevity of adults. That is because a major determinant of life expectancy at birth is the child mortality rate which, in our ancient past, was extremely high, and this skews the life expectancy rate dramatically downward.
early years from infancy through to about 15 was perilous, due to risks posed by disease, injuries, and accidents. But those who survived this hazardous period of life could well make it into old age.
Damanhur’s mock battles prevent the kind of burn-out you find when the most empathetic people in a community get tasked with dealing with the emotional needs of others, putting a lot a strain on the shoulders of a few.
The bottom line is that many intentional communities exist because of wealthy patrons and benefactors, and courting philanthropy and start-up capital is part of the job of charismatic founders.
she writes about her time cutting and baling hay, making butter, driving a tractor, cutting firewood, baking bread, and taking care of children, animals and the wellbeing of her peers.
When the Welsh social reformer Robert Owen established New Harmony in 1825, on 20,000 acres in Indiana, he attracted an enthusiastic following, gaining more than 800 members in just a little over six weeks.
the more relevant drivers that cause many communities to unravel sound more like the challenges afflicting any organisation today: capital constraints, burn-out, conflict over private property and resource management, poor systems of conflict mediation, factionalism, founder problems, reputation management, skills shortage, and failure to attract new talent or entice subsequent generations.
the irony is that many of the administrative and managerial forces that individuals are running away from within mainstream society are exactly the organisational tools that would make intentional communities more resilient:
attrition rates for intentional communities are not all that different from many other types of human endeavour.
Generally, intentional communities fail at a rate slightly higher than that of most start-ups. Only a handful of communities founded in the US during the 19th century’s ‘golden age of communities’ lasted beyond a century; most folded in a matter of months. This golden age birthed more than 100 experimental communities, with more than 100,000 members in total who, according to the historian Mark Holloway in Heavens on Earth (1951)
Founded by the psychoanalyst and sociologist Dieter Duhm in Germany in 1978 and re-founded in Portugal in 1995, Tamera aspired to dissolve the trauma of human relationships. Duhm, heavily influenced by Marxism and psychoanalysis, came to see material emancipation and interpersonal transformation as part of the same project.
According to the International Hydropower Association, or IHA, a facility with two reservoirs roughly the size of two Olympic swimming pools, and a 500-metre height difference between them, would have an energy capacity of about three and a half megawatt hours. And they last for decades,
While the proximate mechanisms of these anthropogenic changes are well studied (e.g., climate change, biodiversity loss, population growth), the evolutionary causality of these anthropogenic changes have been largely ignored.
Ted Nelson launches Project Xanadu, and he said, "Well, what if it wasn't just limited to the things that I have? What if I could connect ideas across a larger body of work?"
Back in 1945, there was this guy, Vannevar Bush. He was working for the US government, and one of the ideas that he put forth was, 00:01:35 "Wow, humans are creating so much information, and we can't keep track of all the books that we've read or the connections between important ideas." And he had this idea called the "memex," where you could put together a personal library of all of the books and articles that you have access to. And that idea of connecting sources captured people's imaginations.
contacting your city council members running for office yourself donating to projects like black space and getting involved in zoning board meetings that could help change the density and makeup of the 00:20:08 communities where you live
according to project drawdown's walkable city solutions the 00:17:09 factors that make cities and neighborhoods most walkable include density of homes workplaces and other spaces wide well-lit tree-lined sidewalks and walkways safe and direct pedestrian Crossings and connectivity 00:17:22 with mass transit this can be applied to the suburbs as well
beautiful cities have six qualities
the Auto industry built for us and what's most Insidious is the financials behind all of this
paraphrase
when it comes to housing, people of color have been screwed over in literally every way in imaginable
so we have this self-perpetuating cycle
Auto industry actively demonized pedestrians making fun of pedestrian victims of auto accidents and coining the term jaywalker from the term J used in the late 1800s to mean worthless 00:10:26 fourth rate a hick or a dope and walking in the suburbs is actively discouraged through City planning
Lots but the people living in the suburbs continued to work and commute in the cities what's the solution High-Speed Rail and Incredibly 00:08:08 efficient mass transit no dummy cars obviously but it wasn't obvious the obsession with and Reliance on cars that seems uniquely American was manufactured as not a symptom but a feature of the 00:08:20 suburbs
the GI Bill provided a range of benefits to returning World War II veterans including low-cost mortgages job training and college tuition the implementation of these benefits was not Equitable across racial lines though the 00:04:36 legislation itself didn't explicitly differentiate benefits based on race in practice the distribution of its benefits was largely influenced by social and institutional racism the GI Bill worked in tandem with existing racially discriminating housing and 00:04:48 lending practices such as redlining and restrictive covenants which effectively excluded black veterans from enjoying the same opportunities for homeownership as their white counterparts redlining was a discriminatory practice where 00:05:00 lenders would designate neighborhoods with a high percentage of black people as high risk areas for mortgage lending these areas were often outlined in red on maps used by Banks and other lending institutions hence the term redlining 00:05:13 this led to a systemic denial of Home Loans or Insurance to People based on the racial or ethnic composition of their neighborhoods
when you when you sort of take a step back and look at that part of the distraction and the 00:14:47 chaos that Trump and these GOP trolls deliver it's it's a wonderful Boon for the oil and gas industry and the Koch brothers and the guys that fund these campaigns and the federal Federalist 00:14:59 Society you know that's owning the Supreme Court they want to keep doing business as usual and the easiest way to do that is to have this big chaotic GOP that ignores climate change and to play 00:15:11 into what they want is the mainstream media not focusing more on climate change let alone making those two connections and a lot of mainstream media is scared to make that connection because oil companies are paying the bills 00:15:23 and CNN and every other network
acting locally 00:24:28 with knowledge is how we bring about systemic change
to live for the common good is a very good purpose but purpose is a gift and the purpose of our life here on Earth is to change the environment which we met for something better because there is 00:21:54 always an opportunity for something better [Music] or to be in a learning mode and we when we know things to be in a teaching mode 00:22:11 also that is propagating what we know sharing it with others and making this knowledge open source for the world and especially to help train a young 00:22:24 generation of new leaders who are going to be the ones that grapple with these problems
people from all different aspects all different kinds of business people in in governments not just the finance people but the environmental 00:20:09 section and so on they need to get together and discuss calmly and and productively what we can do to move it 00:20:20 to creating a new mindset foreign s but also our common sense and we can only work out a future economy if people come in from these different sectors and 00:20:41 talk together not in a controversial way but in a way of we must find a solution because humanity is not exempt from 00:20:53 Extinction
professor John on Beatty will always say 00:14:07 I am because we are since we are therefore I am so my being is not just my being alone and being the richest in the world and 00:14:19 owning everybody my property has no meaning my wealth has no meaning if it's not of service to the community so if you come to my Village and many other villages in the African continent and someone says is a wealthy person but 00:14:33 is not bringing his wealth to Advanced education Advanced roads and infrastructure train people support agriculture people don't care he's not respected but once you bring your wealth and no matter how poor you are that you 00:14:47 are contributing to the society you are considered great so these are the values we think we can start discussing in the International Community
what I'm advocating here isn't radical redistribution it's merely more 00:13:08 redistribution in a and structurally dependable manner that is fair that is inclusive and that allows for the poor and improvised Nations to be granted excess not just a vital strategic resources that are very much needed in 00:13:21 maintaining the quality of life at own citizens but also more importantly the ropes to climb the ladder