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<blockquote>“How do we get fundamentally new things out of relationships of things where that didn’t exist before? Emergence is the closest thing to magic that’s actually a scientifically admissible term. ” - Daniel Schmachtenberger</blockquote>Coherence occurs when different parts come together and create something greater. The difference is emergence. | <blockquote>“How do we get fundamentally new things out of relationships of things where that didn’t exist before? Emergence is the closest thing to magic that’s actually a scientifically admissible term. ” - Daniel Schmachtenberger</blockquote>Coherence occurs when different parts come together and create something greater. The difference is emergence. | ||
Coherence enhances evolutionary fitness because emergence may create properties that offer some evolutionary advantage. Things can come together in various ways. | Coherence enhances evolutionary fitness because emergence may create properties that offer some evolutionary advantage. Things can come together in various ways. The ones that came together and offered the most advantages are selected for and are what drives the arrow of evolution. | ||
In complexity theory, evolution is defined as more elegantly ordered complexity. | In complexity theory, evolution is defined as more elegantly ordered complexity. | ||
From the big bang to stars to chemicals to planets to single-cell organisms to multi-cell organisms to humans, the universe has selected for increasing elegantly ordered complexity. | From the big bang to stars to chemicals to planets to single-cell organisms to multi-cell organisms to humans, the universe has selected for increasing elegantly ordered complexity. | ||
On the opposite side, defection | On the opposite side, defection that occurs when parts are not aligned with the whole is selected against. An example is the tragedy of the commons, whereby a person exploits a common resource for their own gain at the expense of the whole instead of cooperating to ensure the resource is used sustainably. The result is that it incentivises others to also exploit the resource, thereby defecting on the global optimum, and thereby rendering the system eventually self-terminating. So, avoidance of defection in favour of coherence also enhances evolutionary fitness. | ||
As [https://www.bighistoryproject.com/home Big History] suggests, new complexity results from having both the proper ingredients and goldilocks conditions. As an example, after the universe created stars, | [[File:Thresholds of increasing complexityB.png|center|800x800px]] | ||
As [https://www.bighistoryproject.com/home Big History] suggests, new complexity results from having both the proper ingredients and goldilocks conditions. As an example, after the universe created stars, the universe consisted of only hydrogen and helium. When giant stars ran out of hydrogen, they collapsed and with high enough temperatures, the fusion of helium nuclei created many different elements that form our periodic table. This brought increased complexity that could lead to planets. | |||
[[File:New chemical elements.png|center]] | [[File:New chemical elements.png|center]] | ||
=== Our Human Advantage is Collective Intelligence === | === Our Human Advantage is Collective Intelligence === | ||
Skipping forward, the evolution of humans was a big milestone in the history of the universe. For the first time, something | Skipping forward, the evolution of humans was a big milestone in the history of the universe. For the first time, something had the ability to contemplate its existence and consciously change the future. | ||
Anatomically modern humans evolved about 150,000 years ago. As Jordan Hall mentions, the evolution of the human needed many different pieces to come together. They include: | |||
* Humans beginning to grow larger and larger crania | |||
* Significant increases of the gestation period | |||
* Increased male attention in parenting | |||
* Grandmothers living long enough to provide resources and knowledge for support, among others | |||
According to The Late Upper Paleolithic Model, humans were not cognitively or behaviorally "modern" until around 50,000 years ago. Jordan Hall characterizes this as the emergence of our collective intelligence toolkit including abstract thinking, planning depth, symbolic behavior, among others.<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity#cite_note-McBrearty_Brooks_2000-2</ref><ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity#cite_note-Henshilwood_Marean_2003-3</ref> | |||
This represented what Yuval Harari called the Cognitive Revolution.Once we passed a threshold, humans became the first species that could learn collectively and not just as individuals. Collective learning meant, with each generation, ideas and knowledge accumulated and more information was retained than lost, allowing humans to become more and more powerful. | |||
So, our evolutionary advantage was our ability to collectively learn and collaborate. It is encoded in our genes. | |||
=== Humans Found Coherence Under the Dunbar Number === | === Humans Found Coherence Under the Dunbar Number === | ||
With | With this new collective intelligence toolkit, groups of humans gathered at the band level numbering between 5 to 150. These groups were meta-stable due to the high level of coherence and ability to police defection. Robin Dunbar found a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size and proposed that for humans, 150 appears to be the limit of our neurological capacities to model every other member and all of the complexities of relationships. At 150, Dunbar speculated that 42% of the group’s time would need to be devoted to social grooming. | ||
As | As Jim Rutt hypothesizes, a band that could have coherence at 150 had a very substantial advantage over a band that could only have coherence at 80, so there was a group selection advantage. There was a ratchet for more neocortex until the limit of the pelvic girdle in the human female was reached and that was how he converged to the Dunbar number of 150. | ||
As examples, Dunbar found 150 as the estimated size of a Neolithic farming village; 150 as the splitting point of Hutterite settlements; 200 as the upper bound on the number of academics in a discipline's sub-specialisation. As bands approach 150, they | As examples, Dunbar found 150 as the estimated size of a Neolithic farming village; 150 as the splitting point of Hutterite settlements; 200 as the upper bound on the number of academics in a discipline's sub-specialisation. As bands approach 150, they tended to fractionate into two units. | ||
With high degrees of coherence under 150, humans quickly | With high degrees of coherence under 150, humans very quickly became asymmetric with the rest of nature. This allowed humans to spread, survive, and thrive in most environments. We quickly became the peak predator. Ever since this Cognitive Revolution, humans have been able to change our behaviour quickly, transmitting new behaviours to future generations without any need for genetic or environmental changes. So, the speed of evolution became dominated by cultural evolution rather than biological evolution. | ||
=== How Did We Lose This Coherence? === | |||
=== | |||
Agriculture arose independently across the world | ==== Agriculture allows for larger population ==== | ||
# | Humans quickly spread and dominated every niche. By 11,000 years ago the population grew to 6 - 8M, which was about the largest forager population that the Earth can support. | ||
#Human communities | |||
Farming allowed | Agriculture arose independently across the world starting in Mesopotamia, 11,000 years ago. This was likely because: | ||
# Global temperature rose after an ice age | |||
# We gained more understanding of plants and animals | |||
# Human communities became more dense, and there was increasing competition for resources | |||
Farming allowed humans to support a larger population with a much smaller land area than foraging. As humans began to organize beyond the Dunbar number, the larger population meant there was more space open for defection. | |||
[[File:Agriculture emergence.png|center]] | |||
[[File:Global temperature and agriculture.png|center]] | [[File:Global temperature and agriculture.png|center]] | ||
==Enter Game A == | === Enter Game A === | ||
In the intimate context of hunter-gatherer life, defection | In the intimate context of hunter-gatherer life, defection would be difficult. As societies became more complex, and people were interacting with people that they did not know, the civilization toolkit emerged to police defection. | ||
===Introduction of | |||
With the advent of agriculture, humans | ==== Introduction of Scarcity ==== | ||
===Game A's | While humans were foragers, we were a part of the ecology and lived in relationship with the natural world. With the advent of agriculture, humans have shaped the environment for their own needs. Farming also allowed humans to produce enough food so that there was surplus. This created the concept of (property) ownership since now there was something to own. Ironically, this also created the concept of scarcity, and hence created the beginning of economics, and how to divide up scarce resources amongst the population. | ||
Game A is almost everything that humans have been doing to design | |||
==== Game A's Primary Problems ==== | |||
Game A is almost everything that humans have been doing to design our world, especially in the last 10,000 years, to coordinate beyond the Dunbar number. | |||
Game A, fundamentally, is about being able to solve these three primary problems: | |||
# '''Resource production''' - coordinate people together such that they can extract resources from nature and provide for the well-being of the group | |||
# '''Interior defection''' - survive internal defection as the population begins to grow well beyond the Dunbar number. | |||
# '''Exterior competition''' - survive and be victorious in competition with other human groups | |||
So, Game A is primarily characterized by scarcity and thus rivalrous or win-lose dynamics. How do we increase our resources production? How do we divide up the scarce resources? How do we compete with other groups of people? | |||
So, Game A is primarily characterized by scarcity and thus rivalrous or win-lose dynamics. How do we increase our resources production? How do we divide up the scarce resources? How do we compete with other groups of people? Civilization became the toolkit to solve these problems. Civilisation is characterised by the continued effort to police local defection against the global optimum, but through a growing dependence on formal institutions and less on interpersonal relationships (although this still continued to an extent). | |||
=== Game A's Increasing Complexity === | |||
==== Chiefdoms ==== | |||
After agriculture first spread across a region, with enough surplus, chiefdoms tend to follow. Anthropologist Robert Carneiro defines a chiefdom as “an autonomous political unit comprising a number of villages or communities under the permanent control of a paramount chief.” The exception was Papua New Guinea probably because the root crops could not be stored and agriculture was not quite productive enough to generate surplus. Chiefdoms, the scholar Randolph Widmer has written, “were at various times the most common form of society found throughout Europe, Africa, the Americas, Melanesia, Polynesia, the Near East, and Asia.” | |||
==== Agrarian Civilizations ==== | |||
Chiefdoms sustained the basic trend toward larger and more complex social organization. The chiefdoms’ villages evolved into something more like towns, then city-states, then multi-city states, and then civilizations. | |||
As farming technologies became more complex and more productive, they eventually allowed for the creation of larger, more populous and more complex societies. These agrarian civilizations appeared all over the world. They are usually divided into 4 world zones: The Americas, Afro-Eurasia, Australasia, and the Pacific Island societies. Although every civilization was different, they had many things in common. They all had big cities. These cities had monumental architectures like temples, pyramids and palaces. They also had rulers, hierarchies, tax systems, armies and a large population of peasant farmers to support the civilization. | |||
[[File:Four world zones.png|center]] | |||
Game A | === Game A Tools === | ||
With scarcity and non-rivalrous dynamics in Game A comes the power to influence and control resources. | |||
Some tools used by Game A to do this and solve the three problems of resource production, interior defection and external competition are: | |||
* Formal Roles and Hierarchy | |||
* Formal Narrative / Religion | |||
* Armies / Police | |||
* Formal Law | |||
==== Formal Roles and Hierarchy ==== | ==== Formal Roles and Hierarchy ==== | ||
With chiefdoms, for the first time there are groups of people under the permanent control of a paramount chief. A chief’s status is usually based on kinship, so it is inherited or ascribed instead of achieved status like leaders at the band level. | |||
Chiefdoms | Chiefdoms are characterized by centralization of authority and pervasive inequality. With chiefdoms, for the first time, there were at least two inherited social classes. Farmers extract resources from the environment, and there was a ruling elite above them that extracts resources from the farmers. | ||
Through this | Through this rent-seeking dynamic, the ruling elite could accumulate surplus from the labor of other people and not their own. As Daniel Schmachtenberger says, this was the beginning of a [https://civilizationemerging.com/new-economics-series-part-iv/ new multiplicative economy]. | ||
In civilizations, | [[File:Hierarchy.png|center]] | ||
In civilizations, specialists began to appear like potters, merchants, priests and soldiers. These were formal roles that people had. There were a few rich, politically powerful people and many more comparatively poor commoners who had little political influence and almost no possibility of acquiring it. As single-city kingdoms became multi-city empires with vast territories, the hierarchy became more rigid. | |||
==== Sacredness of the Ruling Elite ==== | ==== Sacredness of the Ruling Elite ==== | ||
Chiefs had demigod status and possessed religious authority. They | Chiefs had demigod status and possessed religious authority. They usually became the representative to the gods, and performed rituals that only they could perform. | ||
Observed over the past few centuries, chiefdoms have gone to great lengths to underscore their chiefliness. Many forms of chiefly self-advertisement are enduring such as monumental architecture. These include the huge mounds built in North America as tombs for past chiefs, pyramid-like temples on Tahiti, and even the giant stone heads on Easter Island. | |||
Similarly, in agrarian civilizations, the ruler commonly became a god-king with absolute authority. The Pharaohs of Egypt are a prime example of this. They were thought to be not just mortals but god-kings. As living gods, their authority was absolute. They also had monumental architecture like huge pyramids. | |||
==== Formal Narrative/Religion ==== | ==== Formal Narrative/Religion ==== | ||
Any large-scale human cooperation is rooted in shared myths. The crucial historical role of religion has been to give superhuman legitimacy to structures of states. Religion asserts that laws are not | Any large-scale human cooperation is rooted in common shared myths. The crucial historical role of religion has been to give superhuman legitimacy to structures of states. Religion asserts that the laws are not the result of human fallibility, but are ordained by an absolute and indisputable authority. This helps push them beyond challenge and thus ensuring social stability. As Yuval Harari describes, “The imagined order is inter-subjective.” It exists in the shared imagination of everyone. | ||
==== Armies/Police ==== | ==== Armies/Police ==== | ||
As Chris Boehm suggests, it was the development of weaponry that allowed two betas to kill an alpha | As Chris Boehm suggests, it was the development of weaponry that allowed two betas to kill an alpha and thus one alpha couldn't dominate and the band level was essentially egalitarian. With the extra resources, Chiefdoms could assemble military forces and break out of anti-hierarchical operating system that we had at the band level. | ||
In 1970, the American anthropologist Robert Carneiro developed the coercive theory of state formation that suggested increasing population pressure in early agricultural societies would have resulted in intensive competition with other societies for scarce resources such as land, water, salt, and wood. This would have triggered wars of conquest. Centralized governments would have developed to mobilize and direct armies. According to Carneiro, the armies would continue to exist to control conquered peoples, collect tribute, and allocate resources. | |||
==== Laws ==== | |||
Written laws came into existence after writing was invented. Writing allowed these laws to be easily shared and inscribed. As an example, the Code of Hammurabi of 1776BC presented Hammurabi as a just king and served as the basis for a more uniform legal system across the Babylonian Empire. It asserted that Babylonian social order is rooted in universal principles of justice, dictated by the gods. According to the code, people are divided into two genders and three classes. With this collection of laws and consequences and the threat of force, social order was created that was clear and enforced. | |||
=== The Industrial Revolution Creates a Global Society === | |||
As the Persians, Romans, and Mongols civilizations expanded and developed long-distance trade routes to expand their regional influence. New transportation and navigational technologies would connect all world zones. | |||
This leads us to what I would argue is the second of 4 major revolution in human history | |||
* '''Agriculture''' (human energy to animal energy) | |||
* '''Industrial''' (animal energy to mechanical energy) | |||
* '''Software''' (mechanical energy to digital energy) | |||
* '''AI''' (digital info to intelligence) | |||
The Agricultural Revolution allowed humans to better harness the energy from the sun that gets captured by plants. Animals like horses and oxen can pull carts and carry burdens, which is 10 times more than human could do. | |||
The next big revolution was the Industrial Revolution and it created the world we live in today. The industrial revolution is arguably the primary cause of the dramatic trajectory change in human welfare that began 1800 - 1870. As [http://lukemuehlhauser.com/three-wild-speculations-from-amateur-quantitative-macrohistory/ Luke Muehlhasuer] write, “Everything was awful for a very long time, and then the industrial revolution happened.” | |||
[[File:Industrial revolution.png|center|1000x1000px]] | |||
As the diagram shows above, all 5 measures of well-being dramatically increased after the Industrial Revolution | |||
# Physical health, as measured by life expectancy at birth. | |||
# Economic well-being, as measured by GDP per capita (PPP) and percent of people living in extreme poverty. | |||
# Energy capture, in kilocalories per person per day. | |||
# Technological empowerment, as measured by war-making capacity. | |||
# Political freedom to live the kind of life one wants to live, as measured by percent of people living in a democracy. | |||
Before the Industrial Revolution, in the 1400s, the world was still divided into 4 isolated world zones: the Americas, Australasia, the Pacific, and Afro-Eurasia. The European exploration eventually united all four world zones and we became a global species with a huge global exchange network. Technologies, innovations, ideas, goods and belief systems could be shared across the world. | |||
The | The Industrial Revolution’s large impact may have been from these 4 factors: | ||
==== Cheap Fossil Fuels ==== | ==== Cheap Fossil Fuels ==== | ||
We found new sources of energy: coal, oil and natural gas. These fossil fuels stored energy from the sun for hundreds of millions of years. We learned how to use this energy to power engines of all kinds. | |||
Wood was the | Wood was the main source of energy in the pre-modern world. For a given amount of heat, coal required much less labour to mine than cutting wood, and coal was much more abundant than wood, supplies of which were becoming scarce. | ||
[[File:Energy sources.png|center]] | |||
==== Improvements to the Steam Engine ==== | ==== Improvements to the Steam Engine ==== | ||
Fundamental improvements to the steam engine were | Fundamental improvements to the steam engine were important for the Industrial Revolution. Changes by James Watt that saved 75% of coal costs and allowed steam engines to be used in various industries. The steam engines could use the untapped sources of coal to generate cheap energy and mechanically move large loads. By the early 19th century, steam engines were being used for industrial-scale production. The innovations of railways and steamships revolutionize transportation as well. | ||
==== Increases in Commerce and Global Markets ==== | ==== Increases in Commerce and Global Markets ==== | ||
In agrarian civilizations, elites tended to extract resources through the threat of force. | In agrarian civilizations, elites tended to extract resources through the threat of force. However, there was another class of merchants and artisans who got money through competitive markets. To succeed, they needed to be innovative with their goods and services. So, in the areas of commerce, there were many ideas exchanges and new innovations generated, and competitive markets flourished. By 1500, expanding global networks of exchange increased the importance of commerce and markets everywhere. | ||
==== Science Revolution Brought Growth in Knowledge ==== | ==== Science Revolution Brought Growth in Knowledge ==== | ||
Science differed from previous knowledge | Science differed from previous traditions of knowledge by admitting ignorance, testing hypotheses and acquiring new powers to develop new technologies. As Francis Bacon argued “knowledge is power.” | ||
Until the Scientific Revolution most human cultures did not believe in progress. When modern culture admitted that there were many important things that it did not know, and that scientific discoveries could provide real progress, people began suspecting that real progress was possible. | |||
During the last 5 centuries, humans increasingly came to believe that they could increase their capabilities by investing in scientific research. This began a strong feedback loop where the more resources that governments and people put into the science, the more knowledge and power they got. | |||
=== Game A's Trends of Emergence === | === Game A's Trends of Emergence === | ||
Looking back from the start of agriculture, there have been some trends of emergence through innovation to help understand how we got to the modern era: | |||
* | |||
* | * Human history has seen improvements and innovation in transport and processing of energy, matter and information. | ||
* | * We have a positive feedback loop: more population leads to more emergence and innovations; more innovations allows for more population. | ||
* | * For a rivalrous dynamic, societies must adopt new innovations or get conquered by more advanced societies. | ||
* New innovations often redistribute power within societiesLooking back from the start of agriculture, there have been some trends of emergence through innovation to help understand how we got to the modern era: | |||
==== Improvements and Innovation in Transport and Processing of Energy, Matter and information. ==== | ==== Improvements and Innovation in Transport and Processing of Energy, Matter and information. ==== | ||
===== Energy ===== | ===== Energy ===== | ||
[[File:Energy usage.png|center]] | [[File:Energy usage.png|center]] | ||
As we moved from hunter-gatherer to agricultural civilization to modern civilizations, energy | As we moved from hunter-gatherer to agricultural civilization to modern civilizations, the amount of energy used has continued to increase. As mentioned before, we have moved from human power to animal power to mechanical power. Today, we are also able to harness energy from the environment (sun, water, wind) and nuclear, which is the same way stars generate energy. As Daniel Schmachtenberger says, “we now have the power of the gods.” | ||
===== Matter ===== | ===== Matter ===== | ||
With | With the increase in energy, we could move matter faster and easier. Our transportation technologies have moved from animal and horses to trains and ships. Today, we could almost send and receive anything anywhere in days. Furthermore, we have the ability to fly and send people into space. | ||
===== Information ===== | ===== Information ===== | ||
Many information technologies have dramatically increased | Many information technologies have dramatically increased human’s ability to coordinate. Two noteworthy innovations were writing and the printing press. First, writing helped store knowledge easily across century. Second, the printing press drastically reduced the cost of printing books and spreading knowledge. The printing press helped overhaul religious thought and ushered in both the scientific and industrial revolutions. | ||
Before the 20th century, information spread through our transportation technologies like trains and ships. In the 20th century, this changed with the invention of the telegraph, | Before the 20th century, information spread through our transportation technologies like trains and ships. In the 20th century, this changed with the invention of the telegraph, telephone, computer and internet that allowed us to connect with anyone in the world in seconds. The distance between people has continued to decrease over time. | ||
With this decreased distance | With this decreased distance, smaller and smaller communities of common interest can come together. This has lead to tribalism that fragments the population. On the other side, globalization integrates the world. | ||
Furthermore, with the information revolution, information | Furthermore, with the information revolution, information has become easily coded in bits with 1s and 0s and copied with very low cost. Instead of atoms, these bits have very little weight and travel close to the speed of light. | ||
Other social and information processing technologies include the invention of money and markets. Money added liquidity to exchanges of goods. Markets brought together many buyers and sellers and used price to efficiently value goods and services. | |||
==== More Population Leads to More Innovation; More Innovations Allows for More Population ==== | ==== More Population Leads to More Innovation; More Innovations Allows for More Population ==== | ||
[[File:Population over time.png|center]] | [[File:Population over time.png|center]] | ||
With the agricultural and industrial revolutions, | With the agricultural revolution and industrial revolutions, human population has dramatically increased. With the industrial revolution, the global population has grown from 1 billion in 1800 to 7.6 billion in 2018. There is fear that the exponential population growth is putting strain on natural resources, food supplies, housing, etc. | ||
Additional population provides more nodes for emergence and innovation. The potential for collaboration and interactions grows exponentially with the number of people.[[File:Historical population over time.png|center]] | Additional population provides more nodes for emergence and innovation. The potential for collaboration and interactions grows exponentially with the number of people. | ||
[[File:Historical population over time.png|center]] | |||
==== For a Rivalrous Dynamic, Societies Must Adopt New Innovations or Get Conquered by More Advanced Societies ==== | ==== For a Rivalrous Dynamic, Societies Must Adopt New Innovations or Get Conquered by More Advanced Societies ==== | ||
<blockquote>Selfishness beats altruism within groups, but altruistic groups beat selfish groups. The rest is commentary. - David Sloan</blockquote>Throughout history, more advanced | <blockquote>Selfishness beats altruism within groups, but altruistic groups beat selfish groups. The rest is commentary. - David Sloan</blockquote>Throughout history, we have seen the more advanced civilization generally conquer the less advanced civilizations. This is how the European countries colonized most of the world. | ||
This means that because of the rivalrous dynamics, similar to evolution, the weaker civilizations will not last and the ones with greater coherence, emergence and innovations will continue to spread. With the pressure of rivalry, the arrow of complexity continues to increase through this mechanism. | |||
===== New Innovations Often Redistribute Power Within Societies ===== | ===== New Innovations Often Redistribute Power Within Societies ===== | ||
Innovations often expand the number of people who profit from the system and so wield power within it. There is a | Innovations often expand the number of people who profit from the system and so wield power within it. There is a Hobson choice for governing elite: accept valuable technologies that may erode power or resist them that you get overrun by a more advanced group of people. | ||
The medieval historian Joseph Strayer once noted “an interesting problem in the history of civilization. If there is steady progress anywhere, it is in the field of technology, and yet this kind of progress seems to have little connection with the stability of society.” | |||
Elites dislike power shifts. For example, the instinct of feudal lords was to exploit the emerging class of merchants. But it didn't take long for the merchants to unite into guilds and demand freedoms. Increasingly towns won the right to self-government as Feudal lords were in competition and soon realized that local prosperity was good for them and that prosperity required a bit of freedom. | |||
A more recent example, the legacy of capitalism’s growing power can be seen as democracy is widespread and greater amounts of people have more representation and voting rights. | |||
Technology, time and again, has changed the balance of power within society. And people tend not to surrender power gracefully. This basic tension between the aggrandizing instincts of powerful people versus the decentralizing tendencies of technology, especially information technology has played out again and again. As trend throughout history has generally that the power of the individual has continually increased. | |||
== Where are We Today? == | |||
== | Our quality of life has never been higher. | ||
As | As we saw in the last section, for the first time, we have a globally connected human society. We have billions of people who can instantly communicate with each other. We generate enormous amounts of energy. We understand quantum mechanics to relativity. We have markets that are able to solve most of our needs efficiently. Medical advancements have increased life expectancy from 32 years in 1900 to 71 years in 2018. | ||
Here are some other metrics that show the progress we have made, 200 years ago vs 2015: | |||
* 94% vs 10% of people lived in extreme poverty | |||
* 83% vs 14% did not have a basic education | |||
* 88% vs 15% were not able to read | |||
* 99% vs 44% did not live in a democracy | |||
* 100% vs 14% were not vaccinated | |||
* 43% vs 4% of kids died before they were 5 | |||
[[File:World as 100 people.png|center|1000x1000px]] | [[File:World as 100 people.png|center|1000x1000px]] | ||
Now, there are many more metrics to look at. | Now, there are many more metrics to look at. And we still have a lot more progress to be made. But things are so much better. | ||
== The Crises Produced by Game A == | == The Crises Produced by Game A == | ||
Line 218: | Line 266: | ||
* Daniel Schmachtenberger | * Daniel Schmachtenberger | ||
</blockquote> | </blockquote>'''For the First Time, We are Facing Threats to All of Humanity''' | ||
With all this progress, we have become an interconnected world that is | With all this progress, we have become an interconnected world that is venturing to collapse. | ||
Here are 4 big problems: | |||
# '''Exponential tech''' - We have exponential tech in a win-lose world that poses an existential risk | |||
# '''Environment''' - We are that now are affecting the planets | |||
# '''Fragility''' - We are living in a fragile interconnected world | |||
# '''Poorer Sensemaking''' - There is a war on sensemaking | |||
=== Exponential Technology in a Win-Lose World Poses an Existential Risk === | === Exponential Technology in a Win-Lose World Poses an Existential Risk === | ||
For the first time, we have technologies that could wipe out all of humanity. This started with nuclear in the 1940s. Other coming technologies that improve exponentially are AI, synbio, nanotech, etc. If technological development continues, small groups to individuals could have the capabilities to devastate all of civilization. NIck Bostrom calls this the Vulnerable World Hypothesis in his 2018 working paper. | |||
Game A is about scarcity and thus win-lose dynamics. If we people disagreed, they would fight it out. Today, that fight could produce catastrophic damage. Imagine someone with a gun or bomb that could blow up a whole block now had the capability to blow up a whole country because they are unhappy. This means if there are agents that are misaligned with the whole, there could be disastrous consequences. | |||
Game A is | In Game A, it was important to build up offensive capability or defensive capability or be killed. This is prisoner’s dilemma or multi-polar trap, where the equilibrium that is good for the agents is not good for the whole. We have gone from stone tools to guns to weapons of mass destruction. With exponential tech, it is now lose-lose for everyone because any war may blow up everything. | ||
For example, right now there is Arms race between China, US, Russia to develop autonomous weaponry. They may signed “Pledges” to not build the weaponry but they could defect or sign it and do it in secret. As an example, China indicated in April 2018 its support of ban on battlefield use of autonomous weapons and then on the same day released plans for an intelligence swarm designs. These win-lose dynamics also incentives speed and the need to cut corners while developing technologies. | |||
'''Why does our current state that pushes for individualism not work?''' | |||
This is a bottom-up approach that provides more information processing | The invisible hand, introduced by the 18th-century Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith, that characterizes the mechanisms through which beneficial social and economic outcomes may arise from the accumulated self-interested actions of individuals, none of whom intends to bring about such outcomes. | ||
This is a bottom-up approach that provides more information processing that a top-down approach. It doesn’t work because there will be misaligned of agents to the whole. Specifically with the bottom-up approach, there could be many situations where there are perverse incentives that are detrimental to the whole. | |||
Here are some [https://civilizationemerging.com/new-economics-series-part-iii/ examples] that Daniel Schmachtenberger provides: | Here are some [https://civilizationemerging.com/new-economics-series-part-iii/ examples] that Daniel Schmachtenberger provides: | ||
Furthermore, our progress has also been dependent on non-renewable resources like oil that have taken its toll on the environment. | * '''A for-profit military industrial complex''' as one of the largest blocks of the global economy. Peace would mean bankruptcy. Ongoing war and threat of war to continually manage is optimal. War for any cause is profitable. Military contractors have massive lobbying resources, and major shareholders in decision making positions of military and government. | ||
* '''A for-profit health care system''' that makes no money on healthy people, makes a little on permanent cures, makes the most on long term symptom management | |||
* '''Information as competitive advantage''', incentivizing hiding information, protecting it as intellectual property to keep it from being useful to others, and actively creating and promoting disinformation. | |||
This individualism has pushed people to create their own niches through niche construction to benefit themselves. Furthermore, there is a lot of strategic and planning that focuses on the narrow goals of the individuals which may not taking into consideration the whole. | |||
=== We Are Now Dramatically Affecting Our Planet === | |||
==== We Are Using Up Non-Renewable Resources ==== | |||
With exponential technology, we could do enormous damage very quickly. An example is long-range fishing that could deplete the oceans of fish very quickly. Our current system incentives us to extract the dwindling resources faster than they can be replenished because a fish is worth nothing in the ocean, but worth something if caught. | |||
Furthermore, our progress has also been dependent on non-renewable resources like oil that have taken its toll on the environment. Like a kid addicted to cigarettes, it is hard to take that away because we have become so dependent on it. | |||
==== Open Loops are Affecting the Planet ==== | ==== Open Loops are Affecting the Planet ==== | ||
Currently, we have an | Currently, we have an “open loop” system where there are externalities that are not factored into the system. We have a linear materials / consumption / extraction system where we extract, use one time and then dispose. This accumulates waste and depletes natural resources. | ||
Our current open-loop economic systems that don’t account for the cost to the environment have led to sea level rises, desertification, wildfires, ocean acidification, pollution, soil degradation, extreme weather, species extinction that is at 1000x normal rate, a 76% decline in insect biomass, and many more issues. | |||
==== We Are Reaching the Carrying Capacity of the Earth ==== | ==== We Are Reaching the Carrying Capacity of the Earth ==== | ||
[[File:Footprint vs capacity.png|center]] | [[File:Footprint vs capacity.png|center]] | ||
With exponential population growth, many believe our ecological footprint has exceeded the | With the exponential population growth, many believe our ecological footprint has exceeded the Earth’s biocapacity. If we don’t change our current trajectory, we could be on our way to a [[wikipedia:Malthusian_catastrophe|Malthusian catastrophe]] where population growth outpaces agricultural production. | ||
==== We Are Living in a Fragile, Interconnected World ==== | ==== We Are Living in a Fragile, Interconnected World ==== | ||
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[http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190218-the-lifespans-of-ancient-civilisations-compared Here's the full list of the civilisations displayed above.] | [http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190218-the-lifespans-of-ancient-civilisations-compared Here's the full list of the civilisations displayed above.] | ||
As | As seen above, every civilization has collapsed. Collapse can be defined as a rapid and enduring loss of population, identity and socio-economic complexity. Because we are now a global civilization, a collapse could be catastrophic for all of humanity. | ||
As [https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190218-are-we-on-the-road-to-civilisation-collapse Luke Kemp wrote], there are many reasons why a civilization could collapse including: | |||
* '''Climate change''' - When climate changes, there can be cascading effect. The collapse of the Anasazi, the Tiwanaku civilisation, the Akkadians, the Mayan, the Roman Empire, and many others have all coincided with abrupt climatic changes, usually droughts. | |||
* '''Environmental degradation''' - Societies could collapse when they overshoot the environment’s carrying capacity. Jared Diamond’s Collapse debately argues that this was the fate of Easter Island | |||
* '''External shocks''' - Also known as the “four horsemen”: war, natural disasters, famine and plagues. For example, smallpox arriving in the Americas was devastating and a reason why Aztec and Incas were defeated. | |||
* '''Inequality''' - With technology, there are more winner take all dynamics, and wealth of the top 1% is growing in the US since 1980. Inequality causes social distress, which is arguably one of the reasons why Trump got elected. | |||
* '''Red Queen Effect''' - Statistical analysis on empires suggests that collapse is random and independent of age. An explanation is “Red Queen Effect”: if species are constantly fighting for survival in a changing environment with numerous competitors, there is consistent probability of extinction. | |||
* '''Complexity''' - Collapse expert and historian Joseph Tainter has proposed that societies eventually collapse under the weight of their own accumulated complexity. We describe further below | |||
[[File:Civilization danger signs.png|center|1000x1000px]] | [[File:Civilization danger signs.png|center|1000x1000px]] | ||
Dave Snowden created the Cynefin framework to explain the difference between complicated and complex. | Dave Snowden created the Cynefin framework to explain the difference between complicated and complex. | ||
* '''Complicated''' - In principle can be taken apart and put back together again. Cause and effect are easy to follow | |||
* '''Complex''' - Cannot be taken apart and put together again because the phase space in time is changing and dynamic. In complex systems, it is hard to determine cause and effect relationships | |||
Complicated systems tend toward entropy. Complex systems tend toward emergence. Part of the problem we’re facing is that we’ve been for a long time trying to manage complex systems with complicated structures. And as it has failures and creates externalities, the complicated system becomes more complicated until the point where that complicated system becomes so expensive to keep going that it starts to collapse. | |||
Here is an example: Because of the difficulty of policing defection behavior, you create formal rules.The laws are endeavoring to manage the complex reality of human beings. As this happens, what you’ll ultimately find is that as the complex system just mutates and changes and new possibilities emerge, the complicated system actually has to become more complicated. | |||
Today, we solve most problems by using complicated systems to manage the complex. Science has been a great tool to determine cause and effect for complicated systems. This is why we have eradicated many infectious diseases because the disease are clearly identifiable and an accurate diagnostic tool should exist. On the other hand, non-communicable diseases like diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular diseases are much harder to reduce because they are complex. | |||
As Tainter hypothesized in his book “The Collapse of Complex Societies”, societies eventually collapse under the weight of their own accumulated complexity. Take oil as an example. First you start with the lowest hanging fruit. What happens is the society becomes addicted to its own tools that initially, they’re really useful. For a little while, there is huge boon of surplus capacity and energy that allows the society to grow. But then the society finds itself addicted to its tools. As you pick the low hanging fruit, you have to actually upgrade your technical infrastructure like pipelines and tankers, to be able to continue to maintain the same amount of supply. | |||
As | |||
What will end up happening inevitably as Tainter points out, is that you get an S-curve happening at the level of innovation. At a certain point, it takes more energy per unit innovation and then that gives you an S-curve in just the actual throughput of your technical infrastructure. As you have been burned through the low hanging fruit, you end up getting this increasingly fragile relationship between the way that your society goes about meeting its needs and its relationship with the resources that happen to be in the ground. This then generally leads to a collapse. | |||
On a grander scale, our system that is optimised to continue growing its complicatedness in order to pursue its aim of reducing everything that is complex into something that is simple. Our civilisation is a kind of paperclip maximiser. An example is the focus on GDP growth at the expense of other variables. By optimizing certain variables, we might be missing the impact on other things, like the environment, that are harder to quantify. This reductionism leads to externalities. | |||
As we move up this technological curve, any particular perturbations that can have larger cascade effects. Our system is currently not set up to have the resilience to deal with these issues. Our system has become so complex and everyone is a specialist that a breakdown could be catastrophic. | |||
150 years ago, shutting down the power grid wouldn’t have much impact. However, because we are so reliant on the system, any capacity to shut down the power grid could be catastrophic. Because things are centralized and connected, there are a number of different ways to shut down the power grid like an EMP, cyber warfare or even a distributed drone swarm. | |||
Furthermore, experts predict that a Carrington flare, a solar geomagnetic storm, would cause widespread electrical disruption, blackouts and damage to the electrical grid. The solar storm of 2012 missed Earth’s orbit by 9 days. | |||
Nature disasters could also compound this issue. An example is the 2010 eruptions of Iceland volcano. Although in a remote location and relatively small for volcanic eruptions, air traffic was disrupted by the ash plumes for an entire week. Overall, 10 million travellers were affected. If the flights were disrupted for more weeks, it could have affected global supply chains. | |||
==== There is a War on Sensemaking ==== | ==== There is a War on Sensemaking ==== | ||
Finally, | Finally, a big problem is the war on sensemaking. Our information ecology is broken, which makes it harder to understand what is happening and make the right choices. Everyone has vested interests for sharing information, that it is hard to know who to trust. | ||
For example, marketing and sales are rarely telling the truth and doing what is best for the customer. There is an incentive to manufacture artificial demand because one group wants to maximize lifetime value of a customer, essentially selling things that people don’t really need. They are essentially benefiting themselves at the expense of the greater whole. | |||
Furthermore, companies have teams working on hacking our attention by showing supernormal stimuli. Our economic incentives leads to more sensational and fake news to get clicked on and shared. It also pushes platforms to create filter bubbles that confirm their own views and lead to strong ideologies. | |||
Finally, information is used as a competitive advantage. We protect it using intellectual property. With rivalrous dynamics, we are incentivized to hide and misinform others to get a competitive advantage. | |||
All these factors make it hard to do proper sensemaking. The sensemaking crisis is characterised by the fact that our ability to trust any mediated communication is rapidly approaching zero. | |||
=== The Need for a Phase Shift / Evolutionary Transition === | === The Need for a Phase Shift / Evolutionary Transition === | ||
As Daniel | As Daniel Schmactenbeger said, 'if we are gaining the power of gods, then without the love and wisdom of gods, we self-destruct.' | ||
When things are getting exponentially better and exponentially worse at the same time, neither of those are actually happening. It shows that things are destabilising. So, we will either get the emergence up into a higher degree of order, or an entropic drop down into a lower degree of order. That’s the precipice we’re on. | |||
'''There is hope''' | |||
The challenges we face are solvable. For the first time in history we have the technological infrastructure and capability to make the changes necessary to create a world that works not just for human life, but for all life now and in the future. Our problems are not the result of unavoidable human nature, but are the result of systems that are changeable. | |||
The | If there’s one creature that is built to address that sort of problem, it is us. The human niche is niche switching; we can figure what to do in new situations. Collectively, we have figured out what to do when the wisdom of ancestors have run out, and will need to do this again to tackle these problems. | ||
== Enter Game B == | == Enter Game B == | ||