In their recent book Warnings, former US national security advisors Richard Clarke and R.P. Reddy take an evidence-based approach to identifying persons they call Cassandras. Cassandras are credible forecasters, with solid track records in their fields, who warn of coming existential threats, based on irrefutable data. The book combines case histories of previous Cassandras who…
As I was watching The Late Show with my wife, the topic of the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie divorce came up on the show. I realized that this is a traumatic event for many people. Then I wondered why. The only explanation that makes sense to me is that people longed for this to be a…
As my wife recently pointed out, there is a particular error to which meritocracies are prone. While they start out with clear principles favoring merit as the basis for advancement in society, inevitably some of those in exalted positions come to believe themselves inherently superior, rather than superior by virtue of past merit. This fall…
I am an admirer of Peter Diamandis. He and Steven Kotler have been largely responsible for shifting the planetary conversation from endless doom and gloom within a context of scarcity to the possibility of sustainable abundance. For the book Abundance and his related work, I believe we all owe him a large debt. Peter is…
Meat consumption is a problem is many ways. A substitute for industrial “farming” of animals is needed. This could take the form of vegetable “meats” (more on this below) or a 21st century alternative to industrialized animal “husbandry”. We will, in future, grow meat in vats in a factory-type environment without the involvement of any…
While some believe that money is necessary to motivate behavior, this is false. Significant organizations exist that operate on the basis of voluntary, mutually supportive service. That service is unpaid, and can be highly effective. One prominent example is Toastmasters. Toastmasters was founded in 1924 —almost a century ago. It has grown from nothing to…
Those of us who are old enough will remember the 1950s, when “Japanese import” meant balsa wood trinkets. Several decades later, the first Japanese cars started appearing in the US. They were widely derided as cheap looking, rust-prone tin cans, at first. No longer. In recent years, Japanese cars have led the world in reliability…
Psychologists have noted that many people, when presented with evidence that contradicts a belief of theirs, simply ignore or rationalize away that evidence, holding even more tightly to their existing beliefs. If we are to fundamentally change the world in the direction of an Abundance Game, we must accept that many of our fellow people…
Imagine, if you will, aliens exploring Earth. They visit a chess tournament. They see rows upon rows of players, hunched over chess boards, facing each other. Silence prevails, but it is an intense silence. The players’ expressions are focused, and they often scowl or sweat. They rarely speak. Sometimes a player will sit in deep…
The AI researcher Jurgen Schmidhuber has argued in a talk that there is a precise way to optimize a self-improving superintelligence based upon Godel’s mathematics. He further explained this in a paper audaciously named “Formal Theory of Creativity, Fun, and Intrinsic Motivation”. He says “The simple but general formal theory of fun & intrinsic motivation…