Your essay reflects ideas that I used to think about and voice. I was an organizer of the Green Party. I use the past tense, used not use, as an average. I occasionally say things similar. However, in the last decade I have become a bit jaded about these things. The problem as I see it is that we humans are stone aged creatures that by their ability to learn new ways to exploit their...

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Your essay reflects ideas that I used to think about and voice. I was an organizer of the Green Party. I use the past tense, used not use, as an average. I occasionally say things similar. However, in the last decade I have become a bit jaded about these things. The problem as I see it is that we humans are stone aged creatures that by their ability to learn new ways to exploit their environment have constructed a world we may simply not be well adapted to.

I find it irritating when I see trash lying around, and the standard thought still happens, “How can people be such pigs?” I then step back and realize that this is how we evolved. Our ancestors ate fruit, grains, later meat and took food from the natural world. When they ate a fruit they thought nothing of throwing the core or peel onto the ground. Once the product is consumed it is second nature to cast off the inedible parts. It takes additional thought or training to hold on to that aluminium can and put it later in a recycle bin. In addition our view of the world is local. It is still hard to get people to recycle basic stuff. How many times have I put such material in a recycle bin to see that people discarded their unsorted trash into it?

We evolved in small bands that later, about 30 thousand years ago, became larger tribes and only in the last 5,000 years or so did we start to settle into large sedentary groups or cities. Our species spent 125 thousand years in small bands of a few dozen members and a total world population of a few million. Our perspective was intensely local with very intimate relationships with people. Bands would exchange members, often through marriage, and so outsiders were a presence and such encounters could be peaceful or they could be violent. The tendency is then to act on the basis of very immediate concerns and sensory input. These often involve people in their community and concerns about the “others” on the outside, or what they will eat tomorrow, or in the modern world whether they will have their job next year. We are creatures that no matter how smart we are, or think we are, we still have a stone aged brain that tries to manage in a world that is interconnected across continents, populated by over 7 billion of us and in mega-cities with ten of millions of people.

It is clear that you can motivate people into action if the problem involves people who are identified in some way other than you. This can cover a range of things, from religion, language, skin tone, their flag and so forth. In 2002-3 I found it almost frightening to witness the war fever in the US as it geared up for the invasion of Iraq. This nation spent $3trillion to engage in that adventure. It is far more difficult to get people similarly motivated over the CO_2 molecule and our uncontrolled experiment with the planetary climate by producing about a trillion tons of the stuff. This is far more of an abstract problem. It requires a different way of thinking. It might be the case that education will persuade some people to give some concern over this. However, I have known a number of physicists who regard global warming as a pseudo-problem. There is a certain (I keep unnamed) physicist who is advanced in knowledge of string theory, an inexhaustible bogger and who holds to far right winged (almost fascist) ideology as a higher truth that somehow negates any matter of global warming. Along those lines, 25% of the Nazi SS held graduate degrees. So education may not be the magic bullet we think it is.

I argue in my essay that intelligent life in the universe faces certain limits due to cosmology, and in addition face problems maybe not too different from what we face. I argue in a funny way that this might in fact be a good thing. You will have to read it to see how that is the case. We appear to be engineering the next mass extinction. Our impact on the environment will persist for up to 100,000 years and could count as severe as the KT or maybe even the Permian extinctions. Our current situation may be just a high energy and high resource consumption period that on a timeline is a narrow Gaussian curve (almost delta function) between two stone ages. We came out of the Pleistocene stone age in a world of great abundance and after this we will be in the second stone age on a planet severely depleted and biologically reduced. Our species may in time be snuffed out as a result.

I will of course continue to hope for the better angels of our nature. I though question whether that can hold.

Cheers LC

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Sabine,

It seems you start out with trying to save the world and conclude by arguing for better scientific networking. At the dawn of western civilization, with the story of Adam and Eve, it was recognized that knowledge is a double edged sword. Will expediting the increase of knowledge save the world, or speed up the rate of its consumption? Complexity tends to increase until it becomes...

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Sabine,

It seems you start out with trying to save the world and conclude by arguing for better scientific networking. At the dawn of western civilization, with the story of Adam and Eve, it was recognized that knowledge is a double edged sword. Will expediting the increase of knowledge save the world, or speed up the rate of its consumption? Complexity tends to increase until it becomes unstable, then it resets to a more stable state. Just look at atomic structure. What if rather than creating ever more feedback loops, we were to examine the ones which already existed, to find ways to make them more environmentally friendly? Right now the most monumental and powerful feedback loop on earth, short of the convection cycle, is the financial/monetary system. My argument is that the major conceptual flaw build into it, which turns it from an effective economic circulation system into a monstrous tumor, is that we imagine money to be a form of commodity, rather than a contract. Now if you had such a magical property which could, in sufficient quantities, provide you with just about anything available to anyone, you would want as much of it as possible and so would every living human on the planet; Right? Then the people in charge of this system would have monumental power over the rest of society, just so long as they continue producing these magical promises. Yet on the other hand, if you understood those pieces of paper were simply notational chits from the broader community and any value assigned them was entirely dependent on the economic well-being and general long term health of said community, you might be happy with just having enough to get by, knowing there is some flexibility in the system and if you come up short on occasion, you'll probably be able to slide by and anyone caught hoarding these promises would likely have the opposite occur, that the community might just turn its collective shoulder and ignore that person's pile of chits. Then there wouldn't be any tendency to draw value out of the community and environment to store as chits, because the greatest store of value would logically be a strong community and healthy environment, not a financial system bloated with far more promises than an increasingly burdened economy can ever possibly hope to fulfill. Would that make sense to you?

Regards,

John M

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Fellow Comrade,

Your article is an intellectual knowledge base. Special appreciation must be given to every author for creating time to share their thoughts. Many time it is not the reward that is attached to this contest that interest me but ability to reason out facts in solving problems. And this is one of my hobbies!

However, I will like to point out some point in your high...

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Fellow Comrade,

Your article is an intellectual knowledge base. Special appreciation must be given to every author for creating time to share their thoughts. Many time it is not the reward that is attached to this contest that interest me but ability to reason out facts in solving problems. And this is one of my hobbies!

However, I will like to point out some point in your high capacity essay. I understand your point on the use of Gamification to balance people's priority. Researcher at the University of Hamburg Germany have criticized the use of Gamification as not being fun and creating an artificial sense of achievement. They concluded that gamification can encourage unintended behaviours may be misleading for those unfamiliar with gaming. Your model of priority map is also good but how will more than 1 billion people mostly in the developing countries who do not have access to basic education use the system and gamification? Some legal restrictions also apply for the following reasons criminals,fraudsters and money launderers

You have said it all. Human wants decision that suits him even though it against the social, economic and environmental issues. You are right. The nagging voice that say he should make better decision as you said. But at the end he end up doing contrary. I call this disobedience to the universal law. Man true heart condition is the true reflection of his heart. On Monday this week, a bomb exploded killing scores and injured hundreds of people in Nigeria capital, Abuja. After the incident, it is possible for the man responsible to come around and show cheap empathy. He caused emotional trauma to his fellow Nigerians because he did not keep the universal law. This is what I call upsetting the ecosystem's balance in my article. I make a lot of reference to 2008 economic downturn. Ben Bernanke in his time alluded to the fact that the banks and bankers did not keep the financial laws which was the cause of the mortgage in US and worldwide. Please refer to my article.

You suggested the use of questionnaire in making decision for right candidate during. This is the system of true democracy. But as I said earlier man's appearance is not the true state of his mind. Why do many politicians failed to manifest their manifesto. It is simple, they couldn't obey the universal law.

Summarily, I wish the whole world is enlightened to use gamification and also in the absence of criminals,fraudsters and money launderers! But if the criminals and fraudsters can keep the law, the global ecosystem will be in a dynamic and balance equilibrium as I asserted in my article

This is an exciting intellectual debate platform.

Stay lifted!

Gbenga

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Sabine,

In 1995, shortly after my honorable discharge from the U. S. Marine Corps, I graduated from commercial dive school and have primarily worked in the petro-chemical and energy sectors ever since. Based on this experience, I find the idea that humans can self-regulate their way to a sustainable future somewhat naive. Don't get me wrong, I feel your Priority Maps would make for an...

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Sabine,

In 1995, shortly after my honorable discharge from the U. S. Marine Corps, I graduated from commercial dive school and have primarily worked in the petro-chemical and energy sectors ever since. Based on this experience, I find the idea that humans can self-regulate their way to a sustainable future somewhat naive. Don't get me wrong, I feel your Priority Maps would make for an interesting research program, I just don't feel your assumptions, which you conveniently placed in the conclusion, have any basis in reality. Allow me to elaborate if you will.

Houston, Texas, hosts CERAweek, a gathering of top executives from all of the world's energy companies, once a year. 2013 was the first time ever that they acknowledged the existence of anthropocentric global warming. Of course the round-table discussion they held on the subject didn't focus on what they could do to mitigate anthropocentric contributions to the phenomenon, rather, it was on what they could do to mitigate the effects anthropocentric global warming could potentially have on their business model, but at least they acknowledged its existence. Even the investors in said companies are demanding an assessment of global warming. Meanwhile, conservative politicians and blowhards such as Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump continue to insist it's just a myth propagated by the liberal media. The conservative columnist who writes for The Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer, even quoted your favorite physicist, Freeman Dyson, to support his latest tirade. And he received full support from Forbes magazine, of course.

I personally had a role in shutting down an operation that was illegally storing and recycling used drilling mud. They were storing the mud in open earth pits - no liners or other containment barriers - just long enough for the drill filings to settle, then mixing the chemicals in the pit by cycling the mud through a system of mix pumps, and then re-introducing the chemicals back into their mud production process. The open earth pits were located just upstream from a large, freshwater lake which was supplying drinking water for two large communities. The man bankrolling the operation has a Harvard MBA and a Forbes profile, of course.

I've had the occasion to get to know a gentleman who works in the Major Offenders Division of a major Environmental Enforcement Agency and he can tell you some tales. He makes a living off of concrete manufacturers and readily admits that he only halts a very small fraction of violators. He's arrested people who are getting paid, and paid rather handsomely, to properly dispose of hazardous materials for dumping said materials illegally and at public detriment.

I have another acquaintance from the commercial dive industry, Paul McKim, who was once a legend in the industry; for a good while he held records for both depth and duration in saturation and was one of eleven American divers recruited by the government of England to implement dive operations in the North sea. In 2001 Paul secured exclusive rights to utilize an innovative, one-man, autonomous submarine with a tremendous depth rating in oilfield support operations and, with said rights, his knowledge of the offshore environment, and his vast network, he developed an offshore support company specializing in deep water work called Deep Marine Technologies (DMT). In 2001 DMT grossed just under $600,000 in revenue; by 2005 Paul was on the cover of Entrepreneur magazine and DMT grossed just under $60 million.

To facilitate the exponential growth of DMT, Paul brought in a venture capitalist from Minnesota, an Iranian/American named Kazimeny; Kazimeny was "friends" with the U. S. Congressman from Minnesota, Norm Coleman. Not long after Paul and DMT were featured in Entrepreneur magazine, Coleman and his wife embarked on a $400,000 renovation of their home in Minnesota. Naturally wanting to help his "friend," Kazimeny decided to funnel $100,000 through DMT to the Colemans. Norm Coleman's wife was an insurance agent licensed in Minnesota and worked as an independent contractor for Hayes Insurance, a company owned by another Coleman "friend." So Kazimeny simply created a fraudulent paper trail demonstrating that DMT engaged Hayes Insurance for "risk analysis" work and instructed DMT's CFO to pay Hayes Insurance, hence, Coleman's wife, $100,000 in four installments. Never mind that DMT, like most offshore companies, utilized Llyods for all of its insurance needs.

After the first $25,000 payment, McKim found out about the ploy and put a stop to it. Kazimeny illegally manipulated the board and promptly fired McKim from his own company. Paul sued in the State District Court of Texas claiming breach of fiduciary duty, amongst other things, and Kazimeny promptly put DMT into bankruptcy because it was McKim's only source of income. Kazimeny displayed absolutely no regard for DMT employees or anyone depending on DMT's services.

Of course the FBI became involved but the investigation went nowhere. Norm Coleman was trying to get re-elected when it all played out and the resulting scandal was partially responsible for his losing a run-off to the comedian, Al Franken. Today Coleman is a conservative lobbyist in Washington so now he and his wife can whore themselves with the full support and blessing of the American Supreme Court. Do you think Norm Coleman is the exception or the rule? Call me a cynic, but I say he's the rule.

Not long ago I watched a "gentleman" driving a fancy Recreational Vehicle, a motor home in the $80,000 - $100,000 range, dump his motor home's septic in the city storm sewer. Based on scientific analysis and extrapolation, approximately 350,000 - 400,000 barrels of used motor oil find their way into the Galveston Bay every year. This at a time when all automotive parts stores AND Walmart offer used motor oil recycling FREE OF CHARGE! I could go on and on . . .

So perhaps you would be interested in the Lifeboat Foundation, Ha, Ha, Ha . . .

"I am presently working on three related topics:

1. the paleolithic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle as a model of what humans have evolved to live like, and thus a good starting point if you want to understand how we can optimize our physical and mental health, strength and well-being

2. the concept of challenge as the fundamental driver of action and development in all agents, human as well as non-human

3. the problem of coordination in self-organization: how can a collective of initially autonomous agents learn to collaborate in the most productive way without any central supervisor telling them how to do it

The three topics are related in that they are all applications of what I call the "ontology of challenge and action," which sees the world as being constituted out of actions and their agents, and challenges as situations that elicit those actions. The life of a hunter-gatherer is essentially a sequence of (mostly unpredictable) challenges - mostly minor, sometimes major. In contrast, our modern civilized life has tried to maximally suppress or exclude uncontrolled challenges (such as accidents, germs, hot and cold temperatures, wild animals). Without these challenges, the various human subsystems that evolution has produced to deal with these challenges (e.g. the immune system, muscles, fast reflexes) remain weak and underdeveloped, leading to a host of diseases and mental problems.

The link with self-organization is that the action of one agent will in general change the environment in such a way as to produce a challenge to one or more other agents. If these agents react "appropriately," their interaction may become cooperative or synergetic; otherwise it is characterized by friction. In the best case, patterns of synergetic interaction propagate via the challenges they produce to the whole collective, which thus starts to act in a coordinated fashion."

- Francis Heylighen, pages 316-317 in Between Ape and Artilect

"I don't like the phrase 'existential risk' for several reasons. It presupposes that we are clear about exactly what 'existence' we are risking. Today, we have a clear understanding of what it means for an animal to die or a species to go extinct. However, as new technologies allow us to change our genomes and our physical structures, it will become much less clear to us when we lose something precious. 'Death' and 'extinction,' for example, become much more amorphous concepts in the presence of extensive self-modification.

It's easy to identify our humanity with our individual physical form and our egoic minds, but in reality, our physical form is an ecosystem, only 10% of our cells are 'human.' Our minds are also ecosystems composed of interacting sub-personalities. Our humanity is as much in our relationships, interconnections, and culture as it is in our individual minds and bodies. The higher levels of organization are much more amorphous and changeable. For these reasons, it could be hard to pin down what we are losing at the moment when something precious is lost. {Addition to clear with Steve: It is more likely that we will only realize what we have lost, long after it's already gone for good.}

So, I believe the biggest 'existential risk' is related to identifying the qualities that are most important to humanity and to ensuring that technological forces enhance those rather than eliminate them. Already today we see many instances where economic forces act to create 'soulless' institutions that tend to commodify the human spirit rather than inspire and exalt it."

- Steve Omohundro, pages 326 – 327 in Between Ape and Artilect

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“humans don’t care what somebody or some thing thinks they should

be doing. They’ll do whatever they please.”

I WISH that were true! If so, we’d be totally functional. Instead humans are easily brainwashed by governments/corporations/media to behave in ways that go against their very nature, making them do self-harming behavior, and turning them into miserable,...

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“humans don’t care what somebody or some thing thinks they should

be doing. They’ll do whatever they please.”

I WISH that were true! If so, we’d be totally functional. Instead humans are easily brainwashed by governments/corporations/media to behave in ways that go against their very nature, making them do self-harming behavior, and turning them into miserable, anxious, depressed physically ill folks who don’t understand why they are so sick!

Which is why I totally agree with you that “We have a social problem, not a technological one. “

Once we start a social trend of focusing on taking good care of ourselves, and following our own dreams for doing what we feel most inspired to do in life, and attaining what we most value in the world (doing what we please) we’ll finally start to see humans getting out of their own way, and actually being the forward-thinking, pro-social, intelligent, creative beings that we’re genetically programmed to be, rather than the wage-slave, anti-social, vengeful, paranoid beings that we’ve been convinced we’re “supposed” to be.

To me, as a teacher and counselor, the only real solution I've ever found is to create an environment where individuals feel supported, get their basic needs met (with honestly high quality food, water, air, warmth, light, information, and outlets for expressing their body’s excess matter and energy), and are encouraged to follow their dreams for doing whatever they find most meaningful in life. Gamification, while amusing and currently very hip, is likely to fail for the same reasons that our current monetary system has failed, because it adds an artificial, kludgy system of over-complexity and unscientific/subjective valuation to things that are already naturally understood and simple (homo-sapiens’ natural pro-social, creative, playful exploration and mastery of the world).

However, I do totally agree that we need to make information readily accessible to everyone, because ignorance does no one any good! The more information an individual has access to, the better they are able to make decisions based on reality, rather than fantasy. We need to provide unconditional access to high quality communication tools for anyone who wants them.

I also like your idea of priority maps. That’s similar to my own proposal in my essay. Sharing our goals, wants, and offers is crucial to bringing the stuff that is out there to the people who need it to do their best work. I envision a matchmaking system that works like a personal dating service, only for everything. And I mean everything! You want X, I have X to offer. That’s the nervous system of the world. Then we just need an efficient circulatory system for the world to move X from me to you, and we’re all set.

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Dear Sabine,

I found several of the ideas expressed in your text quite interesting and original.

We humans are smart in changing the rules of adaptation: we quickly adapt the environment to ourselves, rather than waiting for darwinian evolution to slowly adapt us to the environment, as it did with the rest of the biosphere. But now our adaptation as a species has fallen behind...

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Dear Sabine,

I found several of the ideas expressed in your text quite interesting and original.

We humans are smart in changing the rules of adaptation: we quickly adapt the environment to ourselves, rather than waiting for darwinian evolution to slowly adapt us to the environment, as it did with the rest of the biosphere. But now our adaptation as a species has fallen behind the changes we have induced ourselves.

So your solution to this problem concentrates on the way the scattered, distant, costly information about the consequences of individual actions (or, more generally, information about how to solve big societal problems) should be turned into close, easily grasped, intuitive, possibly visual messages, thus wiring back into the circuits that our brain is used to work with.

But packing that information in an effective, intuitive way, and moving it close to the individual, or to the initiators of change, is only half of the problem: before converting that information, one has to build it, i.e., to find or compute a correct solution to the addressed problem.

There are certainly cases (e.g. that of a person throwing an empty plastic bottle in a river) in which it is quite simple to figure out what is the information to be made available to the guy (e.g., showing him a big island of plastic bottles in the ocean). But in many cases the correct action to be taken for solving a societal problem is not knowable, because we are dealing with a complex, layered system, in which emergent phenomena occur.

You write:

We reached this gridlock because the human brain did not evolve to understand the consequences of individual actions in networks of billions of people.

Your reaction to this correct observation is essentially: let us reformulate the information about those consequences so that the human brain can better grasp them.

My reaction would rather be: in general, the human brain cannot understand those consequences because we are talking about two distinct levels in an architecture of emergence. Networks of billions of people create emergent phenomena that follow their own dynamics, and cannot be under the control of individuals, by the very definition of emergent phenomenon.

The political, economic, social systems that govern our present day world represent the emergent entities at the next level above that of individual humans. Metaphorically, we are the ants, they are the upper level functions of the anthill. What is the effective power that an individual ant has to steer those upper level functions? Can there be effective interaction and mutual influence between the consciousness and creativity of the super-organism at the upper level, and the supposedly smaller consciousness and creativity of the lower level entities (us)?

If we believe in the beauty and strong explicative power of the notion of emergence (I certainly do), and we rule out the idea of an anthropocentric universe, then shouldn t we conclude that something is happening above our heads that does not care too much about us as individuals?

For example, when you write that these political, economic and social systems are too slow to adapt to our needs as individuals, I occurred to me that one can reverse the reasoning and take the point of view, and time scales, of these upper level entities: maybe the problem (our problem, not their problem) is that we humans are too fast in appearing and passing away.

I would be curious to know whether you share some healthy and moderate skepticism about the possibility for us to take the elevator and go talk to the super-organisms at the upper floor.

Best regards

Tommaso

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Sabine --

A very fine essay... like your blog, clear and sensible and fun to read. I think it should win, if only because it might be the only entry with a practical approach. I agree, it doesn't make sense to try to change people, but we can change the informational environment in which they operate. In fact, that environment is changing quite radically, now -- which is the...

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Sabine --

A very fine essay... like your blog, clear and sensible and fun to read. I think it should win, if only because it might be the only entry with a practical approach. I agree, it doesn't make sense to try to change people, but we can change the informational environment in which they operate. In fact, that environment is changing quite radically, now -- which is the theme of my essay on communications technology. And this is an evolution we might hope to "steer" in the manner you suggest.

I like very much that you focus on an everyday issue I can easily relate to -- that no matter how much I'd like to do the right thing and act responsibly, it's so hard to know what that means that I basically give up... just give a few dollars to a few organizations that I hope know what they're doing, and try not to think about it. But it's not just complexity that's my problem. It's also the feeling that whatever I do can make only the tiniest difference to what's happening at a global scale. I don't respond to phone surveys because it's too depressing that what I say won't matter, that it gets reduced to a checkbox answer.

In fact, I think you're wrong that complexity is the root of our problems now. Maybe things look different in the civilized world, but here in the US it seems clear that the free-market principle (which I certainly agree with) has become an ideological screen for the domination of markets by financial power and its political allies. It's a deep problem that so much power lies with institutions, private and public, that have their own very primitive priorities. That's the main obstacle to effective action on climate change, to take one example -- not the complexity of the science.

But the issue you address is very important, and the notion of priority maps feeding into a global information network gives me hope -- maybe we can find ways to shift the balance back toward a participatory democracy. But I wonder if there's something missing. I think many of us would have a hard time prioritizing our hopes and desires, or even putting them into words. I'm not sure passing out questionnaires will provide the needed input to your system, though if such a project got off the ground, it might help get us focused on what we really need and want. As to brain-scans, I'm happiest believing that no such technology will ever be feasible.

Yet you've already addressed this problem in your essay, suggesting we get the scientists to develop this system for us first, working with a limited range of priorities that might be more explicit and quantifiable. If it works for them, we can think about how to broaden the scope.

Thanks again for giving us such a clear-minded and inventive piece.

-- Conrad

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Dear Sabine Hossenfelder,

Thanks for your excellent essay, appreciated by many judging from your score and the number of comments. You acknowledge "inborn knowledge", a topic James Putnam's essay deals with.

You also note that our political, economic, and social systems that govern our lives are presently adaptive by trial and error, concluding that this is too slow to solve current...

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Dear Sabine Hossenfelder,

Thanks for your excellent essay, appreciated by many judging from your score and the number of comments. You acknowledge "inborn knowledge", a topic James Putnam's essay deals with.

You also note that our political, economic, and social systems that govern our lives are presently adaptive by trial and error, concluding that this is too slow to solve current problems we face. John C Hodge addresses this in his essay, and is somewhat at odds with this. The key is to partition the system finely -- many instances of local trial and error. Our Internet and existing communication systems will tell us which work and which fail, just as the state of major cities in the US tells us which policies work and which don't work very well. This is essentially parallel processing! Of course, if you are referring to a global system operating by trial and error, then the result is likely catastrophic.

I certainly agree that "quantum computing" will not solve our problems. My favorite line in your essay is:

"The point here is not to manipulate people into changing their ways because I or you or some supercomputer thinks it would be better... The point is to help people make decisions."

I quote you in my essay and suggest change I think would be very helpful.

Your "politics by looks" is shocking but not surprising. That's partly why Washington DC is called "Hollywood for ugly people" (relatively speaking). Also, your example of the mortgage housing crisis was hardly unrecognized. But the politicians who benefited by forcing banks to provide bad loans to their constituents actively opposed efforts to rein things in -- part of the problem I address. I also quibble a little with your distinction between science in the academy and "for-profit" science. Much science today has been politicized, and is essentially "for-profit", whether labeled so or not.

Anyway, thanks again for your fine essay and well thought out approach, and I hope you will find my essay, the Thermodynamics of Freedom, interesting and compatible with your ideas. I look forward to any comments you might make.

My best regards,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

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Sabine,

Beautifully argued analysis and ideas. I just can't help thinking; a) They can't be effectively implemented (and who draws prejudice free maps!?) And; b) If implemented they'll fail due to how brains work. I agree about attention span, but feedback to a database (lobes) has scant connection to the front cerebral cortex which takes the fast intuitive decisions, often wrong despite...

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Sabine,

Beautifully argued analysis and ideas. I just can't help thinking; a) They can't be effectively implemented (and who draws prejudice free maps!?) And; b) If implemented they'll fail due to how brains work. I agree about attention span, but feedback to a database (lobes) has scant connection to the front cerebral cortex which takes the fast intuitive decisions, often wrong despite 'knowledge'. Once those lessons of youth are imprinted we're indoctrinated. Too late for non surgical cure. But focussed on the young you refer to, then perhaps!

The problem is that we're now beyond Planck's solution, the indoctrinated are cloning the young. The SM you laud is near death in practice. Information overload (your 'reading time' problem) means retrenchment, stifling advancement in understanding. You wrote; "There MUST be more to find than we have found so far" and; "We know the theory MUST exist". Fine and true words, but now just words. When put before our eyes the truth is now only ignored or denied. Read my essay and falsify that statement.

I should explain my view is that of an implementer. Scientist and theorist perhaps but largely exo-academia and Architect trained. I was lead consultant for a North Sea petro-chem consortium bringing home the largest UK project, then recently on the largest UK windafarm (Vestas). All fast-track from blank sheets of paper. Good decision taking methods and feedback are implicit.

Advising on appointing other consultants we've learned to avoid academics as most can't cope with rapid (or any!) advancement. That's what I see really needs to change. Academic theoretical inertia. I've watched it steadily worsen!

I almost wrote the essay on that, and the poor use most make of the brilliant quantum computer in our heads. We need to be trained when young how to use it properly, not just as a database! I decided implementing unified physics is a far more important advancement for science and mankind, thus my essay (and previous).

But while I can make things happen elsewhere, in academia I'm entirely powerless. Many see it as an ego led 'closed shop' but I see the fear, confusion and poor rewards. Whatever the problem it need major surgery! I do like your ideas but they look like darts to me not arrows, and getting close to the target, but not hitting it. I'd love to work with you to help focus and develop your ideas, but of course there's probably no time.

I think if anyone can prove part of the solution not part of the problem it may be you Sabine, but it may need courage and wider vision to see it.

Best of luck. You're my favourite for top spot.

Peter

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Dear Sabine,

Tommaso Bolognesi suggested we read your essay since he saw many similarities between yours and ours. In a standard cop-out that you obviously will recognize, we only wish we had the time to devote to our essay to make it is clear as yours, although, we still are likely to have fallen short of your compelling and passionate (and at times very funny!) proposal.

We agree...

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Dear Sabine,

Tommaso Bolognesi suggested we read your essay since he saw many similarities between yours and ours. In a standard cop-out that you obviously will recognize, we only wish we had the time to devote to our essay to make it is clear as yours, although, we still are likely to have fallen short of your compelling and passionate (and at times very funny!) proposal.

We agree that there are clear parallels in our summaries of current problems, although our proposed solutions are quite different. You doubt human abilities to derive meaning from large data sets and to think about long-distance and long-term consequences of our actions, and you say "what little grasp we have is prone to cognitive biases and statistical errors." And then you crystallize these issues thusly: "These cognitive shortcomings are not only obstacles to solving our problems, they are the problem". We couldn't agree more or have stated the problem more clearly.

We also are in complete agreement with your analysis of education: "It is time to wake up. We've tried long enough to educate them. It doesn't work. The idea of the educated and well - informed citizen is a[n] utopia. It doesn't work because education doesn't please people. They don't like to think. It is too costly and it's not the information they want." But, then it appears your solution is to provide training and feedback frameworks, and education on how to implement them. You state very clearly that technology is not an integral piece of the solution: "We have a social problem, not a technological one."

The primary differences between your proposal and ours are as follows:

- We believe the solution to our problems is partly priority and partly technology, i.e. first deciding that we need better brains and other thinking machines, and then creating the technologies to implement the solutions. You appear to agree on the first part, but not the second.

- You believe that training will work this time if we just do it a certain way.

- To guide long-term decisions, your proposal places trust in current human priorities, and thus current levels of rationality. Substantial research by Kahneman and Tversky, Keith Stanovich, Tom Gilovich, Dan Ariely, and many others convince us that people are neither rational nor good forecasters, even when they are focused on the future. You clearly understand these issues, but this doubts about bias and irrationality seem to be overwhelmed by the apparent practicality of your proposal.

After saying the problem is not technological, your essay appears to acknowledge that an engineering solution is preferred: "In the future, information about matches with personal priorities may be delivered wirelessly to brain implants, constituting an upgrade of humanity for global interactions." But given current limitations, you rely on a less reliable but practical solution "With presently existing technology we have to settle for visualizing a match or mismatch rather than feeling it." But this is what education has been doing for centuries: translating data into an intuitive graph, or a problem into another kind of problem, using analogies and other abstractions.

Here is the key question for you: why not simply commit to fixing the intrinsic problems you identify, rather than playing tricks of substitution of a long-term goal for a short-term one, or making someone believe they are eating ice cream when they are actually eating vegetables? Why not instead engineer the brain to be better at understanding data (or to like vegetables more than ice cream)? Without question these are challenging undertakings, but why continue to apply band-aids on top of dozens of previously applied band-aids?

We think our proposal is the only truly efficient (albeit, long-term) approach and, while our proposed solution is not as specific as yours, we want people to engage in a serious conversation about the issues we raise and how to create better brains and other thinking machines - especially the best scientists and engineers who typically have little motivation to consider these issues because they are comfortable with their own intellects. However, we think that this is another illusion of spacetime proximity (close), which is why our essay asks the reader to consider an imaginary being with god-like powers to do science and engineering (distant). The most rational and intelligent people only feel satisfied with their present mental status because human perceptions are selected to be relativistic about abilities, but the problems highlighted by both of our essays apply to everyone.

I hope your essay does well since the parallels of our two essays are striking and it is important that these issues take center stage. I also hope that you read our essay and that we persuade you to some degree of the soundness of our proposal. Whatever the outcome, we're glad to have made your acquaintance through this competition.

All the best,

Preston Estep (and Alex Hoekstra)

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Sabine,

I am still waiting for your objection. Let me check whether or not you are ready to answer questions that I consider foundational ones. English is not our mother tongue. Therefore I looked into my dictionary for the meaning of the word humanity and found:

#1 "Humanity is the same as mankind." All essays I got aware of understood humanity in this sense which corresponds to...

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Sabine,

I am still waiting for your objection. Let me check whether or not you are ready to answer questions that I consider foundational ones. English is not our mother tongue. Therefore I looked into my dictionary for the meaning of the word humanity and found:

#1 "Humanity is the same as mankind." All essays I got aware of understood humanity in this sense which corresponds to the German word Menschheit.

#2 "A person's humanity is their state of being a human being, rather than an animal or an object, a formal use." While logically a bit imperfectly formulated, this corresponds to the German word Menschsein.

#3 "Humanity is also the quality of being kind, thoughtful, and sympathetic." The German word is Menschlichkeit, and this is what distinguishes your essay.

#4 "The humanities ..." does obviously not apply to the topic of our contest.

You will certainly agree on that #3 summarizes what is also called human values. Because I feel that Mohammed Khali cannot answer my belonging questions, I hope you will dare. To Muslims the doctrine "as many (Muslim) children as possible" is a value in the sense of #3, and when I lived together with a Tunesian he told me why: The more children, the more food for the elderly.

While the notion overpopulation lacks a reference value, it is indisputable that the consequences of unlimited growth cannot forever compensated. Ethics needs to be modified, and I consider this a pressing most fundamental necessity.

Let me refer to Nigeria where Boku Haram is said having kidnapped 200 non-Muslim school girls, possibly with the perspective of selling them. You will certainly agree that this is a crime against humanity #3.

Those who are fighting against polio in Nigeria are guided by #3. They are facing resistance because of distrust. Some Muslims suspect getting cheated with the aim to hinder them getting as many children as possible. While this is definitely not true, I see their attitude unacceptable. Isn't hindering the worldwide fight against polio a crime against humanity #3 too? Do you agree, and if so, is the modification of #3 justified?

Voluntary restriction to one or two children per couple worldwide may stop the rapid destruction of environment. Such modified ethics should be encouraged by demonstrating that life in non-growing states is much richer and more peaceful.

Any objection?

Eckard

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Hi Sabine,

Thank you for a very entertaining and thought-provoking essay!

I really like your idea of personal AI assistants that know your values and suggest the right actions for you to take --- in fact, I want one right now, not just to help me make the right choices concerning the future well-being of the planet, but also to help me plan my day to day routine in order to be more...

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Hi Sabine,

Thank you for a very entertaining and thought-provoking essay!

I really like your idea of personal AI assistants that know your values and suggest the right actions for you to take --- in fact, I want one right now, not just to help me make the right choices concerning the future well-being of the planet, but also to help me plan my day to day routine in order to be more productive!

I teach science to 18 and 19 year-old students, and it probably explains why, in my essay, I explore the idea of improving education in order to raise the collective knowledge and awareness of the world population towards the issues that are the most important for the future of humanity. You will perhaps disagree with my solution, since you write in your essay that

We've tried to educate [people]. It doesn't work. The idea of the educated and well-informed citizen is an utopia. It doesn't work because education doesn't please people.

And yet, you also say that

[T]he main problem [...] isn't to collect information, but feeding this information back into the system, back to the many humans who are the initiators of change.

In my experience as a teacher, I certainly have seen a lot of students whose attention span and interest is limited in the way you describe in your "split-second looks at photos" analogy. And yet, I still believe it is possible to teach differently, to teach better, in school settings but also in lifelong learning endeavors, such as YouTube videos, or accessible, entertaining and pedagogically sound MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses).

I agree with you that humans

do whatever they please. The only way to change their ways is to please them. Please them differently than before, and change will follow.

So I hope that the educators of the world can come together in a worldwide futurocentric education initiative, and find a way to "please" the people while raising their knowledge and awareness of what is going on in the world, and what is likely to come next. In doing so, to paraphrase what you said in your essay about your proposal, maybe we can "use people's priorities and values in a systematic way to discover shortcomings in the system and improve it".

And when your personal AI assistants become reality, perhaps we will be able to use some of what we learned in the Futurocentric Education Initiative in order to construct a better, less "costly" system to inform and guide mankind towards a better future!

I consider your essay one of the best in this contest, and I hope you do well in the final judging.

Marc

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Recap. The human species has created a complex hybrid environment/system X (technology, politics, economics, etc., on top of the natural system/biosphere) that has somehow changed the rules of the evolutionary adaptation game to our advantage. But the accelerating complexity growth of X is bringing it out of our control, making it hard to close the feedback loop between individual human actions...

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Recap. The human species has created a complex hybrid environment/system X (technology, politics, economics, etc., on top of the natural system/biosphere) that has somehow changed the rules of the evolutionary adaptation game to our advantage. But the accelerating complexity growth of X is bringing it out of our control, making it hard to close the feedback loop between individual human actions and their effect on X. Our cognitive skills have been left behind, with a mismatch between our ability to analyse local scenarios and act accordingly, and the global dynamics of system X.

And so you propose to build a `bring-closer` information system for bridging the gap between global-collective and local-individual info and action, that should also learn from the priority lists expressed by individuals. Users should ideally find the information all in one place, well integrated and effectively presented, to please their intuition.

My concern (partly expressed in a previous comment) derives from the gap I perceive between plainly collecting and integrating information on one hand, and actually computing the correct global consequences of individual actions on the other, for informing the decision of the individuals (and the institutions).

In other words, I totally agree on the psychological usefulness of the `bring-closer` service for wiring back to our cognitive circuits - that`s one of the most brilliant and well expressed ideas of your essay - but I believe the devil would often be in the process of actually building the info to be displayed closer. Computing the consequences of a local event in a complex system is intrinsically hard. (Not to speak of the potential uncontrolled influences from political or commercial agendas in this process, but that`s a general problem.)

I am still inclined to look at these issues in terms of emergent properties of a layered system, where the emergent entities are largely independent from those at the lower layer. Under this light, it occurred to me that your proposals could be seen as a creative and generous attempt to strengthen the communication channel between two adjacent layers, in both directions. And this vaguely reminds me of an essay on the importance of top-down causation by George Ellis in a previous contest.

Regards

Tommaso

PS

(I hoped that re-reading and re-commenting your essay could help me deciding how to rate your entry, but I confess that I still have mixed feelings between the pleasurable presentation style, the originality of the analysis and the potential problems with the proposed solution. Not that this would change anything, given your top position in the community ranking! Congratulations!)

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Dear Sabine

Scientifically lay people are certainly not lazy and indifferent... They may not be scientists, scholars, or academics, but you would be surprised how much they might know about relevant things concerning life... And in general, the less influenced by irrelevant values of the society - the wiser they are. The reason why they may not be interested in science is in "science", not...

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Dear Sabine

Scientifically lay people are certainly not lazy and indifferent... They may not be scientists, scholars, or academics, but you would be surprised how much they might know about relevant things concerning life... And in general, the less influenced by irrelevant values of the society - the wiser they are. The reason why they may not be interested in science is in "science", not in them. The "fundamental science" transformed into a mass in Latin... Lay people are conditioned by and respond to the system that they don't understand, which doesn't make them any different from you or anybody else. Knowledge is not the information learned by heart, but the information understood by heart. Do you understand any equation containing G, or any other "universal constant of nature"? Do you understand the quest of searching for the smallest division in nature? Considering you knowing the fractal mathematics... and that all natural forms are fractals...

When CERN announced the possibility of finding the Higgs Boson, I was sitting in a café, watching the faces of people scrolling newspaper headlines... The supposed to be "The ultimate discovery ever", didn't catch anyone's attention... It didn't change anything in anyone's life. There was no enlightenment, no shift of a consciousness, understanding, philosophical insight... but it produced some good jokes :) It may be that people are simply fed up of being stuffed with useless information. Instead of increasing our spiritual wealth, junk makes us spiritually fat, increasing our inertia.

If one refers to the laws of nature, one sees its self-organised, self-sufficient and self-similar matrix of chaos. If not disturbed, one witnesses equilibrium tending to equilibrium. On the other hand, self-proclaimed legislation of men, tend to ever greater order, i.e. ever greater polarization. "If there would be no order, there would be chaos..." Facing such contradiction we are offenders either to nature, either to the artificial system of institutionalised men...

"I am" follows only the rules of living knowledge, not the rules of dead conjunctions maintained by non-living institutions which usually do things in the name of humanity, in the name of progress, in the name of democracy, in the name of our children, in the name of some god, etc... never in the name of "I am". Well, statistically, "I am" is insignificant, anyway :)

Institutions are not to be misinterpreted as organ of an organism. Institutions are official seals whit taken power to set rules, valorise and judge. Although build and fed on the idea of the individual, institutions are negation of the individuality. With time, they become purpose on its own, acting as a tail of retardation creating instruments and tools for their own existence, thus maintaining and creating problems... On a big scale, the result is the self-similar matrix manifested as the age of problems...

You may have been noticed that non-living systems - institutions (states, religions, corporations, institutionalised science...) - favour all which is unnecessary, artificial, unhealthy, uniformed, obedient, destructive, lethal, non-reproductive, and non-alive. On the other hand, living necessities like reasoning, individual intelligence, sexuality, reproductive organs, natural food, healing plants, freedom, diversity, life as such... are "legitimately" stigmatized, neglected, rejected, forbidden, tortured or executed... On the universal scale this self-similar matrix can be recognized as Tanatos versus Eros... On a scale of a body, it is virus versus cell.

So, just let "I am" be self-sufficient, self-organised, self-aware, self-responsible and unique "I am". Do not think of mapping "I am's" brain or extending its capabilities with some artificial implant (do you know or does anyone know what brain really is?). "I am" does not want to be "I am not". "I am" is not the statistics in some stock market graph or the IP address in some global network. "I am" is alive and life is the infinite chaotic function of equilibrium tending to equilibrium. "I am" is the measure and the building block of "We are" - the Humanity.

To conclude, instead of "How to save the world", I would suggest "How to save I am". Only then, billions of infinitely unique, though self-similar snowflakes can fall free, creating a matrix of harmony. And if we are imprinted that this is utopia, then the universe and everything in it is utopia indeed :)

Regards,

andrej

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Sabine Hossenfelder,

I like your essay very much; however, I have held off rating it. Here is one reason why? Could you please say more about your analysis of the mortgage crisis with respect to measuring emotions?

"Moreover, emotions can capture problems that do not result in actions at all (are not “revealed”). Take the 2008 mortgage crisis as an example. If you read reports...

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Sabine Hossenfelder,

I like your essay very much; however, I have held off rating it. Here is one reason why? Could you please say more about your analysis of the mortgage crisis with respect to measuring emotions?

"Moreover, emotions can capture problems that do not result in actions at all (are not “revealed”). Take the 2008 mortgage crisis as an example. If you read reports from back then, many people clearly felt something was wrong. “Something about that feels very wrong,” a banker said, “It makes me sick to my stomach the kind of loans that we do,” a mortgage broker was quoted with [6]. But these feelings didn’t register in the system. Imagine we could have measured the tension in priorities between, say, keeping their job and acting morally right. This could have been an early warning sign. How many warning signs do we currently miss?"

If feelings were measured, who's would we choose to side with? There was a vast number of others who were available to be tested at the time. What would their responses have registered? It is not my intent to pin blame. My question has to do with the difficulty of relying upon emotions ahead of an event. Who would you have relied upon for emotional guidance before the collapse?

"...on Oversight and Government Reform

Darrell Issa (CA-49), Ranking Member

The housing bubble that burst in 2007 and led to a financial crisis can be traced back to federal government intervention in the U.S. housing market intended to help provide homeownership opportunities for more Americans. This intervention began with two government-backed corporations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which privatized their profits but socialized their risks, reating powerful incentives for them to act recklessly and exposing taxpayers to tremendous losses. Government intervention also created “affordable” but dangerous lending policies which encouraged lower down payments, looser underwriting standards and higher leverage. Finally, government intervention created a nexus of vested interests – politicians, lenders and lobbyists – who profited from the “affordable” housing market and acted to kill reforms. In the short run, this government intervention was successful in its stated goal – raising the national homeownership rate. However, the ultimate effect was to create a mortgage tsunami that wrought devastation on the American people and economy. While government intervention was not the sole cause of the financial crisis, its role was significant and has received too little attention.

In recent months it has been impossible to watch a television news program without seeing a Member of Congress or an Administration official put forward a new recovery proposal or engage in the public flogging of a financial company official whose poor decisions, and perhaps greed, resulted in huge losses and great suffering. Ironically, some of these same Washington officials were, all too recently, advocates of the very mortgage lending policies that led to economic turmoil. In a number of cases, political officials even engaged in unethical conduct, helping their political allies, family members and even themselves obtain lucrative positions in the mortgage lending industry and other benefits. At a time when government intervention in private markets has become alarmingly common, government “affordable housing” initiatives offer important lessons about the dangers of government efforts to manipulate or conjure outcomes in the market. ..."

There is much more that could be said about who played what role. However, my point still has to do with emotions. I don't remember the date, but, President Bush, in a speech to the nation, mentioned with pride the high rate of home ownership. I recall feeling that that was a good result. I knew that mortgages were very lenient compared to any that I had received in earlier years. But it felt good to think that the government was making it possible for more people to own homes.

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Dear Sabine,

Some interesting points. But what I miss in your argument is: (1) how are individual priority maps to be translated into collective action?; (2) what happens when group think drives collective action to a disaster?

The 2008 financial crisis you mention is an example of a system where there is de facto collective action, because we now have a system of rapid international...

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Dear Sabine,

Some interesting points. But what I miss in your argument is: (1) how are individual priority maps to be translated into collective action?; (2) what happens when group think drives collective action to a disaster?

The 2008 financial crisis you mention is an example of a system where there is de facto collective action, because we now have a system of rapid international financial transactions, driven by individual priority maps of traders who mostly want to make profits on quite short timescales. As you say some of them did not feel right about it, and continued nonethless - and actually a number of smarter ones got out of it well before the crunch hit. But the point is, even better knowledge would not prevent the herd running to a disaster, as long as the dominant priority map driving the collection of traders is making a profit on a short time scale at the expense of others. With better information the crunch would have just hit sooner. Setting aside questions of ethics, such a system is just intrinsically unstable and the increased connectivity in the internet age can just amplify the instabilities.

If we just consider the less politically charged sphere of academia and science that you discuss (well less charged for those outside academia!), then individual researchers do (at least subconsciously) have priority maps which we apply every day when we scan arXiv abstracts to decide whether a paper is worth looking at. In fact, priority one for the vast majority is: will this paper help me with what I am working on, the things I want to know more about to write my next paper? (The writing of papers recognised as good by our peers is the basis of reward.) As with the financial markets, the internet amplifies perturbations where there is a strong prior propensity for group think. BICEP2 and primordial gravitational waves from inflation is a topical example. Will it go the way of the OPERA experiment and the faster-than-light-neutrinos that generated a similar sociological phenomenon? Who knows.

For the record I would say that inflation is an interesting phenomenology, which looks to be correct at the surface of last scattering. But it is a phenomenology still in search of a fundamental theory. (And it may well involve quantum gravity in the end; the really hard important stuff.) So the question of whether there are primordial gravitational waves is important. But inflation is a phenomenology that is very easy to arrive at: add a few more epicycles to the action, solve a bunch of differential equations and avoid thinking deeply. That is why there are hundreds of inflationary models on the market, and it is why BICEP2 is a sociological phenomenon.

Card-carrying members of FQXi have got into the club because hopefully we do try to take a larger scale view of the fundamental issues in science. I think the real problem is not so much the construction of individual priority maps, but the fact that the present reward systems that drive collective action do not have a longer-term, 100+ year perspective, either in science or society at large.

All best wishes,

David

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