James Hughes : “Great convo with Yuval Harari, touching on algorithmic governance, the perils of being a big thinker when democracy is under attack, the need for transnational governance, the threats of automation to the developing world, the practical details of UBI, and a lot more.”
In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Yuval Noah Harari about his new book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. They discuss the importance of meditation for his intellectual life, the primacy of stories, the need to revise our fundamental assumptions about human civilization, the threats to liberal democracy, a world without work, universal basic income, the virtues of nationalism, the implications of AI and automation, and other topics.
Yuval Noah Harari has a PhD in History from the University of Oxford and lectures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializing in world history. His books have been translated into 50+ languages, with 12+ million copies sold worldwide. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind looked deep into our past, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow considered far-future scenarios, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century focuses on the biggest questions of the present moment.
Already, 1,000 smart city pilots are under construction or in their final urban planning stages across the globe, driving forward countless visions of the future.
As data becomes the gold of the 21st century, centralized databases and hyper-connected infrastructures will enable everything from sentient cities that respond to data inputs in real time to smart public services that revolutionize modern governance.
Connecting countless industries—real estate, energy, sensors and networks, and transportation, among others—tomorrow’s cities pose no end of creative possibilities and stand to completely transform the human experience.
CERN has revealed plans for a gigantic successor of the giant atom smasher LHC, the biggest machine ever built. Particle physicists will never stop to ask for ever larger big bang machines. But where are the limits for the ordinary society concerning costs and existential risks?
CERN boffins are already conducting a mega experiment at the LHC, a 27km circular particle collider, at the cost of several billion Euros to study conditions of matter as it existed fractions of a second after the big bang and to find the smallest particle possible – but the question is how could they ever know? Now, they pretend to be a little bit upset because they could not find any particles beyond the standard model, which means something they would not expect. To achieve that, particle physicists would like to build an even larger “Future Circular Collider” (FCC) near Geneva, where CERN enjoys extraterritorial status, with a ring of 100km – for about 24 billion Euros.
Humanity is under threat. At least according to Sir Martin Rees, one of Britain’s most esteemed astronomers.
These two kinds of technologies enable just a few people to have a hugely wide-ranging and maybe even global cascading effect. This leads to big problems of governance because you’d like to regulate the use of these things, but enforcing regulations worldwide is very, very difficult. Think how hopeless it is to enforce the drug laws globally or the tax laws globally. To actually ensure that no one misuses these new technologies is just as difficult. I worry that we are going to have to minimize this risk by actions which lead to a great tension between privacy, liberty and security.
Do you see ways that we can use and develop these technologies in a responsible way?
We’ve got to try. We can’t put the genie back in the bottle. We’ve just got to make sure that we can derive benefits and minimize risks. When I say we have a bumpy ride, I think it is hard to imagine that there won’t be occasions when there are quite serious disruptions caused by either error or by design using these new powerful technologies.
I’m speaking next Friday evening, Dec 14, at 6PM then doing a panel at the NodeSF in San Francisco. Hosted by the Institute for Competitive Governance and Startup Societies Foundation, the event will discuss innovative approaches for new cities and societies. Join us in building the future! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/future-cities-distributed-socie…gFeha96wn2 #transhumanism
How are the future cities going to look like? Are they going to be sovereign states? Will people have decentralized governments? What is the future of law like?
Over two decades, I’ve worked with many collaborators studying infrastructure commons and knowledge commons. We developed the Governing Knowledge Commons framework, adapting Ostrom’s empirical approach to the special characteristics of knowledge resources. Understanding how communities share and develop knowledge is crucial in today’s “information society.” And, of course, sharing and developing knowledge is critical to successful governance of natural resources, especially on a global scale. Using the GKC framework, we’ve made substantial progress toward an empirical picture of knowledge-related commons governance. But it’s not nearly enough. Here’s why.
A classic study of the perils of resource sharing, with implications for how we deal with climate, has been updated.
The growing mistrust and hostility towards global intuitions must be overcome if the world is to successfully tackle the environmental challenges it faces, the head of the University of Sussex’s global sustainability research centre has warned.
Professor Joseph Alcamo, Director of the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme (SSRP), said high-quality research and closer engagement with citizens around the world was needed to overcome the growing zeitgeist that viewed organisations such as the UN as meddling amid a geopolitical backdrop of cancelled treaties, neglected obligations and frozen negotiations.
Delivering his keynote speech at the 2018 Utrecht Conference on Earth System Governance this morning, Prof Alcamo said: To many people earth system governance is not beautiful, it is worrisome, it means loss of control over their lives, and this mistrust is a big part of the national retrenchment going on.
Governments are one of the last strongholds of an undigitized, linear sector of humanity, and they are falling behind fast. Apart from their struggle to keep up with private sector digitization, federal governments are in a crisis of trust.
At almost a 60-year low, only 18 percent of Americans reported that they could trust their government “always” or “most of the time” in a recent Pew survey. And the US is not alone. The Edelman Trust Barometer revealed last year that 41 percent of the world population distrust their nations’ governments.
In many cases, the private sector—particularly tech—is driving greater progress in regulation-targeted issues like climate change than state leaders. And as decentralized systems, digital disruption, and private sector leadership take the world by storm, traditional forms of government are beginning to fear irrelevance. However, the fight for exponential governance is not a lost battle.
James Hughes : “Great convo with Yuval Harari, touching on algorithmic governance, the perils of being a big thinker when democracy is under attack, the need for transnational governance, the threats of automation to the developing world, the practical details of UBI, and a lot more.”
In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Yuval Noah Harari about his new book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. They discuss the importance of meditation for his intellectual life, the primacy of stories, the need to revise our fundamental assumptions about human civilization, the threats to liberal democracy, a world without work, universal basic income, the virtues of nationalism, the implications of AI and automation, and other topics.
Yuval Noah Harari has a PhD in History from the University of Oxford and lectures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializing in world history. His books have been translated into 50+ languages, with 12+ million copies sold worldwide. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind looked deep into our past, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow considered far-future scenarios, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century focuses on the biggest questions of the present moment.
For millennia, our planet has sustained a robust ecosystem; healing each deforestation, algae bloom, pollution or imbalance caused by natural events. Before the arrival of an industrialized, destructive and dominant global species, it could pretty much deal with anything short of a major meteor impact. In the big picture, even these cataclysmic events haven’t destroyed the environment—they just changed the course of evolution and rearranged the alpha animal.
But with industrialization, the race for personal wealth, nations fighting nations, and modern comforts, we have recognized that our planet is not invincible. This is why Lifeboat Foundation exists. We are all about recognizing the limits to growth and protecting our fragile environment.
Check out this April news article on the US president’s forthcoming appointment of Jim Bridenstine, a vocal climate denier, as head of NASA. NASA is one of the biggest agencies on earth. Despite a lack of training or experience—without literacy in science, technology or astrophysics—he was handed an enormous responsibility, a staff of 17,000 and a budget of $19 billion.
In 2013, Bridenstine criticized former president Obama for wasting taxpayer money on climate research, and claimed that global temperatures stopped rising 15 years ago.
The Vox News headline states “Next NASA administrator is a Republican congressman with no background in science”. It points out that Jim Bridenstine’s confirmation has been controversial — even among members of his own party.
Sometimes, flip-flopping is a good thing
In less than one month, Jim Bridenstine has changed—he has changed a lot!
After less then a month as head of NASA, he is convinced that climate change is real, that human activity is the significant cause and that it presents an existential threat. He has changed from climate denier to a passionate advocate for doing whatever is needed to reverse our impact and protect the environment.
What changed?
Bridenstine acknowledges that he was a denier, but feels that exposure to the evidence and science is overwhelming and convincing—even in with just a few weeks exposure to world class scientists and engineers.
For anyone who still claims that there is no global warming or that the evidence is ‘iffy’, it is worth noting that Bridenstine was a hand-picked goon. His appointment was recommended by right wing conservatives and rubber stamped by the current administration. He was a Denier—but had a sufficiently open mind to listen to experts and review the evidence.
Do you suppose that the US president is listening? Do you suppose that he will grasp the most important issues of this century? What about other world leaders, legislative bodies and rock stars? Will they use their powers or influence to do the right thing? For the sake of our existence, let us hope they follow the lead of Jim Bridenstine, former climate denier!
