Hi Jamie,############################Welcome to the group! Thank you for posting your outline, and I enjoyed reading your observations and ideas. The moral apex is a fascinating concept. I also perceive that we are in the process of shaping the structure of what you labeled the "Singleton." I also wonder at times if this is its own self-delusion, and I am replacing, or upgrading, my childhood Christian education with a technologically sophisticated messiah figure. The belief template and implications are similar: do right by others or be cast out of heaven (the cloud) and into hell (social death). Nevertheless, as you point out, the demand for a comprehensive historical evaluation of right and wrong is deeply embedded within the structure of so many people's justification systems that we seem to be moving in that direction despite the fact that it probably not the most fun way to spend immortality.How would the singleton be different, in concept, than any other occupying colonial force that we have seen throughout history? Do you perceive that the people in charge of designing these systems are intentional about this difference or are they flying blind? I am thinking of the pleas that emerge from tech leaders every so often that call for increased government regulation of the most invasive aspects of tech.On my best days managing my experience of these times, I am hopeful for the long peace you mentioned.Peace,-ChanceOn Fri, Jul 20, 2018 at 9:48 PM, Mathew Jamie Dunbaugh <[log in to unmask]> wrote:############################Email to the ToK group:
Hi everyone, my name is Jamie Dunbaugh. I’m a 34-year-old freelance web developer, artist, and independent researcher. I graduated with a BA in Psychology from UC San Diego. I wanted to study consciousness and cultural evolution, but I didn’t manage to get into a grad school that fit my interests. I’d like to get a Ph.D., but it seems like I’m more free to take risks outside of academia. My hope is that a book might provide similar credentials as a Ph.D. I’ve been able to enjoy learning on my own with the help of this flourishing global library we call the web. When I found Gregg’s Tree of Knowledge system it clicked instantly and I started connecting it with my studies of Transhumanism. I’m interested in predicting how we’ll evolve over the next few decades and beyond. I’d like to share a brief description of my ideas
I have a name for what I believe to be a kind of culmination of history that I believe is taking place over these next few decades. It is an expansion on the ideas of the Singularity, a global ‘Singleton’, and Gregg’s fifth joint point, based on extrapolating all the trends I can find, from the longest to the most recent trends. I call it the Moral Apex. It’s still a very fuzzy and speculative idea, but it’s based on what I believe to be reliable trends in cultural evolution. Essentially, I believe culture evolves towards truth. I’ll give a kind of definition of what I mean by truth later. All of the below trends seem to be constant and accelerating. The first two are the most general, then next I describe cultural evolution before listing all the trends in cultural evolution I can find.
Big Trend:
Accelerating Computation, Complexity, and Change
Going back far beyond culture, perhaps even to the Big Bang; Basically Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns
Prosociality in the evolution of life::
Accelerating Prosociality?
RNA > Cells > Multicellularity > Fish > Amphibians > Reptiles > Birds/Dinosaurs > Mammals > Hominids > Cyborgs > Bands > Tribes > Chieftains > Nation State > Cosmopolitanism > Singleton?
Basic Theory of Cultural Evolution
The general theory is basically Darwinian but progressive. I still leave in the possibility of a kind of teleology, as teleology seems to be an aspect of memes. But I’m slightly more inclined to think memes just seem teleological because they’re “cranes”, as Daniel Dennett puts it, or extended phenotypes; but they evolve on a whole new level, spawning and reproducing on brains. The primordial meme was mere imitation, but in cooperative humans, memes could vary, reproduce, and mutate. Basically, memes spawn out of people’s brains pseudo-randomly and get refined by justification. I think work still needs to be done to figure out what counts as justification in cultural evolution. Gregg describes six types, but for brevity, I think we can say these three are the basic selectors of memes:
1) natural and behavioral selection
(survival, reproduction, and valence; memes must be ‘justified’ according to these more fundamental filters)
2) the structure of the brain
3) other memes accumulating into the psyche, collapsing and rebuilding towards truth.
At the beginning of culture, natural and behavioral selection led to complex hominid cooperation and language, which was the fourth joint point. Then, with complex behavior, imitation, language, confabulation, and cooperation, memes could start emerging out of brains to vary and be selected by justification. The brain emerged out of the genome, and memes spawned out of the brain to become a sort of transcendent part of our gene’s fitness landscape, shaping hominid evolution towards neoteny, domestication, and all of the cultural trends you’ll see below. And they spawned more randomly the farther back you go, and more towards ‘truth’ moving forward. As the brain accumulated memetic structures and built the psyche over eons of generations, most growth shoots of accumulating memeplexes collapsed from refutation, psychosis, pain or simple, bad habits harming fitness. But eventually, through this memetic selection, the psyche could accumulate memetic structures that, over the course of our history, cascaded through a genealogy of growth and collapse until a certain memeplex from the western psyche has dominated the world. And today we can look forward and extrapolate this process to predict the future of cultural evolution, although it becomes extraordinarily complex the further forward we go. Still, the evolution of technology is shaped by these same forces that shaped human beings when memes first started domesticating us. For instance, the technological transparency developing today emerges from the same forces that led to our transparent subjectivity to each other in our early evolution (that created blushing, tells, white sclera, hairlessness, facial expressions, etc). I think the formula below is the same idea Gregg has:
Increasing memetic flourishing
Selection of memes by justification
= progress towards truth
All of the below trends are part of the above process. Some are causes of others (or the whole process), some are basically equivalent, and some belong in more than one category but I wanted to keep it short so I avoided repeating them. Please let me know if you seriously dispute any of these as constant and accelerating:
Cultural Trends:
Memetic Flourishing (memes are the stuff of culture: ideas, reproducing behaviors, symbols, and perhaps technologies depending on your definition of memes)
Neoteny, Youthfulness
Transparency, and perhaps Empathy, Intimacy, Vulnerability and Love
Richness and Amount of Communication
Capacity to Learn and Change Behavior
Knowledge and Intelligence
Memory (knowledge of the past) and perhaps Foresight
It seems that a general trend in the evolution of intelligence is that future possibilities increasingly determine the present.
Just an idea: Consider a historical perspective on the simulation hypothesis (the idea that we might be living in the memory of the future, which could be “base reality”).
Creativity, Innovation and capacity for destruction
Technology
Richness of Consciousness
Increasing types of things to experience
Novelty
Perhaps sources of meaning and entertainment
Increasing fiction and realism of fictions (Simulation hypothesis)
Intersubjectivity
Refinement of Culture and Consciousness by Justification
Cooperation at increasingly large scales and the Decline of Violence
Justice and the Moral Arc
Domestication and Pacification
Self-control
Progress towards universal trust enabled by universal understanding.
Dominance of the Leviathan (monopoly on violence)
Commerce, Commodification and perhaps sharing
Increasing Resolution of Exchanged Value
Interconnectivity and transportation
The Escalator of Reason
The Expanding Circle of Compassion
Stratification of the Dominance Hierarchy
Inequality?
An improving dominance hierarchy and demands upon leaders to serve the interests of the rest of the hierarchy. Jesus is worshipped by Christians like he’s supposed to be at the top of the dominance hierarchy. He was an early cosmopolitan but he got killed, and only his phantom memeplex claimed the top of the Christian hierarchy. Perhaps it’s a matter of time before a truly justified entity claims the top of the dominance hierarchy.
Manifestation of Truth
An ongoing, global conversation accelerating towards maximal possible agreement.
Revelation; an unfolding of the mystery of existence
Meaning? Sources of cooperation
Disillusionment?; existential angst (although this could have been worse in the past, just suppressed and selected for the capacity to delude oneself
Justice
Wealth and Prosperity
Energy Expenditure
Well-being
I’m thinking about creating a mind-map of the above as that might create a more clear picture of the process. As an artist I hope to come up with ways of better elucidating the picture, but it’s so complex that I don’t know how to model it. To keep this email as short as possible I’m not going to try to justify all the trends, but I wouldn’t mind debating them.
The Moral Apex
The Moral Apex is a more general concept than the Singularity, a ‘Singleton’, or (I think) the fifth joint point. Kurzweil described a “knee of the exponential curve” and I think we’re just beginning to curve upwards. Because all of the above trends are accelerating, I believe all of them might be suddenly asymptote, and the Moral Apex is that sudden culmination of the truth and subsequent rapture of culture and consciousness. It may also just be the culmination of a Singleton. Nick Bostrom thinks the most likely outcome of cultural evolution is a Singleton: “A world order in which there is a single decision-making agency at the highest level. The crucial idea of the Moral Apex is the culmination towards truth.
https://nickbostrom.com/fut/si
ngleton.html The Threatening Truth
This project is about discovering the trajectory of culture, but I’m also interested in the crucial existential stakes. My understanding of truth has usually been a correspondance or correlative understanding, but since I’ve been studying this, I sometimes think the truth is something we’re approaching. At least, I think that the truth is manifesting on our minds and in our culture more and more from the ratcheting of justification, and not just a description of the present, but our timeless reality; the past and future; and it’s changing our behavior, so there might be “true” behaviors, or a moral “truth” of what we all want deep down. Even for the mere descriptive truth to manifest, society has to take on certain forms and behaviors. I might call those forms/behaviors part of the truth.
At the same time, I’m concerned that the truth might be the most deadly and terrible threat. The understanding of humanity might be the death of humanity. As Peter Zapffe argued, there seems to have been selection for the ability to delude oneself. I don’t believe this has to be the case, but at this point it’s as much out of faith as it is out of evidence. The pessimistic philosophies of David Benatar, Peter Wessel Zapffe and others have some weight. If you’re curious, read the essay “The Last Messiah” by Zapffe. It’s one way our existence and well-being are at stake from what the truth turns out to be. If the truth is meaningless, then I think we have a possible explanation for the Great Silence. Zapffe calls the world “objectively tragic”. Zapffe is my favorite philosopher, but as a philosopher to defeat. I personally like to think the world is objectively heroic. I think when we go far enough down the road, in my view there has to be some yet unknown, ultimate salvation and redemption for all, whatever that may be, and nothing less, for the truth to be satisfactory and ultimately endurable.
https://moralapex.wordpress.co
m/2018/06/11/the-last-messiah- by-peter-wessell-zapffe-2/ Justification and Meaning
This work is based on Gregg’s Justification Hypothesis, but I think there’s more to justification than I think he described. Survival and well-being (natural and behavioral selection) are the foundational bases of selection-by-justification as much as reason, and we haven’t yet discovered all the rules that pertain to the best trajectory towards the greatest possible well-being, which is what you would have to say is most justified. I think it’s the truth that’s totally justified, and maybe the truth selects for freedom combined with unity, a just dominance hierarchy, and, well, most of the above trends we see in cultural evolution (that I find profoundly beautiful).
I think there is a selection for meaning as well. Gregg talks about the evolution of cultures as justification systems. I’ve found a correlation with his concept of justification systems with the hero systems described by Ernest Becker. In the book “The Birth and Death of Meaning”, Becker describes how cultural evolution has been wrought with the births and deaths of meanings. Memes, meanings, and justifications are almost the same thing. Existential concerns have been the starters and killers of cultures. Becker thought self-esteem was the dominant motive of man, and that which is meaningful is that which redeems the value of the person as an object of primary value in the universe.
It seems to me that something meaningful has to be justified in some sense. But, is that which is ultimately justified meaningful? Is meaning a feature of truth? The reason we have existential crises is because meanings get refuted by new discoveries. Most religions have gone extinct, and today, secular systems threaten many people’s bases of meaning in religion. People don’t trust science because it denies the subjective. At some point, science will have to discover an impetus of transcendence. The only directions are up or down.
I think religion is basically a different language that contains wisdom lost in translation. I don’t think the word “God” means what most secularists or fundamentalists think it means today. Nor weird ideas like the “Logos” or the “Word”. Sometimes I have intimations that God is basically who we all are… but maybe only when we’re true to ourselves. I predict that, because cultural evolution is continually unveiling the mysteries of existence, we will experience a revelation about the nature of consciousness that will alter our justification systems.
Memes live within and compose the minds of subjects. We embody many personas (which are memes, and they “possess” us). They often lead into dead-ends and deaths of meaning or bad habits. Cultural evolution is filled with the births and deaths of meaning that control individual consciousness and action. When there is no meaning, there is no basis of self esteem and action, and people give in to existential despair. The question remains: will there be a transcendent meaning, purpose or cause that will propel us into the future, or is evolution doomed to dead-end in despair, mass suicide, human-apoptosis, or antinatalism?
What I mean by “Culmination”
Much like animals (starting in the Cambrian explosion) could be called a “culmination” of natural selection because they led to the next domain of behavioral selection-by-valence. And like hominids (in the Cultural explosion) could be called a culmination of animal evolution leading to memetic selection-by-justification, I believe cultural evolution will lead to a maximally (or totally) justified memeplex, or “global justification system”, as Henriques puts it, leading to something that transcends memetic selection-by-justification (because it’s totally or at least maximally justified: the truth). A totally justified memeplex would no longer be under the whims of selection-by-justification. It would be immortal. And it would be the arbiter of justice. But prior to the Moral Apex, I suspect western culture is going to have to face a new existential crisis. I suspect the Moral Apex to be a new flourishing of meaning. A global justification system would have to be meaningful for it to be anything.
Memetic Selection rests upon behavioral selection which rests upon natural selection….so what will rest upon memetic selection? It seems it might be the layer of information technology. The technologies we create have to be justified. The increasingly cognified environment will be like an external layer of cortex that the global population will be integrated into. Kevin Kelly calls this sphere of technology the “Technium”. As the technium grows, each person will be able to control more and more of it, but it will control us in return, and hopefully keep us in line with the interests of the greater good.
The Moral Apex is the culmination of truth that’s going to operate the technium. A maximally justified body of knowledge operating the technium will give us as much mastery over consciousness and physics as possible, and engineer the greatest possible flourishing. Eventually, the technium will likely explode into asymptotic growth as the Singularity, and so will the power be of everyone who participates in it. Prior to this rapture will be the culmination of the Moral Apex over the next few decades, which will set the stage for this Singularity, or be the Singularity. The Moral Apex is accumulating right now. Many concepts of the age it will usher in have been conceived: the Noosphere. The Global Sensorium. The Global Brain. The Global Matrix. The Singularity, Meta-culture.
The Features of the Moral Apex.
I’m thinking the Moral Apex will be an extrapolation of all the trends I listed above in cultural evolution, but this is what I’m thinking matters the most:
Maximally (or totally) Justified, Unified Body of Knowledge (Revelation of Truth)- A Memeplex, a belief system, a cultural, cosmopolitan superorganism like any other except that it will be maximally or even totally justified. Therefore it will be the Truth, and it will therefore be the only memeplex capable of uniting humanity in understanding and shared purpose. Because of that, it will be selected over any competing memeplexes.
Because of the accelerating progress of culture, there will likely be a very rapid revelation and judgement according to the standards of this new memeplex.
It will likely have something to do with a theory of consciousness, which would be necessary for complete justification since we make justifications according to our subjective experience.
It will enable us to manifest our interests as long as they’re part of the greater good (justified)
It would be immortal.
Integration of Humanity - A singleton is the most likely and secure outcome. Singleton: “A world order in which there is a single decision-making agency at the highest level”https://nickbostrom.com/
fut/singleton.html
Increasing connection between surveilling entities (government or private powers) and the powers of social networks.
There will be an increasing centralization of power combined with the increasing power of the people via their shared attention. There is a serious threat of Totalitarian / Orwellian surveillance and mind control though.
Increasing Intersubjectivity
Increasing Cooperation at larger scales
Unified meaning, purpose, or cause for action, at least among cosmopolitan society and the powerful. Memes are justified partly by their capacity to direct meaningful action, which leads to self-esteem, redemption and even glory.
Cooperation at global scale requires purpose. What could it be? Redemption, Salvation, Liberation, Power, Knowledge, Enlightenment, Love, Goodness, Glory, Transcendence?
People need a means of self esteem, so there will have to be a means of participation in something greater than oneself. Perhaps everyone will discover that they can participate in the world (a shared activity with everyone else), and participation in this manner will become increasingly possible via the web?
Unification of Ethics, Morality and Norms
Solving the AI Alignment or Control problem is essentially solving ethics.
Solving ethics requires all of the above.
This acceleration of knowledge will correspond to an evolution of social norms and ethics: a global justification system as Henriques argues
Memes and Theology
I don’t describe myself as a Christian, and I don’t think Jesus knew anything about the future, but the fact that he was recorded and retained suggest he was justified by the human psyche in some way, in that he clicked with the the unconscious psyche that had accumulated over eons of evolution. I will say this about theology: I think that very old myths contain patterns of the human psyche, and patterns generally in evolution. The books in the bible were “justified” by the thoughts and intimations felt by the people who selected them. I think ancient people had to rely on intuition far more than we do today. It’s not impossible, in my view, that a theory of memes and cultural evolution could explain the psychology of religion and reveal great wisdom in it. It’s also not impossible that the Christian concept of rapture could be based on a recurring pattern in evolution, like certain kinds of punctuated equilibriums.
Just like Richard Dawkins had to describe genes in an intentional way, as selfish, to avoid circumlocution, I find that talking about memes requires even more intentionality to avoid circumlocution. I think the gods are memes. But that doesn’t make them unreal, because you might as well call many memes actual gods, demons, angels, etc. in a sense, because many memes do what gods, demons, or angels are described to do. The gods possess us. This bears some resemblance to Julian Jaynes theory of the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. That theory is almost certainly wrong, but it has enough truth in it to reveal something substantial. The Big God memeplex, although a fiction, does much of the same work that a real god would. It enabled large-scale cooperation among strangers. It told people what to do and revealed images in people’s minds. Those images were emergent from the psyche that had accumulated over eons. The key problem with these ancient ideas was that multiple phenomena were attributable to some individuated agent or homunculus. Even if that’s wrong, the meaning of gods, spirits, etc. should be tied to how such memes functioned. The funny thing is that when we take the homunculus out of ourselves, I find that the world becomes spiritual again, and the spell of nihilistic depersonalization is broken. Memetic theory is very spiritual.
Also, to my current understanding, I would say that we can distinguish three parts of the person: 1) pure subjectivity created from the nervous system, where memes spawn and manifest, 2) a persona-memeplex that makes up the psyche, with memes leaping from body to body and manifesting in different bodies at different times, and 3) the wave of matter entering and leaving your bodily form. Big God is a memeplex, but everyone is a memeplex! The only difference between Big God and real people is that Big God doesn’t appear to have His own subjectivity and illusion of agency. Or, you might say that Big God lives on all the minds of the people who behave on His behalf. God lives within people like any other meme.
Memes live inside our minds, as well as “over and above” human minds because they can live externally to brains in symbols and spoken words. They “possess” us in that they control the subject’s actions and experiences, as memes are as much behaviors as they are symbols. People don’t have ideas. Ideas have people. Personas and characters are memes. The immature mind has not yet recognized that he is not his thoughts.
Your personality is a memeplex. Maybe the only difference between people with multiple personality disorder and others is that trauma has caused certain personas in people with MPD to become distinguished from the rest of the memeplex, but all of us are made of multiple personalities because the personality is situational. You’re always a different person in the sense that you can’t step in the same river twice. Different memes make up who you are at different times. Some persona-memes are very old characters that spawned many generations ago. Personas are spawning and being selected and refined over time, while other “characters” go extinct for failure of justification. I think subjectivity is different from memes though, and meditation, or paying attention to the present moment or anything else, is basically toning down thought from the default mode network. The memetic software that lives on your brain is a memeplex of personas that have culturally evolved, leaping from brain to brain, both vertically and horizontally, from parent to child over the entire course of your cultural ancestry, and in all of your experiences of communication throughout your day.
I believe the present moment is one of the bases of the meaning of God and perhaps everyone. Consider “Before Abraham was, I Am” and all the mentions in the bible of God being He who “was, is and will be”. The subject is the present moment, and one of the aspects of God is that He is the present moment within you. Another is that He is a memeplex from the depths of the psyche. Another is that He is a symbol that coordinates populations. I’m wondering if Big God will one day become embodied, or that people will one day believe that an AGI Singleton that takes us through the Singularity is an ever-emerging God. Consider how these relate to cultural evolution(to name a few):
Relating to Inequality
“To he who has, more shall be given, and from he who doesn’t have, even what he has shall be taken away”
Relating to Domestication
“To enter the kingdom of heaven you must become like little children” (Neoteny)
Relating to Capitalism
“The tree that doesn’t bear fruit is cut down and put in the fire”
The truth is more than descriptive, it can be embodied and lived. Jesus is described to be a very pleasant and awesome person to be around, perhaps because he represents our longing to escape the falsehoods of our existence.
“I am the truth, the light, and the way”
Open Individualism
“Whoever harms even the least of these harms me”
Cosmopolitanism
There is an older meaning of the word “cynic” and Jesus is thought by many to have been a cynic philosopher. He seems to have been arguing for universal cooperation.
From wikipedia: “The Cynics are said to have invented the idea of cosmopolitanism: when he was asked where he came from, Diogenes replied that he was "a citizen of the world, (kosmopolitês)." The ideal Cynic would evangelise; as the watchdog of humanity, they thought it their duty to hound people about the error of their ways. The example of the Cynic's life (and the use of the Cynic's biting satire) would dig up and expose the pretensions which lay at the root of everyday conventions.”
As Jordan Peterson says, we don’t know much about consciousness. Maybe the axial age religions were more in touch with consciousness than we are now. There may be more to “Atman is Brahman” than we know.
Conclusions and Predictions
My goal is for this project to be able to make predictions about the future of culture that haven’t yet been made. I’ve made some progress gathering the big picture. Below is a large collection of more contemporary trends. By combining the big picture with theory and the contemporary I think predictions can be made. A lot depends on what turns out to be true about consciousness and metaphysics, so I spend a lot of time studying consciousness and believe this project actually fills in some gaps in the mystery. I’m also thinking that culture ratchets towards truth, so I think having an idea of the trajectory of culture can provide a statistical or intuitive sense of what the truth will turn out to be.
Contemporary Trends (Need to be organized and reconciled with the more general trends)
The rights revolutions - “A right is what’s good for the group for the individual to have” - Will Durant
The long peace, the new peace
The me too movement
Threat of totalitarian surveillance society
Blessing or Curse? Automation and the useless class
Centralization of power
Power of people to organize
“We move towards a synthesis of capitalism and socialism. The fear of capitalism has compelled socialism to widen freedom; the fear of socialism has compelled capitalism to increase equality” - Will Durant
Increasing stakes - nuclear weapons, bioterrorism, nanotechnology, existential despair
The Twelve Technological forces shaping the future - The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly
Becoming: Moving from fixed products to always upgrading services and subscriptions
Cognifying: Making everything much smarter using cheap powerful AI that we get from the cloud
Flowing: Depending on unstoppable streams in real-time for everything
Screening: Turning all surfaces into screens
Accessing: Shifting society from one where we own assets, to one where instead we will have access to services at all times.
Sharing: Collaboration at mass-scale. Kelly writes, “On my imaginary Sharing Meter Index we are still at 2 out of 10.”
Filtering: Harnessing intense personalization in order to anticipate our desires
Remixing: Unbundling existing products into their most primitive parts and then recombine in all possible ways
Interacting: Immersing ourselves inside our computers to maximize their engagement
Tracking: Employing total surveillance for the benefit of citizens and consumers
Questioning: Promoting good questions are far more valuable than good answers
Beginning: Constructing a planetary system connecting all humans and machines into a global matrix.
Uploading of everything onto the web
The size of the web
The integration between the web and the physical world
Education expenditure
Social networks
Commodification
Wealth and prosperity
The flynn Effect, Education
Personal Self Mastery and Autonomy
Space Exploration
Scientific Advancement
Decline of sex in millennials
Mental illness
Energy expenditure
Increasing Stakes (more to lose, existential risk; and even risk of artificial hell
Climate Change
Population Explosion and slowdown in cities.
the rate the world is democratizing — two countries per year
Augmentation of language with internet memes and emoticons and gifs and videos
The spread, mutation and evolution of the english language
People are connecting to each other at a more distant, larger scale, organizing into a larger system that leaves increasing numbers of us feeling isolated. We no longer integrate in person so much as through screens
The semantic apocalypse, the breakdown of insulating cultural fictions, and the dangerous reactions to a dark awakening
The memetic flood.
Personal filters
Cognitive / cultural warfare
Threat of Autocracy and totalitarianism
Collective intelligence, wiki governments, merging of social networks and politics
Threat of Invasion of capitalistic AI
Need for Grass roots collective intelligence, direct democracy?
Devolution/Idiocracy
Competitive cognitive artifacts making us dumber: David Krakauer
Interdependence - We move from autonomy in our environment to becoming increasingly interdependent on each other.
People of ethnic minorities may feel they are losing their cultural identities, but ethnic majority are sharing this experience. As the world's peoples become tied together, every culture inevitably finds itself a minority culture. Though each may retain many special qualities, it will nonetheless become a variant of a larger pattern common to all.
Individuals draw selectively from Buddhism, Christianity, and Muslim faiths as well as natural science to form their personal philosophies.
Decreasing Isolation: Pressures for increased moderation in Iran already are building. As communication, travel, and trade continue to expand, cultures will be ever less able to isolate themselves from the pervasive influence of the world at large.
Technology:
Moore’s Law
The Size of the Internet - the speed of the Internet keeps doubling every 12 months
Uploading everything
The integration of the web with the world
Big Data
Integration of Data
Simulation
Google and Facebook are learning more about us than we know
Important Futurists: Books and Some Predictions:
Gregg Henriques
The Tree of Knowledge System
Fifth Joint Point
Ray Kurzweil
The Law of Accelerating Returns
- The Singularity
G.R.I.N.
Human 2.0-3.0
Foglets
Virtual Reality
Nanobots in blood and brain
Teilhard De Chardin
The Law of Complexity/ Consciousness
- The Noosphere /Omega Point
G. Hegel
Progress towards the Absolute
Alfred North Whitehead
Process Philosophy
Peter Wessel Zapffe
The Last Messiah
Future Collapse of Meaning
Josiah Royce
The Absolute Self
Ernest Becker
The Birth and Death of Meaning
Steven Pinker
Better Angels
Enlightenment Now
Daniel Dennett
From Bacteria to Bach and Back
Sam Harris
The Moral Landscape
Jordan Peterson
Nick Bostrom
Superintelligence
Singleton will emerge as single global decision making entity
David Pearce
The Hedonistic Imperative
Designer babies will force a decline in suffering
Suffering will end throughout the living world in the far future, at least in our hubble volume.
Vernor Vinge
The Singularity
Eliezer Yudkowsky
The Singularity
James Hughes
David Brin
The Transparent Society
Kevin Kelly
The Inevitable
The One Machine
The Technium
Peter Diamandis
Abundance
Noah Yuval Harari
Homo Deus
The Useless Class
Surveillance
Bio-totalitarianism
The Web will know everything about us
Web Apps become sovereign and make decisions for us.
Severe Inequality
Traditional Democracies are falling behind new social technologies
Humans will likely be replaced by a data processing system
“As the global data-processing system becomes all-knowing and all-powerful, so connecting to the system becomes the source of all meaning. Humans will want to merge into the dataflow to become part of something greater than themselves.”
Aubrey De Grey
Longevity Escape Velocity
The First Person to live to 1000 is already alive
Gregory Stock
Metaman
Many diverse types of transhumans will be dependant on Metaman (the cultural superorganism)
There will be widespread Birth control
Because of increasing intelligence, the future increasingly determines the present
Clay Shirky
Cognitive Surplus
With a large enough crowd, unpredictable events become predictable
We have to figure out what our interests are to figure out what technologies will emerge.
We’re going to solve the problem of isolation and belonging.
“Indulgences in feelings of membership and sharing can increase our desire for more connectedness, which increases its expression and so on.”
“Increases in community size, decreases in cost of sharing, and increases in clarity all make knowledge more combinable, and in groups where these characteristics grow, combinability will grow. These three conditions are all magnified by a medium that is global and cheap, and that lets unlimited perfect copies of information spread at will, even among large and physically dispersed groups. Our technological tools for making information globally available and discoverable, by amateurs, at zero marginal cost, thus represent an enormous and positive shock to the combinability of knowledge.”
“Community, Cost and Clarity aren’t enough. The fourth is culture. Community members have to understand each other in order to work or share together well.”
“A community of practice is more about maintaining the cultural norms that hold the community together than about preserving any bit of knowledge the community holds. Knowledge in such communities often changes, but the cultural commitment to the work must remain in place.”
“We are terrible at predicting our own future behavior” (we might be getting better at predicting external things, but not at predicting what we will do.”
Max Tegmark
Life 3.0
Howard Bloom
The Global Brain
Peter Russell
The Global Brain Awakens
Increasing Wisdom and Eastern Enlightenment
Eckhart Tolle
A New Earth
Increasing Wisdom and Eastern Enlightenment
Nikolai Fyodorov
The Common Cause
Sri Aurobindo
Progress towards the Supermind
Nietzsche
Dante
Rumi
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