Social Evolution

Imagine picking up your smartphone one morning to find only two apps: one red one blue. Your smartphone's operating system now only runs these two apps. You'd probably think it sucks.  In the USA, we run on DOS (the democratic operating system) with only two apps. Many fetishize voting and elections, but these have become circuses to go with all the bread. We labor under the illusion that we are “free,” but we have outsourced our primary responsibilities to a corrupt cartel in Washington.  In this episode, Porch and Max discuss the evolution of the Republic, the problems of political power, and the woeful shortcomings of democracy. The fundamental question: can we do better than monopolies on violence? Two-Party System Constitutional Government Separation of Powers - Check & Balances Founding Father of the United States Democratic republic Scapegoating & René Girard Tristan Harris Daniel Schmactenberger The Social Dilemma The Social Singularity by Max Borders First past the post voting American civil religion Campaign finance reform in the United States Tammany Hall Republic, Lost by Lawrence Lessig United States presidential primary Lobbying and special interests Parliamentary system Westphalian sovereignty City-states Settled agriculture and the Neolithic Revolution James C. Scott Theories on the origins of the state James Madison Thomas Hobbes: Moral and Political Philosophy Philosopher King Majoritarian democracy and majority rule Liberal democracy John Rawls and reasonable pluralism Freedom of religion Ninth Amendment to the US Constitution Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution George Mason and Anti-Federalism Consent of the governed Social contract theory Ward republic Territorial expansion of the US Jane Jacobs and the Monstrous Hybrid Bootleggers and Baptists

Are we living through a moral panic about Social Media? Many folks are concerned about misinformation while for others censorship is the main concern. Social media companies seem stuck in a dilemma where they're damned whatever they do. Does the magnitude of the problems measure up to the handwringing on either side? Is our ability to make sense of things lost in this hall of mirrors?  Some argue that algorithms create asymmetries between enfeebled humans and awesome AIs. Others say these concerns are overblown and that partisans are scapegoating social media companies for the failures of legacy governance.  Join us for what turned out to be, in moments, a heated exchange. You will not be bored. Strap in and hang on. (And of course: like, share, and hit subscribe.) The Facebook Files - Wall Street Journal The Social Dilemma Limbic Hijacking Operant conditioning chamber aka “skinner box” Filter Bubble Propaganda by Edward Bernays  “We shape our tools and our tools shape us” Marshall Macluhan Critical Theory A Propoganda Model by Noam Chomsky B.F.  Skinner Blank Slate Evolutionary Psychology IQ and susceptibility to misinformation Propaganda A/B split testing  Click-through rate Search engine optimization (SEO) Conversion rate optimization (SRO) Online Advertising networks and Ad exchanges Unexplainability and Incomprehensibility of AI GPT-3 RSS Newsreader Moral panic Steel Man Argument Viral phenomenon Hooked: How to Build Habit Forming Products by Nir Eyal Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life also by Nir Eyal Nudge theory Clickbait NPR Bias Instagram in the News: Mental Health Risks for Teen Girls Conspiracy theory Internet meme Political polarization Understanding the Blue Church by Jordan Hall A brief explanation of the cathedral by Curtis Yarvin The Prussion Welfare State High modernism Technocracy FDR's Fireside Chats Psychographic segmentation Facebook needs, wants, must have regulation, Zuckerberg says Regulatory capture Deregulation of the Radio Broadcast Industry Big 3 TV Networks Walter Cronkite Citizen journalism Cyperphunk manifesto Socrates on writing Print and the persecution of witches Spiral Dynamics Plato's Authoritarianism Public choice theory Platonism Relativism Rawls' Reasonable Pluralism Daniel Schmactenberger Occam's Razor Lab-leak vs zoonotic origins of SARS-Cov-2 Crony Capitalism Chinese Communist Party - The Great Firewall Elizabeth Warren Call on Facebook to Stop the Deliberate Spread of Disinformation Frances Haugen The Hypocrisy of The Social Dilemma Tristan Harris Cambridge Analytica Controversy Sensemaking in the Era of Authoritarian Media by Max Borders Hot to make your iphone black & white Less Wrong Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters by Steven Pinker Sequences by Eliezar Yudkowsky Critical thinking The dubious rise of ivermectin as a Covid-19 treatment, explained by Kelsey Piper Bayesian inference The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth by Jonathan Rauch CGP Grey Kurzgezagt Prediction Market Distributed ledger & blockchain Falsifiability Open Science

From Skynet to Singularitarian fantasy, AI is back in vogue with much hype and hand-wringing. Mainstream media don't really know how to talk about it in a way that brings as much light as heat. In fact, even AI researchers have difficulty unpacking concepts like, well, intelligence. Philosophers stand by with critical eyes. Michael and Max talk about the stickier issues as they try to find footing in a fog of mystery and misinformation. What is cognition? What are morals? Are we recreating conscious minds or just spinning out more sophisticated algorithms? Such questions linger as the industry speeds along, whether or not we have ready answers. Conversations like this help us burn the proverbial candle at both ends. Artificial Intelligence Intelligence Boston Dynamics dog Spot A Collection of Definitions of Intelligence by Marcus Hutter and Shane Legg Metalhead episode of Black Mirror with killer robot dogs Instrumental Rationality Intelligence Quotient and g factor the psychometric of general human intelligence Multiple Intelligences and developmental psychologist, Howard Gardner Technological Singularity The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil Exponential growth Symposium: 'Will Spiritual Robots Replace Humanity?' on April 1st, 2000 Why the Future Doesn't Need Us by Bill Joy GPT-3 an AI text generator Moore's law Moore's Law is not dead and AI is ready to explode IJ “Jack” Good and the Intelligence Explosion FAQ AlphaGo project from DeepMind at Google Lee Sedol AlphaZero project from Deepmind  Thomas Thwaites: How I built a toaster - from scratch I, Pencil by Leonard Read 2001 A Space Odyssey Terminator Dystopia “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.” — Stewart Brand Stuart J. Russell The myth of King Midas and the curse of his Golden Touch The Sorcerer's Apprentice Paperclip Maximizer Superintelligence Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom Descartes Errror and The Feeling of What Happens and the somatic marker hypothesis from Antonio Damasio The Elephant and the Rider from Jonathan Haidt Dual process theory — System 1 & System 2 The prefrontal cortex Reinforcement learning Skinner box Playing Atari with Deep Reinforcement Learning Neocortex Cortical column How to Create a Mind by Ray Kurzweil On Intelligence: How a New Understanding of the Brain will Lead to the Creation of Truly Intelligent Machines by Jeff Hawkins Predictive model of the brain B. F. Skinner and behaviorism Noam Chomsky and the cognitive revolution Neural networks Machine learning Writing Successful Reward Functions Search engine Image classifier Homeostasis Instrumental Convergence, the orthogonality thesis, and the superintelligent will Externalities The Chinese Room Argument from John Searle Oracle AI Deep Learning Artificial general intelligence AI safety conference in Puerto Rico Tristan Harris Iason Gabriel on Foundational Philosophical Questions in AI Alignment with Future of Life Institute Morality, ethics, and meta-ethics Moral anti-realism Justice as Fairness by John Rawls AI Alignment Problem, aka, the Control Problem Ethics of technology “We shape our tools and our thereafter our tools shape us” Daniel Schmactenberger Laws of Robotics Friendly AI Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control by Stuart J. Russell Asliomar AI Principles Complexity Darwin Machine Universal Darwinism The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values by Brian Christian Moral Constructivism Blockchain Decentralization Code is Law by Lawrence Lessig Nudge theory from Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein Spiral Dynamics John Nash and game theor David Gauthier and social contract theory of morality Ahimsa The Golden Rule John Stuart Mill No-harm principle Categorical imperative from Immanuel Kant Negative Utilitarianism Communicative rationality from Jürgen Habermas Hippocratic oath Mutually assured destruction Warrior monk Non-attachment Desire Biofeedback Social reality Network effect Brain-computer interface Agent-based models and simulations Why deep-learning AIs are so easy to fool Moravec's Paradox aka “the hard things are easy and the easy things are hard” Adversarial machine learning Deduction vs. Induction vs. Abduction AI Winter & hype-cycle Common Sense Creativity Analogy and Analogical Reasoning Inference to the best explanation aka abductive inference aka hypothesis generation Cognitive science Competitive vs. Complementary Cognitive Artifacts

Higher states of consciousness, whether through psychedelics or meditative practice, straddle the cognitive and the sacred. As we enter a “psychedelic renaissance,” we must do so not in a bacchanalian frenzy, but with respect and discernment. Michael and Max explore their personal experiences as well as the value of higher states in both personal transformation and contemporary life. Removing taboos around psychedelic substances, which are still illegal in most jurisdictions, starts with frank discussions around risks, benefits, and the need for wisdom. Psychedelics Entheogen Ego death Set and Setting Psychological Shadow Varieties of Religious Experience by William James Vedanta Ahimsa The Immortality Key by Brian C. Muraresku Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan The Psychedelic Renaissance Appolonian and Dionysian Eleusinian Mysteries Phenomenology The Omega Point and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin Terrence McKenna Omega Point Where do ideas come from? with Alan Moore Imagination and Hypothesis generation Adult Development Second Tier Mystical Experiences Nondualism Model of hierarchical complexity Is stage theory BS? - Nora Bateson

Consciousness is a central feature of our humanity, yet consciousness is a mystery. Conscious experience comprises every aspect of our waking lives, yet we have a hard time explaining its nature. We know that our brains and bodies are made up of energy and matter. We also know that if we get a big bonk on the head, we can disturb the energy and matter in such a way as to LOSE consciousness. So what is the nature of the relationship between mental properties (such as itchy feeling) and physical properties (such as firing neurons)? For millennia, humans have been trying to bridge this ‘explanatory gap.' And as we enter the age of AI, questions about the nature of consciousness will become more relevant as we create artificial beings who will think and feel like us.  Artificial Intelligence Sentience Bishop Berkeley (Idealism) The Technological Singularity Phenomenal Consciousness Qualia Animal Consciousness Reductionism Physicalism Subjective/Objective Distinction Epistemology Mental Properties Grits Causal completeness/closure The Explanatory Gap “What it is Like to be a Bat?"”  Cartesian Theater Nanotechnology Penrose Microtubules Cartesian Dualism  Eliminativism  Paul and Patricia Churchland Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennet Conscious by Annaka Harris The Conscious Mind by David Chalmers Folk Psychology Causal Overdetermination Emergentism Panpsychism I Am a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter What is it like to be a Thermostat? Multiple Drafts Theory Recursion Fractals fMRIs Complexity and Consciousness Substrate Independence Emulation Ems (Emulation) - The Age of Em by Robin Hanson Agnosticism Conscious Universe Panpsychism Redux (Porcelli's Page!) The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra Wilber's Quantum Questions Dancing Wu Li Masters Interdependent Co-arising (Pratītyasamutpāda) Indra's Net Vedanta Mythopoetic Thought Phenomenology Meditation Edmund Husserl Naturalism Psychonautics Physicalism Paradigm Shift and Thomas Kuhn Ineffability Epistemic Status of Unobservable Entities

The greatest innovation since the printing press is here. The trouble is, it's a threat to the old Westphalian order: digital ledger technologies (DLTs), like bitcoin: aka “crypto.” The supplicants of the old order have a lot at stake in the status quo, so a war is coming. Michael and Max spend this episode talking about the idea of crypto as money, going back through a little bit of history, then rocketing back to the future to discuss the implications for humanity. To what extent can we disintermediate using crypto? To what extent will humanity be able to create cloud governance that challenges the old order? Nobody knows, but it's important to speculate. Indeed, we must set out a vision of possibilities for crypto, because there is so much promise in this evolving ecosystem.  Cryptocurrency Distributed Ledger Technology Bitcoin Ethereum Blockchain Distributed Application (DApp) Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace by Lawrence Lessig The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988)by Timothy May A Cypherpunk's Manifesto (1993) by Eric Hughes David Chaum Nick Szabo Wei Dai Hal Finney Cypherpunk Freedom of Association Common Law Code of Justinian DigiCash, ECash, BitGold  Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System by Satoshi Nakamoto Fiat Money Reserve Currency Central Bank Neolithic Revolution Moneychangers James C. Scott Temple / Palace Economy Usury  Medieval Antisemitism  Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes Middleman or Intermediary Interest Investment Banking Financial Crisis of 2007-2008 Occupy Wall Street Money Subjective Theory of Value Price Mechanism Goldbuggery Bitcoin Maximalism Cryptography Miracle of Wörgl Velocity of Money John Maynard Keynes Time Banking, Local Exchange Trading System, Mutual Credit Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein Bancor Ludwig von Mises Friederich Hayek Bretton Woods Conference and System Peter Zeihan Virtual currencies Deficit spending Standing army Inflation Inflation hedge The Big Short by Michael Lewis Cooperative Network effect Metcalfe's Law Hyperinflation FOMO VisiCalc Technology adoption lifecycle Institutional investor Coinbase Regulatory capture Cartelization Securities and Exchange Commission How we Become the Social Safety Net by Max Borders Mutual societies Welfare state Trustless system Art Brock and Holochain  Open access network Consensus mechanism Tezos On-chain governance Butterfly effect Real estate Rivalry in Economics Plutocracy Oligopoly Hobbesian trap Bureaucracy Democracy Feedback loop Crypto anarchism The Vanguard Group Credit Union Polyarchy Panarchy Polycentric law

Billions of people worldwide are trying to track the truth. And yet we are living in a hall of mirrors. Whether it's admonitions to “trust the experts” or headlines that read “Science says…” it's too easy to forget that human beings have epistemic limits. We are all trapped in our subjective selves. We come with biases. And in our search for truth we sometimes have to appeal to authorities who are just as human as we are. In this brave new world of narrative warfare, we must reckon with the fact that tracking the truth (nevermind arriving at collective intelligence) is a tough, dirty business. In this episode, we seek the wisdom to know our limitations and the courage to track the truth despite them.

We are evolved beings. In fact, we're more or less the same species we were 100,000 years ago. Yet, as individuals, we continue to develop until we die—as individuals and as cultural groups. Theories of adult development such as those proposed by Abraham Maslow, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Clare Graves are making a comeback. In this episode of Social Evolution, Michael and Max talk about the delicate interplay of nature and nurture. Then they discuss Spiral Dynamics, a popular “theory of everything,” which weaves together a number of threads in “bio-psycho-social” development.  Biological Evolution Darwinism Fitness landscape Limits to cognition Long tail of excellence  Evolved Cuteness: Dan Dennett Neuroplasticity Outliers Egalitarianism 10,000 hours Adult Developmental Psychology Nabokov's Lolita Language Acquisition and Age Spiral Dynamics Claire Graves Beck and Cowen Dunbar's Number Animism Magical Thinking “They worshipped strength, because it is strength that makes all other values possible.” Daimyo Hobbes's Leviathan James C. Scott: The state as protection racket Against the Grain Duty Hierarchy Great Chain of Being Magna Carta Galileo Baconian Methodology From Mercantilism to Markets Jean-Jacques Rousseau Counter Enlightenment & Romanticism “Everybody get together try to love one another right now” Hippies The Sixties Consensus Cultural relativism Postmodernism Critical theory Ken Wilber Jürgen Habermas Charles Dickens Das Kapital - Karl Marx Trust Busting & Progressive Era Childhood labor laws Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States Frankfurt School - Max Horkheimer, Max Weber Speak truth to power Culture war Noble Savage Traditionalism Islamism Sharia Catholic Integrism Ted Kaczynski Tree Structure Evolution before Darwin Tree of Life Stephen Jay Gould Lawrence Kohlberg  Robert Kegan Cognitive complexity Either/or fallacy and All-or-nothing thinking Cognitive bias Complex Systems Multifactorial causation of behavior Bayesian epistemology Black swan theory and Nassim Taleb Unknown Unknowns Integral Theory Emergence Epistemic humility Second Tier Thinking Holonic Apotheosize Cultural Evolution & Sociocultural Evolution Comparative religion Animal domestication & selective breeding & coevolution Bird and crocodile & cleaning symbiosis  Self-domestication Transhumanism, genetic engineering, & CRISPR James Mark Baldwin Baldwin effect Cognitive Stratification The Flynn Effect Daniel Kish, “bat boy” & human echolocation Biofeedback Accelerated learning Elysium The Time Machine by H.G. Wells Metamodernism Gautama Buddha Thomas Aquinas Gottfried Leibniz Emily Dickenson Enneagram of Personality

Since humans roamed in paleolithic clan groups, humans have arranged themselves in different ways in order to coordinate. New forms of organization continue to emerge to this day. Max Borders and Michael Porcelli have a deeper look at these organizational forms, where they come from, and where they could be going. The hosts peer through the lenses of institutional rules, culture, as well as the technologies that enable different forms. The upshot? Insights about these rapidly evolving forms could be the most important lessons humanity has to learn so as to reckon with the onrush of complexity. Notes: Organization Eight metaphors of organization Hunter-gatherers Prosocial behavior and Eusociality Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society by Nicholas Christakis Paleolithic - the era of hunter-gatherer society Neolithic Revolution - the transition to settled agrarian society Hierarchical organization Institution Constitutional Documents - the legalistic definition of an organization Corporate governance  Capitalization Table Business Entity Types and 501(c)(3) Organization Exogenous and Endogenous Dutch East India Company and British East India Company Juridical Person and Corporate Personhood Carrot and stick Protection racket Profit motive Biological Thermodynamics Entropy Social Organization: The Thermodynamic Basis by Adrian Bejan, et al. How physics explains the evolution of social organization Blood vessels and the Aorta Tree structure Dunbar number Jeff Bezos and Amazon.com The Nature of the Firm by Ronald Coase and Transaction Costs,   Holacracy Property rights Org chart Workplace politics Buck passing Political decay Executive function Decision fatigue Biological bases of conformity Biological cases of hierarchy Employment Organizational structure Visionary entrepreneurship Intrapreneurship Corporate values Processing tensions in holacracy Corporate culture The HP Way Emergent culture Ouja board Peter Drucker Globalization Cultural relativism / pluralism  Metarelating practice Clearing the air Weaving shared reality Diversity, equity, and inclusion “Dismantling” racism at work “Dismantling” patriarchy at work Technical debt and organizational debt Cosmopolitanism Information Technology, Telecommunication, Databases Cryptocurrency and distributed ledger Smart contract Disintermediation Distributed Autonomous Organization (DAO) Forking the code Bitcoin and Ethereum BTC, BCH, BSV Reduced transaction costs Economies of scale Client server model Amazon Web Services Decentralized web Cosmos and Taxis by Friedrich Hayek After Collapse: The End of America and the Rebirth of Her Ideals Economic planning Emergent order Taylorism and Fordism Teal organization Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage in Human Consciousness by Frédéric Laloux

Our imaginations are fonts of apocalyptic thinking--from the ancients seers to contemporary doomsday preppers, end-times cultists, and think tanks dedicated to studying existential risk. It seems there's an end-times prophecy to suit any proclivity. Worries about human-caused cataclysms are gaining steam, including climate change, CRISPR, and superintelligent AI gone bad. Does the proliferation of dangerous exponential technologies require interventions such as “turnkey totalitarianism”? Or does trust in such great power bring catastrophic risks of its own? Join Max Borders and Michael Porcelli as they dive into these questions and even get a bit personal about why they each care about such matters. After Collapse by Max Borders Eschatology Commitment device Delayed Gratification Survivalism Collapsitarians The Technological Singularity Posthumanism Transhumanism Matrioshka Brain Thomas Malthus Malthusian Catastrophe The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich The Club of Rome and The Limits to Growth Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond Stewart Brand Kevin Kelly The Long Now Foundation Julian Simon The Simon-Ehrlich Wager Climate Change Bright Green vs. Dark Green Environmentalism Jim Bendall Dematerialization and Ephemeralization More From Less by Andrew McAfee Global Catastrophic Risk Nick Bostrom Turnkey Totalitarianism Future of Humanity Institute (see also Future of Life Institute and Centre for the Study of Existential Risk) Vulnerable World Thesis COVID-19 Biohacking CRISPR Incel Drake Equation Fermi Paradox Great Filter Existential risk from artificial general intelligence The Precipice by Toby Ord Jordan Hall Prometheus Democide Daniel Schmachtenberger Jim Rutt Nonviolence and Ahimsa Black Mirror episode San Junipero Decentralization Cryptocurrency Multicellular Life Ludwig von Mises Holon Mussolini and Fascism Central Nervous System Cancer Holacracy Flash Crash Systemic Risk Hobbesian Trap Race to the Bottom Red Queen Effect Immune System Cybersecurity Cyberwarfare Mutually Assured Destruction Black Swan Theory SolarWinds Hack Coordination Problems The Blue Church by Jordan Hall Walter Cronkite FUBAR Anthony Fauci Daniel Dennett Future generations (posterity) Transcendental Argument Sentience Moral Agency Ethical Constructivism Pascal's Wager Postmodern Condition The Road by Cormac McCarthy Ted Kaczinski Spiral Dynamics Catastrophizing Cognitive Distortions Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Extinction Rebellion Effective Altruism Will MacAskill Flagellant Modern Stoicism Virtues Polyphasic Sleep Ken Wilber Truth, Goodness, and Beauty Post-Truth OODA Loop and John Boyd

What is social evolution? We wield tremendous powers of transformation: culture, technology, and institutions. From the mists of our primordial past up to the dazzling civilizations of the present, the natural world has shaped us as a species. As the process of social evolution unfolds, we find both promise and peril. And that process is accelerating. In this episode, Michael Porcelli and Max Borders set the stage for what comes next.