Brain dump: What the world is going through
Instead of being mad at the messed up things in the world, we should look at the man-made systems that led to these broken things, and choose if we wanna: 1. fix those systems, or 2. adopt non-man-made systems.
Option 1 and the likes of it (creating or choosing better different man-made systems) isn’t feasible, according to Marvin Minsky. He said quite certainly that we’re not smart enough to do fix our economy, education, governance, healthcare, terrorism issues, culture, and etc. and we won’t be, ever, because they’re too complex.
Regarding non-man-made systems I have a whole long text here if you’re wondering what’s out there. But the TLDR is that we’ve received an education that tells us to only trust what we see, and non-man-made systems are often everything but that.
So we’re being set up for a bottom-up discovery journey in which we reinvent wheels, rant and chant, become an activist but never a sufficiently helpful change-maker.
More on the “non-man-made systems”
Over the past few centuries, technology has opened people’s eyes to more than what they were once exposed to, but the world’s economy and education and governance paradigms weren’t prepared deliberately and methodically adapt to that sudden increased exposure.
Consequently, today we have more dots to connect in one lifetime than all our ancestors did, combined. However, we don’t have as many man-made models and paths that help us connect these dots. So then we face 2 choices: 1. there’s this top-down program called religion that claims to be the ultimate connector of the dots, no matter what and when, 2. and there’s us: me who can go on a bottom-up mission to connect as many dots as we can in our lifetime, or if we’re really clever, try to discover and package “the right” lifestyle so that other people can live it, too.
Whether we’re clever or just humans, this is learning by trial and error. Most people don’t pick option 1 because it’s not perceived as a cool thing and life is generally too short for option 2, so we’re constantly torn between living the moment and having a sense of empathy for what’s next; for us; for others; for the environment.
But why is religion perceived as uncool, even if it offers a methodical plan to deal everything that the world has ever gone through?
It’s easy to explain this to anyone who understands object oriented programming. Religion is an abstract class. Arguably, it has all the methods that we need, even the ones that we don’t yet know we need. And remember, the thing about an abstract class is, we don’t run/execute it; we implement it, and then we can run it; and we don’t implement it once. We implement it iteratively as we go.
In the case of religion, every instance in which religion failed a society was when a state tried to run a society using the direct methods of religion, rather than implementing them based on time-relevant requirements.
Now, it doesn’t and shouldn’t matter who can code and who can’t.
The question that matters is, how many people are educated and wired to look at a broken outcome, and question the system that created that outcome, instead of questioning the outcome itself?
How many people are educated to see that difference and to adopt models that lead to better outcomes, instead of taking on failure-driven approaches? I’m gonna throw a wild guess and say less than 10% of the population. The other 90% include both religious and non-religious people.
Bad education is universal, too.
I’m not an elitist, just blessed to have gotten a good education; and if you’re thinking I’m referring to my Computer Science education, I’m not. I acquired my thinking abilities at high school in my theology, calculus, geometry, algebra and Persian literature classes.
This is what drives me to wanna build the world’s next education system over the next 30 years.
References:
“life is generally too short for option 2”
Marvin Minsky one of the AI pioneers help you see objectively why that’s the case, in this video: https://www.ted.com/talks/marvin_minsky_health_and_the_human_mind?language=en
“today we have more dots to connect in one lifetime than all our ancestors did, combined”
watched this Joe Rogan Podcast episode with a guy who lived a nomadic life in a jungle in Russia for some years. He goes deep into the daily routines of that primitive life, and how limited your options in life are (not in a bad way, in fact he said people there are extremely happier because of that). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrCNpDigVxA
Some inspirations:
Net positive societies and lifestyles
Tom Chi, ex Google X inventor says ants consume 3x more than humans but they dont damage the planet because they add to earth more than they take away from it. In other words, they’re net positive and we’re not. He goes on and shares some thoughts on creating truly sustainable societies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DnJxnEXB1g
A 3rd model for the world
IMHO, the biggest threat to that net positive goal is the idea of profit maximisation, something that religion has had a good plan for dealing with “There should be neither harming nor reciprocating harm.” In other words, an economy in which you don’t aim for max gains or min outcome, but min loss mutually.
https://islam.stackexchange.com/questions/55935/what-is-meaning-of-these-hadith/55938#55938
has it been implemented by any states ever? No.
