Maybe it’s that he’s near the end, but there is no filter here. He goes back 100K years when humans started destroying major species and brings it up the nuclear age and AGW. He’s responding to something that I need to look up, but the sweeping condemnation of human greed is the theme.
It’s self reflective too, musing on human nature and the question of Fermi’s paradox, does intelligent life being with the power to destroy itself without the wisdom to stop it?
Okay so listening to him, to summarize, self-absorbed and self-serving is an accurate reduction of our human experience. Or?
Our disregard for this planet that created us, will have consequences.
American citizens give up on our democracy and allowed the decades long, mega-corporate hostile take over of our government with barely a peep.
Kennedy assassination, Texas oil solidifying their global real-politic power.
Nixon laying the ground work for things to come.
Reagan dirty tricks to ensure the rationalist science respecting Jimmy Carter loses. Long live Profits Über People.
Republican Party making bedfellows of Evangelical Christians - Too many Christians imagined themselves in a literal war against rational, progressive, science based, evolution respecting people.
Too much is never enough.
While the public stood by with astounding apathy and disregard, the brainwashing campaigns of Gingrich, Rush, FOX faux news, Murdock, Koch, et. al, GOP took over statehouses and court judgeships across the country.
The Prosperity Gospel ruled and “Progress” became God, honest good faith critical thinking became an enemy - and good times were our reward, no distractions were tolerated. Uncomfortable science required lies and malicious slander to subdue, and that worked with surprising ease.
What happened to respect for honesty and critical thinking?
Here we are. 9:25 - Questions about human nature.
Yes we human have unique talents,
but most still don’t know who they are, so wind up lost within the confines of their own minds.
Self-serving, disregard and apathy towards recognizing our damaging habits.
Noam makes it sound like a grand master plan to disrupt humanity.
I disagree, seems more like it’s simply blind self-serving opportunism
being pursued and let the chips fall where they may.
Fermi paradox mind experiment. Higher intelligence is ultimately self destructive.
And why is that?
Can that be boiled down to some basic character traits that drive how we behave?
Leads the way to what? No answer.
This is where I point out the need to confront the concept of a personal “God” via
recognizing the most fundamental Physical Reality (biology) ~ Human Mind divide.
Accepting the physical reality that our consciousness is produced from within our own body, and is the result of nearly half a billion years of uninterrupted research and development (you could say, read evolution)
I believe that is important because, via a deep appreciation for one’s own body’s development and creation as part of this Earthly “whole” - includes gaining an appreciation for Earth’s Deep Time and the dynamic dance between biology and geology.
Attaining that level of understanding brings with it a profound change in emotional attachments.
I feel connected to Earth and that my very existence hinges on its health.
Therefore I live in a mental emotional partnership with this planet Earth and she is included within my prioritizing and my thinking and decision making process, including time and budget.
Sort of like a young couple making the choice to have a baby or more, that fundamentally priorities one’s time and money for the rest of your life. Those who can’t accept it will have nothing but nightmares. I have five siblings, two have children, guess which three of us are always going on vacations and such. And, we two are good with that, we have these ever growing humans to keep us in awe and life interesting.
It’s like the difference between seeing dogs as things, or connecting with a dog that inevitably turns into a years long relationship, that also makes demands on time and budget, that we bear with grace.
It seems to me, only through that sort of profound shift in human attitudes, and turning mental state of mind away from today’s me, me, me thinking that drives our economy plus all our destructive wars - is any meaning full change possible.
I don’t hear Noam making any suggestions.
Where do we go from here?
The Fermi paradox is a question, something to consider. It’s not something with an answer that can be proven. Yeah, it’s about our basic character, but I don’t know what you mean by “boil down”. We’re complex creatures.
Not surprised you missed that
One thing is sure. Nature itself will resolve the issue if we are a viable species, in spite of our extraordinary intelligence.
We seem to lack the wisdom to restrain our own destructive behavior and natural selection still rules the survival or extinction of species.
Not sure what you mean by viable. We don’t know of any species that are anywhere near our intelligence, size, or complexity that lasted more than a few hundred million years. We don’t know of any species with intelligence like ours. So we don’t have data that says our intelligence is “better”. We made up the idea that we matter to nature. We came up with the reasoning for destroying other living things so that we can move around more and make more of us. Beyond the will to survive, nature doesn’t provide much.
I maintain that our intelligence far outstrips our wisdom. Our intelligence is not the result of a gradual evolution in harmony with Nature. We are a freak of Nature.
I don’t see Gorillas contribute to global warming, or the Whales. But their evolution was gradual and dictated by their environment. The reverse is true with humans.
Where we wander, things begin to die, because our intelligent behavior allows us to affect the environment drastically and all the organisms have no time to adapt.
Except the insect (Hellstrom)
Didn’t question that. I commented on the word “viable”. If wisdom is a virtue that tracks differently from intelligence and can supersede it, then I guess you could say it’s not viable to increase intelligence without increasing wisdom in some equal or greater measure.
It’s a bit circular though, isn’t it? Knowing how wise you need to be to survive is wisdom. I could understand logic says I need to be more wise then choose unwisely because I’m dumb. How do you separate these?
By practising what our intelligence tells us. Think of it.
We know that we are causing global warming and predict a global disaster, while at the same time we are increasing oil production and consumption and dump our wastes in rivers and oceans, killing the very organisms that actually sustain our lives.
All this because we are spoiled and refuse to curtail our wanton ways that use resources without contributing to the health of the planet.
We speak of terra forming of off-world planets while we are destroying the one we live on. Talking about wisdom?
Nah, guess we can all agree on that.
That is, wisdom is a very rare thing indeed.
You pretty much described intelligence, being able to do things, without wisdom, not know which things are the right things to do. Starting with what I said, that survival is the drive, the choices don’t look like they are pointing that way right now.
As a rule, man is a fool
when it’s hot, he wants it cool
when its cool, he wants it hot
always wanting what is not
(Nat King Cole)
7:30 In a sane world, the reaction would be different. We would seize the opportunity to move much more rapidly to sustainable energy and save coming generations from a miserable fate. The temporary problem of inflation … can be overcome … by fiscal measures and more for example turning the fossil fuel producers into a public utility.
What would a recipe be for this “sane world” look like?
Perhaps a better question is, what would be needed for that sort of world? Just for arguments, developing a sort of baseline for how constructive behaviors could be recognized.
To better understanding what we are doing wrong.
This is a running theme through many of my posts. It’s not something I can summarize in a few paragraphs.
How about,
The judicious use (reliance) of renewable resurces and the minimization of use (reliance) on non-renewable resources.
The earth is a closed system with large but not infinite resources.
All its limited resources should be dedicated to the development of renewable resources until we become independent of the non-renewables.
Only then shall we have a sustainable living space.
Listening to this one again. It integrates chemistry, biology, evolution, and more important cultural evolution. One thing I didn’t hear much about us addressing energy limits.
I’m listening to Sean Carroll’s Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas | 255 | Michael Muthukrishna on Developing a Theory of Everyone on Podbean, check it out! https://www.podbean.com/ea/dir-pybpu-1b992004
If you don’t have the app, try searching the title
Some rough notes
32 Bipedalism
43 organic evolution, eukaryotes
Human revolutions
Borlaug
53 equilibrium, broken ideas
1hr populism
When you can’t work harder to get a fair share
I agree. I have always thought renewable energy should be a major part of our energy consumption. Back in the early 1970’s our government used the universities to bury geothermal energy because they wanted nuclear energy.
One of our cleanest renewable resources is dry heat geothermal energy caused by radioactive decay. And it is an infinite resource.
Radioactive decay is a continuous process, meaning the heat generated is constantly replenished, making geothermal energy a renewable resource.
