Contours of can’t-be-evil futures
Four Futures
We are in a moment where the future is both wildly exciting and highly uncertain. The future state and greatest opportunities are likely determined by the axes: rate of advancement and the openness of the frontier models.
Perpetual futures, explained
Capital efficiency for pros, leverage for bettors, rich yields for market makers, and a dangerous failure mode.
How to Future
A good futurist focuses on the 3 time phases: past, present, future.
THE CALIFORNIAN IDEOLOGY by Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron | Imaginary Futures
“Not to lie about the future is impossible and one can lie about it at will” – Naum Gabo [1]
Prophecy And Future Coding
Preface: On Prophecy and the Search for Certainty in an Age of Reflexive Time
Reality Blind - Vol. 1
Integrating the Systems Science Underpinning Our Collective Futures
From risk to flourishing: Seeds for responding to a complex world
Flourishing is the actualization of all beings toward their good -- not only individually but collectively, answering the question of `how do we live well with and for each other?'. In science as in society, the tendency to reduce, segregate, specialize, and settle has precluded embracing the concept of flourishing as a guiding principle. We aim to identify an approach to risk science research that promotes the flourishing of socio-ecological-technological systems (SETS). We discuss the normative role of an orientation toward flourishing for the field of risk science. We explore the possibility that (risk) science could be done in a way that is capable of pointing society toward a different future, one more resilient and more capable of flourishing. Our exploration mirrors the conversational nature of flourishing itself: examine ideologies traditionally believed to be rigidly in opposition and consider what emerges in the space(s) and conversation between them. We call this a dialectical approach. Within this paradigm grounded in conversation, pluralism, and pragmatism, we revisit three longstanding tensions in risk science: physical$|$social, determinism$|$uncertainty, contextuality$|$generality. Although these tensions are not new, revisiting them together through the lens of complexity science, and with explicit attention to the normative commitments that shape risk research, reveals underexplored possibilities for the field. Examining them in conversation with the other allows us to explore the provisional seeds for what might be termed complex risk science: interdependence, responsivity, participation, pluralism, openness, and ongoingness. Enacting the dialectical paradigm towards a risk science for a flourishing world will depend on creating collectives toward complex risk science, supporting them with skillfully governed commons, and centering care in our research.
How are we writing the future of humanity?
Consciousness spinning
The Future of Everything is Lies, I Guess: Where Do We Go From Here?
This is a long article, so I've broken it up into a series of posts, listed below. You can also read the full work as a PDF or EPUB.
The Expert Trap and the Next War
what forecasting failure tells us about the future
The Intelligence Curse
This series examines the incoming crisis of human irrelevance and provides a map towards a future where people remain the masters of their destiny.
Our Future Is Being Devoured By Feral Thought Experiments
Here's a chance to start taking it back.
The Human Condition: Second Edition
A classic work of political thought, more relevant today than ever The twenty-first century has seen a resurgence of interest in the political thinker Hannah Arendt, “the theorist of beginnings,” whose work probes the logics underlying unexpected transformations—from totalitarianism to revolution. A work of striking originality, The Human Condition is in many respects more relevant now than when it first appeared in 1958. In her study of the state of modern humanity, Hannah Arendt considers humankind from the perspective of the actions of which it is capable. The problems Arendt identified then—diminishing human agency and political freedom, the paradox that as human powers increase through technological and humanistic inquiry, we are less equipped to control the consequences of our actions—continue to confront us today. This new edition, published to coincide with the sixtieth anniversary of its original publication, contains Margaret Canovan’s 1998 introduction and a new foreword by Danielle Allen. A classic in political and social theory, The Human Condition is a work that has proved both timeless and perpetually timely.
