How Should Humanity Steer the Future?

[Yeti101]

Came across this via Motherboard - "How Should Humanity Steer the Future?"

Basically it's an essay competition about (you guessed it) what humanity can and/or should aim for in the future and how that might be achievable. Cash prizes for the best 18 essays!

I. GOALS & INTENT

The goals of the Foundational Questions Institute's Essay Contest (the "Contest") are to:

• Encourage and support rigorous, innovative, and influential thinking connected with foundational questions;

• Identify and reward top thinkers in foundational questions; and,

• Provide an arena for discussion and exchange of ideas regarding foundational questions.

For examples of previous FQXi contests, please see the list to the left.


II. EVALUATION CRITERIA

An expert panel of judges will be instructed (and general readers strongly encouraged) to rate the entries by the degree to which they are relevant and interesting, as more specifically described below, with 1/3 weight given to relevancy and 2/3 weight given to interest.

• Relevant: The theme for this Essay Contest is: "How Should Humanity Steer the Future?".

• Dystopic visions of the future are common in literature and film, while optimistic ones are more rare. This contest encourages us to avoid potentially self-fulfilling prophecies of gloom and doom and to think hard about how to make the world better while avoiding potential catastrophes.
  
  Our ever-deepening understanding of physics has enabled technologies and ways of thinking about our place in the world that have dramatically transformed humanity over the past several hundred years. Many of these changes have been difficult to predict or control—but not all.
  
  In this contest we ask how humanity should attempt to steer its own course in light of the radically different modes of thought and fundamentally new technologies that are becoming relevant in the coming decades.
  
  Possible topics or sub-questions include, but are not limited to:

  • What is the best state that humanity can realistically achieve?

  • What is your plan for getting us there? Who implements this plan?

  • What technology (construed broadly to include practices and techniques) does your plan rely on? What are the risks of those technologies? How can those risks be mitigated?

  (Note: While this topic is broad, successful essays will not use this breadth as an excuse to shoehorn in the author's pet topic, but will rather keep as their central focus the theme of how humanity should steer the future.)
  
  Additionally, to be consonant with FQXi's scope and goals, essays should be sure to touch on issues in physics and cosmology, or closed related fields, such as astrophysics, biophysics, mathematics, complexity and emergence, and the philosophy of physics.

• Interesting: An interesting essay is:

  • Original and Creative: Foremost, the intellectual content of the essay must push forward understanding of the topic in a fresh way or with new perspective. While the essay may or may not constitute original research, if the core ideas are largely contained in published works, those works should be the author's. At the same time, the entry should differ substantially from any previously published piece by the author.

  • Technically correct and rigorously argued, to the degree of a published work or grant proposal.

  • Well and clearly written, so that it is comprehensible and enjoyable to read.

  • Accessible to a diverse, well-educated but non-specialist audience, aiming in the range between the level of Scientific American and a review article in Science or Nature.

I'm thinking of entering, but I also have a higher degree to finish by July, so I might be too busy being a fist-chewing ball of stress. That said, it might give me something to do at night since I'm not sleeping so much anyway. I would love to see people from this community have a crack at it - put something in that the judges won't expect.

The competition aside, I think it's a pretty good topic for discussion. What do you think is the best future humanity can achieve (or hope for) and how could we get there? What technology (if any) would this be based upon? Most importantly (and I think this a glaring omission on the part of the essay comp organizers) what attitudes or beliefs are going to get us there?

Edit: just in case you missed the link: http://www.fqxi.org/community/essay

Edited February 19, 2014 by Yeti101

[-RC-]

Good luck, and I look forward to reading your contribution

[quarterflesh]

Abolishing religion should clear up most of the worlds problems in one fowl sweep.

[DiscoStu]

Abolishing religion should clear up most of the worlds problems in one fowl sweep.

how can you abolish a belief system? besides, countering authoritarianism with harsher authoritarianism isn't an answer.

[Dreamwalker.]

but there's nobody steering this thing........................

[ThunderIdeal]

i'm fairly optimistic that civilisation/s can overcome problems when they try, as long as theres about ten good folk for every fifteen assholes.

however, we've created more problems than we can deal with in time. maybe if government led the charge, but government takes orders from companies who are driven by profit.

honestly i think we are facing catastrophic bullshit and the people steering humanity after the dust settles will be the global elites. that's what i'd do if i was one of those pricks, prevent humanity from steering around destruction so the planet can be necessarily depopulated and me and my cronies will spring from the ashes with all the makings of whatever future we decided to build (with total control over the remaining population, i imagine). hopefully their future earth doesn't revolve around them having total control and living in pointless luxury on the backs of the remaining population. maybe they are genuinely the most visionary members of the species, the most deserving to carry the species onwards to whatever... i sorta doubt it.

i really AM an optimist, that just seems like the way its headed.

[ThunderIdeal]

so i guess my answer is that humanity is already steering the future, but when i say humanity i don't mean us plebians or even the organisations we nominate to lead us.

if you want any say whatsoever in the future then concentrate on surviving (productive well-equipped rural property) but expect to take orders from your new self-proclaimed nobility IT MAKES ME SO ANGRY heheh. whatever. australians have a proud history of begrudging the man because he's a useless short-sighted control freak. i sincerely hope no one group ever controls the species, no matter who it is. WE ALL HAVE THE ABILITY TO BRING FORTH GOOD AND BAD QUALITIES, so if my prediction comes true it's probably not a good thing, no matter what their intentions. it seems like such an obvious mistake to make "these other groups can't be trusted to share our goals, we must subdue them for everyone's benefit. we can't have these rogues doing their own thing, clearly its in everyone's benefit that things be done our way"

latest rap news. seems appropriate.

 

Edited February 19, 2014 by ThunderIdeal

[Dreamwalker.]

I'm not so optimistic.........................there's a handful of psychopaths not steering humanity to a utopia ......but rather fighting amongst themselves...........fighting to be 'king of the castle'...................(there's an instinctive reason kids play such games........some kids never grow up........in a bad way)......................so each psychopath grabs the wheel..............for a moment before the next psychopath pushes in for a turn.........................utter fucking chaos..........................

and this is what happens.................stand by for a real Indian disaster............ http://phys.org/news/2014-02-greens-alarmed-floodgates-indian-industrialists.html " Greens alarmed as floodgates open for Indian industrialists"

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-02-greens-alarmed-floodgates-indian-industrialists.html#jCp

India is hopeless...corrupt.....inefficient......................the Chinese skrewed up 4000 years of landscape planning....................with a few decades of industrialisation........... and the Chinese are pretty clued up........................ok they make crap...(don't they all)...but they do it well........................India's landscape/environment is about to be apocalyptic....as if their rivers weren't polluted enough ..................the death of the Indian ocean will follow...................

Edited October 18, 2014 by Dreamwalker.

[Bigred]

We are consumers pretty much everyone on the planet. Gone are the days of the family vegie patch and orange tree.

We need to teach people to be sustainable with power foods etc . As i see the future of farming in Australia really

taking a turn for the worst ( ie current supermarket price wars) .If more people had community gardens with

large scale aquaculture and chickens and cows etc imagine what people diets would be like . This is a major

problem that needs steering is the obesity epidemic peoples diet's are high in processed foods. Never before

in history have we ever consumed so many trans fats and other bad chemicals to flavor foods . We need to find

a sustainable way of producing foods and energy and be responsible with our foods and energies .

Also Thorium energies are amazing I think we should steer our energies to solar and use small thorium reactors

for shipping

[-RC-]

I have just been thinking about shrooms and the reptilian brain, so entertain me for a moment.

I once had a pronounced serpent vision one night, sort of like an uncoiling if you will, and I now believe that it has a bit more of a message for me.

Most of us have had some sort of fear-based experience with shrooms (generalisation I know, and I stand ready to be contradicted by the more hardened psychonauts out there) and I'm beginning to think that it is a response of the ego in concert with the reptilian brain (perhaps no revelation to anyone here)

When you 'experience' ur-reality, or reality at large if you will, you are in it so to speak. The moment your ego becomes aware of this it initiates a response in the reptilian brain, i.e. fear. "Oh no, ego-death, consciousness has snuck past me somehow and I want to have my say back"

The reason I bring this up is that I feel MOST of the economic/corporate decision making apparatus apparent in our world are based in/on the reptilian brain, as in "ME, MINE, NOW, FEAR, AGGRESSION, ATTACK, DEFEND, DOMINATE, ACQUIRE/POSSESS"

If we are to somehow transcend this situation we need to understand that, although we are highly intelligent, our intelligence does not necessarily provide us solely with with the means of our salvation. Inner work, expansion of consciousness and awareness, knowledge of self/self mastery is ESSENTIAL to avoid further reptilian/primitive decision making continuing into the future.

And honesty for fuck sake. When did honesty of vulnerability and ignorance become such a rare thing? "I don't know everything, and I am fairly easily hurt and impacted by the devastation and rape of our planet, because I am part of it, and it is part of me"

Not that hard surely? Any pol-lie-tician who could bring their reptilian brain in to order enough to utter such a thing would have SOME of my respect... maybe

[ThunderIdeal]

no matter what happens, i think we're the first earth species responsible for a significant extinction event (coming soon to your nearest planet).

bacteria might have caused one, but prove it. you can't. bacteria definitely can't. this will be the first confirmed case. first we proved to ourselves that evolution is more feasible than some other crazy nonsense. then we proved it to all of the other species!

now will the aliens say hello? surely we've proven that we're the superior species of this planet.

a comet might try to steal our thunder. when we do a lap of the galaxy there are two places that are most likely to gravitationally disturb the oort cloud and send comets flying around. during the last lap both of these areas coincided with one of the six mass extinctions, 65 and 255 million years ago. we're passing through one of these zones now so comet likelihood is high.

actually i wonder if a nice collision might counteract the global warming with a couple million million ton of dirt blocking the sun?

[-YT-]

expect to take orders from your new self-proclaimed nobility

Finally ill be able to make the peasants swear blood oaths of servitude/obedience and invoke the right of jus primae noctis.

Perhaps a return to more traditionalist type world not in terms of some outdated feudalism but more localized economies where people grow there own food / make there own products etc which would in turn breed a greater sense of community ( i would hope haha ) but then again mammon's reach into the hearts of all men spans far and wide so maybe it would degrade into some sorta weird feudalistic society again based on greed and power.

Farming in this country it is said is at its most productive relative to the technology we have so will most probably continually decline with more droughts, higher temps and variable consistency in rainfall, available water and suitable land for cropping and grazing. the cost of labor/processing and transportation which inevitably gets passed onto the consumer will also continue to rise even with the monopoly of these supermarkets with there price wars and million dollar profits. will be a sad day when we are importing more then we can produce just to be able to feed our country.

another interesting point is the slow erosion of manufacturing within this country over the past 40 or so years coupled with pushing major and minor manufactures offshore and or sold to offshore investors with profits travelling abroad is some what disturbing, how long will the mining boom last and when its dieing what will we have left of significant worth to export? considering the failure of the mining tax its huge subsidies and the fact it employs something like 1% of the population isnt all that reassuring although i guess we still have shit loads of coal... maybe we should have nationalised such industry's years ago meh

anyway i think some of these issues will eventually coalesce into some sorta tipping point hopefully where we (the people) see the errors of our ways and start to clean up the mess we've made.

Ive always wondered what these billionaires plan to do with all that money if the world ever did go to complete shit

[ThunderIdeal]

YT, remember just then i showed everyone my cool tinfoil hat when i suggested there are "global elites" who do most of the steering, and will probably do all of the steering if they get the opportunity

(a crazy conspiracy theory! they're just a tiny fraction of the population with all of the wealth and influence, nothing global or elite about them!)

(i'm not even going into their bloodlines! turns out they're all descended from indiana jones. or dan brown)

well, i can't easily find a link to back this claim up but australia ditched its secondary industry long ago at the behest of the trilateral commission. it didn't just fade away cuz china, we were steered towards globalisation. it wasn't just australia, the first world basically handed a lot of manufacturing over to the poor countries, i think in the 70s. TLC are a bit like a steering wheel, you could compare TLC with G20 except i think G20 is more your elected representatives and TLC is more your overly rich people who elect what decisions the facade-leaders make

[Optimystic]

how have we been steered?

though politics comes to mind, psychology is the real governor...

and what role does technology play? Will monopoly control

the technology, or will humanity ultimately be liberated by it...

how effective will waving flags be, say 100 years from now?

I guess its fun to speculate

some food 4 thoughts....

https://archive.org/details/TheCenturyOfTheSelf

[Yeti101]

Good luck, and I look forward to reading your contribution

Don't hold you breath, I actually slept well last night

It would be nice, but a lot of my science is rusty and I don't know if I could devote as much time to this as it deserves. It isn't just about banging out the 9 pages, it's the researching, polishing etc that takes the time. If anyone else does want to have a go, I'll proof-read for you though

[-YT-]

another tangent lol

Kinda reminds me of God emperor of Dune book where leto becomes the sandworm human hybrid "god" i assume which would somewhat resemble jabba the hutt. by transforming himself he was able to bring forth a golden age primarily one of stagnation and great suffering which would " teach humanity a lesson they would remember in there bones" in order to force evolution forward in the several thousand years of his reign and afterwards. Seems very much an allegory of our times rife with corruption, power, apathy and greed the destruction of the environment and perhaps eventual fall of our great civilization will in time serve as a warning to those that came after us of such follies as letting such machinations evolve out of hand with little thought of the outcomes in regards to prosperity of future generations of humanity.

It seems in a way we have experienced such catastrophes in the past with regards to the last ice age and the great floods and earth changes that followed which threatened the very existence of man passed down form many cultures in the forms of mythological stories and beliefs. in a way we are i guess going on current projections destined to continually relive those pasts played out over aeons .

I guess at the end of the day i would like to largely finger christianity for this retarted belief in if you give your life to god you gain an eternal life which in way seems to make people belive in some sort of carte blanche belief that whatever they do will in time be negated by jesus coming back and instigating 1000 years of some sorta weird ass golden age. guess going to a christian school for tens years will give one that kinda beef haha

[∂an]

How should humanity steer the future? My first reaction was to think that our attempts to steer affairs here on earth is the problem in the first place. But as others here have rightly pointed out, we have got ourselves into a predicament (destruction of the biosphere, overpopulation, climate change, proliferation of weapons and people willing to use them etc) from which there may be no return without drastic intervention. Then I thought what we need is education - if people fully comprehended our predicament, and knew what it will take on a day to day practical basis to re stabilise the planet, then maybe we would have a chance. Maybe an educated population would turn their backs on consumerism and the commercial media that drives it. Politicians, in a healthy democracy at least, are a reflection of the zeitgeist. If there is overwhelming consensus amongst a population then the leadership will follow suit sooner of later, or be replaced.

But you can't teach someone empathy for the planet. That is something we must all find on our own accord. For me the way I found it was through the inherent beauty of nature; in wilderness, and exemplefied in entheogens. So as I see it, the way to steer humanity out of this cul der sac is by holding the beauty and elegance of nature and her processes as a central tenant and attempting to mirror this in our own lives and societies.

[botanika]

10,000 years ago - 10,000 years into the future. Life is always good and bad, it just gets more complex.

It's not so much about how humanity 'should steer' but 'what will the wheel look like?'.

Life doesn't go where it should, it goes where it can.

[ThunderIdeal]

i can't remember what my earlier posts here were, but that's a pretty good summary of my recent thoughts botanika.

while in my human-scale worldview i'm sad that "so much" might be lost for the sake of maybe 20 years of inaction (if its global warming that does us in), in truth much will be lost no matter what, evolution isn't just creation but also destruction. there were mass extinctions before we caused one and there will be more afterwards. if we disappear it's because we weren't adapted for continued survival in the given conditions and i feel okay with that outcome, especially considering we slammed shut the window of survival opportunity for so many other species, it's kind of poetic that we should slam shut our own too.