2020s trends and principles to build by
- run through the principles broadly for thoughts, critiques, etc. as this is a work in progress
- what’s actually worth living by?
- If they’re true axioms that I find, they’ll likely be quite minimal (reality shows my views are often wrong).
Trends and principles to build with (18)
- Ideas to potentially wield in, in the future
Truths/things I learned:
- We define problems too narrowly — we solve many problems (i.e., saving a species’ life, climate change, anti-authoritarian technology), while making others worse. Lots of attempts to solve for catastrophes or dystopias will make the other more likely.
- Principles:
- focus on solving the dynamics that cause these problems (‣)
- or/and carefully consider the complexity of our systems while solving these problems:
- move from problem/solution to complex-system management and “responses to situations.” As seen in wicked problems.
- Tradeoff: near-certainly less money/profit. The need to create a different system means I won’t maximise my ability to thrive in this one.
- Many business models financialize other forms of value, without adding any net-value to the system (because they take attention away from cultural/relationship capital; because they irreparably turn nature into financial extraction)
- Principle:
- value multiple types of capital — build only things that are net-positive across multiple axes
- Tradeoffs:
- there are fewer businesses that make sense
- the most “profitable” across different capital types may return less financial capital
- Damage often occurs where people ignore diverse viewpoints
- Principle:
- seek to create diversity within groups, and value wielding in relevant (local) voices or stakeholders for projects
- Tradeoffs:
- cost to incorporate different viewpoints (or environmental damage) may make you less competitive in a market that does not account for damages
- efficiency plummets — or useless compromises take place — when committees are needed.
- however, acting without understanding a variety of viewpoints is what creates monoculture forests(desserts), destruction of local property, short-term buildings, culture-less property developments.
- Win-lose dynamics create omni-lose-lose dynamics.
- Principle:
- Vector towards omni-win-win
- Tradeoffs:
- These dynamics will hurt the upper-limits of some individuals (/candidate monopolies). However, that’s only short-term or perceived upper limits because its not at the global maxima.
- The world is becoming more localized* — both due to fracturing “truths”/values and because nature is highly fractured and local. *”local” includes digital interest groups. localizing world [local communities]
- Principle:
- Work in a way that facilitates “pluralism” /different groups thriving, and ideally works amongst local communities.
- Tradeoffs:
- reducing the focus on centralized/government-scale coordination
- **Personal change first: “**a deep wisdom we all innately know: until we get ourselves in order, any action we take—no matter how good our intentions—will ultimately be wrong-headed and wrong-hearted.”
- Principle:
- A constant striving&exploration — what I already value with once a week reflective time, continued improvement, and personal advisors/friends who hold me accountable [per what Feinberg suggested]
- tradeoffs:
- “The world is a complex, interconnected, finite, ecological-social-psychological-economic system. We treat it as if it were not, as if it were divisible, separable, simple, and infinite. Our persistent, intractable global problems arise directly from this mismatch.” — Donella Meadows
- Principle:
- respect that comment:
- Do not consider solutions without a wider appreciation for its complexity and interconnectedness (even with psychology)
- Tradeoffs:
- Hard work and hard to communicate — the human brain can not optimize for many different variables — it is focused on “what’s the use/insight/immediate step” and “how does it effect me?” Joe Tainter even says we cannot think broader picture like that
- Our current economic and financial system assumptions do not offer the best way to organize society
- Everyone agrees, and we usually also agree capitalism is the best of a bad bunch
- Principle: encourage the testing of other paradigms + work towards another way to operate!
- one that 1, encompasses the complexity of the world (allowing for plural viewpoints, not centrally controlling the system), 2, sees humans as interdependent with each other and nature (less self-separated), follows the Similarities between new economic system proposals.
- Biodiversity is valuable, fragile, and unrecoverable yet human society does not value it at all. Given we destroy/damage other species at a rapid rate (plummeting biodiversity and changing ecosystems), reducing harm or protecting ecosystems is undervalued compared to productivity advancements.
- Principle:
- it’s worth personal sacrifices if it can tangible protect nature/other species. In protecting that, we also protect intelligent life’s future (given we are inextricably dependent on the web of life). If humanity collapses, better we have more resources for a next attempt
- Tradeoffs:
- be an asshole tree person (/hated by the people you’re putting restrictions on to protect nature)
- Humanity is a mindless super-hungry organism when trapped within the meta crisis (/dangerous patterns). Humanity becoming wise, rather than an efficient/teenage approach of trapping us into the mindless path of existing growth&”progress.” That’s a major mission, and one worth giving a life too.
- Principle: support innovation and companies that help a transition in systems to one without the meta crisis’ dynamics
- Principle 2: I should support generator functions over individual ones like climate — unless it’s making an immense difference in mitigation (allowing later transition)
- climate through a carbon lens is solely one facet of increasing resource use
- and does not account for other X-risks or the destruction of cultural&attention capital
- Being moral often hamstrings someone in our current dynamics — so you must partially bend&work in the system. Most things here — like choosing to include diverse viewpoints, accounting for env costs — are marginally less effective compared to people without moral qualms. As a result, people thoughtfully and slowly working through problems (i.e., Regen Network) may lose to move fast and break things (i.e., Flowcarbon) as a result.
- Principle: be game theoretically aware (consider bad actors and work to build more win-win systems) and be able to build things that have power in this system — but always that are ultimately really authentically in service to transcending that.
- Principle2: Place working on this transition — towards a world without the dynamics of the metacrisis — as a north star
- Principle 3: encourage new coordination tools
- Cam may have great tweaks on this
- Remain optimistic, and personally commit to this problem (if you care about addressing it). Doing so greatly increases the chance you continue striving and do not wed your ideas (/fool yourself in the years before you find a true solution).