The Importance of Worldview

  • Define con­silience and explain how it is pos­si­ble and why it is necessary.
  • State six ques­tions around which peo­ple con­struct a world-view, and respond to these by sci­enc­ing to con­struct an inclu­sive, con­silient world-view. (See below.) 
  • How do we know? 
    1. Explain why sci­ence is a sin­gu­lar basis for consilience
    2. Make case for valuescience
    3. Define val­ue. Show pre­dic­tion is nexus. Val­ue mean­ing­ful only to extent rest­ing on suc­cess­ful prediction.
    4. Pred­i­cate behav­ior upon, and explain it with ideas about value
    5. Map dif­fer­ent from ter­ri­to­ry. Humans numer­ous and pow­er­ful. Errors increas­ing­ly cost­ly. Close gap to thrive, survive.
  • What is?
    1. Mat­teren­er­gy, space­time, uni­verse, par­ti­cles, ele­ments, forces, laws
    2. Solar sys­tem, Sun, Earth, moon, life, bios­phere, mat­ter cycles, ener­gy flows
    3. Human phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal characteristics
    4. Human soci­ety, tech­nol­o­gy, artifact
  • How did it come to be? 
    1. Evo­lu­tion of uni­verse, Earth, life, human life, soci­ety, to c. 200,000 years BCE
    2. Evo­lu­tion of glob­al ecosys­tem for most recent 200,000 years
    3. Human hunting/gathering, agri­cul­ture, urban­iza­tion, cen­tral­iza­tion of pow­er and rise of social “sys­tem,” spe­cial­iza­tion, tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment, mon­ey and bank­ing, dom­i­nance hierarchy
    4. Con­ver­sion of oth­er nature to human bio­mass, infor­ma­tion, and arti­fact with atten­dant ener­gy and oth­er resource deple­tion, pro­lif­er­a­tion of haz­ards, dis­rup­tion of processes
    5. Humans as glob­al geo­phys­i­cal force
  • Where are we going? 
    1. World mod­el­ing: sys­tems think­ing, eco­log­i­cal foot­print, TruCost 
    2. Men­tal and phys­i­cal health: med­i­ta­tion, phys­i­cal exer­cise, social sup­port, delu­sion, addic­tion, anomie, cyn­i­cism, pos­i­tiv­i­ty, infec­tious dis­ease, degen­er­a­tive dis­ease, med­ical interventions
    3. Infor­ma­tion: accu­ra­cy, per­ti­nence, sci­ence, fun­da­men­tal­ism, sig­nal-to-noise ratio, over­load, filtering
    4. Nature/human ecol­o­gy: expo­nen­tial growth, Lim­its to Growth, “ratch­et of progress,” com­plex­i­ty, over­shoot, eco­log­i­cal foot­print, ERoEI, RRoRI, AI
    5. Arti­fact: elec­tron­ic devices, urban­iza­tion, robot­ics, GMOs, malware
    6. Soci­ety: dominator/partnership mod­els, wealth and income dis­tri­b­u­tions, unem­ploy­ment, emer­gence of “sys­tem” and “mega­ma­chine,” migra­tion, tech­nol­o­gy, tran­si­tion move­ment, cor­po­ratism, local­ism, crim­i­nal­iza­tion, incar­cer­a­tion, bio­phys­i­cal eco­nom­ics, sci­ence-based religing
  • What do we want? 
    1. Describe vision for self, soci­ety, Earth
    2. Self­ish gene, meme machines, sta­tus in social hier­ar­chy, Maslow’s Hierarchy
  • How can we get it? 
    1. Accom­mo­da­tion, manip­u­la­tion, con­scious­ness, technology
    2. What to ask/offer?
    3. Port­fo­lio of selves akin to invest­ment port­fo­lio, trade-offs in sat­is­fy­ing dif­fer­ent lev­els of Maslow’s Hierarchy
    4. How to become bet­ter able to real­ize vision through con­scious evo­lu­tion of self?
    5. Evolve infor­ma­tion: genet­ic, epi­ge­net­ic, expe­ri­en­tial; replace flawed bases for know­ing val­ue with sci­ence-based relig­ing, bio­phys­i­cal eco­nom­ics, new money
    6. Evolve polit­i­cal and moral phi­los­o­phy: lit­er­al, inte­grat­ed cap­i­tal­ism; incomism; com­mu­nism; individualism
    7. Social con­tract: how many peo­ple, for how long, rely­ing upon what inputs, apply­ing what tech­nolo­gies, to gen­er­ate what out­puts, allo­cat­ing work and reward how, to what ends, with what mech­a­nism for con­tract amendment?
    8. How to evolve visions?