How to save the world by Sabine Hossenfelder

Sabine,

It seems you start out with trying to save the world and conclude by arguing for better scientific networking. At the dawn of western civilization, with the story of Adam and Eve, it was recognized that knowledge is a double edged sword. Will expediting the increase of knowledge save the world, or speed up the rate of its consumption? Complexity tends to increase until it becomes unstable, then it resets to a more stable state. Just look at atomic structure. What if rather than creating ever more feedback loops, we were to examine the ones which already existed, to find ways to make them more environmentally friendly? Right now the most monumental and powerful feedback loop on earth, short of the convection cycle, is the financial/monetary system. My argument is that the major conceptual flaw build into it, which turns it from an effective economic circulation system into a monstrous tumor, is that we imagine money to be a form of commodity, rather than a contract. Now if you had such a magical property which could, in sufficient quantities, provide you with just about anything available to anyone, you would want as much of it as possible and so would every living human on the planet; Right? Then the people in charge of this system would have monumental power over the rest of society, just so long as they continue producing these magical promises. Yet on the other hand, if you understood those pieces of paper were simply notational chits from the broader community and any value assigned them was entirely dependent on the economic well-being and general long term health of said community, you might be happy with just having enough to get by, knowing there is some flexibility in the system and if you come up short on occasion, you'll probably be able to slide by and anyone caught hoarding these promises would likely have the opposite occur, that the community might just turn its collective shoulder and ignore that person's pile of chits. Then there wouldn't be any tendency to draw value out of the community and environment to store as chits, because the greatest store of value would logically be a strong community and healthy environment, not a financial system bloated with far more promises than an increasingly burdened economy can ever possibly hope to fulfill. Would that make sense to you?

Regards,

John M

I was struck by this sentence at the bottom of your abstract:

`Only then, when we can make informed decisions by feeling rather than thinking, will we be able to act and respond to the challenges we face.`

Yes, we are lazy, at least relative to the huge and growing amount of information that we would like to be able to digest daily (and, ehm, I still have to read your essay :-) You seem to imply that `feeling` is faster, more efficient, less costly, and transparent to laziness, than `thinking`: feeling and intuition at the basis of decision making, in place of `traditional` thinking. I suspect that that feeling and intuition may play a stronger role than thinking in several contexts, for example in educating children, or even in scientific investigation, but always at the level of a single person's individual decision. When cooperation is necessary, for handling problems at a more global level, then you need to communicate, and thinking / speaking / writing (increasingly slow and laziness-vulnerable processes) become necessary. Or not?

Hi Sabine,

Your essay contains contains very similar diagnoses of the problems to mine (so, naturally, I liked it a lot!). Especially:

"We reached this gridlock because the human brain did not evolve to understand the consequences of individual actions in networks of billions of people. We are bad in making good long-term decisions and do not care much what happens in other parts of the planet to people we have not and will most likely never meet. We have no intuitive grasp on the collective behavior of large groups and their impact on our environment, and what little grasp we have is prone to cognitive biases and statistical errors, many of which are now subject of new scientific areas like game theory, behavioral economics and decision science."

and "We solve them by bringing close that what is far away."

My essay focuses exactly on what to do to close the gap when what is far away is in the future: http://www.fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2030.

Best,

Dean

Ps,

In your essay, you do go into how best to link scientific ideas and that does go to how we categorize and process ideas and concepts, so basically what I'm saying is that money needs to go from the commodity category, to the contract category. If someone gives you a piece of paper that says, 'IOU one ounce of gold,' is that really a commodity, in itself, or is it a contract? This system certainly treats such obligations as commodities and goes out of its way to manufacture as many as possible. Right now there are something like 900 trillion dollars worth of derivatives contracts alone, which amount to a form of parimutual wagering, based on a 60 trillion dollar world economy. Obviously those most able to pull the strings in this world would prefer most people not bother themselves thinking about these things and none of us, even those actually riding this wave, can really do anything about it. Eventually though, this wave will crash up on the shores of a larger reality and those of us left to pick up the pieces will need to ask themselves if they really want to repeat the process, with far fewer resources, or is there a lesson to be learned.

Regards,

JM

I think the critical set of events surround the timing of what might be called the "oh shits" report. I think that in another decade the climate problem will become too big to ignore and the denialists will be swept from the public forum. That will be good news of course, but then the question is one of comprehensiveness of the response and timing. The response will be best if it takes a whole systems approach, which means the entire question of our energy/entropy situation on Earth is addressed. This means wrapping the issue into everything from energy development to the ecological distress of oceans. Timing is also another problem, for it could be that by the time we address this issue it is too late. Methane release from permafrost melt and methane hydrate release is thought to trigger a runaway process. There are now indications this process is now rapidly starting to take place. I suspect that geo-engineering will be forced upon us. I would prefer to think we would not have to take such measures, but we might have no choice.

I happen to think the socio-economic problem is that our future will by necessity require a different mode of operation. The standard system of nation-states with representative governments most responsive to corporations and an economy powered by financial power will have to be seriously modified or changed out with something else. Of course in the United States this brings forth howling charges of communism and so forth. I have for the last year been living in Texas, and as the state advert says, "A whole different state" is not far off the mark. This place is borderline insane. I think changing the socio-economic modality of the world is maybe not so much a problem for Europe, but I fear it could mean the "Second American Civil War."

The progressive movements in the US, which are folded to a degree into the Democratic Party, tend to choke if they deviate at all much from centrism. The Democratic Party is really a centrist party with a neoliberal agenda that promotes corporate power. The progressive wings of the party are a combination of window dressing and leftovers from the main economic banquet taken by financial power. Clinton and Obama are cases in point, for while they are preferable to the defective twerp we have in 2001-9 they are pretty much operators who curry favor to financial power. From an environmental perspective that translates into support for energy business as usual.

Cheers LC

Sabine

Thank you so much for your note. Now I see your comment "No, the major challenge,..., is to convert these ideas into action."

I have "The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization" but have only scanned it. The same with his "Environment, Scarcity, and Violence". I omitted a reference to them because he makes things a bit more complex than they are, in my opinion. That is why I went with Tainter. For example, I agree with Friedman that the Federal Reserve was a big mistake. I suppose he would call me a "neo-Malthusisn". I did like his stages of denial, some of his income gap comments, and the chapter of "why don't we face reality". You can see examples of the latter in these essays.

All his tectonic stresses and conditions in Tainter are present today and have been for a long time. The limited space left me with commenting, "However, the collapse is a failure of the society's organization to adapt to nature and to the changing conditions." That is, he is only describing some of the natural conditions imposed on humanity all the time.

Let me take this opportunity to address another idea I think you are tending toward. Almost all the essays have suggestions with little chance of happening. My last comment "The barons are organizing." suggest the required action is already happening. Look at the conditions that forced the barons to action. They are all present in the US today. Many today are already taking action toward a thing like the Magna Carta that I suggest is a new constitution. The TEA party (they want a smaller Federal Government) is becoming stronger. The secession movement is small but growing. Many are writing books and article s suggesting constitutional amendments (Friedman, M. R. Levin, R. E. Barnet, etc.). The path toward the kind of constitutional change is already happening. I hope the leaders of today are as smart as the leaders in 1787.

Thanks, Sabine - Agreed, the market economy does work efficiently to satisfy individual wants but it does NOT take all priorities into account - including the priority of being left alone. Moreover, I some market interests are better than others at influencing the political process and the accepted "rules of the game" - in order to maximize the interests of certain individuals.

I think there is a larger issue here, one that I address in my essay "The Tip pif the Spear". The institutions that we are seeking to influence, including markets, governments, media, social movements, religions, and science itself), have evolved to the point of exhibiting autonomous behaviors. By analogy to the human body, the system (markets) bends the behaviors of component units (us) to its ends, not the other way around.

That said, universal priority maps would provide improved "signaling" between component units and increase efficiency in institutions - but this is not the same as shaping community norms and the shared moral framework they represent.

Thanks - George

Fellow Comrade,

Your article is an intellectual knowledge base. Special appreciation must be given to every author for creating time to share their thoughts. Many time it is not the reward that is attached to this contest that interest me but ability to reason out facts in solving problems. And this is one of my hobbies!

However, I will like to point out some point in your high capacity essay. I understand your point on the use of Gamification to balance people's priority. Researcher at the University of Hamburg Germany have criticized the use of Gamification as not being fun and creating an artificial sense of achievement. They concluded that gamification can encourage unintended behaviours may be misleading for those unfamiliar with gaming. Your model of priority map is also good but how will more than 1 billion people mostly in the developing countries who do not have access to basic education use the system and gamification? Some legal restrictions also apply for the following reasons criminals,fraudsters and money launderers

You have said it all. Human wants decision that suits him even though it against the social, economic and environmental issues. You are right. The nagging voice that say he should make better decision as you said. But at the end he end up doing contrary. I call this disobedience to the universal law. Man true heart condition is the true reflection of his heart. On Monday this week, a bomb exploded killing scores and injured hundreds of people in Nigeria capital, Abuja. After the incident, it is possible for the man responsible to come around and show cheap empathy. He caused emotional trauma to his fellow Nigerians because he did not keep the universal law. This is what I call upsetting the ecosystem's balance in my article. I make a lot of reference to 2008 economic downturn. Ben Bernanke in his time alluded to the fact that the banks and bankers did not keep the financial laws which was the cause of the mortgage in US and worldwide. Please refer to my article.

You suggested the use of questionnaire in making decision for right candidate during. This is the system of true democracy. But as I said earlier man's appearance is not the true state of his mind. Why do many politicians failed to manifest their manifesto. It is simple, they couldn't obey the universal law.

Summarily, I wish the whole world is enlightened to use gamification and also in the absence of criminals,fraudsters and money launderers! But if the criminals and fraudsters can keep the law, the global ecosystem will be in a dynamic and balance equilibrium as I asserted in my article

This is an exciting intellectual debate platform.

Stay lifted!

Gbenga

A beautiful essay.

It is interesting the acceleration of the idea change approaching far away events with close backreaction, there is an analogy with an accelerated biologic evolution with radiation, or chemical mutagen (on the dna), or an accelerated change in cultural memes (with many innovators that break the knowledge system): it seem that environments that have too fast changing must have a faster cultural change, but there is a limited teaching capacity; a kindly cultural manipulation is natural for a teacher, but I see the futuristic prevision of probable brain implants like a nightmare (the television advertising like an anticipation).

I am not interested to the current practice of publication, that I see like a nonsense, but if a group of researchers in a scientific field, would vote in a manifest way an open article that it is read, and understood (and this essay contest is an example that sometimes work), then everything would be more democratic, and interesting (no referees, no style, no restriction, only good readers of a successful article).

I am thinking that any limitation (not due to ethical reasons) in scientific papers, and in the exploration of the frontiers of the knowledge, limits our capacity of adapt to the environment, along the same road, without variety.

Dear Sabine,

You wrote: "I may be naïve and I may be wrong." Yes, perhaps. This makes you cute. May I ask you how your job in HEP contributes to rescuing the world? Voting for SPD or Greens and limiting the number of own children is perhaps not enough.

I hope you will not mistake me.

Best,

Eckard