How to save the world by Sabine Hossenfelder

Sabine,

Unfortunately the way the monetary system functions, it naturally accumulates and coalesces these obligations in fewer hands, almost as a gravitational process and historically there have been a variety of ways this build up is resolved; inflation, debt jubilees, social break downs, war, etc. Our mathematical and information technology resources are being put to the purpose of creating history's largest such creation of financial obligations. So I can understand why any reasonable person would want to just stay away from it and frankly I usually do. That's why I frequent the science blogs and forums, such as yours on occasion, and only read economic ones, but the topic of this contest asks how to best steer the future of humanity. In which case, trying to figure out how to unravel the financial conundrum seems unavoidable.

Regards,

John M

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.

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

Sabine

It is clear that much thought and a sincere wish to find the right way to solve the looming questions facing humanity has gone into the writing of this essay. You may be quite right in your assessment how much effort an individual is willing or can spend towards solving problems beyond his or her immediate experience.

With the tools available now or will be available soon the implementation of your priority map feedback scheme may well be possible. My iphone priority app will warn me "do not buy that," when its camera sees my hand reaching out for an environmentally harmful product at the supermarket.

I feel though that you have left out a large part of the problem and the solution: the collective organization of society and educating it to act in the right way. This has been traditionally the role of religion and politics - good governance is necessary for solving our global problems. Scientists need not be the only source of new ideas - artists of all kind are essential to translate our inner hopes and fears into a form that can be fed into your priority maps.

Best wishes

Vladimir

Dear Professor Hossenfelder,

Your essay was beautifully written and held my interest throughout. I do hope that it does well in the competition.

With regards,

Joe Fisher

Sabine,

In 1995, shortly after my honorable discharge from the U. S. Marine Corps, I graduated from commercial dive school and have primarily worked in the petro-chemical and energy sectors ever since. Based on this experience, I find the idea that humans can self-regulate their way to a sustainable future somewhat naive. Don't get me wrong, I feel your Priority Maps would make for an interesting research program, I just don't feel your assumptions, which you conveniently placed in the conclusion, have any basis in reality. Allow me to elaborate if you will.

Houston, Texas, hosts CERAweek, a gathering of top executives from all of the world's energy companies, once a year. 2013 was the first time ever that they acknowledged the existence of anthropocentric global warming. Of course the round-table discussion they held on the subject didn't focus on what they could do to mitigate anthropocentric contributions to the phenomenon, rather, it was on what they could do to mitigate the effects anthropocentric global warming could potentially have on their business model, but at least they acknowledged its existence. Even the investors in said companies are demanding an assessment of global warming. Meanwhile, conservative politicians and blowhards such as Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump continue to insist it's just a myth propagated by the liberal media. The conservative columnist who writes for The Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer, even quoted your favorite physicist, Freeman Dyson, to support his latest tirade. And he received full support from Forbes magazine, of course.

I personally had a role in shutting down an operation that was illegally storing and recycling used drilling mud. They were storing the mud in open earth pits - no liners or other containment barriers - just long enough for the drill filings to settle, then mixing the chemicals in the pit by cycling the mud through a system of mix pumps, and then re-introducing the chemicals back into their mud production process. The open earth pits were located just upstream from a large, freshwater lake which was supplying drinking water for two large communities. The man bankrolling the operation has a Harvard MBA and a Forbes profile, of course.

I've had the occasion to get to know a gentleman who works in the Major Offenders Division of a major Environmental Enforcement Agency and he can tell you some tales. He makes a living off of concrete manufacturers and readily admits that he only halts a very small fraction of violators. He's arrested people who are getting paid, and paid rather handsomely, to properly dispose of hazardous materials for dumping said materials illegally and at public detriment.

I have another acquaintance from the commercial dive industry, Paul McKim, who was once a legend in the industry; for a good while he held records for both depth and duration in saturation and was one of eleven American divers recruited by the government of England to implement dive operations in the North sea. In 2001 Paul secured exclusive rights to utilize an innovative, one-man, autonomous submarine with a tremendous depth rating in oilfield support operations and, with said rights, his knowledge of the offshore environment, and his vast network, he developed an offshore support company specializing in deep water work called Deep Marine Technologies (DMT). In 2001 DMT grossed just under $600,000 in revenue; by 2005 Paul was on the cover of Entrepreneur magazine and DMT grossed just under $60 million.

To facilitate the exponential growth of DMT, Paul brought in a venture capitalist from Minnesota, an Iranian/American named Kazimeny; Kazimeny was "friends" with the U. S. Congressman from Minnesota, Norm Coleman. Not long after Paul and DMT were featured in Entrepreneur magazine, Coleman and his wife embarked on a $400,000 renovation of their home in Minnesota. Naturally wanting to help his "friend," Kazimeny decided to funnel $100,000 through DMT to the Colemans. Norm Coleman's wife was an insurance agent licensed in Minnesota and worked as an independent contractor for Hayes Insurance, a company owned by another Coleman "friend." So Kazimeny simply created a fraudulent paper trail demonstrating that DMT engaged Hayes Insurance for "risk analysis" work and instructed DMT's CFO to pay Hayes Insurance, hence, Coleman's wife, $100,000 in four installments. Never mind that DMT, like most offshore companies, utilized Llyods for all of its insurance needs.

After the first $25,000 payment, McKim found out about the ploy and put a stop to it. Kazimeny illegally manipulated the board and promptly fired McKim from his own company. Paul sued in the State District Court of Texas claiming breach of fiduciary duty, amongst other things, and Kazimeny promptly put DMT into bankruptcy because it was McKim's only source of income. Kazimeny displayed absolutely no regard for DMT employees or anyone depending on DMT's services.

Of course the FBI became involved but the investigation went nowhere. Norm Coleman was trying to get re-elected when it all played out and the resulting scandal was partially responsible for his losing a run-off to the comedian, Al Franken. Today Coleman is a conservative lobbyist in Washington so now he and his wife can whore themselves with the full support and blessing of the American Supreme Court. Do you think Norm Coleman is the exception or the rule? Call me a cynic, but I say he's the rule.

Not long ago I watched a "gentleman" driving a fancy Recreational Vehicle, a motor home in the $80,000 - $100,000 range, dump his motor home's septic in the city storm sewer. Based on scientific analysis and extrapolation, approximately 350,000 - 400,000 barrels of used motor oil find their way into the Galveston Bay every year. This at a time when all automotive parts stores AND Walmart offer used motor oil recycling FREE OF CHARGE! I could go on and on . . .

So perhaps you would be interested in the Lifeboat Foundation, Ha, Ha, Ha . . .

"I am presently working on three related topics:

1. the paleolithic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle as a model of what humans have evolved to live like, and thus a good starting point if you want to understand how we can optimize our physical and mental health, strength and well-being

2. the concept of challenge as the fundamental driver of action and development in all agents, human as well as non-human

3. the problem of coordination in self-organization: how can a collective of initially autonomous agents learn to collaborate in the most productive way without any central supervisor telling them how to do it

The three topics are related in that they are all applications of what I call the "ontology of challenge and action," which sees the world as being constituted out of actions and their agents, and challenges as situations that elicit those actions. The life of a hunter-gatherer is essentially a sequence of (mostly unpredictable) challenges - mostly minor, sometimes major. In contrast, our modern civilized life has tried to maximally suppress or exclude uncontrolled challenges (such as accidents, germs, hot and cold temperatures, wild animals). Without these challenges, the various human subsystems that evolution has produced to deal with these challenges (e.g. the immune system, muscles, fast reflexes) remain weak and underdeveloped, leading to a host of diseases and mental problems.

The link with self-organization is that the action of one agent will in general change the environment in such a way as to produce a challenge to one or more other agents. If these agents react "appropriately," their interaction may become cooperative or synergetic; otherwise it is characterized by friction. In the best case, patterns of synergetic interaction propagate via the challenges they produce to the whole collective, which thus starts to act in a coordinated fashion."

- Francis Heylighen, pages 316-317 in Between Ape and Artilect

"I don't like the phrase 'existential risk' for several reasons. It presupposes that we are clear about exactly what 'existence' we are risking. Today, we have a clear understanding of what it means for an animal to die or a species to go extinct. However, as new technologies allow us to change our genomes and our physical structures, it will become much less clear to us when we lose something precious. 'Death' and 'extinction,' for example, become much more amorphous concepts in the presence of extensive self-modification.

It's easy to identify our humanity with our individual physical form and our egoic minds, but in reality, our physical form is an ecosystem, only 10% of our cells are 'human.' Our minds are also ecosystems composed of interacting sub-personalities. Our humanity is as much in our relationships, interconnections, and culture as it is in our individual minds and bodies. The higher levels of organization are much more amorphous and changeable. For these reasons, it could be hard to pin down what we are losing at the moment when something precious is lost. {Addition to clear with Steve: It is more likely that we will only realize what we have lost, long after it's already gone for good.}

So, I believe the biggest 'existential risk' is related to identifying the qualities that are most important to humanity and to ensuring that technological forces enhance those rather than eliminate them. Already today we see many instances where economic forces act to create 'soulless' institutions that tend to commodify the human spirit rather than inspire and exalt it."

- Steve Omohundro, pages 326 - 327 in Between Ape and Artilect

Do you have any example where greater communciation or feedback loop would be useful? You mention some things like plastic in the ocean, but in my experience, people think that there is much more plastic in the ocean than there really is. What will be accomplished by better info about plastic in the ocean?