Meet inside The Shops at Waterloo Town Square - we will congregate in the indoor seating area next to the Your Independent Grocer with the trees sticking out in the middle of the benches (pic) at 7:00 pm for 15 minutes, and then head over to my nearby apartment's amenity room. If you've been around a few times, feel free to meet up at the front door of the apartment at 7:30 instead.

Description

I'm back!!! Hopefully the group didn't burn down in the meantime.

This week, we'll be partition-reading and discussing Charles C. Mann's How the System Works series, from The New Atlantis this year. Charles C. Mann is a journalist who has previously written several books that are popular among rationalists, including The Wizard and the Prophet (on the green revolution) and 1491: New Revelations of The Americas Before Columbus (on what we've learned about pre-contact Americas in the last ~30 years.)

His How the System Works series explains the workings of several systems of infrastructure that keeps us fed, watered, warm, and healthy. You will read the short introduction and conclusion sections, and one of the substantive essays in the middle.

Readings

• We Live Like Royalty and Don't Know It (Introduction)
• One of:
  • Breakfast for Eight Billion (agriculture)
  • A Spring in Every Kitchen (clean water)
  • What Keeps the Lights On (power)
  • Two Hundred Years to Flatten the Curve (public health)
• Why We Are Better Off Than A Century Ago (Conclusion)

In the discord, please emoji react to indicate which essay you will be reading. If this is your first KWR meetup, please roll a d4 and read the corresponding essay.

Discussion Format

The first hour will be focused on doing a round of 10 minute lightning talk summaries of the system they learned about. I'll give everyone ~20m at the beginning to discuss with others who read the same chapter what they want to cover, and who is going to talk about which part.

After all four chapters are covered, we'll take a break and then move on to more freeform discussion. I'll try to arrange the conversational circles such that people who read the same chapter are put in different discussion groups.

Discussion Questions

• Which facts did you find the most interesting? The most surprising?
• Do you think the series is more optimistic, or pessimistic about the future?
• Do you think you are more or less optimistic about the future than Charles Mann?
• Did reading this change how you think about any political issue? (Infrastructure spending, regulation, NIMBYism, etc.)
• Mann seems to think the main barrier to maintaining these systems is that people just don't know about them. How true does this feel to you?
• Which of the four systems (food, water, power, public health) do you feel like you understood least before reading this? Which one do you feel like you now understand the least?
• If Charles Mann is to write a fifth explainer, what system do you think he should do it on?