Learning about society.
Thank you! There are many conflicting recommendations when it comes to writing, but I think that for imparting models articles should open by introducing themselves.
Agreed. Implicitly the intended audience is already familiar with many of those.
Overbuilding an outside view and under-building an inside view is one of the key generators of akrasia, and renders knowledge inert rather than allowing book knowledge to be mixed in with lived life experience.
On August 23rd I'll be giving a talk organized by the Foresight Institute.
Our civilization is made up of countless individuals and pieces of material technology, which come together to form institutions and interdependent systems of logistics, development and production. These institutions and systems then store the knowledge required for their own renewal and growth.
We pin the hopes of our common human project on this renewal and growth of the whole civilization. Whether this project is going well is a challenging but vital question to answer.
History shows us we are not safe from institutional collapse. Advances in technology mitigate some aspects, but produce their own risks. Agile institutions that make use of both social and technical knowledge not only mitigate such risks, but promise unprecedented human flourishing.
Join us as we investigate this landscape, evaluate our odds, and try to plot a better course.
See the Facebook event for further details.
There is a limited number of spots and there has been a bunch of interest, still I'd love rationalists to attend so try to nab tickets at eventbrite. Feel free to introduce yourself and chat me up after the talk, would be happy to meet rationalists thinking about civilization and sociology :)
Mostly yes. Some bureaucratic growth is driven by actively piloted centralizing drives, but in those cases the task at hand is increasing central power, with the nominal work being pretext.
Thank you! Had asked some lawyer contacts, but always good to get another data point.