Are We Past the Point of No Return?

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Yim: I think that we're past the point of no return in terms of that the type of world order that we have and the underlying civilization architectures are definitely going to collapse. It just means that, if they, if our species is going to not collapse with it, it has to figure out new systems for mediating itself. So i do think we can have a situation where environmental issues, that include climate change, but also include decertification and fishery collapse and resource issues of various kinds,. Yim: Those massive human migrations lead to a really significantly increased resource pressures, which definitely have a good chance of leading to war or economic collapse.

This week I'm speaking with Daniel Schmachtenberger.

Daniel is a founding member of The Consilience Project, aimed at improving public sensemaking and dialogue.

The throughline of his interests has to do with ways of improving the health and development of individuals and society, with a virtuous relationship between the two as a goal.

Towards these ends, he’s had particular interest in the topics of catastrophic and existential risk, civilization and institutional decay and collapse as well as progress, collective action problems, social organization theories, and the relevant domains in philosophy and science.

Motivated by the belief that advancing collective intelligence and capacity is foundational to the integrity of any civilization, and necessary to address the unique risks we currently face given the intersection of globalization and exponential technology, he has spoken publicly on many of these topics, hoping to popularize and deepen important conversations and engage more people in working towards their solutions. Many of these can be found here.

We talk about the current state of the phase shift, whether we are past the point of no return for social collapse, Daniel’s three generator functions of existential risk, the definition of an adequate social architecture that avoids existential risk, how technology creates asymmetric advantage that debases the planetary life support system, why we need to create technology that leads to ‘metastability’, the pollution of the epistemic commons, why we need to define problems in a comprehensive way where the solutions don’t create worse problems, the vows Daniel made as a teenager, what progress is being made at solving the generator functions of existential risk, the auto-poetic nature of trauma, and the necessity of a mature relationship between certainty and uncertainty.