Philosopher and educator Zak Stein discusses the flaws in the current education system, the influence of unfettered technology and AI on youth, and the importance of creating well-rounded, stable young humans with a sense of belonging. The conversation delves into the impact of standardized testing, the concept of legitimate teacherly authority, and the potential consequences of AI replacing human roles in education and society.

John Vervaeke, Zak Stein, and Nora Bateson discuss transformation and its complex, cross-domain dimensionality. This episode addresses topics such as how does transformation take place and in what contexts? How does western culture misunderstand transformation? How is transformation naturally interwoven within the larger narrative of our lives? This conversation is brought to us by the Respond Network (https://rspnd.network). The Respond network is an initiative to address the meta-crisis by researching and cultivating wisdom. Respond is a network of researchers and practitioners who develop and deploy ecologies of practices (EoP) for personal and systemic transformation. 0:00:00 - Introduction, the Respond Network, Patreon 0:03:41 - Transformation Dimensionality 0:09:05 - Consequences of Transformation 0:13:13 - Transformation is not Chosen 0:19:11 - Virtue in Response to Fate 0:24:28 - Transformation is Ecological 0:29:41 - Re-Humanization of Transformational Spaces 0:32:05 - Necessary Tension within the Mythology of Hero 0:41:41 - Shifts in Intergenerational Transmission 0:44:08 - Ecology of Communication 0:50:58 - Necessity of Cultural Cognitive Grammar 0:53:20 - The Contextuality & Transferability of Transformation 1:08:23 - How Skills are Interwoven & Transferable Support Daniel on Patreon

In this first conversation after a year sabbatical from the Emerge project I'm speaking with Zak Stein. This is a far ranging conversation about ethics, education, trauma, the erotics of moral understanding, and more.  Support me on Patreon Show Notes 0:00 Opening 0:03 How to create the kinds of humans who can respond to the meta-crisis? 0:08 “We’re not sure what it means to be good anymore” / what’s worth loving 0:09 Eros and Ethics / Ensoulment 0:17 Moral development 0:23 “How do you get someone interested in what is truly good?” 0:25 Linking / meta-psychology 0:29 Community ethics feedback loops 0:33 Objective ethics 0:37 Embodied ethical sensing 0:38 Intersection between Trauma & Ethics, desensitization, somatic de-armoring 0:43 Trust, return of the Sacred 0:47 The Moral Exemplar 0:52 Exposure to the full ethical range 0:54 “Trauma” in culture 0:62 Evil 0:68 Practices for Wellbeing 0:72 “Enlightenment is your greatest disappointment” 0:74 Eros & Ethics 0:77 Human as ethical actor, intimacy and obligation 0:81 Circling, following “aliveness”, co-discovering moral landscape 0:85 Path = compromising moral integrity increasingly intolerable 0:88 Ethics in Community, MAPLE’s advantage 0:90 Closing

Jim talks with recurring guest Zak Stein about the Consilience Project's article "Technology is Not Values Neutral: Ending the Reign of Nihilistic Design"... Jim talks with recurring guest Zak Stein about the Consilience Project's article "Technology is Not Values Neutral: Ending the Reign of Nihilistic Design." They discuss how technologies actualize & encode values, 2nd- & 3rd-order effects of technologies, the "invisible hand" approach to design, effects of cars on culture, landscapes, & sexuality, the work of historian of technology Lewis Mumford, how smartphones affect structures of communication & cognition, how the bathroom scale changed the meaning of health, clock time & capitalism, the deskilling tradeoff of technology, how Facebook became a case study in nihilistic design, the difficulty of predicting nth-order effects, monitoring & predicting psychosocial externalities, Jim's role in early social-media design choices, axiological design, our accidental planetary computational stack, developing co-responsibility in tech, whether banning advertising could change everything, 5 propositions towards axiological design, thinking about tech & its users in the whole context, and much more. Episode Transcript JRS EP113 - Zak Stein on Hierarchical Complexity Technology is Not Values Neutral: Ending the Reign of Nihilistic Design," by The Consilience Project  Currents 063: Jessica Flack on nth-Order Effects of the Russia-Ukraine War Free: The Future of a Radical Price, by Chris Anderson The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution, by Micah White Zachary Stein is a writer, educator, and futurist working to bring a greater sense of sanity and justice to education. He studied philosophy and religion at Hampshire College, and then educational neuroscience, human development, and the philosophy of education at Harvard University. While a student at Harvard, he co-founded what would become Lectica, Inc., a non-profit dedicated to the research-based, justice-oriented reform of large-scale standardized testing in K-12, higher-education, and business. He has published two books. Social Justice and Educational Measurement was based on his dissertation and traces the history of standardized testing and its ethical implications. His second book, Education in a Time Between Worlds, expands the philosophical work to include grappling with the relations between schooling and technology more broadly. He writes for peer-reviewed academic journals across a range of topics including the philosophy of learning, educational technology, and integral theory. He’s a scholar at the Ronin Institute, Co-President and Academic Director of the activist think-tank at the Center for Integral Wisdom, and scientific advisor to the board of the Neurohacker Collective, as well as a co-founder of The Consilience Project.

Philosopher Zak Stein discusses reconstructing value in a post-postmodern context, avoiding premodern pitfalls, challenges of language tracking value, and shifting paradigms. Topics include panpsychism, emergentist framings, dissipative structures, anti-value, and moving towards the infinite intimate. The conversation explores the essence of life, intersection of intimacy and complexity, and the relationship between God and the future through sacred architecture.

Zak Stein, a writer and educator focused on social justice and education, discusses the evolving relationship between humanity and artificial intelligence. He emphasizes the importance of developing a mature relationship with AI, addressing its societal impacts and the risks of uncritical acceptance. The conversation delves into themes of trauma, emotional resilience, and the necessity of integrating wisdom with technology. Stein also highlights the significance of micro-heroism in coaching, showcasing how individual actions can foster meaningful change within communities.

Zak Stein and Michael Gibson, co-founders of the 1517 Fund, delve into the transformation of education in the digital age. They discuss how AI and technology are reshaping learning, advocating for more accessible and community-driven models. The conversation explores the importance of personal interactions in education versus the rise of machine-generated content. They critique the current university system and highlight the need for innovative approaches to foster creativity and intrinsic motivation, challenging traditional educational values along the way.

Zak Stein and Daniel Thorson discuss the myriad risks of emerging AI tutoring technologies. AI tutoring is being developed now and will be deployed over the course of the next two to five years, bringing radical changes to our educational systems. This conversation explores the risks of this emerging technology while simultaneously proposing how, if designed correctly, this technology could solve the meta-crisis. Timestamp 0:00 - Intro 5:20 - Shift in Awareness of AI 10:08 - GAI Risk 15:51 - AI Alignment & Human Alignment 17:18 - Risks of Generalized Nature of AI 19:08 - Accelerating Misaligned Institutions 20:26 - AI Assistance & Anthropomorphism 25:35 - Instantaneous Media Interfacing 29:48 - AI Tutoring Risk 38:44 - Obsoleting Human Relationship 41:52 - AI Perfecting Propaganda 43:22 - Humanity's Educational Relationship 46:21 - Breaking the Human Nervous System 50:14 - AI Tutoring Risk Continued 55:17 - Building Aligned AI Tutoring Technology 59:56 - Importance of Non-Anthropomorphizable AI 1:02:10 - Irreducibility of Human Goodness 1:04:42 - The Limits of Computationalism 1:07:10 - AI Tutoring Guardrails 1:11:44 - Implementation of AI Tutoring Technology 1:17:36 - AI Planetary Tutoring System 1:21:59 - Solving the Meta-Crisis with AI Planetary Tutoring 1:25:06 - The Emergence of the New Human 1:29:18 - Right Relationship with Emerging AI Technology 1:35:18 - Conclusion ⁠Support the Emerge Podcast on Patreon⁠ ⁠Learn more about the Anti Fragile Heart Retreat at the Monastic Academy⁠

This week our guest is writer, educator, and futurist, Zak Stein, who is well known for co-founding the Consilience Project with Daniel Schmachtenberger, as well as his recent publication, Education in a Time Between Worlds: Essays on the Future of Schools, Technology, and Society. In this episode, Zak takes us on a well-articulated tour of the philosophical and sociocultural conditions that are causing us to fail at our central task of educating the next generation. Along the way we discuss how technology is playing a role in this struggle for sensemaking, from social media to the future of AI tutors. Much of this, Zak explains, is due to the current issues in the information ecology, issues that he explains could have catastrophic consequences if not rectified.  Find out more about Zak at zakstein.org and his work with the Consilience Project at consilienceproject.org ** Apply for registration to our exclusive South By Southwest event on March 14th @ www.su.org/basecamp-sxsw Apply for an Executive Program Scholarship at su.org/executive-program/ep-scholarship Learn more about Singularity: su.org Host: Steven Parton - LinkedIn / Twitter Music by: Amine el Filali