Humans On The Loop

Helané Wahbeh, Director of Research at the Institute of Noetic Sciences and a neurology professor, dives deep into consciousness research. She challenges traditional materialistic views, advocating for new theories and examining evidence for non-local consciousness. The discussion includes the societal stigma around extraordinary perceptual abilities and the significance of transcultural experiences. She explores telepathy, precognition, and the need for unflinching research in this promising field. Get ready for a thought-provoking journey beyond conventional boundaries!

Environmental philosopher Timothy Morton discusses the need for a new Christian ecology, embracing the sacred, and riotous love for the living world. Topics include postmodern Christianity, ecstatic religious experiences, psychedelics, Kundalini energy, AI dangers, creation through comedy, and collaborative understanding of evil.

Andrés Goméz Emilsson, President and Director of Research at the Qualia Research Institute, discusses the computational approach to consciousness and psychedelics. Topics include the geometry of DMT space, avoiding dissonance in psychedelic states, complexity of music and cognitive processing, pharmacological adaptations to technology, and temporal perception under the influence of psychedelics.

Tom Morgan, a curiosity sherpa, discusses answering destiny's call and love as an attractor. Topics include complexity, the heroic metamyth, alchemy of money, love in cognition, and holding others through the 'meaning crisis'. The podcast delves into personal narratives, new evolutionary paradigms, embracing complexity, love's transformative power, and the importance of time and flow.

Austin Wade Smith, designer and ecologist, discusses convivial ecological institutions, extending legal rights to non-human entities, and reimagining economic systems for regenerative stewardship. They explore the importance of open source commons for collective sensemaking and challenge human-centric views by advocating for a more holistic approach to technology and ecological governance.

Joshua Schrei, writer and teacher, discusses the mythic dimensions of tech innovation and the need for self-mastery in wielding generative language models. They explore living responsibly in a tech-magic world, raising kids amidst the A.I. revolution, and humans' fascination with power beyond understanding.

Neil Theise, discoverer of a new human organ, discusses complexity, nonduality, and interconnectedness of life. Topics include burnout, emergent behaviors, funding challenges in research/art, scientism, and the impact of modern computing pioneers on society. The conversation bridges science and spirituality, urging listeners to stay present and engaged with reality.

Exploring regenerative accelerationism, Greg Landua & Speaker John Ash discuss bending finance for land stewardship. They critique extractive capitalism and advocate for AI solutions. Reflecting on sustainable fisheries in Alaska and redefining trust for biospheric health. Trust in technology is emphasized with new models and decentralized structures for community management.

Jingmai O'Connor, Associate Curator of Fossil Reptiles at The Field Museum, shares her passion for Mesozoic flying reptiles and the colorful world of paleontology. She discusses the multifaceted evolution of flight in dinosaurs, including the striking Microraptor and the fascinating dinosaur Yi Qi. O'Connor delves into the importance of soft tissues in fossils and the intersection of kickboxing and scientific inquiry. Her insights reveal the challenges and triumphs faced by those tracking ancient mysteries, making a case for resilience and dedication in the field.

This week I speak with social scientist Nicholas Brigham Adams (Twitter, LinkedIn) about his work at Goodly Labs to create new infrastructure for collective intelligence — new systems for collective fact-checking and sense-making that can help us rise to the occasion of our inherently social, planet-scale challenges.  And the time for this work is definitely NOW.  As paths across social, economic, and ecological networks continue to shrink due to the increasing connectivity of technological systems, humankind migrates from an Earth on which most events seem impossibly distant and irrelevant to an Earth defined by nonlinear, often exponential impacts of seemingly-trivial developments anywhere on the planet.  This is the century — and the decade — in which many of us have no choice but to learn, the easy way or the hard way, the consequences of our increasing vulnerability to and power over one another.  And one of the places this is most vividly apparent is in how truths and untruths ripple at unprecedented speeds across the globe, forcing us into a new and intense cosmopolitanism.  In the 1940s, the message was “Loose lips sink ships.”  Perhaps the message for the 2020s is “Cognitive biases spread mind viruses.”If you’ve followed me for a while, you’ve likely read my 2017 science fiction short story “An Oral History of The End of ‘Reality’”, a peek into our present-day post-truth carnival funhouse where AI-assisted forgeries demand vastly more nuanced and sophisticated methods for navigating fundamental uncertainty, far greater humility about our validity claims, and revolutionary tools for thinking together.  We have to learn to communicate the degree and dimension of our confidence and of our doubt — to learn how we can rigorously restore the trust necessary for coordination at scale — and Goodly Labs is, in my opinion, one of the most promising efforts in the world right now in this regard.  2024 is very likely to feel like the end of reality for a lot of us, and the stakes are immense:  fair presidential elections, concerted ecological action, and effective AI steering policy are all domains of existential risk in which we MUST be able to reconstruct some kind of minimally viable consensus reality.  I’d be considerably more worried for our future if I did not know that there are people like Brigham Adams and his amazing team of academics, founders, engineers, and journalists tilting their spears directly at this issue and working around the clock to help midwife that Holy Grail of communications technology:  a sane and healthy global brain.Announcement: The Future Fossils Book Club is back! Join me for to discuss Iron John: A Book About Men by Robert Bly on Saturday 27 January and Saturday 10 February from 12p-2p MST. I’ll send Substack and Patreon supporters the link to both calls soon, and there will be a dedicated private discussion channel in the Discord server.✨ Mostly-Complete List of Citations:Study: On Twitter, false news travels faster than true stories (MIT News)LOGIN 2009 keynote: gaming in the world of 2030 by Charles Stross (transcript)Ready Player One by Ernst ClineThe meaning of life in a world without work by Yuval Noah Harari (read at web.archive.org or 12ft.io)Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel KahnemanMotivated Numeracy and The Politics-ridden Brain by Stuff To Blow Your Mind (podcast)Coming Into Being by William Irwin ThompsonExplosive Proofs of Mathematical Truths by Simon DeDeo (lecture video)Stewardship of global collective behavior by Joseph Bak-Coleman et al. (paper)OpenAI's anarchist science chief is a techno-spiritual culthead (Athenil)So You Want To Be A Sorceror In The Age of Mythic Powers by Josh Schrei (podcast)Saul PerlmutterOccupy MovementJamie JoyceLynn MargulisDouglas EngelbartAlexander BeinerDouglas RushkoffSteve JobsStewart BrandW. Brian ArthurJim RuttSense8 (television series)✨ Support My Work:• Subscribe on Substack or Patreon for COPIOUS extras, including private Discord server channels and MANY secret episodes!• Make one-off donations at @futurefossils on Venmo, $manfredmacx on CashApp, or @michaelgarfield on PayPal.• Buy the music of Future Fossils (in this episode: “Olympus Mons” & “Sonnet A”) on Bandcamp.• Buy the books we discuss at the Future Fossils Bookshop.org page and I’ll get a cut.• Browse and buy original paintings and prints or email me to commission new work! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe