The Consilience Project
I currently only know the title and that a founder was Daniel Schmachtenberger whom Nate Hagens has had on his podcast The Great Simplification a half dozen times so far. So, let’s see, go to The Consilience Project website, look for an About page… [I may add boldface and notes in brackets]
Critical conversations for the future of human civilization
The Consilience Project publishes novel research at the leading edges of global risk mitigation, governance design and culture. Our content explores the key challenges and existential threats facing humanity, and the underlying problems with current approaches for addressing them. We outline how our social systems and institutions need to be redesigned if free, open, non-authoritarian societies are to survive [as if such societies could or should survive — ‘free’ and ‘open’ imply democratic modern human centrism].
Our Context
At no other point in history has humanity faced such a wide range of novel catastrophic risks [maybe; about 900k years ago, for 117k years, our ancestors numbered less than 1,280 individuals, a near extinction bottleneck]. Our civilization has never been more vast, complicated, and fragile. This systemic fragility is exacerbated by new technologies, geopolitical instability, an ecological crisis and a reliance on global economic supply chains. These interlocking, interrelated problems are known collectively as the metacrisis [i.e. overshoot debt]. The Consilience Project’s primary aim is to clarify and reveal the nature of the metacrisis to enable comprehensive solutions [that do not involve ending our form of civilization?] to global problems. Our work recognizes the interconnectedness of humanity’s challenges: any solution must factor the underlying drivers of each one. [I.e. any solution must start with the recognition that modern humans, our 75k year expansionist form of civilization/invasive metastatic species, must end if our renormalized species is to sidestep extinction because we cannot fix modernity, but perhaps some could abandon modern techno-industrial global society now to increase the chances of some humans passing through the foreseeable bottleneck this millennium.]Our Project
We publish research and analysis to help guide decision-makers and leaders towards the critical paths necessary to address [or not?] the unique challenges of our time. The content published here is for any individual [i.e. me], group or institution trying to innovate around global coordination challenges, catastrophic risks and social technologies [all of which involves numerous presuppositions we moderns are blind to that are needed to even think that our current form of civilization is remotely viable].The Consilience Project is a publication of the Civilization Research Institute (CRI), a charitable think tank focused on reducing systemic fragility and advancing new forms of governance and coordination. CRI seeks to inform the next era of human collaboration and collective intelligence to ensure human and ecological thriving.
The home page has a ‘Subscribe’ and ‘Log-in’ at top, and three other links to articles/pages. So, from the top: I created a username/password and actually used my real email, but left occupation, biographical info, birth date, location, and website (I have one) blank as there is no indication any fields are required to be filled (other than first three). There is an option to have information sent to your email address.
The first link on page is to “How to Mislead with Facts” I couldn’t read associated small print, so I’ll cut’n paste: Verified facts can be used to support erroneous conclusions | Jan 30, 2022 | 8 Min Read
No author is noted — a red flag. At the end is a scroll bar with other articles.
First words:
Verified facts can be used to support erroneous conclusions. Here is how we can put an end to that.
Fact-checking has become popularized as the definitive process for certifying truth in the media. This has occurred in response to the proliferation of a wide variety of internet subcultures, often based largely upon misinformation….
a 10 minute read.
“The now crucial nexus of digital technologies, education, and politics can be reconfigured to allow for widespread learning and mutual understanding.” I recall when the Internet became a thing. The world was going to be reconfigured to get rid of misinformation and disinformation by allowing each individual to learn about the world and how it works without any intermediaries as all information known now and from all time would be at our fingertips. And it is.
Everyone could have the equivalent of ten PhDs free, for the price of an effort. Meanwhile, Listservs, Facebook, X, Quora, TickTok, Medium….
The second link (feature article) is The Endgames of Bad Faith Communication.
Seeking to understand others and communicate honestly is an essential democratic virtue. Can it be maintained in the digital age?
Decades of culture war have degraded civic discourse, putting many open societies in a tailspin of bad faith public communications. Politicians, journalists, and everyday people on all sides intentionally mislead with facts, mischaracterize opposing views, and dehumanize those with whom they disagree. Social media has started to change our basic habits of communication by amplifying and incentivizing bad faith tactics. Every day, whole populations are exposed to powerful forms of computational propaganda and other manipulative information.
Skipping 10 minutes to last paragraph:
To get started you could consider the common strategies of bad faith communication in Box 2 [Misleading with facts, White hat bias, Strawman arguments, Ad hominem dismissal, Moving the goalposts, Sanctimony
Acting, Appeals to authority, Dehumanizing language, Undue social pressure, Pejorative representations, Faking empathy and respect, Equivocations and false logics, Manipulative framing, Villainization, Oversimplification, Complexity smoke screen] and practice the opposing strategies for good faith. But understand that highly skilled, non-naive good faith communication cannot be made routine. There is not a formula or practice or technology that assures it — and nor should there be. Any approach that becomes a recognized signal of “good faith!” will then be faked in bad faith. Individuals must therefore continually innovate in their approach to communication. We must work together always to find new ways to break the hegemony of bad faith. This should be done as if the future of civilization depends on it — because it does.
The “future of civilization” that depends on “good faith” communications is the future of Modern Techno-Industrial (MTI) Civilization, the one Ted Kaczynski wrote about (and tried to destroy), the one Blaise Pascal lived in. Pascal made the same points as the staff writer (Daniel?) in fewer words, “Thought makes the whole dignity of man; therefore endeavor to think well, that is the only morality.” from Pensée, 1669, his message (he could and did fail to think well) is noted on 457 websites now and in accessible to everyone books via libraries before the Internet. Meanwhile…. modernity happens.
Nothing new here folks, so maybe our problem isn’t ignorance or bad faith communication, but our failure/inability, as subsystems of a form of MTI civilization, to use what we could know. Modern humans would rather believe than know. Is Daniel a thoroughly modern human?
Our form of civilization selects for willful ignorance, motivated error, and illusion piled high and deep as learned via our form of culture taken in with our mother’s milk and reinforced (more often than not) by a global schooling system, formal and informal. I can find no evidence that modern humans post-Internet are more enlightened in either the Western or Eastern Way.
Calling upon individuals to endeavor to think well could work, but not to transform 8 billion individuals, or even a small fraction of one percent. Could a small fraction of renormalized humans be enough? I don’t know — to know with absolute certainty, you’ll have to ask a true believer (and believe them — its easy).
The third link, other than the About page, is the last: Technology is Not Values Neutral: Ending the Reign of Nihilistic Design
And it starts with a summary (abstract), which helps people like me looking for the ring of truth:
Summary
The widespread adoption of new technologies always has unintended consequences. Through the natural course of innovation, many technologies co-evolve to form distinct technology ecosystems with emergent and highly complex impacts. The development of the car, for example, had a profound impact on humanity’s perception of time and space. Cars made previously difficult journeys far easier, opening up new opportunities for both individuals and markets. This affected how we think, how we plan for the future, and what it is that we value in life. The car determined how we built our cities, and therefore which places were valued and which were not. Vehicles shaped how we distributed and accessed food, social interaction, and employment, which altered our relationships, families, and livelihoods. At the same time, they disconnected people from the local economy and community, generated harmful emissions, and had a major impact on health and well-being. There is almost no aspect of modern Western life that has not been impacted by the automobile.
In this article, we propose that there are inevitable and unexpected impacts of technologies on both the human mind and society as a whole. For most of history, the process of tech design has either assumed that such second-and third-order effects do not occur or that tech innovation is net positive. This approach is called “technological orthodoxy”, and it views technology as neutral with regard to human values. This must change if humanity is to survive in a world of ever-increasing technological presence and complexity. At this moment in history, it is essential that we adopt an approach to design that accounts for how tech affects the way people think and behave. This is axiological design. Axiology is the philosophical study of value, including both ethics and philosophy of mind. Axiological design is the application of principled judgment about value to the design of technology. This is not a single approach, but a general model for design that focuses on how technology is inextricably linked to our view of the world and our activities within it. Tech affects power dynamics in society, forms ecologies and habitats, and shapes the thoughts, values, and relationships of those using it. We must start to take tech seriously, before it changes our world in ways that may not be easy to repair.
What if the context of the last 300 years of hyper-modern fossil fueled life is 75k years of human domestication to serve ideology and technology (to acquire a dependence on what serves us to expand)?
“Take most [modern] people, they’re crazy about cars. They worry if they get a little scratch on them, and… if they get a brand-new car already they start thinking about trading it in for one that’s even newer… I’d rather have a goddam horse. A horse is at least human, for God’s sake.” — J. D. Salinger.
Horses are domesticants, but only since about 5.5k years ago, and so are more like normal humans than we are. They are far less denormalized than modern humans.
Dogs, domesticated about 30k years ago, are also far less denormalized wolves than we moderns are denormalized hominins.
Being context blind may be fatal. Will it be? Posterity may find out, specifically the last human standing — but we don’t know where, don’t know when, and we may not meet again some sunny day.
Tweaking the modern world socioeconomic-political system and form of civilization at the margins may not change it’s trajectory in any way that alters its outcome.
Posterity may want us to endeavor to think well with far more endeavor than we imagine, or perhaps can imagine.
I had no idea who Daniel Schmachtenberger might be, so doing a google search on his name turned up a vast number of social media links. There is no Wikipedia page on him. His personal website has an About page almost devoid of information. But elsewhere:
Daniel Schmachtenberger is a scientist, complex systems designer, and evolutionary philosopher. He is the founder of Emergence Project, a futurist think tank, and the co-founder of Neurohacker Collective , the company behind the cognitive supplement Qualia. [Note: a pseudoscience endorsed brain supplement at $139 a bottle, 22 pills.]
Actually, Daniel’s only CV I could find is from his Facebook page which mentions that he “Studied Mathematics at Maharishi International University from 1997 to 2001.”
I actually rejoined LinkedIn to see what info was there: “Daniel is the founder of Civilization Research Institute and founding member of The Consilience Project.” So far, he and his claims appear vacuous.
Causes
Animal Welfare • Children • Civil Rights and Social Action • Economic Empowerment • Education • Environment • Health • Human Rights • Poverty Alleviation • Science and Technology • Disaster and Humanitarian Relief
Researcher
Civilization Emerging Mar 2017 — Jul 2020 · 3 yrs 5 mos
Growing up home-schooled, Daniel had early exposure to design science (Buckminster Fuller, Jacques Fresco, Permaculture, etc.), systems science and complexity (Fritjof Capra, Stuart Kauffman, etc.), philosophy and psychology (eastern and western approaches), and activism (animal rights, environmental issues, social justice, etc.) His passion has always been at the intersection of these topics — specifically, endeavoring to facilitate the emergence into a more mature civilization — that can prevent otherwise impending catastrophes, remediate existing damage, make possible a radically higher quality of life for all sustainably, and support greater realization of our individual and collective potential.
Okay, Daniel’s brain, despite Qualia, is 100% human centric and being able to talk the talk, to traffic in “mere eloquence,” is of no interest, and worse, a distraction. He’s obviously not a scientist, nor “person of interest” (to me).
But I could be wrong, so I listened to Nate and Daniel talk: The Great Simplification #05, Energy Blindness. I actually listened to Nate’s intro and to a few sentences of Daniel’s before pausing to download the corrected and readable PDF transcript that Nate provides (thank you one of Nate’s students/supporters).
I can’t trust even my short-term memory of what is said, so I don’t, and if it matters, I need to be able to pause and reread without using a keyboard input. Nate asked him to “briefly describe your work, a little bit of Consilience Project and what you’re trying to do?”
Daniel Schmachtenberger (00:05:26): Yeah, roughly I have been, as a kid, was interested in environmental topics, social justice topics, animal rights topics, all different kinds of activism and also then had a deep interest in kind of system science and looking at how all of those problems had certain interconnections where you could solve one problem but display some of the problems somewhere else, or had common drivers like perverse economic incentive and collective action issues. And started forecasting and seeing that many of those problems were reaching critical tipping points of global catastrophic risk. And that just kind of got me thinking about how do we make a mature civilization that can be a safe steward of exponential tech, the power that exponential tech gives, and what is a civilization that makes it through its technological adolescence look like? And so that looked like catastrophic risk and existential risk kind of assessment, and rethinking our social systems, governance, economics, law, rethinking our kind of cultural and value systems, educational process, and obviously also rethinking our technological systems.
So… “how do we make a mature civilization that can be a safe steward of exponential tech, the power that exponential tech gives, and what is a civilization that makes it through its technological adolescence look like?”
The concern is that the Modern Techno-Industrial (MTI) form of civilization faces catastrophic and existential risks that need to be assessed by rethinking our social systems, governance, economics, law, rethinking our kind of cultural and value systems, educational process, and obviously also rethinking our technological systems so MTI society can be made to work. We just need to make it through our technological adolescence to transition to the world as envisioned in 1967 by techno-seers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, which the poet Richard Brautigan was able to capture the essence of (what poets can do).
It was the beginning of a new religion for the coming new world order, and it has been called the Data Religion, but Edward Bernays’ apostles haven’t come up with a final name. A follower may view forms of technology as an existential threat, but never technology or ideology.
Sorry, I don’t have to waste band-width on this poem, buy my inner muse forces me to. These are not Brautigan’s innermost ideas/vision. He had been invited (paid?) to be a poet-in-residence at Caltech, and like Shakespeare, he gave voice to those about him, what they might say if endowed with superhuman eloquence.
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace
Okay, nice view from 1967. Meanwhile, “the pace of planetary destruction has not slowed.” [Suzuki 2016].
In summary: I seeth a totally human centric worldview. Zero thinking outside the MTI box nor questioning of MTI presuppositions, possibly because the MTI narrative automatically selects for its continuance. The MTI narrative traffics in concepts that reference other concepts in a house of mirrors where each concept reflects all the others holographically. Daniel is an awesome master of his trade: concept mongering wordsmithery — mere eloquence, e.g. superhuman complex systems speak. He could probably use “emergy” and “transformity” in a sentence and define each correctly.
It is a conceptual Ponzi scheme that works for a time, as it is also a belief-based house of cards (concepts) that will collapse. In a Nature centric worldview (a different form of civilization), no human is a source of any information that matters, even if their book is the word of God spoken in a cave or read in a hat.
What top scientists or scholars think also isn’t a source. Nature, the nature of things, the Gaia system, Aluna… is the only source of information that matters: about what works to persist long term as evolvable subsystem. Prattling primates can only, at best, guess then test.
Oh, but Nate Hagens is sitting at the feet of the Master, he knows that Daniel is awesome…. So do I, but not in anyway that matters (Rasputin was awesome — he got the Royal Family to believe in his awesomeness). I’ve referenced Nate’s work, featured it, and valued his offering since Oil Drum days, but sometimes in the affairs of the intellect, nothing fails like worldly success. Nate is now a public intellectual. A babe in the woods in the hands of a gifted wordsmith/concept bewitcher (“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language” — Ludwig Wittgenstein).
Such failure is usually, I’ve observed, a Faustian bargain that alters your message, your ability to think outside of the consensus narrative (your position within the consensus is forfeit if you did or could). If everyone you know, live with, mentor, befriend (except your dogs) would be aghast, horrified if you said, “________,” you probably won’t say it nor could you be led to think of saying it.
Most primates will die (modern humans will kill) for social approbation. Actually questioning MTI presuppositions may involve a cost (not measured in money) too few can pay. This may be why (bewitchment of our intelligence) posterity will pay our overshoot debt.