Superorganism Intelligence, Nuclear Power and the Metacrisis of Wisdom

Are we at the Fermi Paradox filter moment?

BWX Technologies, a company that builds power systems for submarines and aircraft carriers, is developing a mobile reactor for the US military that will fit into a standard shipping container and be delivered on a truck. It may not be long before you can order one for your RV on Amazon. The company expects installation should take about three days and the unit will run three years before it needs to be sent back to a service center for refueling.

Artificial intelligence may accelerate BMX’s timetable and provide even more engineering marvels. Is that a good thing? This past week I took a deep dive into the three-and-a-half-hour podcasted conversation between Nate Hagens and Daniel Schmachtenberger, on how artificial intelligence accelerates climate disruption and pushes us well beyond the many planetary boundaries we have already breached. For the sake of those with less time to spare, let me extract some of the more salient parts of that discussion from The Great Simplification. I recognize these are long sets of quotations, but they extract some of the best parts of a much longer and far more intricate and nuanced conversation.

NH: So humans are a social species and in the modern world, we self-organize…