Daniel Schmachtenberger On Why The Answer to All the Problems is All of the Solutions
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- Опубликовано: 13 сен 2024
- Excerpted from The Great Simplification Episode #50 aired December 19, 2022
Full episode: • Daniel Schmachtenberge...
#thegreatsimplification #danielschmachtenberger #natehagens
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It is so refreshing for me to hear someone speak the way I think and speak. After decades in organization/design I developed a holistic model for positive change, and over time, a methodology which I am both documenting into a book, as well as using w/ existing clients. It's an ongoing challenge, these big, complex structures. It's one thing to 'think' cool solutions, and another to do the ground-floor work - and I'm honored to take on the challenge of both.
Congratulations! Where can I find your work? I'm working on integrating these perspectives into youth leadership development in LATAM.
Thanks Daniel and Nate for giving me my thought for the day. You guys are on the cutting edge of trying to grasp the situation, and I am right there with you! Keep it going!
engage as best you can. it's an awesome time.
This is spot on. There is so much unnecessary conflict over which transformative narrative is "correct". They are (mostly) all worthwhile, at least the well-meaning ones; and the challenge is for the holders of each narrative to hold their own narrative positively, but not exclusively - valuing the other narratives as well. A narrative typically has three parts: beginning, middle and end - (A) what is wrong with the world (B) what the world should be like; and between them, (C) how we get from A to B. People sometimes don't recognise that agreement on A and/or B doesn't mean full agreement, but it does mean some kind of alignment, even if their Cs are different.
The statement "The Answer to All the Problems is All of the Solutions" is in essence dialectic. It involves a dialectical relationship because all things are connected, and all things are in a constant state of change thus also influencing each other in subtle and overt ways. Meaning exactly what he said the solution to all problems is the aggregate of individual solutions to individual problems.
my favorite term that captures all these problems/solutions into an overarching problem is "evolutionary mismatch." The solution, like Daniel says, is all of them. Viewing them through the lens of evolutionary mismatch can help us bring a wide variety of solutions under the umbrella of "intentional and managed prosocial evolution" at all levels.
Yes indeed. Thank you, for creating these short excerpts. It's great to have these small bites of Daniel wisdom to land fully and digest well.
This is straight out of "the matter with things" from iain mcgilchrist... "Everything does everything to everything" . There is no causal chain of events from A to B because A and B are not actually distinct from each other. I highly recommend that book.
Dude he was like an actor switching from 6-7-8 key viewpoints of solution centric thinking to the metacrisis. Amazing, it was as if he went around a round table with leaders of all walks of life. How do we assure someone like this has the power to impart change? Power in all it's forms is wild...one of the most frustrating things we grapple with in human centric society that leads to decay is WHY do we continually allow bad people to become powerful in our shared societies and HOW can we prevent this from happening? It's nature's oldest question and since we are all the apex predator's of our ecosystem (well...most of us), the worst thing we know is that this happens randomly and constantly all the time. Darwin was the OG in realizing many species before have had their own metacrises and there may not be an identifiable pattern to assure long term security for our own species. What's insane is that I can even type this to you all and people will understand...I hope I'm making sense.
Excellent work
I find it amusing and also somewhat saddening that 2/3rds of the current comments are of the 'at the end of the day' variety despite the videos topic. And it nicely illustrates that not falling into reductionism on complex issues is really really challenging. I do it myself all the time. I think Daniel's right and that these are all issues that deserve people's caring. It would be wonderful if we could find ways for our individually deeply caring about different things to bring us together.
Distillation and reductionism are distinctly different. Distillation is necessary, as you cannot expect an 8th grade reading average population to understand complex subjects such as NBG set theory and declining EROEI.
Daniel is wrong for a very simple reason: There is no perceived benefit to people who aren't educated on the subjects sufficiently to give a shit about it. Einstein is accused of saying, "If you understand something well enough you can explain it simply." So allow me to employ Socrates' Elenchus to "solve the problem:"
Where is the solar powered factory that makes solar panels?
Seriously it's like no one even watched the video
@@skeetorkiftwon sadly true in that not enough people could give a shit. Both for education issues and willful ignorance.
Unless something affects the average person directly and painfully, they worry not about changing things.
Daniel is a brilliant and insightful guy, but not wrong.
@@digitalperson108 No. You appreciate his insight. But you're 1:1,000,000 at best. And that's not a compelling argument. You just imagine that you're surrounded by like minded people. That's a logical fallacy. You're not. You're surrounded by people that can't tell you the Pythagorean theorem.
You suffer from presentalism. And you'll get what you deserve.
@@melkadmidis4363 very interesting and well put viewpoint.
As hopeless as things on the whole may seem…I think you are right. All anyone can do is the best they can to make a positive impact and contribution.
Those solutions have been talked about all my life and at the end of the day I don't see it happening.
What I have seen is going pedal to the metal until we can't anymore.
Daniel continuing to prove that wisdom is correlated with beard length
I’m an orthodox Christian. Can confirm. The monks are the wisest men I have ever met.
That's such a sexist comment. It implies that only people with beards can be wise. Nonsensical.
😂
We need to get this man out on center stage more ❤
Indeed, a bearded clown who makes kraft beer on the side.
Even if the assertion is true, the application of all solutions simultaneously still implies the need for coordination and cooperation. The main obstacle to cooperation is the natural human tendency to compete with one another, not just for material goods, but for social status. Some competition is OK. Too much of the wrong kind is destructive.
Some cultures have successfully developed techniques to restrain excess or destructive competition. But the larger the society, the more opportunities exist to thwart such restraints. Large societies have a lowest-common-denominator problem.
If someone evades the cultural limits on monopolizing materials-directly, or by way of social influence-then it destroys any equilibrium. They become an existential threat to everyone else. That sets off a decline into competitive free-for-all. It doesn't have to be absolute all-against-all. But even having multiple sub-collectives at each others' throats is destabilizing. Many of us-even the most powerful-suffer anxiety. Circumstances can change in a heartbeat. Security is fragile and tentative. It's the dominant psycho-social dynamic.
The degree of uncertainty varies in different nations and cultures, but it is rare to ever feel sufficiently safe that we lose the desire for more control, better defenses, greater hoards of wealth. At best, we can numb the anxiety with unhealthy behaviours. It will take a radical cultural phase change to remove our anxiety, and the related pathologies. Such a phase change would be equivalent to having the wherewithal to address all structural and relational dysfunctions in all the various areas of society.
But there is no obvious way to engineer such a phase change. The pessimists believe that a global catastrophe might achieve it, but that the cost may exceed our ability to pay. But perhaps some other kind of radical change, be it an idea, or a technology, or a religious transformation, some kind of positive black swan, might do it. But until the people in power have means, motive, and opportunity (and a critical mass of consensus) to initiate a phase change deliberately, we're at the mercy of random events.
Perhaps if access to love and affection was correlated to one’s ability to elevate the systemic whole rather than correlated to one’s ability to plunder for personal gain at the expense of the whole we might gain insight into how to defeat the existing perverse incentives.
All true enough.
And there are some things underneath that are often seen as opposing, but are actually essential in appropriate balance.
Freedom is absolutely necessary - it is the foundation of "search", of discovery, of creativity. Yet freedom without responsibility is necessarily destructive.
Every context has necessary sets of limits required for its continued existence, and often those limits are very context sensitive.
Competition can be a lot of fun, yet competition without a cooperative base is necessarily destructive.
And real freedom results in diversity, so we must all learn to accept and respect any and all diversity that is not an actual and unreasonable threat to our existence.
So yes, diverse answers to diverse problems is part of what delivers security in practice. If you over constrain complex systems they become brittle and break.
There are real planetary boundaries, and we do often see power laws in practice, and we are the most adaptable species we know of, with the greatest ability to generate novelty and change patterns. And building a reasonable appreciation of the depths and dimensionality of the strategic systems at play takes a long time, and a lot of opportunity to study, to experiment, to fail and recover - for all levels and classes of agent.
Thanks Nate and Daniel for nicely summarising that the challenge(s) we are facing are inevitably interconnected and there is no (quick) fix. We are all part of the challenge and we are all part of the solution. Fully on board with that ❤
When talking to individuals of the different realms mentioned (economies, education, food, parenting, trauma work, etc.) myself, it becomes apparent that it's just so damn natural to fall back to a reductionist mindset. Isolating one problem, prioritising it and acting (that a "good case scenario" anyways). This oftentimes leads us to polarisation and we form more siloes than before 🌍
Self-awareness and becoming aware of the interconnectivity are a fundamental component. Therefore, videos like this one help so much 🫶
The acceptance that everyone is doing their part by just doing whatever their part is, is not an easy one but potentially a strong one. Lately, I have come to belief that this might be a way forward and I would love to what from you what you think of that 💬
If individuals (and hence groups) become more self-aware of what they are contributing to (pick any system you feel like to fill the blank here), some will inevitably reconsider their current activities, take action and drive towards the (so plentiful in number) changes we need 🚀
Two decades spent retracing the path Wilber documented two decades ago. History does indeed repeat itself. 😊 ‘Round and round we go!
Interesting.
The heart of the issue is Wypipo's epigenetic fracture with Nature.
So many problems and solutions!
I would suggest anything that requires large scale institutional change, such as the ones given, require too much mass to redirect. Instead, perhaps we should begin discussions on potential parallel systems that could develop into preferred lifestyles that attrophy problems.
It’s a mixture of cultural and individual development based on a model that prioritizes the ecosystem as we have subjected that space to a great deal of abrasion. This is all very true and the question is, are we already beyond the pal? Can we reconvene and re-institute some type of balance, the timetable and the timelines are abstract. We have to move forward what are the actual practical applications to do with such and if we don’t know, then we’re kind of doggy paddleing .
So then does it come down to "first principals" that we can apply to these multi-facetee and enmeshed problems?
What Daniel is referring to broadly is the history of Socialism. Every one of those solutions have been discussed (at great length) by most contemporary Socialist groups, Including Marxists, Communists, Anarchists, (Loosely) the liberal left.
Apply all solutions, in conjunction -- Strategically. Start an ecosystem of responses and tactics. Incubators of change.
Daniel has laid the foundations for a way of living based on holistic wisdom and wide goal setting (all solutions). An AGI that is programmed to enhance all life in perpetuity and that delivers on Daniels vision seems our only hope at this moment in time. Some people might think relying on AI to solve our problems is dangerous or implausible. But it would seem the only way out of our race to the bottom/precipice that is built on naive human ideas of progress, If we can't trust each other to follow wisdom rules (instead of forever valuing competitive advantage) then perhaps we can all agree to trust the AI? David Bowie predicted this situation in his song "Saviour Machine". He thought it was a Dystopia though, and the machine would get bored, start wars etc. - but if we can control the programme to value all life in some Buddhist consequential manner then surely it will always save us from destructive anti-life decisions? Maybe President Joe is working on it already...
I wish people would listen to my simple theory which enables one to wrap their mind around what we need to do as a species to save ourselves from ourselves and save ourselves from AI. If you listen to what I have to say it’s both the basis for a political platform and a kind of non-religious religion. It goes to the heart of Daniel’s observation that the answer to all the problems is the solution to all of the problems coupled with his observation that if you have the power of god you have to have the wisdom of god to steward that power to avoid self termination and move to a state where we are one with nature. In the same way that John Mearsheimer has used his offensive realism theory to explain how geopolitics works I’ve used my theory to explain how we might best help ourselves as a species be happy, healthy, spiritually wealthy and wise for as long as possible. That’s the goal we should be striving for. Daniel has identified where we need to go (The Third Attractor) and I’ve come up with the roadmap and vehicle to get there.
Have y'all read Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment or Minima Moralia? I'm a metamodernist working on AI alignment and these books seem particularly relevant
At the end of the day, looks like an emergence is necessary 😊
All of the problems expressed here are externalized. At the end of the day (lol), it seems to me that we need to support, impart, explore the nature of self and identification and highlight their arbitrary and illusory nature. All the rest will fall into place.
Hey Daniel! Keep growing that beard - it let's us know how recent your interviews are!!! 😀🧔
In the original Star Trek series, Kirk and crew landed on a planet where the ancestors of the humanoids living there had put in place an AI overlord that kept their descendants in check in a sustainable society of limited ambitions. Kirk decided to violate the prime directive so that these descendants of the architects of that sustainable society could be free to advance and perhaps one day, "boldy go" to explore new worlds and new civilizations.... The irony of course being, the 60s era writers of this episode, depicting an earth civilization capable of "warp drive" and interstellar space travel (in time for lunch), apparently had zero appreciation of ecological realities (the 2nd law, carrying capacity, species synergies and mass extinctions, bio accumulative toxins, etc.) and the idea that the ancestral designers of that AI sustainability governance mechanism perhaps loved their progeny and that planet more so than alien interlopers who only deified "progress".
You sound like the typical creepy globalist authoritarian who self-righteously deems themselves worthy of a 'parental' role over the 'children'/masses, and this micromanaging their lives is justified, because 'you know better'. So constrain the hell out of their parameters, like sheep on a free-range factory-farm. Real growth only comes from freedom, and the writers of Star Trek possessed that wisdom, which is why the show remains one of the best tv shows of all time, even to this day.
@@c3bhm In Star Trek IV The Voyage Home Kirk and crew save future Earth from total annihilation by an "alien probe". To do so they must time travel to resurrect hump back whales from extinction. (Actually the genetic puddle they resurrect was probably insufficient but that's a digression.). The point being, in this movie, the writers, made one small step to promulgate the idea, if you read between the phantasmagorical flourishes, that Earth's planetary ecology could collapse and lead to the end of many species, including human civilization, if a key linchpin species is lost. This opens the conceptual door to the larger idea that the web of life can be disrupted so severely that only time travel could save the planet from destruction. If not whales, perhaps it'll be the a extinction of a few key insect species that starts the doomsday click. . Or maybe it bioaccumulative toxics, carcinogens, and or endocrine disruptors, that cause havoc on microbes, inner biome and reproductive health. Maybe it's simply the 2nd law that pretty much outlines that a sustainable "civilization" is a contradiction in terms. Problems have solutions. Predicaments are another matter.
The fictional alien designers of that AI overlord in that 60s episode were computer scientists and engineers. But their AI sustainability governance system limited their progeny to simple lifestyle and "unscientific" pursuits. In the show the AI governed progeny were depucted as rather hedonistic and childlike, but they could have been written as dignified, sober Luddite agronomists, or perhaps edible landscape gardener hunter gatherers reminiscent of early Polynesian cultures.
In destroying that AI, Kirk in effect did something roughly parallel to the government bureaucrats who supplied the Gatling guns to the imperial troops in the Last Samurai.
Hate to draw the comparison. But strategic, non-violent Guerrilla Warfare tactics/strategy seem to be invaluable methods.
The " it's like what species is the forest" is a great way to frame it tbh.
The "solution" is an acknowledgment of the simple concept of the Common Good. We all live on the same "life raft" Earth which we are collectively and systematically undermining to the detriment of everything and everybody. Why is that so hard to understand?
This is why we’re just screwed though. There’s no way humans are ever going to smarten up and properly solve all these different problems. Each one is seemingly insurmountable on its own, let alone all of them.
Nate's team can you please upload clips from episodes onto another feed? I have bell notifications on for this channel and would prefer to only receive notifications for full episodes 🙏
Population, Habitat, Sociology
There are five major issues: Global debt to GDP is 400%. Fossil fuels supply 84% of global energy. Fossil fuels supply is near permanent decline. There is not available the minerals and metals to electrify energy supply. Global warming is accelerating past being able to be limited.
I believe that the roots of the human problem lie in open systems biology, from which there is ultimately no escape. And here the maximum power law applies, whereby system designs - such as biological cells etc - develop and prevail that maximize power intake, energy transformation, and those uses that reinforce production and efficiency. As humans do.
Under competitive conditions systems are selected which use their energies in various structural-developing actions so as to maximize their use of available energies. In the struggle for existence, the advantage must go to those organisms whose energy-capturing devices are most efficient in directing available energy into channels favorable to the preservation of the species.
As humans have done while driving to extinction (or close to) innumerable species in the quest for an ever great ecological niche.
Wait, I could only hear the beard.. what did he say?
You should see his beard now... check out a recent pod cast with Before skool
Trust. A decision about trust is at the core of every human interaction.
Change the way we measure that and you're changing everything.
I've been trying to tell people about this for decades.
Nobody listens.
Y'all all talk, nobody wants to do the work.
How do we inculcate trust more broadly?
@@mikerobinson4457 - It's pretty straight forward actually. We need a tool that can measure trust in a decentralized way, on a global scale. That can be achieved using a new type of rating system (a combination of older designs) that is based on open peer review. This can create a trust network that would facilitate human interaction and the assessment of information quality. The thing is that you cannot do that using an automated algorithm (like pageRank), it has to be manual and it has to be built ontop a truly decentralized network in order to be trustworthy as a system (the air doesn't judge the words it carries). This would allow us to determine the value of information and other easily fungible goods (something that money cannot do properly - because it is a tool for value assessment of non-fungible goods; the value of an mp3 and an apple cannot be measured the same way).
Fullcircle
animism. you dont have to over analyze it or overstate it, its animism.
A man who can see through the shadows and the lies of his culture will never be accepted, let alone believed, by the masses. Paraphrasing Plato, there. Being well adjusted to such an insane and destructive culture is not a sign of good mental health, but quite the opposite, in my opinion. Daniel is a quite lucid thinker - good job having him on!
Individual "enterprise" is a fundamental building block of the world we live in. But if those efforts are not under-pinned by the fundamental concept of the well-being of the WHOLE, then cultural erosion begins. The handful of multi-billionaires amidst an ocean of struggling "peasants" is a disaster in the making.
"So you're saying" (Just kidding!!!) that "in the final analysis" ( I couldn't help myself) that these complicated and issues must be solved by the accumulated wisdom of billions of individual human beings making rational decisions in favor of themselves and their ability to project their interests (their offspring) into the future without fear of coercion??!!
Who'd a thunk it!!!
Well done and well said.
Could AI serve as the synthesizer of all human wisdom, all perpectives?
Seem to have forgotten the basics.
In disaster it is mothers and children first, so far there has been no mothers or children ever mentioned.
But upstream from "all of the problems" is a common cause, which is the belief that happiness is dependent on gain or maintenance rather than innate to being. Look in each of Daniel's examples:
MIC, government, and lobbyists think their happiness is dependent on money, prestige, and power.
Educators and parents think their happiness is dependent on preparing kids for a job.
Religious people think their happiness is dependent on religion and meaning.
Environmentalists think their happiness is dependent on protection of nature.
Media people think their happiness is dependent on money and prestige.
Therefore, we just need to see that happiness is innate to being rather than dependent on gain or maintenance.
First: What's the Problem? If you cannot refine the problem definition there can be no strategy towards a solution. Daniel is describing problems from upstream influences. Yet, ultimately, the effect of the downstream problem is how we will measure if it was solved. If the downstream problem (i.e. sea-level rise) is caused, completely, by one upstream problem (i.e. Climate Change), then only fixing the upstream problem will solve the downstream problem. Not all "problems" are completely caused by these upstream problems. And, we should be using a reductivist approach wherever it can be used.
a reductive problem is multi-non-sustainable systems with finite resources. WE all gonna die.
@@DaleLefflerCLC But it does make a difference if humanity lasts longer and if we mitigate some undeserved suffering, no?
A classic intellectual struggle of getting lost in the weeds. It IS absolutely possible to focus on a specific action that produces the greatest improvements without ignoring all the rest.
That action is the fostering of free collaboration and the calling to meet everyone's needs UNCONDITIONALLY with decentralized grass roots Free Collaboration Networks
I think we need to crash. Then, perhaps people can build something again, considering all these things, but us....???
Not wanting to sound 'zealotous' and would never say 'at the end of the day' lol.... but isn't everything fundamentally stemming from the population overshoot of our own species? Of course it's all so intertwined and complex, BUT, are not all the 'symptoms' (climate change, climate migration, degraded education, degraded environment, resource and power wars, etc., etc.) we are having caused by the overburdening numbers of us? We're not talking about exterminating humans for all those who have that knee jerk auto-reaction to this concept... if we were to simply begin stemming the tide of new humans (babies/procreation) in order to reduce the great ravaging effects we are having on the planet would not everything else start to relax out too? We all die eventually, and if we're not producing more than our replacement numbers the Earth will slowly recover, very slowly....For those with the birth rate argument: even with 'reduced birth rates' occurring, it's still not enough because those birth rates are ratios based off of our great numbers of close to 9 billion, we're still growing our world population at a rate of 80-100 million humans per year, net (even with wars, climate disasters, plagues, poisonings of our environment, earthquakes, floods, fires, etc.)....THAT is not sustainable, and the more humans we bring to the planet the less oxygen, food, water, etc. there is to go around and the more damage we cause due to our shelter and waste needs, and manufacturing of stuff required by every human. This is something each and everyone person on the planet can play their part in. Why would anyone even think this is a great time to bring a new human to the planet in the first place, i don't get. Willful ignorance? Anyway, I know i'm whistling in the wind here; I know it won't happen. It's way easier to point the fingers elsewhere and wait for someone else to solve the problems we collectively create and way harder to take personal responsibility.
Numbers can change the quality of a system but you should remember that scaling does not only create problems.
Daniel is good at slinging truisms . Tell me something that is not obvious..
You tube has given the most banal thinkers a platform.
The key to all those problems is there are too many people on a crowded planet. ALL those problems have existed for thousands of years. But NOW, our sheer numbers have forced us up against environmental limits: water, energy, etc. Fixing culture, politics, or religion need to be done. But without getting population under control, nada.
The government's are working on that . Just be patient 💉💉💉💊
@@johnmitchell2741 Thanks, and see Darrell Bricker's "Empty Planet". Government's not required.
"The key is" to see how all these things come together ..... was that reductionist thinking sneaking in there at the end😆?
Solidarity is the only answer. So it's education otherwise we don't have the tools to discuss. Education primarily in mindfulness and connection to our planet, each other, and ourselves gives people power over their perceptions, together.
Bolstered by traditions of wisdom from engineering to planting to water and power and dance and song, such an education would inspire an ethos of gratitude that slows the pace down and keeps it all going. What is not sustainable is the problem we must solve for -- which is to say entropy will win, but the transmission of information is the temporary victory over entropy that determines quality of life lived.
In ignorance we can only see scarcity, our pace becomes fast/survivalist, nasty brutish short...the solidarity of the herd. The light of freedom relieves some ignorance, but now we are a herd of "individuals", distracted from responsibility in comfort, literal or supremacist. Capital is supremacist, it hates People and eternally punishes their lack of solidarity.
No, We seek to establish a solidarity of the responsible, this only comes about with education in how to make space, to respond instead of react. In the shared experiences thereof we are rooted in being children of this planet, our mother. We are grateful for the responsibility, this is our meaning in life. it is enough to bring this to the fore and watch us be content creating beauty with our lives.
Did you even watch the video?
@@globesurfer122 Yep 5 minutes is within my attention span. Frankly he loses his point and mushes the end. I enjoy his talks.
And to further hone my point, I always enjoy from the 5 min mark in this Alan Watts short video
ruclips.net/video/Fz1rC8SW_t8/видео.html
The disassociation he talks about is a square one fundamental that an education in mindfulness gets at the root of. In a favorable way, it teaches an embodiment grounded in connection that changes the default perception to something that not only understands but can generate solidarity based in gratitude and responsibility.
Daniel is such a cmear thinker and communicator but the main impression I got from this video is that the top of his face doesn't exactly fit with the bottom of his face.
Something about sacred soil and having more capital flow through women as both founders and investors seems like it would answer oh I don’t know maybe 98% of the issues. Where capital flows energy goes. Ha can you believe 3% of venture funding goes to women. What if 3% of water went to women. What if sacred soil went upstream to crest sacred healthcare.
Are we still allowed to say women?
98% of the issues... you're delusional. Maybe worry about the human rights issues in the middle east instead of 'more women founders'
Grossly delusional, not to mention the hypocritical sexism.
In the meantime Homo sapiens aka Homo technicus aka Homo singularitas aka Homo stupidus celebrates that science is now capable of extracting Oxygen from Mars' atmosphere.
Earth, Nature, Trees, Photosynthesis, Mars, the Solar System, and the Universe must be laughing at our utter imbecility.
Darn, I always thought if we voted for a new President, we would get change. LOL , not
Daniel is so completely off the mark and utterly confused. Not a single one of these are a solution to our current dilemma.
Yes, there are so many problems and most are stemming from the competitive substance we live in. And yes we have to change a lot of things at the same time.