Mindscape 270 | Solo: The Coming Transition in How Humanity Lives

It’s so wild I just made a video on Sean’s ideas here regarding efficiency and human happiness using dating apps as an example. So good to hear this from someone I respect so much.

Whatever topics Sean Carroll covers , they are always interesting and a pleasure to listen to. Thanks!

Solos are my favorites to!

Kudos, Dr. Carroll, for tackling such a thorny subject. The political and socioeconomic aspects of future technology are daunting. One aspect is the control of future technology because of society's inherent kleptocratic nature. Also, society has only been marginally successful at minimizing the costs of unforeseen problems of technological development. As always, there will be people who profit by shifting these costs to the society, e.g. the oil industry and climate change. We must prevent gene editing of the human germline to be sold to the highest bidder; if we don't, the 'haves' will evolve into a new species and the 'have nots' will be left to perish.

Yes, a solo! Love these as much as the AMAs

A beautiful mind , beautiful spoken by a beautiful man. Love these videos , your thoughts and opinions and how your express them. Massive respect , peace and love 🧡

I heard that in the original script of the Matrix humans were used as neural network rather than batteries

Brilliant. Thanks, Sean!

Thank you so much Sean. I sincerely appreciate your work and intellectual exploration. It's wonderful to have this stimulation especially when health issues have me frequently debilitated. Your podcast is a godsend-particle. The Carroll boson 😜 I'm not as clever as you are, but I try lol

In the Matrix original script, humans were used as efficient neural networks rather than batteries, it made much more sense.

The 4 day workweek is great for salaried workers in offices. In factories and warehouses, it would probably mean an increase in work demand. Many of the current production facilities already have mandatory overtime, even where it's "illegal".

Thank you for your light Dr. Carroll! May entropy treat you super well <3

1:28:06 you're basically describing late-stage capitalism, which ties so deeply back to the current climate crisis - as well as the risks of not moving towards positive biological/health outcomes such as universal health care, education access, etc. I'd highly recommend having on an economist like Thomas Picketty on the pod to talk about the quickly expanding hyper-inegalitarianism of modern society, where the ultrarich can enjoy increasingly positive economies of scale for growing their wealth to astronomical levels. He's a proud capitalist, but makes a great case for why we desperately need measures like progressive wealth taxes and 'national inheritance' to try and at least stymy our slide into global plutocracy. I love your analogy of these societal shifts as a sort of phase transition - and to me by far the scariest factor in all of it is the fact that all this technological process is being run by mega-billionaires :( Anyway, thanks for the insightful episode. P.S. I was the dude who brought a Sean B. Carroll book for you to sign last year in NY 💀

Very imaginative comic book writer Alan Moore described the singularity precisely as a phase transition, where we change as a society from the recent liquid state to a society of steam. I hope that that means that many individuals escape earth and go to populate the stars.

Wow! A lot of food for thought there. Thanks Sean!

A real phase-transition: Being able to share thoughts and perceptions directly. It will let us overcome all collective actions problems. Which are the real problems. We can solve wars, climate change, abandon politics, ...

I just pre-ordered your latest book. I can't wait to read it this May.

The solos are my favorite episodes.

Interesting as always - if anything I wish it were longer.

Interesting episode. I know it wasn't the intention to deal with everything exhaustively, but one thing I think will be an important factor in a possible coming phase transition is how we will get our energy. Maybe this is overstating things a bit, but everything depends on it. Historically also, we see that when we shifted towards new sources of energy, like say the domesticated horse, agriculture or fossil fuels, societies changed arround those new sources of energy. Now ofcourse we need to get off of fossil fuels for climate change, or we will run out anyway eventually. The question here is, in relation to a possible 'technological singularity', can we keep increasing our energyproduction necessary to power this technological progression? All of these depend on enormous amounts of energy. As it stands it doesn't seem like we can build enough non-fossil fuel alternative energy-sources to keep up with this. So one scenario that seems plausible to me, is that the technological progress peters out a bit because of decline in energy-production and also stagnation, or decline in population. Then we get a scenario that is unlike any of the ones that assume technological progress will continue to keep accelerating.