From: jimruttshow8596
Forrest Landry, founder and CEO of Magic Flight, conducts research under the Ronin Institute into various complex topics, including the influence of product and system design on culture and ecology, the interface between the organic and inorganic (specifically the relationship between concept and computation), and models for effective personal and social governance [00:46:00]. He is also a philosopher focusing on ethics and metaphysics [01:20:00].
Motivation for Research
Landry’s motivation stems from a profound appreciation for being alive, viewing it as a fundamental gift [02:47:00]. His work is in service to nature and the future of humanity, aiming to preserve healthy experiences and the capacity for life to thrive [03:11:00]. He believes that human well-being and natural well-being are not mutually exclusive and can both be achieved [03:36:00].
He observes that current decision-making processes often lack a long-term perspective and are not even optimally designed for the short term, leading to squandered opportunities and resources [04:08:00]. Humanity is at an epochal moment where the future could be glorious or disastrous, and this outcome depends on the choices made [04:33:00].
Ethics vs. Morality
Landry distinguishes between ethics and morality, comparing them to principles and rules [05:34:00].
- Principles (Ethics): General heuristics that apply broadly, guiding thinking about important issues [05:37:00]. Ethics, in this sense, represents the “principles of effective choice” [09:36:00].
- Rules (Morality): Specific guidelines relevant to a particular situation or context [05:52:00].
Rules are derived from principles and must be re-evaluated as the world changes, especially with the introduction of technology like the internet, cars, and planes [08:20:00]. The challenge of the current era is to find a firm basis for crafting operating rules that align with underlying values [09:17:00].
The Concept of Choice
The philosophical concept of choice is crucial to ethics [09:44:00]. While science and technology provide robust tools for understanding causation, there is a lack of equally developed tools for understanding choice [10:01:00]. Modern scientific views often suggest that choice might be an illusion or that the world is deterministic [10:24:00].
Metaphysics provides a framework for clear thinking about choice, which in turn supports the concept of effective choice and its principles [10:42:00]. Without a clear understanding of these principles, the notion of an effective choice lacks a foundation [10:57:00].
Landry defines choice as involving “a range of potentials, some sort of selection, and then there’s a consequence” [20:10:00]. He avoids the terms “free will” due to their complications [20:03:00].
Consciousness and Computation
Landry argues against the idea that consciousness can be purely modeled in terms of compute [18:10:00]. He believes that consciousness and computing are distinct concepts and that a coherent notion of consciousness is difficult to achieve if it’s solely viewed through the lens of computation [18:16:00].
He points out that reductionism, the idea that complex phenomena can be explained by simpler underlying principles, fails even in seemingly strong cases like deriving chemistry from physics [20:50:00]. This suggests that emergent phenomena exist that cannot be predicted from lower-level states, which is a core tenet of complexity sciences [22:04:00]. Deterministic chaos also shows that even simple physical models can produce wildly different trajectories from tiny initial differences, making worries about determinism practically moot [22:28:00].
Landry highlights the existence of the “unknowable”—fundamental limits to what can be known, even in principle [23:39:00]. This unknowability implies that “utilitarian ethics,” based purely on feedback mechanisms and objective metrics, is incomplete [24:00:00]. There is a need for “value ethics,” which considers what truly matters and the fundamental basis of choice that doesn’t solely stem from feedback [24:11:00].
Values, Meaning, and Purpose
Landry outlines distinct modalities for these concepts:
- Purpose: Defined externally, assigned to an object or entity by something other than itself (e.g., the purpose of a toaster is to make toast, assigned by a user) [28:58:00]. Purposes are mutually exclusive; one can only do one thing at a time [47:24:00].
- Values: Innate, coming from within an individual or entity and manifesting in choices [30:09:00]. Values are not necessarily mutually exclusive; one can hold multiple values simultaneously [47:18:20]. While sociological perspectives might suggest values are learned, Landry maintains their innate quality is a metaphysical distinction [31:48:00].
- Meaning: Occurs in the relationship between the subjective and the objective; it is inherently transpersonal [31:06:00]. Meaning bridges values and purpose, allowing a multiplicity of values to lead to what is meaningful, which then clarifies purpose [47:44:00].
The Role of Consciousness in Societal Choices
The development of technology has given humanity immense power, including the capacity to create and destroy the entire world (e.g., nuclear war, biotechnology) [33:34:00]. This unprecedented power necessitates a profound ethical coherency, often likened to the “wisdom of gods” rather than their “capricious” nature [33:57:00].
Societal choices, such as those regarding industrial farming, must consider complex systems like ecosystems [40:48:00]. For practices to be truly sustainable, they also need to be adaptive and evolve with changing natural contexts [42:26:00]. This requires a level of consciousness that transcends pure evolutionary processes, which, while effective scientists, are “dispassionate” and can lead to species dying off or continents becoming deserts [42:50:00]. Humanity has forced itself into a position where it must make top-down choices with conscious values, moving beyond the “unconsciousness” of market forces or blind evolution [44:05:00].
Challenges in Sense-Making and Action
To navigate current global challenges and avoid existential risks, society needs to move from a state of “muddle blind deaf and dumb” to effective sense-making, choice-making, and action-taking [50:13:00].
- Sense-making: Requires entering an observational state, sharing information transparently and unfiltered, and engaging in real inquiry to ask the right questions about the world’s state and current position [50:31:00]. This contrasts with the current “disinformation ecologies” created by market incentives [51:30:00].
- Choice-making: Guided by a “compass” of values and criteria for success, ensuring choices are holistic and comprehensive [53:39:00].
- Implementation: Having the capacity to manifest chosen actions, which is often lacking at the individual level but present in large institutions, albeit often without sufficient sense-making [1:11:31].
These three elements are all necessary; none alone is sufficient [1:12:32]. The problem with current implementation systems is their susceptibility to corruption and private benefit, which externalizes harm to the commons [1:14:40]. Society needs to develop new capacities in sense-making, choice-making, and implementation, especially concerning institutional design, to ensure they promote the well-being of the community [1:15:14].
Landry suggests moving from platforms to protocols to avoid centralization and market capture [1:04:52]. Distributed systems, while less efficient in some ways, are necessary for handling the vast amounts of information needed for high-quality, collective choice-making at scale [1:06:15].
Fermi Paradox and Humanity’s Ethical Responsibility
Landry connects the discussion of consciousness and choice to the Fermi Paradox, which questions why humanity hasn’t observed other intelligent life in the universe [1:25:39]. He notes that the TEDx talk “The Accident of Unconsciousness” touches on the unlikeliness of human existence [1:25:25].
One possible explanation for the Fermi Paradox is the “dark forest theory,” where advanced civilizations remain silent to avoid alerting potential predators [1:41:42]. In this context, any species would only initiate contact if they were certain the other party had a sufficiently developed level of ethical thinking and behavior to be “safe to talk to” [1:29:02].
This implies that if humanity desires to find other intelligent life or participate as a “citizen of the universe,” it must cultivate an ethics of “nonrelativistic ethics” [1:33:02]. Our existence might be unique, or at least uniquely advanced, placing a profound purpose upon humanity to “bring the universe to life” [1:27:00]. Squandering this opportunity by destroying Earth’s ecosystem or capacity to expand into the universe would be a monumental loss [1:27:19]. This possibility serves as a strong motivation to develop the “wisdom of good gods” to match humanity’s increasing power [1:32:01].
Humanity cannot afford endless boom-and-bust cycles of civilization, especially with current technological power that can entangle and damage entire ecosystems globally [2:21:34]. The focus must be on developing new capacities for sense-making, choice-making, and implementation now, using existing knowledge and resources, rather than waiting for a “reset” that might leave humanity in a worse state [2:22:00]. This monumental task requires a collective, non-commercial effort to integrate comprehensive knowledge from all fields (science, technology, philosophy, etc.) [2:37:00].