From: jimruttshow8596
The Consilience Project aims to support a new cultural renaissance or enlightenment, where people understand the unique challenges the world faces and develop capacities for sense-making, effective communication, and participation in new problem-solving and governance systems [02:27:00]. This initiative is designed to foster a bottom-up emergence of new institutions, rather than having them imposed [03:00:00].
The Unique Problems of the Modern World
The world currently faces unique problems due to exponential technology and digital globalization that it never encountered previously [01:41:00].
Key challenges include:
- Scale and Complexity: The asymmetry between large enterprises (like Amazon) and individuals is vastly different from historical periods [08:54:00]. Quantitative differences can become qualitative changes, meaning old frameworks may no longer apply [09:08:00].
- Accelerated Change: The pace of change is far more rapid than in previous centuries, with some domains feeling like they are “going straight up” [09:33:00].
- Existential Risks: The nuclear bomb introduced the ability to destroy the habitability of the planet, making human self-induced existential risk a real thing for the first time [11:14:00]. Traditional approaches like warfare between empires are no longer viable due to concepts like mutually assured destruction (MAD) [12:16:00].
- Planetary Boundaries: Exponential growth driven by globalization has led to hitting planetary boundaries, an issue that never existed before [13:06:00]. Humanity now accounts for the vast majority of large mammal and bird mass on Earth, indicating a significant impact on ecosystems [16:08:08].
Erosion of Core Institutions
For an open society, democracy, or republic to function, higher levels of education and press quality are uniquely required compared to closed societies [04:49:00]. The American founding fathers, like Jefferson and Washington, recognized the fundamental importance of an educated citizenry and an honest press for self-governance [08:00:00], [31:10:00].
However, both the educational system and the fourth estate (press) in the U.S. and the West have eroded over recent decades [05:37:00].
- Media Landscape: The fragmented media landscape, driven by ad models, incentivizes appealing to bias, tribalism, and salacious headlines, leading to a “pathological fourth estate” [33:00:00], [44:50:00]. Social media platforms, optimized for time on site, push content that confirms existing biases, fosters fear of out-groups, and elicits outrage, leading to increased polarization and extremism [45:10:00]. This has created a situation where people’s responses can be more predictable than GPT-3 algorithms, resembling “memetic propagation” rather than original thought [39:16:00].
- Political Polarization: Political parties have become a matter of “life or death” in identity, with a higher disapproval rate for children marrying someone from an opposing political party than based on race or religion [59:31:00]. This deep enmity and infighting within a nation, where citizens treat each other as enemies, is a symptom of a dying system undergoing institutional decay [53:02:00], [56:37:00].
The Need for New Problem-Solving Processes
Current problem-solving processes often fail to address catastrophic risks, or they create additional, cumulatively worse problems [18:00:00]. Solutions designed narrowly (e.g., for one nation, or one metric like CO2) can externalize harm elsewhere, leading to resistance and infighting [19:10:00].
- Beyond Game Theory: Humanity needs to move beyond “rivalrous dynamics multiplied by exponential tech,” which is a generator of existential risk [01:08:45]. This necessitates a basis for choice-making other than just game theory, which is why “Game B” is a relevant concept [01:08:55]. Cooperation is essential, especially as warfare with exponential technology can lead to “exponential direct destruction or exponential indirect destruction through externality” [01:08:12].
- Defining Problems Broadly: A key aspect is understanding the interconnectedness of problems and the underlying systemic incentives that give rise to them [21:25:00]. The goal is to define the problem space clearly enough to generate design criteria for new social systems and problem-solving approaches [21:51:00].
A New Cultural Renaissance
The Consilience Project aims to catalyze a new cultural renaissance to develop the capacities needed to make sense of the world, communicate effectively, and participate in new systems of problem-solving and governance [02:27:00]. This involves:
- Epistemic Commons: The concept of an “epistemic commons” refers to the shared process of belief formation about what is true and understood [29:16:00]. A democracy cannot function if its citizens cannot make sense of the issues government is addressing [30:16:00].
- Three Epistemologies: A necessary cultural enlightenment must include first-person, second-person, and third-person epistemologies [01:11:06].
- First-person: Understanding one’s own cognitive biases, desires for certainty, and unwillingness to admit error [01:10:43]. This requires courage and comfort with uncertainty [01:11:18].
- Second-person: The ability to understand and inhabit others’ perspectives, as in the Socratic method or Hegelian dialectic [01:10:09].
- Third-person: The philosophy of science, which deals with repeatable, measurable phenomena to understand the objective world [01:09:55].
- Transcending Tribalism: To avoid cultural arms races driven by exponential tech, people must overcome tribalism and develop a “memetic immune system” against narrative warfare [01:07:22], [01:07:29]. This means acknowledging that others do not cease to exist or act politically just because they are “out-grouped” [01:07:02].
- Moral Education and Civic Virtue: Beyond cognitive sense-making, a moral education is needed to inform choices in service to shared values and foster civic virtue [01:00:52]. This forms the basis for coordinated choice-making and cooperation necessary for civilization’s design and transformation [01:01:06].
The Consilience Project’s Approach
The Consilience Project (consilienceproject.org) is a non-profit initiative with two major branches:
- Publishing Branch: Publishes three types of articles:
- Foundation Series: Theoretical pieces exploring the uniqueness of the problem landscape and reifying social theories to understand their strengths and inadequacies for the future [23:22:00]. An example is “Democracy in the Epistemic Commons” [29:08:00].
- Situational Assessments: Apply social theory to current global issues (e.g., U.S.-China relations, movement from traditional finance to crypto, exponential tech risks) using a “consilience epistemics” approach that factors in various narrative views and epistemologies [24:30:00]. An example is an article on China’s activity in East Africa [33:49:00].
- Meta News: Addresses highly polarized topics by forensically analyzing how different narratives arose, identifying vested interests, epistemic biases, and how platforms optimize for tribalism [26:05:00]. This aims to help people develop a “memetic immune system” [27:44:00]. An example meta news piece analyzed the “bricks planted at protests” narrative during the George Floyd protests [36:02:00].
- Movement Catalyzing Branch: Seeks to identify and support groups doing critical work related to the epistemic commons, sense-making, and choice-making capacities [01:24:16].
The project operates under specific principles:
- Open Access: Information is not behind a paywall, nor does it sell user data or display ads [01:17:50]. It is donation-funded, accepting no donations with strings attached [01:18:04].
- Collective Intelligence: Articles do not have individual author bylines to encourage focus on content, decrease ad hominem attacks, and reduce internal perverse incentives [01:18:26].
- Catalytic Role: The project aims to be an example to other media organizations by publishing its methods (e.g., for meta news), hoping others will innovate and adopt them [01:21:39]. It seeks to change the nature of demand for information by showing what high-quality, nuanced reporting looks like [01:23:27].
- Self-Terminating: The project is designed to self-terminate after five years to avoid the common organizational incentive to perpetuate existence rather than solving problems [01:16:05]. This signals that it’s not in competition with other groups but aims to help them do better work [01:20:11].
Target Audience
Initially, the content targets generally educated adults who are willing to engage deeply with complex, nuanced topics that may challenge their existing biases [01:12:49]. The project acknowledges this is a smaller audience but plans to translate its deep work into more accessible forms, like animations and podcasts, to reach wider audiences over time [01:14:01]. The ultimate goal is for the insights to be disseminated and amplified by others in a decentralized manner, fostering a broad cultural renaissance [01:15:59].