The Consilience Project

From: jimruttshow8596

The Consilience Project is a new information service launched by Daniel Schmachtenberger and his associates, described as a blend of journalism and education [00:54:00]. Jim Rutt, the host, has been an advisor to the project since its early stages [01:14:00].

Core Purpose

The project aims to support a “new cultural renaissance or new cultural enlightenment” [02:27:00]. It connects three key areas [01:33:00]:

1. Unique Global Problems: Addressing the challenges faced by the world in an era of exponential technology, digital globalization, and issues never encountered before [01:41:00].
2. New Problem-Solving Capacities: Identifying the necessary problem-solving capacities, new social institutions, and governance models required to tackle complex, large-scale, and rapidly evolving issues [01:51:00].
3. Cultural Prerequisites: Cultivating the cultural conditions among people for these new institutions and capacities to emerge organically, rather than being imposed from the top-down [02:09:00].

Ultimately, The Consilience Project seeks to define the current problem space well enough to derive design criteria for new systems, enabling people to participate in developing these new systems and capacities [03:11:00].

Differentiating from Traditional Media and Education

The project recognizes the historical roles of education (developing societal capacities) and the press (informing the public) in a civilization [03:40:00]. In an open society like a democracy or republic, these roles are uniquely vital, demanding higher levels of knowledge and civic participation from the populace [04:14:00].

The Consilience Project does not aim to replace the fourth estate or public education [05:00:00]. Instead, it offers theoretical pieces to help people understand these institutions more fundamentally: their historical roles, how they’ve eroded in the West, and what adequate versions would look like for the future [05:18:00].

The Problem Landscape

The world faces unprecedented challenges in terms of scale, complexity, and acceleration [09:16:00].

• Scale: The power asymmetry between large entities (e.g., Amazon) and individuals is vastly greater today than in the past (e.g., a 100-person shipyard in 1776) [08:30:00].
• Complexity: Quantitative differences can become qualitative changes, as seen with nuclear weapons making global self-destruction possible, unlike any previous warfare [10:20:00].
• Speed: The rate of change (derivative) and acceleration (second derivative) in many domains are significantly higher than in any previous era [09:20:00].

Past societal systems, like feudalism, socialism, communism, or capitalism, and their underlying theories (e.g., Scottish Enlightenment market theory), are inadequate for current issues involving AI, drones, and global social media [07:08:00]. Solutions of the past often created the new problems we face today (e.g., GDP growth leading to environmental issues) [18:41:00]. The project emphasizes that current problem-solving processes either fail to solve catastrophic risks or cause worse cumulative problems [18:08:00].

The current understanding of problems is often too narrow, focusing on individual issues (e.g., climate change, systemic racism) rather than the underlying generative dynamics and their interconnectedness [21:18:00].

Content Categories

The Consilience Project’s publishing branch releases three types of articles, with plans to convert them into other media forms like podcasts and animations for wider accessibility <a class=“yt-timestamp” data-22:28:00”>[22:28:00].

1. Foundations Series

These are theoretical pieces discussing the unique problem landscape and social theory, evaluating past theories and identifying their inadequacies for the future [23:22:00].

• “Democracy in the Epistemic Commons”: This article explores the concept of the epistemic commons – the shared process of developing belief about what is true and shared understanding [29:08:00]. It highlights that an open society relies on citizens’ ability to make sense of complex issues, which is compromised by the erosion of education and the fourth estate [30:06:00].
• “Challenges to 21st Century Sense Making”: This piece illustrates why the epistemic commons is much trickier today than in 1776, due to the complexity of issues, fragmented media, and the pathological nature of an ad-driven media landscape that incentivizes bias and tribalism [32:47:00].

2. Situational Assessments

These apply the project’s social theory to current global issues [24:30:00]. They factor in various narrative views (left/right, different countries) and epistemologies to achieve higher-order insights [24:56:00].

• China’s activity in East Africa: This article frames how the West has engaged with the developing world versus China’s approach, highlighting geopolitical differences [33:49:00].
• French vs. US Secularism: This piece explains the fundamental differences in historical approaches to freedom of religion, revealing how cultural biases can lead to misunderstandings and poor global policy [34:30:00].

3. Meta News

These articles analyze highly polarized topics, addressing the reasons for polarization and the vested interests pushing specific narratives [26:05:00]. The goal is to help people develop a “memetic immune system” to narrative warfare [27:44:00].

• “Were bricks planted at the George Floyd protests?”: This analysis examines the highly contested topic of whether bricks were planted to escalate violence during the George Floyd protests [36:02:00]. It forensically breaks down how narratives formed and propagated, showing that people often clung to beliefs reinforcing their existing emotionally intensified perspectives, even when evidence was inconclusive [36:36:00]. The article emphasizes the importance of comfort with uncertainty over “wrong certainty” [37:41:00].

Underlying Philosophy

The project aims to counter the “runaway confirmation bias” prevalent in modern discourse, where even slight reinforcement of an existing worldview leads to it being accepted as truth [38:03:00]. It critiques the “ad-driven model” of major platforms like Facebook and YouTube, which optimize for engagement by exploiting limbic hijacking (fear, desire, tribalism), leading to increased polarization and extremism [45:07:00].

The project promotes:

• Transcending Tribalism: Encouraging people to move beyond tribal loyalty to engage in “real epistemics and real good faith dialogue” [28:11:00].
• Cognitive and Emotional Sovereignty: Helping individuals develop a memetic immune system against being easily hijacked by narratives [47:11:00].
• Integrated Epistemologies: An adequate “cultural enlightenment” must include [01:06:08]:
  • Third-person epistemology (Science): Objective measurement and repetition [01:09:55]. While powerful, science doesn’t provide “ought” (ethical) guidance and can lead to rivalrous dynamics when combined with exponential technology [01:08:09]. Emergentism of rivalrous dynamics multiplied by exponential tech is seen as a generator of existential risk [01:08:51].
  • Second-person epistemology (Dialogue/Empathy): The ability to truly understand and inhabit another person’s perspective and feelings, like the Socratic or Hegelian dialectic [01:10:07].
  • First-person epistemology (Self-awareness): Understanding one’s own cognitive biases, desire for certainty, and unwillingness to admit error [01:10:37]. This relates to the stoic tradition and Eastern practices [01:10:52].

This approach aligns with the idea of an “Enlightenment 2.0,” absorbing critiques from postmodernism but moving towards a constructive new synthesis of understanding and shared values [01:03:14]. It pushes for a new basis for choice-making beyond pure game theory [01:08:53]. The goal is to coordinate choices to enable cooperation among diverse populations, a significant challenge for open societies [01:01:08].

Target Audience and Outreach

The initial target audience comprises generally educated adults who are willing to engage deeply with complex, nuanced, and non-bias-confirming content [01:12:49]. This includes those already concerned about catastrophic risks and seeking better ways to think about solutions [01:13:39].

The project plans to expand its reach through:

• Transmedia Translation: Converting articles into animations (e.g., 15-minute high school student accessible versions) and podcasts [01:14:01].
• Partnering for Decentralized Catalysis: Working with other groups and individuals (e.g., rap battle platform builders, TikTok influencers) who can translate and bring content to diverse communities in ways the project itself cannot [01:15:08].

The project aims to “catalyze a kind of decentralized cultural renaissance” [01:16:01], recognizing existing nascent movements (like Game B, metamodern, integral, and humane technology initiatives) and helping them recognize their shared purpose of upgrading culture to address global problems [01:16:16].

Operational Model and Community Building

The Consilience Project operates as a non-profit [01:18:00], committed to ethical media practices:

• No Paywalls, Ads, or Data Sales: Information is freely accessible, avoiding perverse incentives of traditional media [01:17:57].
• Donation-Funded: Relies on donations, with strict rules against accepting funds with strings attached [01:18:01].
• No Individual Bylines: Articles are published without individual author titles to emphasize collective intelligence, focus on content, and protect authors from ad hominem attacks [01:18:29]. This is part of prototyping how to do collective intelligence well [01:19:00].
• Self-Termination: The project is designed to shut down after five years, with a public post-mortem [01:20:07]. This avoids the common organizational incentive to perpetuate existence rather than truly solve problems, ensuring it acts as a catalyst rather than a permanent power structure [01:19:34].

For community building, the project is working on [01:24:02]:

• Curating Resources: Identifying and curating groups doing critical work related to the epistemic commons, sense-making, meaning-making, and choice-making capacities [01:24:17].
• Creating Forums: Developing digital architectures for deep discussions that incentivize quality sense-making and good-faith discourse, rather than degenerate “troll wars” [01:25:06].
• Sharing Methods: Publishing its own methodologies (e.g., for meta news) to inspire and empower other media organizations and individuals to do better work [01:21:40].

The project hopes to show people what is possible in media, changing the nature of demand from “salacious headlines” to a desire for long, nuanced, and bias-challenging content, thus fostering a “race to the top” in information quality [01:22:55].

For further information, visit consilienceproject.org [01:09:00].