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WEDNESDAY, DEC 14, 2022: NOTE TO FILE
On the Uses of Information Technology To Spread Information
Not misinformation/disinformation/denial/distraction
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: HOPE, FROM THE WIRES, THINKING IN SYSTEMS
Abstract: The Internet (I'm 69 and was an early user and content adder) was information technology that would allow, as envisioned by enthusiats, the world to be turned into a Global Plato's Academy where sapience would rise to the top and everyone could get a world-class education for the price of the effort. Love and understanding would flurish because who wouldn't want them to? And the vast sea of information provided would float all boats. Anyone could self-publish. A platform would arise (Medium) that would publish 70 thousand free articles (okay, most are paywalled, but all you have to do is open the article in incognito mode on a browser to read all of them) everyday! And lesser bits of information would be offered everyday by the teaming billions working ferverously to update their favorite platforms when not consuming content generated by others like themselves. What could go wrong with that?
COOS BAY (A-P) — The Internet is a platform (there are others, e.g. taverns, lecture halls, classrooms, churches...) for spreading distraction, confirmation of one's tribal narratives (aka the truth), denial of other narratives (lies), misinformation, and disinformation in that order.
Inevitably, by chance or intent, some information is out there, but no one would know it if they tripped over it and probably wouldn't Like or Share it if they did as evidenced by the content of the Internet (which includes the details of almost all academic conferences in video format and/or transcripts whose consumers are even less likely that most to realize they are in an echo chamber that allows dissonant to them views to be ignored).
It now seems that you can lead a human a mile towards a better understanding of the nature of things, but they’ll probably be distracted within a few steps. And the few who make it the full mile won’t drink the kool-aid in front of their pug-nosed face as they were expecting a latte with whipped cream and chocolate drizzled on top.
Those who drink the kool-aid didn’t follow anyone to it, but got there only because they would rather know than believe (and so only listen to Nature who has all the answers instead of to primate prattle). The trees speak wisdom; the birds cry truth.
The most important video on YouTube, the one containing information humanity needs to understand to persist, currently has 176k views over a 10 year period, while Baby Shark Dance has more views in 6 years than there are humans on the planet (pets like videos too, and there is a growing demand for pet video games). It truly is a wonderful day in the neighborhood (for a time).
Prologue
While software and the internet is still a thing (the ability to turn fossil fuel or other high energy source, e.g. hydro, into microprocessors may be for a time at a scale needed for globally connected individual use), what best use can be made of modern technology to help transition humanity towards living in a viable form of civilization as renormalizing animals?
For a time, personal laptops and smartphones are a thing, a tool that could be made use of. Much of their functionality would be lost with the loss the global internet and local intranets. Peak information technology has not been reached and decline may involve decades or even centuries to either complete loss (e.g. inability to make microprocessors/capacitors at all) or contraction to a sustainable steady-state of manufacture in a low energy form of civilization (no fossil fuel use) supporting a small fraction of the 21st century’s human/livestock/pet/crop populations.
Assumed is that current technology, including transportation technology (e.g. cars, planes, trains) are for a time, and that the best use of IT tech is not to support social media (the internet as it is now used). The current predicament of humanity is overshoot which, by definition, evolves climax and descent.
The tipping point of modernity’s trajectory, from an increasing rate of growth to a slowing in the rate of growth, was foreseeable to a few when the rate of growth became so rapid that change could be observed within on lifetime (e.g. 18th century Europe). Many more can now (but still a small fraction of all humans) foresee that growth will only be for a time.
Those who were paying attention noted the Great Acceleration when century’s of gradual noticeable growth transitioned to rapid growth post WWII (about 1950 on average)when there was more change in a decade than was seen in a lifetime in the 19th century. 
Our trajectory is an S-curve where the line always plots out to the right given the arrow of time. As the lower inflection point from gradual to rapid growth was about 1950, the next tipping point from growth in the rate of growth to a slowing in the rate of growth was about 1980.
The next tipping point, climax, will be from a slowing of a positive rate of growth to a zero rate of growth (e.g. in GDP) production/consumption and population…, which has yet to occur on average within the World Socioeconomic-political System (WSS).
The rate of descent, negative growth, will increase to a maximum rate (which could be greater than the rate of positive growth had been) to a terminus or a transition to a steady-state of sustainable pulsing within carrying capacity limits. The year/decade in which climax occurs is unknown, but is like this century. Not good news for 10 year olds.
Technology NOW!
The potential value to posterity of our going places faster and consuming more stuff is low. Using information technology to misinform and disinform and distract humans from their meta-problem, their problematique (overshoot and descent), is to do far more harm than good.
Changing the behavior of the teaming billions may not be a viable near-term goal. Using information technology to interconnect those who endeavor to listen to Nature (who has all the answers), who can understand our S-curve growth/descent trajectory, and foresee the challenge of our high-stakes endgame having a viable outcome, could alter the outcome by working cooperatively to better understand the ghastly dynamic we are all trapped by thereby be delivered from it (provided revolutionary change is the outcome).
First Steps Towards a Viable Pathway
To give a name to those who ‘think in systems’, who have been touched by Garrett Hardin’s ‘the one big thing ecologists know — the idea of a system’, I’ll use Hardin’s words ‘ecolate’ and ‘ecolacy’ as short for systems science literate/literacy.
In his Filters Against Folly classic, an educated (as distinct from schooled) mind depended on three pillars: ecolacy, literacy, and numeracy. Like the San, those still living as forager-hunters in the Kalahari and the agrarian renormalized Kogi living in the Heart of the World (which is everywhere), it is possible to live well and persist as the millennia past (to evolve) while being illiterate and innumerate, but not inecolate. We moderns (the 99+%) are inecolate.
If the ecolate may, perhaps, in some remotely possible manner, inherit the Earth (a viable outcome unlike inheriting the wind), then perhaps those who are or have the potential to be ecolate, who have internet access, should/could meet online to plot revolutionary change, to foment John B. Calhoun’s ‘compassionate revolution’. Look at it this way; you could do worse.
The tools identified so far include website design software (e.g. Dreamweaver, Joomla!) and graphics creation software (e.g. Gimp, Photoshop), and video editing software. But these tools are mainly for individual use. For interconnecting the ecolate, add group email listserv (e.g. Groups.io, Google Groups), conferencing (Zoom), and article publishing platforms (e.g. Medium) that allow online communities to form, which could include the ecolate. The limit is the need of each individual to have a screen (desktop to small screen) tech and internet connectivity.
At risk of forming another supertribal identity group, the ecolate need to seek consensus (evidence based). The shared understanding will compel cooperative action. Shared beliefs can too (ideology), but there is no basis for or potential to iterate towards a shared narrative about the what-is, the what’s out there (that which doesn’t go away when you stop believing in it).
Einstein’s claims were like a 2x4 upside the heads of fellow physicists. But unlike ideologues, most adapted and the few who couldn’t got old and died. Progress comes from without, however. Einstein’s crazy ideas are of interest only because compelled by evidence. Celebrating his genius is a distraction.
The growing body of evidence supporting Einstein’s claims alone changed everything, resulted in a paradigm shift. Modern Techno-Industrial (MTI) society/culture/form of civilization is not viable (as will become evident to evermore in coming decades) and some MTIed humans must shift to persist. A viable form of civilization (complex society) will have to select for minds that would rather know than believe, the opposite of what MTI society selects for (a believing mind).
A viable pathway to a viable form of civilization would involve those who foresee humanity’s coming bottleneck and hence are able to act in response (those who do not foresee cannot act). Interconnect those who can foresee, who know enough to no longer traffic in opinion, who listen (to the data). ‘To think is to listen.’
Use online tech to interconnect the ecolate intent on avoiding complete dissolution.
Use online tech to interconnect the ecolate, those who would self-select into using online tools and whose self-assessment is not delusional, i.e. if those who are part of any online ecolate group are not delusional, they need to identify those who are and exclude them.
Most of the founders of Earth First! (they invited E.O. Wilson to present at meetings and paid careful attention) do not appear delusional, but they allowed anyone to self-select into becoming a member, hence left-leaning ideologues came to predominate (canceled Edward Abbey from speaking at one gathering), and were themselves replaced by green-anarchists who liked talking destroying things. Hence the Union of Concern Elders (UoCE whose members may be delusional) membership is by invitation only and world-be ecolate elders (of any age) will be subject to initial and ongoing vetting (a member could become demented). This is the main difference between the UoCE and Earth First!, the common ground being Gaia centrism, a paradigm shift away from human centrism and exceptionalism (dominionism). [Earth First!: Lessons from the recent past]
If you think you might be ecolate or could be (maybe even, for posterity’s sake, should be), then one doorway is a Medium publication of the UoCE: World Ecolate Elders’ Warning to Posterity. Assumed is that the inecolate are unlikely to intentionally redress humanity’s meta-problem, ecological overshoot, to transition to a viable form of civilization that selects for a renormalizing of the humans living within it.
The Pathway
Assumed by the UoCE members is that their consensus narrative is a social construct of the members subject to change so as to tell the most likely story about such as can be inferred by reading the tea leaves of evidence (data), but that not all constructed narratives are equally likely stories about how complex systems (e.g. Gaia as world system) work. Also assumed is the consensus narrative could be ‘not even wrong’, and so the condition of considering the possibility that one might be wrong about anything is the norm, as normal as breathing.
If a homeless appearing man hands an ecolate elder a slip of paper with a handwritten URL on it, asking that they consider a critical message to humankind on the site, they will thank him for the offer and likely type in the URL to consider the claims made. If considering the claims requires learning a new language that alone would enable a human to fully consider the evidenced-based claims, the elders would consider delegating the time and effort to learn the language to a few members having the time and ability to learn the language, then share their findings. A normal person would not. The homeless appearing crazy guy, calling himself Ishmael, could be Klaatu [See: The Human from Earth 2.0].
Assume the current consensus narrative of the UoCEs (it changes with new evidence and insight) is maybe not crazy. A willing suspension of disbelief, for a time, is required to consider unthinkable thoughts. Without argueing why, had humanity needs to do is:
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All modern humans are an expansionist form of human whose expansionist plague-phase overshoot is ending.
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Some modern humans, perhaps 0.001% or more need to renormalize if possible, beginning with the recognition/understanding that they are not normal animals.
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Renormalizing must be viewed as a mandate from posterity to allow for their existence.
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Per elders’ best guess: humans need to again live in communities of less than 51 trusted others in association with less than 51 communities within a biophysically definable area (a watershed or sub-watershed area able to support their population) on 1/5th of the land/shore area (to leave room for Nature) in order to renormalize so as to live properly with the planet long term as the millennia pass.
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All who move (vote with their feet) to live in a watershed management unit (WMU) with stated limits on human demands on Natures resources agree to a new social contract which disallows any attack on neighboring WMUs or Nature’s 4/5th.
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All WMUs will agree to come to the defense of any WMU that is attacked, including any attack on Nature’s 4/5th by a WMU’s residents.
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Those who don’t like the details will self-select out of joining a WMU that would have them as a member.
Global governance will involve defining the limits all WMUs must agree to to persist long term as a viable form of civilization, and not managing individual behavior. Nature determines what works. Human can listen, guess, then test, but humans don’t determine the outcome.
After perhaps 500 years of renormalizing, some WMUs may be allowed to experimentally live in larger groups, with careful monitoring over the next 500 years for adverse outcomes. The first 500 years will focus on renormalization of humans under conditions most likely to work. Thereafter, testing of initial best guess limits may be considered if there is evidence that 500 years of endeavoring to renormalize was in some WMUs actually working.
The Transition
The world system of human socioeconomic endeavor must select for a viable outcome as no one can determine what is viable by choosing an outcome (i.e. no one gets a vote — only a guess to then test).
A transition will involve founding the first Academic Watershed Management Unit (AWMU) whose residents will all be students as none will ever graduate the New education system. Students, autodidacts all, self-select into being citizens of the AWMU whose endeavor is to understand the world system and how to live properly with it, globally and locally within the WMU that is within an ecoregion that is within a bioregion that is with a sublate region within the seven global ecolates all having biophysical (instead of political) boundaries.
The 30 sublates of the 6 habitable by humans ecolates
Watersheds units would be managed by residents within agreed upon limits that apply to all WMUs. WMUs are managed by the United Federation of Watershed responsible for listening to Nature who determines what works long term to persist.
The biosphere subdivisions into ecolates, sublates, bioregions, and ecoregions is for administrative purposes only. The form of governance is unlike any form of human governance, as governance is based on nature’s laws (e.g. thermodynamics, energetics, systems ecology).
The form of governance is a naturocracy, rule by Nature’s laws that alone determine what works long term to persist as complex, adaptive, dissipative, and evolvable subsystems of Gaia. There will be policies, but no politics above the WMU level. WMUs that minimize or depoliticize their society may be able to persist long term.
With 20 to 30 thousand WMUs, a WMU failure rate of 10% per decade would not be an existential threat to humanity given that all would be eager to learn from the mistakes (error, ignorance, and illusion) of others, especially those endeavoring to make a failed WMU work that failed due to prior mismanagement. The world system of human socioeconomic endeavor must select for a viable outcome as no one can determine what is viable by choosing an outcome (i.e. no one gets a vote — only a guess to then test).
Of course almost no citizens (apart from a few possessed of foresight intelligence) who view themselves as part of any existing political order will or could choose to change horses (or even think of doing so) until the one they are riding is in decline. A horse cannot be transformed into a water buffalo.
“In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete. That, in essence, is the higher service to which we are all being called.” — R. Buckminster Fuller
