Long Now

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Mary Lou Jepsen: Toward Practical Telepathy Nov 05, 2018

Show notes

With her stunning breakthroughs in neural imaging, Mary Lou Jepsen is making the brain readable (and stimulatable) in real time. That will revolutionize brain study and brain medicine, but what about brain communication? Could a direct high-resolution interface to the brain lead to what might be called practical mental telepathy? What are the prospects for brain enhancement? What are the ethics of direct brain reading and intervention? Mary Lou Jepsen founds programs and companies on the hairy edges of physics, invents solutions and takes them to prototype all the way through to high volume mass production. She's done this at Intel, MIT’s Media Lab, One Laptop Per Child, Pixel Qi, Google X, and Facebook (Oculus). She is the founder and CEO of [Openwater](https://www.openwater.cc/), which is "devising a new generation of imaging technologies, with high resolution and low costs, enabling medical diagnoses and treatments, and a new era of fluid and affordable brain-to-computer communications."

Julia Galef: Soldiers and Scouts: Why our minds weren't built for truth, and how we can change that Sep 19, 2018

Show notes

An expert on rationality, judgement, and strategy, Julia Galef notes that "our capacity for reason evolved to serve two very different purposes that are often at odds with each other. On the one hand, reason helps us figure out what’s true; on the other hand, it also helps us defend ideas that are false-but-strategically-useful. I’ll explore these two different modes of thought — I call them “the scout” and “the soldier” — and what determines which mode we default to. Finally, I’ll argue that modern humans would be better off with more scout mode and less soldier mode, and I’ll share some thoughts on how to make that happen.” Galef is founder of the Update Project and hosts the podcast [_Rationally Speaking_](http://rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/).

Juan Benet: Long Term Info-structure Aug 15, 2018

Show notes

"We live in a spectacular time,” says Juan Benet. "We're a century into our computing phase transition. The latest stages have created astonishing powers for individuals, groups, and our species as a whole. We are also faced with accumulating dangers -- the capabilities to end the whole humanity experiment are growing and are ever more accessible. In light of the promethean fire that is computing, we must prevent bad outcomes and lock in good ones to build robust foundations for our knowledge, and a safe future. There is much we can do in the short-term to secure the long-term." "I come from the front lines of computing platform design to share a number of new super-powers at our disposal, some old challenges that are now soluble, and some new open problems. In this next decade, we’ll need to leverage peer-to-peer networks, crypto-economics, blockchains, Open Source, Open Services, decentralization, incentive-structure engineering, and so much more to ensure short-term safety and the long-term flourishing of humanity.” Juan Benet is the inventor of the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS)—a new protocol which uses content-addressing to make the web faster, safer, and more open—and the creator of Filecoin, a cryptocurrency-incentivized storage market.

Shahzeen Attari: Facts, Feelings and Stories: How to Motivate Action on Climate Change Aug 15, 2018

Show notes

An environmental researcher examines perceptions of energy use & conservation and asks how we can inspire behavioral change and policy support in individuals and the public at large. With a background in environmental engineering and training in cognitive science, Dr. Attari searches for the narratives that can help us improve our environmental decision-making. [Shahzeen Attari](https://www.szattari.com/) works on environmental decision-making at the individual level, looking at biases that shape people’s judgments and decisions about resource use, especially use of energy and water. She is an [Associate Professor at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University](https://spea.indiana.edu/faculty-research/directory/profiles/faculty/full-time/attari-shahzeen.html). She holds a joint PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering & Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon, as well as a BS in Engineering Physics from the [University of Illinois](http://illinois.edu/). She was a postdoctoral fellow at the [Earth Institute and the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED)](http://cred.columbia.edu/) at Columbia University. Dr Attari is a 02017-18 Fellow at the [Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences](http://casbs.stanford.edu/) (CASBS) at Stanford University (co-producers of this talk) and a 02018 Andrew Carnegie Fellow.

George P. Shultz: Perspective Aug 01, 2018

Show notes

Perspective? No one has a longer or better-informed view of world affairs and America's role than George Shultz, now 97. (Henry Kissinger is only 95.) Secretary Shultz was a US Marine Captain in World War II. After becoming an economics professor at MIT and the University of Chicago he served the Nixon administration as Secretary of Labor, then director of the Office of Management and Budget, then Secretary of the Treasury. Back in private life by 1974, he led Bechtel Group as executive vice president and president. He was appointed by President Reagan as Secretary of State in 1982, where he helped finesse Reagan’s relationship with Gorbachev that wound down the Cold War. Still active in public policy after leaving government in 1989, Shultz has been an advocate for legalizing recreational drugs, for ending the Cuban embargo, for a world totally free of nuclear weapons, and for a revenue-neutral carbon tax. Secretary Shultz was interviewed on stage by Peter Schwartz, head of strategy for Salesforce and a founding board member of Long Now, formerly the CEO of Global Business Network and author of _The Art of the Long View_ (01991). This SALT talk was arranged in partnership with the [Asia Society of Northern California](https://asiasociety.org/northern-california). **The Long Now Foundation** and **Asia Society Northern California** are partnering on a series of talks in Long Now's _Seminars About Long-term Thinking_ series. With the Asia Pacific region being vital to long term thinking for the planet, and especially for those on the Pacific coast, we believe that there is a fruitful collaboration to explore for both of our memberships and the wider public. The Asia Society's depth of knowledge about critical issues, key leaders and cultural perspectives coming out of Asia can inform the topics, people and conversations featured in the long-running Seminar series curated and hosted by Long Now's president Stewart Brand. Public access to the recorded talks broadens the reach of this in-depth collaboration.

Chris D. Thomas: Are We Initiating The Great Anthropocene Speciation Event? Jun 26, 2018

Show notes

The bad news (not news to most): Many wild species are under severe duress. The good news (total news to most): “Nature is thriving in an age of extinction.” Ecologist and evolutionary biologist Chris Thomas has examined a little-noticed phenomenon around the world, that as an unintentional byproduct of massive human impact, _biodiversity is increasing in pretty much every region of the world_. Evolution has sped up. Wild populations are on the move, sometimes in response to climate change, often hitch-hiking on us. Hybridization is rampant, leading at times to whole new species. The Anthropocene, evidently, is a mass speciation event. An ardent conservationist, Thomas makes the case that conservation efforts are far more effective when we acknowledge—and study— what nature is really up to, and work with it. Chris Thomas is a professor in the Department of Biology at the University of York in England and author of _Inheritors of the Earth: How Nature Is Thriving in an Age of Extinction_ (02017).

Benjamin Grant: Overview: Earth and Civilization in the Macroscope May 30, 2018

Show notes

Civilization is both astonishing and astonishingly various when viewed from slightly above. Not so far above as to be lost in planetary context, but just high enough to see a fascinating thing whole, entire, intensely peculiar and informative. The glory is in the high-resolution details, in the perpetually surprising god’s-eye perspective, and in the shocking patterns that we arrange things in without even knowing it. Revel in a host of such images and the understanding that emerges from them with collector/curator Benjamin Grant, author of the book _Overview_ and host of the Instagram project “[Daily Overview](https://www.instagram.com/dailyoverview/).”

Kishore Mahbubani: Has the West Lost It? Can Asia Save It? Apr 30, 2018

Show notes

In Kishore Mahbubani’s view, global power is shifting from the West to the Rest—from Europe and North America to Asia and Africa. He argues that changes will be required both in the West and the Rest to manage the shift gracefully for long-term stability. The rest of the world has learned a great deal from the West. Now it is the West’s turn to learn and to dispel some of its myths about the new world order. Singaporean diplomat and scholar Kishore Mahbubani served as his nation’s Ambassador to the United Nations and as President of the UN Security Council. He is a Professor in the Practice of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore where he was Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy from 2004 to 2017. His books include _Has the West Lost It?: A Provocation_ (2018); _The ASEAN Miracle_ (2017); _The Great Convergence_ (2013); and _The New Asian Hemisphere_ (2008). **The Long Now Foundation** and **Asia Society Northern California** are partnering on a series of talks in Long Now's Seminars About Long-term Thinking series. With the Asia Pacific region being vital to long term thinking for the planet, and especially for those on the Pacific coast, we believe that there is a fruitful collaboration to explore for both of our memberships and the wider public. The Asia Society's depth of knowledge about critical issues, key leaders and cultural perspectives coming out of Asia can inform the topics, people and conversations featured in the long-running Seminar series curated and hosted by Long Now's president Stewart Brand. Public access to the recorded talks broadens the reach of this in-depth collaboration.

Margaret Levi: The Organized Pursuit of Knowledge Apr 18, 2018

Show notes

The human quest to understand our world continues. The Director of Stanford’s [Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS)](http://casbs.stanford.edu/) discusses how academics and researchers have organized the study of human action, society, and institutions over time, how they share their findings, and what transformations we need for the future. [Margaret Levi](https://casbs.stanford.edu/margaret-levi) is Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and the Sara Miller McCune Director of CASBS. She is Jere L. Bacharach Professor Emerita of International Studies in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington. She became a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow in 2002, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2015.

Steven Pinker: A New Enlightenment Mar 19, 2018

Show notes

## Making the world better **Much of Pinker’s talk** was devoted to showing how most of the things than humans care about (except climate) have been getting drastically better over the last few centuries and decades. The roster includes length of life, health, food, prosperity, education, human rights, freedom from violence and accidents, leisure, and happiness—world wide. That good news is surprising to many and unwelcome to some, who fear it could foster complacent optimism. “While pessimists sound like they’re trying to help you,“ Pinker noted, “optimists sound like they’re trying to sell you something.” So Pinker explored the specific causes of progress in each domain and what it will take to keep the progress going over the coming decades and centuries despite inevitable setbacks and new threats. The main roots of continual advance Pinker sees as the values pushed by the 18th Century Enlightenment—reason, science, humanism, and progress. Those values can’t be taken for granted because they are far from universal. From the 18th Century to this day, they are opposed and sometimes defeated by authority, tradition, faith, mysticism, intuition, ideology, romanticism, and exclusion. Human nature doesn’t change much, but progress can proceed anyway thanks to benign institutions such as democracy, markets, a free press, schools and universities, scientific societies, declarations of rights, and global organizations for cooperation. Their job is to apply knowledge and sympathy to enhance human flourishing. It is no accident that “Secular liberal democracies are the happiest and healthiest places on Earth.” What is the program for continued progress? Don’t treat every problem as a sign that we should burn down our institutions and hope for something better to rise out of the ashes. Nor should we treat progress as a mystical force guaranteed to lift us ever upward. Progress is the result of human effort, guided by an _idea_ : that if we apply reason and science to make a better world, we can gradually succeed. If we continue to embrace that idea, Pinker concluded, it’s reasonable to expect progress to continue. If we don’t, it may not.

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