Daniel Schmachtenberger: "Modeling the Drivers of the Metacrisis” | The Great Simplification #42 

I seek out, listen to and read everything I possibly can about the complexity of our modern dilemmas and, by far, there’s no one getting to the heart of it all like you two. So once again, thank you.

Daniel is an excelent speaker - I will follow him more.

The Absolute thrill of seeing a new Nate & Daniel conversation in my recommendations. I shamelessly shriek like a fangirl every time haha. No matter the mood I am each of these installments have left me feeling mindful, hopeful, and reoriented to pursuing what I find actually meaningful both personally and professionally. Each conversation feels like I'm an astronaut looking down to earth and feeling the overview effect and considering the improbability of the glass blue marble in the void. I love this series for its ability to prompt these reflections every few months or so. Hope you never stop

We need to consider reformatting the title of these - BEND NOT BREAK #4 - "Modeling the Drivers of the Metacrisis" and so on. When I'm trying to watch these in sequence it's a bit foggy. Sorry, love this so much, been watching them in a loop, trying to grasp all this knowledge and wisdom, love it, love it. Thank you so much to you both! Encore!! ;-)

Daniel’s off-topic addition at the very last when he spoke of the sacred seems to me to be THE topic. I love Daniel’s brilliant cerebral analysis and mapping, but it also depresses me. I don’t see it happening. I don’t think we are mature enough, capable of much of any of it, especially if we continue to focus only on logistics and head work and don’t equally embody some sort of change of heart, undergo some sort of accelerated spiritual or moral growth and maturing. A fully incarnational paradigm shift. We are out of time for any sort of smooth transition, and I think it’s important to prepare people for the pain and suffering that lie ahead. I think we are all weary of not being told the truth, alternately lectured or bright-sided or shocked into varying states of compliance and complacency. It’s time to get real.

Daniel needs to start writing books! You two are the best.

I just discovered Daniel a few days ago, and OF COURSE you two are working together... These conversations are changing everything for me in consistently positive ways. Can't thank you enough.

This was great as always. Please please have that next conversation with Daniel sooner than later. I’m especially interested in this aspect of the sacredness of nature and how growth can occur in a new realm. I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, and I agree with Daniel that on some level future change has to occur through this aspect of sacredness. I don’t see any other way.

My friend has the optimistic view that we will develop solutions to the problems we see in the world eventually, even if it takes hundreds of years. I hope we will because of people like Daniel and Nate but it will be very, very hard and we can't have hundreds of years of developing because that would probably include a long period of chaos. My struggle is conveying the meta-crisis to 'laypeople' and therefore conveying how hard it would be to turn down a new path(s), away from these existential risks we face.

These conversations need to be made in a epic story that shape a new myth.

"You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour. And there are things to be considered . . . Where are you living? What are you doing? What are your relationships? Are you in right relation? Where is your water? Know your garden. It is time to speak your Truth. Create your community. Be good to each other. And do not look outside yourself for the leader." Then he clasped his hands together, smiled, and said, "This could be a good time!" "There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are torn apart and will suffer greatly. "Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above water. And I say, see who is in there with you and celebrate. At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, Least of all ourselves. For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt. "The time for the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves! Banish the word struggle from you attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. "We are the ones we've been waiting for." -- attributed to an unnamed Hopi elder Hopi Nation Oraibi, Arizona

Part of the walking worried wanting to contribute to threading this impossible needle we have before us, turning up to these conversations with the hope of finding some directionality and vision and its nice to see that somewhat shaping up. I hope the grid discussion crystalises some tangible workable solutions for the rest of us to work on. Understanding so much of the metacrisis through Daniel's eyes over the last two years intuitively and cognitively yet having such little agency has been soul crushing for me to say the least.

So much to absorb over these 4 podcasts, looking forward to 5. Thank you both Daniel and Nate for not giving up on trying to figure out how we're going to make it through the coming years, and letting us listen to these conversations. Peace

I wish we could force all the politicians, business leaders and influencers in the world to listen to your interviews Nate.

I could listen to Daniel all day in the hope that some of that considered and lucid thinking rubs off, you too of course Nate

I am a water filtration operator in a manufacturing plant and I am hyper vigilant about the purity of water that I send out of our plant.... a drop in the ocean , I know, but its where we all must start.

What seems absent from the game theoretical models Daniel mentions is trust. You build trust by being around each other without incident. When there's enough trust that you can tolerate each other's presence (and even attention), you can start discovering each other's virtues via experimentation/coincidence. If you work together, you don't have to worry about the other guys anymore, since you should be the largest. I call it the game of trust, it starts as a series of games without a winner of loser, if there is no loser (no party fought or fled), trust is gained. Once virtues are found, rules and ideals can be agreed on, and friendly cooperative and competitive games can be played, as an alternative to conflict.

Seeking hope and spread the word is my individual action.Talk about it with people around😊

Thank you! Looking forward to the next conversation.

Fantastic episode! I did not know about Daniel Schmachtenberger before, now he's definitely on my radar.

One of the greatest episodes to date.

Nate and Daniel your work is so valuable thanks a lot 😊👍

This ongoing dialogue covers the same issue as so many other conversations about "How can civilization escape the multipolar trap that appears to be self-terminating (euphemism for extinction of higher life on Earth)?" Daniel continues to convey an impressive yet incomplete understanding of the topic at hand, dancing with Nate around the role of energy flow (power), while failing to formally distinguish syntropic energy flow/power from mankind's unnecessary, destructive and unsustainable use of entropic energy flow/power. "Syntropy" is the name for the third attractor Daniel is seeking, and once this is articulated clearly, there will be greater clarity/awareness. Consider how our Biosphere works - a cycle of plant producers, animal consumers and fungal recyclers, where Entropic consumption by animals is restrained in service of a Syntropic whole that has capacity to sustainably unfold with ever-greater beauty, wisdom and complexity. Human animals have (temporarily) escaped ecological/Darwinian constraints on our consumption, with the disastrous results. Without self-restraint, humans have focused our abilities to cooperate on exponentially entropic projects (warfare, industrial consumption). This is NOT adaptive. For example. GDP is an accounting of entropic power (mostly), and therefore a misnomer, destructive not productive. It should be called GDD (gross domestic destruction) or GDE (gross domestic entropy). "Economic growth" is another oxymoron. Our industrial economy is destructive and wasteful, and in opposition to true growth within our syntropic planet. This suggests the solution: to avoid external restraint from a collapsing Biosphere (via mass die-off), we must develop as much syntropy at the spiritual/psychological/social levels as possible to allow self-restraint (self-regulation). This is possible at individual and collective levels given our current level of knowledge. Syntropic power is more precious and valuable than entropic power, it is the path to health, beauty, wisdom and happiness, and it requires free, autonomous and self-regulated individuals who have capacity to manage (and mostly renounce) entropic power unless it is in the service of our syntropic planet. This is the ONLY path, as far as I can see it - we must cultivate attitudes, knowledge and capacities for Syntropic communities, including freely-chosen self-restraint of unnecessary entropic tech/power.

Hi Daniel and Nate, I just got home from doing a beach survey of endangered birds on my electric bike. I have been vegan for 12 years. I am making changes. We can all make changes. We can acknowledge that we can make such choices as we reasonably can to move things in a sustainable direction. Agree that we need to transition to long term sustainability, we need to close a lot of currently open material loops. The curve is not 200,000 years old, it is 4 billion years old. It is a "double" exponential. Not only are the levels of complexity increasing exponentially faster, but the number of infinite dimensions is also increasing exponentially. The multiple levels of systems within our subconscious brains, and our various social and linguistic structures, that tend to simplify the complexity present, to create whatever it is that we each individually experience as reality for us, tend to blind us to the complexity and uncertainty actually present. Yes we can make tools and abstractions, and that is powerful for us; and it has an exponentially increasing tendency to make us over confident about our simplistic assumptions and approximations. Yes, we can do recursive abstraction, and it necessarily gets exponentially more complex and time consuming as we do so. I have gone to 12th level abstraction, and that is impossible to communicate to other individuals. There are tensions between sociality and creativity. The multiple levels of pressures for social agreement are direct constraints on individual freedom and creativity. Agree with Daniel about a "third attractor", and agree that it is "not easy", and as I see it, it is empowerment of all. We need indefinite life extension. Ordinary people need to have a reasonable probability of living with the long term consequences of their actions. When we have that, then we will get the sorts of coordination and cooperation that are the only real counter to the threats of central control, and capture of powerful systems by non-aligned agents. Ordinary people need to be empowered with the time and incentive and willingness to challenge authority, required to counter the risks from authority. And no strategy is without risk. The great strength comes from cooperating diversity (all levels, all domains). When one can view life as "Search", across domains of the possible for systems that are survivable, and one can appreciate that for a fully loaded processor, the most efficient search possible is the fully random search, then having multiple independent levels and systems of "Search" is actually the safest long term strategy. Understanding how we got here is one of the hardest parts. Understanding the fundamental role of cooperation in the emergence and survival of complexity is hard. It is deeply complex. It is much easier to simplify it down to - Evolution is competition. That is easy, and it is wrong! Wrong at a level that embodies existential level risk. The idea of a superstructure of coordination has some value, but it seems to me to be much more closely some version of random search delivering patterns that work in practice in some set of contexts - at least to the degree that they do, which is better than most others they have encountered - which is a higher level evolutionary selection system. Yes - groups with their entire "tech stack" and their entire "conceptual stack" part of which is their "social stack". Yes - we select across all levels, simultaneously - even those most are not aware of. Yes we have the necessity of stewardship, and that necessity extends far beyond the "biosphere". Yes - the "in group" has to include everyone - even those we like least. Our motive can be ordinary evolutionary motive - to survive - on the longest term imaginable. Agree that distributed understanding is fundamental. Where we seem to fundamentally part ways is around the solution space. The idea that we need to rethink "info-sharing" cannot end well - it necessarily results in some sort of fixed caste system, and some form of totalitarianism. What is needed is far deeper understanding of uncertainty, and the responsibility that necessarily comes from that. We need systems that allow anyone to progress through any set of systems, provided that they can demonstrate awareness of appropriate levels of responsibility. No set of fixed rules or systems can ever be sufficient. It demands responsibility of all individuals, all levels. It is never enough (at any level) to simply follow the rules. The "rule of law" is and always was an overly simplistic approximation to what is needed. It is a simplistic form of boundary that has uses in some contexts, but always contains at least as many dangers as benefits, as many of today's systemic spaces adequately demonstrate. We must stop telling people that following rules is good enough. It isn't. Never was. Never can be. Any level of freedom demands an appropriate level of cooperation and responsibility and respect for diversity if it is to survive. The mathematics of that is beyond any shadow of reasonable doubt. Rule of law alone removes "Search", and that limits the advancement of knowledge, and that increases the risk from the unknown unknown. We need search at the boundaries, eternally, if long term survival is the desired outcome. That has to be fundamental to the systemic space design. It was clearly a deep aspect of many ancient cultures. Freedom is fundamental - even if guys like Sam Harris and Trick Slattery are so bounded by their assumptions that they are unable to conceive of it - that doesn't change the reality of it. Any system of governance has to have freedom, responsibility, cooperation and respect as founding principles - all of them are fundamentally mathematically linked to the long term survival of the evolution of complex systems. No logical escape from that in any form of logic I have explored (and I have explored a few sets of non-binary logics). Anything not firmly based in those principles is by definition some form of totalitarianism in disguise. It has to start at the level of the individual - if it is to have any long term chance of survival. Freedom and responsibility have to be foundational at every level, every stack, and they both necessarily contain uncertainties - no logical escape from that - ever! The freedom of individuals is important - fundamentally so; but the part that is often missing in the American experiment is that all such freedom has to be accompanied by cooperation, respect, and responsibility (all levels, all domains, all stacks). Anything less than that and freedom self terminates - necessarily. Any system without freedom self terminates - necessarily. Respect has to lead to acceptance of any diversity that is not an actual and unreasonable threat to the survival of any. These have to be fundamental to all axes, all grids, eternally. Everything else is necessarily dynamic and evolving - that is an eternal aspect of "Search", of life itself. A sense of the sacred is important, and it cannot dominate the ideas of freedom and creativity. Part of responsibility is finding a context sensitive balance in any and all specific contexts. What is required in all domains is acceptance that competition is only survivable if it is built on a cooperative base. That is a fundamental given.

Took me a few days to get through but the conversation definitely builds a stable bridge into triaging the types of transitional systems that are needed as we progress into the future. Any form of global rule will be unlikely but the concept of smaller transitory initiatives that can cause us to "bend not break" seems like a good place to start. Like Daniel mentioned there are already existing system that exemplify transitory success like ranked choice voting. A note on Daniel's dream, one of my personal goals over the past few years has been to improve my relationship with water. A sanctification of the external and internal world is what will relieve the "knife poised at our own hearts" as Terence McKenna once said.

That was an awesome conversation. My response is that we should emphasise Cultural Enlightenment because that will trickle down to everything else. At a minimum, the enlightenment would involve understanding the risks and understanding that it’s time to move from a survival focus to a happiness focus. If we guarantee the basics, i.e. survival and comfort, to everyone, then we can all relax, which will reduce the competition. It will end the multi-polar trap and fix the destruction of the environment. As in the video, I imagine this happening through a mix of grass roots and hyper-agent action.

We need to end the need to earn a living, it is what forces us to sell our values. Everyone has to start talking about the need to meet everyone's needs unconditionally.

So fortunate to have been brought to such an exemplary rendition of a conversation such as this. My sincerest gratitude to you both.

My goodness I can't help myself listening these two guys over and over again...brilliant minds on this planet Earth! Thansk a billions!!your fan from Brazil!

Spoke with Steve Keen recently. We talked about using "Minsky" to create a "World Game" as outlined by Bucky Fuller in "Critical Path"and "Utopia or Oblivion". To "make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological damage or disadvantage to anyone." Recruiting some programming talent to see how far we can push it. Hopefully the data from several iterations can offer some real world insights, strategies, and heuristics.

This is exactly the right conversation to have. The leverage points are rare and far between. But the full attempt and effort to slow down and stabilize the mega machine must still be made. Resilience now, even in its failure, will help whatever resilience well emerge in the future. We are powerful, but even we are incapable of extinguishing all life.

So much speechless gratitude for your work

Love the work that you are doing Nate! These conversations are so inspirering and really help solidify the idea for me that we need a way to iterate on ideas in a collaborative way. Within a system that can capture problems and start mapping solutions that have experts ready to bring up externalities that are not being considered. If we started working on problems this way I feel we could solve many of them with limited externalities and also build technology that helps with other problems that we hadn't considered before.

Moloch. Nash Equilibrium. Prisoner’s Dilemma. Multipolar predicaments. We’re in deep trouble if we don’t get clever/wise and construct a parallel system that governs not by forcing (starving, withholding) but rewarding. Without rewarding (paying for, subsidizing) restoration we’re going to eat our way out of house and home. Great talk btw.

I have a feeling that while we are struggling to keep up and build the same mental model he has, Daniel is bored to tears talking about this, as it's so trivial for him.

I found myself entering into your conversation so many times, aloud and empowered by your topics of discussion that I had to laugh at myself. When Nate went through the beginnings of the list of precursors necessary for us as a species to arrest ourselves and steer ourselves into a symbiotic relationship with the natural systems our world provides, and asked what it would take, I was uttering the word "realization" over and over, then Daniel comes in with "all of the above" I sighed in relief. My daily thoughts and onboard computer is constantly searching for a solution to this problem of how can we get everyone alive to this existential predicament we find ourselves in without conflict and with speed and enough sustenance for even the greediest arsehole to comply with. I have reduced my energy consumption considerably and talk a lot to others about preparedness and resillience toward what is coming. I feel very alone sometimes. I can see where it has all been going for a long time and it saddens me immensely. Thank you both for your presentations. In my work, I align myself to Permacultural principles of low technology wherever possible and every installation in my environment must have a minimum of three uses but more if possible. My primary energy sources of course are of the Sun, Soil, Plants, Water, and my own conscious awareness.

Thanks to Nate for nailing Daniel down

Love love love this. You both are making my head hurt...but in a good way ❤

Never clicked so fast. Thanks for all the great content

I like that Daniel brought up the importance of honest and accurate accounting as a fundamental requirement for aligning our economy with ecological limits. In my view a new global accounting standard is one of the very first tasks on the critical path of our project. "Context based sustainability" (CBS) may one possible useful initial framework for such a new accounting system.

I normally don’t write comments but this time I just have to. I always had the feeling that something is not quite right with the human civilisation and where we are going and it made me feel kind of helpless and sad. Disempowered you could say. Now after watching almost all of the schmachtenberger and Hagens videos I regained some hope and a sense of purpose. I mean it still seems really fucking hard but at least now I know what the actual problems are and what would be possible solutions for them. Thank you Nate and Daniel for brilliantly explaining these complex topics.

Rich description of the complexity of our modern world. Many thanks.

Great insights. Intricate interconnections. Water=5th Sacred thing. Not Resources, but Life Sources, or 'Treasures,' as I refer to them. And, Yes, Growth still - but qualitative growth, not physical growth. Endless opportunities for meaningful employment in ways that improve quality of life ~ all of which enhance, not debase, the biosphere. Time for a far less material, and qualitative richer, world. Thank you once again for such an enriching interaction!!

I am definitely one of the Walking Worried, yes... thank you to both of you for this series of discussions.

After watching one Daniel S. video I find youtube now feeding me more.

03:02 - Maximum Power Principle 05:13 - Superorganism 08:13 - Biodiversity loss, climate change, ocean acidification 11:37 - Ecological economics + the problems with GDP 14:03 - Metcalfe’s Law 14:14 - Limited Liability Company 16:39 - China taking Tibet, Colonial genocide of Native Americans 21:31 - Regulation on cigarettes and reduction in people who smoke 21:58 - Companies knew health effects of smoking for a long time 22:20 - There is no industry that doesn’t need energy 22:42 - CFCs regulation and the ozone 25:42 - Germany importing coal and cutting down old-growth forests 26:26 - Brazil cutting down rainforests for soybean industry 39:31 - Pareto Distribution 41:41 - If you factored in the cost of all externalities, no industry would be profitable 46:20 - Mutation and evolution 48:45 - Other animals use tools 50:05 - Humans are able to use abstractions to develop tools 52:08 - Humans are ultrasocial 52:15 - Jonathan Haidt The Righteous Mind 54:04 - Dunbar’s number 56:40 - Language was a major tool for humans 57:36 - Agrarian Revolution 1:01:53 - Pinker and Rosling Narrative 1:02:15 - Positive, Negative, and Zero Sum 1:05:01 - The 4th Industrial Revolution 1:06:05 - Fossil fuels provide the equivalent of 500 billion human workers 1:06:45 - Human population growth 1:09:15 - The origin of banking, interest, and modern monetary system 1:11:08 - Lithium 900% more costly, Olivia Lazard 1:15:08 - The average American uses 57 barrel of oil equivalents of fossil fuels/year + 17 from finished products imported 1:15:32 - Online Slave Calculator 1:16:00 - Gini Coefficient 1:23:45 - Group Selection 1:43:15 - Jevons Paradox 1:46:25 - Financial musical chairs moment 1:47:28 - Human migration is fixed from climate effects 1:50:25 - Francis Fukuyama and others - Russia collapse isn’t far away 1:52:38 - We use social sorting mechanisms to solve physical world problems 1:57:42 - Lawrence Lessig 1:57:45 - Rank Choice Voting, Gerrymandering, Campaign Finance Reforms 1:58:15 - B Corp Legislation 2:05:40 - Porcupine Tree

I love how Nate is able to get Daniel in the "zone", what a great host!

This subject should be being taught in school

Thanks you Nate!

Yes! Long awaited! I’ve been enjoying all of your other podcasts Nate while waiting for this 4th installment. I’m so glad DS brought me to your channel. I’m super grateful for your series of conversations with DS. For me his conversations with you are among the best to be found online.

One of the most important conversations right there. Its just so hard to know the state of the system without getting bogged down hard. Peace

Water is sacred and nestle knows it…It would be nice to see Daniel and alike building an organisation over many countries

Fascinating talk. Perhaps we need to talk more about the motives and plans of our elites and how these affect the problem space. I'm not sure that they're very interested in avoiding the central command dystopia that Daniel describes.

Talking about limits to total consumption in an information / media economy, that reflects the limits of consumer spending alreary in our material / production economy: the buying and funding of a large amount of economic activity is through the military, and government contracted operations and subsidized industries. Weapons manufacturing, animal industries, for example.

WOW WOW WOW! That was an incredibly brilliant conversation. Lately I have been watching a lot of videos about early humans and homonins, and I came to a similar conclusion. Up until recently, I thought that our wrong turn was the agricultural revolution, but I think it goes back to our Sapien origins.

‘There is no end to talking.” These conversations are a modern version of the age old dilemma that has faced humanity from the beginning. Interesting and engaging and hopefully not just relegated to another sedimentary layer of thoughtful information deposited on the bedrock of our existence. A search for meaning in the perplexing dilemma of finding ourselves ‘in medias res’ endeavoring for a solution to unanswerable questions. Laudable and laughable at the same time.

1:21 people would immediately "choose" to consume less if we banned all advertising.

Yes. 😢 This is the problem! Listening and hoping you can also articulate ideas about solutions. 🌻

What would be interesting would be to discuss and compare the fundamental nature of people from an anthropological view point and to see how environmental and geographical variance affects human nature and therefore decision making within a culture. I’m curious how say Aboriginal people in Australia seemed to have lived in harmony with the environment for 60,000 years before being colonised. What drives some cultures to become disconnected from the natural world.

Well done, Nate and Daniel. This may have been my all time favorite dialogue. I’m looking forward to the next one. I’d love to hear Alex Epstein join you guys. Bend Back Better.

Daniel is always an amazing guest. Little hard to keep up but can try⛵️☀️

This series of talks only demonstrates to me how truly screwed we and humanity are. There will be hell to pay for our negligence regarding our responsibility to nature. Humanity doesn’t deserve to survive fellas. Go live simply and enjoy the days you have left and to hell with the sleeping masses. They all have their rewards and they will die clutching them and crying. It’s up to the awake to find what will be worth protecting and preserving to try and create a new world after this one burns down in utter failure.

it's great to watch this whole discussion and track Daniel's beard growth

Another great discussion - thanks guys.

I love this series, thank you both and thank you to the production team. I love Daniel's comment at the end, growth won't end it will shift dimensions. Also, the 3x3x3 grid is exciting, can't wait to hear more.

Fuck yes! I love these. Thank you.

Prayer or meditation come to mind as a way of interconnecting empathically and develop spiritual powers to tap into our dimension to draw resources from other dimensions rather that using materials…

Nate and Daniel, how do I make my work about what you guys are talking about? I don't see what else there is to care about when these truths are so fundamental. How do I not get caught up in the process of contributing to embedded growth obligations and using more than is rational in every domain of life?

Thank you for this conversation.

All the things I love hearing. Great interview.

Good recognition of the role of Tool (Technology) development. Added to it the recognition of the development of Cooperation. Most of human evolution depended on them.

Enjoyed as usual, thank Nate and Daniel. have a comment: to me it seems that you are most suggesting a peacuful transition by educating people and elites about complex sense-making. I agree that specially about people thats very necessary, but I dont think that elites and power holders will change the direction voluntarily even if they can do a complex sense-making of the metacrisis. They would probably not put long-term collective interest on top of their own short-term self-interest. So a kind of seizing power by grassroot movements becomes a necessary step at some point. And game-theory analytics would definitely help to analyse and empower those movements. Would love to hear a conversation between you and an expert on grassroot and radical counter-hegomonic movements.

I had a similar dream as the sacred water dream. My dream was that there was a collective global movement to invest “as much as it takes” to ensure that every single one of our children and top soil are loved and nourished without excuses. That generation of loved & nourished children then grew up to solve all our other problems 🌞🤝🌞🤝🌞

"We are ethically responsible for what we could do, but don't, as well as for what we do. We [ have technologically evolved] beyond an apex predator. Because we have the ability to build these adaptive abstractions on top of each other faster than nature can build resilience to that, we have the ability to advantage ourselves at the expense of nature. We have the ability to destroy whole ecosystems in a way that no other animal can. Because we have the capacity to destroy the biosphere on which we depend, we have the necessity to steward it. I am-because we are, with the WE being everything we depend upon in the biosphere."

Excellent!

Wow, what an incredibly stimulating conversation! Thank you for sharing!

33:30 "Can individuals change their behavior to make a difference?" Overall, I see there's some peace of mind for individuals to "live below their means" and having more freedom in the future with less dependence upon a system that is destructive. The "goal" is have adaptability at each step of the "Long Emergency" and in those moments of crisis, just have a better sense of what is reasonable to fight for, and what to surrender.

I’d like to hear Daniel talk about how our species, post standard selection pressures, allows expressions that can not happen otherwise. So things like neurodiversity being expressed far more now, we have a large and growing minority that can think of problems in ways the ultra fit competitor class cannot. These people have always existed in smaller numbers, just like psychopaths/sociopaths, but now that they aren’t selected against anywhere near as much, a whole new class of thinkers and actors is available for differential problem solving.

People need to exit these systems and form villages based on their needs, values etc, making it clear why they're going a different way. Live in closed-loop communities where they produce a lot more of what they need, then source the rest tangentially from locals - starting inside the village and working outward to rebuild lost local economies. People will drain bureaucratic, corporatized systems by doing this, become much less dependent on transportation and more able to cope without oil/cars/etc when the time comes. And the more of it they can do inside their community without currency, the less they pay taxes to govts, the less they pay money for mass-produced products. And most importantly, they get to live meaningful, thriving lifestyles with real friends & family, close to nature, life balanced to best meet their needs. This model is highly relevant because it appeals naturally to so many different kinds of people and it minimizes risk/danger across many metrics. It appeals to people across wildly different political beliefs, even in extreme cases, and with widely varied motivating factors- some care more about the environment, while others care more about economic disaster. People naturally envision independent new villages/communities when their values are pushing them to leave systems.

We have to grow degrowth pathways ... Isn't it fun being a human alive at this moment?

Using fire for cooking also accelerated our ability to calorify food so more energy could be employed to develop our brains - this was a benefit byproduct but maybe should be considered another type of recursive improvement mechanism.

First rate conversation, touching on so many important points! I'm citing the transcript in an essay I'm writing. May I offer one small criticism? Please do not blindly accept Ranked Choice Voting (aka. Instant Runoff Voting) as the only alternative to our current first past the post method. Please look into STAR Voting, which stands for Score Then Automatic Runoff. It's a relatively new innovation in voting methods that solves many of the severe problems with RCV, which was invented before many of the methods of statistical and numerical analyses that now reveal its serious flaws.

Love this guy

Nice view, Daniel! 🌺🌊🌿

amazing intro, on the amoeba theory and the drive for profit or growth, I'd just add the population size, which is also driven and influenced by these entities, such as the government etc, but can lead to a different outcome as in, more revenue with less people and less energy can lead to a more revenue per capita

Energy is currently coupled to how the population is aligned to central distribution. If population was arranged to in much smaller centres with localized: energy capture; food production; health support. Perhaps we must uncouple some of our systems to a locally operated systems. Government can be hands off, in most ways - once this is set up. Culturally generated heart and mind will prevent eventual solution. Connection to self and environment, outside of cultural interests and influences) ... will lead us to mindfulness. Daniel mentions a change at a cultural level is required. I suspect much more than we understand. Wee don't get to where we need to be without understanding that .... what we hold in heart and in mind is important.

The comment that you both made early on about even a first grader should intuitively understand that we can not have exponential growth on a finite planet needs to be the metric for all human organization, for the global governance mechanism. The instant that proposals and planning from this global governing body step outside this metric must be called out and summarily dismissed and it should be explained in simple terms why. Because it is an absolute truth ...a first grader understands that there are only so many M&Ms in a pack and if there are 5 kids and 20 M&Ms each kid gets 4 M&Ms ...wait ...is that right...wait a minute I need to get my smart phone out. Point being we are taught from grade 1 to ignore this physical reality and believe instead that technology can over come it.

What an amazing environment to continue learning in. Thank you.

Experts have a reasonable chance to solve complicated problems provided they have achieved a necessary level of understanding along with enough support. Experts have little or no chance to solve complex problems. There is only restricting and enabling constraints in a very dynamic fitness landscape.

Best one yet.

that thing where you get to invite any 10 people to a dinner party? these are 2 of mine ...

Daniel you were in my dream last night when I was listening to you and in the dream we were discussing something important but I don't remember much and you had me sign a contract or something it was pretty real kinda Astraly you know. I left this message before Daniel spoke of his dream at the end. Interesting.

Is governance using Sociocracy (in so far as using consensus for decision making as opposed to majority vote) a viable "breadcrumb" for organizing neighborhoods, community, cities, organizations etc? Would you guys be able to speak to that in your next episode? I would love to hear your thoughts.

I came back to delete my previous comments (about no sound) and found them already deleted. BUT it is important for people to know that RU-vid muted sound for about two hours while they reviewed content. Some people who immediately began to listen heard about 12 minutes of sound. Then the sound cut off for many people, who were commenting " no sound." And then the sound returned, which is in keeping with listeners knowing that content is carefully controlled reguarding the climate predicament.

11:06 Daniel describes the classical objective (or labor) theory of value. I wonder if he is conscious of it. It would be interesting to hear them discuss the theory of value of the physiocrats vs the classical.

Daniel Schmachtenberger, Balaji Srinivasan, and Leo Gura are 3 guys who make me realize that some people are born with a mind on a whole other level than my own.

Been waiting for this!!!

Eating space cake and doing a Daniel and Nate binje...it is on the same level as a Terrence McKenna binje, but more up to date and useful. Am going to need a serious defrag in the morning though.

...I'm watching this, and the term you are looking for is a change from a natural Darwinian Mendelian Evolutionary structure, to a Social Lamarckian Evolutionary structure. Mendelian is the natural evolutionary process that happens where there is no external cross fertilisation of traits outside of the genetics and neutral genetic drift. Lamarckian is where traits can be externalised and inherited, so for example if an Amazonian tribe gets to look at the technological wheel of a more advanced society it suddenly leaps forward in it's understanding and capabilities almost overnight. Mendelian is a slow process that is almost blind and which generates a lot of redundancy (though can be guided by an outside selective agent, cattle, dogs etc.), Lamarckian by contrast can move at the speed of light.

If we account for externalities (charge hefty fees when industries deplete resources, emit pollution or destroy wildlife habitat), then share a monetary representation of natural wealth to all people (share the proceeds from the fees), we will align what is profitable with what is sustainable, in an efficient and fair way. From a moral philosophy perspective, we can say we are making prices honest and sharing natural wealth, to promote sustainability and end poverty. We have a shared right to define limits to the rate of extraction of various resources and a shared right to benefit from natural wealth. We should make fees just high enough to bring overall impacts into line with what most people think is acceptable. (A system of random polls can show when fees are high enough--when most people say that there's not to much of this or that kind of impact.