The first in the new London Futurists series of webinars on "addressing root causes" takes place tomorrow, Sat 15 Feb, at 4pm UK time. It features philosopher and entrepreneur Kristian Rönn, highlighting themes from his fascinating book "The Darwinian Trap" www.meetup.com/london-futur... - ThreadSky

dw-2.bsky.social • 18 days ago

The first in the new London Futurists series of webinars on "addressing root causes" takes place tomorrow, Sat 15 Feb, at 4pm UK time. It features philosopher and entrepreneur Kristian Rönn, highlighting themes from his fascinating book "The Darwinian Trap" https://www.meetup.com/london-futurists/events/305593904

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dw-2.bsky.social•18 days ago

The book - subtitled "The hidden evolutionary forces that explain our world (and threaten our future)" - provides excellent insight into why individuals keep pursuing objectives that end up harming the group in which they belong - and, in time, harming themselves too.

dw-2.bsky.social•18 days ago

Why do people sometimes do bad things? We may blame them for bad behaviour, bad philosophy, bad psychology, and so on, but from another level of analysis, we should expect that kind of bad behaviour (etc) to continue until destructive incentives are removed from our environment.

dw-2.bsky.social•18 days ago

In his book, Kristian Rönn introduces the concept of "Darwinian demon", to describe destructive incentives, but he also postulates that "Darwinian angels" can arise, which lead individuals away from behaviours that cause group-harm and ultimately self-harm.

dw-2.bsky.social•18 days ago

The book analyses three fundamental races - the race for more resources, the race for more power, and the race for more intelligence. In our present world, each of these races is poised to bring humanity to catastrophe. Can we organise Darwinian angels in time?

dw-2.bsky.social•18 days ago

Rönn reviews at two ways in which destructive incentives can be changed: top-down control (which, alas, involves its own risks of catastrophe) and bottom-up decentralised adoption of reputation markets (which have their own drawbacks). The best solution may be a hybrid.

dw-2.bsky.social•18 days ago

Along the way, Rönn explains the "group selection vs. individual selection vs. gene selection" controversy in evolutionary theory. He shows how, when matters are organised appropriately, selection happens on multiple levels in parallel. This has implications for humanity today!

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