The Long View
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By Michael Lerner, Angle of Vision…The polycrisis has many names—cascading crises, the metacrisis, the permacrisis, the great unraveling, the great simplification, “the end of the world as we know it” [TEOTWAWKI], and more. In Latin America it’s called “eco-social collapse.” The French call it “collapsologie.” Or one can simply call it turbulent times or a rapidly changing world.
There’s a strained supply of rice as a result of the ongoing war in Ukraine, as well as weather woes in rice-producing economies like China and Pakistan.
by Ezra Klein, The New York Times…This is an example of “alignment risk,” the danger that what we want the systems to do and what they will actually do could diverge, and perhaps do so violently. Curbing alignment risk requires curbing the systems themselves, not just the ways we permit people to use them.
A discussion with a researcher who studies the way global crises intersect.
In a 2022 survey, A.I. experts were asked, “What probability do you put on human inability to control future advanced A.I. systems causing human extinction or similarly permanent and severe disempowerment of the human species?”
Precisely twenty years ago, I published a book called “Enough” that outlined my fears about artificial intelligence and its companion technologies like advanced robotics and human genetic engineering
Artists have a long history of channeling social change into their works, shaping our cultures, societies, and institutions. When informed by science, this becomes a powerful tool for action.
In a March Guardian editorial that similarly treated the matter of origin as an arcane sideshow, the paper emphasized expanding disease surveillance, protecting natural habitats, reforming factory farming and ramping up lab safety — and concluded that all “this, rather than the blame game, is what politicians should prioritize.”
Since the Long View started as a newsletter almost 2 years ago, our aim has been to curate the highest quality polycrisis news, research, and analysis to support this growing learning community. As this polycrisis work has gone global, so has the volume of content, debate over its relevance, and evolving language. Here are this month’s top picks of polycrisis news, curated by Omega Program Director Stanley Wu. It was quite a month, worldwide. These selections were chosen to help foster thinking about these times and how we consider resilience in light of the global polycrisis.
Nate Hagens, Director of the Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future, offers a valuable, insightful, and cautionary presentation on energy consumption and the alarming challenges society will face in the not-so-distant future.
by Danny Lewis in Smithsonian Magazine….“Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point.”
by Mohan Mainali in Nepali Times….Half-century of eastern Nepal’s rainfall data points to a link between chronic drought and depopulation
by Johathan Watts in The Guardian…If the anomaly does not stabilise by August, ‘the world will be in uncharted territory’, says climate expert
