A few rules for predicting the future by Octavia E. Butler

by Octavia E. Butler in Common Good Collective…So why try to predict the future at all if it’s so difficult, so nearly impossible? Because making predictions is one way to give warning when we see ourselves drifting in dangerous directions. Because prediction is a useful way of pointing out safer, wiser courses. Because, most of all, our tomorrow is the child of our today. Through thought and deed, we exert a great deal of influence over this child, even though we can’t control it absolutely. Best to think about it, though. Best to try to shape it into something good. Best to do that for any child.

The U.S. needs to pay more attention to electronic warfare

by Steven Glinert in Noahpinion…Electronic warfare (EW) is a bit of a sleeper in the US arsenal. The US invented its modern form and has used it to great effect in every war we’ve fought, especially since 1990. Indeed, if you want to know what the literal “war” in “chip wars” is, it’s this. The US spends about as much on it as its much cooler and flashier younger sibling, cyberwarfare (around $5b) and spending is due to increase. Likewise, the Chinese think of it as essential to their victory in a potential war against the US. Finally, it has become a defining aspect of the war in Ukraine, with Russian and Ukrainian forces playing a cat and mouse game between drones and electronic attacks.

New paper: Polycrisis Research & Action Roadmap

New paper: Polycrisis Research & Action Roadmap

by the Cascade Institute, et al….The authors define the core characteristics of polycrisis
(emergent harms, multiple causes, deep uncertainty, systemic context, and new knowledge and action) and
identify gaps, opportunities, and priorities across four dimensions (theoretical foundations, empirical
research, practical applications, community building).

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Jul 06 2023

Global polycrisis: The causal mechanisms of crisis entanglement

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Oct 10 2024

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Oct 10 2024

Applying resilience thinking

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Oct 10 2024

Hurricane Helene isn’t an outlier. It’s a harbinger of the future.

by John Morales in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists…And then came the rain. Preliminary storm-total rainfall measured on the ground included nearly 31 inches...
Oct 10 2024

Chartbook 325: Wrestling with transition thinking. Or on being “interregnumed” and how to resist it. (Hegemony notes 8)

by Adam Tooze in Chartbook 325…The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying but the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of...
Sep 24 2024

Yuval Noah Harari on the eclipsing of human intelligence

Sean Illing of The Gray Area interviews Yuval Noah Harari…If the internet age has anything like an ideology, it’s that more information and more data and...
Sep 24 2024

How rising global heat connects catastrophic floods on four continents

by Scott Dance in The Washington Post…At this time of year, that flood potential amped up by global warming can become especially evident.

Sep 18 2024

Scaling: The state of play in AI

by Ethan Mollick in One Useful Thing…With continued advancements in model architecture and training techniques, we’re approaching a new frontier in AI...
Sep 18 2024

Facing global risks with honest hope

From (ASRA) Accelerator for Systemic Risk Assessment report Facing global risks with honest hope….Transforming Multidimensional Challenges into Multidimensional...
Sep 18 2024

Superbugs ‘could kill 39m people by 2050’ amid rising drug resistance

by Kat Lay in The Guardian…Child deaths from infections see ‘remarkable’ decline but AMR fatalities of over-70s likely to rise by 146%, study finds Analysis:...
Sep 16 2024

Global trends are polarizing us: Can democracy handle it?

by Richard Heinberg in resilience.org….Today the world faces historically unique stresses that are likely to be increasingly polarizing for many societies. These...