Welcome

Welcome to my blog. This is a way for me to write down and explore some thoughts I have about the changing world we live in. My basic thesis is that

1. Technology changes our society (think agriculture, metallurgy, industrial revolution, computer revolution)

2. Our societal constructs are built to fit that society (tribalism, feudalism, republics, urbanization, etc.)

3. Technological change is accelerating: (see wiki on this)

4. Many of our world's problems stem from our inability to change our societal constructs fast enough to keep up with the technological and social changes we are enduring.

I am interested in exploring what changes we need to make across the board. Here are some examples of areas: economics, politics, government structure, food supply, transportation, energy generation, education, war, relationships, and working. All these things are changing as our world changes, and how we deal with them will need to change as well. Failure to do so will lead to the decline of the human civilization.

I am highly interested in your comments and feedback. I'd like to meet more people who are interested in these topics and have meaningful discussions. Please send me your thoughts and links to any interesting blogs or articles.

Biological Evolution is... irrelevant

The battle rages on in the U.S. over teaching darwinian evolution in school. Some fight to have Creationism or Intelligent Design taught as alternatives. However, this debate is mostly over the teaching of children and not very deep into the concepts themselves. This is a cultural debate, not a scientific one. This is largely because to people living in the present and looking into the future, evolution DOESN'T REALLY MATTER.

Sure, it was an important scientific breakthrough at the time, and it has led to a much better understanding of where we came from, but the mechanisms of the past should not necessarily control the goals of tomorrow. And lets face it, evolution will not have a significant impact on human society in the forseeable future. Why?

Well, first of all, evolution take hundreds of thousands of years. Our technological advances are accelerating such that our world changes significantly in centuries and decades. Biological evolution is working so slowly as to be irrelevant in the short term.

Secondly, we've separated "good traits" from the main tool of evolution: procreation. Almost all humans can now survive long enough to procreate. In fact, the birth rate in industrialized nations is dropping while the rate in poor countries remain high. If anything, we are trending towards the evolution of poor traits.

Finally, human beings formed societies. By doing so, we made the organism that evolves a society rather than an individual. But societies are different in several important ways:

1. Societies can change - biological evolution is based on random mutation (luck) and dying. Societies can plan and change on purpose without dying out. Poorly constructed societies can also die out while well-planned societies survive, but this is not purely by chance. Intelligent design and redesign is allowed.

2. Societies can merge - in individual evolution, we require a LOT of individuals to support random mutation and the weeding out of bad genes. Though societies can also be weeded out, there are a lot fewer of them. In fact, as we advance technologically, we have also globalized our societies. There are now fewer socieities that grow large. Eventually there will only be a few truly distinct societies. This means that traditional random evolution becomes hazardous. We cannot let these societies die without suffering immensely. That is why we must evolve our societies by choice and design.

Biological evolution WAS important. But understanding Societal evolution and planning it... that is what is truly important today.