wisdom of the crowds: arc of history

[alexr_rwx]

How are we doing, humanity? In the medium-long run, are we winning? Or are we doomed?

Is that arc of history actually bending towards justice? What are you doing to bend it? What bendings are you excited about?

(or are we going to completely wreck the oceans in the next five years, including the oxygen-providing algae, then descend into furious infighting over the dwindling resources until we all starve/asphyxiate? Or do we lose by forming a perma-self-replicating unbeatable fascist surveillance state with no interest in bettering the human experience, where the unfathomably wealthy are content to rule over serfs and burning rubble, until we get taken out by an asteroid?)

You've probably heard me say this, but I am hella excited about the democratization of really good education. Coursera and Udacity (nice interview with Sebastian Thrun about it, via +Tim O'Reilly) and Khan Academy and DuoLingo (etc) are exploring this space, and now anybody can get Stanford-level courses, free online, and it rules. Teaching in person is still important. But not everybody has access to good teachers in person. And just because you're at a (good?) university doesn't mean that the in-person classes aren't crap.

Lowering the opportunity cost to entering or leaving a course: that's huge. Want to sign up for a class just to try it out? No problem. Don't enjoy it, or it's not what you thought it was, or find out you're busy with other stuff? No problem, just ignore it.

I care, it turns out, about getting information and knowledge and wisdom to people, and at least along those lines, I think we're winning.

Also I feel like I should probably learn Chinese.

Comments

[bubblingbeebles.livejournal.com]

I've been wanting to learn yiddish for a year or so now.

[oniugnip.livejournal.com]

Me toooo! Can you read the Hebrew alphabet?

I got Di Katz Der Payats (http://www.yiddishcat.com/) last year, and got to the point where I could mostly sound out the non-transliterated words.

[bubblingbeebles.livejournal.com]

Only five letters of it. (Can you guess which ones?)

My vocabulary is only as large as what i've accumulated from jewish heritage/tradition. :P

[oniugnip.livejournal.com]

These ones? נגהשא

(aleph, because people know aleph, and the four on a dreidel)

(hrm, having trouble making Hebrew letters come up large-ish in my browser...)

[bubblingbeebles.livejournal.com]

yes, those are the ones.

[lindseykuper]

(Can you guess which ones?)

The ones most closely corresponding to b, n, j, m, and l should be enough for all the consonants in 'benjamin blum'?

(hashtag-has-not-the-slightest-idea-how-hebrew-works-or-what-someone-is-likely-to-have-accumulated-from-jewish-heritage-and-tradition)

[bubblingbeebles.livejournal.com]

nope, can't write my own name. (checked to see if i remembered 'beth' - i was wrong, but now i know that one too.)

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

According to Steven Pinker, human-human violence has dropped off massively, by up to 3 orders of magnitude. On average this is the safest time to live. And the longest lived, of course. Explicit rights for women and gays are probably at a record high, though I suspect explicit persecution of gays was recently at a record high as well. A record percentage of humanity lives in at least somewhat welfare-state democracies.

OTOH antibiotic resistance is growing, many of those democracies are inching toward police-state plutocracies which have leapt into a dark age of macroeconomics, and it's looking as if we'll find, if not enough oil, then enough natural gas and coal to fry the planet.

So things are good, but there are worrying signs, and things could be a lot better with a few simple changes. Global carbon tax and tariff, proper Keynesian management, and we'd have adjusted the energy market and gotten economies back up to speed, rather than wallowing in unnecessary unemployment because of pure stupid.

[oniugnip.livejournal.com]

I pretty much agree! I think we've made a lot of progress recently.

Also, thanks for reviewing that book (http://mindstalk.livejournal.com/328793.html)! I read at least one of his earlier articles on the topic; neat stuff for sure.

"Most homicides, Black notes, are really instances of capital punishment, with a private citizen as the judge, jury and executioner." "[dogma] is that violence is caused by a deficit of morality and justice. On the contrary, violence is often caused by a surfeit of morality and justice, at least as they are conceived."
(this idea, this is huge)