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.

[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.