
November 17, 2020
Kevin Kelly: Seeing the Future | North Star Podcast with David Perell
Check out the North Start Podcast Page & Episode Notes
Key Takeaways
- “Most of theology today is done by science-fiction” – Kevin Kelly
- Science fiction grapples with the questions that theologians used to ask:
- What does it mean to be human?
- Why are we here?
- Who do we want to become?
- Science fiction grapples with the questions that theologians used to ask:
- You cannot solve problems by just thinking about them
- Kevin calls “think-ism” a disease
- To solve problems you have to actually try different things
- If you ban technologies you’re not able to figure out how to steer them for our benefit
- Technology provides us opportunities to blossom
– Imagine if Mozart was born before the invention of the piano
– We have a moral obligation to develop new technologies to allow for everyone to express their genius - We need to be careful to not optimize everything to be efficient
- Efficiency is for robots, humans are inefficient
- “Every single thing that we really value as humans is terribly inefficient” – Kevin Kelly
- Science, discovery, art, adventure are all inefficient
Intro
- Kevin Kelly (@kevin2kelly) is a futurist, the co-founder of Wired Magazine, and a best-selling author
- Check out Kevin’s website
- Check out these podcasts notes from Kevin’s appearance on the Tim Ferris Show
- Host: David Perell (@whatdavidreads)
- In this chat, Kevin shares his views on the future and on the way technology helps humans blossom
The Transition from Books to Screens
- Text in books are fixed, permanent
- Books represent authority
- Screens are fluid, dynamic, never finished (Wikipedia is a great example)
- There’s no authority to tell you the truth
- You have to assemble your own truth
- There’s no authority to tell you the truth
- With books, the enemy we had to fight against was propaganda
- With screens, our enemies become conspiracies
Theology and Futurism
- “Originalist” Christians see the predictions of the Bible as the only permitted scenario for the future
- Kevin thinks that’s unfortunate because we need to think about more possible scenarios
- “Most of theology today is done by science-fiction” – Kevin Kelly
- Science fiction grapples with the questions that theologians used to ask:
- What does it mean to be human?
- Why are we here?
- Who do we want to become?
- Science fiction grapples with the questions that theologians used to ask:
Can We Shape the Future of Technology?
- The future is intrinsically unpredictable
- “We drive into the future using our rearview mirror” – Marshall McLuhan
- We can use scenario-planning to envision what’s possible (even if unlikely)
- While we can’t predict the future, we can be ready for it
- Kevin sees his role not as trying to predict the future
- Rather he’s imagining the future that we want to strive for
- Shaping the future of technology
- You cannot solve problems by just thinking about them
- Kevin calls “think-ism” a disease
- To solve problems you have to actually try different things
- If you ban technologies you’re not able to figure out how to steer them for our benefit
- Social Media, is still in its infancy
- We haven’t yet figured out how to use it properly
- You cannot solve problems by just thinking about them
- Silicon Valley taught us to embrace failure when starting companies
- Yet, we are not able to accept the “moral” failures of Social Media and other technologies
- To be able to correct errors, we have to accept failures
- Yet, we are not able to accept the “moral” failures of Social Media and other technologies
How Amish Decide Which Technologies to Adopt
- Amish process to adopt new technologies
- Few early adopters will use and test the technology
- The rest of the community observes the effects on the early adopters
- They decide to introduce a technology if they find that it strengthens their families and communities
- Kevin approves their evidence-based system towards adopting technology
Technology Help us Blossom
- The problem with Amish culture is that it offers a very limited set of choices
- We have the choice to pursue many different possibilities
- Each possibility is an opportunity for our talent to blossom
- This is why people move to cities
- Technology provides us opportunities to blossom
- Imagine if Mozart was born before the invention of the piano
- We have a moral obligation to develop new technologies to allow for everyone to express their genius
- Imagine if Mozart was born before the invention of the piano
- We have the choice to pursue many different possibilities
Technology Abuse and Protopia
- Kevin believes that every technology we invent can be weaponized
- “The more powerful the technology, the more powerfully it will be abused” – Kevin Kelly
- AI will be really abused
- Even the possibility for abuse of technology is an additional choice we didn’t have
- Kevin sees additional choices as positive
- This makes new technologies generally more good than evil
- Over time, the small additional “goodness” will compound
- This makes new technologies generally more good than evil
- Kevin sees additional choices as positive
- Kevin sees himself as a protopian
- He believes in the power of incremental improvements that compound over time
Increased Destructive Capacity of Technology
- David is concerned that it only takes one moment to destroy everything
- It’s getting easier for one person to do more and more harm
- Kevin was also concerned about this, so he looked at the evidence
- According to evidence, one person’s ability to kill hasn’t increased dramatically over time
- On average one person is able to kill around 100 people
- We can imagine the possibility of one person killing’s capacity to increase dramatically
- Kevin thinks it’d be a lot harder than we think
- “As these technologies become more powerful, they become more social. They actually require more people to be involved” – Kevin Kelly
- The need for more people becomes a deterrent to using them
- According to evidence, one person’s ability to kill hasn’t increased dramatically over time
Moral Progress and Technological Progress
- Technological progress allows us to live comfortably without fear of constant scarcity
- Scarcity was often at the root of human “savage” behavior
- Could moral progress be a result of technological progress?
- Kevin thinks that technology and science allowed us to create surplus
- We can worry less about survival and focus more on other, higher things
Future Divergence in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
- Kevin sees a convergence towards the lower levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy
- Around the World, everyone aspires to have their basic needs met in the same way (house, food, clothing, etc…)
- He thinks we’ll see a divergence about the higher levels of the Hierarchy
- What we are about, what is our purpose etc.
Noticing the Present to Understand the Future
- Some of Kevin’s writing looks like he’s trying to predict the future
- David brings up the example of “New Rules for the New Economy”
- In it, Kevin is actually accurately describing the present
- Doing so he finds the direction in which the future is leaning
- In it, Kevin is actually accurately describing the present
- David brings up the example of “New Rules for the New Economy”
Fame, Creativity and Inefficient Government
- In Kevin’s essay “The Technium: 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice“, he advises against becoming famous
- Fame is a constraint against creativity
- When you’re famous you’re not allowed to make mistakes (in all aspects of your life)
- Creativity requires one to try different things and fail
- When you’re famous you’re not allowed to make mistakes (in all aspects of your life)
- Fame is a constraint against creativity
- In a similar way, Government is not allowed to fail and cannot innovate
- But that’s the role of government
- “The business of Government is to be inefficient” – Kevin Kelly
- During COVID governments are stockpiling millions of extra masks, just in case
- No company could afford to do that
Why We Should not Optimize for Efficiency
- We need to be careful to not optimize everything to be efficient
- Efficiency is for robots, humans are inefficient
- “Every single thing that we really value as humans is terribly inefficient” – Kevin Kelly
- Science, discovery, art, adventure are all inefficient
- Clearly, not everything inefficient is desirable
- Kevin thinks we should optimize for opportunities, choices, innovation, love
- Again, none of those are efficient
Efficiency in Writing
- Kevin writes to discover what he thinks
- The process shows him how much he doesn’t know about a topic
- It forces him to research
- He doesn’t see his process as efficient
- In writing, he optimizes for clarity
- The process shows him how much he doesn’t know about a topic
- How David uses dictation in writing
- After writing his first draft, he records a three-minute summary
- Speaking a summary forces him to structure his argument in a more cohesive way
- After writing his first draft, he records a three-minute summary
Exotropy, Technology and California
- The term was coined by Max More
- Extropy as a positive transhumanist evolution in the right direction
- Kevin appropriated and hijacked the term to mean the opposite of entropy
- Entropy is the degradation of the Universe through increased disorder
- Exotropy (Kevin changed the term) stands for the positive force that increases order in areas of the Universe
- As order increases in exotropic areas, entropy also increases outside those areas
- Kevin sees technology as an exotropic force
- California is a hub of exotropy
- Historically California’s culture has been libertarian, do it yourself, independent
- People were encouraged to come up with their own solutions, think for themselves, find their own funding
- This led to the startup culture and technological development that we see today