Daniel Schmachtenberger: "Bend not Break #2: Maximum Power and Hyper Agents"
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Nate Hagens
4.8 • 555 Ratings
🗓️ 25 May 2022
⏱️ 112 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this episode we meet with founding member of The Consilience Project, Daniel Schmachtenberger.
In the second of a four-part series, Nate and Daniel explore the relationship between energy, information, technology, the Superorganism, and the maximum power principle.
How can we maximize returns on agency? Nate and Daniel explain the importance of hyper agents: those humans who have an outsized influence on what's happening in the world.
About Daniel Schmachtenberger:
Daniel Schmachtenberger is a founding member of The Consilience Project, aimed at improving public sensemaking and dialogue.
The throughline of his interests has to do with ways of improving the health and development of individuals and society, with a virtuous relationship between the two as a goal.
Towards these ends, he's had particular interest in the topics of catastrophic and existential risk, civilization and institutional decay and collapse as well as progress, collective action problems, social organization theories, and the relevant domains in philosophy and science.
For Show Notes and Transcript visit: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/20-daniel-schmactenberger
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to The Great Simplification with Nate Higgins. |
| 0:06.0 | That's me. |
| 0:07.0 | On this show, we try to explore and simplify what's happening with energy, the economy, the environment, and our society. |
| 0:17.0 | Together with scientists, experts, and leaders, this show is about understanding the bird's-eye view of how everything fits together, where we go from here and what we can do about it as a society and as individuals. |
| 0:32.6 | This week's podcast is a second installment of a conversation with my friend, Daniel Schmockenberger. |
| 0:43.2 | We intended this series to be a three-part series on Bend versus Break, but we got a little |
| 0:50.1 | sidetracked with both interesting and I hope relevant and helpful tangents on energy, |
| 0:58.0 | maximum power, animist religion, and the importance and relevance of hyperagents are those |
| 1:09.0 | human individuals who have outsized influence on our cultural direction. |
| 1:15.0 | Daniel and I come to this with wildly different backgrounds and we've kind of found each other |
| 1:22.6 | on the internet and are learning from each other and exploring and trying to figure out the path ahead |
| 1:30.3 | and basically share our revelations and our thought process publicly because I think we need |
| 1:37.1 | a lot more people engaged in these questions in this space at this time. |
| 1:43.0 | I hope you enjoy this conversation. |
| 1:44.9 | I certainly did. |
| 1:46.3 | Here is part two with Daniel Schmachtenberger. |
| 2:08.6 | Okay, this is podcast number two with you of a three-part series, at least. And what I'd like to do today is kind of merge our meta-world views on how energy, materials, technology, money, human behavior, all aggregate |
| 2:23.0 | into an explanatory systemic overview of the human condition, the human predicament as it |
| 2:31.6 | pertains to all the risks that we're facing. |
| 2:35.5 | You and I have been kind of playing verbal, mental ping pong on this stuff for a couple years. |
| 2:43.3 | And we have a huge overlap in how we see this stuff. |
| 2:46.7 | And I'd like to kind of hone that overlap to converge on on maybe a unified thing that we both agree on today. |
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