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Dec 11, 2024 | 
resilience.org | Tom Murphy
Brains. What are they good for? Why do we—and loads of other animals—have them? What is the point of evolving increased neural complexity? Brains obviously confer advantages, or they would not survive the gauntlet of evolution. They must also exact a cost, or every creature would boast a headpiece of enormous potential.
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Nov 27, 2024 | 
resilience.org | Tom Murphy
No matter which candidate won the U.S. Presidential election, about half the citizens were set to fear the end of the country. Rather than argue about whether each side’s concern is similarly credible, I’ll address a broader question. What, exactly, does a voter/citizen imagine the goal to be, and—given modernity’s transient status—is the goal anything more than unfounded fantasy?
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Oct 16, 2024 | 
resilience.org | Tom Murphy
A while back, I came across a fascinating paper from 2007 by Gurven and Kaplan on longevity among hunter-gatherers that helped me understand aspects of what life was (and is) like outside of modernity. My interest is both a matter of pure curiosity, and to gain perspective on how desperate life feels—or doesn’t—to members of pre-agricultural (ecological) cultures.
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Oct 10, 2024 | 
resilience.org | Tom Murphy |Bart Russell Anderson
What if we presented possible options for future human developments—let’s say human population as a solid example—and pretend it’s a menu from which we get to choose. What outcome would most people see as the desired goal? What would make them happy, or satisfied? Which population curve below do you think most would select? I present the following options:A: Indefinite exponential rise. This implies no biophysical limits, ultimately demanding expansion to space (as if possible).
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Oct 1, 2024 | 
resilience.org | Tom Murphy |Bart Russell Anderson
I spend a fair bit of time asking myself the question: Am I crazy? I mean, without really wanting to do so, I seem to have landed on a fringe view within our culture, which is not a comfortable place for me in a social sense. I don’t love it. The easiest—seemingly most likely—explanation for the glaring mismatch is that I’m the one off kilter. My statement: Modernity (even if defining starting 10,000 years ago) is a short-lived phase that will self-terminate—likely starting this century.
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Sep 25, 2024 | 
resilience.org | Tom Murphy
I struggle to strike a balance between certainty and circumspection. Our culture has a tendency to favor certainty, while one of my favorite and frequent fall-backs—seldom wrong—is: “we don’t know.” Certainty is often the hobgoblin of decontextualized, rigid, (only) logical thinking: an artificial by-product of incomplete mental models. That said, I feel that I can do more than throw up my hands on every issue.
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Sep 18, 2024 | 
resilience.org | Tom Murphy
A short story of fiction by Tom MurphyAlmost any nerd worth their salt has read Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, relishing its innovative and unpredictable humor. So it was with Adam Lundquist and Alex Ford: top-level coworkers at the Institute for the Future of Artificial Intelligence Learning, who—besides being project leaders—were widely regarded as the principal talent behind an exciting new AI platform on the verge of becoming operational.
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Sep 3, 2024 | 
resilience.org | Tom Murphy
This is the final installment in the Metastatic Modernity video series (see launch announcement), putting the meta-crisis in perspective as a cancerous disease afflicting humanity and the greater community of life on Earth. We have arrived at the part where people say: “yeah, but what can I do?” I hope that I can offer solid suggestions that are more satisfying than frustrating. But I’m just winging it, here.
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Aug 29, 2024 | 
resilience.org | Tom Murphy
This is the seventeenth of 18 installments in the Metastatic Modernity video series (see launch announcement), putting the meta-crisis in perspective as a cancerous disease afflicting humanity and the greater community of life on Earth. Here, I attempt to paint a picture of how we might think of ourselves as humans on this planet, as integral members of the community of life. If we’re good, evolution might keep us for a while—along with lots of friends currently in deep trouble.
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Aug 26, 2024 | 
resilience.org | Tom Murphy
This is the sixteenth of 18 installments in the Metastatic Modernity video series (see launch announcement), putting the meta-crisis in perspective as a cancerous disease afflicting humanity and the greater community of life on Earth. This installment tries to round up perspectives developed so far, and throws in a bit of mythology at the end.
