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The Biggest Takeaways from the Logic of the Superorganism

December 11, 2024

(Recorded November 26, 2024)

Description

​​As we piece together the different facets of our reality, the systems synthesis which emerges confronts us with some uncomfortable truths. These are the advanced inferences rooted in the logic of The Great Simplification. They have important implications for our expectations about the future and how we should respond in the present.

In this Frankly, Nate revisits some key messages from this channel and delves into some of the more challenging takeaways. The logic of the Superorganism reveals why narrow focus on solutions while extrapolating current trends will be insufficient for addressing the most important issues of our time and why these will increasingly have to be championed proactively, creatively and indirectly instead. As the biophysical and social limits to growth become harder to ignore, The Great Simplification synthesis points us to a more realistic portrait of the future: one of less for the ‘median’ human. Facing these realities is neither easy nor pleasant, but as more people arrive at a species-level conversation, it is necessary. Only by doing so can we look and plan several steps ahead to change the initial conditions of the future, in service of life.

In what ways are free markets and technology ‘false gods’? How does the metabolic hierarchy of the Superorganism dictate what gets prioritised in global decision making? And what speed bumps lie ahead on the road to The Great Simplification?

Show Notes

PDF Transcript

01:56 – Frankly on probability

03:47 – Frankly on energy blindness

04:34 – BRICS countries control 50% of oil exports

05:24 – The italian government is borrowing at a lower rate than the US

05:55 – Fossil fuels account for *82% of the global energy mix

07:17 – Frankly on overshoot

07:36 – Poleward movement of fish

08:44 – Frankly on AI and the straw

08:45 – The deadly effect of AI-guided drones

12:22 – Law of total probability

12:54 – Russia’s Oreshnik missile

14:28 – 5 horsemen

15:34 – Mean vs median income in the US

16:09 – Peter Turchin + immiseration

20:00 – James Baldwin

Nate Hagens

Nate Hagens

Nate Hagens is the Director of The Institute for the Study of Energy & Our Future (ISEOF) an organization focused on educating and preparing society for the coming cultural transition. Allied with leading ecologists, energy experts, politicians and systems thinkers ISEOF assembles road-maps and off-ramps for how human societies can adapt to lower throughput lifestyles.

Nate holds a Masters Degree in Finance with Honors from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in Natural Resources from the University of Vermont. He teaches an Honors course, Reality 101, at the University of Minnesota.