The Great Filter

Congratulations to William Shatner!

Impact threats are the most certain of any extinction-level events. Yet, despite the warnings of hundreds of scientists - we continue to dawdle in both our search for alternative, extraterrestrial, homes and the development of technologies to get there. Let's take a really good look at this, shall we?

"All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct."
Carl Sagan (unsourced)

"Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring - not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive. And once you're out there in space for centuries and millennia, moving little worlds around and engineering planets, your species has been pried loose from its cradle."
Carl Sagan - Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of The Human Future in Space p 173

"If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds."
Carl Sagan - Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of The Human Future in Space p 176

What are the common arguments for the necessity of money? Are there any logical counterarguments? What profession would you choose if money was not a factor?

Our children are the future, yet our willingness to invest in them dawdles and whimpers. With so much at stake - including our species' own survival - why have we chosen to ignore this problem?

This episode takes a look at the motivations and bottlenecks surrounding this issue.

"It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self." -- Donald Woods Winnicott

"Whether in the public or independent sector, in schools or at home, being creative in providing education and promoting creativity are not dispensable luxuries. They are essential to enable us all to make lives that are worth living." -- Sir Ken Robinson

Links:
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Education, Children, Learning & Development (courses, books, research, and other resources):

https://www.amazon.com/Make-Stick-Science-Successful-Learning/dp/0674729013
https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Understanding-Creation-Intelligent-Machines/dp/0805078533
https://www.amazon.com/Discipline-Without-Punishment-Employees-Performers/dp/0814402763

https://www.wondrium.com/scientific-secrets-for-raising-kids-who-thrive
https://www.wondrium.com/raising-emotionally-and-socially-healthy-kids
https://www.wondrium.com/how-to-raise-lifelong-learners
https://www.wondrium.com/how-the-world-learns-comparative-educational-systems

Scrum:

https://www.amazon.com/Scrum-Doing-Twice-Work-Half/dp/038534645X

Scrum in The Classroom:

https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/scrum-classroom-part-1-time-change
https://threeteacherstalk.com/2019/01/25/using-scrum-in-the-classroom/

Marijuana & The Adolescent Brain (Research):

Marijuana Use and High School Dropout: The Influence of Unobservables: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2910149/
Effects of Cannabis on the Adolescent Brain: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3930618/
Is the Adolescent Brain at Greater Vulnerability to the Effects of Cannabis?: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.00859/full
Cannabis and the adolescent brain: https://www.pnas.org/content/117/1/7
What Pot Really Does to the Teen Brain: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-pot-really-does-to-the-teen-brain/

NOVA Principles (bad science):

NOVA homepage: https://novaprinciples.com/
Religious Kids Are Less Likely to Get in Trouble (as cited by NOVA): http://www.center4research.org/religious-kids-likely-good/

Effects of Religion (the more honest science):

Mixed Blessing: The Beneficial and Detrimental Effects of Religion on Child Development among Third-Graders: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/10/1/37/htm
Science Does Not Say That Religious Children Are More Likely to be 'Immoral': https://futurism.com/no-science-does-not-say-that-religious-children-are-more-likely-to-be-immoral

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Science fiction often drives innovation. Star Trek, specifically, has inspired the computer and the cellular telephone among other modern miracles of science and technology. One aspect of Star Trek that has even had books written about it is the Star Trek economy. In this episode, we're talking about just that.

"The economics of the future is somewhat different. You see, money doesn't exist in the 24th century. The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity."
-- Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) from Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek VIII: First Contact

Statistics of finance & insurance markets:
https://www.selectusa.gov/financial-services-industry-united-states
https://datausa.io/profile/naics/finance-insurance

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Entropy is a two-edged sword. It is our life-force; but if it accelerates and begins to runaway with our energy, it can become a death sentence. Our society has within itself a variety of entropy amplifiers that increase our system's entropy by orders of magnitude - warming the planet and wasting our hard work. If we don't get this fixed, these entropy amplifiers will truly spell our end.

"If your theory is found to be against the second law of theromodynamics, I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation." -- Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington

The Royal Institution: Explaining Thermodynamics - Monthly(ish) Mailbag #3:
https://youtu.be/0A44-TCJU9g?t=105

World Hunger:
https://ourworldindata.org/hunger-and-undernourishment

FBI Crime Data Explorer:
https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/downloads

Psychopaths / Brain Injury:
https://www.med.wisc.edu/news-and-events/2011/november/psychopaths-brains-differences-structure-function/
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brains-psychopaths/study-finds-psychopaths-have-distinct-brain-structure-idUSBRE8460ZQ20120507
https://sciencenordic.com/forskningno-psychology-society--culture/no-we-are-not-swimming-in-psychopaths/1450492
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/mar/30/michael-mccaul/michael-mccaul-says-1-100-people-sociopath/

Up The Gravity Well (Essay):
https://creationtribe.medium.com/up-the-gravity-well-7af2e35ac87a

Value & Harmonized-State Potential:
https://youtu.be/MnkMLj24J3Y

Professor Dave's Thermodynamics Playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLORSu_035d5XIQfDwty_LY8kp2-39jgdh

--

Understanding our own psychology and social behaviors are critical to avoiding self-extinction. This episode explores this in great depth. In the next episode, we'll see all of these moving pieces in action to paint a vivid picture of what we can expect if we don't shift our way of thinking. 

What are the possible self-extinction scenarios and why is it important to understand this? In this episode we explore this; setting things up for part three where we walk this back to uncover the major causes and how to counter them.

"The first subcategory of suicide is of the more immediate sort; intentionally carried out by the conscious mind and typically focused on the cessation of pain.

The second subcategory is of a more discrete and drawn-out sort; characterized by the misguided search for absolution, brought on by an unconscious sense of self-loathing, and silently executed just outside the victim's periphery.

The real difficulty in saving humanity is not in ascertaining a diagnosis. Without question, our situation is of the second sort; the real difficulty is in discovering a reason for convincing each other that we deserve salvation."

It's time for a more upbeat episode, wouldn't you say?

You've heard the phrase, "Be the change you want to see"?

In the world we live in, with the changes we need if we're going to overcome our species' adolescence, being the change we want to see is exactly what needs to be done.

Xà La'awran's Coin is a story I wrote some time ago. I've always meant to put an animation to it (and I likely will at some point), but I just felt like I wanted to get it out there.

I hope you enjoy the story :)

What are the bare-bone attributes that we would need if we were to increase our chances of surviving as many great filters as possible, so that we would have the opportunity to seed other worlds and ensure humanity's survival?

What are the evolution-honed traits that allowed humanity to rocket to the top of the food-chain?
Will they be enough when we're face-to-face with one of the many great filters?
In this first part of our two-part episode, "Survival of The Shittiest", we'll explore the fundamental nature of humanity and where we may have taken a wrong turn in respect to fulfilling our true potential as a supra-organism optima.

This episode's quote:
(note: in this quote, Alex Danco is explaining David Graeber's arguments from his book, "The First 5,000 Years of Debt", and does not necessarily reflect his personal opinions on the matter.) 

What are the most dangerous natural disasters? Which one's can cause the total extinction of the human race and how likely are they?

In this episode we take a look at asteroids/meteors, super volcanoes, and gamma-ray bursts.

What would we need if we were to create the perfect atmosphere for human survival? How much of a system change would we need to entertain to maximize our chances for being able to evade future events which may threaten extinction?

It's odd that so many people are scrambling to fix climate change - yet so few have actually taken the time to point out the core source of all of the problems that have given rise to our current situation.

"The Earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth.
All things are connected like the blood that unites us all.
Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."
--Chief Seattle

I forgot to include the audio clip in the episode; however, if you're still interested in hearing the correct pronunciation, you can find the clip here:
https://www.historylink.org/File/5071

What is The Drake Equation? What is Fermi's Paradox? What is The Great Filter? What is our probability of surviving this unknown danger ... if it exists?