Our little thought experiment of the world of collective intelligence (CoIn) has a lot in common with ingenious ideas that have started (or will start) to shape the world in recent years and decades. Some of them had inspired me for a long time, while others made me realize that from completely different standpoints, people arrive at surprisingly similar conclusions.
Tibor Liska was an economist who proposed a combination of the capitalist free market and communal ownership. The latter was the reality of the Eastern block when he developed his model in the 1960s–1990s Hungary; the former was needed to mitigate the growing inefficiencies of the planned economy. He envisioned a world without taxes, a version of universal basic income (“social inheritance”), social ownership blended with personal stewardship, and a bureaucracy that’s role is limited to regulatory functions. These concepts are all built into CoIn, although money has a somewhat different role in our system.
Robert H. Frank’s “The Economic Naturalist: Why Economics Explains Almost Everything” offers a unique perspective on economic principles from everyday enigmas. While questions like “why do drive-up ATMs have Braille dots?” seem insignificant when reshaping the global economy, it is a thought-provoking illustration of the underlying principles. This book helped CoIn to focus on what can be changed while respecting these principles.
Yuval Noah Harari’s “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” is a great synthesis of what we know (and what we don’t) about human evolution: survival, abstraction, imagination, religion, empires, science, ideologies among many other important concepts that give us a context to understand the world around us and project the future. These thoughts helped CoIn to remain down-to-earth; instead of fighting human nature (or nature in general), let’s make the best of what we have!
Kurzgesagt’s educational YouTube channel has short videos that discuss scientific, technological, political, philosophical, and psychological subjects. These clips are amazing both for their content and for their graphical design. While “Sapiens” puts human history in perspective, Kurzgesagt does the same for the world surrounding us. It is a great example of the scientific approach, which can be useful when studying society as well. In CoIn, this is how we imagine the future of lifelong learning that is fundamental to all of us.
Laszlo-Albert Barabasi’s research on network theory, a scientific field that emerged in the last few decades, reveals patterns across seemingly remote topics. “Linked: The New Science of Networks” is a popular introduction to networks; “The Science of Science”, which he wrote with Dashun Wang, applies science’s method to science (including researchers and their works, and the systems of academia and public education as well) itself. CoIn is a huge network itself that should consider all these lessons learned.
Jeff Hawkins’ “A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligence” is an exciting idea that explains how our brain (more precisely, the Neocortex, the “thinking brain”) works. It consists of cortical columns that perceive different, but highly overlapping parts of the world surrounding us. All of these columns have multiple layers (that are similar across the columns) and they build models (that are useful to make predictions) of each thing that they perceive. Thinking is essentially moving, and the different models are reconciled through the cortical columns’ voting mechanism. The columns communicate with each other and other body parts through synapses. Now, if you replace “cortical columns” with “people” (or more broadly, “thinking beings”) and “synapses” with “communities”, you get CoIn…
Okay, but what about Elon Musk? He just bought Twitter, and it could become the social medial platform of CoIn. OpenAI could provide artificial intelligence that boosts the efficiency of collective decision-making. Neuralink could save us from forgetting or not being able to express our great ideas by revealing the mysteries of our brains. Tesla, SpaceX, and The Boring Company are already revolutionizing how we move around and have a huge impact on the energy sector as well. Paypal had changed money transfers, and cryptocurrencies have the potential to make CoIn’s vision of money come true. So what are we waiting for?
Homework:
List inspiring books, articles, shows videos
