Podcast Series

Podcasts Episodes

Episode 1: What is Star Bright?

Episode 2: Doomsday or Opportunity?


Episode 3: All Things Considered (not yet released)
Episode 4: Initial Results from the Civilization Sim (not yet released)
Episode 5: On The Importance of Being Wrong (not yet released)
Episode 6: Complexity (not yet released)
Episode 7: Easy Problem – Hard Problem – Dangerous Problem (not yet released)
Episode 8: You Have a Choice (not yet released)
Episode 9: Sharpen the Saw (not yet released)
Episode 10: The Attention Getting Society (not yet released)
Episode 11: Make 10 Wishes (not yet released)

Plan Outline for the Podcast Series

  1. What is Star Bright?
    1. The search for a path to a better world.
    2. We try to make only two assumptions.
      • Our civilization is not the best possible.
      • We are made to do better.
    3. We are a people’s think tank. We are experts, and generalists, and every day people seeking a better understanding.
    4. Our approach is grounded in math, science, engineering and practical business concepts with a good deal of the humanities and art thrown in.
    5. First and foremost we want to be certain we understand the problem
    6. Who we are not
      1. we have no political, religious, or commercial agenda.
      2. We are not about whose belief system is right or wrong or better.
      3. We simply note that those belief systems that are with us today have survived the test of time and thus have value.
      4. We accept the wisdom and insights from each and move on.
      5. We are not an advocacy group focused on any specific societal problem.
    7. Our focus is on root causes that reduce our quality of life.
    8. How Star Bright works
      1. We are translating the 300,000 year history of humanity into a computer simulation.
      2. When the sim matches history we run it into the future.
      3. If we don’t like the resulting forecast we look for change agent mitigation and test them in the Sim.
      4. We seek your help
        1. to make certain we include all things that have an effect on our quality of life,
        2. to identify those things in a forecast that we wish to change,
        3. to suggest how we might bring about a change, and
        4. to tell others what we discover, once we have something useful to contribute.
  2. Doomsday or Opportunity
    1. Some day we may face a species level extinction event. But, it is not today. Today we have a choice. You have a choice and I have a choice.
    2. Before I tell you about that choice I am going to tell you a little personal story. I started preparing for this podcast series in my newly rebuilt home. It was 4 years and one day after the worst wildfire in the history of California struck my town of Paradise. Some 30,000 people were forced to flee with no notice, 85% of all buildings were destroyed, 58 people lost their lives. We lost everything except the clothes we wore and the cars we drove. We lost rental property, the facility housing Northern California Ballet, a few thousand square feet of storage housing costumes and sets for the ballet, other vehicles, and our home and its contents. For my wife and I the decision to rebuild was easy. We were already doing what we wanted to do. There is no need to feel sorry for us. We had adequate insurance. Many did not.
    3. I tell you this because, we had a choice. We could have given in to despair and depression. Instead we decided to treat this as an adventure and opportunity to rebuild back better. We had, prior to the fire, identified several things that we would like to change. Many of these changes were difficult and too costly, but during the rebuild process they became easy. We are now nearly done. Just some landscaping and a forest to replant. We lost 93 trees. How many people do you know who get to plant their own forest? Putting trees exactly where you want them.
    4. Climate change is the most talked about problem facing humanity. The many wildfires in California are blamed on climate change. If correct we in Paradise are among the early victims of climate change.
    5. OK, back to today’s topic. Is civilization near collapse? At Star Bright we are working to get an answer. In today’s attention seeking economy the noise, the falsehoods, accusations, and lack of respect for truth makes this a difficult question. One of our activities is to build a computer simulation of civilization. If we understand society correctly then we should be able to build a a cause and effect sequence of our history. We are implementing this in a simulation of society. Once that sim tracks the historical record we will run it into the future. We are months away from a first functional version of such a sim, but there is an early result, intriguing possibility that I want to share with you today.
    6. is civilization broken? Remember past “calls to action.” Remember past claims that the sky is falling; nuclear holocaust is eminent buy your bomb shelter now, the population bomb, Y2K, .
    7. The fix we require is more than reducing our carbon footprint
    8. Climate change is a symptom
    9. A deep fix is only possible in time of turmoil
  3. All Things Considered
    1. How bad off are we? We’re working on an “all-things-considered” answer to that.
    2. We are going through the many society problem lists created by different groups
    3. We are estimating the affect the issue would have the UN Human Development Index, the Gallup Poll Survey on World Happiness, and on the GNI, with no mitigation and then with the current level of mitigation. We are documenting the basis for our estimate. We are asking you to review this and propose adjustments. We will document and report the results.
    4. We propose to answer the question, “Are we a Plague on the Planet?”
    5. We consider the evolutionary nature of society. Punctuated equilibrium. Greatness is forged in a crucible.
    6. The choice: the brink of disaster or a great opportunity.
    7. A personal story of climate change.
    8. The Fermi Paradox and what if we are alone?
  4. Initial Results from the Civilization Sim
    1. Something happened 65,000 years ago that triggered a dramatic spread of sapiens.
    2. Language directly increased population carrying capacity
    3. food variety increased ability to survive in times of environmental stress
    4. cultural evolution begins with language
    5. language aided the development of the clan structure of society
    6. music, dance, and art developed at the same time and are deeply connected with our emotional system and pattern recognition ability
    7. the development of the clan structure lead to organized conflict, population increase, empire building, horticulture , agriculture, and monument building in an easy to explain sequence.
    8. The increase in complexity has brought about a decline in monument and empire building, but not the desire for it.
    9. The increase in complexity has brought about a move toward decentralization and the commercial market place.
  5. On The Importance of Being Wrong.
    1. In the sims it is very clear that a strong clan story is valuable. It improves our survival chances if we are more convinced of the righteousness of our way of life and feel free to kill those not from our clan. It is even better if it is an honorable and a worthy thing to do.
    2. The clan story was a powerful survival strategy, but today it is deadly. Those with the strongest clan stories survived and have left us with the world we face today. These old clan stories haunt us more than any world of spirits. Too many people believe they are right and just. And believe this simply because that is what they believe. We must find a way to eliminate the resulting deadly confrontations.
    3. We all need to deeply learn that being wrong is more likely than being right.
    4. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story bias.
    5. Kathryn Schulz, a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of Being Wrong.
    6. The Dunning-Kruger effect: the tendency of people with low ability in a specific area to give overly positive assessments of their ability.
    7. The value of a science education, that includes a history of science.
    8. We must come to grips with the fact that we, each and everyone of us, are wrong about most things. And it is not possible to learn enough to change this.
  6. The Really Controversial Problems
    1. These are the things that motivate people to kill. These are the things that are often forbidden topics, unless everyone present is on the same side.
    2. Religion, abortion, racism and discrimination, gender, and politics
  7. The Easier Problems and the The Three Hardest Problems
    1. Climate change, work, housing, malnutrition, healthcare, forced migration, political corruption, substance abuse, obesity, social isolation, gerrymandering, education, forced marriage, poverty, human trafficking, digital divide, bullying, war, non-zero threat of nuclear holocaust, pollution, pandemics, gender identity conflict, and many others.
    2. “I am right bully” personality.
    3. The attention seeking economy.
    4. Complexity
  8. You Have a Choice
    1. How do you choose to react to the problems we face? Our attention seeking society has thrown the socials ills into your face and will continue to do so. Here are four choices. No doubt there are more. 1) Ignore the problems. They are way too big for you. 2) Jump in and fight for what you know is right. 3) Analyze and explain to people what they should do. 4) Work to understand what is really happening. Prepare and do something helpful.
    2. Let’s consider each one and why it might be right or wrong for you.
  9. Sharpen the Saw
    1. Stephen Covey’s 7th Habit. Folks the stuff of today’s podcast is hard. If you try the tips here and you find it easy, you ain’t doing it right.
  10. The Attention Getting Society
    1. Come to understand that most things you see in the news media, most things on the internet, and most things you get from social media are designed for one purpose and one purpose only – to get your attention because your attention generates revenue. Here “most” means not all. There are some very good reliable sources. Here are a few that I recommend.
    2. Inoculate yourself to prevent getting sucked in. Here’s how.
    3. Listen to the music and watch the dance. There is a pattern to the way each of us do things. Pay attention to those patterns. They form a type of music and a type of dance. Are the words and actions consistent? What is motivating the dance. Follow the advise of a Buddhist monk promoting meditation. “Do not judge the music. Just observe the dance” Try it. One of our great strengths is we are very good at discerning these patterns, the motivations, the character of others. It takes practice. And, be aware we are also good at deception. Think of it as a contest – a type of game between deceivers and trustables. The deceivers have an initial advantage. Everyone wears a label that says, “You can trust me.” But, ultimately the deceiver must reveal their true self or why be a deceiver. The measure of your preparation is the speed with which you see the reveal.
    4. Before following a person, a group, or a cause check for disease. Start with a temperature reading.
  11. Make 10 Wishes

Thank you Dave Blottie for the idea for this episode.

“Star Light, Star Bright,” by Anonymous

Star Light, star bright,

First star I see tonight,

I wish I may, I wish I might

Have this wish I wish tonight.

Here are my ten wishes.

  1. That everyone has the opportunity to satisfy their basic physiological wants.
  2. That everyone has the opportunity to satisfy their basic psychological wants.
  3. That the climate change risk is mitigated.
  4. That there is peace.
  5. That everyone had access to a high quality education and life-long learning appropriate for their wants and abilities.
  6. That everyone had discretionary time and income to pursue personal interests.
  7. That there is little crime in our communities.
  8. That there is little threat of environmental disasters.
  9. That there was a better design for democratic rule than the current political structures.
  10. That the distribution of power and wealth is more equitable

The real purpose of this episode is to solicit your 10 wishes.

Contact: SametKaplan@gmail.com or wayne@complexs.com

We really need to see your list if we are to seek a path to a better world. Only you can define the detail of a better world.

And there is something else about this list. Only a few of us at Star Bright have filled it out. But we have found the list keeps changing each time we fill it out.