The New Enlightenment with Ashley

This video explores the notion that a subset of people attracted to a set of ideas may be attracted to those ideas for pathological reasons. One problem with sensemaking happens when people paint the entire set of ideas with these pathologies and fail to go deeper into the idea pyramid.

This is a book review of Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business by Rana Foroohar. It explains the problems with rent seeking in the finance sector, and the way the industry is sucking resources from the rest of the economy. If you plan to buy the book on Amazon, use this link to support the channel: https://amzn.to/3FV19n7

This video explores the possibility of a different structure to universal basic income – one that requires work under grassroot leaders as a stipulation.

This video looks at why new economic thinkers should put a greater emphasis on attention and governance energy before goods and services. Old economics textbooks focus on the allocation of goods and services. My hope is that textbooks of the future recognize that goods and services follow from values, attention, community, governance, etc.

This video tells a story about a dictator who runs an anticorruption campaign. The story is intended as an allegory to capture some of the game theory dynamics at play at a population level.

I review Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber, a thought-provoking book about jobs that add no value to the economy. If you plan to buy the book on Amazon, use this link to support the channel: https://amzn.to/3PnqUBL

This video goes through my own view of the “hero” role for each of the four generations (Boomers, Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z) in a 4th Turning crisis or rebirth moment. What traits will be needed? How do each of these hero traits distribute across the different generations?

In this video, make the case that we need academic disciplines with different sub-specialties. Working together, Jane Austen fans and computer geeks could model the decision-making dynamic around important institutional groups.

This video explains why the digital economy is fundamentally different in nature due to its movement toward public goods and club goods instead of private goods. The Web 3.0 community is experimenting with different mechanisms that might work for allocation of scarce resources in such an economy. This includes an explanation of quadratic funding and retrospective funding.

This video explains James Madison’s arguments from Federalist Paper 10 regarding tyranny of majority. He explains why representative democracy gets around some of the downfalls of direct democracy. However, some of his arguments do not work given the modern environment.

This video explains the Grassroot Leaders’ Dilemma, which is where they spend an increasing share of their efforts just getting people to show up. Could that power-dynamic be changed to make control over the financier spigots more democratic?

This is a book review of The 4th Turning Is Here by Neil Howe. This is a cyclical theory of history book focusing on the role of different generations in a possible impending crisis. If you plan to buy the book on Amazon, use this link to support the channel: https://amzn.to/48lhVbY If you are interested in a similar book with stronger causal logic, I recommend End Times by Peter Turchin. Again, here is a link that supports the channel… https://amzn.to/44Rh4NP … And here is my book review of End Times: https://youtu.be/SHoqcGqnAUY

I lay out some initial thoughts on the economic paradigm shift that is needed. I mentioned Meditations on Moloch, so here is a link to the article: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

In this video, I play around with the idea of a governance system that involves electing sensemaking groups. I'm calling this "bubble cluster governance".

This video explains why we need creative, unrealistic, goofy economic thinking. Because of this, I’m introducing the white rabbit (an Alice in Wonderland reference) to the channel to let you know when this is happening. If you plan to buy any of the four books on Amazon, use this link to support the channel: The Master and His Emissary: the Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist - https://amzn.to/43ZDriO The Network State: How To Start a New Country by Balaji Srinivasan - https://amzn.to/3QsOm1l The Listening Society: A Metamodern Guide to Politics by Hanzi Freinacht - https://amzn.to/3YrEVRR The article is: Should We Treat Data as Labor? Moving beyond ‘Free’: Arrieta-Ibarra, I., Goff, L., Jiménez-Hernández, D., Lanier, J., & Weyl, E. G. (2018, May). Should we treat data as labor? Moving beyond “free”. In aea Papers and Proceedings (Vol. 108, pp. 38-42). 2014 Broadway, Suite 305, Nashville, TN 37203: American Economic Association. https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pandp.20181003

This video explains what a paradigm shift is by visualizing the process from Thomas Kuehn’s book “Structure of a Scientific Revolution”.

This video explains the governance concept of Pluralism and compares it to Federalism from the days of the founders of the US Constitution. A great article that inspired this is Glen Weyl’s Radical Exchange article, “Why I am A Pluralist”: https://www.radicalxchange.org/media/blog/why-i-am-a-pluralist/

This video explores the notion of a straw man mythology that is collectively constructed by a group of people to keep out evidence from the “other side”. I also briefly touch on the first step to getting through to people when encountering their straw man force field.

I review Christopher Boehm’s book which makes the case that human nature has tendencies toward both egalitarianism and despotism. The book asks the question: How might such a nature have evolved from a common ancestor with chimps?

This video explains the broad strokes of the New Enlightenment, how it relates to the Old Enlightenment and why now is the moment for this.

This video goes over some of the key concepts in Balaji Srinivasan’s book “The Network State”, and provides some critiques that are intended to help us build upon his ideas.

This video maps the analogy of the human superorganism onto the New Enlightenment. Nate Hagens talks about the human superorganism in his book (Reality Blind) and his other works, and I flesh that out and relate it to rent-seeking.

This book convinced me that network power beats out financial power in our system. The video is a book review of Sandra Navidi’s book Superhubs, with commentary on the broader meaning of the book. I connect some of her ideas to a podcast that discussed elite networks in China. Here is a link to that podcast: https://youtu.be/Hn-iQ7-fO3k If you plan to buy the book on Amazon, use this link to support the channel: https://amzn.to/3OnFPKz

This video explains the version of the paradigm shift in knowledge systems that we need in the modern era.

This video reviews John Kenneth Galbraith’s book, The New Industrial State. This book essentially makes the argument that capitalism depreciates toward a centrally planned system where the corporate sector and the state merge into a colluding technostructure.