SKIL Notes        (Most 90 second reads)

SKIL notes use a current event to focus the reader's attention on cognition based solutions to global problems.

The notes show scarcity, conflict, and environmental destruction are caused by the collection of 6 billion sets of personal behaviors.

 

Current institutional or technological efforts to prevent global problems can not be successful in the face of these collective behaviors.

Efforts, powerful enough to solve these problems, must create a future generation, consisting of individuals who are able to gather, process, and value present information better then we do and thus behave better than we do.
Note Archives
Brief description
Original i nvitation
April 2004

Note 1 ==> Peace seekers have no plan for enduring peace

 Making a peace is more than stopping existing hostilities. It requires reversing the forces toward conflict that are created by the benign behaviors of 6 billion people just creating and taking care of their families.
Note 2 ==> Footprint versus Freedom
 When we change the human footprint we change our freedoms. The connection seems to be missing from calculations that control footprint-determining behaviors.
Note 3 ==> Six billion Against Tony Blair
 Six billion sets of personal family creating and supporting behaviors have more power to determine the future than any leader.
Note 4 ==> Demographics -- The 500 Pound Gorilla
 All efforts to reverse our trend toward human conflict are impotent in the face of demographics driven by the temporally blind.
Note 5 ==> Viewing the Present From the Future
 Many of us have expectations of a bad future. Can we use them to get a clearer view of the present and to find behaviors to create a new destination?
Note 6 ==> You have to pay for peace
 If you were offered a peaceful nation based on one child per family would you pay this price to live there?
Note 7==> Social Vectors and Individual Behavior Social trends have destinations. What if the collection of individual behaviors controls social trends?
Note 8 ==> Sustainability - Doublings, Halvings, and Footprint While rapid increases in per capita consumption facilitate social stability rapid population declines facilitate reduced foot print and sustainability
Note 9 ==> Terrorism and the Ostrich Growing terrorism is a much bigger problem than we realize. This is caused by a defect in our cognition, that we should strive to fix.
Note 10 ==> Temporal Social Fundamentals Temporal social fundamentals predict the destination no one wants == a social conflict greased slide to subsistence.
Note 11 ==> Bush and Kerry Have No Plan for Graceful Survival While each of us can see benefits to either Bush or Kerry, neither man has a plan to address the biggest problem facing humankind - graceful survival.
Note 12 ==> Indians did not see their destination - do we? The destination of our society does not seem to be clear to us. At least it is not influencing the behaviors that could change it.
Note 13 ==> Cognitive Evolution and the Human Predicament The human predicament can be resolved by an upgrade in cognitive abilities which change procreative behavior. We know enough about the limitations of our cognitive abilities and the cognitive evolutionary process,to be pushing for an advance that would would accomplish this change in behavior.
Note 14 ==> Graceful Survival Revisited Each of us has a partial view of human craziness. Incomplete as it is, we have to work to understand and fix it.
Note 15 ==> Social Fundamentals Revisited Our animal instincts, combined with our existing cognitive abilities, are a deadly mix. We have to universally enhance human cognition or suffer a terrible end game.
Note 16 ==> National Problem Referendum If we create a way for the constituency to understand and elect a future, they can be more than spectators in their institution's struggle with the present.
Note 17 ==> Do you like to give Flowers? When normal benign behavior creates scarcity, conflict, and environmental destruction, it's time to find out how to keep the system in balance.
Note 18 ==> Who controls Humankind's future? We have great faith that powerful leaders control our future. However, this may be a cultural myth. Creation of our global problems maybe distributed among 6 billion people.
Note 19 ==> "Just Muddling Through" -- Still doesn't work How SKIL sees the human condition - our assumptions and the situation that follows from them.
Note 20 ==> Thinking About the Unthinkable If we fully appreciated the tragedy of our present conditions, we might think again about accepting behaviors we have always rejected.
Note 21 ==> Is "population down" the opposite of "population up?" If the upward trend in population appears to create problems, why does the downward trend not appear as their resolution?
Note 22 ==> The "Overlap trend" Controls the "Conflict Trend" The hidden linkage that makes benevolent parents into warmongers.
Note 23 ==> Huntsville Rocket Scientists Even rocket scientists haven't figured out how to get humankind to fly right.
Note 24 ==> We must be on SOMA In Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" the population all took a drug called "Soma," It made each person think everything was just fine. Is this generation on such a drug?

Note 25 ==> Our Next Round of Insanity

 People are focusing on China's rising military power. But they still don't have a clear picture of the human journey.
Note 26 ==> "The Alpert Alternative"   A believable prediction of the future and a behavior to change it.
Note 27 ==> "What Can I Do? " If you concur with" the Alpert alternative" that the human destination is unwanted and rapid population decline is the only way to change it, you have to break peoples' fantasy that RPD is unnecessary.
Note 28 ==> For Peace -- Rapid Population Decline Now -- Not Later We should not wait until all other solutions fail to produce peace before we implement "rapid population decline."
SKIL Note 29 ==> Implementation of Rapid Population Decline Most people think that RPD is unnecessary, how are you going to get them to change their minds.
SKIL Note 30==> Distractions Cause Civilizations to fail Our immediate problems distract us from seeing and solving the problems that cause civilizations to fail.
SKIL Note 31==>A Mechanism of Civilization Collapse When a civilization approaches its environmental constraints, and a block of its citizens realize their downward movement from their attained “wellbeing,” this block’s behavior causes the civilization’s collapse
SKIL Note 32==> Experienced at Burning Man -- Life without scarcity A little artificially created taste of life without scarcity.
SKIL Note 33 ==> Should We Strike Weapons of Mass Destruction Builders - From Dilemma to Solution: When both "Strike" and "Not Strike" are bad choices, then it is time to find and change what's causing the builders to build.
SKIL Note 34 ==> Peace -- We will have to invent it
Alan Kay said, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." SKIL invents ways to create ever-increasing peace. SKIL for Nobel Peace Prize.
SKIL Note 35 ==> Sustainability  -- When Everyone Affected Gets a Vote: Giving the unborn the vote might produce a sustainable society.
SKIL Note 36 ==> Your View Shapes Your Behavior A father and son view the same conditions, see different problems and thus differ on resolving behaviors.
SKIL Note 37 ==> Elevated Intellect Required The wellbeing of our global community requires constituents that can both understand what behavior has to be taken and motivate themselves to take it.
SKIL Note 38 ==> HIgher Intellect Required (a movie) The wellbeing of our global community requires billions of constituents that can understand the human predicament enough to behave differently than today's common man. Our goal should be to create a whole generation of these more capable thinkers.
SKIL Note 39 ==>Think Better or Perform Genocide Our current thinking processes lead to a place where we will have to choose between survival and genocide.
SKIL Note 40 ==>Sustainability --- One-child-per-family or genocide Sustainability will require one-child-per-family or genocide behaviors and maybe both.
SKIL Note 41 ==> Humankind's Viability Is Preceded by Rapid Population Decline How do we know this? How do we implement it? This is the introduction to the "SKIL Rapid Population Decline Contagion Project."
SKIL Note 42 ==> Belief Consensus" Makes Rapid Population Decline Possible An individual's act of restraint, personally choosing one child per family, is not as powerful in creating rapid population decline as an act to build an RPD "belief consensus."
SKIL Note 43 ==> Civilization's Perfect Storm Global problems that we see are big. However, their integration is bigger than anything we can imagine.
SKIL Note 44 ==> Will having a second child become Taboo? As humankind expands filling every space and sharing every resource, some acceptable behaviors will become taboo.
SKIL Note 45 ==> Ethical Coercion and OCPF Implementation Is it ethical for a democracy to coerce one child per family behaviors.
SKIL Note 46 ==> What's a SKIL Dinner? The introduction to a SKIL Dinner 1/18/08
SKIL Note 47 ==> How Many People Will I KILL? Who is responsible for global starvation and civilization collapse?
SKIL Note 48 ==> Finding and Implementing "Course-changing-Behavior." The people who understand the future have to explain it to the people who can behave to change it.
SKIL Note 49 ==> Converting Involuntary Manslaughter to Murder help individuals change their view of births from benign acts, to involuntary manslaughter, to murder.
SKIL Note 50 ==> Which Information Describes the Human Predicament? Saving your kids from a nasty future starts with using the most important information to describe our predicament.

SKIL Note 51 ==> Converting Involuntary Manslaughter to Murder -- Revisited

 This change in perception of one's personal procreative acts is the first step in addressing the human predicament.
SKIL Note 52 ==> What is NOT too little too late? Helping people see "THE" personal behavior that changes humankind's course from progressively worse to progressively better.
SKIL Note 53 ==> Forming a constituency is a solution to our predicament The human predicament addressed rather than defined.
SKIL Note 54 ==> While we were sleeping the correct behavior changed From 2 to "none or one" children per family - rapidly decreasing (rather than constant) population makes us more viable
SKIL Note 55 ==>. Does Your Addition See the Future Clearly? Simple addition should show that billions of people will starve to death in the next century because their labor value will not exceed the cost of food, and all alternative means of producing food will be beyond their reach.
SKIL Note 56 ==>. Technology Can Save Us If We Can Keep Civilization Together Technological miracles happen only as long as civilization facilitates them.
SKIL Note 57 ==>.Rapid population decline --- Not an Impossible dream Helping recruiters create a constituency of people who think rapid population decline is necessary to solve the human predicament.
SKIL Note 58 ==>.Morality of implementing RPD laws RPD laws sound immoral until you include all the impacts of not having RPD laws

Time Blind books present "temporal blindness" and " temporal inference learning theory."
SKIL Dinner program presents developing ideas.

Jack Alpert (Bio)     mail to: Alpert@skil.org      (homepage) www.skil.org      Other position papers

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