See the SKIL
Dinner program for developing ideas
Jack Alpert (Bio) mail to: Alpert@skil.org (homepage) www.skil.org Other position papers
| Half Truths of Overpopulation View 4 | The whole truth is too painful to talk about. | (219 words) |
| Half Truths of Overpopulation View 3 | Mechanics of missing truth. | (516 words) |
| Half Truths of Overpopulation View 2 | What is being left out? | (677 words) |
| Half Truths of Overpopulation View 1 | More aggressive solutions to the human predicament depend on a view of a bigger problem. | (498 words) |
| SKIL Note 69 ==> What does IQ have to do with human viability? | Even the way we evaluate an individuals thinking interferes with our ability to create a viable human experiment. | (780 words) |
| SKIL Note 68 ==> The earth's sustainable population is below 100 million The movie | How to calculate a sustainable population. Based on social justice, resources, and opportunity to advance wellbeing. | (6 min movie) |
| The earth's sustainable population is below 100 million | How to calculate a sustainable population. Based on social justice, resources, and opportunity to advance wellbeing. 09/01/09 | (650 words) |
| Social conflict trips civilization collapse | We are focused on smaller problems v because ever increasing "social conflict" and its impact on our global civilization remains invisible. 08/18/09 | (640 words) |
| Survival -- Eagles and Humans | Hard times are ahead for both -- or neither 07/10/09 |
(700 words) |
| How To Implement Birthrates Below One Child Per Woman? | Economic process to generate very low birthrates. 04/22/09 | (298 words) |
| How Fast Can Lower Birthrates Reduce Population? | Numerical model shows population vs time of birthrates below 1. 04/22/09 | (1200 words) |
| Why do we need rapid population decline | Only rapid population decline can handle the large increases in total human footprint caused by increases in wellbeing. 04/22/09 | (698 words) |
| The path forward | What do we do to resolve the human predicament. 2/20/09 | (1460 words) |
| Happy New Year Wishes -- SKIL Plan for 2009 | Year end summary-- new objectives -- and plan for 2009 2/1/09 | (870 words) |
| Implementing Rapid Population Decline with a Vote | The path humankind is on creates genocide. RPD laws are an alternative. The next step is to create a constituency that implements RPD laws. 12/05/08 | (940 words) |
| Morality of implementing Rapid Population Decline laws | RPD laws sound immoral until you include all the impacts of not having RPD laws 11/7/08 | (750 words) |
| 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. 10/9/08 | (1000 words) |
| Technology Can Save Us If We Can Keep Civilization Together | Technological miracles happen only as long as civilization facilitates them. (08/19/08) | (450 words) |
| 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. (08/12/09) | (650 words) |
| 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. 8/08/08 | (600 words) |
| Forming a constituency is a solution to our predicament | The human predicament addressed rather than defined. 6/13/08 | (1700 words) |
| What is NOT too little too late? | Helping people see "THE" personal behavior that changes humankind's course from progressively worse to progressively better. 5/16/08 | (500 words) |
| 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. 5/5/08 | (900 words) |
| Which Information Describes the Human Predicament? | Saving your kids from a nasty future starts with using the most important information to describe our predicament. 4/19/08 | (400 words) |
| Converting Involuntary Manslaughter to Murder | Help individuals change their view of births from benign acts, to involuntary manslaughter, to murder. 4/8/08 | (390 words) |
| Finding and Implementing "Course-changing-Behavior." | The people who understand the future have to use it to change behavior. 2/08/08 | (1283 words) |
| How Many People Will I KILL? | Who is responsible for global starvation and civilization collapse? 1/28/08 | (600 words) |
| What's a SKIL Dinner? | The introduction to a SKIL Dinner 1/18/08 | (700 words) |
| Ethical Coercion and OCPF Implementation | Is it ethical for a democracy to coerce one child per family behaviors. 12/15/07 | (1083 words |
| Will having a second child become Taboo? | As humankind expands filling every space and sharing every resource, some acceptable behaviors will become taboo. 9/19/07 | (360 words) |
| Civilization's Perfect Storm | Global problems that we see are big. However, their integration is bigger than anything we can imagine. 6/20/07 | (300 words) |
| "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." (6/13/07) | (730 words) |
| 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." (5/13/07) | (2500 words) |
| Sustainability --- One-child-per-family or genocide | Sustainability will require one-child-per-family or genocide behaviors and maybe both. 3/1/07 | (675 words) |
| Think Better or Perform Genocide | Our current thinking processes lead to a place where we will have to choose between survival and genocide. 12/18/06 | (275 words) |
| Higher Intellect Required | 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. 9/12/06 | a movie |
| 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. 7/11/06 | (490 words) |
| Your View Shapes Your Behavior | A father and son view the same conditions, see different problems and thus differ on resolving behaviors. 6/1/06 | (625 words) |
| Sustainability -- When Everyone Affected Gets a Vote: | Giving the unborn the vote might produce a sustainable society. 5/16/06 | (650 words) |
| 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. 1/15/06 |
1400 words |
| 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. 11/22/05 | 1000 words |
| Experienced at Burning Man -- Life without scarcity | A little artificially created taste of life without scarcity. 9/23/05 | 500 words |
| 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. 9/20/05 | 2000 words |
| Distractions Cause Civilizations to fail | Our immediate problems distract us from seeing and solving the problems that cause civilizations to fail. 8/22/05 |
750 words |
| Implementation of Rapid Population Decline | Most people think that RPD is unnecessary, how are you going to get them to change their minds. 7/15/05 |
800 words |
| 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." 6/31/05 |
350 words |
| 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. 6/16/05 |
450 words |
| "The Alpert Alternative" | A believable prediction of the future and a behavior to change it. 6/1/05 |
3000 words |
| 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. 5/12/05 |
550 words |
| "We must be on SOMA?" | In Auldus 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? 5/4/05 |
650 words |
| Huntsville Rocket Scientists |
Even rocket scientists haven't figured out how to get humankind to fly right. 4/25/05 |
1400 words |
| The "Overlap trend" Controls the "Conflict Trend" | The hidden linkage that makes benevolent parents into warmongers. 3/1/05 |
800 words |
| 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? 2/14/05 |
600 words |
| 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. 1/23/05 |
800 words |
| "Just Muddling Through -- Still doesn't work | How SKIL sees the human condition - our assumptions and the situation that follows from them. 01/10/05 |
900 words |
| 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. 12/18/04 |
300 words |
| Do you like to give Flowers? | When normal benign behavior creates scarcity, conflict, and environmental destruction, its time to find out how to keep the system in balance. 12/11/04 |
300 words |
| 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. 11/1/04 |
375 words |
| 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. 11/1/04 |
225 words |
| 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. 11/1/04 |
250 words |
| 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 enhance our graceful survival. 10/16/04 |
1 pg. |
| 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. 9/27/04 |
1 pg. |
|
| 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. 9/21/04 |
2 pg. |
| Temporal Social Fundamentals | Temporal social fundamentals predict the destination no one wants == a social conflict greased slide to subsistence. 9/9/04 |
2 pg. |
| 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. 8/21/04 |
1 pg. |
| Sustainability - Doublings, Halvings, and Footprint | While rapid increases in per capita consumption facilitate social stability, rapid population declines facilitate reduced foot print and sustainability. 7/023/04 |
1 pg. |
| 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. 5/11/04 |
1 pg. |
| Footprint versus Freedom | When we change the human footprint we change our freedoms. The connection seems to be missing from the calculations that determine the behaviors that determine footprint. 4/1/04 |
1 pg. |
| Are we worrying about the right problem? | The war in Iraq is costing 200 billion dollars. Is there any place we could spend that kind of money and get greater returns? Yes, create clean water. 4/5/03 |
1 pg. |
| Should
we fight or not fight the Iraqi war - either answer is not a path to peace |
Deciding if you are a hawk or a dove in the Iraqi war is a waste of time if you're really interested in working toward peace. 3/31/03 |
2 pg. |
| Hawks and doves are both intellectually lazy | While cringing at the present, both hawks and doves fail to see the larger dangers of the future. 3/24/03 |
1 pg. |
| Peacemakers have no plan for enduring peace | They are missing part of the picture describing human activity. They have to rediscover that part and let it influence their behavior. 3/03 |
1 pg. |
| How can universally upgrading the temporal rational processes of the next generation improve human behavior and condition --1/24/03 |
1 pg. |
|
| Social Vectors and Individual Behavior | Social trends have destinations. What if the collection of individual behaviors controls social trends? --1/22/03 |
1 pg. |
| We have to change our course | Spending 100 billion dollars to de-fang Iraq is meaningless because another nation will take its place. We have no solution until human behavior stops making these nations. --01/13/03 |
1 pg. |
| From Human Cognition to Human Condition | Connecting global problems to quality of cognitive processing of the constituency. --12/13/03 |
1 pg. |
| What should we learn from a reconciliation conference? | We are so busy working on repairs to our global problems we miss our chances to find ways not to create them. --11/10/02 |
1 pg. |
| Should we strike Iraq - From Dilemma to Solution | What should dealing with Saddam Hussein teach us about our thinking and behavior? ----11/10/02 |
1 pg. |
| The Blind Futurist | The Futurist Magazine reflects society's blindness to dominant trends. ----11/01/02 |
1 pg. |
| Is "down" the opposite of "up? | If we lower population will it have the opposite affect of raising it? 2/17/05 |
1 pg. |
| 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? 6/17/04 |
1 pg. |
| Most efforts to reduce social conflict impotent in the face of demographics? 6/4/04 |
1 pg. |
|
| Increasing Versus Decreasing Footprint | A mechanistic view of decreasing scarcity, social violence, and environmental destruction. ---11/10/02 |
1 pg. |
| Global Problems and "One Child Families | Why "one child families" is a solution. 5/14/03 |
1 pg. |
| 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? 6/04/04 |
1 pg. |
| If Not the Beneficent Hand | If humankind has free will then our future is just as good as our thinking processes. 8/13/03 |
1 pg. |
| Things are Getting Better – Aren’t They? | This rule of thumb prevents any honest view of future conditions. 5/14/03 |
1 pg. |
| Societies -- Build to Last or Built to Fail | The implications of population change within a closed environment. 8/13/03 |
1 pg. |
| Finding the Road to Both Peace and Freedom | Celebrating the exodus is a way to understand that some pathways to peace are pathways to slavery. --11/10/02 |
1 pg. |
| See the Time Blind books for presentation of temporal blindness and temporal inference learning theory. |
See the SKIL
Dinner program for developing ideas
|
|
Jack Alpert (Bio) mail to: Alpert@skil.org (homepage) www.skil.org Other position papers |
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