But first, an announcement for the thousands of you in my active online fora:
After years of volunteering dozens of hours a week in a patrons-only Facebook group and Discord server mostly populated by free riders, I'm finally clearing out the non-patrons and restoring some focus and sanctity to the community we've built together. Spending so much time moderating non-subscribers has been taking time away from podcast production and my family, but I also don't have the heart to just nuke this group. If you'd like to stay involved please consider signing up for at least $2 a month for the part-time job it is to curate and moderate this group.
Let me clarify that old close friends, former guests of the show, and other people who routinely and consistently add value to this group are welcome to remain regardless of whether you're contributing financially. There are many ways to do this, so if you're broke but interested in staying involved please respond to me privately.
✨ There Is No One Path Forward: Pluralism in Science, Philosophy, & Art
A digestible, albeit light-speed, six-minute-and-forty-second talk on the virtues of and need for pluralism, presented at Creative Santa Fe's Pecha Kucha Talks last month.
Biodiversity is the measure of ecological health. Cognitive diversity is the secret to innovation and effective collaboration. And contrary to popular belief, there will never be one Theory of Everything to unify all of human knowledge in an equation that fits on a t-shirt. Multiplicity is how the cosmos knows itself, because all models of the world — whether they take the form of intellectual theories or organisms in an ongoing dance of adaptation with their environment — are partial, incomplete, and provisional. Every statement of truth is a conjecture based on limited information, conditioned by a specific history, and ultimately up for revision. Even the myriad standards by which we settle on satisfactory explanations are in tension and conflict with each other — and that's a good thing, because unanimous agreement results in brittle, easily disrupted strategies. If humankind stands any chance of navigating the immensely complex challenges we face, it's time for us to jettison the notion that there's One Idea To Rule Them All, and fan out into "The Adjacent Possible," covering as much ground as we can to search the space of what could be more comprehensively.
✨ AI Art Experiments Stash
Lately I've kind of lost myself in the rapture of exploring text-to-image AI art prompts on the invite-only platform Midjourney, which is (at least in some respects) considerably more advanced than similar apps like NightCafé and Wombo Dream.
Part of this is my lifelong commitment to guinea-pigging myself with new creative tools, starting with my immersion into Google Glass and the resultant contemplation on the co-evolution of surveillance technologies and the self (see essay parts 1, 2, 3, 4). Exploring AI-assisted mass production of works that would, just two years ago, have each taken 20-50 hours to paint...well, I'm hardly the only artist that feels drawn into this as a necessary precursor to navigating the disruption of the creative sector by these tools.
In the meantime, I want to give patrons exclusive access to my curated "dream stream" of Midjourney experiments — feel free to download any of these images you like for personal use: wallpapers, desktops, one-off pillow/t-shirt printing, whatever floats your boat.
But of course it also raises deep philosophical issues, like those I recently discussed on The Jim Rutt Show with Jim and my friend and frequent Future Fossils guest J.F. Martel — questions of what art even is, whether sentience is required, what if anything is uniquely human, and how different art might be in another few years' time. I recommend digging into that discussion — and staying tuned for more, because this is a conversation I consider very squarely in the Future Fossils wheel house, and more urgent than most people seem to realize.
One conversation wasn't enough so I ALSO just appeared on my friend Michael Phillip's show Third Eye Drops to talk about Google engineer Blake Lemoine's claims of AI sentience and machine ensoulment, labor market disruptions from new creative tools like Midjourney, and what it's like to "breed" images straight out of the ethers of the imagination.
From Shane's show notes: "In this episode, I catch up with my good friend, Michael Garfield. Michael is the host of the Future Fossils podcast and the Complexity podcast. In his 4th appearance on Here We Are, we discuss topics like fatherhood, lifestyle changes, and the ever-changing world we live in."
I recently got into a very deep and intense conversation with Carnegie Mellon/SFI Professor Simon DeDeo during his latest visit to the Santa Fe Institute campus. (Check out his talk and my Twitter coverage of it, which I found equal parts nightmarish and utterly inspiring.)
Most of that two hours was spent in roundtable discussion with him and our 2022 cohort of Undergraduate Complexity Researchers, making for the most exciting opportunity I've ever had at work to blow the minds of a bunch of awesome, brilliant twenty-somethings.
Here is the epic mind-dump I sent them afterward, collecting resources that came to mind during our rap session. If you've been following the show for a while you've probably heard me bring most of these up at one point or another, but I'm happy to share them all in one place.
I apologize in advance for what my buddy Mitch Mignano would call an "ecodelic avalanche." Enjoy either spending the rest of time getting around to this or immediately binning it all to preserve your mental health!
(Album cover is from my ongoing series of AI art experiments with Midjourney, which as mentioned above I'm archiving for the personal use of my patrons.)
✨ New Future Fossils Podcast Episodes
✨ Big Changes for Future Fossils!
After years of volunteering dozens of hours a week in a patrons-only Facebook group and Discord server mostly populated by free riders, I'm finally clearing out the non-patrons and restoring some focus and sanctity to the community we've built together. Spending so much time moderating non-subscribers has been taking time away from podcast production and my family, but I also don't have the heart to just nuke this group. If you'd like to stay involved please consider signing up for at least $2 a month for the part-time job it is to curate and moderate this group.
Let me clarify that old close friends, former guests of the show, and other people who routinely and consistently add value to this group are welcome to remain regardless of whether you're contributing financially. There are many ways to do this, so if you're broke but interested in staying involved please respond to me privately.
✨ There Is No One Path Forward: Pluralism in Science, Philosophy, & Art
A digestible, albeit light-speed, six-minute-and-forty-second talk on the virtues of and need for pluralism, presented at Creative Santa Fe's Pecha Kucha Talks last month.
You can find their (audio-and-slides-only) presentation on the Pecha Kucha website, or find my own video recording and extensive supplementary notes and resources on Patreon.
Abstract:
Biodiversity is the measure of ecological health. Cognitive diversity is the secret to innovation and effective collaboration. And contrary to popular belief, there will never be one Theory of Everything to unify all of human knowledge in an equation that fits on a t-shirt. Multiplicity is how the cosmos knows itself, because all models of the world — whether they take the form of intellectual theories or organisms in an ongoing dance of adaptation with their environment — are partial, incomplete, and provisional. Every statement of truth is a conjecture based on limited information, conditioned by a specific history, and ultimately up for revision. Even the myriad standards by which we settle on satisfactory explanations are in tension and conflict with each other — and that's a good thing, because unanimous agreement results in brittle, easily disrupted strategies. If humankind stands any chance of navigating the immensely complex challenges we face, it's time for us to jettison the notion that there's One Idea To Rule Them All, and fan out into "The Adjacent Possible," covering as much ground as we can to search the space of what could be more comprehensively.
✨ AI Art Experiments Stash
Lately I've kind of lost myself in the rapture of exploring text-to-image AI art prompts on the invite-only platform Midjourney, which is (at least in some respects) considerably more advanced than similar apps like NightCafé and Wombo Dream.
Part of this is my lifelong commitment to guinea-pigging myself with new creative tools, starting with my immersion into Google Glass and the resultant contemplation on the co-evolution of surveillance technologies and the self (see essay parts 1, 2, 3, 4). Exploring AI-assisted mass production of works that would, just two years ago, have each taken 20-50 hours to paint...well, I'm hardly the only artist that feels drawn into this as a necessary precursor to navigating the disruption of the creative sector by these tools.
In the meantime, I want to give patrons exclusive access to my curated "dream stream" of Midjourney experiments — feel free to download any of these images you like for personal use: wallpapers, desktops, one-off pillow/t-shirt printing, whatever floats your boat.
Here are some of the most exciting images to have emerged from AI "latent space" lately:
✨ Podcasts on AI, Art, and Philosophy
✨ Podcasts on AI, Art, and Philosophy
The above experiments have led to a whole series of fantastic conversations on the direction things are moving, how it connects to ancient esoteric practices, the labor market implications, and how I'm engaging with the mysterious Other through these tools. Here are three solid recordings on this and related topics:
But of course it also raises deep philosophical issues, like those I recently discussed on The Jim Rutt Show with Jim and my friend and frequent Future Fossils guest J.F. Martel — questions of what art even is, whether sentience is required, what if anything is uniquely human, and how different art might be in another few years' time. I recommend digging into that discussion — and staying tuned for more, because this is a conversation I consider very squarely in the Future Fossils wheel house, and more urgent than most people seem to realize.
One conversation wasn't enough so I ALSO just appeared on my friend Michael Phillip's show Third Eye Drops to talk about Google engineer Blake Lemoine's claims of AI sentience and machine ensoulment, labor market disruptions from new creative tools like Midjourney, and what it's like to "breed" images straight out of the ethers of the imagination.
From Shane's show notes: "In this episode, I catch up with my good friend, Michael Garfield. Michael is the host of the Future Fossils podcast and the Complexity podcast. In his 4th appearance on Here We Are, we discuss topics like fatherhood, lifestyle changes, and the ever-changing world we live in."
✨ Recommended Resources on Human-Technology Egregores
I recently got into a very deep and intense conversation with Carnegie Mellon/SFI Professor Simon DeDeo during his latest visit to the Santa Fe Institute campus. (Check out his talk and my Twitter coverage of it, which I found equal parts nightmarish and utterly inspiring.)
Most of that two hours was spent in roundtable discussion with him and our 2022 cohort of Undergraduate Complexity Researchers, making for the most exciting opportunity I've ever had at work to blow the minds of a bunch of awesome, brilliant twenty-somethings.
Here is the epic mind-dump I sent them afterward, collecting resources that came to mind during our rap session. If you've been following the show for a while you've probably heard me bring most of these up at one point or another, but I'm happy to share them all in one place.
I apologize in advance for what my buddy Mitch Mignano would call an "ecodelic avalanche." Enjoy either spending the rest of time getting around to this or immediately binning it all to preserve your mental health!
(Album cover is from my ongoing series of AI art experiments with Midjourney, which as mentioned above I'm archiving for the personal use of my patrons.)
✨ New Future Fossils Podcast Episodes
✨ New Music: Live at the West China Tea House (Austin, Texas 2022.05.28)
On the musical front, here's an intimate "storyteller" format acoustic and electroacoustic concert spanning fourteen years of songwriting, with some teahouse-specific improvisations to accompany gong fu tea ceremony. This was my first show in Austin, Texas in nearly four years, a very emotionally intense reunion with old friends and the land I love and once called home. Big thanks to So Han Fan and Nate Bell at the West China Tea House for making space for me to play a family-friendly concert (you can hear my kids screaming throughout) and for the live Future Fossils Podcast I taped there in between sets with Kevin Welch and David Hensley of EFF-Austin!
(If you want a blast from the past (or into the future?), I played one of my favorite late-night instrumental sets at their pop-up tea house at Utopia Festival back in 2017, when they were still called the Guan Yin Tea House.)
Lastly, for now, here's a link to my ever-growing Spotify playlist of new music discoveries and old favorites. I've been keeping and cultivating this for three years now, and it's EXTENSIVE, over 37 hours long. Enjoy!:
