Welcome to Issue 07
Can Widening Our Aperture Help Us Create Moral Machines?
Before you skip through to the links and clips at the end of this issue, start by watching a clip of Joseph Garfield discussing the relevance of Eastern worldviews to Western philosophical (and by extension, ethical) tradition. And if you’re truly inspired by Jay, I highly recommend his book on Buddhist ethics, but for now, this clip will adequately set the stage for the following discussion.
and, while a longer essay on the phenomenological origins of ethical innovation are cooking, here’s the skim:
Why does computer vision seem so rigid compared to the fluidity of human sight? What are the trade-offs when we hand over our perceptual tasks to machines, exchanging the subtleties of human experience for the precision of computational truth?
Sisyphus, the mythical figure condemned to an endless, fruitless task, resonates with this dilemma. Just as Sisyphus uses cunning to attempt to cheat his fate, we use technology to replicate our sensory experiences. But this comes with a cost. As technology evolves, it doesn't just replace tedious tasks; it increasingly mimics the mind, replacing whatever it can.
We rely more and more on visual analogies and conceptual schemes, many of which are likely biased, to avoid the metabolically expensive task of seeing. This raises a nuanced question: how much of our seeing should we outsource? Most technologists avoid normative questions, especially when definitions are unclear. Yet, the mind is inherently ambiguous, constantly redefined and described, and technology both reduces the world into individual parts and synthesizes these parts into a cohesive whole.
This brings us to a philosophical query: Is there a form of unity that evades mechanical relations, something that cannot be captured by the combinatorial logic essential to computers and taxonomies? Was G. E. Moore, the analytic philosopher who cautioned against reducing living things to mere logical relations, right in his skepticism?
In our attempt to understand the world through technology, we must ponder whether there are aspects of human experience that remain irreducible and uniquely our own.
Quote Worth Exploring
Nothing is either as it appears to be, or where we think it is.
-Voltaire
Startup Highlights
DNA Compass
DNA Compass hooks up patient advocacy groups, industries, and counties with their own genomics infrastructure. They make federated genomic data accessible through an open API by leveraging existing global location data infrastructure (thanks to ESRI's mapping software). Their main product is a micro-geocoding service that adds a spatial layer to genomic data, combined with security and collaboration tools. You can check out dnaguilds.com for a genome dashboard and DNA01.com for tracking pandemic virus mutations.
Embodied Labs
An older startup that I wanted to highlight here because it’s bridging the qualitative knowledge gap in a category that is historically allergic to empathy-first solutions. EL delivers VR experiences that allow caregivers to understand the perspectives and conditions of patients, offering insights that traditional training tools can't provide.
GLASS Imaging uses artificial intelligence to extract the full image quality potential from hardware on current and future smartphone cameras by reversing lens aberrations and sensor imperfections.
Compound Eye
Compound Eye powers perception for robots, vehicles, and other machines, enabling them to navigate and understand their surroundings more effectively. By enhancing their sensory capabilities, Compound Eye ensures these machines can operate safely and efficiently in various environments.
Sightx.ai
SightX is an AI-powered vision technology startup that develops electro-optics-based autonomy and connectivity solutions for mission-critical applications. Their advanced multi-object acquisition engine enables real-time computer vision capabilities on air, land, and maritime platforms, offering a significant AI and computer vision R&D effort for various industries.
Ought's goal is to improve thinking using machine learning. Though ML is great for tasks with clear goals and plenty of data, it's not so good at helping with complex thinking. It does well in simple, clear tasks, but finds it hard to cope with the complicated and unclear nature of human thought. Despite these issues, bettering our thinking is important for solving problems, resolving conflicts in society, and planning for the future.
Onsight is an AI-powered computer vision robotic platform for solar farms. It was developed for big remote sites, providing important data and analysis for expansion without the need for extra labor.
Extrasense
Automated Pest Monitoring→
In a world where pests are responsible for destroying 40% of our food supply, the need for efficient pest control has never been greater. Digital monitoring tools offer a proactive and data-driven solution, helping us safeguard our precious resources, reduce waste, and ensure a more sustainable and secure food future.
Mizu Risk Lab
70% of the freshwater we use is allocated for agriculture. About 80% of that water comes from rain, but as weather becomes increasingly unpredictable, our $4.3 trillion food production faces unforeseen water risks. Mizu is building analytical tools for key agricultural stakeholders to make informed decisions for water sustainability.
Inner Vision
Sometimes we need to rest our eyes. By simply letting our ears receive the music of nature, these miraculous, exquisite sounds can help us calm down and return to our senses, instead of escaping into a virtual world.
Founder Resources
In the realm of reality, vision—or what physics refers to as the observer effect—emerges as the most material foundation we know, surpassing even the concept of matter itself. When we delve into the nature of matter, we find it composed of atoms, which are further made up of protons, electrons, and neutrons. Yet, as we probe deeper, we realize that these particles are better described by equations of probability, manifesting differently depending on how they are observed. This highlights the primacy of vision: what we see shapes not only our behavior but the very existence of matter. Our perception, the act of seeing, thus becomes the foundation of reality, dissolving rigid notions of materiality and emphasizing the interconnectedness of observation and existence.
Process: Distilling your product vision & strategy into KPIs
When thinking about product KPIs, most people tend to think about revenue, active users, installed seats, NPS, etc. While these help you measure and manage the performance of the product, how do you know if your product is tracking to the original vision and the strategic objective(s) that it is meant to help accomplish?
Three Questions to Help You Communicate Your Vision:
- What is the initial product that enables the company and product to “get big” over the first three-to-five years of its life?
- What will you “lead?”
- Once your product establishes a leadership position, how might it “expand” even further?
With spatial intelligence, AI will understand the real world
Visualizing Representations: Deep Learning and Human Beings
“Right now machine learning research is mostly about getting computers to be able to understand data that humans do: images, sounds, text, and so on. But the focus is going to shift to getting computers to understand things that humans don’t. We can either figure out how to use this as a bridge to allow humans to understand these things, or we can surrender entire modalities – as rich, perhaps more rich, than vision or sound – to be the sole domain of computers. I think user interface could be the difference between powerful machine learning tools – artificial intelligence – being a black box or a cognitive tool that extends the human mind.”
The Impacts of Technology on Perception
We shouldn’t be quick to judge these new technologies because it takes a generation for them to work out what they’re really good for. And the ones I’m talking about, I don’t know how they’re going to be used but I certainly see the possibility they can be used for truth as well as fantasy.
-Kevin Kelly
What does “transparency” mean for AI Ethics?
Check out the Editor’s essay here.
Short on time? Here’s the a preview:
“About 80% of the mass of all matter in the universe is dark matter...we can see the gravitational influence of dark matter in our own galaxy and throughout the entire structure of the observable universe. It leaves a clear imprint on all of our cosmological and astrophysical observations through these gravitational interactions, so we know it is there and it does a remarkable job of explaining what we see. But we have no idea what it actually is made of, and this is an essential part of understanding nature.” notes Dr. Shawn Westerdale, head of the Dark Matter and Neutrino Lab at the University of California, Riverside. Nearly 100 years ago, and 50 miles from Riverside, California, Fritz Zwicky, a Swiss astronomer and astrophysicist, was studying the Coma Cluster of galaxies at the California Institute of Technology, when he made a groundbreaking discovery that led to the development of the theory of dark matter. Zwicky noticed that the galaxies within the Coma Cluster were moving much faster than what could be accounted for based on the visible mass of the cluster. According to the laws of gravity, the visible matter in the galaxies should have caused them to move more slowly or even fly apart. However, the observed velocities indicated that there must be an additional unseen mass present that was providing the gravitational pull necessary to hold the galaxies together.
Based on his calculations, Zwicky estimated that the mass needed to explain the observed motions was much greater than the mass of the visible stars and gas in the cluster. He referred to this missing mass as "dunkle Materie," which translates to "dark matter."
Zwicky's theory of dark matter was met with skepticism at first, as the concept of unseen matter was quite radical at the time. However, subsequent observations and research, including the work of Vera Rubin and others in the following decades, provided strong evidence supporting Zwicky's initial hypothesis.
Today, dark matter is considered a fundamental component of the universe, comprising a significant portion of its total mass-energy content, even though it does not interact with light or other forms of electromagnetic radiation, making it invisible to telescopes and other traditional astronomical instruments.
And while the scientists work out how to see the universe clearly, you and I and most people who are navigating the ebbs and flow of daily life are doing just that on a more personal scale. If we live long enough and honestly enough, we will all eventually find ourselves reluctant visitors to the dusky and desolate haunts of our own nature, where shadows we do not want to meet dwell. And yet, to be in relationship is come into contact with both the light and the shadow in life. Whether we seek authenticity in our relationships or truth in the cosmos, the matter of clear sight — of seeing through the fogged panes of the mind and removing the mirror of our own projections, is the central perplexity of human life.
Perhaps for those of us who are exploring what clear lines of sight in our technology could mean and how to summon that meaning into material and measurable reality, we ought first to recall something the eminently wise Iris Murdoch reminded us of the nature of transparency: “People are so very secretive… What are other people really like? What goes on inside their minds? What goes on inside their houses?”
Question for the Editor:
What are the unobservable pitfalls in ethics?
While reading Gary Lachman’s Lost Knowledge of the Imagination recently, I paused for a while to consider more thoroughly those aspects of experience which are unreachable through analysis. Like language and consciousness, imagination is a concept that requires a kind of understanding from the ‘inside’; or at least, we can’t get behind or in front of these ideas, or stand apart from them to become strict observers. So, on one end of the spectrum of intentional response, we might create field guides and handbooks, or should our tendency to concretize certainty into rigid structures prevail, we have been known to architect state or industry-defining constitutions and bibles. You might think of these scriptures as merely decision making levers, which in the most ideal sense would also serve as platforms for culture-defining values. One might reasonably come to believe that ethics-as-a-service necessitates a bible to light the path for its adherents, much as the psychiatry profession has relied on the DSM. We assume, much like the therapist who rigidly adheres to the guidelines, that utility, reliability and validity exist only in the lines. We marginalize the very same feature of human intelligence that enables the way we meet the world and the dynamic, animated, chaotic and often uninterpretable world meets us.
There has been a debate in the field of philosophy of science between scientific realism and instrumentalism, which sheds light on the nature of postulated constructs within ethical frameworks. The scientific realists argue for the material existence of these constructs, instrumentalism views them as tools for predicting observable phenomena without making claims about what is unobservable. With dutiful care, the ethicist designs a framework with a traditional descriptive approach, which emphasizes systematic depictions and categorizations. Words like alignment and trust set the foundation for generating explanatory hypotheses, contributing to an iterative process of more refining. The promise is that this somehow leads towards greater empirical adequacy and practical utility. But like psychiatry, the professional appeal is not just about the possibility of cure, which is why the profession continues to flourish even when it cures nothing and relieves symptoms only haphazardly. It’s in the naming itself. Give a name to suffering, perhaps the most immediate reminder of our insignificance and powerlessness, and suddenly it bears the trace of the human. It becomes part of our story. It is redeemed.
The world had never been so watched.
The relatively effortless process of taking a photograph, compared to drawing a picture, placed the sensory emphasis on the visual end result, rather than on the manual craft. As Walter Benjamin wrote in 1936: “photography freed the hand of the most important artistic functions which henceforth devolved only upon the eye looking into a lens”. The photograph itself, by eliminating all sensory information but the visual, gave an added value to visual appearance. If the visual was all that this wondrous new technology of reproduction could depict, then it was essential to make the most of visuality. This emphasis on “looking good” in contemporary culture was enhanced by pervasive advertising imagery which promoted products and the people pictured with them in terms of their visual appeal. The function of the camera in modern society, however, was not only to record significant people and places, to capture “slice-of-life” moments, or to showcase desirable merchandise. It was also to survey. First World War cameras, carried aloft on airplanes, were put to the service of military reconnaissance. Over the course of the century the camera became essential to peacetime surveillance as well. Introduced in the 1970s, video surveillance of public spaces as a form of social control was widespread by the century’s close: “Today, the ubiquitous video ‘security’ camera stares blankly at us in apartment buildings, department and convenience stores, gas stations, libraries, parking garages, automated banking outlets, buses, and elevators. No matter where you live you are likely to encounter cameras; some places simply bristle with them”. Even in the sky, cameras mounted on satellites circled the Earth, capturing images which were viewed down on the ground. “Has the camera replaced the eye of God?” asked John Berger.
-David Howes
Beyond the looking glass.
The mirror does not, in fact, offer a full reflection of who we are; nor is it the most privileged and truthful perspective on our being. Mirror images possess no sound, no smell, no depth, no softness, no fear, no hope, no imagination. Mirrors do not only reveal us; they distort, occlude, cleave, and flatten us. If I see in myself only what the mirror tells, I know myself not at all. And if AI is one of our most powerful mirrors today, we need to understand how its distortions and shallows dim our self-understanding and visions of our futures.
-Shannon Vallor
Listening and Watching
Making the Invisible Visible
Breathing with the Forest is an experience of deep continuity and reciprocity with a Capinuri tree (Maquira coriacea) in the Colombian Amazon rainforest. Inviting us to see inside its hidden pathways, this multimedia journey brings us into relationship with the rhythmic interchange of breath that keeps the forest—and us—alive. Entering the forest, we step out of our separateness to embody something much more than human.
To See a World in a Grain of Sand Watch→
Exploring the underlying mechanisms of (poly)computation in CGMMs and studying the micro-macro relations that give rise to the desired computational capabilities using the modern Koopman theory (check out this page for details.).
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism - 2024 Dorsett Lecture with Shoshana Zuboff
“I write about something I call behavioral surplus. These behavioral signals, these traces that are left behind whenever we brush past the internet we are not aware of the-the way in which those traces are harvested, extracted-those methodologies are engineered to be outside of our awareness so we can never become aware of them. So these huge data flows that are being en masse, these trillions of data points every day-that's not something that we willingly give and it's not something that is in any way visible to us. That's why I say we rely on the leaks and the whistleblowers and so forth…”
Exploring Americans’ Visions of the Future
“…the visions individuals hold for the future of their country and the world, carry profound significance. Understanding these visions provides invaluable insights into the aspirations, concerns, and priorities of communities and nations alike. In the United States, a diverse tapestry of perspectives shapes the collective imagination of what lies ahead, influencing societal discourse, policy agendas, and individual actions. Our exploration has uncovered some dominant themes shaping citizens’ visions of the future; in particular, AI, climate change, and ongoing culture wars. Mental health is inextricably linked here, as concerns around these issues are negatively impacting mental health. Poor mental health in turn is likely limiting more positive visions, as well as a sense of hope, agency, and ability to pursue meaningful goals.”
The Headless Way
Consider this – what you are depends on the range of the observer. At several feet you appear human. At closer ranges you are cells, molecules, particles… At greater ranges you are a city perhaps, a country, the planet, the star, the galaxy… But what are you at zero distance? In other words, what are you really? Others cannot tell you because they always remain distant from you. But you are at your own centre so you are well-placed to look and see what you are there. But how can you do that?
39 studies about human perception in 30 minutes
I don’t think data visualization or data storytelling is prescriptive; I think there are many options and an infinite number of possible visualizations, many we haven’t even discovered yet.
But perhaps it’s not purely a language either. Obviously there are biases and distortions we bring with us when viewing graphing frameworks and objects, some of which is learned, but some of which seems inherent.
Neuroscientists use AI to simulate how the brain makes sense of the visual world
The human brain can compute a billion-billion math operations with only 20 watts of power, compared with a supercomputer that requires a million times more energy to do the same math. The new findings emphasize that neuronal maps — and the spatial or topographic constraints that drive them — likely serve to keep the wiring connecting the brain’s 100 billion neurons as simple as possible. These insights could be key to designing more efficient artificial systems inspired by the elegance of the brain.
Other worlds pop in and out of view when the perspective shifts by degrees
A thought-provoking exploration of point of view, and how our exteroception, especially our relationship to the ground, shapes our perspective.
How VR could help treat depression Listen→
“You can change implicit beliefs. I don't know if you've ever talked to Jeremy Bailenson about the Proteus Effect-when you inhabit the body of an avatar and the characteristics of that avatar change your implicit beliefs about those characteristics after embodying that avatar. So, in a sense, it's like forced empathy.”
Pre-sensor computing with compact multilayer optical neural network
Bringing computing units closer to sensors is a promising strategy to improve speed, reduce power usage, and enhance data storage efficiency. One innovative approach involves using optical neural networks (ONNs) to process data before it reaches the sensors. While this method allows for advanced processing capabilities, it currently faces limitations such as the lack of nonlinear activation and reliance on laser input, which constrain its computational power, usability, and scalability.
To overcome these challenges, researchers have introduced a new concept called a compact and passive multilayer ONN (MONN). This has sparked a trend in mobile vision technology, focusing on practicality, miniaturization, and energy efficiency.
If technology creates evolutionary mismatch, why do we keep creating more technology? Can technology be done better?
…evolutionary psychology, in suggesting the context in which certain emotions are likely to arise—as well as the adaptive function they might have originally served—has been a far better lens for understanding my clients’ reactions than traditional therapeutic orientations like psychoanalysis or cognitive-behavioral therapy.
…
In all sorts of ways, humans are suffering because the world around them is, to varying degrees, foreign to the brain that is processing it.
In an essay published in the Financial Times last year, Ian Hogarth, an entrepreneur and tech investor, argued that the speed at which money is pouring into the development of AI tools, whose outputs developers do not yet fully comprehend, is worrying. He also expressed concern over the paucity of resources currently being allocated towards making AI safer. For example, he noted that teams involved in this work made up just 2% and 7% of headcount at two of the major developers, DeepMind and OpenAI, respectively.
Smart Homes: A Technical Guide to AI Integrations
AI is the core of smart home systems, the more advanced AI gets, the more it can smartify home environments by making the devices proactive. Smart homes use multiple devices to automate and enhance living, especially for impaired or senior individuals. Visually impaired, for example, can use home cameras and voice commands to facilitate their day-to-day lives.
VR drug discovery makes precision therapy a reality
If you find yourself squinting and crossing your eyes to make printed images pop out of your screen, you may have been looking right at the opportunity for technology to assist you.
For researchers looking for spots on molecules where new drugs might latch on, VR tech is the culmination of decades of trying to figure out how proteins—the cell's busy bees—act in both health and sickness.
MediaPipe: A Framework for Perceiving and Processing Reality
Building an application that processes perceptual inputs involves more than running an ML model. Developers have to harness the capabilities of a wide range of devices; balance resource usage and quality of results; run multiple operations in parallel and with pipelining; and ensure that time-series data is properly synchronized.
Seeing Is Believing, Unless It Isn’t
People who focused on values that they did not hold in high regard and who did not have an opportunity to regain their feelings of self empowerment were more likely to perceive visual images that did not actually exist and to perceive conspiracies in innocent situations. The people who regained feelings of self control by focusing on important personal values were no different from people who never lost their feelings of self control in the first place, who never had to recall experiences of helplessness. Galinsky and Whitson broke people’s self control, then helped put it back together again, fixing perception and behavior in the process.
Visual Attention Software: A New Tool for Understanding the “Subliminal” Experience of the Built Environment
The 3M Visual Attention Software (VAS) is an AI application that uses eye-tracking technology to predict viewer responses to images. Scientists have used it to analyze images of buildings and patterns, revealing points of fixation and design coherence. The results, when related to Christopher Alexander's geometric order theory, showed varied attention distribution. This suggests new opportunities for calm technology.
Fragmentation In Contemporary Psychology: A Dialectical Solution
As children we have all seen, and been puzzled by, maps that represent the entire world alternatively as a rectangle or as two circles on a flat, 2-D, plane. As children, we wondered how both of these seemingly incompatible representations could each depict the world in its entirety. The clue to the paradox, of course, is that each is an attempt to do something that is virtually impossible, that is, to represent on a 2-D surface (a map) what is, by nature, a 3-D phenomena, the globe. When we compare the maps to the globe we can see how, and from what perspective, they were constructed and thereby comprehend not only the possibility but also the advantages and the limitations of each.
He’s at the Forefront of Wave Physics
“My research is curiosity-driven, and the work in my group generally focuses on demonstrating that, by structuring materials at the nanoscale, it is possible to change their interactions with light, sound, and other waves. We aim to challenge long-standing assumptions in optics, acoustics, and wave physics, demonstrating that it is possible to observe phenomena that are thought to be difficult to achieve, if not impossible. Often these phenomena can also be useful to enhance modern technologies. Our recent work has been having an impact on energy harvesting, imaging, biomedical sensing, computing, communications, and more.”
Art in the Brain of the Beholder
What can science teach us about how we perceive and understand art? How can art help us understand ourselves and each other? In this event we explore the interactions between our brains and the artistic world, finding connections and parallels between art and science.
Art and Culture
Before cultural commentators in the age of the internet began noticing that the pace of life had changed, the twentieth century had already identified itself as an age of speed by writers and artists, and at the center of this whirlwind age was the automobile. The sensory impact of the automobile was not limited to the exhilarating sensation of velocity it offered, however, but included a full range of perceptions. . . . the windshield multiplies our eyes . . . and the wind liquefies sounds” wrote Guillermo de Torre.
A number of modernist artists noted that car windows framed the world as a series of pictures. Henri Matisse brought out this aspect of automobile travel in his painting The Windshield, which depicts a car interior with the picturesque nature of the view from the windshield implied by a sketchpad lying on the dashboard. The speed of the automobile, however, blurred and scattered the scenes it presented. The perception that the objects seen through car windows were themselves moving was described by Proust in “Impressions de route en automobile.” He imaginatively declared that during his drive, houses “came rushing towards us, clasping to their bosoms vine or rose-bush” while trees “ran in every direction to escape from us”.
It was not only the view from the car, but also the view of the car that transformed perception. As a prestige object and a technological wonder, a shiny new automobile attracted admiring looks and desiring touches. The sight of cars hurtling along a road enhanced the impression of living in a whirlwind age. The Futurist Giacomo Balla captured some of this feeling in a series of drawings and paintings which employed abstract representations of spinning wheels, rushing wind, scattered light, and roaring engines to approximate the “thrilling onrush of visual, tactile, and aural sensations” experienced by viewers at an automobile racetrack.
Since the 1960s, several major subfields of artificial intelligence like computer vision, graphics, and robotics have developed largely independently. But the community has recently recognized that progress toward self-driving cars requires an integrated effort across different fields. This motivated the development of KITTI-360, a new suburban driving dataset which comprises richer input modalities, comprehensive semantic instance annotations and accurate localization to facilitate research at the intersection of vision, graphics and robotics.
We look at the world once, in childhood. The rest is memory.
-Louise Gluck
Bookmarked
The View from Nowhere
On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious
The book delves into an insight that blew the author, Douglas Harding's mind — from a first-person perspective, as a matter of subjective experience, there was no evidence that he had a head. Put another way, if you try not to interpret what you're seeing and just describe exactly what's in front of you, not only is there no head on display, but the whole picture of who you are, of the person doing the looking, looks strange.
The key insight here is that if you can reframe the picture with your awareness and just notice, and you try to notice what direct experience is available in the spot where your body-map tells you your head should be... you won't find a head.
The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience
The Entanglement: How Art and Philosophy Make Us What We Are
More-Than-Human Aesthetics: Venturing Beyond the Bifurcation of Nature
By looking at how technology and design work together, we can develop a deeper and more critical understanding of how these forces shape our lives. This awareness can push us to engage more thoughtfully with the world, making us question the hidden mechanisms that drive our actions and shape our social environments.
A Problem Worth Pondering
The Spectre Of Elite Failure
I want to tell the story of free market capitalism how on the one hand it is the secret to human flourishing and prosperity and how on the other it is a fragile plant which in the wrong hands can wither and die.…crony capitalism is a form of what you might call elite capture and elite capture would I suppose be acceptable if the elites could be relied upon to be virtuous and visionary if they had the vision of Ludwig Erhard…or the courage of Margaret Thatcher then maybe we would be in a different place today but what we have today is a near ubiquitous case of elite failure.
Learning & Connection Opportunities
Awakening Embodied Presence: A Contemporary Approach to Tummo, Dzogchen, and Healing. Taught in a modern, pragmatic style without being tied to specific cultural traditions, this course will guide you through a progressive series of practices that work with the breath, the subtle body, and always-available open awareness. Whether you're entirely new to these practices or a seasoned practitioner, this course will help you integrate these profound methods into daily life, supporting more presence, authenticity, and compassion in your relationships, work, and sense of purpose in the world.
August 28 to September 18, followed by a two-week break for integration and reflection. The course will then conclude with sessions from October 9 to October 30.
Vision Quest with Ryel Kestano: 4-day Vision Quest and prayer ceremony in community led by Lakota Chief Howard Bad Hand on Ryel’s land.
September 12-15, 2024 near Boulder, Colorado
Chief Flourishing Officer Learning Journey: This is a 5-year learning journey starting with year 1 for 16-20 participant organizational practitioners (CXOs, People professionals, marketers, and more) to join our researchers (neuroscientists, economists, behavioral scientists, organizational psychologists and more) and practitioners (people professionals, product developers, and more) to explore both the Science of Flourishing interventions and products and the tangible, measurable Return on Investment of Care-based organizations.
Starts November 7th, 2024
Vision Weekend 2024: Foresight Institute’s annual festival with a main conference track dedicated to “Paths to Progress”.
December 6-8, 2024 in the Bay Area, California
Progress Conference 2024: Presented by the Roots of Progress, together with the Foresight Institute, Works in Progress, the Institute for Progress, HumanProgress.org, and the Institute for Humane Studies
October 18–19, 2024 in Berkeley, California
Words of Wisdom
The world that we have to deal with politically is out of reach, out of sight, out of mind. It has to be explored, reported, and imagined. Man is no Aristotelian god contemplating all existence at one glance. He is the creature of an evolution who can just about span a sufficient portion of reality to manage his survival, and snatch what on the scale of time are but a few moments of insight and happiness. Yet this same creature has invented ways of seeing what no naked eye could see, of hearing what no ear could hear, of weighing immense masses and infinitesimal ones, of counting and separating more items than he can individually remember. He is learning to see with his mind vast portions of the world that he could never see, touch, smell, hear, or remember. Gradually he makes for himself a trustworthy picture inside his head of the world beyond his reach.
-Walter Lipmann, Public Opinion
Meditation Practice Notes for July 2024
By its own activity the mind can engage in a specific kind of ideation and bring about levels of stillness and attention so deep that it causes profound changes in not only what we perceive but how we perceive it. This capacity, when developed, can move thought from its normal role as a mediator between the sensory world and waking consciousness, to the level of enlivened thought engaged in perceiving phenomena which never announce themselves to the five physical senses
Enjoyed this issue? Let me know! I’d genuinely love to hear from you.
Come to Mind is written in sunny Los Angeles, California.
Published by:
Christina Fedor / Consorvia
