Non-Weaponizable Mindsets

In general I try to embody a "non-weaponizable" mindset. i.e. A mindset that has the following property:

  • If this mindset was duplicated across all humanity (i.e. if everyone had this mindset), then there would still be positive impacts. (i.e. A variant on Kant's Categorical Imperative)

Or, to put it in an even stronger form, you could make the conditional across all remixes of the mindset, i.e.

  • If remixes of this mindset were duplicated across all humanity, then there would still be positive impacts.

Win-Win Non-Violence --> No Enemy

One crucial property of this mindset is changing competition (win-lose) to coopetition/co-evolution (win-win). However, this co-evolving win-win mindset "loses out" on a crucial mechanisms for change: creating an enemy (because in theory we're all on the same team! win-win!).

However, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that we need an enemy/other outside of the system we're trying to make antifragile. e.g. Our Networked Human Organism (Nature 2.0, along with Earth, Nature 1.0, and AI, Nature 3.0) should have another "group" to compete with. I think it'd be powerful to construct an other, e.g. Evil Mars People :). This might be easy, except this enemy should exist within our constraints, e.g. we should likely be metamodernist about it in acknowledging that it's a constructed story for our purposes. So maybe call the enemy Fake Evil Mars People.

Emotional Non-Violence --> No Shame

In addition to co-evolving to win-win shared outcomes, our non-weaponizable mindset should likely involve some version of emotional nonviolence. For example, AFAICT, shame is the primary mechanism used to shape norms. Thus far, I haven't used much shame. Would we want a future with everyone shaming each other? Also, shaming others goes against a crucial future value of individual responsibility. Individuals should want to "do good" because they've reflected on their actions and are taking responsibility for them, not because someone else is shaming them into it. The constraint-based question here is: how can we used non-shame based mechanisms to shape norms?


Vote for future articles here!