This is an update from Foresight’s Existential Hope project! We are happy to announce this month’s Hope Drop which features Chiara Marletto, a physicist at Oxford University. The drop includes a new podcast episode on existential hope where we interview Chiara, NFT artwork and a storytelling X-Hope bounty.
Watch the interview with Chiara Marletto.
Chiara is the author of the book “The Science of Can and Can’t”, where she writes about the concept of counterfactuals and constructor theory.
This is a new and different approach to physics where the idea is that the physics most of us are familiar with is mirrored in a way that is very limited. There is a large class of things that science has neglected, and according to this theory, there are questions of what is and isn’t possible, which could provide scientific explanations to many questions in the long run. Those unwilling to bring this concept to science prevent us from making progress on certain fundamental problems.
In this interview Chiara talks about (among other things):
See the artwork in it’s full animated version here.
This artwork is inspired by Chiara Marletto’s vision of Existential Hope:
Humans can think in ways that allow endless creativity. This is what creates resilience for humanity and its survival.
If we could achieve a state in which all people are able to think freely and not need to worry about day-to-day problems that have to do with survival, like being hungry or trying to pay rent, we could achieve an ideal situation (similar to what Plato had): Time to think freely, to be creative, and to consider various problems.
Scientists try to create this in their lives, time and space where they can just think about problems freely and in peace. But it’s currently too narrowly present in humanity.
It’s a very utopian scenario but there might be a way to get there. Consisting of two elements:
We know that technology is supporting us in ways that bring people beyond the subsistence level where they can actually just be creative.
This event should be coupled with one in which people growing up as kids are encouraged to think in creative ways and have an instilled love for knowledge and creativity.
Today it’s hard to get people into this creative thinking and often schools don’t do a good job at getting them into knowledge. So by putting these two elements together we could have a lot more people who are into problem solving than now and this would help our chances of survival enormously.
Submit your bounty-response for your chance to be rewarded 0.15 ETH!
See the full animation of the NFT depicting Annas’s eucatastrophe scenario here to get inspired!
The proceeds from the NFT sale will support scientific research.
After having re-designed the visuals of the website, we are currently focusing on revising the content of our Focus Areas where we list resources, projects and organizations in the ecosystem across future-positive organizations. We really want to emphasize that this project is a collaboration between everyone willing to participate. The future is for everyone to create together, so please, if you have any thoughts or ideas on what to feature, please let us know via our Contribute-page!
The Future of Life Institute has presented the finalists of their Worldbuilding contest, a contest focused on “world building” a vision of a positive AI future. Explore the worlds of the 20 finalists the judges selected here.
The gallery on the Existential Hope website is continuing to grow in its effort to try and bridge art and science. We want to push beyond crypto hypes, towards the possibility of key social change. The gallery works with scientists to offer to the public the possibility to discover their scientific research and existential hope vision in a more accessible and visually inspiring way.
The gallery is preparing a major exhibition at ETH BARCELONA and will be also curate a panel on the Main stage. Explore the gallery here.
A new list to learn about funding opportunities for long-term-oriented people and projects. This list is for future-oriented projects to find funding outside of traditional funding sources. The ambition of this list is to shift the economic Overton window to support many such projects–-through deploying capital (via the funds listed here), and through designing new incentives.
