New Article: Why Civilizations Collapse

The idea that the internet carries a scythe is familiar — think of Blockbuster Video, the pay phone and other early victims of the digital transition. But the scale of the potential extinction still isn't adequately appreciated.

This isn't just a normal churn where travel agencies go out of business or Netflix replaces the VCR. Everything that we ta

Fermi Paradox of human civilization -- we are nearing a precipice of pivoting from competitive evolutionary theory to adaptive-contextual learning.

We are trapped, then, between a rock and a hard place. Humankind now constitutes a single civilization, and problems such as nuclear war, ecological collapse, and technological disruption can only be solved on the global level. On the other hand, nationalism and religion still divide our human civilization into different and often hostile camps. Th

Fear of the unknown can paralyze us more than any tyrant. People throughout history worried that unless we put all our faith in some set of absolute answers, human society would crumble. In fact, modern history has demonstrated that a society of courageous people willing to admit ignorance and raise difficult questions is usually not just more pros