Topic: Civilization’s Predicament and Its Unwinding Behavior.
Speaker: Dr. Jack Alpert
Time: Aug 20, 2025 13:30 Eastern Time (US and Canada)
Summary:
Energy and mass flows describe the unfolding of civilization. Over the last 200 years those flows increased. Each year they supported an ever-larger global population with ever grander lifestyles.
Unfortunately, this century these flows, due to the earth’s crustal limitations, may decline back to their 1750’s levels.
Unless energy deliveries from solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, fission, and fusion can come online and replace lost fossil deliveries, human population and lifestyles will also drop back to the 1750’s levels.
In the last two minutes of this 31-minute video, a behavior is proposed that causes much pain and prevents the injuries during civilization contraction. The video helps the chooser of the potential behavior quantify the injuries on each path.
https://lite.evernote.com/note/ee411e1c-c69e-5e16-c340-c6d87c523fec
Biography:
Dr. Jack Alpert is director of Stanford Knowledge Integration Lab, a Lab which he started in 1978 at Stanford University. In 1992 the Lab left Stanford and became a nonprofit research foundation. The research focused on how people gather and process information to understand dynamic systems. Over the years the Lab has transitioned its focus to the relationship between human cognition and civilization viability. The current work is on discovering and implementing a viable civilization.
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