The Vital Syllabus
Futurist David Wood lays out a syllabus designed to prepare young people for the future. I'm shamelessly stealing it to share it with you. And you should steal it too.
Update: a couple of readers have found some garbage units in the Vital Syllabus and given me shit for it. Fair. One reader pointed out a lesson where WalMart’s “planning” was turned into an exemplar of economic planning. (Titter.) Anyway, I do not give this syllabus my formal imprimatur as editor of Underthrow. I merely think parts are worth perusing and using—selectively—and I will endeavor better to serve reader expectations of quality in the future. Mea culpa.
Futurist David Wood developed the following syllabus. This is certainly worth mining for anyone who wants to prepare young people for the future and help them bypass today’s indoctrination camps.
Please explore it, mine it for good stuff, and leave behind what you dislike. For example, I might redo a lot of 12. Economics, 13. Governance, 14. Democracy, as well as chunks of 15. Geopolitics and 18. Philosophy. Otherwise, leave in any ideas worth interrogating. Even 21. Environment is not as neo-Malthusian as one might think. The point is, there is pretty good stuff here.
Note: there’s no need to work through all the pages in the order given below. Feel free to jump straight into whichever areas attract you.
(1) Learning how to learn
Setting aside previous learning that no longer pertains
Learning and self-knowledge
The risks of overestimation of self-expertise
Knowing oneself better in order to learn in the best way
Online resources to support learning
Strengths and weaknesses of various online search tools
Finding online courses that are best suited to individual needs
Finding learning communities that can improve understanding
Evaluating the reliability of sources and communities
Particular methods for learning
Active learning
Learning via playfulness and retrospectives
How to consolidate new learning
(2) Communications
Effective communications with a variety of different kinds of audiences:
Speaking well
Writing well
Richer communications
The importance of narrative as well as facts
Graphic and video design
Immersive communications
Establishing rapport
Understanding audience needs
Building empathy
Better listening for better communications
Motivational Interviewing
Converting negative critics and trolls into constructive partners
Pros and cons of different communications environments
Advocacy
(3) Agility
Dividing up tasks into a series of short sprints
Obtaining useful feedback at the end of each sprint
Updating plans based on new information obtained
Combining a series of short sprints into lasting positive change
When Agile goes wrong
(4) Creativity
Methods for generating innovative new ideas
Methods of evaluating innovative new ideas
Methods for transforming new ideas into actual solutions
Methods to decide between innovation and the status-quo
Design and creativity
(5) Augmentation
Traditional methods to boost memory, concentration, etc
Uses of personal, wearable, and embedded technologies
Biofeedback mechanisms
Roles for brain-computer interfaces
Tools that can act like a “personal guardian angel”
Tools and techniques to strengthen critical thinking
Tools and techniques to boost creativity
Tools and techniques to boost resilience
Tools and techniques to widen or deepen perspective
The impact of various “consciousness raising” practices
(6) Collaboration
Addressing individual blind-spots by collective analysis
Designing teams to promote synergies rather than cancellation
Forms of play and other team activities that boost mutual learning
Strengths and weaknesses of wikis and other open systems
Obstacles to collaboration
(7) Emotional health
Nurturing emotional resilience, flexibility, and transcendence:
The benefits of a growth mindset
The strengths and weaknesses of positive thinking
Mindfulness
Playfulness and recreation
Not being slaves to inner anxieties and other “demons”
Transcending failure
Handling fear of failure
Dealing with underperformance in oneself and others
Failing forward and failing fast (associated with Agility)
Social dimensions of emotional health
Social skills and perceptiveness
Links between emotional health and social circumstances
Understanding, supporting, and valuing diversity
Managing stress
Links between emotional health and physical health
(8) Longevity
The remarkable possibility of significantly extended lifespans:
The science of age-reversal
The ethics of age-reversal
General arguments
Overpopulation and resource usage?
Immortal tyrants?
Unequal access to age-reversal?
The social implications of age-reversal
Bankrupting pension schemes?
The Longevity Dividend
Social stagnation and renewal
Accelerating the advent of age-reversal
Understanding psychological opposition
Historical examples of extensions
Robust Mouse Rejuvenation
Regulatory reform?
Actions by members of the public
New options for fertility and pregnancy
Broader considerations about physical health
Living long enough to live indefinitely
Improving the health of our brains
Augmenting the body
Accelerating personalised medicine
(9) Foresight
Forecasting
When forecasts were mistaken
When forecasts proved invaluable
Forecasters and superforecasters
Metaphors: animals and beyond
Trends
Identifying trends that have the potential to cause disruption
The Gartner Hype Cycle, and why it often misleads
The factors behind potential exponential change
Identifying potential accelerators – and brakes – for trends
Establishing “canary signals” for advance warning of tipping points
Noticing “signals” that don’t match previous assumptions
Scenarios
The purpose of scenarios
How trends can combine to form breakthrough scenarios
PESTEL classification of types of trend
Examples of interconnections producing unforeseen scenarios
Using imagination to anticipate novel scenarios
Assessing the credibility of imagined scenarios
Assessing the desirability of imagined scenarios
Transformational foresight
Assessing actions to influence the actual course of scenarios
Precautionary and proactionary approaches to risk and opportunity
Deepening foresight skills
Agile futurism
Collaborative futurism
Constructive future-oriented fiction
(10) Leading change
Why major change initiatives often fail
Positive methods to manage major change initiatives
Cultivating a sense of urgency instead of complacency or resignation
Building and managing a coalition to guide vital change
Identifying and addressing misaligned incentives
Moonshots and moonshot worship
Crossing the chasm
Managing optimism and pessimism
Existing organisations vs. creating new ones
(11) Technologies
Industrial revolutions
The structure of industrial revolutions
Technologies and overhang
The fourth industrial revolution
Products and platforms
Core technologies
Nanotech
Biotech
Infotech
Cognotech
Quantum tech
Technology applications
Energy
Food
Clothing
Shelter
Robotics
Extended Reality
Space tech
Social tech
Access to finance
Access to computation
Access to data
Access to markets
Access to regulations
Access to privacy
Access to security
Access to education
Access to politics
(12) Economics
Free markets
The positive accomplishments of free markets
The failure modes of free markets
The tragedy of the commons
Planned economies
The failure modes of planning
The positive accomplishments of planning
Public goods
The mixed model
Separation of responsibilities
Business for good
Money and banking for good
Productivity
Industrial strategy
Cryptoeconomics
Cryptocurrencies
Tokenomics
The circular economy
Encouraging circulation
Property and its drawbacks
Social safety nets and social contracts
UBI and alternatives
FALC
(13) Governance
Incentivising and regulating the development of technologies and institutions:
Regulating technologies
Incentivising technologies
Dimensions of governance
Beyond left vs. right
Evidence-based policy vs. ideology-based policy
Centralisation vs. decentralisation
Styles of governance
Egalitarianism and its issues
Meritocracy and its issues
Redistribution and its issues
Socialism and its issues
Libertarianism and its issues
Technoprogressive governance
The narrow corridor
Lean governance
Self-regulating technologies
Trustable monitoring
(14) Democracy
Failure modes of democracy
Alternatives to democracy
Dictatorship
Technocracy and democracy
Vital features of democracy
The separation of powers
Trusted vigilance
Deliberative democracy
Toward superdemocracy
Enhancing democracy with AI
The role of career politicians
Beyond party politics
(15) Geopolitics
Influencing political processes, nationally and internationally:
Sovereignty and interdependence
The international separation of powers
Nuclear deterrence
Alliances and partnerships
Self-governing virtual states
Seasteading
Rejuvenating the Bretton Woods institutions
(16) Numeracy
Exponentials
Probabilities
Lies, damned lies, and statistics
Estimating harm vs. ruin
Complexity
Numeracy for privacy and security
Numeracy for fairness vs. bias
Game theory
(17) Science
When scientists were mistaken
Normal science and revolutionary science
Debates over scientific methods
Science and human nature
Cognitive biases
Social pressures on science
Science and consciousness
Science and parascience (parapsychology)
Potential limits of science
(18) Philosophy
How philosophy changes the world
When philosophers were mistaken
The positive impact of philosophy
The potential power of transcendent thinking
Constraints on clear thinking
Philosophical biases and fallacies
How language moulds thought
Implications of modern science and tech for philosophy
Theories of mind
Materialism and alternatives
Free will
Theories of values
Consequentialism and alternatives
Good and evil
Virtue signalling
Crime and punishment
Expanding moral concern
Evaluating unborn generations
Attitudes toward animals
Attitudes toward AIs
Potential foundations for philosophy
Approaches to determine ultimate priorities
Strengths and weaknesses of religions
Strengths and weaknesses of humanism
Evolving a framework for ethics fit for the 2020s
(19) Transhumanism
Components of transhumanism
Varieties of transhumanism
The values of active transhumanism
The transhumanist shadow
Criticisms of transhumanism
Transhumanist culture
Anticipating the growth of transhumanism
(20) Culture
Societies with increasingly diverse subcultures
Limits to tolerant coexistence
Coexistence with AIs and robots
Coexistence with animals with uplifted capabilities
Options for the future of work
(21) The environment
Our cosmic context
Environmental independence and interdependence
Planetary boundaries
The co-evolution of life and mind
Options for re-wilding
Options for de-extinction
Options for paradise engineering
Options for exploring the wider universe
Alien life and the Fermi paradox
(22) Landmines
The left behinds
WMD proliferation
Biotech hazards
Infotech hazards
Financial instabilities
Environmental instabilities
Political instabilities
Cancers within society
Reason under threat
Divided nations
Divided aging
Bubbling under
Existential opportunities
(23) The Singularity
The singularitarian stance
The singularity shadow
Different routes to ASI
Hard and soft take-off
Possible timescales to reach ASI
The control problem
The alignment problem
Human-ASI merger
No Planet B
The singularity principles
AGI or not AGI: fundamental choices
(24) Ultimate futures
Picotech and femtotech
Ultimate physics: births and deaths of universes
Beyond human death: cryonics and reanimation
Space-time engineering and technological resurrection
The transcension hypothesis
The simulation hypothesis
Parallel multiverse branches: communication beyond base reality
I republish all of this as is for your edification. It is designed to be shared.
Unless otherwise noted, material published by Vital Syllabus is available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
A great deal of thought and detail has gone into David's syllabus. It should not be torn apart without sufficient time and dedication to process its concepts as thoroughly as possible. There is gold here and should be considered over time and experience.
A couple of readers are unhappy with some of the contents in the syllabus, and understandably so. I want to invite you to tear into the parts you think are garbage and comment away!