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Everything I Know – 1975 Lectures by Buckminster Fuller
- h2odragon 7y agoVideos, but they link to the transcripts too: https://www.bfi.org/about-fuller/resources/everything-i-know https://www.bfi.org/about-fuller/resources/everything-i-know
- EricE 7y agoVery nice. I'm going to enjoy going through these - thanks!
- carapace 7y agoBucky Fuller. The only person in history to have a form of carbon named after him†. He calculated (he was an engineer) that, if we applied our tech and resources efficiently, we could provide for everyone "without disadvantaging anyone." > Think of it. We are blessed with technology that would be indescribable to our forefathers. We have the wherewithal, the know-it-all to feed everybody, clothe everybody, and give every human on Earth a chance. We know now what we could never have known before - that we now have the option for all humanity to make it successfully on this planet in this lifetime. Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment. † https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminsterfullerene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminsterfullerene
- VvR-Ox 7y agoYes very nice theories he came up with and very sad to live in a world that's like the dirty, bloody, stained picture of this utopia. We endure the current situation because of the greed and narcissism of a few who don't want to share. I suppose it was their parents and kindergartners who did a really lousy job showing them how to share and collaborate with others. Why should they care if people have to starve when they could have a new yacht, beach house or another 50 motorbikes in their garage? R.I.P. Fuller - you did a great service to all of us who dream of a better future.
- nabla9 7y ago> We endure the current situation because of the greed and narcissism of a few who don't want to share. I suppose it was their parents and kindergartners who did a really lousy job showing them how to share and collaborate with others. Buckminster Fuller was known as a systems philosopher. He would think that your diagnosis is utterly misguided. Our society is not worse than it could be because there are bad people in the world. They will always exist. If few bad apples destroys the happiness in the society it's arranged in a wrong way. We have lots of incentives, policies, ideologies and systems where completely normal people are behaving in a way that produces harm to others. People with less empathy get rewarded when you create systems where they thrive. People should learn systems thinking.
- lemonberry 7y agoGreat comment! If you have any recommended resources and the time to share please do. Thank you.
- nabla9 7y agoThese approaches fall under positive political theories with name social choice theory, public choice theory etc. The idea is to apply the formal tools of economics, statistics, game theory, etc. to analyze politics. The old classics: - The Theory of Political Coalitions (1962) by William H. Riker - Social Choice and Individual Values (1952) by Kenneth Arrow. - The Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy (1962) by Buchanan and Tullock
- carapace 7y agoEr... "Grunch\* of Giants" by R. Buckminster Fuller (\*GRoss UNiverse Cash Heist) > Here Buckminster Fuller takes on the gigantic corporate megaliths that exert increasing control over every aspect of daily life. In the form of a modern allegory, he traces the evolution of these multinational giants from the post-World War II military-industrial complex to the current army of abstract legal entities known as the corporate world. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/285349.Grunch_of_Giants https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/285349.Grunch_of_Giants PDF available from here: https://fullerfuturefest.com/humanitys-critical-path-from-weaponry-to-livingry-by-buckminster-fuller/grunch-of-giants/ https://fullerfuturefest.com/humanitys-critical-path-from-we...
- dlkf 7y ago> He calculated (he was an engineer) that, if we applied our tech and resources efficiently, we could provide for everyone "without disadvantaging anyone." This is just putting a name on the problem.
- carapace 7y agoThe crucial point is that physics permits utopia which was (and still is) widely and wildly underappreciated. The obvious corollary is that our problems are all psychological now (or spiritual, if you prefer.)
- dlkf 7y agoI find this physics problem / psychological problem distinction totally unconvincing. The variety of scientific advancement that makes peoples' lives better has always required the joint effort of pure scientists solving physics problems, and business-types/political-types solving psychological problems. Communists love to point out that the internet grew out of the government program ARPANET; they are less inclined to acknowledge that it ran on machines built by IBM and DEC - giant companies who were beholden to market forces and shareholder pressures. The idea that we can take a system like western capitalism and then just uniformly distribute the profits is self-undermining. The system as it is is what generated the wealth, and if you completely change the system you can't assume it will continue to have the same dynamics. You don't need to be Robert Lucas to see this. Utopianism is just a form of intellectual laziness that further entrenches the status quo.
- AKifer 7y agoThe soviets also thought the same, unfortunatelly a system with bad actors cannot be solved from within. Especially when the "bad" actors controls means of production and distribution, and have incentives to continue acting such and in return creating incentives for "good" actors to imitate the "bad" behaviours. Anyway, defining what's good and what's bad when you are an actor within a system is a very subjective exercice, a seemingly "good" actor will turn "bad" overnight given the right incentive and vice versa. The real question is determining who distributes the incentives, and who should. And for all the systems in this world, it spans from random to being concentrated in the hands of a few oligarchs or a single dictator.
- fouc 7y agoBuckminster Fuller had some lesser known discoveries that never got capitalized. The cooling dome or reverse chimney effect for example. http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/blog/chilling-domes-physics/ http://www.stuartmcmillen.com/blog/chilling-domes-physics/
- snthd 7y agohttp://www.buckminster.info/Ideas/10-EndEnergyCoolingFree.htm http://www.buckminster.info/Ideas/10-EndEnergyCoolingFree.ht...
- taxicabjesus 7y agoI have a ~77 year old friend who was recently telling me about going to Buckminster Fuller's lectures at his engineering university, circa 1968. He quoted Mr. Fuller as saying something like, "entropy takes things apart, life puts them back together." The quote he referenced was probably something like this one: “The physical is inherently entropic, giving off energy in ever more disorderly ways. The metaphysical is antientropic, methodically marshalling energy. Life is antientropic. It is spontaneously inquisitive. It sorts out and endeavors to understand” - https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1222650-the-physical-is-inherently-entropic-giving-off-energy-in-ever https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1222650-the-physical-is-inh... Many people are so sure of their belief in entropy (aka "thermodynamics"). I like the idea that there's anti-entropy too.
- Arbalest 7y agoLife reverses entropy only locally, it still needs to "spend" entropy to do so. In this way, life is an efficient entropy accelerating machine, and we're the pinnacle.
- sword_smith 7y agoYou are both correct :)
- amelius 7y agoCould you use this principle to detect any kind of life?
- Arbalest 7y agoThat's actually a really good question. It does make me question the hypothesis, which is essentially, is the entropy any different to a lifeless planet just re-radiating solar energy. The answer is probably, not in the long term. You may be able to use the principle to determine what stage intelligent life is in though? If we were talking plants only, the re-emitted radiation would be expected to be reduced, as it is bound up in the growth. But our species is now expending that, so at this moment, solar re-radiation we would expect to be above lifeless levels.
- ProCicero 7y agoI used his ventilated prose method to parse out and simplify complex statutes. One example was the definition of a slot machine, which consisted of two paragraphs with two sentences each, that took up an entire page of text. It had some deeply nested clauses and an ungodly amount of commas and semi colons. I started with one sentence per line, then broke to one clause per line. From there, I used indentation to sort out exactly which clauses were dependent on what. It made explaining the law to others a lot easier.
- johnnylambada 7y agoInteresting. Can you point to an example?
- rv-de 7y agoI'd like to put one of his books on my reading list. Given his voluminousness - any suggestions?
- EFFALO 7y agoI’d start with “Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth.” He has a really interesting, albeit super rambling type of prose that is an acquired taste (I personally love it). This particular book is a great introduction to his worldview without being too exhausting. Check it out!