19: Jim Rutt – Prototyping a Global Social Operating System

Jim Rutt is the host of one of our favourite podcasts: the Jim Rutt Show. He is a past chairman of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) with a long and distinguished career in the California tech community. An avid proponent of complexity science, Jim is currently an SFI Research Fellow working in the scientific study of consciousness and evolutionary artificial intelligence. He is also one of the founders and most prominent advocates for Game B, a community trying to figure out what a viable, better civilization could look like and how to reach it. Jim joins us for a wide-ranging conversation, riffing on ideas from Game B, liquid democracy and the cutting-edge thinking on display in his own podcast series. From the historical contingencies which gave rise to Game A to the great acceleration of the 20th Century, Jim helps us take stock of where we are as a global civilisation, the contours of the civilisational crisis we find ourselves in, and possible exit strategies which do not involve collapsing into a neo-dark age or analogous undesirable states. Along the way we talk game theory, energy justice, the role of universities, complexity science and building “Proto-B” communities above the Dunbar number. Jim tweets @jim_rutt: https://twitter.com/jim_rutt You can find Jim at The Jim Rutt Show: https://www.jimruttshow.com/ Many of Jim’s writings are available on Medium: A Journey to GameB (13 Jan 2020): https://medium.com/@memetic007/a-journey-to-gameb-4fb13772bcf3 The Game B Wiki: https://www.gameb.wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page An Introduction to Liquid Democracy (26 Feb 2018): https://medium.com/@memetic007/liquid-democracy-9cf7a4cb7f In Search of the 5th Attractor: Complexity Science Thinking About Real Change for the Better (3 Feb 2017): https://medium.com/@memetic007/fifth-attractor-6d1a54fcda2e