A Surprising Solution to the Climate Crisis

Humans are storytelling creatures. As the world grapples with coordinating to solve climate change, new research from Harvard shows that a surprising age-old mechanism might hold the answer. In results that seem like satire, the researchers found that ancient societies coordinated using gossip. But the results make sense once we realize that coordinating with someone requires establishing trustworthiness. And how do we establish someone’s trustworthiness? By asking other people about them, i.e. gossiping!

The research has profound implications for driving the culture change required to usher in systems change. When asked how we could implement findings from the research in today’s world, the researchers replied, ”We are already doing this at scale today. We just call them Podcasts. A bunch of tech bros talking about what they heard from whom and airing their grievances at being misunderstood when they were just trying to make the world a better place”. Joe Rogan, Lex Friedman, and Elon Musk could not be reached for comments on being classified as the world’s top gossips. But the results did prompt Mark Zuckerberg to announce a new podcast in another desperate attempt to fool people into liking him.

In another finding that has implications for solving the AI alignment problem, the researchers focused on how gossip creates shared reality. It is a well-established fact that our brains do not see the world as it is, but act as prediction engines based on historical information. This means that what we see as reality is just our perception. This means that to solve the AI alignment problem, we just need to believe Marc Andreessen and Sam Altman when they answer questions about the AI-driven apocalypse with “Just trust me bro”. AI maximalist David Shapiro vouches for the efficacy of this method, having amassed, in his words, knowledge (strong belief backed by evidence) on how it is all going to turn out fine.

The research also showed why Kamala Harris lost the election bigly to Donald Trump. She just could not keep the engines of gossip running as fast as Donald Trump. The President, speaking from the Oval Office with a bag of Cheetos, praised the breakthrough research—”I have always said that I have the best gossip. You just need to look at our leaked chat messages. China can’t beat us. They got no gossip. None. Xi wouldn’t let them have it.”

So there you have it folks. No need for any fancy solutions- no crypto currencies, no network states, no new economic models, no new cities, no spiritual awakening. Just gossip a new world into being. To learn more, listen to this 17-hour podcast between Daniel Schmachtenberger, Ian McGilchrist and Nate Hagens! They clearly have the right idea!

It should, of course, be obvious by now that this is an April Fool’s Day post. I hope that reading it gave you a little bit of a laugh and served as a reminder to not take everything around us and ourselves too seriously. The future is not yet written. And we might yet find our way out of this mess that surrounds us. And if not, I for one would prefer to go down laughing. Take it easy folks.

If you liked this post, you might want to check out my newsletter on Substack where I write about the Metacrisis and systems change- akhilpuri.substack.com 🙂