Santa Fe Institute President David Krakauer on Utopian Thinking
Channel: Michael Garfield + Future Fossils Podcast
Date: 2018-07-03

From Episode 75 of Future Fossils Podcast:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/19095876

• Subscribe on Apple Podcasts:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/future-fossils/id1152767505?mt=2 
• Subscribe on Google Podcasts:
http://bit.ly/future-fossils-google 
• Subscribe on Stitcher:
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/michael-garfield/future-fossils 
• Subscribe on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/show/2eCYA4ISHLUWbEFOXJ8C5v 
• Subscribe on iHeart Radio:
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-FUTURE-FOSSILS-28991847/ 

TRANSCRIPT:

"I don't think we have enough utopian thinking.  Not enough of it.  People are too cynical and they pretend they're not cynical by calling it pragmatic. There couldn't be enough utopian thinking as far as I'm concerned – with caveats, all right – but with that said I think I feel very, very fortunate in so many ways. I've been exposed to amazing ideas, incredible people, and I see those ideas have an amazing power, and we've seen them. The Santa Fe Institute was instrumental in the development of network theory.  It’s everywhere!  It’s everywhere in good and bad ways. And so on.

I think that a success for me would be a world where a fact was a fact – I’m not being political! – where people could be reasonable, mentally pluralistic, and rigorous. I think the educational system was trying to do this – I mean schools are trying to do this, universities are trying to do this – but I think they're not succeeding, and we can see if we look at the world today and the political turmoil, and the genuine risk I think of loss of life at scales which are unprecedented, they're not succeeding.  And in a sense it is utopian, because the Interplanetary Project is saying, "Is there a different way now of getting the best of what we have done to as many people as we possibly can, and in a way that isn't preachy, isn't didactic, is genuinely engaging and fun, and where a single individual somewhere in the world, who we've never met, who has limited resources could make a real contribution to it?" 

It's utopian, but if that turned out to be true, if that happened, that's my notion of success."