> a) We are not actually running. What does stop and think about it actually mean?

To me, "running" refers approximately to "going about business on our current trajectory; the status quo". "Stop and think" means just that: stop and think, but think deeply. Thinking shallowly is effortless, thinking deeply is a different story (perhaps especially for those of higher intelligence, whose shallow thinking can often be equivalent to the layman's deep thinking).

For any given problem, is the situation more complex than it appears on the surface? Have I overlooked anything? Are there non-obvious second order effects that are invisible when thinking about the situation in isolation, but manifest themselves in the real world of integrated systems? Are there any examples in history where shallow thinking got humanity into trouble? For this, the speaker gives the example of the Aswan Dam, on the Nile river; many other things could be added to that list, such as war.

> If there is a cliff and if we can stop or change direction. why not on the edge of the cliff, why way before that?

Momentum, and lack of support from an often selfish, non-unified, and shallow thinking public (see how quickly China can execute on disruptive projects vs the glacial speed in democracies that require consensus).

> b) Nobody is excepting a bridge to miraculously appear, but we might be thinking about how to cross that cliff when we get there and prepare. Humans are actually quite good at that.

Good, but not perfect, especially when the problem is not purely technical, but involves (even in part) relationships with other humans (see: seemingly minor actions that lead to major interpersonal, tribal (political polarism, culture wars), or international conflicts).

I like this part from the 8th segment of the playlist (emphasis and [additions] mine):

> ...now except for the petroleum graphs the things I tell you are not predictions of the future, I'm only reporting facts and the results of some very simple arithmetic, but I do this with confidence that these facts, this arithmetic, and more importantly our level of understanding of them will play a major role in shaping our future. Now don't take what I've said blindly or uncritically because of the rhetoric or for any other reason. Please, you check the facts, please check my arithmetic, if you find errors please let me know. But if you don't find errors then, I hope you'll take this very very seriously.

> You are important people, you can think, and if there was ever a time when the human race needs people who will think, it's right now. It's our responsibility as citizens in a democracy to think, and so to be successful with this experiment of human life on earth we have to understand the laws of nature as we encounter them in the study of science and mathematics [and psychology and sociology]. We have to remember the message of this cartoon: thinking is very upsetting it tells us things we'd rather not know. We should remember the words of Galileo, he said I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. We should remember the words of Aldous Huxley, he observed that facts do not cease to exist because they're ignored. And we should remember HL Mencken social philosophy, he believed that it was in the nature of the human species to reject what is true but unpleasant [or unpleasant, in some psychologically counter-intuitive situations], and to embrace what is obviously false but comforting, and we should remember Eric Sevareide's, law he was a newscaster who made the transition from radio to television back in the 1950s he observed that the chief source of problems is solutions. Now let's just look at an example the Nile River for