Out of the Second Renaissance research call today we homed in on having a clear list of research questions would be a great first step.
Let’s start collecting in this thread questions that we could be answering …
Do you have a list?
Are you still asking people to suggest questions?
Hello, yes we now have more defined research approach which you can learn more about here: Research.
I’ll do a top-level post soon about opportunities to present at the research group.
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The answer from an earlier thread on this question from 2023: List of research questions · life-itself · Discussion #591 · GitHub
Here’s a first pass on a high level answer to the question of “What are we focused on in our research program” and what are our major research questions.
Summary: Key research question
- Domains/Lines: What are the different lines or domains of human development e.g. cognitive complexity and morality could be two distinct domains.
- Maps: What are the “maps” of each of those domains e.g. what are the different locations or levels you can be in in that domains
- Rafts: What are the factors that are associated with movement around a domain? Specifically, what are the “rafts” that you can use to move around e.g. practices, environments etc.
How do we arrive to these?
1. What are the paths to an awakening society?
At the top level, as we write on the research page:
Exploring paths to an awakening society – or, a wiser, weller world.
NB: Going forward, we can call it awakening society or a wiser world.
Specifically: 2.1. What is an awakening society 2.2. How do we get there? 2.3 Why do we want to go there?
So, the next level down is the immediate obvious sub-questions like:
- First, what is a wiser, weller world? What does an awakening society look like?
- Second, how do you get there?
Or as in the the metaphor we used in the original intro to the research collective:
What mountains are we going to … and how do we climb them?
Awakening societies involve much greater focus on human development
Now that is very general. And we have a view already about some of that i.e. about the mountain we’re going to and how to get up it. So isn’t a completely open-ended question.
Our thesis is that wiser, weller worlds involve a much greater prioritization of inner development.
What is human development and how does it happen?
So central to a research program is: the question what is human development and how does it happen?
More formally we can term these topics ontology and culturology i.e. the study of “being” and of culture (“collective being”). We could even more specifically say ontogenetics i.e. the development of being. Similarly, we could say culturo-genetics or cultural evolution. Ontogenetics can sound a bit weird but it was actually exactly the term being used by e.g. James Mark Baldwin in early developmental psychology in late 19th century.
We could use the term psychology but it has become a bit narrowly focused on the mind and cognition. Hence we prefer ontology or ontogenesis as we’re interested in all the aspects of being for human beings and how they can develop.
| Personal | Collective |
| Ontology and Ontogenesis | Culturology and Culturo-genesis or Cultural Evolution |
What is human development? And how does it happen? What factors contribute to it?
And so a big research question would be that:
What is human development? And how does it come about? What factors contribute to it?
Again an aside re terminology: some people don’t like the term development because it can imply some kind of hierarchy. We’ll come back to the maps terminology below which is more neutral. But for now we use development because that’s what the field has generally used.
Development is multi-dimensional or multi-domain
The next point is that there’s general agreement that there isn’t a single line of development for human beings. Instead we can develop along multiple different “lines” or domains of development and at different speeds.
A simple demonstration of this is that cognitive and moral development may be different: you can find people who are smart and are not very nice (e.g. some psychopaths).
Qu: what are the major developmental domains?
So one thing that would be in research program would be:
What are these domains?
That’s a really big question. I note that you may answer this question iteratively in tandem with the mapping and rafting i’ll talk about next i.e. working out domains may only become clear over time.
Maps and rafts: 3.1) what are the maps of given domains? 3.2) what are the rafts that allow us to move around a given map?
Then for each domain we want:
- A map shows the locations or levels within that domain? what places can i go to in that domain
- What are the rafts? i.e. the tools or activities that allow me to move around the map in those domains.
Examples and commentary
Example domain: moral development
One version of morality that’s covered right back in Plato’s Gorgias is: might is right. What’s right is what the powerful to do. It can even be more ego-centric: what’s good is what I want.
Then another location in morality may be: It’s about following the rules. what’s good is following the rule.
But then at some point you might come to question that. is it possible for the laws to be immoral? Very famously and a classic example was: could you try Nazis for obeying their orders to do something like killing Jews. Are they protected by the fact that they were just following orders? for example?
And there’s a sense for many people that there’s a deeper level of morality. A morality beyond the rules of a given society and, so, yes what the Nazis did was wrong even if they were obeying orders. It goes beyond to the conventional to some kind of universal, maybe.
And then we have general principles like it’s about maximizing utility like we’re gonna base morality on utility optimization, doing the greatest good for the greatest number or whatever.
And there you have the start of a map for that domain.
And it’s also the case that most humans, at least as children, develop through those to some extent.
So very, very young children, tend to think about themselves. They don’t have in them, a lot of conception of the other, other people’s needs.
And then at some point there is this sense of power: don’t do it because Daddy’s gonna tell you off. And they respect that. That’s just like there this person who’s bigger and more powerful than me. Just like mummy is.
This is X the stronger than them. They don’t really feel it’s unfair necessarily.
Then there’s a point when it’s like, man, it’s the rules. What is it my parents say, what is it my school says etc.
What I’m telling you here is a bit about Lawrence Kohlberg’s work who was the student of Piaget.
Piaget was this developmental psychologist and Kohlberg was his student. Piaget already had quite a bit on this. But Kohlberg did a lot of studies starting in the 50s of this and had this theory of how these stages unfolded.
I emphasize that whilst there may be this unfolding or trajectory there might just be these different locations without one being before or after another.
And i mention that for many many people in the world today don’t actually get much beyond conventional morality. They don’t get beyond: following the rules is what makes you a good person.
And a bit question is how do people go from the rules to some sense of there being a deeper more universal truth?
We are focused on synthesizing
Right now, we are primarily in the business of synthesizing rather than doing novel work. Now, I think that may lead to other things, but right now doing those kind of syntheses is the priority.
Example Domain: cognitive complexity
So you can pick other domain which relates the kind of complexity of thought.
A classic example would be going from single-variate linear thinking to multivariate feedback thinking.
Example: planting pine trees for a forest for later harvesting. (hat-tip to Suzanne Simard for this example)
In a linear thinking type model: I apply pesticide in a forest to kill off all the other trees so they don’t compete with my trees. So I’m spraying everything with Roundup.
And then it turns out that actually there’s a dyadic ecosystem interaction between the pine trees and the birch trees so that when the birch trees grow they actually draw in nutrients and they give them to the pine tree later and there’s a kind of more symbiotic model. And by killing off the birch trees you are actually harming the growth of the pine trees, believe it or not.
So the first model would be a bit more linear. Like I do X and get Y. and the second is a more multi-variate model.
Yes, suggesting questions - and consolidating them into a structure e.g. an issue tree - is most definitely still valuable.