#80: What Information Wants
A 12-month Interintellect book series on how information flows and how to control it
This newsletter goes out to more than 1,300 ambitious frontier people. Please share it with a friend who would like it. And welcome to all the folks who joined this in the past week!
Hey team!
I just got back from ETHDenver. It’s crazy to see how much it’s grown. In 2018 we had 1,500 people. This year they had 15,000. Feels like the new SXSW. Web3 & Society very much on my mind.
Meanwhile, I am also starting a 12-month book series for my upcoming book, What Information Wants. I’m grateful to host it at the Interintellect, a beautiful internet hub for curious learners.
If you’re interested in learning and co-creating my book with me, join us by clicking the link below! Or read the rest of this email to learn more about the sessions. Thanks!
👉 Interintellect Salon Series on What Information Wants 👈
What Information Wants
Are humans just vehicles for memetic replication? A new series by Rhys Lindmark explores…
Humans love wrongly believing we’re the center of attention. We thought the earth was the center of the universe before Copernicus. We thought humans were a unique species before Darwin. Today we think that humans are the primary agents in the world. We think we’re a superpredator with control over biology and technology.
But what if we weren’t the primary decision-makers? In fact, we aren’t. Organisms are just vehicles for genetic replication. Humans are just vehicles for memetic replication. To understand the past and shape the future, we need to see the world from the meme’s perspective. Others will be surprised by yet another conspiracy theory, nationalist movement, or tech revolution. Meanwhile, you can just ask: What do memes want? What Does Information Want?
Rhys Lindmark is writing a book about how information flows and how it’s changing on the internet. In a series of salons, we will explore this content together, chapter by chapter, and get an inside look at the author’s creative process. Before each salon, Rhys will send out a rough draft of the chapter which will then be discussed during each session.
This series has 15 salons, running on the first Thursday of every month, at 5- 7pm PT
Dates:
March 3rd, April 7th, May 5th, June 2nd, July 7th, August 4th, September 1st, October 6th, November 3rd, December 1st, January 5th, Febuary 2nd, March 2nd, April 6th
Salon Schedule
1. Introduction
Why read this book? An overview of the narrative: A history of time, told from the perspective of information itself. An overview of the methodology: thinking systemically and evolutionarily.
March 3, 2022
PAST
Part I How Information Flowed Before The Meme
2. The Big Bang: From Nothing, Everything
How The Universe Evolved Before Evolution
14 billion – 4 billion years ago
How gravity created macro structure: galaxies, stars, and the planets. How the electrostatic force created micro structure: combining elements into molecules. How molecules on earth led to the start of life.
April 7, 2022
3. Genes Wanna Make More Genes
How DNA Formed The Tree Of Life
4 billion years ago – 300,000 BCE
How the first replicators began. How the environment determines genes. How life has gotten better at accessing energy and transmitting information.
May 5, 2022
Part II Hi, I’m a meme! What do I wanna be when I grow up?
300,000 BCE – Today
4. Memes Before They Were Cool
Spoken Virals in the Agrarian Age
300,000 BCE – 10,000 BCE
How imitation sets us apart from apes. How language enabled infinite ideas. How minds store ideas. How we covered the earth.
June 2nd, 2022
5. Wanna Make Something Up But Pretend It’s True?
Written Narratives in the Agricultural Age
10,000 BCE – 1500 CE
How agriculture gave us energy, brought us into cities, and forced the creation of impersonal trust through written symbols.
July 7, 2022
6. Hey Guys I Found A Bunch Of Flammable Stuff In The Ground So You Don’t Need To Work Anymore
Printed Knowledge in the Industrial Age
1500 CE – 1950 CE
How printing enabled the scientific revolution. How science enables industry, which gives us more energy. How science disrupted God.
August 4, 2022
PRESENT
Part III Because Internet
7. Omg, I Can Move At The Speed Of Light Now
The Information Revolution
How we created the telegraph, telephone, radio, TV, and the internet. How we developed a fundamental new unit, a bit of information. Web1, Web2, and Web3.
October 6, 2022
8. These Hoomans Sure Have Changed
Our Shifting Minds And Values
WEIRD vs. holistic psychology. Culture-psychology co-evolution. Expanding our moral circle to climate change, the global poor, and factory-farmed animals.
November 3, 2022
Part IV Dank Memes on the Interwebz
9. The Zoomies
Internet Virals Run Amok
How virals spread. Challenges, hashtags, outrage, and post-truth. The fragility of the Arab Spring. The fall of mainstream media.
December 1, 2022
10. Want To Join The Grey Pill, My Pyramid Scheme Conspiracy Theory?
Narratives and Coordination in the Internet Age
Mobs vs. movements. New religions. MAGA, Social Justice, and Technoutopians. Communist China vs. the Capitalist West. Why QAnon works. The death of manufacturing consent. An abundance of narratives but a vacuum of metanarratives. Bitcoin and DAOs.
January 5, 2023
11. Tryna Remain Relevant
Knowledge On The Internet
Internet-native science. Fortified essays vs. junk news. How to get attention above the flood of information.
March 2, 2023
FUTURE
Part V Genes, Memes, and Cemes
12. Making The Memesphere Reasonable Again
Fixing memes by changing their homes. Changing our brains. Changing the feed. Shifting the attention economy to the wisdom economy. Tracking the global memesphere like we do with climate. Memetic engineering like we do with geoengineering. One narrative to rule them all
Febuary 2, 2023
13. Rewriting Biology
How we’ll rewrite the biosphere. Wright’s Law for DNA sequencing and synthesis. Eliminating disease. Rewriting our supply chains for food and materials. The rise of the PC vs. the PB, a personal bioprinter. Moving atoms around the world. Climate.
March 2, 2023
14. What AI Wants
Why computer memes, cemes, are the third replicator. What cemes want. The basic science of understanding neural networks. Mechanistic interpretability and convergent evolution. AI alignment from a replicator perspective.
April 6, 2023
15. Conclusion
The future of genes, memes, and cemes. How to apply this in your own life. Directions for research and impact.
May 4, 2023
Hope you have a great week!
Warmth, Rhys
❤️ Thanks to my generous patrons ❤️
Laurel Petterson, Eric Tang, Chris Densmore, Maciej Olpinski, Jonathan Washburn, Ben Wilcox, Audra Jacobi, Sam Jonas, Patrick Walker, David Hanna, Benjamin Bratton, Michael Groeneman, Haseeb Qureshi, Jim Rutt, Zoe Harris, David Ernst, Brian Crain, Matt Lindmark, Colin Wielga, Malcolm Ocean, John Lindmark, Collin Brown, Ref Lindmark, James Waugh, Mark Moore, Matt Daley, Peter Rogers, Darrell Duane, Denise Beighley, Scott Levi, Harry Lindmark, Simon de la Rouviere, and Katie Powell.