"Change The Course"

                                               ----------- Round Table Topics

Topic 1) make injury real
        a) most people on earth are being injured
                (i.e. not living their full productive healthy lives.)
        b) the existing trajectory increases this injury.
        c) expanded injury leads to social conflict and civilization collapse,
                        which will
                i) produce a die off, and
                ii) drive our progeny back to the bronze age.

Topic 2) Describe the design of a peaceful and sustainable civilization.
        a) sustainable (for 500 years)
                i) non exhaustible, constant EROEI energy supply
                ii) production of goods and services based on renewable or recycle resources
                iii) not accumulating, self repairing, disruptions of the Eco system.
        b) high wellbeing,
                i) European
                ii) minus cars, roads, airplanes, and sprawl
        c) low enough inequality that few resources are consumed in conflict
        d) civil constraints on personal behaviors
                i) procreation
                ii) hierarchy
                iii) ownership

Topic 3) Describe the transition path from present civilization to the new one.
        a) content of change
                i) social
                        from personal to civil control of some personal behavior
                        basics produced and guaranteed per capita
                                food, clothing, shelter, education, healthcare
                ii) Physical
                        infrastructure conflated and reformatted to
                                increase civilization's energy efficiency
                        demand on commons limited below continuous delivery
                        Commons production equally assigned
                                hydro power
                                waste recycling ( air, water, soil)
                                soil/agricultural production
                        market-moderated production above basics
                                goods
                                services
                                food
                                waste recycling
                                recreation
        b) Time tables
                i) complete social transition before the end of this decade
                ii) complete physical transition before the end of this century.

        c) process and sequence for obtaining new behavior
                i) converting one person from his or her fanciful view of reality to
                        to a reality that explicitly reflects overshoot
                                and the behaviors that control it.
                ii) creating a groundswell of constituents large enough
                        (3.5 B) to shape global institution law
                iii) using law to coerce everyone to adopt these new personal behaviors.

Topic 4) The first Change the Course project
        assembles small groups who search for
                the content and form of these peer to peer communications.

    Details of these "one on one" conversations

        a) top down action (civil law) occurs only after
                the bottom up ground swell instructs its institution to do so.

        b) changing beliefs precedes changing law
                Changing law precedes changing behavior, and
                        changing behavior precedes the new civilization.

        c) In moving an individual's beliefs
                is peer to peer stronger than expert to peer?

        d) in moving an individual's beliefs
                is expert to peer (one on one) more powerful than
                        the expert (broadcast -- one on many)?

        e) in changing an individual's beliefs
                is proving false hood more or less powerful that
                presenting logical sequences of conditions.

        f) Is creating a view of reality better presented as a
                narrative or a
                construction of causally related parts.

        f) The actual path for peer to peer communication is
                determined real time by the two people.
                        There are hundreds of different paths.
                                CtC needs to supply information and process for many different paths.

        g) How do we define success in this belief change process?.
                each time a peer is recruited to be a member of Change the Course
                        he or she has come to believe
                        that the human predicament is so severe
                                1) he or she will vote for civil law that
                                        takes control of additional parts of personal behavior.
                                                E.g. procreation, hierarchy and ownership,
                                2) he or she has an obligation to recruit
                                                an additional person to this constituency.
                                        (he or she feels an obligation to undo another person's fantasy)
                                3) he or she understands the immediate need to complete the transition
                                        from an overshoot to a sustainable global society,
                                                by end of this century.

        h) How do we define sustainability
                i) delivery of goods and services depend on (until science changes)
                        1) a constant EROEI energy source of in place hydroelectric dams.
                        2) limited to natural renewing or recycled resources.
                ii) inequity maintained below level that induces social conflict
                iii) human footprint maintained below damage to the natural environment

        i) what fantasies have to be released?
                i) what is,
                ii) what could be
                iii) what should be,
                iv) how we get there.

        j) Perception from causality vs perception from logic
                i) correlation vs causality
                ii) causality derived from
                        experience
                        transmission
                        inference
        k) Assigning a descriptor a number
                vs assigning a descriptor a value

        l) Is peer to peer communication stronger in changing belief?
                common ground (basis for conversation)
                previous history creates trust
                common language easier to understand.
                repeated contact over a period of time.

        m) How do you overcome belief change reversibility.
                two expert conflict ( man with two watches does not know correct time.
                when belief change is created by expert to peer is it less reversible?

        n) How to overcome uncertainty of values used in models?
                varying the variables to show similar outcome over a wide range
                Show that certain behaviors attain a value for a variable in a finite time.

        o) How do you help an individual create a present value for
                injury displaced in space and time
                        (injury of children)

        p) How do you help a person reduce uncertainty about a prediction
                causal Inference
                logic (correlation) inference

        q) How to unwind the a person's fantasies that are based on
                educational and media based transmission of information from a
                super being

        r) How to make the overshoot equation powerful?
                demand side to big or expanding
                        human footprint (Population times average wellbeing)
                        social conflict costs created by inequity
                supply side carrying capacity too small or contracting
                        renewing resources -- use exceeds supply
                        recycled resources -- partial loss in the process
                        extracted until recycling is easier
                                fossil fuels
                                fossil water
                                natural fertilizer extracted and diluted to lose
               

-------------

Topic 5) management of table discussions
        a) How are groups formed?
                i) dynamically form themselves?
                ii) convening their own meetings.
                iii) inviting new members
                iv) picking their own topics
        b) meeting durations
        c) size of group
        d) external viewers
        e) produced content management
                i) limited to conveners
                ii) shared with other CtC groups
                iii) posted as public documents
                iv) live streaming of group meetings

-------------------------

Topic 6) Parts of the destination civilization design
        a) Person assignable portion of commons
                each person can direct their portion of a commons (an asset)
                        (hydro output, air, water, soil, etc)
                For example energy units pay for:
                i) private use (purchase of goods and services)
                ii) taxes:
                        civil activities and infrastructure
                        minimum basic services
                        education
                        social safety net
                        healthcare
                        food clothing and shelter
                iii) the monetary unit is energy from hydro.
                        private investment/savings (banks holds or loans) promises to deliver energy
        b) final base line education of
                after reality replaces fantasy, education keeps fantasy from returning.

--------------- alternative short description of Change The Course----------------

The primary task of "CHANGE THE COURSE"
        is to learn to help "ONE" individual to gain an understanding of reality
                that is powerful enough so he or she
                        votes for sustainability laws, and
                                will be able and motivated to
                                        bring another peer to this voting bias and recruitment motivation.

Some content:
        a) present conditions create massive injury.
        b) our trajectory increases that injury.
        c) civilizations which don't create injury are different. They have:
                1) a global human population of 50 million
                2) civil law to bring everyone to behavior that
                        creates and maintains both this population
                                and a fixed footprint.
        d) The transition is possible, when sustainability laws include
                1) births limited to 500,000 births per year.
                2) Footprint balances with renewing energy supplies
                        (current civilization must be conflated to 3 small civilizations.)
                3) The renewing energy supply (for the first 500 years) is
                        in place hydro power.

Summary:

The goal of the project is to get people to understand
        reality -- including new behaviors that make a nice life happen.
Then get these behaviors to be taken using civil law.

The first Change the Course project is to figure out how to
        create one reality knower
        then, billions.

What do we do to succeed with this first individual?

What do we give each knower to successfully recruit another?

The first steps is to get small groups of scholars
        to face one another across an electronic table
        to share their successes and failures in helping one person to understand reality.
                This is an attempt to get beyond all the noisy blogging which
                        mostly complains about all the stupid thinking that is going on
                                without any progress on upgrading common knowledge.

Jack Alpert
The front page of www.skil.org contains updated invitations movies, and archived content from Change the Course.