Vital Syllabus: Contents

Note: there’s no need to work through all the pages in the order given below. Feel free to jump straight into whichever areas particularly attract you.

(1) Learning how to learn

How to pick up new skills quickly and reliably:

Setting aside previous learning that no longer pertains
Learning and self-knowledge
- The risks of overestimation of self-expertise
- Knowing oneself better in order to learn in the best way
Online resources to support learning
- Strengths and weaknesses of various online search tools
- Finding online courses that are best suited to individual needs
- Finding learning communities that can improve understanding
- Evaluating the reliability of sources and communities
Particular methods for learning
- Active learning
- Learning via playfulness and retrospectives
- How to consolidate new learning

(2) Communications

Effective communications with a variety of different kinds of audiences:

Speaking well
Writing well
Richer communications
- The importance of narrative as well as facts
- Graphic and video design
- Immersive communications
Establishing rapport
- Understanding audience needs
- Building empathy
- Better listening for better communications
- Motivational Interviewing
- Converting negative critics and trolls into constructive partners
Pros and cons of different communications environments
Advocacy

(3) Agility

How to manage uncertainty:

Dividing up tasks into a series of short sprints
Obtaining useful feedback at the end of each sprint
Updating plans based on new information obtained
Combining a series of short sprints into lasting positive change
When Agile goes wrong

(4) Creativity

Going beyond existing methods and solutions:

Methods for generating innovative new ideas
Methods of evaluating innovative new ideas
Methods for transforming new ideas into actual solutions
Methods to decide between innovation and the status-quo
Design and creativity

(5) Augmentation

Using technology and tools to boost abilities:

Traditional methods to boost memory, concentration, etc
Uses of personal, wearable, and embedded technologies
Biofeedback mechanisms
Roles for brain-computer interfaces
Tools that can act like a “personal guardian angel”
Tools and techniques to strengthen critical thinking
Tools and techniques to boost creativity
Tools and techniques to boost resilience
Tools and techniques to widen or deepen perspective
The impact of various “consciousness raising” practices

(6) Collaboration

Becoming wiser and stronger together:

Addressing individual blind-spots by collective analysis
Designing teams to promote synergies rather than cancellation
Forms of play and other team activities that boost mutual learning
Strengths and weaknesses of wikis and other open systems
Obstacles to collaboration

(7) Emotional health

Nurturing emotional resilience, flexibility, and transcendence:

The benefits of a growth mindset
The strengths and weaknesses of positive thinking
Mindfulness
Playfulness and recreation
Not being slaves to inner anxieties and other “demons”
Transcending failure
- Handling fear of failure
- Dealing with underperformance in oneself and others
- Failing forward and failing fast (associated with Agility)
Social dimensions of emotional health
- Social skills and perceptiveness
- Links between emotional health and social circumstances
Understanding, supporting, and valuing diversity
Managing stress
Links between emotional health and physical health

(8) Longevity

The remarkable possibility of significantly extended lifespans:

The science of age-reversal
The ethics of age-reversal
- General arguments
- Overpopulation and resource usage?
- Immortal tyrants?
- Unequal access to age-reversal?
The social implications of age-reversal
- Bankrupting pension schemes?
- The Longevity Dividend
- Social stagnation and renewal
Accelerating the advent of age-reversal
- Understanding psychological opposition
- Historical examples of extensions
- Robust Mouse Rejuvenation
- Regulatory reform?
- Actions by members of the public
New options for fertility and pregnancy
Broader considerations about physical health
- Living long enough to live indefinitely
- Improving the health of our brains
- Augmenting the body
- Accelerating personalised medicine

(9) Foresight

Anticipating and managing the unexpected:

Forecasting
- When forecasts were mistaken
- When forecasts proved invaluable
- Forecasters and superforecasters
- Metaphors: animals and beyond
Trends
- Identifying trends that have the potential to cause disruption
- The Gartner Hype Cycle, and why it often misleads
- The factors behind potential exponential change
- Identifying potential accelerators – and brakes – for trends
- Establishing “canary signals” for advance warning of tipping points
- Noticing “signals” that don’t match previous assumptions
Scenarios
- The purpose of scenarios
- How trends can combine to form breakthrough scenarios
- PESTEL classification of types of trend
- Examples of interconnections producing unforeseen scenarios
- Using imagination to anticipate novel scenarios
- Assessing the credibility of imagined scenarios
- Assessing the desirability of imagined scenarios
Transformational foresight
- Assessing actions to influence the actual course of scenarios
- Precautionary and proactionary approaches to risk and opportunity
Deepening foresight skills
- Agile futurism
- Collaborative futurism
Constructive future-oriented fiction

(10) Leading change

Inspiring and maintaining transformations:

Why major change initiatives often fail
Positive methods to manage major change initiatives
- Cultivating a sense of urgency instead of complacency or resignation
- Building and managing a coalition to guide vital change
- Identifying and addressing misaligned incentives
Moonshots and moonshot worship
Crossing the chasm
Managing optimism and pessimism
Existing organisations vs. creating new ones

(11) Technologies

In history, the present, and the future:

Industrial revolutions
- The structure of industrial revolutions
- Technologies and overhang
- The fourth industrial revolution
Products and platforms
Core technologies
- Nanotech
- Biotech
- Infotech
- Cognotech
- Quantum tech
Technology applications
- Energy
- Food
- Clothing
- Shelter
- Robotics
- Extended Reality
- Space tech
Social tech
- Access to finance
- Access to computation
- Access to data
- Access to markets
- Access to regulations
- Access to privacy
- Access to security
- Access to education
- Access to politics

(12) Economics

The management and cultivation of scarce resources:

Free markets
- The positive accomplishments of free markets
- The failure modes of free markets
- The tragedy of the commons
Planned economies
- The failure modes of planning
- The positive accomplishments of planning
- Public goods
The mixed model
- Separation of responsibilities
- Business for good
- Money and banking for good
- Productivity
- Industrial strategy
Cryptoeconomics
- Cryptocurrencies
- Tokenomics
The circular economy
- Encouraging circulation
- Property and its drawbacks
Social safety nets and social contracts
- UBI and alternatives
- FALC

(13) Governance

Incentivising and regulating the development of technologies and institutions:

Regulating technologies
Incentivising technologies
Dimensions of governance
- Beyond left vs. right
- Evidence-based policy vs. ideology-based policy
- Centralisation vs. decentralisation
Styles of governance
- Egalitarianism and its issues
- Meritocracy and its issues
- Redistribution and its issues
- Socialism and its issues
- Libertarianism and its issues
Technoprogressive governance
- The narrow corridor
- Lean governance
- Self-regulating technologies
- Trustable monitoring

(14) Democracy

The worst form of governance, apart from all the others:

Failure modes of democracy
Alternatives to democracy
- Dictatorship
- Technocracy and democracy
Vital features of democracy
- The separation of powers
- Trusted vigilance
- Deliberative democracy
Toward superdemocracy
- Enhancing democracy with AI
- The role of career politicians
- Beyond party politics

(15) Geopolitics

Influencing political processes, nationally and internationally:

Sovereignty and interdependence
The international separation of powers
Nuclear deterrence
Alliances and partnerships
Self-governing virtual states
Seasteading
Rejuvenating the Bretton Woods institutions

(16) Numeracy

Arithmetic and analysis for the modern age:

Exponentials
Probabilities
Lies, damned lies, and statistics
Estimating harm vs. ruin
Complexity
Numeracy for privacy and security
Numeracy for fairness vs. bias
Game theory

(17) Science

Distinguishing “good science” from “bad science”:

When scientists were mistaken
Normal science and revolutionary science
Debates over scientific methods
Science and human nature
Cognitive biases
Social pressures on science
Science and consciousness
Science and parascience (parapsychology)
Potential limits of science

(18) Philosophy

Thinking about thinking:

How philosophy changes the world
- When philosophers were mistaken
- The positive impact of philosophy
- The potential power of transcendent thinking
Constraints on clear thinking
- Philosophical biases and fallacies
- How language moulds thought
Implications of modern science and tech for philosophy
Theories of mind
- Materialism and alternatives
- Free will
Theories of values
- Consequentialism and alternatives
- Good and evil
- Virtue signalling
- Crime and punishment
Expanding moral concern
- Evaluating unborn generations
- Attitudes toward animals
- Attitudes toward AIs
Potential foundations for philosophy
- Approaches to determine ultimate priorities
- Strengths and weaknesses of religions
- Strengths and weaknesses of humanism
- Evolving a framework for ethics fit for the 2020s