Thought
+ Full
AI and technology are pulling people apart. With addictive artificial pleasures. And soon, artificial friends. Sucking them into their own individual worlds.
The basic biology of our human species relies on people loving people. Some to physically create new generations. Some to support them. Some to do both. Not everyone has to, but some people must love beyond themselves. Or else there will be no more people.
It doesn't help that modern society is highly competitive. Fostering an every-person-for-themself culture. Where other people are obstacles. And the cunning exploit the generous. Extinguishing their altruism with doubt.
Meanwhile, technology is advancing at breakneck speed. We are at a turning point in human history. Without urgent large-scale collective action, society is on the fast track to a world of individual isolation. Rendering people powerless, dominated by increasingly powerful systems. Kept in place by AI.
Yet amidst the doom, there is hope. We have a practical and effective way out. Collective action requires a core set of principles to unite a movement. Too many principles breed disagreement. Too few, and there is no deductive power. Of all disciplines, math is actually the art of designing the smallest set of fundamental beliefs which form a sufficiently powerful base. From which a rich collection of conclusions follow from logic and reason. This is what all those postulates, theorems, and proofs in high school Geometry class were about. The tradition of ancient Greek mathematicians and philosophers.
The core of our philosophy is just two real truths that many people actually already hold. With universality across nations. Across cultures. Across religions. Across political parties. The two truths power a host of conclusions (which we will explain), that enable growth driven by, of all things, self-interest and economics.
Philosophy
- Delighting other people; and
- Achieving understanding through their own thought.
A play on words: thoughtful and full of thought. Just two concrete truths already held by many. Compatible with many philosophies and religions. If you look deep within yourself, perhaps you will find that you agree with both of them!
The two truths provide direction and magnitude. Both are necessary. Direction without magnitude is ineffective. Magnitude without direction invites catastrophe. The direction distills the timeless essence of what distinguishes human intelligence from AI: caring that humans still exist. The magnitude harnesses the power and diversity of independent human thought.
Why now?
The power of this philosophy comes from the simple fact that a group of mutually supportive Thought Full people is (even practically) far more powerful than fragmented individuals. It is just more efficient to have a group of people, each of whom creates and shares some different type of real value at a scale that delights many people.
Modern technology enables the creation of a worldwide network of Thought Full people. Connected by strong trusted relationships. Thought Full people naturally love to collaborate with each other. With modern worldwide commerce, they can actually collaborate economically to real material effect. Today, even if some Thought Full people are physically living amidst others who are not, they can remotely unite with faraway collaborators and reap the benefits.
In today's interconnected world, this does not require national policy. Enforcement is naturally powered by a far-flung network of trust. Reputation travels rapidly through trusted-word-of-mouth in a well-designed network. Through network theory (explained below), a big world of strangers can turn into a small town.
Our contribution is to clearly articulate and name this philosophy. So that people can self-identify and use it as a rallying point to create their own networks. Which ultimately merge into a decentralized whole. Independent of a mortal leader.
Book
To propagate this philosophy, the author is currently writing a book. This first book is oriented towards parents and educators. In the meantime, to receive the author's thoughts (mostly on education in the context of Thought Fullness, and math which is the author's vehicle for reaching mass audiences), the author puts out a newsletter every week or two.
Future proof
This philosophy is architected for timelessness. It intentionally does not prescribe specific behaviors. Today's best practices are based upon today's technology. Tomorrow, there will be even more free time for anyone who wishes to learn and think about the world. To draw their own informed conclusions based upon their current context. And to productively discuss with others. Each person individually generating their own insights instead of accepting a common conclusion without question. Ensuring ideological diversity. Avoiding group-think.
Years ago, this was impossible. Most children were too busy working to learn to think. Before the printing press, and before the Internet, educational resources were scarce. Stability required people to trust others to think for them.
The only question today is whether people choose to engage their mind to think. Interestingly, there appears to be a near-universal joy that people feel when they deeply understand something for themselves (and through their own thought). Most people who work with children see this firsthand, flashing across students' faces when they “get it”. Also, there seems to be a near-universal desire among people to think independently and to exert their own creativity.
We seek to empower everyone to discover that they are powerful enough to think. To understand. To question. To have the self-confidence and self-worth to feel valuable even if the conclusion of a discussion is that they were wrong themselves. To feel that the joy of understanding trumped the hurt of being wrong. Casting away that fear unlocks the power of thinking.
Network theory
Consider the network of people in the world defined by trusted relationships. Such a relationship means that each person would vouch for the other as an upstanding, reliable, great person, from having interacted with each other for sufficiently long. In the past, that network was mostly constructed based upon who people grew up with. That was fundamentally geographical and physical, with tight clusters of trusted connections in every school. The distance, as measured by the number of trusted connections separating, between two random people in different countries, was immense. (This is a very different concept from the “six degrees of separation” which defines a connection as a not-necessarily-trusted acquaintance.) Consequently, trusted long-distance collaboration outside your own town, let alone another country, was relatively difficult.
That limitation comes from the structure of the network, which has tight clusters roughly grouped geographically and very locally. The biggest exceptions came from trusted relationships built in college. That was much of the value of “elite” colleges, but that value was by definition not widely available.
Modern technology makes it possible to construct trust networks with a vastly different structure. The important difference is to intentionally form these connections not just with people right around you. A remarkable consequence of the mathematical theory of random networks is that if 1 billion people create a network in which each person has trust connections with 50 random people, then most people (even those in different countries) are within about 6 trusted relationships apart.
The numbers work out even better at the start of a movement when the community is small. This is advantageous because it makes the movement more valuable and causes it to grow faster even when it is small. If 100,000 people create a network where everyone has 50 random trusted connections, most people are within about 3 degrees of trust separation. Akin to the trust environment in a small town, but covering far more people.
The LIVE ecosystem is a (non-exclusive) illustrative practical example of how to seed a widely distributed trust network. It is powered by searching worldwide for kind and clever high school and university students, who then collaborate in pairs to grow the network by live-streaming lessons to younger students.
Collaborate
If this movement resonates and you would like to support, there are many ways.
- Have founder Po-Shen Loh speak to your community
- Directly join the LIVE ecosystem
- Contribute financially
For more details: