Theorizing Holistic Technology for A World in Love with Larry Muhlstein

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This week we hear from Larry Muhlstein, who worked on Responsible AI at Google and DeepMind before leaving to found the Holistic Technology Project.

In Larry’s words:

“Care is crafted from understanding, respect, and will. Once care is deep enough and in a generative reciprocal relationship, it gives rise to self-expanding love. My work focuses on creating such systems of care by constructing a holistic sociotechnical tree with roots of philosophical orientation, a trunk of theoretical structure, and technological leaves and fruit that offer nourishment and support to all parts of our world. I believe that we can grow love through technologies of togetherness that help us to understand, respect, and care for each other. I am committed to supporting the responsible development of such technologies so that we can move through these trying times towards a world where we are all well together.”

In this episode, Larry and I explore the “roots of philosophical orientation” and “trunk of theoretical structure” as he lays them out in his Technological Love knowledge garden, asking how technologies for reality, perspectives, and karma can help us grow a world in love. What is just enough abstraction? When is autonomy desirable and when is it a false god? What do property and selfhood look like in a future where the ground truths of our interbeing shape design and governance?

It’s a long, deep conversation on fundamentals we need to reckon with if we are to live in futures we actually want. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Our next dialogue is with Sam Arbesman, resident researcher at Lux Capital and author of The Magic of Code. We’ll interrogate the distinctions between software and spellcraft, explore the unique blessings and challenges of a world defined by advanced computing, and probe the good, bad, and ugly of futures that move at the speed of thought…

✨ Show Links

• Hire me for speaking or consulting
• Explore the interactive knowledge garden grown from over 250 episodes
• Explore the Humans On The Loop dialogue and essay archives
• Browse the books we discuss on the show at Bookshop.org
• Dig into nine years of mind-expanding podcasts

✨ Additional Resources

“Growing A World In Love” — Larry Muhlstein at Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming

“The Future Is Both True & False” — Michael Garfield on Medium

“Sacred Data” — Michael Garfield at Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming

“The Right To Destroy” — Lior Strahilevitz at Chicago Unbound

“Decentralized Society: Finding Web3’s Soul” — Puja Ohlhaver, E. Glen Weyl, and Vitalik Buterin at SSRN

✨ Mentions

Karl Schroeder’s “Degrees of Freedom”
Joshua DiCaglio’s Scale Theory
Geoffrey West’s Scale
Hannah Arendt
Ken Wilber
Doug Rushkoff’s Survival of the Richest
Manda Scott’s Any Human Power
 Torey Hayden
Chaim Gingold’s Building SimCity
James P. Carse’s Finite & Infinite Games
John C. Wright’s The Golden Oecumene
Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now

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