optimism

James Mickens of Harvard gives a funny lecture at HBS's Future Assembly arguing that blockchains are a very bad idea. He covers their trust, legal and practical shortcomings for real-world problems.

Joseph Tainter lectures at a 2010 sustainability conference on why complex societies such as Rome collapse. His thesis is that rising complexity brings diminishing returns until societies cannot afford to maintain it.

Neil Postman's 1997 lecture at College of DuPage, based on his book, argues that Americans treat technology as a national religion and depend on it to solve larger human problems. It includes audience questions.

A Virginia Tech presentation by Sid Smith about collapse, fossil fuels and overshoot, arguing that industrial civilization faces a decline and how one might live with that. It was later expanded into a video series.

Part one of an American Airlines training video presented by Captain Warren VanderBurgh on automation dependency. It grew out of a program on wake turbulence avoidance, and this restored version has the audio cleaned up.

Jaron Lanier delivers the 2018 Willy Brandt Lecture in Berlin on who civilization is for, covering data, AI, tech platforms and the economics of who benefits, followed by a Q&A with Germany's data protection commissioner Ulrich Kelber.

A recording of Charlie Munger's 1995 Harvard speech on the psychology of human misjudgment. He walks through a list of cognitive biases such as incentives, social proof, and overoptimism.