What do we *really* need to be educated in, to handle the next few wild decades? David Wood and his “Vital Syllabus” lays it out

David Wood’s futurist initiatives have always brought us insight and excitement at The Alternative Global, particularly as he is crucially concerned with the human motivations, emotions and values that drive the adoption and pursuit of radical technologies (indeed hoping they can become transhuman - a more evolved, networked version of human agency and vision).

David is also a fine communicator of his prospectus - and he’s now aiming to become an educator in it, too.

What he calls The Vital Syllabus asks: “In our age of multiple pressures, dizzying opportunities, daunting risks, and accelerating disruption, what are the most important skills and principles to cherish and uphold?” The VS aims to provide those. Below is a graphic of the Vital Syllabus’s priorities, both aspirational and cautionary:

We’re going to reproduce the outlines of the Vital Syllabus below, under a Creative Commons license. It’s a collaborative work in progress - if you’re interested in helping out contact David here. But we recommend you take the striking with the familiar, and do research on terms you don’t recognise.

1: Learning how to learn

How to pick up new skills quickly and reliably:

  1. The strengths and weaknesses of various online search tools

  2. Finding online courses that are best suited to individual needs

  3. Finding learning communities that can improve understanding

  4. Skills in evaluating the reliability of sources and communities

  5. The risks of overestimation of self-expertise

  6. Active learning

  7. Learning via playfulness and retrospectives

  8. How to consolidate new learning

  9. How to set aside previous learning that no longer pertains

  10. Knowing oneself better in order to learn in the best way

2: Communications

Communications with a variety of different kinds of audiences:

  1. Speaking well

  2. Writing well

  3. The importance of narrative as well as facts

  4. Graphic and video design

  5. Immersive communications

  6. Understanding audience needs

  7. Building empathy

  8. Better listening for better communications

  9. Converting negative critics and trolls into constructive partners

  10. Pros and cons of different communications environments

3: Agility

How to manage uncertainty:

  1. Dividing up tasks into a series of short sprints

  2. Obtaining useful feedback at the end of each sprint

  3. Updating plans based on new information obtained

  4. Combining a series of short sprints into lasting positive change

  5. When Agile goes wrong

4: Creativity

Going beyond existing methods and solutions:

  1. Methods for generating innovative new ideas

  2. Methods of evaluating innovative new ideas

  3. Methods for transforming new ideas into actual solutions

  4. Methods to decide between innovation and the status-quo

  5. Design and creativity

5: Augmentation

Technology and tools to boost abilities:

  1. Traditional methods to boost memory, concentration, etc

  2. Uses of personal, wearable, and embedded technologies

  3. Biofeedback mechanisms

  4. Roles for brain-computer interfaces

  5. Tools that can act like a “personal guardian angel”

  6. Tools and techniques to strengthen critical thinking

  7. Tools and techniques to boost creativity

  8. Tools and techniques to boost resilience

  9. Tools and techniques to widen or deepen perspective

  10. The impact of various “consciousness raising” practices

6: Collaboration

Becoming wiser and stronger together:

  1. Addressing individual blind-spots by collective analysis

  2. Designing teams to promote synergies rather than cancellation

  3. Forms of play and other team activities that boost mutual learning

  4. Strengths and weaknesses of wikis and other open systems

  5. Obstacles to collaboration

7: Emotional health

Nurturing emotional strength:

  1. Mindfulness

  2. Playfulness and recreation

  3. The benefits of a growth mindset

  4. The strengths and weaknesses of positive thinking

  5. Not being slaves to inner anxieties and other “demons”

  6. Handling fear of failure

  7. Dealing with underperformance in oneself and others

  8. Failing forward and failing fast (associated with Agility)

  9. Social skills and perceptiveness

  10. Understanding, supporting, and valuing diversity

  11. Distinguishing eustress (“good stress”) from harmful distress

  12. Links between emotional health and social circumstances

  13. Links between emotional health and physical health

8: Physical health

Factors impacting physical health:

  1. Augmenting the body

  2. Accelerating personalised medicine

  3. Opportunities for all-round “better than well” health

  4. New options for fertility and pregnancy

  5. Opportunities for lives in a state of permanent youthful vitality

  6. Anticipating the Longevity Escape Velocity

  7. Anticipating social changes due to greatly extended healthspans

9: Foresight

Anticipating the unexpected:

  1. When forecasts were mistaken

  2. Forecasters and superforecasters

  3. The purpose of scenarios

  4. Identifying trends that have the potential to cause disruption

  5. The factors behind potential exponential change

  6. Identifying potential accelerators – and brakes – for trends

  7. Establishing “canary signals” for advance warning of tipping points

  8. How trends can combine to form breakthrough scenarios

  9. Examples of interconnections producing unforeseen scenarios

  10. Using imagination to anticipate novel scenarios

  11. Methods to evaluate the credibility of imagined scenarios

  12. Methods to evaluate the desirability of imagined scenarios

  13. Methods to assess actions to influence the actual course of scenarios

  14. Precautionary and proactionary approaches to risk and opportunity

10: Leading change

Inspiring and maintaining transformations:

  1. Why major change initiatives often fail

  2. Positive methods to manage major change initiatives

  3. Cultivating a sense of urgency instead of complacency or resignation

  4. Building and managing a coalition to guide vital change

  5. Identifying and addressing misaligned incentives

  6. Moonshots and moonshot worship

  7. Crossing the chasm

11: Technologies

In history, the present, and the future:

  1. The structure of industrial revolutions

  2. Technologies and overhang

  3. Energy systems

  4. Food, clothing, shelter, and beyond

  5. Nanotech

  6. Biotech

  7. Infotech

  8. Cognotech

  9. Virtual and Augmented Reality

  10. Robotics

  11. Quantum tech

  12. Space tech

  13. Social tech

12: Economics

In history, the present, and the future:

  1. The positive accomplishments of free markets

  2. The failure modes of free markets

  3. The tragedy of the commons

  4. The mixed model

  5. The role of business

  6. The roles of money and banking

  7. Cryptocurrencies

  8. Tokenomics

  9. Protecting property

  10. Crime and punishment

  11. The circular economy

13: Governance

In history, the present, and the future:

  1. Regulating technologies

  2. Incentivising technologies

  3. Evidence-based policy vs. ideology-based policy

  4. Socialism and its issues

  5. Egalitarianism and its issues

  6. Meritocracy and its issues

  7. Minimal governance

  8. Lean governance

  9. Self-regulating technologies

  10. Trustable monitoring

  11. The narrow corridor

  12. Redistribution

  13. Social safety nets and social contracts

  14. UBI and FALC

  15. Centralisation vs. decentralisation

  16. Industrial strategy

14: Democracy

In history, the present, and the future:

  1. Technocracy and democracy

  2. The separation of powers

  3. Proactive vigilance

  4. Failure modes of democracy

  5. Deliberative democracy

  6. Enhancing democracy with AI

  7. The role of career politicians

  8. Beyond party politics

  9. Toward superdemocracy

15: Geopolitics

Influencing political processes, nationally and internationally:

  1. Sovereignty and interdependence

  2. The international separation of powers

  3. Nuclear deterrence

  4. Alliances and partnerships

  5. Self-governing virtual states

  6. Seasteading

  7. Rejuvenating the Bretton Woods institutions

16: Numeracy

Arithmetic and analysis for the modern age:

  1. Exponentials

  2. Probabilities

  3. Lies, damned lies, and statistics

  4. Estimating harm vs. ruin

  5. Complexity

  6. Numeracy for privacy and security

  7. Game theory

17: Science

Distinguishing “good science” from “bad science”:

  1. When scientists were mistaken

  2. Normal science and revolutionary science

  3. Debates over scientific methods

  4. Science and human nature

  5. Cognitive biases

  6. Social pressures on science

  7. Science and consciousness

  8. Science and parascience (parapsychology)

  9. Potential limits of science

18: Philosophy

Thinking about thinking:

  1. When philosophers were mistaken

  2. Practical examples of the impact of philosophical decisions

  3. The potential large impact of transcendent thinking

  4. Awareness of philosophical biases and fallacies

  5. Implications of modern science and tech for traditional worldviews

  6. Strengths and weaknesses of religions

  7. Strengths and weaknesses of humanism

  8. Theories of good and evil

  9. Virtue signalling

  10. Evaluating unborn generations

  11. Theories of mind

  12. Free will

  13. Approaches to determine ultimate priorities

  14. Evolving a framework for ethics fit for the 2020s

19: Transhumanism

A philosophy particularly suited to the 2020s:

  1. Components of transhumanism

  2. Varieties of transhumanism

  3. The values of active transhumanism

  4. The transhumanist shadow

  5. Criticisms of transhumanism

  6. Transhumanist culture

  7. Anticipating the growth of transhumanism

20: Culture

The basis for extended flourishing:

  1. Societies with increasingly diverse subcultures

  2. Limits to tolerant coexistence

  3. Coexistence with AIs and robots

  4. Coexistence with animals with uplifted capabilities

  5. Options for the future of work

21: The environment

The context in which humanity exists:

  1. Our cosmic context

  2. Environmental independence and interdependence

  3. Planetary boundaries

  4. The co-evolution of life and mind

  5. Options for re-wilding

  6. Options for de-extinction

  7. Options for paradise engineering

  8. Options for exploring the wider universe

  9. Alien life and the Fermi paradox

22: Landmines

Identifying and addressing the biggest risks ahead:

  1. The left behinds

  2. WMD proliferation

  3. Biotech hazards

  4. Infotech hazards

  5. Financial instabilities

  6. Environmental instabilities

  7. Political instabilities

  8. Cancers within society

  9. Reason under threat

  10. Divided nations

  11. Divided aging

  12. Bubbling under

  13. Existential opportunities

23: The Singularity

Options for the advent of artificial superintelligence:

  1. The singularitarian stance

  2. The singularity shadow

  3. Different routes to ASI

  4. Hard and soft take-off

  5. Possible timescales to reach ASI

  6. The control problem

  7. The alignment problem

  8. Human-ASI merger

  9. No Planet B

  10. The singularity principles

  11. AGI or not AGI: fundamental choices

24: Ultimate Futures

Beyond the event horizon:

  1. Picotech and femtotech

  2. Ultimate physics: births and deaths of universes

  3. Beyond human death: cryonics and reanimation

  4. Space-time engineering and technological resurrection

  5. The transcension hypothesis

  6. The simulation hypothesis

  7. Parallel multiverse branches: communication beyond base reality