The Creative Process in 10 minutes or less · Arts, Culture & Society: Books, Film, Music, TV, Art, Writing, Creativity, Educ The Creative Process

“We and all living beings thrive by being actors in the planet’s regeneration, a civilizational goal that should commence and never cease. We practiced degeneration as a species and it brought us to the threshold of an unimaginable crisis. To reverse global warming, we need to reverse global degeneration.”

“Living in California, I've just come to accept the unsettledness of this era we're moving into. And I think that's really how I see the future. You know, we're living in an era of disruption, and there are others I talk to and write about in the book who also muse about the possibility of a more nomadic future. That maybe home isn't a permanent place with deep roots but is a transient place with shallow roots or two places that you alternate between. In addition to a lot of other dramatic changes that the book is about, a change in our sense of home and our sense of place is a part of this story.”

“One of the things I think about a lot is this. I vividly remember the desire throughout pretty much most of my twenties and certainly my teen years to be a famous artist and win big awards. And when you dig down into what you actually want from that, it's connection. The teen brain, in particular, is extremely geared toward connection and gets different brain chemical payouts for different things than adults. So certainly, when I think of like teenagers, I think of that drive for connection and fitting in and being accepted is so strong. And that was a part of my artistic output or desire as well was like, okay, if I write, you know, something world-changing, like then it could be like a really well-regarded composer and get that respect. Or if I go more of the songwriting and film route, I can be beloved or have people love my music and have this emotional experience with my music. There were all these dreams that I had that I think largely boiled down to just wanting to be accepted. And you can get that outside of your career and outside of the arts.”

“I call myself an apocalyptic optimist. In other words, I do believe there is hope to save ourselves from the climate crisis that we have caused. However, I also believe that saving ourselves will only be possible with a mass mobilization that is driven by the pain and suffering of climate shocks around the world. A generalized sense of extreme risk can lead to peaceful and less-peaceful mass mobilizations at the levels needed to stimulate an AnthroShift. Only a global risk event (or numerous smaller events that are seen as threatening social and economic centers of power) will motivate the kind of massive social change that is needed. In other words, without a risk pivot—be it driven by social or environmental change—an AnthroShift that is large enough to respond adequately to the climate crisis and open a large enough window of opportunity postshock is improbable. 
At this point, it is impossible to predict if such a shock will come from ecological disaster, war, pandemic, or another unforeseen risk. What is certain, though, is that without such a shock that motivates an AnthroShift large enough to reorient all the sectors of society to respond meaningfully to the climate crisis, it is hard to envision the world achieving the levels of climate action needed. Instead, the best we can hope for is incremental change that does not disrupt the dominant nodes of political and economic power; such incremental change has the potential to reduce the gravity of the crisis, but it will not stop the coming climate crisis.”
– Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shocks to Climate Action

“There’s a lot of greenwashing that's going on these days. It is great marketing. And that was really the reason why I wrote this book. I had started to see the patterns. You can start to tell them the companies that are genuinely doing it versus the companies that are just talking about it. So that was one indicator, you know, a company that would send out a press release about their goals and what they anticipated to do in the next 5 to 10 years was very different from companies who had said, you know what, this is what we've achieved. Regenerative started coming into the lexicon, the term in 2017, 2018. And regenerative means to regenerate, means to bring life into something. To sustain means to keep the status quo. And regenerative looks at things from a very holistic lens. You know, it's like if you're going to run a regenerative farm, it's all the different components of the farm and the ecosystem ideally come within the ecosystem.”

“I'd like to focus more on the immediate harms that the kinds of AI technologies we have today might pose. With language models, the kind of technology that powers ChatGPT and other chatbots, there are harms that might result from regular use of these systems, and then there are harms that might result from malicious use. Regular use would be how you and I might use ChatGPT and other chatbots to do ordinary things. There is a concern that these systems might reproduce and amplify, for example, racist or sexist biases, or spread misinformation. These systems are known to, as researchers put it, “hallucinate” in some cases, making up facts or false citations. And then there are the harms from malicious use, which might result from some bad actors using the systems for nefarious purposes. That would include disinformation on a mass scale. You could imagine a bad actor using language models to automate the creation of fake news and propaganda to try to manipulate voters, for example. And this takes us into the medium term future, because we're not quite there, but another concern would be language models providing dangerous, potentially illegal information that is not readily available on the internet for anyone to access. As they get better over time, there is a concern that in the wrong hands, these systems might become quite powerful weapons, at least indirectly, and so people have been trying to mitigate these potential harms.”