The mainstream view is that for the world to be sustainable and stable, it needs to be more centralized and governed from the top.
That doesn't work, because the world is a complex system. It needs to be more functional, not more centralized.
The NNTaleb view is that to be sustainable and stable, the world needs to be decentralized and antifragile. In other words: not 1 government, but 100 well designed, functional governments with small, local democratic governance.
This seems necessary since societies are changing more rapidly, dealing with more problems and crises than before that just can't be effectively solved by bloated entities (see the EU), can't adapt quickly enough to various changes (see all the places in the US without fast internet), and aren't future-oriented enough because of inertia (see Singapore as a counterexample). It also seems more realistic than the article.
Edit: I didn't expect this response to blow up, so let me address more of the article:
1) Completely disagree that technology is "part of us". Amazon isn't a part of me, just a company I shop at. The closest thing we have to "explants" are the platforms we use, like Facebook or WhatsApp. The article seems heavy on buzzwords and light on common-sense. Encrypted messaging is the best solution, to maintain freedom of communication and reduce corporations' influence. That only requires installing Signal or WhatsApp, not "creating a new world".
2) People are not "property". You are free to share what you want. Others are free, too. If you want to work (Naval-style) towards decentralized, encrypted platforms, that's a step in the right direction. Doesn't require buzzwords either.
3) It seems like the article's worldview is based in an even greater influence of technology over our lives (as if the author realized that technology isn't really part of us, but wanted to make it so). The personal cloud would be hosted by "individual organizations", but what makes you think that 1 or 2 orgs won't emerge on top, and cause the exact same problem again?
> That doesn't work, because the world is a complex system.
You've buried an awful lot in that sentence without justifying any of it. I could just as easily say "decentralization and local governance don't work because the world is a complex system" and sound just as correct.
The bigger the banks, the more centralized the banks, the more fragile the banking system. Same for governments. Systemic risk increases as you increase the system's complexity, and you increase its complexity when you centralize it.
The underlying issue is that while decentralization makes one more stable and less susceptible to unexpected crises in the long term, centralization is almost always stronger and more efficient in the short term. Diverse food supplies, separate cultures, multiple governments may be necessary for long term human survival, but historically, the monoculture gobbled those up as soon as it has the technology. That, and you could argue that for some problems, large scale cooperation is always going to be needed, and these problems could surface on the very, very long term; i.e., a decentralized world might be antifragile for most problems, but if a meteor hits the Earth, you'd wish it had been coordinated enough to colonize Mars.
The question is how we maintain decentralization even as all short-term goals push us towards monoculture, and without completely destroying the long-term benefits of large civilization (i.e., I'm not an anarcho-primitivist.) And the only answers I can think of are bizarre and science-fictional, but I suppose that doesn't mean they can't come true.
Ok, but by your same logic it also means not a few monopolistic multinational silicon valley companies dominating our digital lives. These companies are already more powerful than many governments.
I think we need some kind of arbiter of last resort when there is contention for resources or other things which do not respect borders (like climate, resource depletion, pollution, disease, etc).
That doesn't work, because the world is a complex system. It needs to be more functional, not more centralized.
The NNTaleb view is that to be sustainable and stable, the world needs to be decentralized and antifragile. In other words: not 1 government, but 100 well designed, functional governments with small, local democratic governance.
This seems necessary since societies are changing more rapidly, dealing with more problems and crises than before that just can't be effectively solved by bloated entities (see the EU), can't adapt quickly enough to various changes (see all the places in the US without fast internet), and aren't future-oriented enough because of inertia (see Singapore as a counterexample). It also seems more realistic than the article.
Edit: I didn't expect this response to blow up, so let me address more of the article:
1) Completely disagree that technology is "part of us". Amazon isn't a part of me, just a company I shop at. The closest thing we have to "explants" are the platforms we use, like Facebook or WhatsApp. The article seems heavy on buzzwords and light on common-sense. Encrypted messaging is the best solution, to maintain freedom of communication and reduce corporations' influence. That only requires installing Signal or WhatsApp, not "creating a new world".
2) People are not "property". You are free to share what you want. Others are free, too. If you want to work (Naval-style) towards decentralized, encrypted platforms, that's a step in the right direction. Doesn't require buzzwords either.
3) It seems like the article's worldview is based in an even greater influence of technology over our lives (as if the author realized that technology isn't really part of us, but wanted to make it so). The personal cloud would be hosted by "individual organizations", but what makes you think that 1 or 2 orgs won't emerge on top, and cause the exact same problem again?