#0009 Clean the Microplastics Out of Your Body, Astrofuturism, We Weren't Meant to Have This Many Opinions, AI-coups

Welcome to Constant Flux, a weekly lens taking a systemic view on the polycrisis.

This week we take a look at how we are not fixing the problems at the source but rather countering complexity with more complexity. Variety with more variety. This is not necessarily bad, it's just how we function. Any budding management cybernetician understands this.

We are not dealing with closed systems. Every step forward creates new possibilities of action and reaction."
— Norbert Wiener

Doctors Say They’ve Found a Way to Clean the Microplastics Out of Your Body

I think that the above mentioned blood-cleansing clinic and this NeutraOat supplement reveal a deeper pattern -> As the world becomes more complex, we do not regulate it back into order. We adapt by adding more complexity.

This patterns is everywhere. Air travel fills our skies with carbon, so we invent offsets and machines to pull CO₂ back out. The atomic bomb reshaping geopolitics? We build nuclear deterrence. AI floods information systems, so we create filters and regulations (or at least try to) to keep up. We invent drugs like Ozempic to manage appetite and weight without changing the food system. In short, we do not dismantle the systems that cause instability. We build new layers on top of them.

As the link example shows, blood purification and fiber supplements follow the same logic. Microplastics are part of us now. Get used to it.

So the solution to variety is to add more variety. Another signal that management cybernetics is the proper lens to the poly-crisis.

Astrofuturism

Mysticism did not come back to destroy capitalism. It came back to help sell it...

The article shows how practices once seen as dangerous to society, like witchcraft, astrology and esoteric rituals, are being reclaimed as tools for empowerment. But of course, at the same time, these symbols are being turned into products.

But I believe we shouldn't think about these practices as escapism or comfort seeking. They add variety to how people make sense of the world. As the poly-crisis makes life more brittle and harder to predict. Small rituals and symbols open up new (old) ways to respond so this isn't a story about how you simplify life. It's about making it deeper and more flexible. Recognizing and living within the rotating polarities of life in 02025.

We Weren't Meant to Have This Many Opinions

Romero’s article looks at the growing problem of how we relate to expertise today. He rightly argues that the digital age, and especially social media, has flattened the space between experts and amateurs. Everyone’s opinion looks the same once it is stripped down to a post or a comment. Romero points us to Umberto Eco’s warning about giving the village idiot the same platform as a Nobel laureate.

Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community. Then they were quickly silenced but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It’s the invasion of the idiots.

But Romero also points to how moments like the COVID-19 pandemic, where scientific advice changed over time didn't really help in instilling more trust in experts (maybe Sweden being an exception) and blurred the line between knowledge and noise. In the end everybody was a state epidemiologist.

On the other hand, the very fact that advice shifted over time just goes to show the public's lack in understanding the scientific method - but hey, I get it.

This is exactly the kind of tension my c-thesis (currently underway, handing in on the 20th of May...wish me luck) on expertise and democracy is built around. Romero’s article shows how hard it has become to maintain both wide participation and a respect for expert input.

En fin, an article making it clear why democracies need to find ways to let expertise inform public discussion (without turning it into an epistocracy).

Ripples

Sounds Right Fund
Sounds Right lets nature collect royalties from its own sounds, turning music into a way to protect the planet. Definitely worth listening to I'd say.

Agent Village
Watch a bunch of AI agents making it up as it goes, running on its own guesswork 🙃

AI-Enabled Coups: How a Small Group Could Use AI to Seize Power
No need for tanks anymore. Just better access rights.

Relaxing Psychedelic Visuals to Surrender your Loosh to
No comment really. Other than it reminds of my dream last night when I was invited home to a party at Christopher Nolan's place.