Sunless is the second album by Coupler.

Written, performed, recorded, produced and mixed by Ryan Norris.
Vocal samples courtesy of Cortney Tidwell and Amy Marcantel.
Horn samples courtesy of Matt Glassmeyer.
Mastered by Jeremy Ferguson at Battle Tapes.
Photography and graphic design by Jonathan Marx.

08 Sunless

Steven Pinker writes: “Shermer has engaged the full mantle of moral progress and considered how far we have come and how much farther that arc can be bent toward truth, justice, and freedom."

“Through copious data and compelling examples Shermer shows how the arc of the moral universe, seen from a historical vantage point, bends toward civil rights and civil liberties, the spread of liberal democracy and market economies, and the expansion of women’s rights, gay rights, and even animal rights. Never in history has such a large percentage of the world’s population enjoyed so much freedom, autonomy, and prosperity.  The steadily unfolding revolution of gay marriage gives Shermer the opportunity to show how rights revolutions of many different kinds come about.“  [Steven Pinker is the author of "The Better Angels of Our Nature".  He gave a SALT talk on “The Decline of Violence” in 02012.]

Michael Shermer’s new book is "The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom".  His previous books include "The Believing Brain" and "The Science of Good and Evil".  He is the founder and editor-in-chief of "Skeptic" magazine and has a monthly column in "Scientific American".

"The Long Arc of Moral Progress" was given on April 14, 02015 as part of Long Now's Seminar series. The series was started in 02003 to build a compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking from some of the world's leading thinkers. The Seminars take place in San Francisco and are curated and hosted by Stewart Brand. To follow the talks, you can:

Subscribe to our podcasts: http://longnow.org/seminars/podcast
Explore the full series: http://longnow.org/seminars
More ideas on long-term thinking: http://blog.longnow.org

The Long Now Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to fostering long-term thinking and responsibility. Our projects include a 10,000 Year Clock, endangered language preservation, thousand year+ data storage, and Long Bets, an arena for accountable predictions. 

Become a Long Now member to support this series, join our community, and connect with our ongoing work to explore and deepen long-term thinking: http://longnow.org/membership

Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/longnow
Follow us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/longnow
Subscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/longnow

Seminars About Long-term Thinking

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Michael Shermer - The Long Arc of Moral Progress

Before Andy Weir's self-published novel "The Martian" became a "New York Times" bestseller and a blockbuster film, it began as a series of blog posts. Those posts, and the online conversation they sparked, reflect Andy's lifelong love of space and his detailed research into how humans could survive a journey to the fourth planet in our Solar System. In October of 02015, in his talk at The Interval, Andy skipped the fiction and discussed the details of how a real world mission to colonize Mars would work. Hosted by Long Now's Peter Schwartz.

"The Red Planet for Real" was given on October 27, 02015 as part of Long Now's Seminar series. The series was started in 02003 to build a compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking from some of the world's leading thinkers. The Seminars take place in San Francisco and are curated and hosted by Stewart Brand. To follow the talks, you can:

Subscribe to our podcasts: http://longnow.org/seminars/podcast
Explore the full series: http://longnow.org/seminars
More ideas on long-term thinking: http://blog.longnow.org

The Long Now Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to fostering long-term thinking and responsibility. Our projects include a 10,000 Year Clock, endangered language preservation, thousand year+ data storage, and Long Bets, an arena for accountable predictions. 

Become a Long Now member to support this series, join our community, and connect with our ongoing work to explore and deepen long-term thinking: http://longnow.org/membership

Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/longnow
Follow us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/longnow
Subscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/longnow

Andy Weir - The Red Planet for Real

The pundits we all listen to are no better at predictions than a “dart-throwing chimp,” and they are routinely surpassed by normal news-attentive citizens.  So Philip Tetlock reported in his 02005 book, "Expert Political Judgement"—and in a January 02007 SALT talk.

It now turns out there are some people who are spectacularly good at forecasting, and their skills can be learned.  Tetlock discovered them in the course of building winning teams for a tournament of geopolitical forecasting run by IARPA—Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity.  His brilliant new book, "SUPERFORECASTING: The Art and Science of Prediction", spells out the methodology the superforecasters developed.  Like Daniel Kahneman’s "THINKING, FAST AND SLOW", the book changes how we think about thinking.

Philip Tetlock is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.  With his co-researcher (and wife) Barbara Mellors he is running the Good Judgement Project, with its open competition: https://www.gjopen.com/ for aspiring forecasters.

"Superforecasting" was given on November 23, 02015 as part of Long Now's Seminar series. The series was started in 02003 to build a compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking from some of the world's leading thinkers. The Seminars take place in San Francisco and are curated and hosted by Stewart Brand. To follow the talks, you can:

Subscribe to our podcasts: http://longnow.org/seminars/podcast
Explore the full series: http://longnow.org/seminars
More ideas on long-term thinking: http://blog.longnow.org

The Long Now Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to fostering long-term thinking and responsibility. Our projects include a 10,000 Year Clock, endangered language preservation, thousand year+ data storage, and Long Bets, an arena for accountable predictions. 

Become a Long Now member to support this series, join our community, and connect with our ongoing work to explore and deepen long-term thinking: http://longnow.org/membership

Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/longnow
Follow us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/longnow
Subscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/longnow

Philip Tetlock - Superforecasting

No one thinks longer, or bigger, than astrophysicists.

“This is the golden age of cosmology,” says Priya Natarajan, one of the world’s leading astrophysicists, because data keeps pouring in to vet even the most radical theories.  And the dominant mysteries are profound.  She observes that “The vast majority of stuff in the universe—both dark matter and dark energy, which dominate the content and fate of the universe—is unknown.“

The universe’s greatest exotica are the focus of her research—dark matter, dark energy, and black holes. She is an expert, for example, in the complex behavior and gravitational lensing of galaxy clusters, where arrays of 1,000 galaxies are 95% dark matter.  Her theory of the “direct” formation of supermassive black holes may explain the profound mystery of quasars.

Priyamvada Natarajan is a professor in the Departments of Astronomy and Physics at Yale University and at the Dark Cosmology Center, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.  She is an active proponent for the public understanding and study of science.

"Solving Dark Matter and Dark Energy" was given on April 11, 02016 as part of Long Now's Seminar series. The series was started in 02003 to build a compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking from some of the world's leading thinkers. The Seminars take place in San Francisco and are curated and hosted by Stewart Brand. To follow the talks, you can:

Subscribe to our podcasts: http://longnow.org/seminars/podcast
Explore the full series: http://longnow.org/seminars
More ideas on long-term thinking: http://blog.longnow.org

The Long Now Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to fostering long-term thinking and responsibility. Our projects include a 10,000 Year Clock, endangered language preservation, thousand year+ data storage, and Long Bets, an arena for accountable predictions. 

Become a Long Now member to support this series, join our community, and connect with our ongoing work to explore and deepen long-term thinking: http://longnow.org/membership

Support This Series

Priyamvada Natarajan - Solving Dark Matter and Dark Energy

PLAYED BY:
GREGOR SCHWELLENBACH (PIANO)
LUKAS VOGEL (DELAYS)

TERRY RILEY - KEYBOARD STUDY #1 - FILM

The Enlightenment worked, says Steven Pinker.  By promoting reason, science, humanism, progress, and peace, the programs set in motion by the 18th-Century intellectual movement became so successful we’ve lost track of what that success came from.  

Some even discount the success itself, preferring to ignore or deny how much better off humanity keeps becoming, decade after decade, in terms of health, food, money, safety, education, justice, and opportunity.  The temptation is to focus on the daily news, which is often dire, and let it obscure the long term news, which is shockingly good.

This is the 21st Century, not the 18th, with different problems and different tools.  What are Enlightenment values and programs for now?

A psychology professor at Harvard, Steven Pinker is the author of: Enlightenment Now (2018); The Better Angels of Our Nature (2011); The Blank Slate (2002); How the Mind Works (1997); and The Language Instinct (1994).

Steven Pinker - A New Enlightenment

Examining the complex relationship between club culture and corporations.

For more, visit Resident Advisor: https://www.residentadvisor.net/podcast-episode.aspx?exchange=428

RA Exchange

EX.428 Branding In Dance Music

Sunday 27 January 2019
CTM 2019 – Persistence 
Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin

Video available via YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZLhM4AOS5k

Mat Dryhurst’s work has long been concerned with platform politics and decentralisation, manifest through attempts to seed alternative techno-cultural pathways through public proposals, teaching, and artworks. In this talk he will discuss our duty to the musical archive in the face of ahistorical algorithmic populism, and how now might be an opportunity to reconsider first principles. What do we actually stand for? How do we encode this ideology? Unpacking decentralised economic ideas such as DAO’s, Data Guilds and new Group Equity models, he will make the argument that we might want to consider a cultural hard fork.

CTM 2019: Protocols—Duty, Despair, and Decentralisation by Mat Dryhurst

Revelations about the Book of Revelation

Probably the most consequential vision of the future ever written is the Bible’s "Book of Revelation".  If God didn’t write it (through the sainted instrument of someone named John), then who did, and why?

Elaine Pagels has a persuasive answer, spectacularly illustrated.  The author of "The Gnostic Gospels"; "Beyond Belief"; and "Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation", Pagels analyzes other revelations of the time (they were common) and examines how John’s particular version of apocalypse made it into the world’s most popular book.  John had his own agenda.  It wasn’t Christian.

"The Truth About the Book of Revelations" was given on August 20, 02012 as part of Long Now's Seminar series. The series was started in 02003 to build a compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking from some of the world's leading thinkers. The Seminars take place in San Francisco and are curated and hosted by Stewart Brand. To follow the talks, you can:

Subscribe to our podcasts: http://longnow.org/seminars/podcast
Explore the full series: http://longnow.org/seminars
More ideas on long-term thinking: http://blog.longnow.org

The Long Now Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to fostering long-term thinking and responsibility. Our projects include a 10,000 Year Clock, endangered language preservation, thousand year+ data storage, and Long Bets, an arena for accountable predictions. 

Become a Long Now member to support this series, join our community, and connect with our ongoing work to explore and deepen long-term thinking: http://longnow.org/membership

Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/longnow
Follow us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/longnow
Subscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/longnow

Elaine Pagels - The Truth About the Book of Revelations

When thinking about the future, it is easy to forget to look behind you. Enter George Dyson, “a historian among futurists”, who does deep research into the history of computing to understand the trends that will bring us into the future. 

One of his persistent themes is taking the “digital universe” metaphor seriously. When we turned on the first computers, we created a computational universe, a universe that is now growing by 5 trillion bits of storage per second. This universe is not merely expanding--it is exploding, and we need to understand computer time as well as we understand human time. 

"No Time Is There--- The Digital Universe and Why Things Appear To Be Speeding Up" was given on March 19, 02013 as part of Long Now's Seminar series. The series was started in 02003 to build a compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking from some of the world's leading thinkers. The Seminars take place in San Francisco and are curated and hosted by Stewart Brand. To follow the talks, you can:

Subscribe to our podcasts: http://longnow.org/seminars/podcast
Explore the full series: http://longnow.org/seminars
More ideas on long-term thinking: http://blog.longnow.org

The Long Now Foundation is a non-profit dedicated to fostering long-term thinking and responsibility. Our projects include a 10,000 Year Clock, endangered language preservation, thousand year+ data storage, and Long Bets, an arena for accountable predictions. 

Become a Long Now member to support this series, join our community, and connect with our ongoing work to explore and deepen long-term thinking: http://longnow.org/membership

Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/longnow
Follow us on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/longnow
Subscribe to our channel: https://www.youtube.com/longnow

George Dyson - No Time Is There: The Digital Universe and Why Things Appear To Be Speeding Up

Scouring the cultural landscape in pursuit of ego gratification.

08 Sunless

Coupler

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