passages-humanitys-deepest-task-already-begun-dissolve

# Humanity's deepest task is not to make the future... > {{Humanity's deepest task is not to make the future safe; it is to become a civilization capable of entering an unsafe future intelligently.}} It is to distinguish hazard from transformation, catastrophe from disruption, prevention from stewardship, and genuine control problems from the primitive desire to command history to stop moving. We should build guardrails where guardrails can save lives, defenses where defenses can prevent abuse, institutions capable of distributing gains, and technical systems designed to fail less often and less catastrophically. {{No committee, statute, corporation or laboratory possesses a lever marked **RETURN TO BEFORE**. The species has crossed another threshold in the long evolution of information, cognition and technology, and whatever emerges from this transition will inherit a world whose most basic assumptions have already begun to dissolve.}} **Source:** [[articles/We Cannot Un-Strike the Match|We Cannot Un-Strike the Match. There Is No Safety. There Is No Retreat.]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “Humanity's deepest task is not to make the future safe; it is to become a civilization capable of entering an unsafe future intelligently. It is to distinguish hazard from transformation, catastrophe from disruption, prevention from stewardship, and genuine control problems from the primitive desire to command history to stop moving. We should build guardrails where guardrails can save lives, defenses where defenses can prevent abuse, institutions capable of distributing gains, and technical systems designed to fail less often and less catastrophically. No committee, statute, corporation or laboratory possesses a lever marked RETURN TO BEFORE. The species has crossed another threshold in the long evolution of information, cognition and technology, and whatever emerges from this transition will inherit a world whose most basic assumptions have already begun to dissolve.” — Bryant McGill https://bryantmcgill.com/passages/passages-humanitys-deepest-task-already-begun-dissolve ```