A New Story for Humanity: “The Grand Redesign” by Sam McRoberts (Book Summary)

This is a book summary of The Grand Redesign by Sam McRoberts:

I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book this short that’s packed with so many of my favorite subjects. I highly recommend reading it in full because it’s a quick read. Oh, and it’s free! Pick up your own copy: The Grand Redesign.

For a video intro to Sam McRoberts, check out:

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Quick Housekeeping:

• All content in quotation marks is from the author unless otherwise stated.
• All content is organized into my own themes (not the author’s chapters).
• Emphasis has been added in bold for readability/skimmability.

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Book Summary Contents: Click a link here to jump to a section below

• About the Book
• Human Operating System
• Technological Innovations
• The Big Challenge
• The Grand Redesign

A New Story for Humanity: The Grand Redesign by Sam McRoberts (Book Summary)

About the Book

“Change the stories, change the world.”

• “A new book that blends Science Fiction and Science Fact into a story like none other.”
• “A rock solid summary of what makes you you, in particular the evolutionary quirks that put you at the most risk, and that you most need to surmount to increase your chances of reaching your full potential.”
• “This short tome may not seem like much, but is, effectively, a mental vaccine. You have been, for lack of a better word, inoculated with a new set of unifying memes.”

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Human Operating System

“I think the best place to start though is with a foundation of what it means to be human, exploring the ins and outs of your strengths and weaknesses, so that you can see your way through to an alternate path. I need to show you your ordinary world in full detail, so that you’re equipped to build a better one going forward.”

Evolution & Prime Directive(s):

• “Evolution is not the most efficient process, and results in all manner of problems and leftover junk. For most of your existence you had no choice in the matter … Evolution selects chiefly for what you need to procreate and survive, and not for a full and accurate representation of reality. I can assure you, you do not experience reality as it truly is.”
• “Why do humans exist? Sex … Your deepest and strongest wiring, in the most ancient parts of your brain, deals with procreation, and both the topic and the activity still very much dominates your culture … And while procreation is essentially your prime directive, a close second is, of course, the drive for survival. Gotta live long enough to spread those genes!”

In-group Bias & Status Games:

• “All tribes tend to divide the world (or galaxy, or universe) into two groups; those who are part of the tribe, and those who are not. Us vs. Them. And in environments where scarcity and danger are still present, this inevitably leads to competition for resources, from which spring zero-sum (winner takes all) games … Your true tribe is Humanity, and your village is Earth…for now. And in truth, you are so, so much more.”
• “All social animals develop a group dominance hierarchy in some form or another, a pecking order to determine tribal control and resource allocation … Each individual in ‘The Game of Life’ is playing according to their evolutionary prime directives (procreate, survive), as well as the rules of whatever local ‘games’ they are a part of (tribe, religion, job, etc.), and while strong built-in social/cooperative programming helps to support those goals, at the end of the day the primary concern is with the creation and survival of self and offspring.”

Mimetic Behavior & Memetic Contagion:

• “One of the key aspects of the status game is identifying those who you feel are ahead of you in status, in a game in which you want to have higher status, and then trying to copy what they do in order to elevate one’s own status … Not only does this lead to an insane misallocation of resources and mindless consumption, but when you blindly copy someone else in a bid for status you are living inauthentically, and that is a surefire path to long-term (and often short-term) misery.”
• “Memetics is the field that deals with the spread of information through a group, a la Memes. As your scientist Richard Dawkins has said, ‘Memes (discrete units of knowledge, gossip, jokes, and so on) are to culture what genes are to life.’ Some ideas, just as with some genes, clearly spread faster and farther than others … Why? A combination of ‘fitness’ (how well the ideas fit within the human mind and the current social environment), emotional triggers (emotionally charged ideas spread farther and faster), and status value (whether the person sharing the ‘story’ can show tribal affiliation and/or gain status by sharing it).”

Emotions & Suffering:

• “Emotions serve as something of a control schema, based on the stimulus weightings you’re programmed with. Food good, sex good, sleep good, pain bad, hunger bad, rejection bad, etc … In plain English, emotions are more or less the unconscious brain’s puppet strings used to train and control ‘conscious’ you. A stimulus comes in, the brain compares that stimulus to its weighted (good/bad) database of needs and directives, and it triggers the brain chemistry mix that is most likely to secure compliance from conscious you based on how it evaluates that stimulus.”
• “Suffering functions in part as a steering mechanism for humanity (you’re wired to generally avoid suffering, which tends to benefit survival and procreation), but if taken to extremes it functions as a trap, a limiter on your potential … Sufficiently advanced beings simply do not suffer.”

Fear & Attachment:

• “Of all the emotional strings at the brain’s disposal, the most potent by far is fear … Fear is useful in small, precise doses, but it is incredibly limiting when it comes in an overwhelming torrent.”
• “Whether attachment of something to your identity, or attachment as in resistance to some form of change, it is a major limiting factor … Throughout the universe, the only true constant is change. And in a constantly changing universe, the wisest course of action is to appreciate everything, and attach to nothing.”

Free Will:

• “Free will, as you think of it, does not exist. But… That does not mean you don’t have or make choices. Of course you do, all intelligent creatures do. But those choices are not as free as you like to think … All things throughout the universe are interconnected. As such, nothing is truly free (disconnected, unencumbered). Everything is, to one degree or another, influenced … You do not control your genetics, the family you’re born into, where you are raised, who you grow up around, and for the most part what ideas and beliefs get firmly implanted in your minds at a young age. The vast majority of your physical and mental framework is not in your direct control. Yet.”

Language & Map is not the Territory:

• “Across every intelligent species we’ve encountered throughout the universe, one thing has been remarkably consistent: minds run on stories. Your stories are a key part of you, the software to your biological hardware … As a means of conveying information, language tends to be very lossy…errors in communication are not just common, but inevitable. Much like a game of ‘Operator’, too much meaning gets lost in translation.”
• “No description of a thing will ever match the actual thing … Language is a scalpel, carving out little pieces of your observed reality and attaching a label to that observation. Sticking with the map/territory metaphor, you can think of labeling things as the process of mapmaking. When you label, you divide and constrain. You set limits on what is and isn’t a thing.”

Memory & Attention:

• “While the brain jumps through numerous hoops to give you a conscious experience of memory that feels highly consistent and somewhat photographic, this is mostly an illusion. Again, in the name of efficiency, your brain uses what amounts to a compression algorithm to store highly grainy, incomplete memories. Furthermore, each time you recall a memory, that memory gets reencoded (often with edits), which can result in additional loss of accuracy.”
• “Because your brain is constrained in terms of processing power, bandwidth, and memory capacity, it has to be highly selective with what does and does not reach your conscious mind. As such, you are only ever aware of a tiny slice of reality at any given moment.”

Sensory Range & Shannon Limit:

• “The human brain is a remarkably efficient biological computer, consuming roughly 20 watts of energy to produce roughly 100 Teraflops of processing power. To put that in perspective, a computer at your currently level of development capable of similar processing would use roughly 50-100 times more power. As remarkable as this is, it attains this efficiency by taking numerous shortcuts.”
• “At present, the human eye can process roughly 0.0035% of the electromagnetic spectrum, though some humans (what you call tetrachromats) have evolved to see a bit more. Your hearing range is roughly 20hz-20khz, which is just a tiny fraction of the possible range of mechanical waves. Even your senses of touch, taste, and smell are incredibly narrow compared to other species just on your planet.”
• “The Shannon limit is your brain’s general limit on error free sensory bandwidth … If too much is going on, either the fidelity of your perception degrades, or it never even reaches your conscious awareness due to sensory gating.”

Known Unknowns & Unknown Unknowns:

• “A known unknown is something you know you don’t know. There are a TON of things you’re aware of, but do not fully understand, such as fusion, quantum physics, gravity, anti-gravity, faster-than-light (FTL) travel … That said, there are FAR more unknown unknowns, things you don’t even know that you don’t know, that are completely outside your sphere of awareness.”

Linear Perception & Time Bound:

• “As a finite species, with a beginning and end, your perception is by necessity linear and time bound … When the concept of time no longer holds meaning, when you no longer have an end, you will unlock an entirely new mode of existence.”

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Technological Innovations

“All your biological limitations are solvable via technology.”

Robotics / Automation:

• “With advances in robotics and automation, and with governments treating those things as infrastructure, it becomes possible to collectively raise the floor for all of humanity … As quickly as feasible, you need to find ways to automate all tasks that require human time that aren’t being done for personal enjoyment or satisfaction. If it’s seen as a chore (or if a machine can do it better), machines should do it. Simultaneously, you need to make sure the benefits of that automation pass directly to your people, and not into the pockets of the powerful and greedy. You’ve handled this poorly thus far.”

Artificial Intelligence:

• “While physical automation via robotics is an important step, a FAR more important step is cognitive automation … AI will enable far, far more people to express themselves, with shorter learning curves and greatly enhanced abilities.”

Quantum Computing:

• “Quantum computing leverages the probabilistic nature of reality to run computations that a transistor-based computer can’t.”

Clean Energy:

• “You should be focusing your immediate efforts on scaling nuclear fission, though you are already getting very close to viable fusion which is quite exciting (this is a very critical milestone for any intelligent species). Fusion will likely provide your civilization with all the energy you’ll need for some time to come, efficiently and at virtually no ongoing cost, so that is your most critical next milestone on the energy front … You must find a way to achieve energy abundance, because virtually everything else hinges on this step.”

Space Travel:

• “Many of your brightest minds are correct that being a single planet species is very high risk, from roaming black holes and asteroids to solar flares to gamma ray bursts, there are many, many things that could destroy your planet and your species, with little or no warning. If your species is confined to a single sphere, that is an enormous risk.”

Genetic Engineering:

• “You need to actively take over your own genetic evolution as quickly as possible because most of your civilizational problems are problems of neural hardware and software … This technology allows you to enhance your senses, your intelligence, and your memory. It enables the elimination of disease, and the extension of both healthspan and lifespan. It can cure mental and physical illness, strengthen your bodies, and so, so many other things besides.”

Bioengineering:

• “Reverse engineering many elements of nature that you can put to use, and blending nature and technology. Metamaterials, biomimetics, and cybernetics would all fall into this bucket.”

Neural Mapping & BCIs:

• “As a biological species you are limited by this universe’s laws of physics, but as a digital species, you can build universes of your own, with rules of your choosing, and live essentially as gods. Infinite experiences, infinite lives … You need to fully map and understand your brains in order to evolve beyond your current limitations and advance in adjacent domains.”

Nanotechnology:

• “Nanotechnology involves building structures (either stationary or mechanical) in the range of 1-100 nanometers in size (a fraction of a fraction of a human hair). These tools can be used for virtually anything, from repairing damage within the human body, to manufacturing objects, to creating or repairing technology of almost any size or type.”

Atomic Assembly:

• “Manufacturing at the atomic scale is THE key to making a post-scarcity society work … With this technology, any matter can be broken down and converted into any other form of matter. So long as you have energy available, you can create anything that you have mapped down to the atomic level.”

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The Big Challenge

“The key to improving anything is to first understand why it exists, second to understand how it works, and third to understand where it falls short of current and future needs (the evolutionary gap, so to speak).”

Outdated Hardware & Software:

• “You’re currently running hardware and software that’s at least 50,000 years out of date.”
• “You are NOT operating with the optimal set of hardware, or software, for your current environment.”
• “Your biggest challenge right now is that you’re running mental hardware that is millennia out of date, and that can’t keep pace with your technological advancements.”

Technological Development outpacing Psychological Development:

• “The ever-widening mind:technology gap is your most immediate risk.”
• “The linear evolution of your brain, which is quite slow, is being rapidly outpaced by the exponential rate of technological change.”
• “Every civilization that reaches this stage struggles with the same general thing, namely the pace of technological change vastly outpacing the evolution of the brain, and the attendant struggle for society to adapt quickly enough. This is what you would call a Great Filter.”
• “When the pace of neural evolution and technological evolution begin to rapidly diverge, you’ve entered a very narrow window of time in which you must learn to take over your own physical and mental evolution, or you will destroy yourselves.”
• “This is a VERY dangerous place to be, because it means you already have the technology to destroy both your species and your planet, but are still greatly limited biologically and technologically, are not yet cooperating at a planetary level, are still operating from a scarcity mindset, and are still stuck on one planet.”

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The Grand Redesign

“This is the single most important meta step, because if you can’t unite as a single species sharing a single planet, you will not be able to coordinate sufficiently to accomplish all of the biological and technological changes that need to be accomplished … You are Humans of Earth. You must drop the divisive labels and refocus your tribal nature to be global.”

Keys to Success:

• “You must unify as a planet, Humans of Earth, with a single planetary government.”
• “Become a post-scarcity civilization (a non-zero-sum game) … A post-scarcity society is one where everyone has everything they need, and many of the things they want: food, shelter, safety, utilities, medical care, education, etc. You would say they have the bottom two rungs of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs sorted out by default (physiological and safety needs).”

Step 1: Reduce the Flow of Negativity

• “Stop poisoning yourselves … Deliberately curate your sources of information to focus on neutral and/or positive sources.”

Step 2: Increase the Flow of Positivity

• “The goal here is to make positive information at least 80-90% of what you consume. Some important information won’t be positive, so you can’t aim for 0% negativity, but it should absolutely be a small part of your intake.”

Step 3: The Daily Kindness Pledge

• “It is very, very hard to hate someone who you are kind to, or who is kind to you. In fact, your very social wiring makes those who are kind to you part of your ‘tribe’. And just as importantly, you are wired for reciprocity, to repay kindness in turn. This pledge leverages this in your favor.”

Step 4: A New Enemy

• “While all of the above will help enormously, for now you are still wired to think in terms of Us vs. Them. Let’s put that to good use. Your minds still need an enemy, an ‘other’, but for the sake of your civilization that other MUST not be human. You must see yourselves as a unified species, as Humans of Earth. Luckily, there is an alternative staring everyone in the face. Death. The root of all fears, the thing you spend your lives running from. Your true enemy is, and has always been, death. Not each other, DEATH.”
• “The true challenge is framing death as a problem to be solved, not an inevitability, and securing the resources to solve it. But death is, and should be, your one true enemy. Once you conquer that, all battles afterwards are relatively trivial. Why is this so important? Because solving it pushes your vision and timeframe out effectively to infinity, so short-term thinking and the ‘let’s punt this out a generation’ attitude go out the window. If you have everything to live for, and death is not inevitable, you are now aligned as a species in prioritizing your survival. That which has a beginning and an end can’t help but see things in a finite way, but that which has no end develops an infinite point of view.”
• “Up until now, evolution has been your designer. It’s time for a redesign, with humanity at the helm.”

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