Problem: We are screwed if we don't fix thinking

We race toward authoritarianism, AI superintelligence, nuclear war, killer drones and biosphere collapse but can't end despised Daylight Savings. Individual minds trapped in private mental models struggle with problems needing 700 concepts when our brains hold just 7. We're overwhelmed by modern pace, complexity, noise, and lies. The meta-problem: we can't even discuss our problems without triggering tribal warfare.

Vision: deliberately design Humanity's next thinking technology

Imagine humanity thinking as one, through shared semantic infrastructure—a Merged Mental Model (MMM) where diverse perspectives combine rather than clash. Unlike social platforms needing millions to matter, this "motorcycle for the mind" empowers even single users to juggle 70 concepts, manage nuanced evidence chains, and fluidly perceive multiple worldviews. When we connect our ideas directly (with the right algorithms), we get species-scale cognition, not social media noise. Using an extended 'knowledge graph' platform, human and machine voices are brought together harmoniously — providing superintelligence without sacrificing the humane. Unlike tools that force consensus (Google Docs, Wikipedia, GIT), the MMM maintains a superposition of perspectives - no rush to belief, no collapse to false unity, while maintaining source provenance. This is a knowledge ecosystem for what we know, how we know, what we value, and why we believe it.

Status

We are a four person multinational team overlapping in cogsci, tech, design, humans and business — pioneers with multiple web 'firsts' in e-comm, edu, law, academia. Shawn (https://smurp.com) has been unpuzzling the power-v-wisdom hazard since '77; spearheaded an existential risk think-tank in 1989 and was pitching distributed hypertext for civil society in 1987, before the web. We've been bearing the vision, the research, the engineering and the cost of developing this technology for over 40 years, multiple startups, and a score of prototypes.

ThinkerToys is to the MMM what Netscape (née Mosaic) was to the WWW — the first browser for humanity's next cognitive infrastructure — by revealing the Merged Mental Model where we can think and act together at scale. It overturns the WWW's old apps, sites and docs paradigm — where ideas go to die in silos, walled gardens and incompatible file formats (bugs for people, features for rent takers.) On the MMM the new first-class entities are assertions, models, experiences, presentations, worldviews and, all around them, us people — asserting, comparing, designing, choosing, deciding, inventing, and all those other thinky things us fancy monkeys do.

So now, when AI timelines are collapsing, international civility tanking and tribalism skyrocketing — the MMM is needed YESTERDAY — and our little team should no longer, foolishly, try to carry this ourselves. We need to finish off the latest version of multi-user infrastructure for the MMM. We've got to thank our patient angels, call in our outside collaborators, explain the science and document the technology — so this private moonshot can become a global movement. To do this, we need the help of our community to fund and perform the final push and get this revolution out the door.

Cracking the Chicken and Egg Problem

When the toughest problems demand superposition-of-perspectives, and the thought leaders solving them adopt these tools, keeping up means joining in. Especially when the alternative is feeding more money to untamed AI. Meanwhile the MMM has tame ways for AI to participate. So, by partnering with workers in AI risk, democracy resuscitation and the salvation of peer-review -- the roll-out plan puts this tool where the future is going.

Potencies, not apps! (these emerge from the no-code features of ThinkerToys on the MMM)

• HyperVideo - Collaborative hypermedia, from realtime multi-stakeholder meetings to refined, multi-perspectival productions
• Map of the Future - How else to find safe passage to futures worth living in?
• Encyclopedia of the Future - Updated by events, responds to your knobs — view the future with our best understanding
• LegislationForge - Legislatures are too porky, citizens might draft laws in post-partisan public fora which support convergence
• Mind2Mind - Extensible enterprise suite powered by our ManyVoices tech
• SciForge - Citizen science and cross-disciplinary research are evidence-based mind-melding at scale
• FundForge - Drives impact funds powered by evidence and multi-stakeholder insight
• Alum2Alum - Boosts the latent trust, alignment and wealth of alumni networks to new cognitive and performance levels

Structure

We are establishing the Noospheric Software Foundation, a non-profit to steward all technical and collaboration efforts related to our collective cognition mission. Civilization infrastructure presents unique funding challenges—while VCs excel at scaling proprietary platforms and academia advances disciplinary knowledge, we need hybrid models for open technologies serving collective wisdom.

The Foundation's structure is designed to prevent the principle erosion we've witnessed elsewhere—from Google's abandoned "don't be evil" to OpenAI's shift from open research to proprietary development. By remaining transparent and mission-driven rather than profit-driven, we protect against the institutional drift that occurs when profit overrides values.

As the software proves itself, the Foundation will pioneer sustainable funding through its own technology—allowing organizations and communities who benefit from enhanced collective cognition to support its continued development. This creates alignment between the platform's success and humanity's improved capacity for wisdom, rather than traditional extraction models. The Foundation will follow Wikipedia's proven model of open infrastructure and open content, with appropriate licenses for each layer. One of the early collaborations on the platform will validate this plan, in the context of its novel combination of semantic code in content.

Roadmap

• 6 months: Launch the multi-user network with essential initial collaborators, including YOU; explain the science; document the tech; and finalize foundation and governance
• 9 months: Engage 10+ critical institutions which need this the most
• 12 months: Harden for massive scale with an expanded team

Initial, invited collaborators, chosen to facilitate bridges to engagements with critical institutions, will help unlock funds for subsequent phases.

A Note on Proof

Fermat famously promised a proof there were no solutions for aⁿ + bⁿ = cⁿ (where n>2) but it was "too large to fit in the margin". Only 358 years later Andrew Wiles published a 129 page proof that had taken him seven years in an attic. We cannot prove to you that this mad thing will transform society, we ask only that you give us a chance to try. By the way, Andrew Wiles doesn't believe Fermat had a valid proof. The only possible proof is for us to try! It is absurdly ambitious. We won't be disappointed if this doesn't start an avalanche. At the very least it will be a dramatically superior collaboration technology. We'll be devastated if we can't give it a proper try.

Ask: any amount, as soon as possible

This project needs $400K (USD) for

• $350K - 12-month runway for our 4-person team with room for a hire
• $50K - Launch the Noospheric Software Foundation plus essential buffer

This $400K jumpstart supports the team while proving multi-user viability and establishing initial collaborations and the Foundation. Success unlocks subsequent growth phases. We know projects of this scale have non-trivial costs - we're just asking for help to launch it with the right partners.

How to Support

• Join the movement: $5/mo or $50/year at https://noosphere.org/blog/fund/#/portal/signup
• Initial support until the Foundation is operating: Any amount via https://wise.com/pay/me/shawnm48 or EUR to "Shawn Murphy" at IBAN: BE87967063344194
• Volunteer: Coder? Designer? Lawyer? Accountant? Writer? Artist? Film-maker?
• Major donors ($1K+): Membership in the Foundation Council
• Impact Investors (>$10K): Structured investment vehicle available
• Founding supporters ($100K+): Seat on the Foundation Advisory Board

Questions? Advice? Volunteer? Meet: https://smurp.com/meet or email: wiseup@smurp.com

Our power explodes while wisdom wavers. Experts warn their red lights are flashing. Let's jolt humanity awake with tech to put our heads together, so we can steer our future. You pay for internet... what would you pay to make the future more livable?

0:07 Trinity will be lost
0:10 Neo sees the only solution – he ties his fate to the rope and to Trinity
0:17 Trinity sees the only solution and ...
0:21 ... leaps from the chopper
0:27 It works – Neo and the rope save Trinity

Trinity and Neo converged on the only solution achievable. Being unique and obvious – they could arrive at it together, without coordination. By radically valuing and trusting each other they were able to risk everything – and achieve the ideal outcome.

A Schelling Point can be arrived at without coordination because that place, time, or strategy is optimal, obvious, deducible or otherwise unique. It is a attractor in solution-space.

Neo and Trinity display Absurd Optimism: by committing their lives, but also creating meaning with their actions, in effect saying "this is what I am" and "this is what matters".

We are in a similar situation to Trinity and Neo. Our fates are linked. Our situation is dire. Continuing in the normal way is how we got here. For us, for us all, to survive, to flourish -- for our future to be the best it can be -- we must see that our outcomes are shared. We all want a future where the sky is blue, the water clean, the food healthy and the world is safe for babies.

So how shall we act? What risks wouldn't we be willing to take if that future could be secured? Shouldn't we try to figure that out? What stands between us and a bountiful future for all?

Let us commit to one another's well being and begin, together, to figure out the needed actions.

Researchers at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management have developed a fun and challenging tool to test how well YOU can detect deep fakes.

Give it a try

"How do you spot a deepfake? How can you tell if an image is AI-generated? How well can people distinguish between AI-generated media and images, audio, and video recorded by a traditional camera or microphone? Detect Fakes is research project hosted at Northwestern University by researchers at the Kellogg School of Management to examine how people distinguish truth from fiction in online media, especially as synthetic media becomes more and more realistic. This research started at the MIT Media Lab in 2019 by examining comparing human, AI, and human + AI performance at detecting deepfakes."

They published their results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper: Deepfake detection by human crowds, machines, and machine-informed crowds

We all make time to eat—so why not use that same time to meet? Sharing a meal is friendly, fun, and a chance to build and sustain relationships. It's such a valuable activity that even those of us who work alone at home—like so many knowledge workers do—might consider scheduling "virtual lunch dates." This way, we can enjoy the benefits of dining together without giving up the focused solitude that makes remote work so productive.

In particular, those of us who are researchers and developers in the realm of collaboration technology really ought to consider making virtual lunch dates with others in the field, to get to know one another better and to see if we can address one of the great ironies in this field. It is hard to get collaboration techies to actually collaborate! Sharing a virtual lunch is a fun, light and low commitment way to address that.

It is just one of many convergence rituals which can help us bring about the positive future we are all working toward.

We have not gotten to the point of having convincing androids walking among us, of course, but we are well past the point of deepfakes being easy to detect.

This list is far from comprehensive but here are some things to watch for, going from the completely obvious through to the really quite tricky. Keep coming back, we will keep refining this list.

obvious – hard to ignore

• gibberish text (eg completely random letters)
• mangled letter forms ("what letter even is that?")
• too many twins (eg all the cheer leaders are the same woman)
• extra arms and such (eg "whose arm is that?!?")
• impossible juxtapositions (eg dinosaurs in old photos of cowboys)

uncanny – seems a little off

• inconsistent blinking (too fast, slow, one-eyed)
• misshapen irises or pupils
• draped cloth disobeying gravity
• repetition when there should be none

non-obvious – easy to miss

• the lenses of eyes not being transparent
• the whites of eyes not being translucent
• too many or two few fingers or toes
• problems with scale: too large, too small
• changes in scale (eg growing too fast when coming closer)
• round or curved things having geometry when they shouldn't (eg circle is really a rounded off octagon)
• inconsistent object persistence (things appearing or disappearing)
• impossible perspective (floor tiles not converging)
• different things obeying different perspective
• impossible physics (eg goats leaping in straight lines)
• uncanny physics (eg jelly jiggling wrong, waves too wavey)
• anatomical impossibility (mis-directed joints, missing skeletal structure)
• anachronistic information (today's newspaper in JFK's hands)
• missing reflections
• handedness in reflections and backsides being wrong
• high-lights (those white spots where the illumination is reflected) being missing or misplaced
• repeated textures or patterns (ie when they should be random)

subtle – hard to notice

for members only

boss level – hard to prevent

sorry bots, this is for paying humans only

It's official. We can't believe our lying eyes.

Here is a video which, to this moment, has garnered 1.7 million views; 1,830 comments and 44 thousand likes – but no one has commented on the practical certainty that it is AI-generated.

Don't believe it? Consider that this heroic young woman has no name, is completely symmetrical, is possessed of a perfect complexion and is presented to us by a channel which does nothing but post heartwarming imagery much more obviously AI-generated than this. The fact that it was generated in the past few weeks is a bad sign, because that is when such photorealistic shams have gotten very good indeed.

Still not convinced? Notice that the writing is nonsense. OK, maybe it is Cyrillic, but it is still nonsense. Yes, her fingers are pretty reasonable (though that thumb is a little long) but within the bounds of the plausible, so we can't rely on AI's notorious difficulty with our clever humanoid digits. Notice though, that while her watch has the winder on the correct side (indicating that the image has not been reflected for layout purposes) and it agrees with that stylized K on her red shirt – its handedness disagrees with the big sign back behind her head. Even if the sign is some Cyrillic neologism, it is reversed for no plausible reason.

Claude AI judges the likelihood this image is AI-generated as at least 85% and that is without considering various "tells" which I shall refrain from identifying at this time. There are some systematic failures which the perpetrators of this kind of deception seem to be unaware of and which we should not rush to help them understand. Join in the fun and Spot The Bot with some help from check lists and other resources we're curating.

The point of this post, though, is to establish that we are now well past the uncanny valley. Humans must be very alert, suspicious and even possessed of some expertise to be able to detect the handiwork of the bots and the humans who wield them. This particular deceit plucks at our heartstrings but is not, in itself, particularly dangerous. The capacity for wholesale deception which it demonstrates though (remember 1.7 million people were apparently bamboozled by this) should utterly terrify us.

The take-home point is – we can no longer believe anything our lying eyes might tell us, and – we are going to have to figure out what this means for politics, policy and technology.  

Here at the Noospheric Software Foundation we strive not only to contribute to this dialog but to the creation of fundamental technologies which might support the process of us collectively making sense of even the most complex puzzles.

Consider the case of Daylight Savings Time (DST).  It goofs up everyone in its grip. It costs billions. It even kills people: speeding, late for work or driving, under slept. It confuses entire nations. We try to turn it off, yet every year it evades eradication merely by requiring that we coordinate our decision to end it.  Which year? Leave it on? Leave it off? Double it up!?! Is our software ready?

Thankfully though, very few people's jobs depend on Daylight Savings. No billionaire is bribing anybody. No corporation is massing an army of trolls. No intelligence agency is tracking influencers. There are no scientists incentivized to shill for it.  No activist editors are skewing Wikipedia. No tribes have unholstered their bullhorns to bray at one-another. No politicians have tied their reputation to it. We haven't become numb to it to protect our sanity. No odious epithets are being flung about. In short, there is no confusion about the truth of its malignancy because the information space around it is not weaponized. For these reasons, it is probably the SIMPLEST problem we have.  Yet, we can not solve it.

So if the simplest coordination problem is insoluble, what about all those other conundrums where identity, reputation, legacy, jobs, money, power, health, liberty and lives are at stake? To merely mention them is to raise hackles, close minds, divide camps, ruin the party and burn the library. I’ll bleep them so no one swoons (Bi*en, Cli*ate, Co*id, Tr*mp, Tr*ns, Ch*na, Pu*in, Is*eal, Ukr*ine, Br*xit, Ta*wan). What about existential mayhem like Robots, Bioweapons, Nanotech, A.I. or Nukes?  For extra fun try mixing the lethal ones together — our governments are.  We can’t deal with setting back our bloody watches! How can we possibly cope with anything actually complicated?  Seriously.  Face this.

We’re screwed seventeen ways to Sunday and it is essential that we raise up our eyes from the details of any particular stupifyingly vast catastrophe and consider a more comprehensive view. We’ve got to figure out how to talk and think and actually WORK together.  Globally.  Immediately.

About one eighth of the global population of 8 billion people interacts daily with someone on another continent.  So 1 billion of us are talking with dispersed family or trying to reach scattered business collaborators or "dialing in" to remote work on a daily basis.  At the extreme end, many of us are trying to set up calls between people on all the populous continents on a daily basis.  It's bad enough trying to make an appointment between two busy people in the same city.  It is absolutely nuts to set up a one-time call between people on multiple continents. Those few who are regularly travelling between time zones are in an even worse situation as they struggle with jet lag and changing times.

So, not only is it difficult to find the moments of intersecting free time – that is something that even neighbours have to do – it is especially difficult to find those shared moments when we give them different names.  I might call it "10 am" (when I'm on the North American West coast) but, of course that's also "1 pm" for my friend in Toronto and "19:00" for my partner in Barcelona. Dealing with new collaborators in unfamiliar timezones and NOT messing up your first call or two is something of an exception.

So, what can we do about this? Well, there are already organizations which have solutions. The US military and NATO and space agencies – and international organizations in general – all have far flung elements who need to be coordinated. What they use is GMT – or as NATO has called it for decades – ZULU time. "Zulu" is shorter to say than "gee em tee" and the abbreviation for Zulu is just "Z".  So 2025-02-21T09:00:00Z – or "Oh nine hundred Zulu" as NATO nerds say it – is an unambiguous moment in time understood by hundreds of millions of people around the world.

The billion or so everyday civilians who need to share times with friends, family and coworkers around the world can just use ZULU. The puzzle is how to do that conveniently.  One might think your cell phone, being as clever and programmable as it is, should make it easy to work with Zulu time. Of course, a person could simply  set their phone to use Zulu (also known as GMT for Grenwich Mean Time) as its main time. The truly committed globe trotters among us may well already do that.

The vast majority of us, though, spend most of our time in a single time zone and only need to change our own time when daylight savings comes or goes. No, we should probably leave our phones and computers set to local time.  In fact, our phones automatically change their time whenever we hop off a plane and get synced up with a cell tower. That is truly a great feature and we don't want to mess that up.

OK, so here is a modest proposal. Those who wear a watch could set it to Zulu. That way our phones keep on telling us the local time wherever we are and wherever we go. Meanwhile our wrist watches will tell us something else and that is World Time – Zulu time. This way we have two things we can rely on, our phone telling us what time it is where we are, and our wrists telling us World Time.

So, let's "GO ZULU"! It's the thing to do for the billion of us who need to fuss around with time zones every day.  If you want to tell a contact about this idea – the how and the why of it – and the tools and techniques to make it easy, just tell them "GOZULU" (one word) and that should bring them here...

https://gozulu.app/

Going Zulu is just one of many convergence rituals which can help us bring about the positive future we are all working toward.

Humans and dogs have co-evolved. Our funny fur buddies have fangs which can end us. We can confuse them with a blanket. We are at peace with them. We are partners. Heck, we love one another. We overwhelm them at tests of IQ and the ability to unpack emojis. Yet we don't judge them unfit. We are delighted by them. They surprise us. We continue to learn from them. The difference between us is our value to one another. How can we become valuable to AI? How can we trust one another?

In the realm of collective thinking, few practices are as valuable yet underutilized as intentional one-on-one conversations designed to bridge conceptual gaps between individuals. I'd like to propose a name for these structured dialogues: Mind Melds.

What are Mind Melds?

Mind Melds are deliberate conversations between two people with the explicit goal of developing deeper sympathy and comprehension for each other's perspectives, mental models, and terminology. Unlike casual conversations or formal meetings, Mind Melds focus specifically on understanding how another person thinks and communicates.

Why They Matter for Global Brain Building

Those of us working in fields related to collective intelligence face unique challenges around terminology and conceptualization. The distinctions between closely related domains are subtle but significant:

• Collective Cognition workers focus on how groups process information, make decisions, and generate insights beyond individual capacity.
• Global Brain Building practitioners tend to emphasize the structural and technological systems that connect human minds at scale.
• Sense-making specialists concentrate on the processes by which individuals and groups construct meaning from complex information flows.

These adjacent fields often overlap, yet their practitioners may use the same terms to describe different phenomena, or different terms for the same concept. Without shared vocabulary, progress stalls.

Bridging the Architect-Visionary-Activist Divide

Perhaps nowhere is this terminology challenge more evident than among the architects, visionaries, and activists working in these fields. These are individuals of phenomenal high-mindedness and good intention, yet they frequently find themselves unable to collaborate effectively despite fundamentally aligned goals.

The architect may speak of "information architectures" and "data flows," while the visionary discusses "emergent consciousness" and "collective intelligence." Meanwhile, the activist focuses on "democratic participation" and "equitable access." Though all three might be describing compatible or even identical concepts, the terminology masks what could be powerful convergent activities.

This siloing effect is particularly tragic because these fields need the combined talents of all three perspectives:

• The architect's rigorous structural thinking
• The visionary's expansive imagination of possibilities
• The activist's grounding in human needs and social contexts

Mind Melds between these different roles can reveal surprising alignments and create opportunities for collaboration that might otherwise never materialize.

The Structure of an Effective Mind Meld

A Mind Meld isn't just any conversation. For maximum effectiveness, consider the following structure:

1. Set clear intentions: Begin by explicitly stating that the goal is mutual understanding, not debate or decision-making.

2. Exchange mental models: Take turns describing how you conceptualize specific aspects of your work.

3. Terminology mapping: Identify terms that each person uses differently and create a shared understanding.

4. Explore misunderstandings: Discuss past instances where terminology differences led to confusion.

5. Co-create new language: For concepts lacking adequate terminology, collaborate to develop new terms that capture shared understanding.

Benefits Beyond Better Communication

While improved communication is the primary goal, Mind Melds offer additional benefits:

• Intellectual cross-pollination: Practitioners in adjacent fields can discover unexpected connections and insights.
• Innovation catalyst: New ideas often emerge at the intersection of different perspectives.
• Knowledge transfer: Implicit knowledge becomes explicit through the process of articulation.
• Field advancement: Developing shared terminology accelerates knowledge building across the broader community.

Implementing Mind Melds in Practice

Until software solutions emerge to facilitate this process more directly, these conversations serve as a crucial bridge. Consider:

• Seeking out practitioners from adjacent fields whose perspectives might complement your own
• Documenting insights and terminology agreements in public knowledge repositories
• Creating opportunities for Mind Melds at conferences and gatherings
• Building rituals around the practice to emphasize its importance

Conclusion

In fields as complex and emerging as collective cognition, global brain building, and sense-making, we cannot afford to talk past each other. Mind Melds offer a structured approach to developing the shared understanding necessary for true collaboration and advancement.

Mind Melds are just one of many convergence rituals which can help us bring about the positive future we are all working toward.

If, when we collaborate with one another, we notice that the interactions are producing favourable results then we might experiment with increasing the frequency of interactions and the promptness of our responses. If the channels that we are using are asynchronous, for instance mail, then augmenting with more synchronous chat technologies could accelerate the positive feedback loops. This up-regulation can be countered with down-regulation when the results of interactions are less clear.

Works with

• Mind Melds
• Solidarity Among Humans