On Interdependence

The Long Now Foundation welcomes

Baratunde Thurston & Blaise Aguera y Arcas

On Interdependence

Attend the Long Now Talks in-person or via our livestream

Mix and mingle over drinks and small bites with other attendees at our pre & post-show gathering in the re-imagined Cowell Theater Lobby!

This event is made possible with generous support from the John Templeton Foundation

Join us for a conversation exploring interdependence as the core governing principle of nature and intelligence. Featuring Baratunde Thurston (Emmy-nominated producer and host of How to Citizen) and Blaise Agüera y Arcas (VP at Paradigms of Intelligence team at Google), we will examine how cooperation, rather than dominance, will shape our collective survival over the next 10,000 years.

Baratunde Thurston writes on interdependence as an Indigenous principle revealing a law of nature exhibited by all living systems. Relationships are core to sustaining life. In this age of cascading crises, Thurston urges, choosing to live in the truth of our interdependence may be the most important choice we can make.

Blaise Agüera y Arcas explores the future of evolving intelligence through the lens of AI symbiosis. He argues that dominance hierarchies are not how life on Earth tends to thrive; instead, cooperation is as vital a force as competition. Because explosions in intelligence are rooted in the collective, we are already part of everything we create, which in turn, is co-creating us.

Why This Talk Matters Now

As technology accelerates, “intelligence” is being redefined from two directions. New AI models are becoming increasingly capable, while biologists are finding intelligence in surprising places: single cells, fungal networks, immune systems, and whale song. The prevailing narrative about how human, animal, and synthetic minds relate is one of dominance and competition. Both Thurston and Agüera y Arcas argue this story misreads how living systems actually work: dominance is the exception in nature, symbiosis the rule. Together they arrive at a new approach to navigating technology’s current rate of change.

The Long View

Long-term thinking asks us to consider relationships across immense time scales. This requires us to take responsibility for the people, species, and systems we’ll never meet or create. That's what traditions of seven-generation thinking have always asked of us, and it only gets harder as the future changes shape. In a world where new intelligences are rapidly coming online, we need to extend an interdependence mindset across the species and ecosystems we already know, and the new minds that we’re creating and discovering. 

Learn More

WATCH: 

• Baratunde Thurston: From Me to We: A Story of Interdependence at Bioneers
• Blaise Agüera y Arcas: What is Intelligence? Long Now Talk

READ: 

By Baratunde Thurston

• Foreword to American Indigenous Democracy: A Call for Interdependence (available at the Talk)
• 250 Years Since Its Founding, America Needs a Declaration of Interdependence, Atmos Magazine

 By Blaise Agüera y Arcas

• What Is Intelligence? from Antikythera / MIT Press (available at the Talk) 
• Life, Intelligence, and Consciousness: A Functional Perspective on Long Now Ideas