Nate Hagens

The cell enters one branch after that fork, and then that branch forks again.

At each fork, some of what was previously possible to that cell closes off.

By the time it reaches the bottom of a particular valley, it is now committed to being, for instance, a heart cell.

It will never again be a stem cell.

nor will it become any other type of cell, at least not without extraordinary intervention.

The valleys there are not all the same depth or size.

Some are deep and have very steep walls.

And once a cell enters, it stays because the constraints to leave are quite strong.

Some valleys are quite shallow.

A small perturbation or some chemical signal or a mutation might push the cell out and into a neighboring valley.

And the ridges between those valleys also vary in height.

Some transitions between cell states are relatively easy.

Others would require enormous energy or very specific conditions that rarely occur naturally.

I think this way of looking at a situation with valleys and ridges and mountains is useful because, you guessed it, I think it maps directly onto human civilizational futures.

When we imagine and discuss and work towards various futures,

We're not choosing from a list of possible futures the way you would choose from a Chinese restaurant menu where everything is equally available and the only question is your preference.

We're also not sitting at the top of a series of rolling hills and valleys like our imagined cell.

We're already rolling through a moving landscape with a shifting topography and some futures

I would argue most futures are downhill from where we currently are.

Some are uphill, and by downhill I mean the path of least resistance.