Peace events of the 20th and 21st centuries listed by decade

 The Trillion Tree Project

Podcast: Reversing Alzheimer’s: Dr. Heather Sandison and Dawson Church in conversation

Searchable database of energy therapy studies

Podcast: Consciousness Is All There Is: Dr. Tony Nader, world-wide head of TM, and Dawson Church in conversation

Dawson Guided Neuroliminal: Flourishing World, Flourishing Brain

As new studies are published, updates to Chapter 7 are published here.

 7.1. Global wellbeing from 1820 on. Author.

7.2. Workers. iStockphoto.

7.3. Joy at an EcoMeditation retreat. Author.

7.4. Jack Schwartz. Courtesy of Lois Schwarz. Public Domain.

7.5. Médecins Sans Frontières goes wherever the need arises. Shutterstock.

7.6. Athletes meditating. Shutterstock.

7.7. Wars between Great Powers from 1500 on. Author.

7.8. 1903 engraving of St. Joan of Arc. Albert Lynch, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

7.9. Number of homicides per 100,000 people in Europe from 1250 to the present. CC BY-SA 4.0, Our World In Data.

7.10. The mad electric crew. Photo by permission of Harald N. Røstvik.

7.11. NASA map showing substantial reforestation. NEO (NASA Earth Observations). Public Domain.

7.12. Pope John Paul II assassination attempt. Tullio Saba, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

7.13. Lunch 800 feet in the air. Charles Clyde Ebbets, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

7.14. Giving Pledge. Author AI.

7.15. Drone operator in Africa. By Oubaidallah - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia.

7.16. SQ improves productivity and mood in business. iStockphoto.

7.17. Compassion breeds connection across the generations. iStockphoto.

7.18. Picasso creating artwork by waving a light. Photo by Gjon Mili, from The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock.

7.19. Oregon State Beavers in action. Shutterstock.

7.20. Manila’s prayer and protest gathering. Shutterstock.

 This is a complete version of the abridged text that appears in the print version of the book.

Marketer Seth Godin compares AI to a mediocre writer and editor. Its output is bland. But it can collect many resources and do a basic job quickly.

Before AI became widely available in 2022, I tasked human editors with producing initial drafts. I would ask my editor Stephanie Marohn or my project manager Anitha Vasudevan to write a section on a study or a story of a celebrity. I would then develop that draft. An example of this is the story of Dwayne Johnson at the start of Chapter 2 or the Alzheimer’s study that concludes the chapter.

After I began using ChatGPT-4 in 2023, I made similar use of AI in the second half of the book. Below is an example of an AI draft, followed by the rewrite I gave it.

Here’s how GPT-4 outlined researcher J. L. Maron’s (2018) study of the evolution of the evening primrose:

  First, the case of the evening primrose (Oenothera biennis) demonstrates how human activities can drive swift evolutionary changes. Research conducted by Johnson et al. (2018) found that this plant evolved increased resistance to herbicides within just a few generations. The researchers observed that populations exposed to herbicides developed genetic mutations conferring resistance, allowing them to survive and reproduce while susceptible individuals perished. This rapid adaptation underscores the capacity of plants to respond quickly to environmental pressures, illustrating evolution in action over a remarkably short timeframe.
  

Not bad, but dull as ditchwater. Here’s how I rewrote AI’s well-meaning efforts:

The evening primrose (Oenothera biennis) is another weed that farmers aim to control, usually using pesticides rather than mowing.

But in carefully controlled studies, researchers found that certain evening primrose plants exposed to herbicides developed genetic mutations conferring resistance, allowing them to survive and reproduce. Their less-hardy neighbors died off, allowing the herbicide-resistant specimens more reproductive opportunities.

It took only five generations for the evening primrose to develop resistance to commonly used herbicides. This rapid evolution was facilitated by the plant's high reproductive rate and genetic diversity, which allowed resistant individuals to quickly dominate the population. Genetic sequencing revealed specific mutations associated with herbicide resistance, providing a clear genetic basis for the rapid evolution observed in the species (Maron et al., 2018).

Note that ChatGPT didn’t tell us exactly how many generations were required nor emphasize the specificity of the genetic mutations. It didn’t reveal how carefully Johnson and colleagues set up the experiments. It used uninspiring jargon and sentence construction that sounds boring, pretentious, and pedantic, like “populations exposed to herbicides” and “susceptible individuals perished.” It creates paragraphs that are too long. It’s riddled with subtle inaccuracies and off-target word choices. It made up a fictitious reference by the second author of the Maron study. All of this reduces the impact of remarkable stories.

Nevertheless, AI sped up the creation of content by creating basic factual text quickly and efficiently. Rather than drawing on many hours of Stephanie or Anitha’s time that could profitably be devoted to other high-leverage projects, I could have a draft in under a minute. I would then rewrite the material to address AI’s deficiencies and change the tone to that of an excited scientist sharing an amazing discovery.

I also found AI to be useful in creating images that human illustrators would find difficult to synthesize. The images of a loving person in Chapter 4 and a radiant person in that same chapter were produced quickly by AI.

However, AI was hopeless at other tasks; every image of a cross-legged meditator it generated had a third foot peeking out from under their robes. Mike Koenigs, author of The AI Accelerator, says that AI can do about 65% of a job and give you the basics. A human mind has to take things from there. I’ve found this percentage to be accurate.

To indicate where AI was used in image generation, in the Image Rights lists I attribute an image to “Author AI” rather than simply “Author.”