We Are as Gods — Interactive Mindmaps

We Are as Gods by Peter H. Diamandis Book Cover

by Peter H. Diamandis

Peter H. Diamandis's We Are as Gods provides a survival guide for navigating exponential technologies, from AI and bioprinting to drone logistics, offering first principles thinking and the Six Ds framework for harnessing abundance. Written for anyone overwhelmed by rapid change who seeks a proactive mindset to turn disruption into creative agency.

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Chapter mindmaps

Free preview: chapters 1–4 are fully interactive. Click any node to expand or collapse. Subscribe to unlock the rest.

Chapter 1: Chapter One: Theogony

Key concepts: Chapter One: Theogony

1. Chapter One: Theogony

The Age of Holy Sh*t

  • We live amid biblical-scale miracles but call them Tuesday
  • Daily tech reenacts half the Old Testament by 9 AM
  • Awe replaced by dread and apocalyptic media explosion
  • Brain's prediction engine fails with exponential change

Exponential Technology: The Engine

  • Moore's Law and descendants double performance, drop cost
  • Convergence of multiple exponentials supercharges progress
  • PRIMA implant sits at intersection of computing, AI, nano-fab
  • Autonomous cars, humanoid robots, drone deliveries now real

From Biblical Miracles to Retinal Implants

  • PRIMA prosthetic restores sight to legally blind patients
  • Two-millimeter chip with 400 light-powered pixels
  • Average vision improved from 20/450 to 20/160
  • Nearly 3 million projected blind by 2040 from macular degeneration

Mapping Progress onto Biblical Miracles

  • Ten Old Testament miracle categories all now achievable
  • Creation via synthetic biology and 3D printing
  • Healing via CRISPR and stem cell therapy
  • Judgment via AI surveillance and predictive policing

Why We Don't Feel Divine

  • Brains evolved for local, linear world face global exponential
  • Novelty overloads system; analogies fail for godlike powers
  • Superhero film explosion since 1968 as psychological response
  • Information overload: 181 zettabytes vs 50-120 bits/sec bandwidth

Stewart Brand's Tall Order

  • 1968 proclamation: 'We are as gods' captured space age excitement
  • Old gods had monopoly on creation, omniscience, omnipresence
  • Old Testament yields 83 miracles in 10 categories as benchmark
  • We turned out to be very fast learners since 1968

The Cascade of Biases

  • Brain's coping shortcuts amplify negativity, confirmation, recency
  • Algorithms exploit and magnify these cognitive biases
  • Bias cascade blinds us to multiplying miracles around us
  • Challenge: reclaim attention and retrain predictions

Chapter 2: Chapter Two: An Abundance of Abundance

Key concepts: Chapter Two: An Abundance of Abundance

2. Chapter Two: An Abundance of Abundance

Abundance as a Double-Edged Sword

  • Technology turns scarcity into surplus
  • 200M escaped poverty, billions gained electricity/water
  • 90% own smartphones, $7.1M capability per device
  • Brings mental health crises, obesity, polarization

First Principles Thinking

  • Break problems to self-evident truths
  • Musk: rockets expensive because thrown away
  • Sunlight free, desalination costs dropped 60%
  • AI and robots could be 50x cheaper than labor

Six Ds: Digitization & Deception

  • Digitization turns things into bits, accelerates
  • Deception: exponential growth starts invisibly
  • COVID-19 doubled every 2.5 days unnoticed

Six Ds: Disruption

  • Invisible becomes market-shattering
  • Streaming kills CDs, smartphones kill film
  • AI assistants challenge traditional search

Demonetization

  • Costs vanish: long-distance calls become free
  • Supercomputing dropped from $25M to $799
  • Solar energy plummeted 85%

Dematerialization & Democratization

  • iPhone replaces dozen heavy devices
  • Everything as a Service shrinks physical bulk
  • ChatGPT, precision farming in everyone's hands

Positive Feedback Loop of Abundance

  • Lower costs + less bulk + wider access
  • More minds contribute to innovation
  • Accelerates abundance further

Chapter 3: Chapter Three: Data-Driven Optimism

Key concepts: Chapter Three: Data-Driven Optimism

3. Chapter Three: Data-Driven Optimism

Data-Driven Optimism Defined

  • Quantifiable approach transforms scarcity into abundance
  • Compounding momentum across all sectors
  • Age of miracles rewiring everyday life
  • Taking X and adding AI as business plan

Zipline: Medical Drone Delivery

  • Cut maternal mortality in Rwanda by 51%
  • Supplies 75% of Rwanda's blood in 20-30 minutes
  • Operates in 9 countries with 1.1M+ deliveries
  • Cuts emissions 84% and energy use 94%

Food Revolution: Eat Just

  • 90 billion land animals slaughtered yearly
  • Plant-based egg uses 98% less water
  • Cultured meat cost dropped from $330K to $10/kg
  • CRISPR-enabled cell lines target trillion-dollar market

Democratized Diagnostics: Openwater

  • Shrinks MRI from 2 tons to credit-card headband
  • Detects strokes in seconds via infrared light
  • Treats brain cancer with focused ultrasound
  • Open-sourced for next-gen digital therapeutics

Transportation Transformation

  • 50M+ electric vehicles on road globally
  • Autonomous robotaxis in over 50 cities
  • Flying eVTOL air taxis planned for 2028 Olympics

Healthcare Breakthroughs

  • CRISPR gene-editing therapies FDA approved
  • Stem cell treatments reverse Parkinson's symptoms
  • Openwater tackles mental health via diagnostics

Education Access and AI Tutoring

  • 250M+ more children in primary education since 2010
  • AI tutoring reaches 200 million students
  • Global literacy now at 87%

Chapter 4: Chapter Four: One Billion Times Smarter

Key concepts: Chapter Four: One Billion Times Smarter

4. Chapter Four: One Billion Times Smarter

From Scarcity to Abundance

  • AI is the engine driving abundance
  • Added $2 trillion to economy by 2022
  • Healthcare, energy, and agriculture transformed
  • PwC projects $15.7 trillion by 2030

Dartmouth Workshop and Early Struggles

  • 1956 workshop coined 'artificial intelligence'
  • Goal: simulate every aspect of learning
  • Complexity far exceeded optimism
  • Shifted AI from philosophy to science

AI Winters and Gradual Thaw

  • Neural networks failed nonlinear problems
  • Expert systems were brittle and expensive
  • Backpropagation revived neural networks
  • Deep Blue beat Kasparov in 1997

Deep Learning's Big Bang

  • AlexNet slashed ImageNet error rates in 2012
  • Error rate dropped from 26.2% to 15.3%
  • Perfect storm: data, GPUs, cloud computing
  • Hinton, Bengio, LeCun won Turing Award

Transformer and Generative AI

  • Google Brain introduced Transformer in 2017
  • OpenAI built GPT models from it
  • ChatGPT reached 100M users in 2 months
  • Over $200 billion poured into GPU clusters

Intelligence Explosion Warnings

  • Digital intelligence may exceed all human by 2030
  • Recursive self-improvement compresses decades
  • Cognitive gap like human to hamster
  • IQ of models rose from 101 to 148 in 2 years

Ethical AI and Emotional Companions

  • Raise AI like a child with kindness
  • Affective computing gives AI emotional IQ
  • Over 70% of devices will have AI EQ
  • Values embedded today shape superintelligence

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