Empowering HUMAN THOUGHT
to build a better HUMAN FUTURE

About Carl

I spent several decades doing research on the structure and design of DNA-binding proteins, making some fundamental contributions to the field. In 2001, I resigned my positions as a tenured Professor at MIT and an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to look at some even-more-critical questions about the power and limits of human thought and prospects for the human future.

After dedicating years to this research on thought, I came to realize that there is a dangerous mismatch between 1) the capacity of the human mind and 2) the complexity of the world that humans have built. This creates a kind of “complexity trap” that threatens modern civilization by making it hard for governments to deal with the challenges of the Anthropocene. I thus have developed — and continue to offer — new ways to help society work amidst this complexity, thereby improving prospects for a livable human future.