A conversation with Howard Bloom (2)

This conversation with Howard Bloom continues my previous conversation with him of two weeks ago.

We discussed (among other things) Howard’s new book “The Case of the Sexual Cosmos: Everything You Know About Nature is Wrong” (2025), his previous book “The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism” (2010), and my last book “Irrational mechanics: Narrative sketch of a futurist science & a new religion” (2024).

I had prepared these discussion topics:

I propose we start with the question that I stupidly skipped: I look forward to hearing what Howard thinks real progressives (without scare quotes) could and should do to build a culture able to green the galaxy… without Trump. Last time Howard suggested that democratic parties should embrace the principled and inspiring capitalism described in “The Genius of the Beast.” I’ve been reading the book again.

I’ve also been reading “Abundance” by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson (2025). This book proposes a way for liberals and the U.S. Democratic Party party to recover the lost energy and fall in love with the future again. It is highly recommended by Andrew Yang. I doubt the liberals will listen, but they really should.

Then we move to the new math of flamboyance, my mission is shedding a bit more light upon it. My last book is relevant and if you have found time to read it I would like to hear your reactions. Otherwise we move to current suggestions on what this new math could be: maximum entropy production and similar ideas from thermodynamics, stochastic mechanics, fractal spacetime (my current obsession) etc.

Howard Bloom & Giulio Prisco.

Of course we wandered off many tangents, including Islam and (of course) Donald Trump.

I mostly wanted to discuss the new math of flamboyance (the new math of one plus one equals three) but we kept falling back into politics. I loved it when Howard recommended radical centrism as the best answer to current political tensions and problems.

I didn’t complete the argument about maximum entropy production that I started before minute 81 in the video. I’ll complete it now:

The second law of thermodynamics says that entropy always increases, that is, the most probable thing happens. Howard says that, on the contrary, “in this universe, it’s not the most probable thing that happens. It’s the most improbable.” Both of these apparently opposite statements can be true if the most improbable thing (the emergence of higher and higher peaks of local order) must happen in order to make the most probable thing (the global increase of entropy) happen faster.

This video is also on YouTube.