Exhaustion? Prosperity? — 01. The past, present and possible future of humanity and the biosphere: depletion or flourishing?

We are starting a new elective inter-faculty course: "The Past, Present and Possible Future of Humanity and the Biosphere: Exhaustion or Prosperity?"
For certain reasons (thanks to the academic office!), students chose this course without having an annotation, a syllabus, or a video announcement. We, the instructors of this course, are grateful to everyone who chose this pig in a poke, and we will try to make sure they do not regret their choice. But let's see how it goes...
Before discussing the course syllabus, its purpose (or mission, if you prefer!) should be formulated. It is provocative; we want not so much to inform you of certain facts as to provoke you to look at your life in a certain way.
You see certain trends... where can they lead?
You have understood certain causal relationships that affect your life... how will they affect your future?
You make certain decisions... how do they affect the probability of threatening and favorable scenarios for our future?
Mission of the course: to push students toward everyday analysis and consideration in their own actions of causal relationships that affect the probability of threatening and favorable scenarios for our future. After all, we must become beings who anticipate the consequences of the course of action we choose, who consciously affect their own and the common future. The outcome of the course should be the expansion of the basis for finding the optimal course of action for an individual, human groups, and humanity as a whole at the current stage of our development.
You can see that this mission is ambitious. To achieve it, it is not enough to inform you of a certain number of facts. Your activity in working with these facts, in transferring the implications of the knowledge you have acquired into our life, is necessary. Under quarantine conditions, the course will be structured as follows. Lecturers will either record lectures or recommend certain materials to students. Students will be able to work with them at a convenient time for them. The third class period on Friday will not be a time for reading a lecture, but a time for discussing it with students. In general, the following topics are planned for consideration.

Course syllabus
Section 1. Universal history
Models used to describe and predict reality. Why all models are wrong, but some of them are useful. The historical approach to studying natural systems as a path to understanding the causes of their observable state and potential further development. The principle of natural selection in its broadest, Boltzmannian sense.
Universal history as a concept that considers the development of the Universe from its origin to the present as a single coherent process. The origin of the Universe, matter, stars. Stars as factories of elements, the life cycle of stars. The origin of the Solar System, Earth, and the Moon. Various approaches to understanding the phenomenon of time. Models of the distant future of the Universe.
Formation of oceans and sedimentary rocks. The sedimentary cycle. The origin of life. Autocatalytic reactions. Chemical selection. The RNA world. LUCA and the further differentiation of the main groups of living organisms.
Main stages of life's development on Earth. Patterns of this development.
Main stages of anthropogenesis. The spread of humanity across the planet, hybridization between different human species. Megafauna extinction caused by the spread of humanity. Main stages in the development of relationships between human populations and their habitats.
Section 2. The contemporary global humanity
Unique ecological characteristics of Homo sapiens Linnaeus, 1758: energy sources of contemporary humanity.
Unique ecological characteristics of Homo sapiens Linnaeus, 1758: mode of evolution. Comparison of cultural and genetic inheritance.
Unique ecological characteristics of Homo sapiens Linnaeus, 1758: demographic explosion and globality.
Hyperbolic growth of humanity's numbers, its causes. Demographic transition. Regulation of humanity's numbers: achievements and prospects. The general and the unique in the mechanisms of regulation of human population numbers.
Humanity and pathogens. Development of medicine. The effect of changes in the population structure of humanity on conditions for the spread of pathogens. Antibiotics and the directed evolution of bacteria. Modeling of epidemics and pandemics.
Concepts of rational use of natural resources, nature-centrism, sustainable (non-exhaustive) development.
Section 3. Our variable future
Possible future: scenarios of exhaustion. Excessive population numbers; shortage of resources, destruction of natural ecosystems, the sixth mass extinction; climate change; military threat.
Possible future: scenarios of prosperity. Trends in the development of science and technology. Technological singularity.
Search for the optimal course of action for an individual, human groups, and humanity as a whole at the current stage of our development.
Summarizing. Ways to implement new knowledge into life.
It should be noted that the authors consider the presented syllabus to be preliminary, one that may be adjusted during the course (it will be taught for the first time; we still need to understand how this should be done optimally).
Students in this course are very different. Some of them are biologists who have taken a course in ecology. Some of them have even listened to an inter-faculty course that D.Sh. taught last semester. We apologize to them: we will be discussing some things again here, since not everyone understands these matters that are important for determining humanity's future. Well; we hope that you will be able to spend part of your freed-up working time on working with literature and preparing reports.
The grade for the course will consist of three components:
— the number of "attended" classes: online meetings in which students took an active part in discussion;
— answers to a test that will cover the issues analyzed in the course;
— assessment of students' activity in acquainting the group with discussion topics.
If you are interested in how the previous attempt to teach an elective inter-faculty course under quarantine conditions was implemented, you can see how it turned out last semester. We will try to develop the positive features of this experience and get rid of its characteristic shortcomings.
Unfortunately, it is already clear that in 2021, the teaching of this course will be limited to an online format. The consequence of this limitation is a lack of communication, development of one's own understanding and attitude in interaction with each other. What to do?
In any case, we propose that students perform an independent analysis of sources related to the course material. How to do this? In the form of a video review. Some recommendations on how to write such a video, as the course authors do (with all the advantages and disadvantages of such videos), are here: How to record video lectures and presentations? Software recommendations. Examples of reviews made by students in another elective course are here: One and a half natures of humanity — source reviews. We should note — most of these reviews do not seem successful to us. The thing is that, in addition to the presenter's own attitude, we believe it is necessary to add the required number of arguments, material for discussion and understanding.
We ask you to highlight the following issues in the review:
— what this book is; who its author is and how this (possibly) affects his views and presentation of the material;
— the main content of the source, how it is structured, how its logic develops;
— the most valuable gains (if any) that you derived from this source;
— what you disagree with; what you do not accept (if such exists);
— how, in your opinion, the ideas and approaches of this source can be developed and applied.
The issues presented are not a rigid structure, but we believe that without attention to them, a source review will not be able to perform its role of obtaining material for the course. We will be very grateful for presentations, but preferably with images that carry content, not only decorative function. In many cases, it will be logical to use illustrations from the sources themselves. Duration of the review? Depends on the amount of material. Probably, to convey important information to listeners, a few minutes will not be enough; most likely, a well-done review will be longer than 10 minutes. However, there is no point in making the review too large and, for example, retelling the entire book. From this point of view, it is unlikely that a review longer than half an hour will adequately accomplish its task.
Some of the sources that, in the authors' opinion, are worth discussing are located here: Library with materials for discussion. However, you can choose other sources (and not only books!). The file with the video review can be sent to the course authors, who will place all such reviews on a separate page of this site.