What happens when we stop looking at human systems as separate from the natural world?

In this conversation, I talk with Clinton Alden, a researcher and systems thinker I met through Substack. Clinton has developed what he calls the Cosmos Framework and the 7ES framework, which he uses to examine systems, feedback, adaptation, and the conditions that allow systems to remain healthy.

We start with Clinton's childhood curiosity and the unusual path that eventually led him to these questions. From there, we get into binary versus contextual thinking, feedback, cooperation, competition, and his idea that the universe can be understood as a computational system.

We also talk about one of the questions at the heart of The 10,000 Year Problem: if humans have successfully lived in much larger groups than our ancestral communities, is "there are just too many people" really an adequate explanation for what went wrong?

Clinton describes his framework as a diagnostic and auditing tool—something that might help identify where systems have stopped responding to feedback and how they might be repaired.

We also get into a question I keep coming back to: How do we change systems that seem designed to resist change?

One of my favorite moments comes when Clinton talks about being willing to discover that he's wrong:

And later:

We end with beavers, ecology, and a surprisingly simple prescription for living together:

Don't be a dick.

In this episode

• How childhood curiosity shaped Clinton's approach to learning
• Moving beyond binary thinking toward context and gradients
• The universe as a computational system
• The 7ES framework and passive feedback
• Why systems need feedback to remain healthy
• Cooperation, competition, and symbiotic relationships
• Whether population size really explains the emergence of hierarchy
• Cognitive rewilding and reconnecting with ecological reality
• Using systems thinking to diagnose institutional problems
• Testing and validating a new framework
• Why being wrong can be useful
• The relationship between biological and symbolic systems
• What beavers can teach us about living within an ecosystem

About Clinton Alden

Clinton Alden is a researcher and systems thinker developing the Cosmos Framework and 7ES framework for understanding complex systems, feedback, adaptation, and human institutions.

More from Clinton

Clinton's research, writing, and framework are available through his Substack https://substack.com/@clintonalden.

The Kosmos Framework: https://www.youtube.com/@thekosmosframework

KIST Academy: https://github.com/KosmosFramework/learning_center

About The 10,000 Year Problem

The 10,000 Year Problem asks who we were before cities, kings, borders, and ownership—and what happened between then and now.

This isn't about romanticizing the past. It's about understanding who we were, who we are, and who we might become.

10,000 years brought us here. The next chapter is ours to write.