Becoming Homo Lucidus – Min Ding

In this society, friendships no longer arise from status, wealth, or necessity, but from mutual alignment and choice. Your task is to identify five non-family individuals with whom you want to form a mutually acknowledged and deep friendship (bidirectional tie) before entering the new society. These people don’t need to know or like each other, although they can. You will have up to 2035 to identify and build friendships with them. Here are the steps you should take in carrying out this exercise.

Step 1: Define your selection criteria before choosing anyone. Specify the relative ethical codes they must have (or you can state you do not care), and your own relevant relative ethics code. Specify any additional criteria, such as hobbies, personality, value system, etc. Note – You can reflect on examples from real life or fiction to help you identify such criteria (e.g., why Buffet and Munger hit it off right away and stayed close friends and business partners for 60 years).

– Remember you are selecting friends for the coming Lucidus Society, not the current society you are in. Step 2: Choose five people from those you already know Identify the top five non-family members you already know based on the criteria. For each person, explain why you choose them, and why they would likely choose you if they were in your shoes.

Step 3: Add additional people if you can’t find five from your existing network Identify potential profiles of people you want to add to your hub- and-spoke network, based on the criteria. Specify why you choose them, and why they would likely choose you if they were in your shoes. Identify what you must change about your social habits or environment in order to meet these people.

Step 4: Plan shared time intentionally Propose how you plan to share time with each of these five friends on a regular basis. I also encourage you to iterate the process to reach more satisfactory results. For example, you may want to go back to Step 1 after evaluating all your existing friends and see whether you should revise the criteria. Similarly, you may want to reevaluate the criteria after reflecting on Step 3. Of course, any time you change the criteria, you will need to revisit Steps 2 and 3.

You can also consider Step 4 as a constraining factor.

HAT HAPPENS WHEN HUMANITY steps beyond the limits of biology and creates intelligence greater than its own? Becoming Homo lucidus offers a bold vision of that future and a roadmap for how to prepare. This book traces humanity’s journey from Biological Intelligence (BI) to Digital Intelligence (DI), showing how the two will converge to usher in Homo lucidus, ageless human beings with Pinnacle Intelligence and Enlightened Needs (ENs).

Readers are invited to imagine Lucidus Society, coinhabited by Homo lucidus and DI, organized around abundance, fairness, and peace. Far from abstract speculation, this book incorporates vivid thought experiments and real-world examples to provide practical guidance. It offers frameworks for building resilience in body and mind, cultivating meaningful relationships, excelling in learning and vocation in an age of disruption, and preparing for life alongside Tutelary Digital Intelligence (tDI). It also explores the deeper pursuits that will sustain meaning once scarcity no longer dominates human concerns.

If you wonder what the rise of DI means for your life, your children, or the world you live in, Becoming Homo lucidus is both a guide and an invitation: to endure until 2035, navigate the turbulent transition to 2045, and prosper in lifespans that may extend for centuries and more. Min Ding is Bard Professor of Marketing at the Smeal College of Business; an Affiliate Professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at the Pennsylvania State University; and an honorary Research Fellow at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.

He has held past visiting positions at the Australian National University, China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), Fudan University, MIT, University of Cambridge, and University of Cologne. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Customer Needs and Solutions. He received his second doctorate, a Ph.D. in Marketing with an additional concentration in Healthcare Management, from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in 2001.

Previously, he had been awarded a Ph.D. in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology from The Ohio State University in 1996, after completing a B.S. in Genetics and Genetic Engineering at Fudan University in 1989. He is the past V.P. for the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science (ISMS). He is the author of several books that include Logical Creative Thinking Methods (2020, Routledge; 2023, Chinese ed), Hualish (2019, English ed; Chinese ed), The Bubble Theory (2014, English ed; revised 2019, Chinese ed), The Chinese Way (2014, Routledge), and The Enlightened (2010), a novel.

He is the co-founder of two nonprofit organizations, the House of Enlightened Needs based in Shanghai, China and the Hua Culture and Life Association located in State College, USA.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 239fae006c38dd27
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 5,565,759 bytes (5.308 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• ISBN: 9781041193135, 9781041192411, 9781003711131
• Pages: 252
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 318.83 minutes
• Total Words: 63,767
• Total Characters: 402,417
• Average Words per Page: 253.04
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