From: jimruttshow8596
Daniel Schmachtenberger, an independent thinker and co-founder of the Neurohacker Collective, focuses on the future of civilization, the current global situation, and potential paths forward [00:00:21]. He holds a perspective that is both dire and hopeful, referring to it as a “hard fork hypothesis” [00:00:48].
The Dire Outlook: Inevitable Collapse?
Schmachtenberger believes that humanity is likely to face an end relatively soon if fundamental design issues in our “social operating system” are not addressed [00:01:04].
Historically, most previous civilizations have collapsed due to internal decay, as studied by thinkers like Joseph Tainter and Jared Diamond [00:01:18]. While civilizations, like people, appear to have life cycles with common breakdown factors [00:01:32], the current situation is different due to a fully globalized civilization [00:01:42].
Amplified Risks in a Globalized World
Unlike past civilizations that caused local environmental harm, current globalized civilization can affect the habitability of the entire biosphere [00:01:48]. The existence of weapons of mass destruction also fundamentally changes the capacity for warfare [00:01:53]. Both globalization and technology have amplified the magnitude of these issues to a degree that it constitutes a “change in kind” [00:02:01].
Schmachtenberger argues that numerous catastrophic and existential risks (e.g., AGI, climate change, biodiversity loss, World War III) are all results of underlying “generator functions” [00:02:18]. Dealing with individual scenarios only buys limited time; addressing these common generator functions is necessary for a lasting solution [00:02:37].
The Problem of Technology
Human-created technology introduces fundamentally different dynamics compared to natural evolution [00:03:41].
- Evolutionary systems: Characterized by mutation, survival selection, and mate selection within ecological niches [00:04:30]. Mutation pressures are evenly distributed, leading to co-selective pressures and a “strong symmetric coupling of power” across the system [00:05:34]. For example, a lion and a gazelle are in a rival risk dynamic, but all lions and gazelles are symbiotic; advancements in one drive advancements in the other [00:06:07].
- Technological systems: Technology, broadly defined as consciously mediated methods from abstraction, changes much faster than genetic mutations and with an uneven distribution [00:07:00]. It is consciously created, often locally, and produces parts not necessarily in equilibrium with whole systems [00:08:38].
This leads to a fundamental problem: a human, an evolutionary agent with evolutionary motives, can rapidly increase its predatory capacity orders of magnitude faster than the environment can increase its resilience [00:08:52]. This “breaks the power symmetry” essential for the meta-stability of evolved systems [00:09:21]. While the “most badass lion is only 2x” stronger than the median, a leader’s “killing ability” or “economic capacity” might be “billions or trillions of times more” than that of an average person [00:09:39].
The Sustainability Crisis
Human activities, even those considered constructive, are pushing planetary limits. The majority of large mammal biomass on Earth is now humans and domesticated animals, and for birds, domesticated species represent 70% of total bird biomass [00:10:43]. This exponential growth co-opts the biome’s energetics and biomass [00:11:11].
Humans, unlike other apex predators, are not limited to a niche. When one environment is over-hunted or over-farmed, humans move to a new one, becoming an apex predator there [00:12:01]. This “rebound effect” means increases in efficiency do not lead to more sustainable practices but instead to the exploitation of new profitable areas [00:14:14]. This is exemplified by Jevons paradox, where increased energy efficiency leads to overall higher energy consumption as new markets become viable [00:14:27].
Rival Risk Games and Self-Termination
The primary generator function of existential risk is humans running “rival risk games” [00:16:56]. This means an in-group seeking to gain at the expense of an out-group or the commons (e.g., a company exploiting an environment, a country winning a war) [00:17:00]. When these games are combined with the ability to innovate new ways of winning via technology, power ratchets up exponentially [00:17:33].
This leads to exponential harm in a finite system, inevitably causing more entropy than the system can handle [00:17:55]. Since exponential technology cannot be stopped, the only alternative is to develop “rigorously anti-rivalry systems” [00:18:10]. This requires fundamental changes at the axiomatic level of what we consider civilization, unlike previous historical shifts [00:18:49].
Critique of Current Civilization Methods and Systems
Current systems, particularly democratic liberalism, are critiqued as fundamentally flawed.
Limitations of Markets and Governments
- Markets: As bottom-up coordination systems, markets without regulation are prone to “multipolar traps” [00:23:18]. These are scenarios (like the tragedy of the commons or an arms race) where an action that is bad for the whole in the long term is very good for an individual or company in the short term, providing significant competitive advantage [00:23:35]. With exponential technology, these traps become catastrophically bad [00:27:00].
- Governments: As top-down systems with a monopoly on force, governments aim to solve multipolar traps and ensure rule of law [00:27:24]. However, government agents are still individuals within the economic system with their own rival-risk incentives [00:29:08]. This leads to “public choice theory” problems, where incentive structures of government agents don’t align with the well-being of the whole [00:29:50].
Ineffective Solutions and Corruption
Attempts to regulate markets (e.g., carbon tax, advertising tax) face challenges:
- International Multipole Traps: A nation-state implementing a carbon tax might be undermined if other countries free-ride and defect, leading to economic disadvantage and internal pressure to revoke the law [00:30:04]. Attempts to enforce tariffs (e.g., carbon tariffs) can lead to trade wars or shift the problem to other markets [00:32:31].
- Agency Risk and Corruption: Economic power can influence law through campaign finance, lobbying, and hiding funds via offshore banking [00:35:11]. Economics is often deeper than law in the “stack of power” [00:35:47]. Multinational companies can move headquarters to avoid regulations [00:36:00].
- Decentralized Exponential Technologies: The emergence of technologies that grant catastrophic capacity to small groups or non-state actors (e.g., gene drives, drones) undermines the state’s monopoly of force [00:31:28].
Breakdown of Sense-Making and Sociopathy
The current system incentivizes withholding true information (trade secrets, classified info) and spreading disinformation [00:39:53]. Exponential information technology amplifies this, allowing for customized disinformation down to individuals, leading to a world where parsing signal from noise becomes impossible and coordination breaks down [00:40:05]. This creates a “fractal defection,” where everyone defects to some degree while signaling otherwise [01:00:00].
Top-down power systems (governments, corporations) act as “strange attractors” for individuals drawn to power and skilled at winning win-lose games [00:52:17]. This leads to a concentration of sociopathy (estimated 30% in Fortune 500 C-suites vs. 3-5% in general population) [00:51:30]. Such systems select for and condition sociopathic behavior because power is maintained by appeasing those directly below, leading to a power-law distribution of influence [00:53:16].
Small groups with strong interests tend to dominate over broader communities, a phenomenon detailed in Mancur Olson’s The Logic of Collective Action [00:37:02].
The Hopeful Side: A New Civilizational Design
To avoid self-termination, a new civilizational model must address these generator functions.
Core Requirements for a Non-Self-Terminating Civilization
The proposed solution must create an “anti-rival risk basis for coordination” [00:42:26]. This system must be:
- Antifragile: Unlike human-built complicated and fragile systems (e.g., a house), a new civilization needs to emulate the antifragility of natural systems (e.g., a forest regenerating itself) [00:43:50]. Humans must learn to build antifragile systems and limit growth and exploitation [00:45:01].
- Solutions that don’t create worse problems: Current problem-solving often creates larger external harms because solutions are narrowly defined for specific metrics [00:46:06]. For example, the plow solved local famines but caused desertification; the internal combustion engine solved horse manure in cities but caused climate change and oil wars [00:46:21]. The information processing required to develop new tech is orders of magnitude less than that needed to ensure its long-term safety [00:47:27].
- Humans as safer vessels for power: Exponentially increasing power combined with human choices that have historically led to torture, oppression, and environmental destruction is self-terminating [00:48:41]. Humans need a different basis for choice-making, moving away from rival-risk conditioning [00:49:26].
Shifting from Private Property to Commonwealth Access
Schmachtenberger suggests moving away from private property as a core axiom [01:00:57]. In a body, organs don’t “own” resources but have access as needed for the whole [01:01:15].
- Current system: Individual quality of life is coupled with increased private property, incentivizing extraction, artificial scarcity, hoarding, and disinformation [01:02:50].
- New system: Focus on “commonwealth access” where one person’s access does not diminish another’s, but rather enhances it [01:03:26]. The sharing economy is an example, where shared transportation could reduce the total number of vehicles significantly while improving quality and reducing cost [01:03:51]. Blockchain-type systems could facilitate this by ensuring resources are truly commonwealth-owned rather than mediated by central companies [01:04:45].
- Anti-rival risk: This means the well-being of individuals is “rigorously positively coupled” [01:05:18]; my well-being goes up when yours does.
- Identity from Contribution: In such a system, where basic needs are met and access is given, identity and self-actualization would come from creative contribution to the system, rather than acquiring material possessions [01:05:46]. Creativity, being non-fungible, is harder to compare in zero-sum dynamics, fostering collaboration [01:06:00].
The Transition: From Game A to Game B
The challenge lies in transitioning from the current “Game A” system to a “Game B” system [01:07:40].
Schmachtenberger argues that the current system is not truly economically optimized, even for the wealthiest individuals, as it prevents the creation of optimal products (e.g., a phone with the best IP from multiple companies) [01:08:41]. Furthermore, it hinders research areas without patentable financial returns (e.g., certain health research) [01:09:53]. The inexorability of catastrophic risk and the system’s incapacity to produce essential goods are increasingly recognized even by the wealthy [01:11:15].
The proposed transition strategy involves:
- Clear Blueprint: An adequate blueprint for Game B that meets necessary and sufficient criteria for solving generator functions [01:20:51].
- Asymmetric Advantage in Coordination: Create a “social technology” that is anti-rival risk and produces increased coordination capacity [01:15:36]. This technology cannot be weaponized because it is “the solvent for weaponization itself” [01:15:45].
- New Attractor Basin: A small number of fast adopters can instantiate a new, “full stack civilization” with ground rules that are fundamentally more attractive [01:17:25]. This system would be more effective at sense-making, innovation, and overall well-being due to intact information ecology (no incentive for disinformation/hoarding) [01:17:00].
- Positive Externalities: This new system would export solutions to the rest of the world, creating “dependent rather than enmity relationships” [01:18:06]. The social technology, being open-sourced, fundamentally changes the basis for agency if adopted [01:18:14]. This acts as a strong beneficial network effect, attracting more people who see the superior quality of life and creative output [01:19:10].
This radical shift entails changing the very basis of human interaction and values, fostering a system where intelligence and capacity are used for protection rather than exploitation, and where creativity and contribution are the primary drivers of self-actualization [01:22:00].