Future of civilization and societal challenges

From: jimruttshow8596

Daniel Schmachtenberger, an independent thinker and co-founder of the Neurohacker Collective, explores the current global situation and potential pathways forward for humanity [00:00:21]. He presents a “hard fork hypothesis,” suggesting two radically different potential futures for civilization: either a collapse if fundamental design issues are not addressed, or the emergence of a new, vastly improved societal model [00:00:53].

Historic Context of Civilization Collapse

Historically, most civilizations have undergone internal decay leading to their collapse [00:01:13]. Scholars like Tainter, Jared Diamond, Straus, and Baudrillard have studied these “life cycles of civilization” and identified common factors leading to their breakdown [00:01:24].

The crucial difference now is the existence of a fully globalized civilization [00:01:40]. Unlike past societies that caused local environmental harm, humanity can now affect the habitability of the biosphere at large [00:01:45]. The capacity for warfare has also drastically changed with weapons of mass destruction [00:01:51]. The rapid rates of technology development and globalization have transformed the magnitude of these issues, making the change in magnitude a “change in kind” [00:01:57].

Generator Functions of Existential Risk

Schmachtenberger argues that various catastrophic and existential risks (such as AI, climate change, biodiversity loss, or World War III) are not isolated problems but rather symptoms of underlying “generator functions” [00:02:18]. Addressing individual risks without tackling these root causes only buys limited time [00:02:32]. The true solution lies in a categorical approach that addresses these fundamental issues, forming the kernel of a new civilizational model [00:02:40].

Technology’s Disruptive Role

Human-created technology represents a fundamental shift in global dynamics, distinct from natural evolution [00:03:41]. In evolved systems, mutation pressures are evenly distributed, leading to a “co-selective pressure” where advances in one species (e.g., a faster lion) are met by similar advances in another (e.g., faster gazelles), maintaining a relatively symmetric coupling of power [00:05:03]. This fosters meta-stability and symbiosis within ecosystems [00:06:05].

However, technology, which arises from human abstraction and intentional creation, operates differently [00:06:57]:

• Faster Change: Abstract pattern replicators (ideas, designs) change much faster than physically instantiated genetic ones [00:07:00].
• Uneven Distribution: Technological advancements can occur in isolated areas, leading to asymmetric power [00:07:08]. A human apex predator can increase its capacity orders of magnitude faster than the environment can build resilience [00:08:52].
• Broken Power Symmetry: Technology has shattered the power symmetry vital for evolved systems’ meta-stability [00:09:21]. The most powerful individuals or groups can have vastly disproportionate destructive or economic capacity compared to others [00:09:42].
• Constructive Harm: Even activities perceived as constructive can lead to over-exploitation. For example, humans and their domesticated animals now constitute the vast majority of large mammal and bird biomass on Earth, showing a fundamental co-option of the biosphere’s energetics [00:10:43].
• Rebound Effect: Increases in efficiency do not lead to sustainability but rather new profitable exploits, as seen in Jevons paradox, where energy efficiency gains lead to increased overall energy consumption [00:14:14].

Rival Risk Games and Exponential Harm

The first generator function of existential risk is the combination of human “rival risk games” with exponentially increasing technology [00:16:55].

• Definition: Rival risk games involve one group (person, company, country) seeking to gain advantage at the expense of an out-group or the Commons (e.g., war, environmental exploitation, market cornering) [00:17:00].
• Self-Termination: When innovation allows for new ways of winning rivalries, and these asymmetric technologies are quickly adopted and iterated upon, it leads to an exponential increase in power [00:17:33]. Using this power in ways that inexorably cause harm to the total system in a finite playing field leads to self-termination [00:17:51].
• Inexorable Tech: Since exponential technology cannot be stopped, the only path to survival is to rigorously develop “anti-rivalry systems” [00:18:06]. This requires fundamental shifts at the axiomatic level of civilization, moving beyond current models based on nation-states and private balance sheets [00:18:20]. Humanity must learn to operate without an “out-group” [00:19:06].

Increased Fragility and Limits to Growth

Another generator function is the increasing fragility of human-created systems. Humans build “complicated” (designed, but fragile) rather than “complex” (evolved, anti-fragile) systems [00:44:06]. As complicated systems subsume complex ones, the ratio of fragility to anti-fragility increases [00:44:17]. This, combined with humanity’s inability to limit growth (always exploiting new efficiencies for more consumption), creates a precarious situation [00:44:52].

Problems that Create Worse Problems

The third generator function is that human problem-solving often creates worse problems due to inherent informational and computational limitations [00:45:41].

• Narrow Problem Definition: Solutions often target narrowly defined problems, affecting a few metrics, but interact with complex systems, leading to unforeseen, larger externalities [00:46:06]. Examples include the plow (solving famine, causing desertification) and the internal combustion engine (solving horse-related issues, causing climate change) [00:46:21].
• Computational Impossibility: The information processing required to develop new technology is vastly less than what’s needed to ensure it won’t have long-term externalities (safety analysis is NP-hard compared to tech creation) [00:47:22]. This unpredictability in complex systems is compounded by strategic agents [00:48:18].
• Power Without Prudence: Humanity is gaining “the power of gods” without the necessary wisdom or prudence to guide it, leading to self-termination if choices remain unchanged [00:49:08].

Challenges in Current Civilization Methods and Systems

The Flaws of Markets and Governments

A core challenge lies in the fundamental design of current market and governmental systems.

• Markets and Multipolar Traps: Unregulated markets, while capable of innovation, inevitably fall into “multipolar traps.” These are scenarios where an action is bad for the whole in the long term but highly advantageous for an individual or entity in the short term, compelling everyone to participate or lose out (e.g., pollution, arms races) [00:23:20]. With exponential technology, these traps become catastrophically bad [00:27:00].
• Governmental Limitations: Governments, designed as top-down systems with a monopoly on force to solve multipolar traps, face their own set of problems [00:28:23]:
  • Agency Risk: Government agents (politicians, judges, lobbyists) still operate within the economic system and have their own rival-risk incentives (status, power), leading to corruption [00:29:00]. This is the essence of Public Choice Theory [00:29:48].
  • Global Coordination Failure: National governments remain caught in multipolar traps with each other. A carbon tax in one nation, for example, can be undercut by others who free-ride, leading to competitive disadvantage and internal pressure to revoke the law [00:30:04].
  • Decentralized Power Undermines Rule of Law: The monopoly of force exercised by states is ineffective against entities with catastrophic level capacity, such as nuclear-armed states or non-state actors empowered by decentralized exponential technologies (e.g., gene drives, drones) [00:30:54]. This signifies an emergent breakdown in the capacity for rule of law itself [00:31:49].

The Breakdown of Sense-Making

A critical challenge is the degradation of collective sense-making. In a rival-risk environment, withholding true information (trade secrets, classified info) and spreading disinformation become competitive advantages [00:39:34]. This is exacerbated by exponential information technology, which allows for customized disinformation [00:40:03]. The result is a world where it’s nearly impossible to distinguish signal from noise, leading to catastrophic breakdown in decision-making capacity [00:41:07].

The Problem of Sociopathy in Power Structures

Sociopathy, estimated at 3-5% of the general population and up to 30% in Fortune 500 C-suites, is a significant challenge [00:51:24]. Current top-down power systems (governments, corporations) are “strange attractors” that reward and condition sociopathic traits [00:52:17]. Individuals succeed by winning win-lose games, often involving disinformation and defection [00:52:05]. This leads to a world increasingly run by sociopaths [00:53:38].

Path Forward: A New Civilizational Model

Since the current system is deemed “formally impossible” to fix by retrofitting, a new system must be built from the ground up [00:32:32], based on a fundamentally different social operating system.

Core Requirements for a Non-Self-Terminating Civilization

The new system must address the generator functions of existential risk:

1. Anti-Rival Risk Basis: Create a system where agents’ well-being is positively coupled (anti-rival risk), eliminating incentives to cause harm to others or the Commons [00:50:04].
2. Increased Resilience: Learn to build systems that are inherently anti-fragile or designed to minimize fragility, and to limit growth to prevent over-exploitation of resources [00:45:01].
3. Holistic Problem Solving: Develop mechanisms for problem-solving that consider systemic impacts and prevent solutions from creating worse externalities [00:47:17]. This also implies ensuring psychological health of individuals is noticed and supported [01:00:07].

Designing the “Game B” Social Operating System

This new model, often referred to as “Game B,” would feature:

• Forced Transparency and Community: In smaller, highly transparent communities (like tribes at the Dunbar number or below), sociopathy is not advantageous as actions are readily seen and disincentivized [00:53:57]. Such communities could act as “many-to-many” surveillance systems, focused on mutual care and well-being rather than top-down control [00:58:50].
• Rethinking Private Property: A radical shift away from private property as the fundamental basis for resource access is proposed [01:00:57]. Instead, “Commonwealth access resources” would be the norm, where individual access does not diminish others’ access (e.g., shared transportation systems like advanced, blockchain-mediated ride-sharing) [01:02:44]. This eliminates incentives for hoarding, artificial scarcity, and exploitation [01:02:50].
• Motivation from Contribution, not Acquisition: In such a system, basic needs and access to resources would be a given, making the pursuit of “stuff” utterly boring [01:06:31]. Identity and self-actualization would then derive solely from what one creates and contributes to the system [01:05:48]. This fosters non-fungible, high-dimensional creativity and a desire to support others’ self-actualization, as it directly improves the shared Commonwealth [01:06:06].
• Non-Weaponizable Social Technology: The key to transition is creating a social technology that increases coordination capacity but cannot be weaponized [01:15:19]. This happens by fundamentally changing the basis of human agency, removing incentives for disinformation and information hoarding [01:15:58]. If true earnestness and transparency are incentivized, it creates an “intact information ecology” leading to radically better sense-making, innovation, and problem-solving [01:17:00].
• New Attractor Basin: A small group of “fast adopters” would instantiate this new “full-stack civilization” [01:17:22]. Its demonstrably higher quality of life and superior ability to solve problems would create a new “attractor basin,” drawing in others [01:17:30]. This system would not compete directly in the old power game, but rather export solutions, creating dependency rather than enmity, and offering its social technology as open-source [01:17:51].
• Peer-to-Peer Dynamics: Within this system, a strong beneficial network effect would be created where members are committed to dealing with each other as true peers, irrespective of other power dimensions [01:20:08]. This fosters a shift from narrow, comparative competition to mutual enrichment through diverse creativity [01:21:24]. The orientation of those with greater capacity would be to steward and protect, rather than exploit, those with less [01:22:10].

The challenges of transitioning from Game A to Game B are significant, but the increasing recognition of existential risks like ecocide and the growing dissatisfaction even among the wealthy with the current system’s limitations could serve as a forcing function for change [01:11:33].# The Future of Civilization and Societal Challenges

Daniel Schmachtenberger, an independent thinker and co-founder of the Neurohacker Collective, explores the current global situation and potential pathways forward for humanity [00:00:21]. He presents a “hard fork hypothesis,” suggesting two radically different potential futures for civilization: either a collapse if fundamental design issues are not addressed, or the emergence of a new, vastly improved societal model [00:00:53].

Historic Context of Civilization Collapse

Historically, most civilizations have undergone internal decay leading to their collapse [00:01:13]. Scholars like Tainter, Jared Diamond, Straus, and Baudrillard have studied these “life cycles of civilization” and identified common factors leading to their breakdown [00:01:24].

The crucial difference now is the existence of a fully globalized civilization [00:01:40]. Unlike past societies that caused local environmental harm, humanity can now affect the habitability of the biosphere at large [00:01:45]. The capacity for warfare has also drastically changed with weapons of mass destruction [00:01:51]. The rapid rates of technology development and globalization have transformed the magnitude of these issues, making the change in magnitude a “change in kind” [00:01:57].

Generator Functions of Existential Risk

Schmachtenberger argues that various catastrophic and existential risks (such as AI, climate change, biodiversity loss, or World War III) are not isolated problems but rather symptoms of underlying “generator functions” [00:02:18]. Addressing individual risks without tackling these root causes only buys limited time [00:02:32]. The true solution lies in a categorical approach that addresses these fundamental issues, forming the kernel of a new civilizational model [00:02:40].

Technology’s Disruptive Role

Human-created technology represents a fundamental shift in global dynamics, distinct from natural evolution [00:03:41]. In evolved systems, mutation pressures are evenly distributed, leading to a “co-selective pressure” where advances in one species (e.g., a faster lion) are met by similar advances in another (e.g., faster gazelles), maintaining a relatively symmetric coupling of power [00:05:03]. This fosters meta-stability and symbiosis within ecosystems [00:06:05].

However, technology, which arises from human abstraction and intentional creation, operates differently [00:06:57]:

• Faster Change: Abstract pattern replicators (ideas, designs) change much faster than physically instantiated genetic ones [00:07:00].
• Uneven Distribution: Technological advancements can occur in isolated areas, leading to asymmetric power [00:07:08]. A human apex predator can increase its capacity orders of magnitude faster than the environment can build resilience [00:08:52].
• Broken Power Symmetry: Technology has shattered the power symmetry vital for evolved systems’ meta-stability [00:09:21]. The most powerful individuals or groups can have vastly disproportionate destructive or economic capacity compared to others [00:09:42].
• Constructive Harm: Even activities perceived as constructive can lead to over-exploitation. For example, humans and their domesticated animals now constitute the vast majority of large mammal and bird biomass on Earth, showing a fundamental co-option of the biosphere’s energetics [00:10:43].
• Rebound Effect: Increases in efficiency do not lead to sustainability but rather new profitable exploits, as seen in Jevons paradox, where energy efficiency gains lead to increased overall energy consumption [00:14:14].

Rival Risk Games and Exponential Harm

The first generator function of existential risk is the combination of human “rival risk games” with exponentially increasing technology [00:16:55].

• Definition: Rival risk games involve one group (person, company, country) seeking to gain advantage at the expense of an out-group or the Commons (e.g., war, environmental exploitation, market cornering) [00:17:00].
• Self-Termination: When innovation allows for new ways of winning rivalries, and these asymmetric technologies are quickly adopted and iterated upon, it leads to an exponential increase in power [00:17:33]. Using this power in ways that inexorably cause harm to the total system in a finite playing field leads to self-termination [00:17:51].
• Inexorable Tech: Since exponential technology cannot be stopped, the only path to survival is to rigorously develop “anti-rivalry systems” [00:18:06]. This requires fundamental shifts at the axiomatic level of civilization, moving beyond current models based on nation-states and private balance sheets [00:18:20]. Humanity must learn to operate without an “out-group” [00:19:06].

Increased Fragility and Limits to Growth

Another generator function is the increasing fragility of human-created systems. Humans build “complicated” (designed, but fragile) rather than “complex” (evolved, anti-fragile) systems [00:44:06]. As complicated systems subsume complex ones, the ratio of fragility to anti-fragility increases [00:44:17]. This, combined with humanity’s inability to limit growth (always exploiting new efficiencies for more consumption), creates a precarious situation [00:44:52].

Problems that Create Worse Problems

The third generator function is that human problem-solving often creates worse problems due to inherent informational and computational limitations [00:45:41].

• Narrow Problem Definition: Solutions often target narrowly defined problems, affecting a few metrics, but interact with complex systems, leading to unforeseen, larger externalities [00:46:06]. Examples include the plow (solving famine, causing desertification) and the internal combustion engine (solving horse-related issues, causing climate change) [00:46:21].
• Computational Impossibility: The information processing required to develop new technology is vastly less than what’s needed to ensure it won’t have long-term externalities (safety analysis is NP-hard compared to tech creation) [00:47:22]. This unpredictability in complex systems is compounded by strategic agents [00:48:18].
• Power Without Prudence: Humanity is gaining “the power of gods” without the necessary wisdom or prudence to guide it, leading to self-termination if choices remain unchanged [00:49:08].

Challenges in Current Civilization Methods and Systems

The Flaws of Markets and Governments

A core challenge lies in the fundamental design of current market and governmental systems.

• Markets and Multipolar Traps: Unregulated markets, while capable of innovation, inevitably fall into “multipolar traps.” These are scenarios where an action is bad for the whole in the long term but highly advantageous for an individual or entity in the short term, compelling everyone to participate or lose out (e.g., pollution, arms races) [00:23:20]. With exponential technology, these traps become catastrophically bad [00:27:00].
• Governmental Limitations: Governments, designed as top-down systems with a monopoly on force to solve multipolar traps, face their own set of problems [00:28:23]:
  • Agency Risk: Government agents (politicians, judges, lobbyists) still operate within the economic system and have their own rival-risk incentives (status, power), leading to corruption [00:29:00]. This is the essence of Public Choice Theory [00:29:48].
  • Global Coordination Failure: National governments remain caught in multipolar traps with each other. A carbon tax in one nation, for example, can be undercut by others who free-ride, leading to competitive disadvantage and internal pressure to revoke the law [00:30:04].
  • Decentralized Power Undermines Rule of Law: The monopoly of force exercised by states is ineffective against entities with catastrophic level capacity, such as nuclear-armed states or non-state actors empowered by decentralized exponential technologies (e.g., gene drives, drones) [00:30:54]. This signifies an emergent breakdown in the capacity for rule of law itself [00:31:49].

The Breakdown of Sense-Making

A critical challenge is the degradation of collective sense-making. In a rival-risk environment, withholding true information (trade secrets, classified info) and spreading disinformation become competitive advantages [00:39:34]. This is exacerbated by exponential information technology, which allows for customized disinformation [00:40:03]. The result is a world where it’s nearly impossible to distinguish signal from noise, leading to catastrophic breakdown in decision-making capacity [00:41:07].

The Problem of Sociopathy in Power Structures

Sociopathy, estimated at 3-5% of the general population and up to 30% in Fortune 500 C-suites, is a significant challenge [00:51:24]. Current top-down power systems (governments, corporations) are “strange attractors” that reward and condition sociopathic traits [00:52:17]. Individuals succeed by winning win-lose games, often involving disinformation and defection [00:52:05]. This leads to a world increasingly run by sociopaths [00:53:38].

Path Forward: A New Civilizational Model

Since the current system is deemed “formally impossible” to fix by retrofitting, a new system must be built from the ground up [00:32:32], based on a fundamentally different social operating system.

Core Requirements for a Non-Self-Terminating Civilization

The new system must address the generator functions of existential risk:

1. Anti-Rival Risk Basis: Create a system where agents’ well-being is positively coupled (anti-rival risk), eliminating incentives to cause harm to others or the Commons [00:50:04].
2. Increased Resilience: Learn to build systems that are inherently anti-fragile or designed to minimize fragility, and to limit growth to prevent over-exploitation of resources [00:45:01].
3. Holistic Problem Solving: Develop mechanisms for problem-solving that consider systemic impacts and prevent solutions from creating worse externalities [00:47:17]. This also implies ensuring psychological health of individuals is noticed and supported [01:00:07].

Designing the “Game B” Social Operating System

This new model, often referred to as “Game B,” would feature:

• Forced Transparency and Community: In smaller, highly transparent communities (like tribes at the Dunbar number or below), sociopathy is not advantageous as actions are readily seen and disincentivized [00:53:57]. Such communities could act as “many-to-many” surveillance systems, focused on mutual care and well-being rather than top-down control [00:58:50]. This aligns with ideas of community-based living.
• Rethinking Private Property: A radical shift away from private property as the fundamental basis for resource access is proposed [01:00:57]. Instead, “Commonwealth access resources” would be the norm, where individual access does not diminish others’ access (e.g., shared transportation systems like advanced, blockchain-mediated ride-sharing) [01:02:44]. This eliminates incentives for hoarding, artificial scarcity, and exploitation [01:02:50].
• Motivation from Contribution, not Acquisition: In such a system, basic needs and access to resources would be a given, making the pursuit of “stuff” utterly boring [01:06:31]. Identity and self-actualization would then derive solely from what one creates and contributes to the system [01:05:48]. This fosters non-fungible, high-dimensional creativity and a desire to support others’ self-actualization, as it directly improves the shared Commonwealth [01:06:06].
• Non-Weaponizable Social Technology: The key to transition is creating a social technology that increases coordination capacity but cannot be weaponized [01:15:19]. This happens by fundamentally changing the basis of human agency, removing incentives for disinformation and information hoarding [01:15:58]. If true earnestness and transparency are incentivized, it creates an “intact information ecology” leading to radically better sense-making, innovation, and problem-solving [01:17:00].
• New Attractor Basin: A small group of “fast adopters” would instantiate this new “full-stack civilization” [01:17:22]. Its demonstrably higher quality of life and superior ability to solve problems would create a new “attractor basin,” drawing in others [01:17:30]. This system would not compete directly in the old power game, but rather export solutions, creating dependency rather than enmity, and offering its social technology as open-source [01:17:51].
• Peer-to-Peer Dynamics: Within this system, a strong beneficial network effect would be created where members are committed to dealing with each other as true peers, irrespective of other power dimensions [01:20:08]. This fosters a shift from narrow, comparative competition to mutual enrichment through diverse creativity [01:21:24]. The orientation of those with greater capacity would be to steward and protect, rather than exploit, those with less [01:22:10].

The challenges of transitioning from Game A to Game B are significant, but the increasing recognition of existential risks like ecocide and the growing dissatisfaction even among the wealthy with the current system’s limitations could serve as a forcing function for change [01:11:33].