From: jimruttshow8596
Daniel Schmachtenberger, an independent thinker focused on the future of civilization, posits a “hard fork hypothesis” regarding humanity’s future. He believes that if fundamental design issues in our “social operating system” are not addressed, humanity will end relatively soon [00:01:01]. While this perspective is dire, it also carries a hopeful vision for a radically different and vastly better future if these issues are resolved [00:00:48].
Civilizational Collapse and Globalized Challenges
Historically, most civilizations have undergone internal decay leading to their collapse [00:01:18]. While models from thinkers like Tainter, Jared Diamond, Strauss, and Baudrillard describe these cycles [00:01:29], the current situation is fundamentally different. Humanity now operates as a fully globalized civilization with the capacity to affect the habitability of the biosphere at large, possessing weapons of mass destruction, and experiencing exponential rates of technology advancement [00:01:40]. This change in magnitude becomes a change in kind, making past civilizational collapse patterns globally existential [00:02:06].
Instead of addressing individual catastrophic or existential risks like climate change, biodiversity loss, or World War III, Schmachtenberger argues for tackling their underlying “generator functions” [00:02:21]. Addressing these root causes categorically is seen as the kernel of a new, non-self-terminating civilizational model [00:02:40].
Fundamental Design Issues: Generator Functions of Existential Risk
Rival Risk Games and Exponential Technology
A primary generator function of existential risk is the human tendency to engage in “rival risk games” multiplied by exponential technology [00:16:58]. In nature, evolutionary processes maintain a “power symmetry” between predators and prey [00:05:38]. Advances in one species drive corresponding advancements in others, creating a co-selective pressure that leads to system-wide meta-stability [00:05:34].
Human-invented technology (including language and social coordination methods, not just physical tools) fundamentally alters this dynamic [00:06:44]. Unlike genetic mutations which are slow and evenly distributed, abstract pattern replicators (tech) can change much faster and with uneven distribution [00:07:02]. This means humans, as apex predators, can increase their predatory capacity orders of magnitude faster than the environment can build resilience [00:08:55]. This breaks the power symmetry, leading to scenarios where humans can “eat all the gazelles and then go extinct” [00:09:08]. The destructive capacity of a single human or small group, amplified by decentralized exponential technology, is vastly greater than in natural systems [00:10:07].
This asymmetry applies within humanity too: a modern leader’s “killing ability” or economic capacity can be billions or trillions of times greater than an average individual’s, unlike the limited power differences among animals [00:09:42]. Such a system, driven by rivalries and exponentially increasing power, is fundamentally unstable and “self-terminates” [00:10:27]. Since exponential technology is inexorable, humanity must figure out “rigorously anti-rivalry systems” [00:18:10].
The Inadequacy of Regulation
The current socioeconomic system struggles with “multipolar traps,” which are generalizations of the tragedy of the commons or arms races [00:23:20]. In these scenarios, an action that is bad for the whole in the long term is very good for an individual or group in the short term, creating a competitive advantage [00:23:35]. Without external constraints, everyone is incentivized to engage in the harmful behavior (e.g., polluting, deforestation, AI arms races), leading to a “race to the bottom” [00:23:50].
Governments are created to solve these multipolar traps by imposing top-down law through a monopoly of force [00:27:22]. However, governments themselves are run by individuals who are still agents within the economic system and possess their own incentives for increased status and power, leading to “agency risk” [00:29:08]. This is the essence of “public choice theory,” a critique highlighting how the incentive structures of government agents can misalign with the well-being of the whole [00:29:51].
Moreover, nation-states are caught in a global multipolar trap where they must compete with each other [00:30:17]. If one nation implements a carbon tax or other regulation, another might defect to gain economic advantage, pressuring the first nation to revoke its law [00:33:09]. The traditional “monopoly of force” of a state becomes ineffective when individual nation-states possess catastrophic capacities like nuclear weapons, as the force cannot be exerted over them [00:30:54]. This issue extends to decentralized exponential technologies where small groups or non-state actors can gain catastrophic capacity (e.g., gene drive weapons), rendering traditional rule of law unexercisable [00:31:28].
Economic power often sits “deeper than law in the stack of power” [00:35:49]. Multinational companies can move headquarters or support opposing political campaigns to resist unfavorable laws, demonstrating how economic incentives corrupt the regulatory process [00:36:00].
Fragility and Growth in Human Systems
Another generator function of existential risk is the human tendency to replace complex, antifragile natural systems with fragile, complicated systems [00:43:40]. For example, a self-regenerating forest (antifragile) becomes a fragile 2x4 and a complicated, yet fragile, house [00:44:09]. Humans are continually increasing the ratio of fragility to antifragility while attempting to run exponentially more energy through these increasingly fragile systems [00:44:26]. This aligns with Tainter’s work on the collapse of complex societies, where increased complexity ultimately leads to breakdown [00:44:32].
Furthermore, humanity struggles to limit its growth [00:44:52]. Increases in efficiency (e.g., energy efficiency) paradoxically do not lead to more sustainable practices but rather to the exploitation of new niches or the expansion of existing ones (Jevons paradox) [00:14:16]. This means a “steady-state population” model, as often seen in evolutionary biology, doesn’t apply to humans due to continuous advancements in capacity and efficiency driving exploitation [00:14:45].
Solutions Creating Worse Problems (NP-Hard Safety Analysis)
A critical flaw in the current approach is that human solutions to problems often create worse, unintended problems [00:45:43]. This is because problems are typically defined and solved narrowly, focusing on a few metrics, without fully accounting for interactions with complex systems and their wider externalities [00:46:06]. Examples include:
- The plow solving local famines but causing desertification and species extinction [00:46:21].
- The internal combustion engine solving urban horse waste problems but leading to climate change, oil spills, and geopolitical conflicts [00:46:30].
- Social media platforms providing value but causing widespread disinformation and bad faith discourse [00:46:48].
The information and computation required to come up with a new technology is orders of magnitude less than that required to ensure it won’t have long-term externalities [00:47:29]. Safety analysis for complex systems is described as “np-hard” (computationally intractable) compared to the “polynomial” work of creating the tech [00:47:40]. The inherent unpredictability of complex systems, especially with strategic agents involved, makes projecting future impacts “effectively impossible” [00:48:21].
Human Nature and Systemic Conditioning
Current systems are structured to attract, reward, incentivize, and condition sociopathy [00:51:54]. Statistics suggest a higher prevalence of sociopathy in environments like corporate C-suites and politics [00:51:30]. Top-down power systems (like corporations or governments) act as “strange attractors” for individuals seeking power, who are adept at winning “win-lose games” [00:52:17]. Leaders in such systems must prioritize those immediately below them to maintain power, leading to a power-law distribution of power and a “multipolar trap on corruption” [00:53:15].
This systemic conditioning shapes human behavior [00:55:20]. In larger, less transparent systems, individuals can engage in “internal defection” – optimizing for their own benefit or direct “fealty relationships” at the expense of the whole, often unnoticed due to lack of transparency and imperfect accounting [00:54:57]. This leads to “fractal defection,” where everyone defects on everyone to some degree while signaling otherwise [01:00:00]. This results in a “catastrophic breakdown in the sense-making necessary to make good choices” [00:41:07].
A key limitation is the “misalignment of agency” inherent in private property systems [01:01:57]. The ability to increase one’s own private property or balance sheet increases quality of life, but this gain can be decoupled or even “ante-coupled” (directly at the expense of) others or the Commons [01:02:07]. This fosters an incentive to create artificial scarcity and hoard information [01:02:50]. This current system conditions “greed, jealousy, and sociopathy” and mislabels them as intrinsic human nature [01:06:26].
The Hard Fork: A Call for Axiomatic Change
Given these deep-seated limitations, the solution requires a shift at the level of “axioms” of civilization, rather than merely retrofitting the current system [01:18:37]. The goal is to move from rival risk dynamics towards “anti-rival risks” where agents’ well-being is rigorously positively coupled [01:05:18].
A new civilizational model would need to:
- Decouple individual well-being from personal acquisition: Instead of identity and well-being being tied to “getting stuff,” access to common wealth resources should be a given [01:06:31].
- Incentivize contribution and creativity: Identity and self-actualization would derive from creation and contribution to the system, which is inherently non-zero-sum [01:05:51].
- Foster radical transparency and earnestness: Systems must be designed so that there is no incentive to spread disinformation or hoard true information [01:16:40].
- Ensure psychological health and accountability: The system needs to observe and support the psychological health of individuals, preventing unchecked psychopathology (like sociopathy) from gaining power [00:59:09].
This new “full-stack civilization” would outcompete the current one not through traditional warfare or power games, but by creating a fundamentally more attractive “attractor basin” [01:17:25]. If a system can produce a higher quality of life on all metrics and better coordinate to solve problems (due to intact information ecology), it becomes desirable for others to join [01:17:33]. This new social technology, while fundamentally changing the basis for agency, would be “open-sourced” and non-weaponizable, as it is the “solvent for weaponization itself” [01:15:42].