Designing a new civilization that prioritizes coherence, closed-loop systems, and comprehensive sense-making and choice-making can mitigate existential risks.
Transitioning towards a full-stack civilization that promotes anti-rivalrous dynamics, focuses on shared access to resources, and prioritizes intrinsic value over instrumental value is crucial for addressing existential risks.
Deep dives
A Vision for a Post-Existential Risk Future
In this episode, Daniel Schmachtenberger shares his vision for a path towards a post-existential risk future. He emphasizes the importance of designing a new civilization that incorporates three key features: coherence, closed-loop systems, and comprehensive sense-making and choice-making. By prioritizing these features, we can create a society that is not oriented towards competition or incentives. This new civilization design aims to eliminate structural incentives that lead to rivalry and instead focuses on increasing inter-personal coherence to foster collective intelligence and creativity.
The Problem with Incentives
Daniel explores the limitations and dangers of incentives in today's society. He explains that incentives often lead to instrumental relationships and utilitarian ethics, where people are seen as means to an end. This approach can result in devaluing intrinsic relationships and intrinsically meaningful experiences. Daniel argues that in a healthy future society, intrinsic value and meaningfulness should be prioritized over instrumental value and utilitarianism.
Creating Anti-Rivalrous Dynamics
Daniel discusses the importance of creating anti-rivalrous dynamics in a new civilization model. He explains that traditional rivalrous dynamics, driven by power over and win-lose games, can lead to disinformation, defection, and a broken information ecology. By shifting from power-centric approaches to strength-centric approaches, where individuals and systems focus on maintaining their own sovereignty and coherence, it becomes possible to foster collective intelligence and coordination without resorting to competition.
Towards a Full-Stack Civilization
Daniel highlights the need to transition towards a full-stack civilization that addresses existential risks and propagates positive change. He emphasizes the importance of synthezing resources and knowledge, closing loops in the material economy, and building an economy based on shared access to resources rather than possession. This transformative shift requires deep thinking, imagination, and a shift from utilitarian ethics to virtue ethics, where relationships and intrinsic value take precedence over instrumental value.