Podcast - Daniel Schmachtemberger on The Portal with Eric Weinstein

Autopoetic (self-perpetuating) System

• Civilization system
  • Intersection of institutions, economics, culture, education, media
• Can be best thought of as “the system that confers power to things”
  • Everything that supports the system gets more power within the system
  • Everything that threatens the system gets spit out by the system
• Existential and catastrophic risks are getting increasingly more likely
  • Our civilization system is self-terminating
• What must be the architecture of a system that is not self-terminating and that doesn’t generate catastrophic risks as a byproduct?

Self-terminating System

• Current argument -> Growth is needed to stay within positive-sum dynamics and avoid conflicts
  • But even if the whole pie keeps getting bigger, few people capture most of the growth
• We can’t keep running a linear material economy with exponential growth on a finite planet
• Can a circular, closed-loop economy solve this?
  • It is a necessary but not sufficient condition
• Capitalism requires growing capital supply year over year just to keep up with interest
  • We have to keep growing goods and services to not debase currency
  • We can’t keep growing a closed loop material economy indefinitely
  • What about digital goods and services?
• Capitalism and nationalism are rivalrous game theoretic structures
  • We coordinate if advantageous but will defect if advantageous
  • Exponentially more powerful tech in rivalrous dynamics
• Rivalrous dynamics necessarily cause harm, either to the opponent or externalized to (ecological or information) commons
  • You can’t keep externalizing harm exponentially