Autopoetic (self-perpetuating) System
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Civilization system
- Intersection of institutions, economics, culture, education, media
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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
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Existential and catastrophic risks are getting increasingly more likely
- Our civilization system is self-terminating
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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
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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
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We can’t keep running a linear material economy with exponential growth on a finite planet
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Can a circular, closed-loop economy solve this?
- It is a necessary but not sufficient condition
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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?
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Capitalism and nationalism are rivalrous game theoretic structures
- We coordinate if advantageous but will defect if advantageous
- Exponentially more powerful tech in rivalrous dynamics
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Rivalrous dynamics necessarily cause harm, either to the opponent or externalized to (ecological or information) commons
- You can’t keep externalizing harm exponentially