Daniel Schmachtenberger - The Generator Functions of Existential Ri...

Part 2

Part 3

Today on the show we welcome back Daniel Schmachtenberger, the co-founder of Neurohacker Collective and founder of Emergence Project.

After addressing the existential risks that are threathening humanity in one of our earlier episodes, Daniel now dives deeper into the matter. In the following three episodes, he talks about the underlying generator functions of existential risks and how we can solve them.

Win-Lose Games Multiplied by Exponential Technology

As Daniel explains, all human-induced existential risks are symptoms of two underlying generator functions.

One of these functions is rivalrous (win-lose) games. This includes any activity where one party competes to win at the expense of another party. Daniel believes that win-lose games are at the root of almost all harm that humans have caused, both to each other and to the biosphere. As technology is increasing our capacity to cause harm, these competitive games start to exceed the capacity of the playing field. Scaled to a global level and multiplied by exponential technology, these win-lose games become an omni lose-lose generator. When the stakes are high enough, winning the game means destroying the entire playing field and all the players.

Daniel then looks into some of the issues that capitalism, science and technology have created. Among byproducts of these rivalrous games are what he calls “multipolar traps”. Multipolar traps are scenarios where the things that work well for individuals locally are directly against the global well-being. He proposes that our sense-making and choice making processes need to be upgraded and improved if we want to solve these traps as a category.

Daniel believes that the current phases of capitalism, science, technology and democracy are destabilizing and coming to an end. In order to avoid extinction, we have to come up with different systems altogether, and replace rivalry with anti-rivalry. One of the ways to do that is moving from ownership of goods towards access to shared common resources. Daniel argues that we are at the place where the harmful win-lose dynamics both have to and can change.

He also proposes a new system of governance which would allow groups of people that have different goals and values to come to decisions together on various issues.

Humanity’s current predatory capacity enhanced with technology makes us catastrophically harmful to the environment that we depend on. Daniel challenges the notion of “the survival of the fittest”, and argues that it is not the most competitive ecosystem that makes it through, but the most self-stabilizing one.

Complicated Open-Loop Systems vs. Complex Closed-Loop Systems

The biosphere is a complex self-regulating system. It is also a closed-loop system, meaning that once a component stops serving its function, it gets recycled and reincorporated back into the system. In contrast, the systems humans have created are complicated, open loop systems. They are neither self-organizing nor self-repairing. Complex systems, which come from evolution, are anti-fragile. Complicated systems, designed by humans, are fragile. Complicated open-loop systems are the second generator function of existential risks.

Open loops in a complicated system, such as modern industry, create depletion and accumulation. This means that resources are depleted on one end of the chain and waste is accumulated on the other end. A natural complex system, on the contrary, reabsorbs and processes everything, which means there is no depletion or waste in the long run. This makes natural systems anti-fragile. By interfering with natural complicated system, we affect the biosphere so much that it begins to lose its anti-fragility.

At the same time, man-made complicated systems are outgrowing the planet’s natural resources to the point where collapse becomes unavoidable.

Daniel explains that the necessary design criteria for a viable civilization which is not self-terminating are:

Creating loop closure within complicated man-made systems
Having the right relationship between complex natural and complicated man-made systems
Creating anti-rivalrous environments within which exponential technology does not threaten our existence

The Relationship Between Choice and Causation

Daniel explains that adaptive capacity increases in groups, but only up to a point. After a certain point, adding more people starts having diminishing effects per capita. This results in people defecting against the system, because that’s where their incentives are. He proposes that we create new systems of collective intelligence and choice-making that can scale more effectively.

Science has given us a solid theory of causation. Through science, we have gained incredible technological power that magnifies the outcomes of our choices. We don’t have a similarly well grounded theory of choice, an ethical framework to guide us through using our increased power. When it comes to ethics, science rejects all non-scientific efforts, such as religious ideas or morals. Instead, win-lose game theory has served as the default theory of choice in science. This has lead to a dangerous myopia towards the existential risks that are generated from win-lose games.

It is necessary to address these ethical questions, especially in terms of existential risk we are now at. We have to improve the individual and collective choice-making to take everything in consideration and realize how we are interconnected with everything around us. “I” is not a separate entity, but an emergent property of the whole.

We need to have a theory of choice which relates choice and causation. The core to the solution, as Daniel explains, is the coherence dynamics, which internalizes the external and includes it in the decision making process.

The Path to a Post-Existential-Risk World

Daniel talks about the need for individuals and systems to have strength as opposed to power. Strength is not the ability to beat others, the ability to maintain sovereignty in the presence of outside forces.

The path to the post-existential risk world is towards a civilization that is anti-rivalrous, anti-fragile and self-propagating. Ultimately, we have to create a world that has not only overcome today’s existential risks, but is also a world where humanity can thrive.

The Nature of Incentives

Daniel argues that an incentive is always evil. Instead of replacing a perverse incentive with a positive incentive, which also co-opts one’s sovereignty, Daniel proposes a future where the collective intelligence is fractal. That means that each individual agent has its own intact and incorruptible sense making, which is directed towards the consideration of the world as a whole.

Instrumental relationships, where people are used as a means to an end, are also evil according to Daniel. In a healthy world of the future, other people and relationships have to have an intrinsic value, independent from their utilitarian value.