We have constructed a civilisation in which recognising existential risk has become another reason to continue producing it.
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Technocracy: Addicted to Risk
Tag: civilisation
Peace is not merely difficult. We have built institutions, identities, economies and languages whose coherence depends upon the persistence of conflict.
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Civilisation: Diary of a Madman
A civilisation builds systems to solve its problems, then discovers that the systems have become the problems, while its dependence upon them has made their continuity deeply problematic.
The machinery does not need to fail. It only needs to keep working in ways that make more of itself necessary.
Civilisations persist by continually reorganising themselves. The unanswered question is whether conflict, crisis and systemic collapse/renewal remain the principal means through which that persistence is achieved.
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outer limits: impredicativity
Every explanation of reality becomes another part of the reality left to explain:
E(R) ∈ R → E(R) ≠ R.
The world is not merely broken. Too many people are paid to keep it that way.
The objective function of civilisation is not wealth, growth or power. It is the continual reproduction of the conditions that make civilisation itself possible.
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some like it hot
Applying an extranumerary interdimensional eye to the complex, adaptive yet strategic dynamics of climate change.
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conflict, continuity, complexity
Power that cannot justify itself through competence often turns to conflict as proof of necessity.
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optimise this
We remain perfectly capable of making catastrophically short-sighted decisions all by ourselves. The technology simply amplifies the incentives we have already normalised.
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the value of nothing
The question is whether what we currently reward actually assists the capacity of civilisation to persist, adapt, repair itself, and create meaningful futures.
Daedelus Kite 