Counterpoint, we somehow managed to build remarkably tall Jenga towers anyway. As for the police state option, that's skipping over a lot of room in the middle; it's like saying the only options for business size are "solo entrepreneur" and "monopoly conglomerate", or the only options for metal composition are "pure iron" and "alloy composed of the entire periodic table".
Did also have some thoughts on this myself, if you're curious.
Re: Jenga — no society has lasted. London went to near zero population after the Roman Londinium years. The question is whether that phenomenon (of none lasting) will persist even as we get more global, or whether the same tower-toppling will just get larger in scope.
Re: non-police states / “room in the middle.” What are some of these middle points which prevent ever larger destructive powers wielded unilaterally? History, at least so far, has not checked that progression.
Looking forward to reading your post once I’m off my flight! Thanks for sharing.
The US is the primary example that comes to mind at the moment, on account of living here and all; we've got the not-quite-fractal federal/state/local government division (and HOAs below local if you want to zoom in even a bit further), the judicial/legislative/executive split on top of that, and theoretically also host the UN, which seems to be mostly ignored these days (plausibly there's a causal link between it being ignored and it not seeming to do all that much, but also I could just be ignorant here).
Also, rereading my own post, I definitely left out some additional musings (key phrases being "chaos theory" and "alpha vs beta diversity") that could stand to be stated explicitly. One more post, I suppose.
I always guessed that this question would never have the simple answer we humans crave. It might be that all of your list of "common explanations" play a part, alongside your own hypothesis, alongside the possibility that the emissions that we look for might be relatively short-lived in the lifespan of a civilization...
Feels like purely Darwinian civilization is architecturally incapable of passing the Great Filter. Agents are driven by evolutionary fitness functions (basically "sins") that optimize for short-term individual reward at the expense of long-term system goals. Post-humanism is all we need)
You should read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Player_of_Games?wprov=sfti1# . It really does play with the idea of how you build society to be stable.
Awesome. I’ve put it on hold with KCLS. Thanks for the recommendation!
All of the Culture series are highly recommended. Elon being a fan gives me a sliver of hope.
Counterpoint, we somehow managed to build remarkably tall Jenga towers anyway. As for the police state option, that's skipping over a lot of room in the middle; it's like saying the only options for business size are "solo entrepreneur" and "monopoly conglomerate", or the only options for metal composition are "pure iron" and "alloy composed of the entire periodic table".
Did also have some thoughts on this myself, if you're curious.
https://veraetor.substack.com/p/perfect-alignment-is-impossible
Re: Jenga — no society has lasted. London went to near zero population after the Roman Londinium years. The question is whether that phenomenon (of none lasting) will persist even as we get more global, or whether the same tower-toppling will just get larger in scope.
Re: non-police states / “room in the middle.” What are some of these middle points which prevent ever larger destructive powers wielded unilaterally? History, at least so far, has not checked that progression.
Looking forward to reading your post once I’m off my flight! Thanks for sharing.
The US is the primary example that comes to mind at the moment, on account of living here and all; we've got the not-quite-fractal federal/state/local government division (and HOAs below local if you want to zoom in even a bit further), the judicial/legislative/executive split on top of that, and theoretically also host the UN, which seems to be mostly ignored these days (plausibly there's a causal link between it being ignored and it not seeming to do all that much, but also I could just be ignorant here).
Also, rereading my own post, I definitely left out some additional musings (key phrases being "chaos theory" and "alpha vs beta diversity") that could stand to be stated explicitly. One more post, I suppose.
I always guessed that this question would never have the simple answer we humans crave. It might be that all of your list of "common explanations" play a part, alongside your own hypothesis, alongside the possibility that the emissions that we look for might be relatively short-lived in the lifespan of a civilization...
PS I can't hear this poem any more without hearing this version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_s3nK3p9YG0
As technology raises the stakes for society and makes mistakes more dangerous, we should do more testing: https://jimpurbrick.com/2026/06/05/the-revolution-will-be-virtualized/
Feels like purely Darwinian civilization is architecturally incapable of passing the Great Filter. Agents are driven by evolutionary fitness functions (basically "sins") that optimize for short-term individual reward at the expense of long-term system goals. Post-humanism is all we need)