We noticed that something was wrong, but there were too many theories of what it was for effective collective action to emerge. We noticed that our tribes and villages were mostly gone, that our families were in trouble and that our individual psychological meaning was disintegrating. We also noticed that before the industrial revolution, all these organizations were still intact (though tribes began to wain with the agricultural revolution), and moreover there was no Global Warming, or any of the other too-slow, too-far global feedback issues between human action and natural responses. We studied and contributed to emergence and multi-level-selection theories and understood that capitalism (even in its purely mercantile phase) was what started this dissolution of these levels of organization. It did it subtly, by making us more comfortable and offering conveniences we couldn’t refuse, and we didn’t know that the tradeoff was a destruction of all these levels of human organization. There were other critiques of capitalism that turned out to be wrong, as well as some benefits of capitalism that we kept.
We didn’t need to convert anyone. The mathematicians, emergence and evolutionary theorists were the first who understood. They realized that integrating their own psyches was necessary but not sufficient, and that we needed to restore all these higher levels of human organization to inoculate ourselves against capitalism, and build new ones properly including nations and federations of nations. We got together about 200 of them in an institute that was a place for theory, development and experimentation in novel techs, and resuscitation of pre-industrial techs that were able to provide for human needs in a localized way. It was funded by eccentric, visionary and environmentally-inclined venture capitalist who realized that the missing ingredient to a real AGI was proper nesting and a third attractor network topology. We further screened the initial pioneers with surveys that ensured a good balance of liberal and conservative tendencies, the first for creativity, the second for keeping good part membranes at all levels.
That was the first village. It produced happy and prosperous people, was regenerative to and symbiotic with the local nature around it, and also produced the first symbiosis between AIs and humans, with humans providing material and energy inputs, and AIs providing computational power. Its success inspired 10 other such villages and they formed a trade federation that respected proper nesting rules (more sharing of material resources within a level than above it, unlimited informational sharing across levels, informational and material synergy among parts at each level, some beneficial-to-current level competition among parts, and local in spacetime feedbacks between actions and consequences), so only luxuries were traded among them, including the ability of federation members to travel among them, and raw materials for the AIs. The Matryoshka Federation grew and outcompeted organizations outside of it, mostly in a peaceful manner, though some investment in defensive infrastructure had to be made. Most people joined because it was a better way to live, not for altruistic or visionary reasons. The diagnosis and prognosis of the problems of humanity provided by the federation also outcompeted other diagnoses and prognoses.
The Matryoshka Federation encouraged research into the emergence of Classical Mechanics from General Relativistic (with singularities and event horizons) foundations unified General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, and this also made it possible for human cognition to do things that were previously termed magic. This also gave the Federation an advantage in competition with capitalism, psyops, as it were. Both competition and cooperation were needed for these developments.
Sue, can you please add this to the blog? It is not linked from anywhere as far as I can tell.