Max Ramsahoye

Zero-sum games are multi-agent behaviours emergent from conditions of material scarcity and cultural divergence

A macrohistorical ‘process philosophy’ of existential risk from universal darwinian selection and replicator misalignment

X-risk is the emergent product of multiple civilisational subsystems interacting; most theories anchor on just one

Good actors with failed coordination mechanisms. Bad actors with successful coordination mechanisms.

Catalysing a second enlightenment to steer the fourth industrial revolution and the Age of AGI

Advancing a new cybernetics for the holistic alignment, control and interpretability of the human and the machine

Searching the design space of civilisations for a civilisation that can stand the test of time

Revisiting the libertarian political philosophy of Anarchy, State and Utopia in light of post-AGI cultural dynamics, defensive accelerationism and pluralistic alignment

Markets, Superintelligence & the Economic Calculation Problem

‘In order to reconquer the machine and subdue it to human purposes, one must first understand and assimilate it’

Advancing a holistic, historical and heterodox understanding of how civilisation functions and dysfunctions

‘Adam Smith needs to meet Complexity economics’

Counter-balancing the order and progress narrative of liberal social theory

‘Led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention’

A short critique of Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ metaphor in political economy, framed using AI alignment theory.

‘The true pilot must and will be the steerer whether other people like or not the possibility of this union of authority with the steerer’s art’

Modernising a classical thought experiment for the integration of AI agents into sociotechnical systems

‘The map is not the territory, but maps are all we possess’

Using conceptual engineering to arrive at a clearer definition of the metacrisis

‘I had no need of that hypothesis’

A sequence on metacrisis meta-theory (social ontology), conceptual analysis and the philosophy of causation:

‘Our civilization is characterised by the word ‘progress’ - progress is its form rather than making progress one of its features’

A critical discourse on the prevailing progress narrative, the dialectic of enlightenment and the prospects for cultural evolution

‘The messiness of how a political apparatus is to be controlled and limited do not fit easily into one's hopes for a sleek, simple meta-utopian scheme’

The moral dangers of the many-worlds interpretation of the ideal civilisation design

‘We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims’

A collective problem we can collectively solve

A Critical Systems Theory of Catastrophic Risk from Misaligned Human, Artificial & Collective Intelligence

‘Working in ERS–working to avoid human extinction–does not mean uncritically holding up the status quo as the ideal or even as acceptable’

A heterodox alternative uniting critical theory and systems theory to identify the generative mechanisms of existential risk

‘Ideology is strong exactly because it is no longer experienced as ideology’ (Zizek)

Without incorporating critical thought, Forethought will reproduce the problem of power it seeks to solve

‘The fresh design of a meta-system, exerting meta-controls, is the only solution to our problems’ (Beer)

Absent an actual plan for the form post-AGI society will take, Forethought will only produce vague philosophical notions, system-blind in their effect

‘The ideology that that we tend to perceive as non-ideological is precisely where we should be most alert to the functioning of ideology’ (Fisher)

Long-Term Risk from Post-Ideological Hyper-Normalisation

‘If we remain a society polarized between a privileged elite and a downtrodden mass, then the most plausible trajectory leads to something much darker’ (Frase)

From permanent underclass to neomalthusian classicide, the default future of AI-capitalism does not look good for the 99%

‘There must be many social systems that would work far better than any now in existence. In the scientific tradition, our task is to find them.’ (Kuhn)

‘The Power of Gods without the Wisdom of Gods’ as Capitalist Civilisational Unalignment

‘If you are temporarily ignorant about a phenomenon, that is a fact about your current state of mind, not a fact about the phenomenon. A blank map does not correspond to a blank territory’

Actually-existing reformist EA hinges on two dubious dominant ideological assumptions about the morality and immutability of capitalism

‘Our present over-commitment to technics is in part due to a radical misinterpretation of the whole course of human development’

Naive progress accelerationism and techno-capitalist optimism is on the rise. We need a more nuanced macrohistory of civilisation and a more omni-considerate macrostrategy for its future.

‘The professional thinkers who sprang from these classes should have based upon the facts of technological and economic progress a general theory of human life’

The 19th century believed in post-capitalist progress; the 20th century became sceptical. We need a new way forward: ‘A Post-capitalism for the 21st Century’

‘Whatever does not enter into identity, whatever eludes rational planning in the realm of means, turns into frightening retribution’

Without factoring in externalities, narrow technological fixes can simply substitute one set of problems for another down the line

‘The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.’

Principles of a progressive beneficentrist movement towards a post-capitalism and post-communism for the 21st century