On the Religion of No Religion — Sovereignty vs Meaning
I want to share some thoughts on the recent discussion of what John Vervaeke and Jordan Hall call The Religion of No Religion and a productive criticism of that effort by Alexander Bard, who says that their effort lacks bold vision and thus cannot solve the Meaning Crisis.
In short, according to Bard, Jordan Hall and John Vervaeke try to build a perfect container or a perfect form on the level of a single sovereign individual and on the level of collective wisdom and coherence. But they lack a content, a bold vision and a strategy how to get to that vision. I see their bottom-up efforts and tinkering in the Game B space (anti-rivalrous and playful infinite game) of bio-hackers and street philosophers, as parallel to what the nation states try to do top-down through Game A (civilization with current cutting-edge tech but in a rivalrous setting).
For example, DARPA tries to enhance the capabilities of super-soldiers (their sovereignty) through nootropics and various advanced techniques of regeneration, learning and group flow (psycho-technologies). IARPA tries to build hybrid intelligence through competitions of hybrid human-machine teams in effort to build superforcasters (see the work of Philip Tetlock).
These super-soldiers and super-forcasters can be combined into effective teams, e.g. elite forces, various skunk works and elite research labs where you can rapidly prototype yet more advanced tech in an ever faster OODA loops of Observe-Orient-Decide-Act. In the Game A, this is done according to certain narrow objectives — e.g. to beat the competition.
But according to Daniel Schmachtenberger, these finite games of Game A, where there are winners and losers and races to the bottom, exacerbate existential risks. Because rivalry, depletion/pollution and exponential tech are three generator functions of existential risk.
Forrest Landry proposes building teams of teams through fractal assembly of small groups, between 6–30 people, where there is an ever shifting dynamic between in-group decisions only via consensus, out-group decisions through executive action, and finally democratic process that shifts between the two, and revokes the power of facilitator of consensus or executive manager for external actions.
S-curves and peak predators
The current work of Jordan Hall and John Vervaeke focuses on two main topics, enhancing individual sovereignty through reciprocal opening (the opposite of addiction and reciprocal narrowing) and also enhancing collective wisdom through better understanding and communication between people with the help of AI that can mediate conflicts or confusion in understanding.
They have touched upon the idea of S-curves and why civilizations fail. Because people buy too much into one paradigm and get addicted to one type of technology, e.g. fossil fuels. Extraction of oil goes through an S-curve, where first you see exponential growth because you pick the low-hanging fruits of accelerating research into related extraction technologies and there is a positive feedback loop. But you hit diminishing returns from this paradigm and the growth starts to slow. This is what happened in the 1970s. But people only tend to double-down on the old paradigm and thus become even more fragile.
These S-curves are a very useful concept that can also model reciprocal narrowing, or addiction to drugs or to certain habits. But I found Dave Snowden to explain this concept of S-curves the best and clearest through his Peak Predator theory. Basically a company, such as Microsoft becomes a peak predator by exapting an operating software from IBM for PCs, the previous peak predator in the mainframe hardware space. But then Microsoft itself goes through an S-curve, and falls pray to a new emerging peak predator, e.g. Apple that realizes people don’t want a software but a whole ecosystem.
So if you want to change a whole ecosystem and reform predatory social networks, bad actors online and addictive technologies, it makes sense to pressure Apple to reform as a peak predator, because this will cause a trophic cascade and eliminate the weaker predators below (Alex Jones, some annoying addictive features of Facebook, etc.). Or you can strive to create a new bottom-up ecosystem of new modular hardware devices and distributed apps to replace Apple and become the new peak predator. But this is much harder.
But this doesn’t solve the S-curve problem — you can also get locked into one narrow paradigm of e.g. some form of blockchains or supply chains where you can still have problem with pollution, extraction, child labor, etc.
To solve the S-curve problem you need to embrace the paradox, and keep dynamically shifting between acceleration of collaboration to create humane (psycho)technologies in the complex Game-B domain of playful exploration, exaptation and imploitation, and deceleration of competition in the already established commodity/utility space of the well-understood yet complicated domain. I need to study deeper the work of Bonnita Roy, but her process philosophy focuses on an ever shifting balancing act between trust and action, and I feel that this paradox of simultaneous need for acceleration of the complex and deceleration of the complicated is necessary but needs to be explored further.
Visual mapping as a psychotechnology
This brings us to Peter Thiel and his book Zero to One that deals with exactly this need to become monopoly in one domain to avoid competition and imitation. Peter Thiel is heavily influenced here by René Girard and his mimetic theory that explains scapegoating and witch hunts that help to temporary cool down the general competition, the ever-present imitation and mimetic conflicts that run amok in society.
But we can go further and visualize this process of racing to commoditize a product and monopolize one domain, only to return to genesis of exploration in a new domain, through a visual mapping tool called Wardley Maps. This tool manages to visualize relationships between a whole value chain (trophic cascade) of technologies and their needs, and puts them on a map in terms of their position in the evolution phases from genesis, via custom-built, product, into the final commodity/utility phase.
I have a feeling that this visual mapping can be a psychotechnology that will yet accelerate innovation in this complex space of Game B. I got this idea from remembering that Dave Snowden often mentions that visual language in form of cave paintings preceded spoken language. So we can understand highly abstract patterns visually much better. And this explains the need for mapping and cartography of noosphere, or cartography of Bard’s bold visions — ecotopia and cosmopolis. In other words, we need the “why of purpose” and the “why of movement”.
So this is my imperfect example of a Wardley Map of Religion of No Religion by Vervaeke and Hall, but without arrows that would indicate strategic moves, what needs to shift where. I am yet to learn various climatic patterns and heuristics of doctrine to be able to do that. But the logic of the vertical value chain is simple — user needs sovereignty, sovereignty needs flow, flow needs wellbeing and so on. This is not intended to be precise; these nodes and their positions can be rearranged on the map in a joint discussion. But one can see various hypotheses — e.g. you need to evolve trust better to improve wisdom, or it is possible to achieve flow easier in a risky situation, like adrenaline sports (see Jamie Wheal’s work)
And this is my example of what is missing here in terms of bold vision and related meaning, and what Alexander Bard talks about:
In short, Vervaeke and Hall can create an almost perfect, always improving vessel, a container and a form. A sovereign supersoldier and a group of wise and effective superforcasters. These people will be able to solve their conflicts with the help of AI and dozens of psychotechnologies, they can be anti-rivalrous and experience group flow and deep relationships of the nomadic tribe, but yet they lack the meaning because they are stuck in California — without the vertical purpose, meaning and a bold vision of where to go from here and what to achieve (bold visions of ecotopia, cosmopolis, for more see below).
I think to achieve coherence we need to work on evolving the components on both graphs — to work on sovereignty but also on meaning and bold vision.
Syngesting the bitter conflicts into beautiful collaboration
According to Alexander Bard, Vervaeke and Hall while constructing Religion of No Religion, need to grapple with the very real issues of class, sex and power. Otherwise there is a threat that this effort will become only horizontal, infantile and even can turn into a Rousseauan nightmare.
It is interesting to note, that class, sex and power somehow map onto Daniel Schmachtenberger’s generator functions of existential risk — rivalry, extraction/pollution (related to exploitation) and exponential technology (related to power). But if I understand Alexander Bard correctly we need to be less platonic and abstract, and deal with this messy carnal reality of our meat space and very human existence. And acknowledge the centrality of issues of class, sex and power.
Alexander Bard invented a term imploitation, the opposite of exploitation — meaning a tantric practice of withholding, of maintenance and repairing. A verb that feels right for circular economy, regenerative practices and ecotopia. Imploitation is also necessary today in terms of need to study deep history and deep philosophy — to go ever deeper, into a deep code, as Jordan Hall puts it.
David Snowden and also John Vervaeke often use the term exaptation — the radical adaptation of one technology for a brand-new context through serendipity (lucky chance). For example, a melted Hershey’s bar in a pocket of an engineer helped to exapt a military radar technology to be used in microwaves to heat food. A similar word to exaptation is repurposing. A great example of repurposing that doesn’t increase existential risks is to use already existing military technology such as drones with AI, and repurpose it to plant billions of trees by shooting decomposable tree pods. This is an example of BioCarbon Engineering, often mentioned by Tom Chi, the engineer behind Google X, a lab to create innovation catalysts.
So we could fight exploitation and tame sexuality with the tantric practices of imploitation (postponing, saving up, withholding), and we could reduce existential risk by imploiting existing technology and exapting it to novel contexts and purposes.
I feel the most difficult area to tackle with a new verb would be rivalry. This is the area of mimetic conflict that Peter Thiel describes. Here so far, I just feel we need to shift between accelerating the Game B innovations and decelerating the copying and competing in established products/services and commodities/utilities. So, this requires us to be able to multitask, balance the active open-mindedness practices that broaden our focus and mindfulness practices that narrow our focus, as Vervaeke explains.
To reduce rivalry we need to see everything as an ever-shifting process, and we need to be able to process our emotions, including envy. We need an opposite of to digest, it could be something like to syngest — to transcend and include but not in abstract, but in a very embodied sense, a combination of synthesizing and digesting, also the negative emotions into something higher and beautiful, while recognizing and digesting the pain. But the result of syngesting would be something more complex, and more beautiful. It would mean regeneration, bootstrapping and overcompensation — not just swallowing one’s pride and turning the other cheek — but an active all-win situation transcending rivalry.
To process (wood into timber) or to digest (food) means to take something complex and turn it into complicated. To syngest would be the opposite move — turning complicated into complex. I am not sure if it is possible. It sounds like a bootstrapping paradox (e.g. a Newcomb’s Paradox mentioned by Jean-Pierre Dupuy, that can be resolved through transcendence and meta-rationality only). But in a sense of building a stack of technologies, decelerating the competition in the complicated domain and returning to collaboration in the complex domain it is possible — and maybe this new vocabulary of syngesting can help us to digest the bitter conflict of excessive competition, in the finite games of the complicated and already established products and commodities, include those commodities/utilities to build yet a higher stack, and return to a beautiful collaboration and exploration in the infinite game of the complex Game B space.
I also want to note, that the inspiration to use and transform the word digest came from Zak Stein and his take on the need to digest also the negative emotions through meta-psychology (psychoalayisis).
Syngesting is a transcendent modality in a sense of Forrest Landry’s metaphysical system of triplication. Exaptation is an immanent outward modality as in active open-mindedness and seizing opportunities through serendipity (using chance and optionality/antifragility to discover/exapt new psycho-technologies). And finally, imploitation is omniscient modality, going inwards and focusing, as in mindfulness.
These three represent a reversal of exploitation, adaptation and digesting/consuming but in a right direction of what Vervaeke calls reciprocal opening (as opposed to addiction and reciprocal narrowing).
But where is the meaning and a bold vision?
Simon Wardley says we need to know the why of purpose but this is not enough. Because we also need to know how we will reach that purpose through the why of movement. We need to have values to get our purpose, and we need to know the landscape, climatic patterns, doctrine (heuristics) and leadership to get the why of movement and strategy. These five factors (purpose, landscape, climate, doctrine, leadership) are derived from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and mapped by Simon Wardley to the OODA Loop, a tool mentioned also by Jordan Hall and Daniel Schmachtenberger.
Alexander Bard talks about how internet and satellites can help us to create God in the future through our collaborative efforts that he calls Syntheism. I wrote about how this maps to Game B space.
Alexander Bard also proposes Ecotopia and Cosmopolis as two utopias. Ecotopia will help us to fight climate change, regenerate nature and provide wellbeing for 10 billion people. It’s important to observe engineers like Tom Chi and philosophers-entrepreneurs like Peter Thiel in this space.
Cosmopolis is the utopia for prosperous charter cities/city states, where one can love and collaborate even with neighbors from very different backgrounds. Because the city shares a culture, a charter, and because AI tools assist us to understand and love strangers. I wrote about the need for something between charter schools and charter cities — charter communities.
Finally Alexander Bard proposes a third “utopia” and he calls it Barred Absolute, or God, or Syntheos that we need to build together, but can only get near to it, it is not for everyone. I think the Barred Absolute is in fact a meta-utopia, or better maybe non-utopia. A realization that we cannot reach the perfect and absolute, only get ever nearer to it, like in a concept of calculus. It is an understanding that makes us humble and makes us reject perfection and embrace our imperfection, but in a paradoxical striving to transcend to a higher plateau and syngest our pain to be able to love strangers better in Cosmopolis, and to build Ecotopia to protect nature.
To summarize, we need to exapt our way through (psycho)technologies to get to Ecotopia, via rapid prototyping in areas of circular economy, regenerative economy and space industry focused on solving climate change, not getting us to Mars.
We imploit our way towards building Cosmopolis, through the opposite of exploiting our neighbors, with the help of AI that will help us to love our neighbors.
And we can syngest our way towards Barred Absolute, through embracing the bitter paradox of almost getting to perfection, but never really getting there. Jordan Hall made a similar point once, related to the concept of calculus versus perfection and infinity. This can be done through Bard’s idea of infinite now and the Event — eventology and nomadology — always being on the move and enjoying the timeless moments until they pass.
So it is a delicate dance of paradoxes, of distinct and yet interconnected concepts of imploitation, exaptation and syngesting in between. Meaning transcending and oscillating, but in an embodied sense, acknowledging the pain and envy and turning it into something creative and beautiful. I am not sure this will solve the deep problem of rivalry, and thus class, but it might have clarified a bit the need to create instead of consuming, but at the same time digesting the pain and synthesizing it into something beautiful and meaningful.
Alexander Bard says that religion is a divine intrusion in our lives, a catastrophe that strikes. I think we need to syngest the pain of loss, of some unexpected negative black swan event, but also syngest the pain of envy, when an unexpected success of a positive black swan event happens to our neighbors. Thus we can reduce mimetic competition and scapegoating.
This paradoxical notion of humbly bootstrapping and striving towards perfection, but knowing we will never get there. We will stay in front of the promised land, but our lives are meaningful, not despite of it, but because of it.
We need to fail again, fail better, and fail forward. Towards the Barred Absolute.
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