Metacrisis VS Humanity: round 1
In this ongoing series, we’ll cover the metacrisis and ways we can leverage Web3’s unique toolset to address it. This first one is a bit grim on the edges, but you will agree some things don’t look better when sugar-coated.
Environmental, climate, and technological risks
Blistering heat waves have smashed temperature records around the globe this summer, scorching crops, knocking out power, fuelling wildfires, buckling roads and runways, and killing hundreds in Europe alone.
The sudden shift from an abstract threat to reality has made many realize our home is on fire.
These are evidence of planetary tipping points being crossed by anthropic activity.
Next, we have the climate risk of triggering extreme climates. Let’s not forget that stable weather is a fundamental condition for our human development.
To spice things up, there are technological risks fuelled by a phenomenon called exponential technology.
The more obvious ones are:
- Nuclear: nations compete for world order
- AI: companies & nations fight for market share & world dominance
- Biotech with CRISPER-Cas9: anyone with basic biochemistry knowledge can go for it
You’ll notice the pattern: exponential technology makes more powerful stuff more affordable and accessible.
Multipolar trap, a Race, & the Metacrisis
To top it off, sprinkle some macro-political division on the international layer cake, and we’ve got a tasty conundrum. Don’t get me wrong, replacing humans in governments wouldn’t solve the issue long-lasting. The entire parade’s incentive system is inadequate to reconcile individual short-term motivations with collective long-term interests. In short, we have massive international-level socio-economic & political coordination failure.
Par example, any country unilaterally taxing carbon correctly would price itself out of competition, hurting it economically and geopolitically. The apparent solution is collaboration, but how can we impose international cooperation in an environment structured around national sovereignty & competition?
Currently, the world is trapped in a multi-agent prisoner’s dilemma, AKA a multipolar trap. The previous example is an instance of it, as well as overfishing, weapon development, toilet paper hoarding (only during pandemics), etc.
It’s a race to the bottom, and there is 0.0% (minus an unfortunate rounding error) of the human+ population that wants to high-five at the finish line.
All this amounts to the overarching challenge:
To succeed, we need to prevent all risks, but to fail, we only need one of them to happen; this is a crisis of crises, a metacrisis.
*Also, we little understand the systems at play; beware of solution externalities.
Next, please
It’s time to reintegrate society with a constructive gaze on the present and future.
Can we be an unstoppable force of change, more powerful than governments or companies, and transform our society from the inside out? Can we build profitable companies that genuinely add value to the world without taking it elsewhere? Can we design a global positive-sum game?
MTX studio’s international and young team specializes in Metaverse & Web3 strategy and technology; we believe this technology offers people and companies the super-tools to become the heroes we need.
In the following article of this series, we’ll dive into how the Metaverse and Web3 can align individual short-term motivations with collective long-term interests.
Credits
Daniel Schmachtenberger and Kevin Owocki, two giga-brains that have electrified my neurons. A lot of this article is inspired by their first podcast together. To you two, thank you!
