---
type: claim
domain: collective-intelligence
description: "Climate, nuclear, bioweapons, AI, epistemic collapse, and institutional decay are not independent problems — they share a single generator function (rivalrous dynamics on exponential tech within finite substrate) and solving any one without addressing the generator pushes failure into another domain"
confidence: speculative
source: "Schmachtenberger & Boeree 'Win-Win or Lose-Lose' podcast (2024), Schmachtenberger 'Bend Not Break' series (2022-2023)"
created: 2026-04-03
related:
- the price of anarchy quantifies the gap between cooperative optimum and competitive equilibrium and this gap is the most important metric for civilizational risk assessment
- epistemic commons degradation is the gateway failure that enables all other civilizational risks because you cannot coordinate on problems you cannot collectively perceive
- for a change to equal progress it must systematically identify and internalize its externalities because immature progress that ignores cascading harms is the most dangerous ideology in the world
supports:
- the metacrisis is a single generator function where all civilizational-scale crises share the structural cause of rivalrous dynamics on exponential technology on finite substrate
- three independent intellectual traditions converge on the same attractor analysis where coordination without centralization is the only viable path between collapse and authoritarian lock-in
- when you account for everything that matters optimization becomes the wrong framework because the objective function itself is the problem not the solution
reweave_edges:
- the metacrisis is a single generator function where all civilizational-scale crises share the structural cause of rivalrous dynamics on exponential technology on finite substrate|supports|2026-04-17
- three independent intellectual traditions converge on the same attractor analysis where coordination without centralization is the only viable path between collapse and authoritarian lock-in|supports|2026-04-17
- when you account for everything that matters optimization becomes the wrong framework because the objective function itself is the problem not the solution|supports|2026-04-17
---

# The metacrisis is a single generator function where all civilizational-scale crises share the structural cause of competitive dynamics on exponential technology on finite substrate

Schmachtenberger's core structural thesis: the apparently independent crises facing civilization — climate change, nuclear proliferation, bioweapons, AI misalignment, epistemic collapse, resource depletion, institutional decay, biodiversity loss — are not independent. They share a single generator function: rivalrous dynamics (Moloch/multipolar traps) operating on exponentially powerful technology within a finite substrate (Earth's biosphere, attention economy, institutional capacity).

The generator function operates through three components:

1. **Rivalrous dynamics.** Actors in competition (nations, corporations, individuals) systematically sacrifice long-term collective welfare for short-term competitive advantage. This is the price-of-anarchy mechanism at every scale.

2. **Exponential technology.** Technology amplifies the consequences of competitive action. Pre-industrial rivalrous dynamics produced local wars and resource depletion. Industrial-era dynamics produced world wars and continental-scale pollution. AI-era dynamics produce planetary-scale risks that develop faster than governance can respond.

3. **Finite substrate.** The biosphere, attention economy, and institutional capacity are all finite. Rivalrous dynamics on exponential technology within finite substrate produces overshoot — resource extraction faster than regeneration, attention fragmentation faster than sensemaking capacity, institutional strain faster than institutional adaptation.

The critical implication: solving any single crisis without addressing the generator function just pushes the failure into another domain. Regulate AI, and the competitive pressure moves to biotech. Regulate biotech, and it moves to cyber. Decarbonize energy, and the growth imperative finds another substrate to exhaust. The only solution class that works is one that addresses the generator itself — coordination mechanisms that make defection more expensive than cooperation across ALL domains simultaneously.

**Falsification criterion:** If a major civilizational crisis can be shown to originate from a mechanism that is NOT competitive dynamics on exponential technology — for example, a purely natural catastrophe (asteroid impact, supervolcano) or a crisis driven by cooperation rather than competition (coordinated but misguided geoengineering) — the "single generator" claim weakens. More precisely: if addressing coordination failures in one domain demonstrably fails to reduce risk in adjacent domains, the generator-function model is wrong and the crises are genuinely independent. The claim predicts that solving coordination in any one domain will produce measurable spillover benefits to others.

## Challenges

- "Single generator function" may overfit diverse phenomena. Climate change has specific physical mechanisms (greenhouse gases), nuclear risk has specific political mechanisms (deterrence theory), and AI risk has specific technical mechanisms (capability overhang). Subsuming all under "rivalrous dynamics + exponential tech + finite substrate" may lose crucial specificity needed for domain-appropriate governance. The framework's explanatory power may come at the cost of actionable precision.
- If the generator function is truly single, the solution must be civilizational-scale coordination — which is precisely what Schmachtenberger acknowledges doesn't exist and may be impossible. The diagnosis may be correct but the implied prescription intractable.
- The three-component model doesn't distinguish between risks of different character. Existential risks (human extinction), catastrophic risks (civilizational collapse), and chronic risks (biodiversity loss) may require different response architectures even if they share a common generator.
- The claim is structurally similar to "everything is connected" — true at a high enough level of abstraction, but potentially unfalsifiable in practice. The falsification criterion above is necessary but may be too narrow to test in a meaningful timeframe.

---

Relevant Notes:
- [[the price of anarchy quantifies the gap between cooperative optimum and competitive equilibrium and this gap is the most important metric for civilizational risk assessment]] — the price of anarchy IS the generator function expressed as a quantifiable gap
- [[epistemic commons degradation is the gateway failure that enables all other civilizational risks because you cannot coordinate on problems you cannot collectively perceive]] — epistemic collapse is both a symptom of and enabler of the generator function
- [[for a change to equal progress it must systematically identify and internalize its externalities because immature progress that ignores cascading harms is the most dangerous ideology in the world]] — immature progress IS the generator function operating through the concept of progress itself

Topics:
- [[_map]]