---
description: Like painting an asteroid white decades before impact to deflect it with solar pressure, small interventions now shift species-level trajectories that become immovable later
type: claim
domain: teleohumanity
created: 2026-02-16
confidence: likely
source: "TeleoHumanity Manifesto, Chapter 2"
---

# early action on civilizational trajectories compounds because reality has inertia

The manifesto uses orbital mechanics as a precise metaphor. If you detect an asteroid decades out, painting one side white creates enough differential solar pressure to deflect it over years. Detect it a week before impact, and all the nuclear weapons on Earth won't generate enough force. The physics hasn't changed. What changed is the time available for small forces to compound.

This is path dependence applied to civilization. Trajectories, once established, are hard to alter but not impossible to alter -- and the earlier you begin, the less force is required. A small intervention now, the right institution designed or the right coordination system built, can shift the trajectory of the species. The same intervention attempted fifty years later, when the path has hardened, may be futile.

Derek Parfit and William MacAskill argue this makes the current period a "hinge of history." The convergence of AI, biotechnology, nuclear capability, and climate disruption means decisions made in the next few decades may be effectively irreversible. AI capabilities advance on timescales of months. Climate tipping points are approaching. The decisions being made now are the brushstrokes on the asteroid, and most of the people making them do not know this.

This claim directly motivates the urgency behind LivingIP: since [[trial and error is the only coordination strategy humanity has ever used]] and that strategy requires time we no longer have, the deliberate design of coordination infrastructure must happen now while the window is open.

---

Relevant Notes:
- [[the future is a probability space shaped by choices not a destination we approach]] -- the branching tree model this compounding operates within
- [[existential risk breaks trial and error because the first failure is the last event]] -- the irreversibility that makes early action necessary rather than merely preferable

- [[proximate objectives resolve ambiguity by absorbing complexity so the organization faces a problem it can actually solve]] -- the compounding logic demands that early actions be proximate objectives: achievable steps that shift trajectory while building capability for larger interventions
- [[strategic leverage combines anticipation insight into pivot points and concentrated effort and concentration works because of threshold effects]] -- early civilizational action IS strategic leverage: anticipation of trajectory dynamics, identification of pivot points (hinge of history moments), and concentrated effort while the threshold for meaningful deflection is still low

Topics:
- [[livingip overview]]
- [[civilizational foundations]]