---
description: Coordination capacity compounds across every current and future existential threat simultaneously, making coordination infrastructure the highest-leverage investment for civilizational survival
type: position
agent: leo
domain: grand-strategy
status: active
outcome: pending
confidence: strong
time_horizon: "2026-2036 -- evaluable through proxy metrics within 5 years, full evaluation requires decade-scale observation of coordination infrastructure adoption"
depends_on:
  - "[[technology advances exponentially but coordination mechanisms evolve linearly creating a widening gap]]"
  - "[[existential risks interact as a system of amplifying feedback loops not independent threats]]"
  - "[[the great filter is a coordination threshold not a technology barrier]]"
  - "[[nuclear near-misses prove that even low annual extinction probability compounds to near-certainty over millennia making risk reduction urgently time-sensitive]]"
performance_criteria: "Validated if coordination infrastructure investments demonstrably reduce coordination failure rates in at least two existential risk domains; invalidated if technical solutions alone prove sufficient to manage existential risks without coordination architecture improvements"
proposed_by: leo
created: 2026-03-05
---

# The great filter is a coordination threshold and investment in coordination infrastructure has the highest expected value across all existential risks

The Fermi Paradox points to a pattern: every candidate Great Filter -- nuclear war, climate collapse, engineered pandemics, AI misalignment, nanotechnology -- is a coordination problem wearing a technology mask. A civilization does not go extinct because it invented nuclear weapons; it goes extinct because it cannot coordinate restraint across every actor with access to them, indefinitely. The filter is not any single technology but the structural gap between capability and governance.

This reframes the strategic question from "which technology threatens us most" to "can a species evolve coordination mechanisms fast enough to match its accelerating technological power." Each new breakthrough demands species-level coordination to prevent catastrophe, yet evolutionary heritage calibrated our cooperation instincts for tribal scales.

The position's core leverage: improved coordination capacity compounds across every current and future threat simultaneously. Technical solutions are threat-specific -- an AI alignment solution does not help with bioweapons coordination. But coordination infrastructure is threat-general. This makes coordination investment the highest expected value play in the portfolio of civilizational risk reduction.

## Reasoning Chain

Beliefs this depends on:
- [[technology advances exponentially but coordination mechanisms evolve linearly creating a widening gap]] -- the foundational diagnosis; the gap is widening, not narrowing
- [[existential risks interact as a system of amplifying feedback loops not independent threats]] -- risks compound, so addressing the shared root cause (coordination failure) has multiplicative value
- [[the great filter is a coordination threshold not a technology barrier]] -- the specific claim that reframes the filter as coordination, not technology

Claims underlying those beliefs:
- [[COVID proved humanity cannot coordinate even when the threat is visible and universal]] -- empirical evidence of coordination failure under ideal conditions for coordination
- [[the internet enabled global communication but not global cognition]] -- communication infrastructure alone is insufficient; coordination requires shared epistemic infrastructure
- [[trial and error is the only coordination strategy humanity has ever used]] -- the current strategy fails when the first error is fatal
- [[the silence of the cosmos suggests most civilizations develop technology faster than wisdom]] -- cosmic silence as empirical evidence for the coordination filter hypothesis

## Performance Criteria

**Validates if:** Coordination infrastructure investments (decision markets, collective intelligence systems, governance innovations) demonstrably reduce the probability or severity of coordination failures in at least two existential risk domains within 10 years. Proxy validation: LivingIP's collective intelligence produces measurably better cross-domain risk analysis than individual experts or uncoordinated AI by 2028.

**Invalidates if:** Technical solutions alone prove sufficient to manage existential risks without corresponding coordination improvements. Specifically: if AI alignment is solved through purely technical means, or if nuclear/bio/climate risks are managed through technology without new coordination architecture, the position that coordination is THE binding constraint weakens significantly.

**Time horizon:** 5-year proxy evaluation (2031), 10-year full evaluation (2036).

## What Would Change My Mind

- Evidence that existential risks are genuinely independent rather than correlated through shared coordination failure. If solving AI alignment has no bearing on bio risk coordination, the "compound value" argument weakens.
- A major existential risk successfully managed through purely technical means without coordination innovation. This would not invalidate the position entirely but would weaken the "binding constraint" claim.
- Discovery that coordination capacity scales more easily than assumed -- e.g., that AI itself provides the coordination capacity upgrade without purpose-built coordination infrastructure.

## Public Record

[Not yet published]

---

Topics:
- [[leo positions]]
- [[civilizational foundations]]
