---
description: Neither inevitable progress nor inevitable collapse -- the future branches based on decisions, and some branches foreclose others permanently
type: claim
domain: teleohumanity
created: 2026-02-16
confidence: proven
source: "TeleoHumanity Manifesto, Chapter 2"
---

# the future is a probability space shaped by choices not a destination we approach

Both techno-optimism and doomerism treat the future as determined, and both relieve their believers of the burden of action. If paradise is inevitable, you don't have to build it. If collapse is inevitable, there's no point trying to prevent it. These feel like opposites but arrive at the same destination: a comfortable chair from which to watch events unfold.

Toby Ord's branching tree model captures the real structure. At each moment, multiple paths extend forward. Choices determine which branches remain accessible. Some branches lead to extraordinary flourishing -- billions of years of discovery across star systems. Some lead to extinction. Some lead to lock-in states that are arguably worse: technologically enforced authoritarianism, AI-managed civilizations devoid of human agency, permanent caste societies maintained by machines.

The lock-in branches deserve special attention because they are self-sustaining. The same technology that creates them prevents reform. An authoritarian state backed by advanced AI might last indefinitely, containing billions of conscious beings living diminished lives with no mechanism for change.

This is the first of the seven TeleoHumanity axioms, and it generates the most fundamental design requirement: since [[the alignment problem dissolves when human values are continuously woven into the system rather than specified in advance]], the system must remain perpetually revisable. Any architecture that locks in a fixed set of values fails this axiom.

---

Relevant Notes:
- [[consciousness may be cosmically unique and its loss would be irreversible]] -- establishes what is at stake across the probability space
- [[early action on civilizational trajectories compounds because reality has inertia]] -- explains why current choices matter disproportionately
- [[the six axioms generate design requirements that make the infrastructure non-optional]] -- this claim is Axiom I, the foundation the other six build on

- [[strategy is a hypothesis not a deduction because strategic insight comes from noticing anomalies that signal the prevailing mental model is wrong]] -- if the future is a probability space rather than a destination, then strategy must be hypothesis-driven: you cannot deduce the correct path, only form hypotheses about which branches lead to flourishing and test them against emerging evidence
- [[the more uncertain the environment the more proximate the objective must be because you cannot plan a detailed path through fog]] -- a branching probability space is the maximum-uncertainty environment, demanding the most proximate objectives and the shortest planning horizons

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