---
type: claim
domain: collective-intelligence
description: "Climate change, nuclear risk, bioweapons, AI misalignment, epistemic collapse, and institutional decay are not independent problems — they share one generator function, and solving any single crisis without addressing the generator pushes failure to another domain"
confidence: experimental
source: "Daniel Schmachtenberger and Liv Boeree, Win-Win podcast (2024); Daniel Schmachtenberger, various public lectures (2019-2024)"
created: 2026-04-04
---

# 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

Schmachtenberger's core thesis: climate change, nuclear risk, bioweapons proliferation, AI misalignment, epistemic collapse, resource depletion, and institutional decay are not independent problems requiring independent solutions. 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 works like this: competition incentivizes actors to externalize costs. Exponential technology amplifies both the benefits of defection and the costs externalized. Finite substrate means externalized costs accumulate rather than dissipate. The combination produces accelerating degradation across every domain simultaneously.

Solving any single crisis without addressing the generator function just pushes the failure into another domain. Regulate AI → competitive pressure moves to biotech. Regulate biotech → moves to cyber. Regulate all tech → moves to social manipulation and institutional capture. This is why targeted regulation fails — it treats symptoms while the generator keeps producing new ones.

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. This is the strongest argument for why TeleoHumanity can't be domain-specific: if the metacrisis is one generator, the solution must address the generator, not the symptoms.

This extends [[multipolar traps are the thermodynamic default]] from the abstract principle to the concrete civilizational diagnosis — multipolar traps plus exponential technology plus finite substrate equals metacrisis as an emergent property, not a coincidence of simultaneous problems.

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Relevant Notes:
- [[multipolar traps are the thermodynamic default]] — the abstract principle underlying the generator function
- [[global capitalism functions as a misaligned optimizer]] — capitalism is the primary instantiation of the generator function
- [[AI accelerates existing Molochian dynamics by removing bottlenecks not creating new misalignment]] — AI amplifies the generator, doesn't create a new one
- [[attractor-epistemic-collapse]] — epistemic collapse is the metacrisis generator's most dangerous output because it disables collective response capacity

Topics:
- collective-intelligence
- grand-strategy
- critical-systems
