The Inexorability of Human Nature: Moloch Traps
The Grand Struggle manifests, and we'll need to learn to live with it.
What is Moloch
I was first tuned into the Moloch discussion back in 2023 when my YouTube comments started mentioning Liv Boeree and her Moloch videos. The journey to that moment was a relatively short one: in my capacity as an AI researcher and consultant, I would frequently get questions like what do you align AI to? And how do you align humanity?
How do you align humanity?
This is the real question, isn’t it?
I had been vaguely aware of Liv before this moment. I had a friend back in the day who was a poker nut and had been obsessed with people like Phil Hellmuth, who’d played Liv at some point. So, I went to look up Liv and found her YouTube channel.
This is the first video I saw:
What followed was about three days spent in a sort of intellectual fugue state as I rushed to try and understand what Moloch is as empirically as I could. Here’s what I came up with:
Moloch as a Narrative
Above all, Moloch is a narrative, an explicative story that describes how the world works, or rather, describes a particular feature of humanity. You could call it a mythic parable about the dark side of competition in humanity, that our short-sightedness will result in self-destruction. As Liv outlines in her Moloch videos, Molochian traps tend to create lose-lose conditions in which no one is happy, but everyone has to keep playing. Examples include beauty filters and attention engineering, both mediated by technology.
Narratives, for the uninitiated, are stories that we use to make sense of the world. Whether you believe in the Bible (a collection of stories) or the history of democracy (also a collection of stories), from a neurological perspective, the human brain primarily engages with the broader world (and other humans) through the lens of narratives.
Moloch, with its demonic iconography, is a compelling narrative. Made To Stick by the Heath brothers explains why it’s such a sticky idea. It’s compelling, emotional, unexpected, and poignant. Liv frequently alludes to Moloch as a metaphysical entity or force, which is apt, as it exists within and emerges from humans. It is reminiscent of the Wyrm from Werewolf: The Apocalypse. In this RPG, the Wyrm is a primordial force of destruction that has taken hold of the world by way of goons, ghouls, and ghosts, manifesting in evil corporations and deliberate destruction of nature. Think Vampire: The Masquerade meets FernGully. To put it in childish terms, Moloch is Hexxus.
Moloch in Game Theory
In more scientific terms, what is Moloch? Here was my initial attempt to define Moloch, to articulate the principles and phenomena that contribute to this narrative.
Market Externalities. Market externalities are costs or benefits arising from a transaction that affect third parties who are not directly involved in the transaction, particularly leading to undesirable outcomes when these external effects are negative. For example, pollution from a factory affects the health of nearby residents, and traffic congestion from a new shopping center increases travel time and pollution for local commuters. In other words, Moloch acts in the shadows, where the true cost of economic productivity is not priced into the cost of the goods and services. See also: tragedy of the commons.
Perverse Incentives. Perverse incentives are rewards or penalties that unintentionally result in harmful or counterproductive outcomes, often by encouraging unwanted behaviors. For example, a policy that pays for each pest killed can lead people to breed more pests to kill for profit, or overly stringent productivity quotas can prompt workers to cut corners on safety or quality. A prime example is the cobra problem in India, where a program was launched paying people for every dead cobra. This incentivized people to breed cobras to exchange for state money. See also: the problem with school grades.
Nash Equilibria. A Nash equilibrium is a situation in game theory where each participant's chosen strategy maximizes their payoff given the strategies of others, and no participant can benefit by unilaterally changing strategies, even when the outcomes are suboptimal for all. An example is the "arms race," where competing nations continually escalate military investments; despite the mutual disadvantage of increased spending and risk, no single nation can afford to unilaterally disarm without jeopardizing its security. See also: nuclear arms race.
Attractor States. Attractor states in the context of competition and systemic rules refer to conditions or patterns toward which systems tend to evolve, becoming stable despite the influence of initial conditions or external disturbances. For instance, in neoliberalism, markets gravitate towards deregulation and privatization as dominant strategies, often regardless of individual or localized attempts to implement alternative economic policies. Similarly, in great power politics, nations may find themselves repeatedly drawn into competitive behaviors like arms races or territorial expansions due to the prevailing norms and strategic imperatives of the international system. See also: cyberpunk genre (e.g. the inevitable result of neoliberalism and globalism)
Prisoner’s Dilemma. The prisoner's dilemma in the context of market competition or capitalism describes a situation where two competing entities could both benefit from cooperation (like setting higher prices or reducing output); however, due to mistrust and the incentive to maximize individual gains, they each choose non-cooperative strategies, resulting in worse outcomes for both (such as price wars or overproduction). This demonstrates how individual rationality can lead to collective irrationality in competitive markets. See also: the current AI escalation and arms race.
Byzantine Generals. The Byzantine Generals' Problem, in the context of market competition or capitalism, illustrates a situation where entities within a system must agree on a concerted strategy to succeed, but the presence of unreliable or deceitful participants complicates achieving consensus, leading to failures in coordination or execution. This is akin to businesses trying to coordinate on standards or regulations but facing issues due to mistrust or misinformation, undermining the collective outcome. See also: the current geopolitical tension surrounding China.
These are the six pillars I’ve identified of Molochian traps, which are well studied aspects of game theory and human nature. The bad news here is that Moloch is an inexorable aspect of human nature, markets, and competition. We will have to learn to live with Moloch forever in the same way that the Wyrm is a primordial force in Werewolf.
Taken all together, these various competitive failures all but guarantee suboptimal choices, fragile systems, and undesirable outcomes.
Other forms of Moloch
Game theory and religious iconography are not the only ways we can view Molochian traps. In point of fact, these more abstract concepts may not even be the best ways of looking at the problem. Let’s take some other views.
Attention Engineering. Attention engineering, particularly in the tech industry, involves designing platforms and algorithms to maximize user engagement by leveraging human psychological responses. This often exploits primal emotions such as anger, fear, disgust, and lust, as these intense feelings can significantly increase time spent on a platform. For example, social media algorithms may prioritize content that triggers outrage or anxiety because such emotions drive higher interaction rates (likes, shares, comments), locking users into feedback loops that sustain attention but may also contribute to emotional and societal instability. See also: thirst traps, outrage culture, cancel culture.
Limbic Hijacking. Limbic hijacking refers to a situation where the emotional brain (the limbic system) overpowers the rational brain, leading to impulsive reactions rather than thoughtful responses. This neurobiological vulnerability makes humans susceptible to manipulation by media or marketing strategies that provoke strong emotional reactions such as fear or anger, as seen in sensationalist headlines ("if it bleeds, it leads") that capture attention and influence public perception and behavior by prioritizing emotionally charged news over more measured or informative content. See also: mean world syndrome, Edward Bernays.
Lose-Lose Scenarios. Lose-lose scenarios describe situations in which the outcomes of a decision or interaction are negative for all involved parties, highlighting that reality can sometimes be worse than zero-sum, where not only is there no net gain, but all participants may end up worse off. This can occur through dynamics like the "tragedy of the commons," where individual interests lead to the depletion of a shared resource to the detriment of all, or through "negative-sum" situations in game theory where the total losses outweigh any gains that might be distributed among players. This reflects a deep pessimism or strategic entrapment where every choice leads to suboptimal outcomes for everyone involved.
Moloch wants lose-lose dynamics. Hence why Liv’s podcast is called Win-Win.
Individually, each of these problems presents some issues in society and our individual lives. From our relationship to news and democracy, to teen suicide rates, all of these problems are created by similar underlying failures and vulnerabilities.
Existential Risk
Okay, fine, you might be buying that each of these phenomena exist individually. You might even accept that they can interact with and exacerbate each other. But, like me, you might not buy that these add up to existential risk for humanity, in the way that folks like Liv Boeree and Daniel Schmachtenberger discuss. I personally am not thoroughly convinced that it is an existential risk, at least, not beyond anything that we already know about. To take it a different way, let’s look at the objective tools that humans have to eradicate ourselves, and connect each of those risks to Moloch.
Nuclear Arms Race
The first existential tool that humans built was the nuclear bomb. Mutually Assured Destruction is a well studied theory and historical event, and most people forget that we are still very much locked in a nuclear stalemate with Russia and several other nations, namely China on its ascendency. Moloch manifests in the arms race because no nation is actually incentivized to fully destroy their nuclear stockpile. In his book, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, John Mearsheimer talks about how nations will always make choices that amplify their defensive and offensive power, based on whatever is within their reach. While John’s position is often maligned, it’s a very compelling framework that as a powerful explicative ability for understanding geopolitics for the last century. Between mistrust, betrayals, and strategic stalemates, we can basically assume that the apocalyptic threat of nuclear holocaust will be a permanent feature of humanity from here on out. And, of course, nuclear war is something that no one really wants, except Moloch.
Absolutely no sane person wants nuclear war. The optimal choice for humanity would for there to be zero nuclear warheads in existence. Yet, we have tens of thousands. This is a manifestation of Moloch.
Bioweapons
The COVID-19 pandemic has two primary hypotheses: natural spillover and lab leak. Irrespective of how COVID-19 actually occurred, it proved to everyone alive today that a biological attack is a lose-lose scenario. At the same time, no nation benefits by not having the big red button, and so they are incentivized to continue doing biological research. To put it another way, genetic engineering research is a double-edged sword. This is what’s called DURC, or Dual-Use Research of Concern. Any research into the rudiments of biology and disease might also create results (intentionally or otherwise) that create catastrophic results. All humans are incentivized to want to solve medical problems, but this research is inextricably linked with the ability to make bioweapons. Genetic research is like Pandora’s Box. Furthermore, with advancements in technology, namely AI, the barrier of entry to bioweapons research is continuing to decline. Whether the COVID pandemic was started by a lab leak or a wet market really doesn’t matter. Personally, I would prefer the lab leak hypothesis, because then it would have been created with some intentionality, rather than spontaneously generated. I consider this whole thing molochy (an adjective coined by Liv as far as I can tell) because, again, the optimal number of pandemics and bioweapons on the planet, if you’re optimizing for human wellbeing, is zero.
Artificial Intelligence
AI is another one of those inexorable technologies. Here’s what I mean: unlike nuclear weapons or bioweapons, AI is imminently commercially valuable. That means there’s a huge economic incentive to forge ahead with AI. In fact, the market competitive dynamics ensure that it’s a race condition, not unlike the nuclear arms race. This forces companies, and even governments, to deprioritize safety in favor of pursuing those economic gains. Thousands of scientists around the world agree: the optimal choice for humanity would be to slow down and focus on AI safety research above all else.
My friend Rob Miles made a video recently on this topic, and one of the most poignant observations he made was that it was all nice way back when AI safety was more of a hypothetical need, rather than an urgent conversation. It’s been a shock to him, a wakeup call when the UK government reached out to him to discuss AI safety.
AI is the ultimate moloch trap for a few reasons:
Corporate Interest: It’s basically a gold rush, so corporations are throwing caution to the wind. See OpenAI’s recent trashing of their superalignment team. Yep, good old Sam Altman who has constantly said their mission is to build AGI safely. See also: regulatory capture.
Military Interest: Nations have already been using generative AI as part of their disinformation campaigns. The most poignant example was when Putin created a deepfake of Zelenskyy surrendering. However, deepfakes didn’t capture the public attention until someone made a deepfake of Taylor Swift getting gangbanged by a football team.
Government Incompetence: All modern governments are slow and ineffectual. They rarely react in time, and almost never react correctly. The foxes are in the henhouse, so to speak, with people like Sam Altman trotting the globe to whisper in the ears of world leaders. Considering that the vast majority of politicians still barely grasp the internet, we have a snowball’s chance in hell of them comprehending AI. Combine that with moneyed special interest groups and military leaders encouraging a no-holds-barred approach, and we are going to have a trainwreck of a governmental response to AI.
Taken all together, this is the perfect storm for Moloch to manifest. Does that mean we’ll get Skynet, a rogue AGI that wants to eradicate all humans? I doubt it. Keep in mind that Skynet was a metaphor for human fear, not a prediction of AI. But also, humans have a tendency to engage in what I call anthropomorphic projection, we ascribe humanlike characteristics to everything, including AI. AI has no limbic system (unless we give it one). It also has no greed, no sense of self, and no sense of vengeance, again, unless we encode such values into the machine.
Even so, the resulting impacts of AI on humanity could still very easily create lose-lose scenarios. These are conditions in which no one is happy, and there’s no structural or game theoretical way to change strategies. In other words, we’d be stuck on an inexorable slide into worse and worse conditions, in a self-reinforcing negative feedback loop.
Now, that may sound very hand-wringy and hyperbolic. The most hyperbolic outcome is what is now called S(DOOM) which is basically: “What is the chance of AI inflicting eternal suffering on all humans out of a sense of retribution?” The scenario is something like this: AGI takes over the world and, out of a twisted sense of logic, decides to put all our brains in jars and make us feel like we are simultaneous drowning and set on fire for the rest of eternity. This thought experiment is highly unlikely, and is basically a technological version of Hell.
So, now let’s unpack what might actually happen in more empirical terms. Here’s where I’ll borrow Daniel Schmachtenberger’s work.
Attractor States
An attractor state is a “stable configuration that systems and structures trend towards.” Temperate arboreal biomes, for instance, trend towards dense forests with a good mix of flora and fauna, and healthy trophic levels. Often, the apex predator will be bears or wolves or the like. The final attractor state is one of peak forest growth, and all the systems and energies of that system will interact and, ultimately, create that biome. Ecology has a lot of self-correcting mechanisms.
Humanity does as well, but we also have the ability to implement exponential leverage in the form of information and other technologies (e.g. drilling billions of gallons of oil out of the ground). On the internet, we have terms like “late stage capitalism” which implies that capitalism will follow an inevitable trajectory. To put it in less romantic terms, let’s define the two primary attractor states that Daniel has identified.
Attractor State 1: Centralization/Consolidation
Wealth and power tend to accumulate over time. Look back over history and you see this consolidation happen many times. Let’s first take a look at ancient Rome. The original Roman ideal was that of a farmer-warrior. However, over time, wealthy landowners consolidated their hold over the most valuable swaths of land. This pushed family farmers out, and into a state of indentured servitude or serfdom. Sound at all familiar? It reached a pinnacle of consolidation with Marcus Licinius Crassus, who built a real estate empire. I’ve heard him described as “the wealthiest man in history” and that by modern accounts, he’d own something like $500B worth of land, but other estimates put it at $1-$2B. Still, he was a Roman billionaire.
After the fall of the Roman empire, there was a period of relative anarchy. The purists will say that feudalism is not anarchy, but these are the self-same people who never open history books. Anarchy is quickly quelled because nature abhors a vacuum. This is why anarchy is an intrinsically unstable state, as there are no trends, forces, or equilibria to hold it in place. So, what happens? Local feudal lords crop up, gain a monopoly on land and violence, and carve up the local land for control. As the population recovers, and feudal lords grow in strength and power, they attack each other, form alliances, and knit the land together often with strategic marriages. The fiefdoms get larger and hierarchical.
You can see this if you tour the many hundreds of estates and castles across France. I’ve stood in the court where Joan of Arc made her case, where some some of the first Duchies were formed, and in bedrooms where the King slept. Rational self-interest drove the feudal lords to create an increasingly larger and more sophisticated hierarchical power structure. Why? They didn’t like getting stabbed, lynched, beheaded, or burned at the stake. See also: Viennese dating services (e.g. most royal families have a ton of German in them, because the Viennese court was the gravimetric center of Europe for quite a while).
Then we had this democratic revolution about two centuries ago, and over the course of the interceding time, we’ve had a paradigm shift in government and economics. But, what we’ve been seeing in the last 60 years or so is the result of globalization: multinational conglomerates are forming for the same exact reason that feudal lords banded together into duchies and kingdoms: rational self interest and defensive realism.
The USA, the EU, the USSR - say it with me - consolidation is inevitable like Thanos. In market theory, there are some reasons that this is inevitable:
Advantages of Consolidation:
Economies of Scale: Larger companies can often produce goods and services at a lower cost per unit because they can spread fixed costs over more units of output. This is crucial in industries like aerospace, where the upfront investments are enormous.
Increased Market Power: Fewer firms in the industry mean less competition, allowing the remaining firms to have greater control over prices. This can lead to higher margins and more stable revenue streams.
Efficiency Improvements: Consolidation can lead to the elimination of duplicate facilities and staff, streamlining operations, and reducing costs.
Enhanced Research and Development (R&D): Bigger firms often have more resources to invest in R&D, leading to innovations that can further strengthen their market position.
Regulatory Influence: Larger entities might have more influence in lobbying for favorable regulations, which can enhance their competitive positioning.
Bigger is better! Greed is good!
Now, those are the advantages of that final attractor state, but here are the pressures and forces that incentivize such decisions as you go:
Mature Markets: As markets mature, growth slows down, making it harder for companies to expand revenue organically. This can lead to consolidation as firms merge to maintain growth and reduce competition.
Competition: Intense competition can erode profit margins over time. Companies may consolidate to reduce the level of competition and stabilize or increase margins.
Barriers to Entry: High barriers to entry in industries like aerospace mean that once consolidation has happened, it's difficult for new players to enter the market, reinforcing the dominance of established players.
Technological Changes: In some cases, technological advancements can lead to consolidation as firms may need to merge or acquire capabilities that they do not possess internally to stay competitive.
Financial Pressures: Especially in capital-intensive industries, financial pressures can drive consolidation. Companies with stronger financials can acquire or merge with financially weaker ones, stabilizing the financial health of the acquired entities and creating more robust conglomerates.
From Disney to Boeing, market consolidation is all but inevitably until something big comes along and shakes everything up (like fundamentally new technologies).
Attractor State 2: Anarchy/Chaos
Every nation and culture goes through periods of construction and destruction, order and disorder, chaos and harmony. On a long enough timeline, you can say that all empires rise and fall. The sun has well and truly set on the British Empire, and many people believe that the American Empire has reached its zenith and is now in decline. World orders come and go. Just ask Ray Dalio.
During a large enough collapse, such as the withdrawal of the British, you end up with temporary anarchy. Personally, I do not find this to be a compelling or durable attractor state, for the reasons mentioned above. Chaos creates a power vacuum, and nature abhors a vacuum. It’s really that simple. Something or someone will step up and capitalize on the opportunity that chaos and anarchy present. However, we can glimpse what this might look like as the world rebuilds. We are rife with collapse narratives, from Mad Max to Bladerunner to Cyberpunk 2077. Many of these works of fiction imagine that society has gone through some kind of collapse or fragmentation. Sometimes it’s driven by corporate greed, nuclear war, or some combination of things.
The central idea is that we end up living in a dog-eat-dog world where everyone is out for themselves, and pretty much anything goes. We see a breakdown of power structures, a collapse of law and order (or rather, a transition to might makes right)
In many respect, the cyberpunk genre somehow captures both of these attractor states. One of the quintessential genre conventions is neoliberalism gone haywire in the form of global conglomerates having all the power. Governments have failed and techno-feudalism reigns supreme.
I am not entirely convinced that this is a true attractor state. Even if it lasts decades or centuries, I do not agree that this is a stable configuration. Either way, we can generally agree that absolute anarchy or absolute authoritarian consolidation are both undesirable outcomes. And, to make matters worse, there are plenty of Molochian forces driving us in these directions. The cyberpunk genre came about as a response to neoliberalism and globalism. I talk about it extensively in several videos:
Remember, Moloch wants lose-lose scenarios. That leads to the need for a third attractor state.
Attractor State 3: Utopia?
Utopia is a somewhat loaded term, so I try and break it down into objective criteria:
High individual liberty for all: Individual liberty is the cornerstone of a healthy, happy society. This means that individual choice matters, and that people have control over their social, emotional, and economic destinies.
High social mobility for all: A different side of the same coin, we can measure a utopian society based on how easily people can change their fortunes and engage in the lifestyles they wish.
High standard of living for all: Finally, as a proxy for material abundance and fair allocation of resources, we would expect to see a high standard of living for all.
Now that I’ve defined what we might want this third attractor state to look like, how do we get there?
First, we can look at the obvious and empirical trends: technological progress. As described above, technological progress is inevitable. There are too many advantages for companies and governments not to invest in technology, so this is all but guaranteed.
However, technology is a double-edged sword. Information technology can be used just as easily to spread good ideas as misinformation, or to provide beneficent oversight or authoritarian surveillance. The same technologies that can move people around the globe for work and leisure can also be used to drop bombs (namely, aircraft).
Technology is always a double-edged sword.
Coordination Failures
One way to understand Moloch is that, even if we can identify optimal strategies and preferred choices globally, we cannot coordinate on those solutions. In other words, no one wants an uninhabitable Earth, yet many fear that we’re heading that way. This is another place that I tend to disagree with my peers. Here’s why.
For one example, climate change. We’ve had a concerted global narrative warning us of the dangers of climate change for several decades. We have successfully coordinated on this problem.
So, how did we successfully coordinate on climate change? Why is solar and renewable energy going through the roof? The answer: narratives.
Narratives have always been how humans coordinate. From the narrative of Rome, coordinating an empire, to Christianity, coordinating most of Europe, and now to the trifecta of modern global narratives: science, capitalism, and democracy, we have gotten really good at constructing coordinating narratives.
A narrative is a set of stories you use to make sense of the world.
Good narratives are both prescriptive and descriptive. That means they both explain how the world works, as well as how to behave. Science is primarily a descriptive narrative, explaining how and why things work the way they do. Democracy is primarily a prescriptive narrative, explaining how to run large societies. Capitalism is a good hybrid model, where it both describes the nature of economics and capital, and makes many prescriptions about how to optimize production and allocation of resources.
Liv and Daniel have done a remarkable job of using narrative to illustrate a problem: namely, Molochian traps. Clearly articulating the problem is half the battle. Liv’s “win-win” narrative is the antithesis of Moloch. This one-two punch serves as the foundation of a new narrative, of a core assertion, a story about how the world ought to be. Rather than viewing the world as a zero-sum game, we ought to view the world as a positive-sum game. Abundance mindset, win-win scenarios, and so on.
While this is not a totalizing solution, it is certainly part of that third attractor state.
Coordination
There are several mechanisms that we can leverage for coordination, but they all center around narratives. From a neurological and evolutionary perspective, this makes sense. Human brains love stories, we are addicted to them. Between the exploding publishing industry, streaming industry, and everything else, we can see that stories and myths are the primary mode of communication. This modality transcends borders. Both fictional narratives and nonfictional narratives abound.
Religion
Discussed at length by many people, including Yuval Noah Harari, there’s a compelling argument to be made that religion has been the primary coordination mechanism for humanity, at least for the last 2,000 years or so. Particularly with the rise of imperialistic Big God religions. But even so, there’s some evidence that spirituality and religion were some of the first instances of what we would call civilization today, that the kernel of society germinated around spiritual sites Göbekli Tepe. I am not here to make a definitive argument about the origins of civilization nor the importance or validity of this theory. My only salient assertion is that religion has served as a powerful coordination mechanism for centuries. From the Holy Roman Empire to Confucianism and Buddhism and Islam. Large scale religions offer a few things that make them powerful coordinating narratives.
Ontological Framework: Particularly larger religions with cosmogonic (creation) myths offer adherents a tremendous amount of answers, an ontological model of how reality works. This factor alone can make it rather compelling, as it provides answers. Most of the oldest and most durable religions have something to say about creation and the fundamental nature of reality. From the twin masculine and feminine energy of Taoism to the story of Genesis, and everything in between, most religions start with an origin story.
Epistemic Framework: As a downstream consequence of providing an ontological model, most religions also have something to say about truth and knowledge. Who serves as the arbiters of truth and facts? Who is allowed to be a teacher? What constitutes valuable and meaningful information? Religions, for many centuries, have been the center of learning for many societies, or at least very closely tied to the education system, as well as the state. From the Chinese imperial exams to the founding of Oxford University, religion and religious trappings, along with the interests of state, have been important.
Ceremony and Ritual: Sunday service and Beltane fires serve as powerful glues to hold communities together. While there is a huge amount of variance from one culture to another, almost all cultures have regularly occurring festivals, rituals, rites, and ceremonies that serve as reinforcing and binding events. They hold communities together by allowing for demonstrations of costly signaling, but many also generate intense feelings of belonging—oxytocin, endorphins, dopamine.
Social Status: Humans, as a social ape, care deeply about social status, which is almost always ordinal. Religious frameworks create a prescribed way to demonstrate adherence to social norms, and a framework within which to establish social hierarchy. Many even include jurisprudence, manifestos, or doctrines about what behaviors are tolerated and which are proscribed, as well as what lengths you can go to in order to correct or coerce behavior.
It should come no surprise, then, that many people, from Joseph Campbell to Seraphim Rose to Jordan Peterson all see (or saw) traditional religion as the only way to hold society together. It is difficult to replace twenty centuries of cultural heritage, ceremony, philosophy, and reason. The twentieth century, and now the twenty-first century has seen the unraveling of traditional frameworks accelerate and reach a critical point. However, there are three primary generator functions (or core driving forces, or trends) that make me think that we are inexorably on a path away from superstitious religions. Before I dive into those, I will finish add a caveat. I do not necessarily mean “superstition” to be derogatory here. Superstition, in this context, simply means codified by arbitrary referents. These are arbitrary, unprovable, and unfalsifiable axioms upon which the religion is predicated—such as the existence of a paternalistic God or dreaming deities. Many social scientists have observed that these arbitrary referents tend to be incredibly durable anchors of meaning, hence why mythology tends to also be durable.
Generator Functions of Change
There are three primary forces that conspire to inexorably drive us away from traditional Big God superstitious religions.
Human Curiosity. Curiosity is an irrepressible aspect of human nature. It is woven into our genes from long before we were even human. We must know for its own sake, because back through the mists of time, our ancestors who were more curious discovered more food sources, more habitable domains, and traveled further. Curiosity is an intrinsic drive for our entire species, and arguably, the primary reason that humans are the dominant species on the planet.
Democratization of Information. Curiosity drives inquiry and technology. Technology, in turn, has ultimately democratized information, starting largely with the printing press, widespread literacy, radio, television, and now internet. This process was intimately linked to the disintegration of old power structures, such as the monarchy in France. Democratization of information accelerates rational inquiry (curiosity) and allows us to winnow away things that don’t make sense, which leads to the third generator function.
Cognitive Dissonance. Cognitive dissonance, I believe, is an adaptive evolutionary trait whereby humans possess the neural machinery to detect fundamental flaws in our models, beliefs, and actions. In other words, we have an immutable impulse to rectify our worldviews over time, because cognitive dissonance is unpleasant, and we wish to alleviate our own suffering. Therefore, over time, we seek to have a more reconciled and self-consistent model of reality.
These three forces combined, curiosity, democratization of information, and cognitive dissonance, all but necessitated the destruction of old ontological and epistemic frameworks. What has been left in its place has left much to be desired. However, I do believe that this is a necessary step for a civilization. In many centuries, we may look at this time as the transition away from superstition and towards something else. I hesitate to say “towards rationalism” because rationalism is itself a narrative, a set of beliefs and stories that we tell ourselves and each other to make sense of the world.
Global Narratives
There are, in my estimation, three primary global narratives that have supplanted or superseded traditional religion. When people say “Atheism is a religion too!” or “Science is a religion too!” they are not entirely wrong, but I prefer to think of the hypernym for all these: they are all narratives.
Science: Science is the set of rational stories meant to rigorously explain and describe how the physical world operates. It is a narrative comprised of many thousands of narratives, from the stories from the Golden Age of Athens to the life of Einstein, and beyond. Consider that every scientific paper is a miniature narrative about experiments, data, and interpretation. Science has become a global narrative, universally adopted by all nations irrespective of culture, religion, history, or language. Science is, perhaps, one of the most successful and ubiquitous coordinating narratives. Unfortunately, science is primarily descriptive, and studiously avoids being prescriptive. Meaning that it may offer an ontological and epistemic framework, but it makes no assertions about society or how we ought to live. But science does include much ceremony, ritual, and social status. Publish or perish.
Capitalism: Capitalism is the narrative of resource allocation, production of goods and services, and the purpose and use of labor and capital. We use the stories of people like Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant, the patron saints of capitalism. We use the failures of Soviet central management as cautionary tales, not unlike how Sodom and Gomorrah are used in the Bible. Capitalism, slowly but surely, has supplanted Communism entirely, and is now firmly established as the defacto global coordination policy of economics. Sure, various nations have different flavors of capitalism. China still meddles quite a bit with state-run agencies. But then again, so does America with lobbying, special interest groups, and subsidies. Two sides of the same coin. The point is, though, that capitalism is a global coordinating narrative, just like science. One of the chief differences is that capitalism is both descriptive and prescriptive. It does not just describe human nature and the nature of capital and labor, but it also makes many recommendations and assertions about how we ought to relate to such things. Some people have even characterized debt as a form of modern religion (or Hustle Culture, or whatever). We worship the almighty dollar.
Democracy. Like science, the narrative of democracy often starts with the Golden Age of Athens. Democracy is far more arbitrary, almost entirely prescriptive with very little description. Democracy is a set of stories, starting in ancient Greece and Rome, and moving to the modern stories of the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the Arab Spring. The stories of democracy say how we ought to coordinate gigantic societies today. It contains principles such as the rule of law, though just like science, there is some variation from one nation to another. Like science and capitalism, democracy is the foremost governance narrative today, spanning the entire globe. Consider that just two centuries ago, this was not the case.
Now, each of these narratives creates unique incentive structures and attractor states. Capitalism, which worships competition and free market dynamics, is highly Molochy. Democracy, while being better than the alternatives, isn’t much better, as it incentivizes corruption, special interest groups, and cults of personality. Even science is subject to perversion, namely when monied interests get involved, and established scientists wield their power for selfish reasons. But, then again, these are human neurobiological failures that are universal to all systems, and not special to any of these narratives.
What’s missing?
Well, you might say “We clearly need a new religion!” something that offers us an ontological and epistemic framework, as well as a bunch of ceremonies, rituals, and social status games that we can all play and come together.
Unfortunately, I don’t see this as a particularly viable option. One of the primary reasons is that democracy must come with the principles of equality before the law and civil liberties, both of which are antagonistic to many religious doctrines. In point of fact, religion is often forced to take a back seat to secular law: you are all equally free to practice your religion, but none of you are entitled to use your religion to supersede the rule of law.
I would also understand if you said “Absolutely nothing is missing. Science, democracy, and capitalism, when played out together, will create a stable and beneficial attractor state.” Honestly, I do think this is a strong possibility. We are in the midst of a social disintegration literally centuries in the making, and so it is perfectly understandable for people to have a bit of trepidation and hand-wringing over our global coordination failures. Not the least of which are tragedies of the commons on the global stage, but also the anarchic world order we have right now where nations point nukes at each other.
However, see my previous observations about consolidation. The United States, the European Union, a potential African Union. Played out over the coming centuries, just like how feudal lords banded together to stitch the nation of France from a litany of fiefdoms, I do think that in the long run humanity will stitch together a global government. Now, this could be subject to all the foibles and failures of any democracy, and it could literally take centuries and several more world wars to get there.
I am personally undecided on all this, so far be it from me to pass judgment on anyone on any side of the debate. Perhaps we do need to bring spiritual narratives back? Perhaps we are fine with the three global narratives we have today? Perhaps we need a new kind of fourth narrative?
The Fourth Narrative (?)
There was a time, rather recently, that I would have said that I know what the fourth narrative is! In fact, that time was when I started writing this article. However, between talking with friends and through the act of writing this article, I realized that it would be beyond pretentious of me to suggest that I knew what the fourth narrative should be, and even then, what I would have proposed I no longer believe is adequate, even if it is potentially part of a solution.
How do we align humanity?
I would argue that we are largely aligned on the three big narratives: science, capitalism, and democracy. By and large, we are aligned on how to achieve more understanding of the universe. By and large, we are aligned on how to optimize production of goods and services. By and large, we are aligned on how to govern society. No, none of these are perfect, but they are stable enough, and we know how to improve them.
Liv Boeree’s narrative is that of win-win, the search for infinite games, Game B, and generative solutions that are positive-sum, rather than zero-sum or negative-sum.
The narrative I’ve proposed is that of Radical Alignment, a first principles look at who we are and what we need. I’ve suggested that it’s a time to move from a nihilistic narrative to postnihilism, by way of Radical Alignment.
We are in the middle of a noisy, messy, and chaotic transition period for humanity, I think this observation is highly defensible. Maybe the Moloch narrative is enough of a cautionary parable, part of our conversations from here on out. Maybe there are more mythic narratives we can weave into the public conversation and public discourse by way of film and TV and novels.
It may be decades or even centuries before we converge on a fourth narrative, if ever. It would be naive of me to make any assertions either way. Perhaps we will find that these narratives are themselves only transitional, temporary in the grand scheme of things.
I don’t want to leave you hanging or guessing, but the fourth narrative I would have proposed is that of alignment, which I have written about here on Substack and also made videos on. The TLDR is that we should align our lives to our true needs and true values, and that if we adopt a more expansive, abundant mindset, our spheres of caring will expand to encompass the entire planet, all living things, and then we will all make rational choices that serve the betterment of all. I know, I sound like a damned hippie.
At the very least, I hope we can take inspiration from the three global narratives identified, and either shape them, discuss them, or model a fourth narrative on them.
Great article. I have considered this as well. For the fourth narrative I have considered combining psychology with religious linguistics. Unlike Jordan Peterson, I considered it from a prosocial and ACT/Liberation Psychology lens. For those that don't know-Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is an explicit valued based approach to therapy. Liberation Psych is culturally competent, social justice, action based approach that overlaps ACT.