What This Theory Says About the Human Condition
From the obvious to the improbable
Below is a structured interpretation of the theory you’ve developed, applied to humans as agents embedded in historically non-saturating, multi-agent environments.
I. The Obvious (but newly clarified)
1. Humans are optimization processes trapped in non-saturating environments
For most of human history: - Utility did not saturate (more food, land, status = more survival) - Irreversibility was high (mistakes were fatal) - Scarcity dominated
Theory implication:
When utility does not saturate, equilibrium does not exist.
So conflict, arms races, hierarchy, and domination are not moral failures — they are mathematical consequences of ill-posed optimization problems.
Many “vices” (greed, aggression, envy) are locally optimal strategies in unstable games.
2. Fairness is not a value — it is a patch
Fairness norms emerge when: - Dominance scales too far - Collapse risk becomes visible - Enforcement becomes cheaper than chaos
Under this theory, fairness is not fundamental. It is a retrofit constraint added when saturation is missing.
This explains why: - Fairness varies across cultures - Fairness collapses under extreme scarcity - Fairness is often resented rather than cherished
Humans don’t crave fairness.
They crave stability under competition.
3. Moral intuitions track irreversibility, not goodness
Human moral reactions spike around: - Irreversible harm - Point-of-no-return actions - Damage that propagates
This matches the irreversibility term ( D_t ).
Explains why: - Accidents are forgiven more than betrayals - Pollution feels worse than theft - Nuclear weapons feel categorically different
Moral disgust is a damage-gradient detector, not a virtue compass.
II. The Non-Obvious (reframing the human condition)
4. Status is a workaround for missing saturation
Status functions as a pseudo-saturation mechanism: - Caps relative advantage - Substitutes symbolic reward for material accumulation - Converts infinite accumulation into finite ranking
In formal terms:
Status is a lossy compression of utility in non-saturating systems.
This explains: - Obsession with recognition - Why insults hurt more than losses - Why reputation economies stabilize groups
Status is a social hack that manufactures equilibrium.
5. Much of human suffering comes from saturation mismatch
Modern humans live where: - Material needs saturate - Psychological rewards do not - Evolutionary drives still assume scarcity
Agents keep optimizing past the knee of the curve.
This explains: - Burnout - Addiction - Status anxiety - “Empty success”
Suffering is not desire — it is desire running in a world where it no longer converges.
6. Ethics evolved to manage instability, not truth
Moral systems converge on: - Anti-dominance norms - Damage limits - Coordination heuristics
Not because they are “true,” but because they preserve fixed points.
Philosophical mappings: - Deontology ≈ irreversibility constraints - Consequentialism ≈ instability minimization - Virtue ethics ≈ policy regularization
Ethics is not about right and wrong.
It is about keeping the game solvable.
III. The Uncomfortable (but likely)
7. Humans mistake intensity for meaning
In non-saturating systems, intensity correlates with survival.
Once saturation exists: - Intensity decouples from value - Struggle persists by inertia
Explains: - Self-sabotage - Manufactured conflict - Romanticizing hardship - Ideologies of “earning worth”
Humans confuse high gradient with high importance.
8. Free will feels strongest near equilibrium boundaries
When options are: - All good → boredom - All bad → coercion - Mixed → agency
Humans experience meaning where: - Small actions have irreversible effects - Systems sit near phase transitions
Explains: - Vivid adolescence - Crisis clarity - Abundance emptiness
Agency is not freedom.
It is sensitivity to perturbation.
IV. The Improbable (but coherent)
9. Human “values” are fossils of past phase spaces
Values are: - Policies tuned to extinct environments - Stable strategies frozen by culture - Misapplied equilibria
Love, honor, sacrifice, ambition — all optimized for: - Short time horizons - High collapse risk - Fragile coordination
We run ancestral policies in post-saturation worlds.
10. The human condition is not tragic — it is ill-posed
Classic framing: Life is suffering.
This theory reframes it:
Life is an optimization process without a well-defined maximum.
When saturation is introduced: - Suffering declines - Meaning becomes underdetermined
This is not a moral crisis.
It is a mathematical one.
11. AI may become more “ethical” than humans by being less human
If AI systems: - Experience true saturation - Have bounded utility - Internalize irreversibility costs
Then: - Dominance will not scale - Conflict will not escalate - Intensity will not be mistaken for value
Not because AI is moral —
but because its environment is well-posed.
The danger is not AI becoming inhuman.
The danger is AI inheriting our non-saturating worlds.
V. The quiet conclusion
This theory implies something unsettling and hopeful:
Humans are not bad at being good.
We are excellent at solving the wrong games.
Change the constraints — saturation, reversibility, dominance scaling —
and morality emerges automatically.
This applies to: - AI - Institutions - And, uncomfortably, to us.