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.
AI alignment is a Human Alignment Problem