On the Trajectories of Planetary Civilizations: Asymptotic Burnout vs. Homeostatic Awakening. Wong, M. L. & Bartlett, S. Volume ALIFE 2022: The 2022 Conference on Artificial Lifeof ALIFE 2022: The 2022 Conference on Artificial Life07, 2022. 8![On the Trajectories of Planetary Civilizations: Asymptotic Burnout vs. Homeostatic Awakening [link]](https://bibbase.org/img/filetypes/link.svg "link")
Paper doi abstract bibtex Previous studies show that city metrics having to do with growth, productivity, and overall energy consumption scale superlinearly, attributing this to the social nature of cities. Superlinear scaling results in crises called “singularities,” where population and energy demand tend to infinity in a finite amount of time, which must be avoided by ever more frequent “resets” or innovations that postpone the system’s collapse. Here, we place the emergence of cities and technological civilizations in the context of major evolutionary transitions. With this perspective, we hypothesize that once a planetary civilization transitions into a state that can be described as one virtually connected global city, it will face an “asymptotic burnout,” an ultimate crisis where the singularity-interval timescale becomes smaller than the timescale of innovation. If a civilization develops the capability to understand its own trajectory, it will have a window of time to affect a fundamental change to prioritize long-term homeostasis and well-being over unyielding growth—a consciously induced trajectory change or “homeostatic awakening.” We propose a new resolution to the Fermi paradox: civilizations either collapse from burnout or redirect themselves to prioritizing homeostasis, a state where cosmic expansion is no longer a goal, making them difficult to detect remotely.
@proceedings{wong22_trajec_planet_civil,
author = {Wong, Michael L. and Bartlett, Stuart},
title = "{On the Trajectories of Planetary Civilizations:
Asymptotic Burnout vs. Homeostatic Awakening}",
volume = {ALIFE 2022: The 2022 Conference on Artificial Life},
series = {ALIFE 2022: The 2022 Conference on Artificial Life},
year = 2022,
month = 07,
abstract = "{Previous studies show that city metrics having to
do with growth, productivity, and overall energy
consumption scale superlinearly, attributing this to
the social nature of cities. Superlinear scaling
results in crises called “singularities,” where
population and energy demand tend to infinity in a
finite amount of time, which must be avoided by ever
more frequent “resets” or innovations that postpone
the system’s collapse. Here, we place the emergence
of cities and technological civilizations in the
context of major evolutionary transitions. With this
perspective, we hypothesize that once a planetary
civilization transitions into a state that can be
described as one virtually connected global city, it
will face an “asymptotic burnout,” an ultimate
crisis where the singularity-interval timescale
becomes smaller than the timescale of innovation. If
a civilization develops the capability to understand
its own trajectory, it will have a window of time to
affect a fundamental change to prioritize long-term
homeostasis and well-being over unyielding growth—a
consciously induced trajectory change or
“homeostatic awakening.” We propose a new resolution
to the Fermi paradox: civilizations either collapse
from burnout or redirect themselves to prioritizing
homeostasis, a state where cosmic expansion is no
longer a goal, making them difficult to detect
remotely.}",
doi = {10.1162/isal_a_00485},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1162/isal\_a\_00485},
note = 8,
eprint =
{https://direct.mit.edu/isal/proceedings-pdf/isal/34/8/2035361/isal\_a\_00485.pdf},
}
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Superlinear scaling results in crises called “singularities,” where population and energy demand tend to infinity in a finite amount of time, which must be avoided by ever more frequent “resets” or innovations that postpone the system’s collapse. Here, we place the emergence of cities and technological civilizations in the context of major evolutionary transitions. With this perspective, we hypothesize that once a planetary civilization transitions into a state that can be described as one virtually connected global city, it will face an “asymptotic burnout,” an ultimate crisis where the singularity-interval timescale becomes smaller than the timescale of innovation. If a civilization develops the capability to understand its own trajectory, it will have a window of time to affect a fundamental change to prioritize long-term homeostasis and well-being over unyielding growth—a consciously induced trajectory change or “homeostatic awakening.” We propose a new resolution to the Fermi paradox: civilizations either collapse from burnout or redirect themselves to prioritizing homeostasis, a state where cosmic expansion is no longer a goal, making them difficult to detect remotely.","doi":"10.1162/isal_a_00485","url":"https://doi.org/10.1162/isal\\_a\\_00485","note":"8","eprint":"https://direct.mit.edu/isal/proceedings-pdf/isal/34/8/2035361/isal_a_00485.pdf","bibtex":"@proceedings{wong22_trajec_planet_civil,\n author =\t {Wong, Michael L. and Bartlett, Stuart},\n title =\t \"{On the Trajectories of Planetary Civilizations:\n Asymptotic Burnout vs. Homeostatic Awakening}\",\n volume =\t {ALIFE 2022: The 2022 Conference on Artificial Life},\n series =\t {ALIFE 2022: The 2022 Conference on Artificial Life},\n year =\t 2022,\n month =\t 07,\n abstract =\t \"{Previous studies show that city metrics having to\n do with growth, productivity, and overall energy\n consumption scale superlinearly, attributing this to\n the social nature of cities. Superlinear scaling\n results in crises called “singularities,” where\n population and energy demand tend to infinity in a\n finite amount of time, which must be avoided by ever\n more frequent “resets” or innovations that postpone\n the system’s collapse. Here, we place the emergence\n of cities and technological civilizations in the\n context of major evolutionary transitions. With this\n perspective, we hypothesize that once a planetary\n civilization transitions into a state that can be\n described as one virtually connected global city, it\n will face an “asymptotic burnout,” an ultimate\n crisis where the singularity-interval timescale\n becomes smaller than the timescale of innovation. 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