The terminus of techno-accelerationists ideals. Hyperindividualism. A combinatoric explosion in the space of ideological expression

Humans, from my understanding, are much like agents, a sort of very complex automaton operating in a highly non-linearly dynamic environment, primarily trying to optimize for a set of reward functions across multiple domains. We can break these domains down into varying levels of granularity. From the organization of our nucleotides in our DNA, coding for an optimal set and combination of genes to maximize the reward function in terms of fitness, to more complex, high-level emergent behaviors in social settings, attempting to optimize for eventual outcomes signaling status. We are optimization machines - and we’re quite good at it relatively speaking. From this need for optimization emerges our true power - generalization. Unlike computers, humans can generalize solutions to a very high degree, with very little data. Think of it as analogous to zero-shot learning in ML. We need only sparse datasets to optimally generalize a given problem over others. But, this propensity for optimization can also be detrimental if geared towards the wrong objectives or predicated on corrupt reward functions. Upon superficial reflection, I have come to the assumption that any such society, on a socio-economical level, seemingly optimizing for individuality, would ultimately converge unto a para-mimetic travesty - an “emergence of hyper-imitation”. For this essay, the idea of Mimesis, which was coined initially by ancient greeks, is denoted in the Girardian sense.

Ingratiated in our collective psyche is an urge to conform to the extent that one may not be designated the title of scapegoat. Like most incomprehensible social phenomena, this could almost plausibly be explained by behavioral genetics in an evolutionary context. Humans generally evolved to be prosocial beings. Such mechanisms as Girard’s scapegoat mechanism, ensures behaviors are maintained in a certain equilibrium range in a self-correcting manner.

Such emergence of hyper-mimicry can occur in a few ways. The lowest hanging mechanism for such entails a manifestation via a virtual reality hyperspace. Mimetic signals for ever more esoteric and bogus bodily configurations. The combinatorial limits of these morphological configurations are fairly unbounded, up till the degree that any such advanced technology would confer unto humans, a greater range of perception, therefore granting ever-increasing morphological configuration combinations and permutations. Take, for example, humans in our current state, as being able to only physically perceive a limited range of colors limited by the way photons with certain wavelengths bouncing off surfaces interact with our rods and cones, producing the perceptual sensation, or qualia of “color”. The range of colors mediated by the EM spectrum, that we can perceive, which is bounded by our biology, could ultimately be expanded given sufficiently advanced technology. In such a scenario, one could see how convergence to such a “para-mimetic travesty” would seem less likely given the combinatorial upper bounds of such bodily configurations. The problem is whether the combinatorial products scale proportionally with the number of people participating. If it does scale proportionally, then it would be almost implausible for one to assume a convergence to any such para-mimetic travesty.

This travesty could also manifest via crisper-type gene editing. This - in my opinion - seems to be a more concerning method. From what one knows about an overly homogenous population, a wide range of natural environmental pressures such as founders effects, genetic bottlenecks, or even plague-like epidemics could give rise to civilization-ending scenarios. Mimetic signals would make people optimize for more of the same features, in an ever-increasingly more esoteric way. Although this would presuppose no such technological advancements that would make humans less “antagonistic”. This could perhaps be another great filter challenge for humans. Just as nuclear weapons and bioweapons engineering. Although at this point, the introduction of population annihilating phenomena by mother nature, such as deleterious mutations in genes of the given population, would be easily caught or predicted and therefore taken care of beforehand. These are very close approximations to “god-level” powers so we would do well to tread lightly, but that does not seem to be the default mode of operation for humans. We are more “move fast, break things” - and, to be honest, I quite enjoy moving fast and breaking things, it emboldens the builder ethos.