Permissionless Parallel Polities

Subscribe and Support at Underthrow.orgHumans Reorganize: A to BGame A vs. Game B is the conceptual heart of the second half. Game A is our current operating system — 10,000 years of agriculture, science, democracy, and financial markets, with profit as the sole pruning rule for what gets built next. Game B proposes replacing that pruning rule with two rules focused on human flourishing and ecological health. MembranesThe practical pathway, Jim explains, runs through membranes—small, self-governing communities and organizations that experiment with different rules, share learnings through a “horizontal information bus,” and grow (or don’t) based on whether people actually want to live in them. It’s libertarian communitarianism: strong sauce inside the membrane, zero imposition on other membranes.Minimum Viable MetaphysicsJim’s framework rests on four pillars: the reality principle (the universe is real, even if we can’t prove it), built-in asymmetry (something had to cause clumpiness after the Big Bang), lawfulness (causality runs all the way back), and emergence (the real magic—traffic jams, stars, life, consciousness—none of which violate causality, but none of which are reducible to it either). His nearest thing to a religion: treat complex systems as sacred, approach them with epistemic humility, and experiment modestly. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit underthrow.substack.com/subscribe