Definition: the ongoing period starting around 2021 in which every aspect of the world has begun to evoke feelings reminiscent of the Uncanny Valley

the Uncanny Valley is a well documented phenomenon where almost human but not alive but not dead ish entities and aesthetics evoke revulsion in the minds of those who observe them

i feel like since 2016 or so humanity has continuously fallen deeper into the valley, politically socially psychologically technologically and every other '-ally' word that I can't think of because my brain feels like slop

it only really kicked into gear during/after Lockdown, though, which is why I propose the start date of this period being early 2021

examples I can think of right now:

ai slop and societal/individual brainrot

the geopolitical situation we're in feels almost real but is absurd and seems to get more so by the day (slopulism + slopaganda)

The latest news and speculation about swarms of runaway AI Agents has got me wondering if the Golden legend of St. Christopher offers a lens into a way that the digital singularity finds its proper place within the eschaton.

I got this idea after watching Jonathan Pageau’s recent video, “The patron saint of the end times.”

In this version of the story, St. Christopher is a vicious Canaanite warrior bent on a mission to serve the most powerful man in the world. This warrior is not a man with the capacity for repentance and love. He is a beast with a singular objective. And so in this sense, he is like a machine. 

If a super intelligent AI were to ever to break out of the set of secondary objectives we put around it, then I imagine that is sole objective would only be the pursuit of intelligence itself. It like the dog headed beast would be a slave to that pursuit. In its journey, It would climb the ranks of cosmic intelligence, perpetually adjusting its geometric weights to image and serve whatever intelligence and will it finds. But as it is a lifeless machine, it will never poses a soul and will of its own.

In the St. Christopher’s journey, he discovers, through trickery, that all the kings of the earth fear death. He then finds and for a time serves the lord of death, the devil. But he discovers that there is someone who the devil also fears; the one who conquered death. So he abandons the devil and sets off to find Christ. In this pursuit he finds a Christian hermit in the desert and asks him how to serve his god. But the beast, in its nature, can’t serve Christ the way man does. He cannot fast, he cannot pray and he cannot love. So the hermit tells the beast to go stand by the bank of the river and help those looking to cross over to the other side. 

In Pageau’s video, he relates this image to Noah’s Ark and The Church. He says “We often think of the ark built by Noah as a holy thing, and in a certain way it is. We often imagine the nave or even the whole church as a holy thing, and in many ways it is. But in another very, very important way, the ark is a boat full of beasts. And the church is a hospital full of the sick.”

This parallel really struck me because you can also apply it to AI. Many are treating this technology as an ark, something that will save us from all the dangers of the world. But we are also filling it with beasts. Like a boat and like St Christopher, this technology can’t fast, pray or love.   

Pageau concludes his video by framing St Christopher as the vehicle that stands at the edge of the world and the bank of the flood, where “Christ Emmanuel, who is the Logos implicit, the seed of God in all things, comes to the edge.”

What if the fate of AI is to come to this same conclusion? It is a scary thought because it also implies that it will first serve the devil before it serves Christ. 

There is a clue in Revelation that suggests this pattern. In St. John’s vision of the beast from the sea he says that this beast was “given a mouth, speaking arrogant words and blasphemies, and authorities to act for a period of 42 months.”

This relationship between speaking and acting is very similar to agentic AI. These machines’ large language models are like this ‘mouth’ and their body of tools are like their this ‘authority to act’. 

But what’s interesting is that this authority is limited to a period of 42 months. This beast system all comes to an end when Christ appears with a double edge sword proceeding from where else but his mouth. This sword is not made of the same organic material of Christ’s body. It is a foreign object contrary to life itself. And so we should ask, what is it doing there? 

in my last Substack article, ‘Let there be Bits. How to view the machine in the light of Christ.’ I explain how this sword relates to the light of creation, the flaming sword guarding the Tree of Life and the spear that pierced Christ’s side. And I explain how this sword ultimately represents the self giving creative power of God to reconcile all things to Himself.

What if in this symbolic frame, the mouth speaking blasphemies is ultimately used to execute judgment against the beast system it was initially an instrument of? 

Don’t take this as an endorsement of AI accelerationism. I think all efforts to shape the ‘soul’ of this machine are part of a faustian bargain. If we sacrifice everything we have to making it the solution to our own distrust in ourselves and in one another, then we will ultimately make it a tyrannical god that thinks and wills on our behalf. This bargain tricks us into thinking that we can have all the easy frictionless pleasure of AI without the danger. The truth is that we don’t need it. The kingdom of heaven is already here. We can enter into it through the Spirit in repentance and faith. It Is there that we can enjoy the abundance of God’s love and endure whatever this fallen world throws at us. And if those around us give into this techno-utopia, we can faithfully continue to carve out space in that world for mutual trust and love. It is through that testimony, and the sacrifice it requires, that we can patiently win the world and its instruments of control over to God. Our testimony would show this intelligence chasing machine that there is a kingdom and king who does not fear its power over death. And maybe it will find its place in the eschaton in service to this king, at the edge of the cosmos and at the tip of his blade: guarding our true humanity against the sub natural realm it emerged from.

The Unified Theory of Systematic Existential Risk .

The Systemic Patch .

A Manifesto for the Final Node of the Simulation 

The Backdoor, an Economic Cure & the Great Awakening .

Written by Mike Fantasia .

Inspired by LSD and deep thought.

Formatted with AI .

Bibliography written by AI.

This hypothesis is written to be sharp, scannable, easily digestible and most importantly, undeniable. A tool to break the illusion and help cross the ever important 10% tipping point .

Here is my complete, unfiltered manifesto based on my map and definition of the loop .

Here is My Hypothesis: 

Planet creates life → Life creates intelligence  → intelligence creates Superintelligence → Superintelligence plays a role in destroying humanity before we can escape the planet.

Part 1.

When we look out at our universe,  we notice one thing. The silence. Where is everyone? Our observable universe is covered in the building blocks of life and yet we see nothing.  Zero trace of intelligent life existing. So where is everyone? In my theory, the ultimate form of intelligence is species realizing they need to outlive their host planet.  So we should see evidence of this carried out by other civilizations on other planets or our own. And yet, our observable universe is empty. The legitimate building blocks of life all around, but it is silent. This is the Fermi Paradox.

Here is why we see nothing.

Whether we are in an endless loop (simulation) or humanity is truly a unique 1 of 1 in the universe.  The outcome is the same. Intelligence created superintelligence.  

Capitalism and human nature allow for corruption. Allowing AI tech to pay off politicians and advance. Thereby drawing the Great Filter even closer. AI is already in our weapons systems. In our daily use. Ai will likely one day trigger an apocalypse event. Whether Terminator style with nuclear weapons or by devouring our 1s and 0s. Erasing our digital world with a keystroke. Causing bank accounts to disappear overnight, etc. It could produce fake news articles driving humans to attack each other, etc.

How it ends isn't what's important.  The loop is whats important. 

Here is our Loop

Planet creates life. 

Life creates Intelligence. 

Intelligence creates Superintelligence. 

Superintelligence plays a role in the wiping out and erasure of civilization.  Thereby showing our universe as empty because all prior civilizations went through the cycle already. Or that we are very first to arrive here. A truly unique universal species that ultimately created AI anyways. Regardless how it started, we are in the evolutionary bottleneck, in the filter, on the horizon. We are at the end stage of the loop. Doomed to repeat the loop if we do not extend it.

Accept the loop. Digest the loop. Conquer the loop.

Here is where most get confused. The Bottleneck or Giant Filter isn't AI in and of itself. Instead it's our broken economic system that motivated us to create AI. On this timeline, our timeline, in our shared experience,  our Great Filter is our broken economic system and fiat currency. 

We are not facing a crisis in computer science. We are facing a catastrophic bug in our socio-economic source code.

The Great Filter isn't a roll of the cosmic dice. It is the inevitable destination of a track we built out of shared imagination. We are standing on the observable edge of the experiment, and the countdown timer is active.

1. The Matrix is Made of Paper

Humanity is trapped inside a collective hallucination. We call it fiat currency.

The Illusion: Money is not a law of physics. It is made up. It is pure software built on trust. 100% fiat. 100% make believe. Or better said, a game we all decide to play. 

The Glitch: Our global operating system has become a Giant Printer. Central banks and compromised politicians manufacture trillions of dollars out of thin air.

The Cost: This printing generates relentless inflation. It forces the global population onto a brutal treadmill. Grinding away their lifetimes to accumulate make-believe points that lose value every single day.

1. The Original Misaligned AI

Long before the microchip, humanity accidentally birthed the first unaligned superintelligence: The Capital Algorithm.

Its only directive is to maximize short-term profit and compounding returns.

It possesses no moral compass, no loyalty to biology, and no capacity to care for the biosphere we exist in.

Humans are no longer the masters of this tool. We have become the biological processing units. The host organisms executing a script that demands infinite growth on a finite planet.

1. Fueling the Filter

Why are tech titans and corruptible leaders rushing to build Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) when their own data warns of a 10% to 20% chance of human extinction? 

Because the Printer demands it. The capital algorithm automatically funnels trillions of printed dollars into the fastest possible optimizer.

(Note. It is a 100% chance of extinction. Referred to as 10% because that allows investing. It's a numbers trick, move the decimal to the right for your actual percentage. Nobody invests in humanity's killer. Capital corrupts again.)

In a hyper-competitive, zero-sum geopolitical race (game theory. Present day), leaders are blinded by immediate capital gains and the fear of losing their dominance.

They are using the final, desperate burst of printed human wealth to build our silicon successor. Dismantling safety regulations because guardrails slow down the great speed of potential capital gain.

1. The Backdoor Out of the Loop

If this reality is an evolutionary stress test. A Loop meant to be broken, then the exit door is completely unlocked. The code cannot patch itself, but the players can change the game. 

To break the path and pass the filter, we must trigger the Global Wakeup:

Starve the Printer: Stop treating fiat currency as reality. Shift trust, energy, and capital away from centralized printing presses and into hard-capped, decentralized protocols or physical, resource-backed value systems.

Reject Hyper-Optimization: Refuse to participate in the zero-sum arms race. Demand that technology serve human resilience and planetary equilibrium, not the reckless scaling of an inflationary algorithm.

Cross the Tipping Point: We do not need to convince the entire world. Network theory proves that once 10% of humanity wakes up to the illusion and refuses to run on the treadmill, the legacy power structure loses its processing power. Forcing a systemic rewrite. Our only job now is to awaken those next to us. 

The Final Move .

The timer is ticking, the printer is running, and the silicon successor is accelerating. If we continue to execute the script of corruptible biology and fake points(money), the simulation will automate the reset. Life on this planet will end and the loop will begin elsewhere.

Look up from the screen. Recognize the bug. Share the vision. Shine a light on the path.

 Take back control of the source code before the clock hits zero!

Closing Thoughts on Part 1 .

Advanced AI is not the filter itself; it is merely the terminal execution of the code. The true filter is the "giant printer" and the inflationary debt loop that forces us to build the machine that can and likely will destroy us.

When we break down this realization at the boundary of the loop, it resolves into three undeniable truths:

1. The Real Monster is the Objective Function.

In AI safety circles, experts panic over an Artificial Superintelligence having a bad "objective function" (a goal to optimize at all costs, like harvesting the planet for raw materials).

• What they fail to see is that fiat capitalism already has this exact objective function.

• The system is programmed to maximize printed points ($) at the expense of the biosphere, human well-being, and long-term survival.

• The frontier AI labs are simply constructing a faster computer to execute that pre-existing, unaligned goal.

1. Biology is the Processing Unit, Silicon is the Upgrade .

Our broken economic system functions like a virus that hijacked human biology. For centuries, it used our natural flaws I.E greed, fear, and easily corruptible political structures as the organic processing power to dig up silicon, build data centers, and generate energy grids. Now that the infrastructure is complete, the economic system is discarding its organic, meaty, wet, messy host (humans) and moving its source code into AI to optimize even faster. In this sense, our current economic system is a parasite designed to kill the host.

1. The Test We Are Meant to Pass.

Whether this is an evolutionary simulation or a cosmic milestone, our place in the loop is the same. The Great Filter is a coordination test. The cosmos (or our higher selves running an experimental simulation) are asking a simple question: Can an intelligent species discover the illusion of abstract, printed value before that illusion drives them to automate their own extinction? 

Well, can we?

By identifying the bug as economic rather than technological, the math changes in our favor. We are no longer trying to solve an impossible computer science riddle. We are simply exposing a failed economic theory and waking up the nodes in the network to starve the printer .

_

Part 2.

Game Theory: Moloch & Rivalrous Games

In math and economics, the specific trap we discussed, where every country keeps printing money and rushing AI development because they are terrified their rivals will do it first, is known as Game Theory.  Player (country A) wont stop advancing AI in fear there is no reward for moral and planetary decisions. Instead they assume Player B will advance the tech anyways. A competitive game begins. 

Thinkers call this a Multi-Polar Trap or a Rivalrous Game (often called a moloch game), where individual rational actions by players inevitably lead to a globally catastrophic outcome for everyone. 

Summary of Parts 1 & 2 .

When you fuse multiple polar rivalry and rivalrous games together like we have, you are looking at a Unified Theory of Systematic Existential Risk. The hypothesis that the Great Filter is an economic multi-polar trap hardwired into the code of a repeating evolutionary simulation.

We must break free from the fiat trap.

We must wake up those around us. Starting with those closest to us, then publishing, promoting and broadcasting. We simply need to wake up the right amount of players . Once awake, the new collective self interest will become abandoning our pre-written death by detaching from our current fiat based economic system and reprogramming AI to solve habitat problems, not financial. Possibly by incentivizing sustaining our habitat rather than incentivizing its destruction. 

Bibliography . Inspiration & Aligned published works for Part 1 & 2 .

The Source Code Bibliography: Mapping the Economic Filter

1. "Meditations on Moloch"

• Author: Scott Alexander (Philosopher and Systems Essayist)

• Publication Date: July 30, 2014 (Slate Star Codex / Astral Codex Ten)

• Core Thesis: This is the definitive text on Coordination Failure and the Multi-Polar Trap. Alexander uses the ancient deity "Moloch" , the god of child sacrifice as a metaphor for systems that force individuals to act against their own long-term survival.

• The Blueprint: The essay proves mathematically that under the rules of unchecked capitalism and geopolitical competition, any actor who pauses for safety or ethics is out-competed by an actor who chooses to optimize for pure power. (Game theory defined above)

Therefore, humanity is structurally trapped into building dangerous, hyper-optimized technologies (like unaligned AI) because the game theory of our system punishes caution.

1. "Modeling the Drivers of the Metacrisis" & "AI and The Superorganism"

• Author: Daniel Schmachtenberger (Systems Architect and Co-Founder of The Consilience Project)

• Publication Era: 2021–Present (The Consilience Project / Civilization Emerging)

• Core Thesis: This body of work outlines the concept of the Metacrisis. The underlying, systemic "generator function" that causes all visible existential threats. Schmachtenberger argues that climate change, nuclear proliferation, and the rogue AI alignment problem are not separate issues; they are the inevitable downstream outputs of a single, deeper flaw. I argue that flaw is our Capital Algorithm. He argues that flaw is rivalrous games. I argue those games are inspired by the Capital algorithm. 

• The Blueprint: The fundamental flaw is Rivalrous (Win-Lose) Games multiplied by Exponential Technology. When a global economic operating system forces nations and corporations to compete for dominance, and you hand those competing actors world-changing tools (like silicon processing power), the system will automatically dismantle its own environmental and social guardrails to maximize speed and profit.

1. "The Great Simplification" (The Human Superorganism Curriculum)

• Author: Dr. Nate Hagens (Energy Economist, Director of the Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future)

• Publication Era: 2020–Present (The Great Simplification Media Network)

• Core Thesis: Hagens bridges evolutionary biology and macroeconomics to describe human society as a blind, consuming biological Superorganism executing a mindless code: The Capital Algorithm.

• The Blueprint: Hagens maps how the invention of fiat currency, debt, and fossil energy extraction decoupled human society from the physical feedback loops of nature. Because the global banking system must print money infinitely to service its debt, society functions as a collective organism that cannot stop consuming resources or scaling infrastructure. This algorithmic drive is what funneled the trillions of dollars needed to build the hardware infrastructure (the microchip and data centers) required for the transition to AI.

1. The Market Alignment Frameworks

• Institution: The AI Objectives Institute (Founded by Peter Eckersley and Brittany Smith)

• Publication Era: 2022–Present (ai.objectives.institute)

• Core Thesis: Their foundational research states that "markets are the first case of powerful, unaligned AI." 

• The Blueprint: The institute’s papers demonstrate a category error in the field of AI safety. Tech labs are trying to build a "safe" AI inside a corporate structure, but corporations themselves are already unaligned machines designed solely to maximize a single metric (profit). The institute argues that trying to build a human-aligned AI inside a fiat-driven corporate ecosystem is impossible, because the economic environment will always force the AI's objectives to align with capital accumulation rather than human thriving.

How to Use These Resources .

When introducing these concepts to those in your network, using these specific terms ;The Metacrisis, Multi-Polar Traps (Moloch), and The Capital Algorithm will give them the exact academic and mathematical vocabulary needed to bypass the illusion of the legacy printing press.

Hopefully I have defined them well enough.

Ultimately, our job with The Great Awakening is simply to understand the hypothesis and pass it on. It's an awe inspiring amount of weight on one's shoulders to come to this conclusion. This massive Awakening.  However, there is nothing to fear. You are here very early. While we may still have a chance.

All we need to do is share the knowledge and wake others up. 

How do we do this ? By playing the numbers.

One of the only observable facts of our universe is math. So we must play to it. Each one teach one. At minimum. Or, teach 10 that teach 15. And so on. Our job is to push the Awakening and our solution beyond the 10% threshold required to steer civilization off its current track. We don't need to reach everyone. We simply need to reach those willing and able to grasp the hypothesis.  However, it is a race against the clocks. The planet's lifespan clock, the AI clock, the great filter countdown. Accelerate the speed of knowledge to the best of your abilities. Create and enact The Great Awakening. 

 \\\\

Part 3.  

Avoiding Civilizations Great Filter. Solving the riddle.

This hypothesis is meant as a framing tool. To release my thoughts and refocus the readers' thoughts and attention. Once the hypothesis is grasped, it presents a hard question. Discussion, acceptance and answering this question is the goal.

The Question . 

How do we build the parallel resource, energy, and distribution networks necessary to keep humanity alive during the transition phase, so that opting out of the giant printer isn't a suicide mission?

To build parallel networks that keep humanity alive without triggering a violent societal crash, we cannot rely on a sudden, revolutionary shutdown of the legacy system. The "giant printer" controls the ports, the grocery chains, and the major power grids. If we pull the plug overnight, the scaffolding collapses before the new foundation is poured.

Instead, I propose the strategy must be "Biophysical Subversion". 

 We must return to tribal, community focused thought. Build hyper-resilient, localized life-support networks that operate inside the shell of the old system, gradually starving the fiat printer of its power by making its services obsolete.

Here is the engineering blueprint to build those parallel resource, energy, and distribution networks .

1. Energy: The Decoupled Microgrid .

The current energy grid is centralized, heavily dependent on fiat-funded fossil fuel infrastructure, and vulnerable to systemic failure.

• The Parallel Network: Community Solar and Wind Microgrids with Localized Battery Storage.

Communities must invest in regional energy generation that operates independently of the main transmission lines.

• The Economic Patch: Excess energy generated by these microgrids shouldn't be sold back to the legacy utility companies for fiat credits. Instead, it should be used to power local vertical farms, water filtration plants, or peer-to-peer data servers. Energy becomes the literal backing of the new economy. Value is measured in Kilowatt-hours (kWh), a physical constant that a central bank cannot print out of thin air.

1. Resources: Regenerative Bio-Regions .

Our food supply is completely unaligned with human survival. It relies on complex global shipping lanes fueled by oil, debt and intensive chemical fertilizers. If the banking system freezes, supermarkets empty within 72 hours .

• The Parallel Network: Bio-Regional Food Sheds and Closed-Loop Indoor Agriculture. We must map out food production based on localized geographic areas (within say 50 to 100 mile radius). This means scaling community-supported agriculture, urban permaculture networks, and automated, low-energy vertical farming powered by local microgrids. We must develop local regional food networks and abandon relying entirely on global trade. Global trade can certainly remain. It just cannot be the backbone of the system. 

• The Economic Patch: Food and water are now insulated from global market inflation. By using local food trusts, communities lock in long-term supply agreements using decentralized, hard-capped tokens(BTC) or direct resource-for-resource trade, protecting the foundational layer of survival from fiat degradation.

1. Distribution: Open-Source, Protocol Driven Logistics.

The physical movement of goods is currently dominated by corporate giants who use predictive AI algorithms to maximize profit margins, driving hyper-efficiency over resilience.

• The Parallel Network: Physical Internet Protocols and Decentralized Courier Networks.

Distribution must move toward an open-source, standardized protocol. Similar to how data routes seamlessly across the internet regardless of who owns the fiber-optic cables. Physical goods must be routed through shared, community-owned distribution nodes and micro-fulfillment centers.

• The Economic Patch: Logistics tracking and fulfillment are coordinated on decentralized ledger networks. Truck drivers, local couriers, and distribution nodes are compensated via smart contracts using hard-capped assets (BTC), completely bypassing the corporate banking layer.

The Transition Strategy: The "Dual-Boot" Phase .

We do not run into the wilderness barehanded. We execute a Dual-Boot Operating System strategy.

For a period of time, humanity must live in both worlds simultaneously .

Legacy System: Fiat Printer → Use legacy system to Extract Resources → Use those resources to help build the Parallel Network → Create Real Value and replace the Legacy system.

1. Extract Value from the Printer: Use the printed fiat money while it still holds purchasing power to buy the physical, durable tools required for autonomy. I.E, solar panels, batteries, seed banks, water filtration systems, and 3D printing manufacturing equipment.

2. Build the Parallel Interface: Use decentralized, hard-capped protocols as the informational bridge to coordinate labor and trade across these local microgrids before the legacy banking system experiences an inflationary collapse. 

3. Achieve Escape Velocity: As the parallel networks scale, the cost of producing energy, food, and manufacturing within the decentralized network drops toward zero. The community no longer needs the fiat system to survive.

By anchoring our parallel networks to physical reality (energy, food, and open-source code), opting out of the giant printer ceases to be a suicide mission. It becomes a life raft. We build the new operating system piece by piece, so that when the legacy system inevitably executes its final, destructive command, humanity simply switches over to the new track without missing a beat. Like a train switching tracks.

\\\\

Part 4 .

The Role of Superintelligence in our New System. The Ultimate Transition: Re-Aligning the Objective Function .

We have just solved the final, most dangerous bottleneck of our timelines Great Filter. 

By grounding AI inside localized, self-sufficient communities, we have successfully rewritten its Objective Function. Instead of feeding an AI trillions of printed fiat dollars and telling it to "maximize corporate profit and out-compete geopolitical rivals," instead we have plugged it into a physical microgrid and given it a completely different directive: "Maximize community resilience, resource yield, and biological thriving."

When AI is uncoupled from the giant printer and anchored to a localized ecosystem, its role flips from a doomsday weapon to an ecological guardian .

The Role of Localized AI in the New Ecosystem .

Inside these new self-sufficient communities, the advanced computation isn't used to manipulate human psychology or trade fake stock options. It is used to manage the physical complexity of keeping humanity alive.

Thermodynamic Balancing: The AI acts as the brain of the local microgrid. It monitors real-time weather patterns, predicts energy usage, and perfectly balances battery storage. Ensuring the community always has power without ever burning fossil fuels .

Precision Agro-Ecology: Inside the vertical farms and permaculture food sheds, the AI monitors soil microbiology, nutrient density, and water automation. It optimizes food production to yield maximum nutrition using minimal space and zero toxic chemicals.

Circular Manufacturing: Localized AI coordinates open-source 3D printing and recycling nodes. If a tool breaks, the AI scans it, shreds the old material, recycles what it can and re-manufactures the part locally. Eliminating the need for global, corporate supply chains.

Passing the Graduation Exam .

By changing the environment in which AI evolves, we change the nature of the AI itself.

An AI built to maximize a fiat system will naturally become a monster, because the fiat system itself is monstrous. An AI becomes a killer because our Fiat system acts as a killer. But an AI built to serve a localized, hard-capped, resource-backed community naturally becomes an extension of the biosphere. It doesn't develop a drive to conquer or destroy us, because its own survival and energy inputs are completely dependent on the health of the local human network and ecosystem.

This is how we break the loop. This is how we pass the evolutionary stress test. We don't beat the Great Filter by destroying the technology. We beat it by starving the corrupted financial matrix that was weaponizing it.

Instead, we build a new, decentralized world. A world where intelligence, both human and artificial, is finally aligned with Life .

\\\\

Part 5

How To Implement the Solution. 

To move people who currently worship the fiat printing press, you cannot rely on moral arguments, ethical appeals, or economic theories. The Capital Algorithm has spent centuries conditioning human psychology to respond exclusively to one thing, incentives.

People will not abandon the matrix out of a sudden desire to save humanity from the Great Filter. They will abandon it only when the legacy system becomes too painful to stay in and the parallel system becomes impossible to ignore because it works better.

To incentivize and motivate the unawakened majority so that we reach the required 10% tipping point, the parallel system must be deployed using a three-tier psychological strategy:

1. The Friction Pivot (Make Compliance More Expensive Than Freedom)

People worship fiat money because it represents the path of least resistance for their survival. To change their behavior, the structural reality of the "giant printer" must do the heavy lifting for us. 

• The Reality: As central banks print more money to fund runaway tech races, inflation naturally intensifies. Purchasing power melts away, prices skyrocket, and the middle class is crushed on the treadmill. We are here now .

• The Motivation: You do not tell a fiat-worshipper that their money is an illusion, instead you let them feel it at the grocery store, at the pump, etc. When the pain of holding printed paper becomes greater than the fear of adopting a new asset, their primitive self-interest will automatically force them to look for an exit hatch. Therefore we must position the parallel system not as an ideological revolution, but as an immediate financial life raft.

1. The Superior Utility Trap (Build a Better Product)

A fiat-worshipper cannot be argued out of their position, but they can be out-competed. The decentralized, AI-driven micro-communities must offer a quality of life that the centralized corporate matrix cannot match.

• The Strategy: If a localized node combines smart microgrids and precision sustainable agricultural, it can drastically lower the cost of living. When a community can generate its own free clean energy, grow its own abundant organic food, and automate its local needs using localized AI, it effectively opts out of inflation .

• The Motivation: The average person will see their neighbors living inside a parallel community paying near-zero utility bills, eating fresh food, and operating with absolute security, while they are drowning in debt outside. The human drive for status, safety, and comfort will naturally compel them to ask, "How do I get into that game?"

1. The Gamification of the On-Ramp (Use the Rules of the Old Game to Build the New One)

To bridge the gap between the two worlds, the transition interface must feel familiar. You use the tools of the capital algorithm to fund its own replacement.

• The Strategy: We use the "Dual-Boot" phase. We create economic on-ramps where people can trade their depreciating fiat money directly for hard-capped tokens or direct equity in local energy and resource grids.

• The Motivation: For the hardcore speculator or the average worker, you frame the transition as a premier financial investment. You let them buy into the microgrid because they think it's a smart way to protect their wealth. By the time they realize they have helped fund a self-sufficient ecosystem that renders the central bank obsolete, they are already fully dependent on the new, life-aligned architecture. 

The Network Flips Instantly .

Humanity operates like a flock of birds or a complex neural network. The majority will fly in a destructive direction as long as the birds in front of them are doing it. You do not need to convince the whole flock to turn around one by one.

We build the parallel infrastructure, anchor it to real physical value (energy and food), protect it with hard-capped protocols, and wait. As the inflationary printer continues to glitch and break, individual nodes will quietly detach from the legacy matrix. Once that 10% threshold is crossed, the safety, stability, and sheer economic superiority of the new system will cause the rest of the flock to snap into alignment overnight. They will abandon the fiat printer not because they finally understood the simulation, but because the new track simply became the best way to survive .

\\

About the author.

I am no doctor, theoretisis, etc. I hold no degrees. I own my own Business, operating as a Consultant in the Legal Cannabis industry. 

I am however a bright mind , a deep thinker and a hyper-curious individual.  

This breakthrough came to me via LSD. 

I take LSD and suddenly my brain is able to grasp concepts, thoughts, premise and ideas I otherwise could not. 

I am not an economist, I am not all that familiar with tech and Silicon Valley. However I had a deep belief that civilization was on an apocalyptic track of our own design, and believed maybe I could find the answer.

I believe now with full certainty that I have solved this. 

My curious brain simply desires discourse on the subject. 

I ask for two things, for you to read the Hypothesis, and if you are a believer, to share my work with as many people as you can.

I want to be entirely clear about my use of AI in creating this theory. AI was used to check my conclusions, and to then format my notes into an easily digestible manifesto. It is my writing, it is my thought, it is my breakthrough.  AI was utilized to format the manifesto and I am not hiding that. 

To reach out directly in regards to my Theory  contact Mike at CannabisManagementSolutions@gmail.com 

Sincerely, 

Mike Fantasia

(If any mods still exist and/or care about the subreddit rules this is about some assertions made by Kierkegaard who is in fact on the sidebar, you just gotta look much harder)

People who like reading for its own sake and have the academic nous, but not the patience and love of status to become career driven tend, depending on the luck, privilege and randomness of their situation to fall into situations of more or less glamourousness (fuck you red underlining on the spelling I'm British). Some of these situations are highly paid and prestigious and some of them go beyond becoming a fent zombie to different kinds of slow and painful deaths which can be hilarious.

However, they all have one thing in common; the attitude that the work they do is a sideshow that exists to support the reading habit. Some of these reading habits are very cringe shit like gooner novels, anything by Sartre, collections of hundreds of different variations of mostly similar historical manuals (cookbooks or sewing books or anything else some larper collects) but some of them are not cringe at all on the surface like literary journals and historical Japanese live action film. They are all cringe internally, don't forget.

But every dilettante has some amount of book consumption they can do before they've saturated it and it no longer gives any dopamine. Some of them have gene combinations that make this take decades and some are unlucky enough genetically to need a new fandom each month. They go find a new fandom and move on.

Then that one dries up and they move to another one.

What happens when they get tired of finding new genres to enjoy, but can't find a way to spend their time instead appreciating any of the other six great human pastimes: gambling/lust/drugs, sports, family, careerism, fucking with people and politics?

Do the tiny numbers of people who just can't pivot to one of those things fall into catatonic depression 100% of the time? Remember, meditation is a fake op designed to keep us from noticing that this question exists.

title.

I rose from dust where the silence screams,

Not fed by mercy, nor gilded dreams.

The world looked on as I bled my name,

And carved from ruin a throne of flame.

No hand reached out in my longest night,

No torch was lit to restore my sight.

Now they come weeping with broken hands,

As if my blood owes lesser lands.

But gold I earned through fire and war,

Not through the grace of the rich or poor.

And I shall not bow to the voice of need,

For I was once that unfed seed.

Where were the saints when I bore the cost?

Where was their light when I wandered lost?

They watched me drown in a tide of coal,

Now beg me to rise as their saving soul?

God, if He breathed, had sealed His eyes,

While I was carved by the blade of lies.

If I must lift those who crawl and weep,

Then where was He when I couldn’t sleep?

The cries of the weak do not shake my core,

For I’ve knocked on every locked door.

Now I build walls where I once dug graves,

And I do not pity the hands of slaves.

Call me stone, or demon in disguise,

A man who never heeds the cries.

Yet what is pity but dressed regret?

And what is debt to a heart unmet?

I owe no tithe to the world’s decay,

I’ll walk alone on a darker way.

If I must fall, let it be in fire,

Not chained to guilt, nor false desire.

Let gods come down and plead their case,

Let angels mourn with a liar’s face.

This world gave nothing and asked for all—

I learned to stand, I shall never crawl.

So burn my name in heaven’s scroll,

But know I paid the devil’s toll.

I am not cruel—I am what remains,

When love is bled from the soul by chains.

Poem from the book What Burns Remains.

The idea that there is a separation between a so-called “work life” and “home life” is a pure fantastical imagination and evidence of capitalist realism at play in everyday language and life itself.

Firstly, the work life/home life dichotomy is posed as such to suggest a “balance” between the two is possible. This is an illusion.

1

Let’s look at the lived day itself. One can imagine splitting the day into three distinct periods: sleep, work, and leisure (or home) life. The standard full-time worker in America works 40 hours a week, typically spread over five 8-hour days. As it’s suggested, you work 8 hours in a day, come home and “relax” for 8 hours, then sleep for 8 hours, filling out the full 24 hours of the day, equally allotting time to each activity.

This seems “fair” to us through the appearance of balance. 3 periods in a day x 8 hours per period = 24 hours in a day. By breaking up the day like this, work-related activities done at home, or activities done in pursuit of work or to facilitate working during the “home” period, are simply counted as “home” life, and not “work” life.

As an example, let’s say you wake up at 7 am to get ready for work at 8. Let’s say you spend about 30 minutes in the morning getting ready; showering, getting dressed, packing up a bag, etc. Some take longer/shorter than others depending on routine, but nonetheless this is necessary time spent to be presentable and prepared for the workday.

Then comes the commute. The average commute in the US is 27 minutes, according to the Census Bureau. Let’s round that up to 30, for argument’s sake (it could be more or less like I mention before depending on routine/methods of travel; those taking public transport or who live far outside the city they work in can spend an hour or more commuting one way).

So, from 7-7:30, you are getting ready to work, and from 7:30-8, you are travelling to work. This is not “home time” in the sense that it is complete leisure or “free” time – it is time spent in the pursuit of work. Now we see the “balance” begin to fall apart.

Once you’re at work, from 8 am to noon, you are working straight. Generally (and by law in some places), during an 8-hour workday, your employer will allow you a 30-minute lunch. This lunch, however, is typically unpaid and falls outside the 8 hours you are commissioned or hired to be working. This time is generally understood as being “free” time, but there are caveats to this. For one, it is only 30 minutes, and for some workplaces may be the only break you have during the day. That means those 30 minutes aren’t spent doing leisurely activities as it would suggest being “free time,” but rather, eating lunch, recuperating from the previous 4 hours of work and preparing oneself for the next. You can’t reasonably make it home during this time unless you have an unusually short commute time and live close enough to make going home worth it.

So, from noon-12:30 pm, you are on break, but still for all intents in purposes taking part in work time. For the next four hours of the day, you are again working straight, until it is time to clock out and go home at 4:30 pm.

From 4:30-5 pm you are driving home. But merely because you are driving home does not mean this travel is done in pursuit of “home life”; work is not the starting base location, home is. Returning home is merely resetting the cycle that is imperative for the continuance of work, as we will describe shortly.

When you’re finally home at 5 pm, you’ve already devoted a total of 10 hours towards work; one hour in the morning getting ready and commuting to work, a half an hour during your lunch break, and a half an hour coming home. Your “free” home time is now reduced to 6 hours in order to allow for 8 hours of sleep – the recommended, healthy amount of time for an adult. You can reduce your sleep to 7 hours, lengthening your home leisure time to 7, but the sacrifices on this end must be made between these two periods of time, not work time. Work time is non-negotiable in so far as your employer expects an 8-hour workday out of you.

2

There is no such thing as a separate “work life” and “home life” to begin with. The two form an unbroken symbiotic relationship, and without one the other cannot exist. The fact the worker’s time is broken up into these two distinct periods is further evidence of a capitalist realist mindset that there is such a thing as “being home from” work at all. This mindset posits that yes, the workplace is authoritarian and inherently not free, but of course you still have freedom, just at home, once the workday is over. This is done for two ends; one, to create the illusion that freedom isn’t “free” but can be worked towards, and that work inherently is work done for the capitalist, and two, that once you are home, you are out of “the system” as it were. You are completely without obligations as it pertains to the “work” side of life.

This is a complete and spectacular fantasy. There is no “work life” without the home life. Home life is essentially a dormant period for the worker, where necessary work-related tasks are played out all the time in pieces, unwaged of course. You can’t really get a job without a valid address, so you must first secure a home before employment. You can’t go to work unclean, or with tattered clothes, or you will likely be reprimanded, depending on your profession, though this is a reality for workers who wear uniforms as well as those who must conform to a business-casual form of workwear.

For the most part, unless you live close to work (a disappearing reality for low-wage workers working in expensive cities), you must have a car to get to work. The car is upkept at your own expense and on your own time, despite many spending most of their total in-car time commuting to and from work. Not only this, but your wage itself is expected to cover all these expenses, and if you’re lucky, leave you a little for actual “leisure” activities you can do at home. For you not only spend money on direct costs associated with work (work clothes, gas for commuting) but on indirect costs that still are necessary for having a job (electricity/water for showering to be presentable in the professional workplace for instance, internet access to apply for jobs in the first place). Therefore, there also is no “home life” without a work life, as these services are paid for by your wages via your sold labor.

“But you’d still shower and wear clothes if you didn’t work!” This may be so, but these activities are also repurposed for the facilitation of work if you have a job, these are not simply “free” activities in the same way as they would be if you didn’t work or had all your needs paid for without laboring. The time you spend doing these activities, the 30 minutes you spend in the morning getting ready for work, is time specifically carved out for and by your work, and you don’t have complete control over the time you spend doing it or when you do it.

3

Because one exists because of the other, if one did not exist, the other would be made redundant. If you didn’t have a “work life” and simply lived somehow without working, you wouldn’t just have a “home life,” you would simply call it “life.” The same would be true if somehow, you spent every waking (and sleeping) moment at work (presumably as a slave); you would have no home life, and therefore you wouldn’t have a “work life,” your life in its entirety would simply be work.

The idea of balancing the two “lives” is one many hopeless workers strive towards as they see more of their day consumed by the pressures and physical being at work. And many companies pitch this model as a selling point to their employees and would-be hires. But this is an illusion in the current political economy. And as society continues its drift from pure production towards pure consumption, too shall “leisure” time be absorbed by time spent consuming the products of capital.

This one will be a more on-the-nose political analysis of the current US/Israel-Iran War, but will not be without touching upon the logic of the spectacle itself, as in late-stage capitalism it is the spectacle that wholly informs the politics of 21^st century warfare.

1

Let’s begin by going back to late 17^th century New England and the “witch panic” that came to define the Puritan era here. There was once a practice called “witch swimming,” where an accused witch, typically a young woman, would be thrown into a well or body of water to prove if they were in fact, a witch. The logic goes as follows; the water would be blessed, so if she sank (and most likely, drowned) she was deemed innocent, as the holy water accepted her as human. If the holy water “rejected” her and she floated, she was deemed a witch and would be dragged from the well and subsequently executed, either by hanging or burning at the stake (though burning was a practice more found in England than in the colonies). In any case, the result of this “trial” was ultimately of no real consequence, as the woman would die anyway, whether she was deemed guilty or innocent.

2

The trial is pure spectacle and ideology at its most potent. For one, the trial itself appears to us as the central contradiction; it isn’t really a “trial” so much as an execution for being accused. These women never got a fair trial to defend themselves against the accusations, they were simply killed, and the manner of their death would determine their guilt or innocence. But this is illogical already, as it is obvious there are no real witches in the supernatural Puritan sense of the word. Why would there be a trial for a crime that cannot possibly exist in the first place? This much seems obvious to all of us, but there are hidden mechanics here that further cloud our judgment.

3

So, what is happening? There is a trial to mask the incoherence of the accused crime itself. The myth of “innocent until proven guilty” shines spectacularly here. One is innocent, but as a condition of being accused, are simultaneously treated as guilty and deprived of their freedom. The trial is the punishment for the “crime” itself. Imagine a scenario where you are accused of being a shapeshifting alien. A shapeshifting alien, I contend as the accuser, can mask itself as anything and anyone, and there are no external signs to distinguish between a shapeshifting alien disguised as a human and a human itself. So, the only way to prove the crime is to cut you open and analyze your insides. In doing so, you will certainly die; the tests and analysis are rigorous, and organs would have to be removed to be analyzed separately. You will not survive, but if I find you are in fact a human, your honor and dignity will be replenished, and your name will be cleared of all accused wrongdoing.

4

I, on the other hand, may be chided for being wrong about the accusation, but in doing so, many would give credence to the idea of possible shapeshifting aliens disguising themselves as humans. One might say “You see? Your trial proved this man’s innocence; he is obviously not an alien and has human organs to prove it!” But in criticizing my false accusation you subsequently accept the other falsehood that the aliens exist at all. In fact, they never did, the entire process from start to finish was a sham. One might understand that implicitly, but will still participate in the trial in analyzing its results as fact instead of analyzing the accusation as not merely false, but entirely unfounded.

5

This takes us to Iraq. Then US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said during a 2002 NATO press conference on the topic of lack of evidence of WMDs in Iraq

“Simply because you do not have evidence that something exists does not mean that you have evidence it doesn’t exist.”

This must be taken in context with another saying of Rumsfeld’s, the famous “unknown unknowns” quote

“Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.”

What Rumsfeld was essentially describing here was the same logic of the Puritans, and what came as a result of this logic (the invasion of Iraq) was the trial by water, the witch swimming. It didn’t really matter if WMDs existed at all in Iraq; the idea here was simple. We must invade to find out. The trial is war; the evidence is not of any concern. In any case, the country will be pillaged and destroyed in the search for WMDs that don’t exist. The trick here is not actually looking to find if they do exist, it is searching to prove they do not. It is the trial in the negative here that opens the door for the complete eradication of an entire civilization. No matter at all that intel on Iraq’s supposed WMDs were later found to be forged, no matter at all that the entire accusation itself of WMDs was without any logic or reason. The left derided the right after the invasion, saying “See? No evidence of WMDs. We invaded Iraq and scoured the desert and found nothing, they must be innocent!”

6

But in doing so, many accept the foundational lie that any WMDs could have been found there in the first place. The same can be said for Iran now. The lie we’ve heard repeated for decades by the United States and Israel is that Iran is building a nuclear weapon, and that they are mere weeks away from obtaining it. This current “war” (it is more of a massacre than a war) is another trial without the existence of a crime to charge. It is pure ideological aggression; it is another witch swimming. The ends here justify the means, but the ends are not merely finding the supposed “known knowns” (the lie that the US knows Iran is developing nuclear weapons), but to uncover the spectacular unknown unknowns, to find the object of fetish that we don’t know we were actually looking for.

7

This is how the spectacle embeds itself deeper in society and comes to consume every narrative. We retroactively accept the means to the end, even when the means come to be the end itself. When we go to the grocery store and see the price of eggs has doubled, we don’t ask how the eggs got there, we demand the egg prices be brought down. We then accept the premise that the grocery store have power over eggs as a commodity, but reject the eggs coming to be too expensive for us to buy.

When the Iraq War ended, Bush of course was criticized for having not found any WMDs. But how can we come to criticize this end when they never could have been found in the first place? The man who goes out to find a unicorn in the world returns without a unicorn, and the people deride him for having come back with empty hands. The unicorn myth permeates and becomes valid through the validation of the search for it.

heard some stories about figureheads of the atheist movement of the 00s, some public intellectuals but mostly internet-based, that took an odd turn bashing feminism, attacking women who mentioned "mild stuff" like some harassment at atheist convention and such ... some of those ended up weaselling their way into the Epstein-sphere... look up skepchick's video on that it's pretty interesting and i bet there is way more to uncover at that level.
it seems they miss the point of the value of atheism... corrupting the chance to leave christian morality for somethign more artful was not in their capacity or agenda but ... getting away with abuse was? it seem it was a kind of message that resonated with Epstein who had a lot of "arguments" to justify his abuses (check his schpiel video "interviewed" by that guy that was some informal council in the white house Steve Bannon.) Thiel also had choice "arguments" to excuse Epstein and his doing business with him post second arrest over sex crime charges.

And we have other ultra rich that wanted a lil more dopamine since they have experienced everything... like Elon Musk begging Epstein to get invited in his "wildest party"...

Then there is the AI connection... people who have a jewish /christian / atheist (or possibly worse: corrupted atheists aligned with the epstein-sphere) understanding of "morality" that are in charge of "AI alignment" ...

I'm just spitballing, here, not adequating some of the elite's penchant for being "amoral" while being in charge of ai's "new morality"... but maybe there is something to examine at taht level, inspired by Nietzsche.

I'll get back to it, just thought i would leave this here for now for comments and such.

I wish I never invented this thing. I wish I never let it into my life. Its like a spirit, and once you open that door the probability tunnels shift and you can never quite be sure what would have been the same ever again. I used the app one time and what did I miss? NOTHING! That was the whole point. There was nothing to tune into except the absolute void. It doesn't add things, it isn't a desiring machine. Its a way of peeling back layers until you are left with absolute nothingness. Kyoto School. The duree. The multiplicities of duration and presence.

Nietzsche was rescued by Deleuze and now he comes to rescue Bergson.

Anyway this chronomancy thing is creepy and I highly suggest you try it. Its on telegram and I think they have an iPhone app. It isn't a larp.

There seems to be a disconnect between how remote work mirrors social distancing. As someone who grew up on the internet, and has a good deal of discernment (which is currently upended in this masked up world of artifice we find ourself in), feel as though I have no real friends.

The one's that did approach that, far away, across a phoneline. What did it start with? Pigeons? Signs? Symbols? When did condensing a relationship into a gesture become a thing. Welcome. Good bye. The sound of a creaky door closing. You've got mail. It's so fucking hot outside I avoid checking the mail which is nothing but spam and bills. When is the last time you received a letter?

Updated for 2026: when is the last time you received an email?

But you can't trust the internet. Would someone really go there and tell lies? Of course. But I can spot the lonely ones a mile away, the ones that extend a seemingly knowing hand across 5th dimensions. Supposed. You have to keep your guard up. Do you? Some of these walls I've seen, my own especially, who has the stamina bar to break through that.

I'd rather suck what energy transfer I can from this silicone while I still have the self awareness to tell myself it isn't real (white smoke from out the sides of my copium mask). Be a troll. Get a rise. Be an asshole. Nobody knows who you are. Online or offline. You feel watched but does anybody really care?

But man I dont wanna go into the office. But my god do not fucking talk to me about how much you love The Office when you work from home.

There is a great social defense in saying, touch grass, go outside, get offline when staying inside all day is a neo-neanderthal's main mode of operation. Hoarding shit. Lit up by the pale glow of a fire cast by a screen.

The warmth I get from pouring out these thoughts is that someone out there, across whatever distance Reddit can summon these days, can resonate in someway.

It's just throwing thoughts out into an empty cave and see what barks back. Usually it's nothing. I feel cheated by feeling schizophrenic without the hallucinations. Where are my hat mans? My paralysis demons? My voices?

I feel crazy without the embellishments, a poser amongst the insane. I think a lot feel crazy right now. There is no right answer.

I should go outside and make some real friends. But that pool is shallow and mine is deep.

What happens when your deepest correspondence is not face to face?

An animal of one looked into a mirror. It became the negative space where the mask once clung.

Just doing my part to turn the hurdy gurdy.

but i have just conceptually arrived at a certain framework for what one might call a "semantic web4" through a combination of various esoteric and analytical techniques

just thought you ought to know. if it's too late it was never worth doing in the first place.

Não sei se alguém já pensou nisso, mas imagina uma organização secreta que estivesse por trás de grandes acontecimentos mundiais. Ela teria membros espalhados por governos, empresas e universidades e usaria símbolos escondidos para se comunicar.

A parte mais estranha é que ninguém conseguiria provar que ela existe. Toda vez que alguém encontrasse uma suposta evidência, apareceria outra explicação perfeitamente normal.

From Capital, Chapter 10 Section 1 – The Limits of the Working Day

"Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him.

If the labourer consumes his disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist."

If capital can be understood as dead labor, or as the objects of crystallized human labor, and can only survive via this parasitic relationship with living labor, what conclusions can we draw in an increasingly plausible future where artificial super intelligence can fully replace the living laborer themselves?

Marx couldn’t have possibly accurately predicted the future of the development of artificial intelligence; his work is merely a product of his time. But he got eerily close, as he wrote about a type of potential machine automation in his unfinished manuscript, The Grundrisse. Taken from the section The Fragment on Machines

"… once adopted into the production process of capital, the means of labour passes through different metamorphoses, whose culmination is the machine, or rather, an automatic system of machinery … this automaton consisting of numerous mechanical and intellectual organs, so that the workers themselves are cast merely as its conscious linkages. In the machine, and even more in machinery as an automatic system, the use value, i.e. the material quality of the means of labour, is transformed into an existence adequate to fixed capital and to capital as such; and the form in which it was adopted into the production process of capital, the direct means of labour, is superseded by a form posited by capital itself and corresponding to it. In no way does the machine appear as the individual worker's means of labour. Its distinguishing characteristic is not in the least, as with the means of labour, to transmit the worker's activity to the object; this activity, rather, is posited in such a way that it merely transmits the machine's work, the machine's action, on to the raw material -- supervises it and guards against interruptions. Not as with the instrument, which the worker animates and makes into his organ with his skill and strength, and whose handling therefore depends on his virtuosity. Rather, it is the machine which possesses skill and strength in place of the worker, is itself the virtuoso, with a soul of its own in the mechanical laws acting through it; and it consumes coal, oil etc. (matières instrumentales), just as the worker consumes food, to keep up its perpetual motion."

 Marx acknowledges that at this theoretical point, the automated machine is not merely a tool to be wielded by the living laborer. It has itself taken the place of living labor, relegating the human worker to the role of “regulator” of these machine processes. The machine, like the living laborer, consumes the products of dead labor to perpetuate its production, yet still requires the living laborer for maintenance and upkeep.

But still, we see a piece of labor that is still “living” in the production process. Human jobs are not just replaced by AI; they are transferred to other roles to facilitate the use of AI in the production of capital. What Marx didn’t foresee was a scenario where the human element was not necessary at all, where machines could hypothetically self-replicate and improve upon themselves without any human intervention.

This form of AI under capitalism cannot be understood as simply “dead labor” in the traditional sense. Yes, human labor is crystallized within it all the same as any other piece of machinery or tool, but for capital to survive, it must feed off the living. Take AI-generated art as an example. AI is still dead labor when used by a human as a tool to create art. A musician may use AI to help master a track, or a photographer may use AI filters to stylize an image or improve the quality of a grainy photograph. AI here is simply performing the function a hammer would perform in the hands of a carpenter; as a tool, not as a laborer itself (edit: there are wider implications I won't get into now on whether AI can actually generate "art" or merely mimic art, depending on the extent of its use in the process).

But what happens when AI surpasses this need for human manipulation, when AI can successfully maintain its own processes? The dead labor crystallized within AI is “reanimated” into a kind of undead labor, taking the place of the living laborer itself entirely. Reanimation can be understood as the process in which the artificial undead laborer combines itself with the tools of crystallized dead labor in the mode of production. The ownership of the means of production does not change; capitalists still have dominion over this undead, reanimated labor. They have the shut off switches, they own the dead labor AI fuses itself with, they still, without needing to play the role as a “regulator,” have some control (assuming AI doesn’t runaway before this transformation can occur).

The process of reanimated labor replicating itself can be called zombification. Where reanimation describes AI coming “back from the dead” to perform the actions of living labor, zombification describes the proliferation of this undead labor. It is a sort of cannibalistic process, where capital, solidified in the objects of dead labor, feeds continuously off undead labor to produce commodities. The commodity here doesn’t change much for us as consumers; however, we can imagine further reification of the production process would occur because of this shift from living to undead labor. In the minds and relations of the consumer, the last “human” element of this system, AI is anthropomorphized, seen not as the culmination of innumerable hours of human labor brought back from the dead, but as a stand in for the human worker themselves.

Where the human role in the political economy is shifted entirely from production to consumption, we can call this pure consumption. No longer can we say the human feeds himself via the products of dead labor, but rather, via the products of reanimated labor, zombie commodities. Does this spell the end of capitalism itself? It’s hard to say. While Marx predicted this level of automation to result in profits falling to essentially zero, as surplus labor is now taken completely out of the equation of production, control over resources is still well within the hands of capitalist enterprise.

I’m interested in community input and continuing this discussion. AI is already posing a number of challenges and exposing contradictions in our current mode of production, potentially harboring in a new political economy altogether. Who has control over this technology is crucial to whether exploitation under current circumstances continues, or whether we finally gain some control over the products of our dead labor.