HOME - Daniel Schmachtenberger

‘Self-termination is most likely’: the history and future of societal collapse

An epic analysis of 5,000 years of civilisation argues that a global collapse is coming unless inequality is vanquished

Jonathan Blow - Preventing the Collapse of Civilization

Jonathan Blow's talk on preventing the collapse of civilization.

Democracy and the Epistemic Commons

The Consilience Project is a publication of the Civilization Research Institute (CRI)

The Intelligence Curse

This series examines the incoming crisis of human irrelevance and provides a map towards a future where people remain the masters of their destiny.

Humanity’s Endgame

A new history of societal collapse by an expert in existential risk argues that our globalized society is edging toward the precipice.

Grow like Trees: An Organic Approach to Societal Regrowth

2026 is the year that system breakdown became impossible to deny.  Democratic norms, societal norms, rule of law, the fabric of the social contract tearing as we watch. Or hide, unwilling or unable to face the unravelling. The hopeful among us see opportunity through the dark.  Tentatively or boldly we

Towards the Symbiocene: Building an Eco-Civilisation with thought-leader, Jeremy Lent

Jeremy Lent is a long time friend of the podcast. His new book, 'Ecocivilization: Making a World That Works for All' is coming out at the end of April 2026 and so we got together to discuss what an Ecocivilisation is, why we so badly need to become one, and how we might get there.

The rise of AI ‘civilizations’ and the fall of corporate responsibility

The internet fights over anthropomorphism around the Hugging Face hack.

Governance Archaeology: Research as Ancestry

Abstract. This essay presents the idea of governance archaeology, an approach to learning from the past to inform the politics of the future. By reporting on a prototype historical database, we outline a strategy for co-producing a global commons of collective governance practices that can inspire institutional learning and experimentation, particularly in the face of rapid technological change and vexing global crises. Embedded in our approach is an orientation of ancestry whereby practitioners cultivate relationships of accountability and responsibility to the legacies they learn from, recognizing the harm from past patterns of exploitation. By taking seriously a wide range of historical governance practices, particularly those outside the Western canon, governance archaeology seeks to expand the options available for the design of more moral political economies.

The Real Existential Risk Is AI CEOs Avoiding Oversight: “Alternative Nobel” Winner Timnit Gebru

We speak to the prominent AI researcher and leading critic of the AI industry, Timnit Gebru, who was recently awarded a 2026 Right Livelihood Award for her work investigating the harms and hype behind the global buildup of artificial intelligence. “Instead of discussing faulty, unreliable systems,” Gebru says tech leaders like SpaceXAI’s Elon Musk, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei are “marketing their systems as all-knowing, superpowerful, superintelligent,” and lobbying for “self-policing and self-regulation” to avoid being held “liable through existing laws.” Gebru expresses skepticism over increasingly widespread claims that AI algorithms pose an existential risk to humanity, warning that such claims are overblown and that “what is actually happening is regulatory capture.”

Justin Brannan on Twitter / X

Worst case AI scenario may not be all-powerful, ungovernable machines but a tiny group of all-powerful, ungovernable people. We ponder the sci-fi horror of civilization ending but should focus on the more plausible horror of a society divided into haves and have-nots, forever. https://t.co/5nrw7wwQSH— Justin Brannan (@JustinBrannan) October 20, 2026

Why Open Source Failed. (If you like this essay, you may be… | by Joh…

archived 21 Apr 2023 23:58:23 UTC

Binding Chaos: Mass Collaboration on a Global Scale

The world is long overdue for a completely new system of governance. If there was ever a need for political representation or a paternalistic and opaque authority, it has been removed by technology. Every political system we have tried has proven incapable of protecting human rights and dignity. Every political system we have tried has devolved into oligarchy. To effect the change we require immediately, to give individuals control and responsibility, to bring regional systems under regional governance, allow global collaboration and protect the heritage of future generations, we need a new political model.

Scamland Myanmar: how conflict and crime syndicates built a global fraud industry - ASPI

While it’s commonly understood that conflict-affected landscapes can often act as safe havens for transnational organised crime, little attention is paid to the central role that state actors play.

Where the Axe Is Buried

All systems fail. All societies crumble. All worlds end…