According to Daniel Schmachtenberger, we are at the end of one kind of civilization and must transition to another. If we don't transition—if we stick with our current civilizational operating system—then we won't survive an interlocking set of global crises. In Daniel's terminology, our current civilization ("game A") will "self-terminate". The new civilizational setup ("game B") is yet to be invented. He suggests we invent it by starting from a series of requirements (he calls them "generator functions") which he has derived from the threats to our survival.

I pretty much agree with this assessment! I love Daniel's emphasis on redesigning society, rather than on power struggles or mindset shifts. And we both put special emphasis on redesigning institutions like voting and markets (“collective intelligence” is the lingo for this in Daniel’s scene).

But I would amend Daniel's account in one place: Game B is already here, operating, on Earth. His requirements are already met. We needn't reinvent civilization from whole cloth—instead, we can study what is already happening.

• The Left and Right Arm of Civilization
• Strong Right Arm
• Weak Left Arm
• Game B
• 1. Instrumentality
• 2. Types of Knowledge
• Example 1 - Personal Lives
• Example 2 - Court Systems
• 3. Antirivalry

The Left and Right Arm of Civilization

To tell this story, I have to start from a very basic idea about human beings—about how we make plans and search for fulfilment. I will say that we have two distinct kinds of problem solving abilities.

1. We solve achievement-problems. There are things that we want to accomplish and "check off". With these, we solve problems about how to achieve them efficiently. We want them to be over as quickly as possible. I want to pay my taxes, and I want to do it as quickly as possible. I may need to fly to another country, which I want to do in the least time possible, etc. We can call those goals, although there's lots of other names you could use, like obligations or outcomes or whatever.
2. We also solve practice-problems. Second, there are things that we want to make into ongoing practices and parts of our lives. For instance, I want to practice playing music. I want to practice loving people in a way that really embraces our development together, and how we change over time. Here, I am not trying to achieve something and check it off. Rather, I am solving problems about making my life into a practice space for what's important to me in an ongoing way. Neither of these—the practicing of music or the practicing of loving people—are things I want to do efficiently or in the least time possible. With the things that we practice, generally we are not about efficiency. We care about "the process".

Each kind of problem-solving takes a kind of intelligence. We are highly intelligent arrangers of life, both with regard to finding venues for practice and tools for accomplishing our goals. So, when I need to fly to a different country or file my taxes, I can also say "I can do that with this tool" or "this person could help me". That's an example of me having agency and intelligence in achievement-problems. And when I'm looking for people to love, I can kind of figure out where I can do that in my life and where I can't, and how to bring new people into my life that I can do that with. That's an example of me having agency and intelligence in practice-problems.

These two skills are like our left and right arms. And what I want to say here is that—as a civilization—one arm has been developed much more than the other.

Strong Right Arm

In particular, we have very sophisticated mechanisms which amplify our powers regarding achievement.

1. We have vast systems for matchmaking to solve them: We find strangers to solve problems for us and with us, using everything from linkedin to classified listings to a variety of professions and professional trainings. Strangers can even form organizations and companies to help people with specific kinds of achievement-problems.
2. We also have scalable structures for collaboration and incentives around them: We set up contracts, and we have all sorts of infrastructure—courts of law, small claims, billing, etc—to make sure people deliver on their contracts. We have offices and specialized workplaces of all sorts, project management software, and various pay-for-work schemes.
3. Finally, we have knowledge related to achievement-problems: this includes much of science and engineering, vocational schools, textbooks, how-to guides, repair manuals, etc.

Developing in parallel with this social capacity for matchmaking, collaboration, incentives, and knowledge around achievement, we have also gotten better at expressing our achievement-problems and at refining them:

1. We have clarity and specificity in naming them: We can list our goals, obligations, desires, impulses, etc. We can type them into google, select them using amazon checkboxes, assign them to others in task lists, and so on.
2. We've refined and developed our achievement-problems themselves. We have a moonshot goal, like going to the moon, a super-personal one like buying a rare coffeemaker or becoming an engineer, or a super-technical one like reducing the coefficient of friction on the airplane wing by 0.05%.

All of this structure amplifies our agency with achievement-problems. This is our overdeveloped, right arm.

Weak Left Arm

Comparatively, our left arm is weak. To see this, look at what we might want to practice, like the earlier examples: loving people in a way that really embraces our development together. This is a pretty common practice-problem, but consider:

• Matchmaking. How would you find others to help you practice this? Is there a way to filter people online by it? Can you search for it on google? Mostly, we can only think about people we already know who would be good to practice this with.
• Collaboration and incentives. Sure, you could maybe find a relationship coach who specializes in this, and maybe a meetup group on the topic. But if you compare this to a similarly common achievement-problem (say, repairing the car's windshield) you must admit that collaboration and incentives mechanisms are sorely lacking.
• Knowledge. There are likely self-help books on this topic, and also literature. But how do you search for them? Is there a wikipedia page? Are there collected stories of people trying to live this way, and when it has worked out and when not?

Also, our practice-problems themselves are, in general, less refined and developed and less clear and specified. We cannot list them offhand, we cannot type them into google or another search box, assign them to people in task lists, or shop for them using checkboxes. We don't usually have moonshot practice-problems and are not as likely to have super-personal or super-technical ones.

So this is our underdeveloped left arm.

Game B

Here's my big claim:

To support this claim, I'll have to show why large scale practice-problem solving would match up with Daniel's generator functions. I'll have to convince you of this diagram:

To do this, I'll introduce two intermediate concepts, and then waltz through the generator functions themselves.

So, the rest of this essay will be in five short sections:

1. Instrumentality
2. Types of Knowledge
3. Antirivalry
4. Wide-Scoped Tech
5. Complex, Not Complicated

1. Instrumentality

You can look at anything—say, a car—from the perspective of practice-problems or achievement-problems. From the practice point of view, a car is an environment, or part of one. Is a car an environment to practice good sex in? To play word games with your friends? Is a place with lots of cars around good for meditation? Etc.

When you look at the same car from an achievement point of view, you consider the car as a tool. Is it going to get me laid? Can I get the hell out of Dodge City, Kansas with it?

Note the following:

1. When a car is assessed in terms of achievement, all that matters is whether it will get the job done. All the other byproducts are overlooked. This is less true when the car is assessed as an environment.
2. If you and I both have goals for which we require the car, we are in conflict. Is the car yours or mine? When we both have things we want to practice in the car, there is less of a conflict. We may even become practice partners!
3. This lens of instrumentality can affect us at the smallest scales: we can try to use every moment. We can have great anxiety about whether to use ourselves for one goal we have, or for another. This is a kind of internal rivalry.
4. It is not only humans who adopt this lens of instrumentality. It is also part of the nature of employment, contracts, market systems, and other systems we've built for solving achievement-problems. A contract usually specifies an exchange wherein both sides are permitted to use each other as tools for particular projects and within particular bounds, or wherein the right to such use is transferred.

I believe this instrumental view of objects (and people) is at the core of the problem Daniel calls rivalry. I will return to this below, when I discuss antirivalry and practice.

2. Types of Knowledge

Here's something I wrote in 2017:

The 19ᵗʰ and 20ᵗʰ Centuries saw the rise of Science. We built engines to collect, distribute, and certify scientific knowledge — e.g., textbooks, laboratories, and universities. We have also developed methods to verify this knowledge: scholarly debates, laboratory replications, the proofs of mathematics, and so on. But these developments ignored a kind of knowledge that’s more important to human beings: knowledge of how to live well. There's a ton of demand for this kind of knowledge, but no good methods to check or organize it (no wikipedias, scientific archives, citation indexes, etc). Predictably, the demand has been filled with ubiquitous BS. Nonsense authorities—like Gwyneth Paltrow and Deepak Chopra or Sheryl Sandberg—tell us how our lives, relationships, and careers should go. The elderly couple down the street—who have probably learned more about the subject—are ignored. What does organized and vetted wisdom look like? How can the people with hard-earned wisdom—rather than a book to sell—be recognized? What would the engines of wisdom look like?

This passage sketches out two types of knowledge, there is technical knowledge, which is knowledge about achievement-problems. And there is wisdom, which is knowledge about practice-problems. These two types of knowledge evolve differently, via different social processes, and in response to different events.

Technical knowledge is knowledge in the shape of achievement-problems, which break down into steps and subgoals and specializations. If I have a goal like "visit my grandmother", it might involve a step like "fly to Delaware", and executing this goal well might involve a specialization of labor which involves me, a pilot, and an aeronautics engineer. Ultimately very specialized goals, like reducing the coefficient of friction on the airplane wing by 0.05% might be involved, and the specializations and subfields are based on the way the goals can be broken into steps.

Knowledge about practice-problems, or wisdom, evolves in a different way. This kind of knowledge concerns the testing and acceptance of new values, approaches, or guidelines, rather than of new models, theories, techniques, or facts.

I will discuss two situations where new values or guidelines arise: first, in our personal lives; second, in court systems. Both have a similar structure, where an existing value or approach is called into question based on an example where it seems to fail, and from the failure a new, modified value is derived.

Example 1 - Personal Lives

In our personal lives, we try to live by one set of values and then we enter a situation where they don't guide us well, and we have emotions of conflict. As I wrote in ❣Emotions, Values, and Wisdom:

A negative feeling signals a conflict between our values that we have to think about: • Perhaps we were pursuing value B but we forgot about value A. For instance, I was trying to be effective but I forgot that it was also important to me to be kind. This might result in embarrassment.

What comes out of these emotions is often new values—values which reconcile the conflict and can guide us through these situations. In this case, maybe instead of being effective, I try to act so as to build the capacity of the team. This involves being kind sometimes, maybe, and overall being more effective in the long run. With the second case, my emotions of conflict may lead me to

Example 2 - Court Systems

It's kind of similar with court systems! Instead of emotions of conflict, the court considers cases where harm resulted from the old values or approaches, and that tell us we need new values. A good example would be Canterbury v. Spence, from 1972, which established the value of informed consent in medical practice. From the wikipedia:

Until the 1960s, it was conventional medical doctrine to withhold significant information from patients, particularly potentially upsetting information. It was common practice not to tell a patient they were dying, and even to deny it. ... Instead, many practitioners revealed only information that another physician might provide, following a rule known as "the professional standard". Risks, in particular, were often glossed over or omitted entirely. Although the right to consent in medical situations had been recognized for decades, the notion of informed consent was new.

All of this happened because a man, one Jerry Watson Canterbury, was not informed of the risks of a surgery, got paralyzed, and took it to court. This one man's experience led to a new key value in the practice of medicine.

Whether due to a court case or to emotions of conflict, the evolution of values is similarly driven: There is a problem with the previous set of values. Through reflection, deliberation, or experimentation, a new value emerges as guiding practice better.

There is a kind of specialization here, but it is not like the specialization of technical knowledge. Different values are relevant to different practices. The practice of medicine is different than the practice of leading a team, which is different than the practice of intimate relationships. Different values have emerged to guide these different practices.

3. Antirivalry

Let's return to the example of a car, and look at it from the perspective of practice-problems.

You can look at anything—say, a car—from the perspective of practice-problems or achievement-problems. From the practice point of view, a car is an environment, or part of one. Is a car an environment to practice good sex in? To play word games with your friends? Is a place with lots of cars around good for meditation? Etc.