The Destination
De-mismatch first. Then augment. The most human post-human.
We're Approaching a Fork
The next wave of technology — superintelligent AI, full-immersion VR, brain-computer interfaces — will either exploit human nature harder than anything before, or finally meet it. Which future we get depends on understanding the spec sheet.
Read the Spec Sheet01
Automation Changes Everything
AI and robotics are eliminating human roles in production. Not just factory work — accounting, legal work, medical diagnosis, coding, driving, content creation. Most of it. Maybe not fully, but enough to break the current structure.
Current arrangement: Humans do delayed-return labor → get money → buy survival → work provides (proxy) purpose, structure, identity.
Post-automation: Robots do labor → humans get... what?
This makes de-mismatch more urgent, not less relevant. The inadequate, proxy purpose that work currently provides is disappearing. What remains is atomized consumption until death — or humans rebuilding tribal-scale contribution and meaning.
UBI is not the answer.
Universal Basic Income solves resource distribution but not meaning. You can have money without having role, tribe, purpose, or reason to get out of bed.
UBI + atomized individual = Netflix until death, punctuated by antidepressants.
UBI may be necessary as transitional mechanism — a bridge while tribal structures develop. But it must stay basic. Survival floor, not abundance.
Path A: Atomized Consumption
UBI + isolation + infinite content = managed decline
Path B: Tribal Meaning
Resources + tribe + visible contribution = thriving
02
Scarcity and Meaning
A tension appears: automation reduces material scarcity, yet the framework argues scarcity creates meaning. Does this mean we need artificial poverty? No. The distinction is between types of scarcity.
Automation Eliminates This
Toxic Scarcity
- ×Food insecurity
- ×Shelter insecurity
- ×Healthcare access
- ×Material resource competition
This scarcity is toxic. It creates desperation, breaks cooperation, produces suffering without purpose. Good riddance.
Remains Regardless
Constructive Scarcity
- ✓Time (still 24 hours, still must prioritize)
- ✓Attention (still limited, still must choose)
- ✓Skill mastery (still takes effort, can't download competence)
- ✓Relationship depth (can't shortcut to trust)
- ✓Creative challenges (making, building, solving)
- ✓Contribution uniqueness (your specific gifts only you can offer)
- ✓Coordination problems (raising children, maintaining habitat, resolving conflicts)
This is why billionaires are miserable: no constructive scarcity. Lottery winners report decreased happiness: sudden removal of challenge. Retirement without purpose kills: nothing left to overcome together.
The tribe collectively overcomes meaningful challenges. Effort is real. Interdependence is real. Your contribution matters because it's actually needed.
UBI provides the floor. The tribe provides the meaning. These are complementary, not contradictory.
03
Technology as Pharmakon
Technology is pharmakon: simultaneously poison and cure, the nature determined by application.
Current technology already de-mismatches when used correctly. Video calls with actual tribe: real connection across distance. AI that helps think, create, organize: extended capability. Coordination tools for real groups: shared calendars, collaborative work.
Current technology also increases mismatch. Infinite scroll. Parasocial content. Stranger validation. Open loops by design.
The question is not technology yes or no. The question is which technology, designed how, used for what.
The same capabilities creating mismatch can serve de-mismatching when designed against the constraints.
04
What We're Building
Technology designed for human nature, not against it. These are directions, not blueprints.
Mixed Reality Presence
Full sensory presence across distance. Not video calls but actual shared space. Touch, proximity, smell, ambient awareness. Hard-capped at ~150 connections because the system understands you cannot maintain more. Facilitating shared work on shared goals, not passive consumption of strangers.
Tribe Formation AI
Deep compatibility matching based on nervous system regulation, conflict styles, values, complementary skills. Not dating app swiping but genuine assessment of who you could build a life with. The village matchmaker, scaled. Once candidates are found, the AI's job is done. Trust-building happens through real human interaction.
Coordination Infrastructure
Consensus tools that work at tribal scale. Resource sharing with full transparency. Reputation systems bounded to your 150, not global score. Shared calendars syncing with circadian rhythms. Conflict resolution scaffolding.
Decay Functions
Technology that degrades without physical presence. Features that lock if you haven't been physically present with tribe members. Notifications that decrease as you increase real-world interaction. Success measured by decreasing use. Business model cannot depend on engagement.
Architecture for Tribes
Physical spaces designed for band-level density. Shared kitchens, visible common areas, private retreats. Neighborhoods at Dunbar scale. Childcare distributed by design. Fire circle spaces — evening gathering built into communities.
Visible Work
Platforms making labor-to-benefit visible. You see exactly who your work helps. Immediate-return cycles where possible. Shared enterprise at tribal scale. Work experience redesigned toward shorter feedback loops.
The paths will be built by technologists, communities, researchers, and people redesigning their own lives.
See what's being built now05
The Most Human Post-Human
This isn't a call to abandon modernity or return to prehistoric conditions. That's neither possible nor desirable.
The vision is conscious alignment — designing environments, technologies, and social structures that work with human nature rather than against it.
For the first time in hundreds of generations, technology may make full de-mismatch achievable again. Not returning to the past but going forward to something new: conscious alignment of environment with biology, enhanced by technology, chosen deliberately.
The first humans to achieve this will feel something their ancestors could not articulate because they had no contrast. The anxiety that seemed like personality dissolves because there's nothing to be anxious about. The loneliness that seemed like fate evaporates because you're actually not alone.
We can have connection without exploitation, technology without addiction, progress without self-destruction. But only if we understand the hardware we're working with.
The most human post-human.
06
The Test
Any solution that works will produce this:
A stable social world of ~150 known people. Daily presence with 25-50. Work that visibly benefits people you know. Problems that can be resolved through action. Real feedback from real people who have stake in you. Children raised by many, not few. Technology that connects without substituting.
Simple test: Do you wake up with a role, in a group, with a goal?
If yes, you've arrived. If no, you haven't.