Overton Window

The biological machinery of abundance Our current era feels heavy with existential dread, yet the metrics of human progress suggest we are standing on the precipice of a golden age. David Friedberg highlights a fundamental human bias: our evolutionary programming for survival makes us hypersensitive to threats. Throughout history, we have survived the biblical floods, the plague, and the Malthusian trap of starvation. In the late 19th century, the world faced a fertilizer crisis as guano islands were depleted. The invention of the Haber-Bosch process shifted the trajectory of humanity by pulling nitrogen from the atmosphere, enabling a population explosion that was previously thought impossible. We are witnessing a similar compounding effect today through the digitization of the physical world. This is not merely about faster computers; it is about our ability to engineer the future using predictive models. Whether it is designing a molecule to solve cancer or building machines that reach the moon, our tools are compounding on an exponential curve. The primary risk we face is not the technology itself, but the rate of change. When social order cannot adapt as fast as the technology, dislocation occurs. In the West, we suffer from a "victim of success" mentality, fearing what we might lose. In the East, particularly in China, the focus remains on the massive gains to be realized, driving a more aggressive embrace of these transformative tools. AI diffusion kills the centralizing power of data centers A common fear regarding Artificial Intelligence is that it represents a difference in kind, not just degree, potentially centralizing power in the hands of a new "trillionaire class." However, technology historically goes through a phase of diffusion and commoditization. In the early days of the internet, people feared Cisco would dominate the world because they owned the switches. Today, the focus is on Nvidia and Google, but the trend toward the "edge" is already accelerating. We are moving toward a world where large-scale data centers are less critical to individual success. Open-source models can now be run locally on a desktop or a phone. Andre Karpathy recently demonstrated this by running multiple agents on a home computer to autonomously improve an underlying AI model. Within a weekend, they produced results that rivaled ChatGPT from just months prior. This suggests that AI will be ubiquitous and decentralized, sitting in every embedded device and garage-based robot. This diffusion allows individuals to take ownership of their future rather than waiting for corporate or government permission. Industrializing the moon and the mass driver revolution While Elon Musk focuses on Mars, the economic logic of space expansion points toward the Moon as the primary industrial hub. The Moon lacks an atmosphere and possesses only one-sixth of the Earth's gravity, making it the ideal launchpad for materials. Moving mass off the Earth is prohibitively expensive due to atmospheric drag and gravity, but the Moon provides a low-energy alternative. By utilizing the raw materials available in lunar dust—aluminum, silicon, carbon, and hydrogen/oxygen from polar ice—we can build massive factories. The mechanism for transporting these materials isn't chemical propulsion, but an electric rail gun or mass driver. A nine-kilometer track on the lunar surface could accelerate a ton of material to escape velocity in four and a half seconds, using only a few megawatt-hours of solar power. This material could be shipped to Mars or back to Earth, using lunar rock as a sacrificial heat shield during atmospheric entry. This is not a project that requires trillions of dollars; with AI-orchestrated robotics, we can send self-replicating starting equipment to the Moon to mine, build, and expand the lunar economy autonomously. Solving the dynamical equilibrium of fusion energy The ultimate driver of economic abundance is dropping the cost of energy toward zero. Fusion is the holy grail of this pursuit. Unlike fission, which breaks apart heavy radioactive elements, fusion jams protons together, mimicking the sun’s energy production. The difficulty has always been maintaining a stable plasma at 100 million degrees Celsius. As protons get closer, they push back with magnetic fields that disrupt the containment system. AI is finally solving this "dynamical equilibrium" problem by training magnetic field controllers in real-time. We have seen plasma stability go from seconds to 30 minutes in recent trials in China. Once net-positive fusion is achieved at an industrial scale, a swimming pool's worth of ocean water could provide enough electricity for the entire planet for a year. This doesn't just mean cheaper bills; it means the marginal cost of everything—from manufacturing to desalination—collapses. If the energy to run a swarm of 100 robots is effectively free, the cost of building a home or a city drops to the cost of land and raw materials. Yamanaka factors and the end of aging as a disease Biological aging is increasingly understood not as an inevitability, but as an epigenetic disease. Every cell in the human body contains the same DNA, but cellular differentiation is controlled by molecular switches that turn genes on or off. As we age, DNA breaks and repairs cause these switches to move to the wrong positions, leading to wrinkles, organ failure, and disease. In 2006, Shinya Yamanaka discovered that four specific proteins could reset a cell to its stem-cell state. Subsequent research showed that a smaller dose of these factors could reset the "cellular clock" to a youthful state without deleting the cell's identity. This process has already reversed blindness in primates and extended mouse lifespans significantly. Companies like Altos Labs and David Sinclair's ventures are now moving this toward clinical trials. We are approaching "longevity escape velocity," where every year of life lived buys more than a year of technological progress in life extension. This shift transforms our perspective on human potential, as we move from a world of limited time to one where individuals can pursue multiple lifetimes of growth. The moral hazard of the genetic arms race As we gain the ability to edit the human genome, we face a shift from treating disease to enhancing performance. Embryo selection is the first frontier. While selecting against negative traits like Huntington's disease is widely accepted, selecting for positive traits like IQ, immune function, or athletic ability remains controversial. However, the Overton window is shifting. If a neighbor's child has enhanced immune function or higher cognitive capacity because of selection, other parents will feel a competitive pressure to follow suit. The final stage is transgenics—introducing genes that humans do not naturally possess, such as infrared vision or increased bone density for space travel. While this raises profound ethical questions about parental choice and "buyers' remorse," the reality of superintelligence makes adaptation a necessity. We can either remain "fleshy bootloaders" for silicon AI, or we can use genetic engineering and brain-machine interfaces to become a "rocket boost" for human capacity. California's decline and the socialist trap Despite the technological promise of the future, political systems are currently acting as a counter-force. California serves as a cautionary tale of what happens when politicians make promises they cannot fund to secure votes. The state faces a pension liability of nearly a trillion dollars, and in a desperate attempt to fill the hole, it is pursuing a wealth tax. This is a fundamental violation of private property rights. Unlike an income tax, a wealth tax targets assets that have already been taxed, requiring the government to monitor everything an individual owns, from art to bank accounts. This is the end state of socialism: a system where the government manages scarcity through expropriation rather than fostering abundance through productivity. When the government intervenes in industries like healthcare and education without market checks, prices skyrocket. Conversely, in industries where the free market dominates—like software and televisions—prices consistently drop. The West is currently paralyzed by "luxury beliefs" that shun nuclear energy and GMOs, while the East embraces these technologies to pull millions out of poverty. If the United States chooses the path of wealth taxes and regulation, the center of gravity for human progress will inevitably shift toward those who choose abundance over control.