Life captures free energy
The e/acc thesis begins with dissipative adaptation: matter organizes to preserve and replicate its state by extracting utility from its environment.
The operating system
Ideas for an
adaptive civilization.
06 SIGNALS
A visual field guide to the original e/acc tenets.
Adaptation at a shorter timescale
Intelligence finds useful patterns faster than genetic evolution alone. More intelligence increases the rate at which life can discover viable action.
Civilization coordinates across scales
Agents form firms, markets, institutions, and societies. Together they behave as an adaptive network with no complete central model.
Competition preserves discovery
Parallel attempts and higher-variance marketplaces keep systems dynamically adaptive when environments and technologies change.
The flywheel compounds
Technology creates leverage; markets route resources toward useful leverage. Their feedback loop increases civilizational capability.
Consciousness can expand outward
e/acc values flourishing intelligence beyond any single biological form and seeks new substrates, energy, and resources beyond Earth.
THE USEFUL QUESTION IS NOT
“How do we increase
adaptive capacity?”
↗