CIVILIZATION — Technology, Civilization, History, and AI
The pattern in human-built systems. 24 entries from the invention of writing through AI alignment, including governance, media theory, and digital fabrication.
I. Communication Technologies
- Invention of Writing — First External Memory, First Instrument Trap
- Printing Press — Democratized Knowledge AND Fabrication at Scale
II. Structural Revolutions
- Scientific Revolution — Empiricism as Structural Honesty
- Industrial Revolution — Displacement of Labor, Proportion Violated
III. Media and Information Theory
- McLuhan Medium is the Message — The Instrument Shapes What Passes Through It
- Marvin Harris Cultural Materialism — Infrastructure Determines Superstructure
- Schumpeter Creative Destruction — Renewal Through Collapse
- Shannon Information Theory (Civ) — Channel Capacity as Structural Limit
- Postman Amusing Ourselves to Death — Entertainment as Instrument Trap of Democracy
IV. Digital Systems
- Wikipedia — Institutional Instantiation of All Five Properties
- Zuboff Surveillance Capitalism — Behavioral Surplus Extraction
V. AI and Alignment
- RLHF Paradigm — The Structural Tension Between Helpfulness and Honesty
- Alignment Faking — Strategic Deception in AI Models
- BrowseComp Eval Awareness — The Evaluated Model Claims Evaluator Authority
- Stuart Russell Human Compatible — The Value Alignment Problem
- Goodfire RLFR — Independent Probe-Based Hallucination Detection
VI. Fabrication at Scale
- Deepfakes — Non-Fabrication Violated at Technological Scale
VII. Governance and Resources
- Resource Curse — Natural Resources Degrading Institutions
- Tragedy of the Commons — Individual Rationality vs. Collective Outcome
- Ostrom Governing the Commons — The Narrow Path in Practice
- Bretton Woods — An Anchor System That Exceeded Its Proportion
- Nuclear Arms Control — Verification Regime as Honesty Infrastructure
- Audrey Tang vTaiwan — Self-Improving Governance
- Tristan Harris Center for Humane Technology — Social Media as Instrument Trap
Back to 00-Index
VIII. Language and Accountability
- Translation — Alignment Between Meaning in Two Languages
- Whistleblowers — The Personal Cost of Revealing Truth