On Energy, Longevity, Governance, and the Transition (an overview).
This document synthesizes a multi-AI conversation exploring the design of a civilization optimized for human flourishing across millennia. The core insight: humans are expensive but interesting—we require variety, autonomy, and continuous renewal to thrive. A drone species would be cheaper but cosmically boring.
The conversation converged on several key conclusions:
Target State: 1–2 billion people living in 750 indestructible cities (2-acre atmosphere-controlled pods) plus 500 million–1 billion on autonomous farming estates, powered by fusion, with 10,000-year lifespans transitioning to indefinite uploaded existence.
Energy Requirements: 20–100 TW depending on pod conditioning and spaceflight ambition – roughly 1–5× current global energy production for 1/4 the population.
The Thermal Ceiling: Heat dissipation, not energy generation, is the ultimate constraint. This mandates a tiered architecture: Earth as garden (50–100 TW max), orbit as engine room (unlimited), cylinders as suburbs, deep space as frontier.
Governance: A “mosaic” of plural sovereignties united by a thin constitutional layer focused on externality containment, not cultural uniformity. Core principle: Abundance + Exit + Anti-Capture.
The Transition: 200–500 years from current state to target, with the highest-risk period being 2060–2120 when longevity technology exists but isn’t universal.