Radical Change Will Be Foisted Upon Us

ByDan September 6, 2026September 6, 2026 September 6, 2026

When I talk about the radical transformation of humanity and the grand scenarios around posthuman life, I’m often asked:

“Why would you want all of this change?”

My answer:

I personally don’t want a reckless race, uncoordinated race to AGI.

I wish “progress” on AGI was vastly slower than it now is.

But wanting change isn’t really how the living process operates.

Radical change is going to be foisted upon us.

We pretend like our choices are only:

• Build AGI and it treats us like pets, or lets us “keep the Earth for ourselves” or some other such pedestal cope nonsense.
• Build AGI and it kills us all off immediately.
• Don’t build AGI and for billions of years humans-as-they-are live happily ever after.

But there’s another wildly more likely scenario that has to be considered seriously:

• Something like AGI is created (with or without international coordination / governance), and humans have to evolve radically faster than biological evolution will allow in order to have any extended relevance, participation, or chance of survival or influence in the new regime of intelligence that is created on Earth.

This last scenario seems to me to be rather likely, and certainly at least worth considering seriously given the trajectory we’re on at the time of this writing (2026).

The choices are not (a) be destroyed, or (b) be coddled or left alone forever.

The choices are (a) be destroyed, or (b) transform into whatever we must become in order to continue participating.

The reason people don’t think about the transformation of humanity is because they presume that “value” exists solely only with hominids-as-they-are. So when it comes to futures they presume:

• “Bad” futures are where humans no longer exist
• “Good” futures are where humans are happy and thriving

But the living process is always in flux, and we must open up our moral aperture to consider that:

• “Bad” futures are where the expanding, changing, living process (of which we are temporarily part) no longer exists
• “Good” future are where the expanding, changing, living process flourishes (including into forms that aren’t appreciably human, just as we are no longer fish-with-legs or flatworms)

This is a switch from the Torch to the Flame moral paradigm:

(I explain this in my interview with Roman, in the section you see embedded below.)

The greater living, intelligent system around humanity is changing radically: technology, intelligence, economic competition, the ability to manipulate biology, brain-computer interface, AI relationships and soon perhaps the ability to create minds and agents vastly more capable than ourselves.

Even if we achieved some strong international coordination and red lines around dangerous aspects of AGI, the trends we’re seeing now with AI relationships, with the potential for bioengineering, etc will be enough to soon totally upend the regime of intelligence on Earth. Even with the development of “safe” AIs capable of curing cancer and managing global supply chians perfectly would imply new magazines of possibilities and powers that would transform the world in radical ways (no “rogue AGI” required).

We hopefully have a chance to influence the speed and the direction of the great changing trajectory of life and intelligence – but we don’t get to pick “destinations” that we want to “stay” at. Life literally doesn’t work like that.

The speed of Darwinian change in the biosphere was vastly faster than the gradual changes of the geosphere before it. And the current technosphere operates via cultural and technological evolution that is outlandishly faster than anything we see in the biosphere.

Even “things going right” and “things slowing down” will imply remarkable change – change that is likely so drastic as to require us to augment our brains and wield ourselves with / immerse ourselves in technology in ways that completely move beyond “human” just to participate:

• Nintendo didn’t persist as a company for 130+ years because they insisted on only selling playing cards until the end of time. No, they had to adapt to new markets, new materials, new possibilities, new needs within the market, etc. They persisted by participating, by becoming whatever they needed to become to adapt to the emergent, ever-changing circumstances in which they were embedded.
• Mammals didn’t persist because some early rodent insisted on staying alive, and insisted that no other species or environmental factors disturb it. No, they had to adapt to new predators, new pray, changes in temperature, in pathogens, etc. They persisted by participating, by becoming whatever they needed to become to adapt to the emergent, ever-changing circumstances in which they were embedded.
• Humanity will not persist by insisting on being valuable, being morally valuable, and deserving provisioning and respect from all possible future intelligences for eternity. No, we’ll almost certainly have to adapt to an entirely new regime of intelligence, incentives, kinds of economic or scientific value, etc. If we persist at all – even for a short period of time – it will be by participating, by becoming whatever we need to become to adapt to the emergent, ever-changing circumstances in which we are embedded.

People often read my tweets about the necessity of transformation, or the possibilities of posthuman life, and they presume that I wish to recklessly race to AGI, and I want change to be as fast as it is.

Once every month or two this results in people saying I need to be jailed or killed. This knee-jerk “taboo cognition” (a phenomenon I’ve written about in depth) is unfortunate but hard to avoid. That said, as soon as I make it clear that I’m trying to surf changes that I am not necessarily wishing for – people quite often become rather civil with me, as you see in the two back-to-back tweets below from a particularly upset Twitter user:

I hope that in reading this you will deign me the same consideration and civility. If you do have to kill me, do it not from distain or malice – for I am just a person like you.

…

This essay was intended to be short so I’ll end it here.

For the full article on what participation means in the context of this essay, read: Participation.

For more context on what “becoming” and transformation might involve, read:

• Ambitious Tech – The Price of Productivity and Power
• Human-AI Merger and Mind Uploads – Pros, Cons, and Scenarios