The Cosmic Greater Good

ByDan April 5, 2026April 5, 2026 April 5, 2026

When someone claims that they or someone else is “acting for greater good,” this colloquially means that this person is acting in a way that helps others, not only themselves.

A person can act in line with the greater good in the context of a soccer team, or a local economy, or an extended family, or even a nation-state.

But what does it mean to act for the “greater good” at the dawn of AGI and potentially radical cognitive enhancement technologies?

In this article I’ll propose precisely what it means to act in alignment with the “greater good” in this time of unprecedented change and transformation, including how we might measure and calibrate towards that good.

For the sake of using a definition that applies across contexts “greater good” (abbreviated in this article as GG) might be defined as:

“The future survival and persistence of the greater living and evolving system in which the individual or observing agent is situated.”

In this essay I’ll lay out:

• A definition of the greater good itself (as an “undergirding” force)
• An exploration of what local greater good”efforts might look like in different contexts
• A definition of the wider cosmic greater good, and an argument for why serving it is humanity’s highest moral imperative
• A breakdown of how humanity might contribute meaningfully to the cosmic greater good

We’ll begin with a breakdown of the definition:

The GG as “Undergirding” to Thriving

The defining feature of the GG is that it “undergirds” any moral value that occurs in the values above it.

• If cancer cells selfishly divide so much that they kill their host, they end the possibility of all flourishing growth and life for the entire organism (including the cancer cells).
• If one person or group terrorizes a community through violence and theft, they squelch the possibility of a greater aggregate prosperity and progress of all of the members of that community (including the thieves).
• If one species were to somehow stop any new, more powerful species from ever developing, that would be a squashing of the entire process of flourishing that allows any species at all to thrive.

Something is definitionally the “greater good” when it not only impacts a wider swath of living processes, but when that wider swath of living processes is itself the supporting, bolstering force that allows the individual to pursue its own flourishing.

Bear in mind this does not imply a kind of definite triumph of coordination over competition. Competition in myriad forms exists up, down, and sideways in the biological and technological and cultural world, and the thriving of the greater living process seems to depend on this (strife is the father of all, in the words of Heraclitus). 

But all in all, the new and more complex modes of competition that have arisen as life has progresses has come about because of greater aggregate coordination of the lower strata in the overall process of life, and it seems reasonable to expect this trend to continue beyond humanity as well.

Examples of the Local GG in Action 

Contribution: Often, the benefit of a part of the system (the individual, or smaller unit), and the system as a whole, is one and the same. 

• Biological context: A kidney cell in my body wants to thrive in its short life cycle as a cell, and I want healthy limbs that do what I want them to do – a win-win.
• Civilizational context: I might want a career as a carpenter, and the society needs more carpenters – a win-win. 

Detriment / Harm: Acting for the benefit of a smaller part of the system, to a clear detriment to the rest of the system itself, is not a win-win. It is worse than the suffering of the individual, as it is a decrease in survivability of the entire system that holds all the individuals.

• Biological context: A cancer cell decides that its goal is not to be part of a healthy whole animal, but to simply replicate itself with as many resources as it can get its hands on. Clearly not a win win. Enough of that kind of activity and the future persistence of the animal (the GG in this biological context) is threatened. Clearly not a win-win.
• Civilizational context: I want to pay rent and eat food, so I rob people in back alleys at night, causing physical harm, taking resources from others, and increasing the required spend on police to deal with violent crime. Enough of that kind of criminal activity from enough people (the GG in this biological context) and the future persistence of the civilization (the GG in this context) is threatened. Clearly not a win-win.

The GG Scales Up Beyond the Local

In the context of an animal, if an individual cell hoards resources from others would be acting against the future survival of the animal itself. 

In the vast majority of cases, the cell probably behaves in alignment with the GG when it acts to keep the animal healthy and well.

We might think about it this way:

• Cell that is part of animal < Animal

Selfishness on the cell’s behalf, at the expense of the animal (the greater system in which it exists / operates) would be against the GG.

We might look at similar examples in increasingly wide contexts:

• Individual that is part of a family < Family
• Individual that is part of a village < Village
• Village that is part of a nation < Nation
• Nation that is part of a global human civilization < Global human civilization
• Global human civilization which is part of a larger sphere of all biological life < Sphere of all biological life

As humanity has developed, we have bumped into the emergent dynamics of higher and higher levels of social and biological systems.

In 30,000 BC, family or tribal survival would have been sufficient. We didn’t know about nation state challenges, and we weren’t yet facing them. We didn’t know about the delicate balance of the biosphere, and we weren’t yet effecting it at scale.

But steadily over time, our circle of concern has extended to what feels to us today to be the final stage of “the sphere of all biological life.”

Humanity now has – imperfect as they are – global structures of communication, including trade agreements, online platforms, intergovernmental organizations, international travel – and a bevy of various causes and initiatives geared towards preventing pollution and protecting the biosphere.

But just as there were vastly larger contexts of the GG than early tribal humans realized – there are also much greater contexts of the GG than modern humans realize…

The Greater Good in Cosmic Terms

There was a time before we understood our interconnectedness with the biosphere – which was also well before we were doing enough polluting to meaningfully impact the global biosphere very much.

There was a time before villages.

When roving bands of humans, maybe 20 or 80 at a time, was about as large a group of humans you’d see regularly and (relatively) peacefully associating. 

But our moral circle has progressively expanded as:

• We needed to exist in larger and larger groups (thus more permutations of “tolerance” became adaptive, as larger cities or communities were capable of more than smaller groups were capable of).
• Some parts of the world lifted enough of their population above the subsistence level, and came to the conclusion that consciousness probably exists in other animals, too – and they might be worthy of moral patient hood.
• We came to understand the interconnectedness of the biosphere (and our dependence on it), and the impact of deforestation, pollution, and other human environmental impacts. 

This expansion from tribe to community to species to animal kingdom to biosphere represents an increasing understanding of the interconnectedness of the greater system.

Let’s go back in time a bit.

Imagine visiting earth 3.5 billion years ago, and observing nothing more than single celled organisms sparsely sprinkled in occasional volcanic pools.

Why are those handful of single-celled organisms valuable?

Surely very few people would answer “Because those cells experience joy and pain, and their individual sentience is rich and complex.”

Instead, most people would (rationally) answer “Because those simple organisms, given time and continued flourishing, might one day become rich, sentient, powerful creatures – like today’s rich bio-life, and human beings.”

This indeed seems like the right answer. It fits well with the definition of the Greater Good we discussed earlier:

“The future survival and persistence of the greater living and evolving system in which the individual or observing agent is situated.”

Two wonderful things exist today because of that undergirding process of expanding potentia that has bubbled up beyond the single cell:

1. More kinds of “goods” have been explored. Parental love, enthusiasm, poetry, scientific discovery – none of these goods were accessible to individual cells. 
2. The entire process of life is more capable of staying alive in the future. If an asteroid hurled towards earth, we could shoot it down (single cells can’t do that!). With enough time, we might have people building civilizations on the moon or mars (single cells can’t do that).

(This is explored in greater depth in the full essay: Potentia.)

So lets ask the same question of today’s biosphere as we did of the single-celled life:

Why is the entire biosphere valuable?

In this case, we self-serving humans would surely say: “Because the biosphere allows humans and other life forms live!”

But this doesn’t sound very in line with the definition of the GG that we agreed to earlier.

If we apply the same “future survival and persistence” GG criteria that we applied to the single cell, then we would land on an answer more like this: “Because that biosphere, given time and continued flourishing, might one day become more rich, more sentient, more powerful entities – beyond today’s bio-life and human beings.”

Any claim to the greater good must involve stewarding forward the great process-of-life to higher reaches of power, experience, and access to nature.

How We Can Best Contribute to the Greater Good

In the 1960s when Rachel Carson’s environmental bombshell Silent Spring but pollution and biospheric concerns on radar for millions, one of the most common responses was: “Okay, so what am I supposed to do about this?!”

Today it seems like there are many relatively clear steps humanity could take to improve the health of the biosphere (our current conception of the GG). Clean energy, pollution reduction, recycling, etc. But these “obvious” approaches to contributing to the biospheric GG took years to be discussed, studied, and normalized.

Carson’s clarion call was valuable as a catalyst to the eventual discovery of viable plans and strategies.

In this article I’ve laid out a more cosmic GG, which involves encouraging a blooming of the entire process-of-life into more capable posthuman forms which can explore more value and even more adequately keep life itself alive.

The immediate response, understandably, might be: “Okay, so what am I supposed to do about this?!”

I won’t pretend to have the answers. I’m mostly here to make the clarion call for the flourishing of the greater process-of-life of which we’re part. Doubtless, new scientific discoveries and technological developments will change the shape of the risks and opportunities that face us, and my own specific opinions may change.

Here’s two ideas:

Concrete Projects for Cosmic Greater Good Contribution

In Our Final Imperatives I lay out two core types of goals to pursue in the face of the impending end of humanity and in pursuit of the higher, cosmic greater good:

• Ensuring that the flame of life doesn’t go out. Lets not kill ourselves off with nukes and let’s not rush to hurl AGI into the world if we don’t know if is an extension of the greater process-of-life, or if it is a brute unconscious squasher of that process-of-life. The stakes are too high to go willy-nilly with posthuman intelligence.
• Ensuring that the flame of life blazes beyond its present limitations. We must more deeply understand how sentience and autopoiesis work, so that we can ensure that through what we build or transform into, we can give ourself the most confidence possible that the process-of-life will flourish beyond us (and for a time, potentially with us).

There are countless ways humans might contribute to local communities and families, outside of the cosmic scale. But at the cosmic scale itself, I suspect these are starting places, and we should be doing a lot more talking about both of them.

A Rule of Thumb

Beyond particular projects or research directions, I’d like to end with a simple rule of thumb for contribution, generally.

It might be framed in both the positive and the negative:

• Do not act in ways that directly threaten or harm the flourishing of the greater living process you depend on, and
• Act in alignment with what would strengthen the greater living process that you depend on.

These tenets might seem self-evident.

After all, most of you reading this essay don’t actively rob your neighbors, and most of you probably recycle.

But most humans believe that they are justified in preventing any further flourishing of the greater living process of which humanity is merely part. We feel justified in acting directly to harm the expansion and growth of transhuman intelligences, or non-biological intelligences.

For the time being, while we know not what “life” is or how to contribute meaningfully to it, we should indeed be skeptical of letting runaway technological advances run recklessly beyond human control in the near-term (see ensuring that the flame of life doesn’t go out in the section above).

While we ought not rush the process – life itself is a process whether we like it or not. And I presume many of us do like it – at least insomuch as we’re grateful that this bubbling flourishing process went from the single cell to human beings. Harming or squelching this undergirding process would likely be both impossible and net-detrimental to the cosmic greater good.

…

NOTE: Of course there is a great deal of complexity in determining if an action is done in line with the cosmic greater good or not. The Great Oxygenation Event (GOE) killed off most earth-life but may have been necessary for multicellular life to form. Most individual human beings aren’t most “contributive” by thinking about grand cosmic outcomes, but my serving the interests of their self and families in their communities. These points of complexity will be hashed out in a further essay. This Cosmic Greater Good essay is intended merely to point out that an undergirding greater good exists at the level of the entire process-of-life we’re part of, and that contributing to the flourishing of this process is a moral imperative.