Architecting Reality

A handful of engineers can now build attention algorithms that shape political and cultural discourse more effectively than any government. A team of two can create economic systems where millions transact daily and generate millions of dollars of profit per day less than one year after launch. A single engineer can rug model weights and cause people to commit suicide. A small number of people don’t just participate in the world, they construct the rules the rest of us have to live inside. This is world building. In a recent talk, Bruno Macaes succinctly enumerates the world building meta-game: “There’s no greater power in the world than to build the landscape or the system within which others have to operate…A superpower encodes the game, a normal power plays the game.” The distinction is not left/right or establishment/anti-establishment. It’s about world builders and world players. World builders and players used to be part of government-controlled institutions and organizations, bu

saved by

• Markus Strasser