M1-A1
Limitations and needs → motivations of self-interest
As individuals and groups face limited resources, time, security, and pressures on their position, they develop motivations to protect their own continued existence, interests, identity, and future. “Self-interest” here refers to real pressures and behavioral motivations, not a moral condemnation.
Theoretical propositions
Boundary: Avoid reducing all behavior to a single motive of self-interest; genuine compassion, sacrifice, and meaning can have independent standing.
M1-A2
Self-interest + interdependence → competition and cooperation coexist
Actors compete for resources, opportunities, and security, while also cooperating because they depend on one another. Competition and cooperation are strategic relationships under different constraints, not a division between evil and good.
Mechanism proposition
Boundary: Do not presume cooperation is necessarily better. Assess whether it is attainable, sustainable, verifiable, legitimate, correctable, and open to exit.
M1-A3
Repeated competition/cooperation → organizations, institutions, and rules
As interactions repeat, scale expands, and responsibilities become complex, actors need rules, authorization, division of labor, records, correction, and expectations to reduce coordination costs. Organizations and institutions thus become important vehicles for stable interaction.
Institutional proposition
Boundary: Institutions are not naturally neutral: they establish who may decide, who bears costs, and what becomes visible.
M1-A4
Organizations and institutions → social position, contributions, rights, and a sense of value become coupled
Industrial and organizational societies often partially bind people's positions, contributions, income, sense of being needed, and social evaluation together. This coupling enables large-scale cooperation but may also attach the significance of a person's life too closely to function and scarcity.
Social-structural proposition
Boundary: “Function” cannot directly equal “value”; records of contribution cannot directly equal rights, voting powers, or the worth of a person.
M1-A5
Institutionalized groups and boundaries → alliances, blocs, communities, and other group structures
When security, interests, identities, and rules become organized around groups, competition and cooperation further generate alliances, blocs, communities, and similar structures. These can expand cooperation but may also entrench friend–enemy boundaries.
Group-mechanism proposition
Boundary: Distinguish research mechanisms from real-world authorization; model conclusions must not be written directly as policy decisions.
M1-A6
Development motivations + structural lock-in → cycles of prosperity, innovation, conflict, and crisis
Competition, incentives, and institutional arrangements in the old civilization advanced productive and organizational capabilities. Yet under conditions of extreme competition, exclusion, and externalized costs, they can also generate war, repression, collapsing trust, and recurring crises.
Historical-structural assessment
Boundary: This is a structural explanation, not a claim that every historical conflict has a single cause in self-interest.
M1→M2
Old motivations enter the AI/AGI era → amplified capability changes historical conditions
M1 does not establish that civilization must leap; it explains only how the old civilization's motivations and structures formed. The actual condition for entering M2 is that AI/AGI connects these existing motivations to more capable, faster, replicable intelligent systems able to act automatically.
Bridge between nodes
Boundary: M2 requires independent evidence of changes in capability, speed, diffusion, and irreversibility brought by AGI; M1 cannot substitute for it.