The Big Brain Upgrade
Humans got really big brains. Great for solving puzzles! But our brains have a shortcut: if something looks real, we treat it as real. A stick that looks like a snake? We jump! Better safe than sorry.
But what if someone figures out how to make fake things look real on purpose? Uh oh...
The human neocortex evolved a remarkable ability: abstraction. We can create and manipulate symbols, stories, and systems that have no physical existence. This gave us language, law, money, and civilization, but it also introduced a critical vulnerability.
Our brains run a "realness-verification algorithm" that can be tricked. We evolved to treat convincing-looking signals as real because false negatives (ignoring a real snake) are more dangerous than false positives (jumping at a stick). This bias is the exploitable flaw that enables God-Kings.
Lowery's analysis of human cognitive architecture (pp. 130-145) argues that the neocortex's capacity for abstraction created a novel vulnerability: the ability to manufacture signals that exploit the brain's realness-verification heuristic. The brain's bias toward false positives (treating imaginary signals as real) over false negatives (treating real signals as imaginary) creates an attack surface that abstract power hierarchies systematically exploit.
From Hunting to Storytelling to Belief Systems
Humans figured out how to use their big brains for ten cool things, and each one was more powerful than the last:
First, we got good at spotting patterns (like animal tracks). Then we learned to be careful (is that a snake?!). We started using symbols (drawings on cave walls). We learned to plan ahead (let's ambush the caribou at the canyon!). We invented language so we could share ideas.
But the real superpower? Storytelling. Before stories, you could only be friends with about 150 people (that's called Dunbar's Number). After stories, millions of strangers could cooperate just by believing in the same story.
Money? It's a story. Countries? Stories. Laws? Stories. Religion? Stories. None of these things are physically real. They only work because everyone agrees to believe in them. Money is a fictional story that works because everyone plays along.
The thesis identifies ten applications of abstract thinking that sapiens mastered over 50,000 years, each building on the last: advanced pattern finding, exercising caution, symbolism, planning and strategizing, complex language, storytelling, solving unverifiable mysteries, developing belief systems, creating abstract power, and encoding abstract power hierarchies.
Hunting was the first strategic application. Humans used their imaginations to run simulations, predicting where caribou would migrate, ambushing them at canyon bottlenecks where their defensive capacity was lowest. No other predator uses abstract thinking to this degree.
Complex language evolved because mammals have vocal anatomy that fish and insects lack: eyelids, facial muscles, vocal cords that communicate pain and emotion. This gave sapiens the hardware for semantically rich, high-order language capable of transmitting precise abstract ideas between brains.
The true breakthrough was storytelling. Robin Dunbar's research suggests the human brain can maintain meaningful relationships with only about 150 people. Storytelling shattered this ceiling. By sharing stories, millions of strangers can cooperate without ever meeting; they just need to believe the same narrative. Money, religions, nations, and legal systems are all fictional stories that humans collectively agree to believe. As the thesis states plainly: money is nothing more than a belief system, a completely fictional story told by storytellers that people voluntarily choose to believe in.
Lowery catalogs ten applications of abstract thinking (pp. 130-141, Table 1), tracing their evolution from simple pattern-finding to the encoding of abstract power hierarchies. The progression is significant: each application represents an escalation in the abstraction's capacity to influence physical reality and inter-sapient behavior.
The hunting analysis (pp. 131-133) demonstrates abstract thinking's first strategic application to physical power projection. Sapiens used planning and intentionality (theory of mind) to predict prey behavior, running hypothetical simulations and sharing them as "virtual realities" with hunting partners, creating shared abstract realities filled with hunters and prey that existed nowhere except within collective imaginations.
Complex language (pp. 133-137) is analyzed as a product of mammalian physiology: the vocal cords, eyelids, and facial musculature that enable semantically and syntactically complex, high-order communication. The primary value-delivered function of this language is not emotional bonding (which occurs through instinctive base-layer protocols like singing, grooming, and baby talk) but rather the ability to encode abstract thoughts with mathematical precision, which is the cognitive foundation for storytelling.
Storytelling (pp. 137-141) is identified as the mechanism that transcends Dunbar's Number (~150 meaningful relationships). Through shared narratives, neocortices can synchronize without physical proximity or shared experience. Lowery argues that all large-scale cooperation, including money, religion, nations, and legal systems, derives from this capacity. "Money is nothing more than a belief system, one of many completely fictional stories told by storytellers that people voluntarily choose to believe in" (p.140). The collapse of a shared monetary story collapses cooperation, and has ended several empires.
"Storytelling is how money and currencies work. Money is nothing more than a belief system — one of many completely fictional stories told by storytellers that people voluntarily choose to believe in."
— Lowery, Softwar, p. 140
Columbus and the Jamaica Eclipse
In 1504, Admiral Columbus was stranded on Jamaica, starving and outnumbered by hostile natives who had stopped providing food. Knowing from his son's astronomy books that a total lunar eclipse was imminent, Columbus warned the Jamaican chiefs that God would destroy the moon as punishment. When the eclipse occurred exactly as predicted, the terrified natives came running with provisions, begging Columbus to restore the moon. He had manufactured abstract power from thin air: no army, no weapons, just a persuasive story backed by astronomical knowledge.
Abstract Power vs. Physical Power
There are two kinds of power. Physical power is real: you can push things, lift things, run fast. Abstract power is pretend; someone tells you they're "in charge" and you believe them.
A teacher's power only works if students agree. A bully's power works whether you agree or not!
The thesis draws a sharp distinction. Physical power (F=ma, watts, thermodynamics) operates regardless of belief. Abstract power (titles, laws, money) only functions within a shared belief system. A king is powerful only as long as people believe in kingship.
The false positive: a knight standing next to the king makes the king's imaginary power seem real. Your brain creates a false correlation between the knight's real physical power and the king's abstract authority.
Lowery formalizes the distinction between physical power (operating through Newtonian mechanics: forces displacing masses) and abstract power (operating through signal manipulation within belief systems) on pp. 147-158. The key structural insight is that abstract power hierarchies are "non-energy-intensive" and "indirectly lead to injury through enforcement," requiring a population that has adopted the belief system and is unable or unwilling to physically resist.
The God-King Problem
A God-King is someone who tricks everyone into giving them power. Here's the recipe:
1. Tell people about something wonderful they want
2. Tell them there's a special door to get it
3. Say "only I have the key!"
4. Get everyone to believe the story
Pharaohs did it. Kings did it. And today? God-Kings God-Kings Someone who exploits a population through their belief system. Uses abstract power (stories, rules) to extract real resources without physical contest. Chapter 2 are everywhere.
A God-King exploits a population through their belief system. The 4-step process: describe a desired state the population wants, describe a gateway to reach it, position yourself as the gatekeeper, and increase adoption of the belief system.
God-Kings don't need physical power. They only need a population that has adopted an exploitable belief system and is too weak or scared to physically resist. The Egyptian Pharaoh is the thesis's primary example: divine authority backed by bureaucratic extraction.
The God-King model (pp. 147-149, 163-164) describes a four-step mechanism for establishing abstract dominance hierarchies. Lowery argues this mechanism is structurally invariant across historical periods, from Egyptian pharaohs to modern institutional gatekeepers. The critical vulnerability is that God-Kings require only two conditions: (1) a population that has adopted an exploitable belief system, and (2) a population that lacks the physical power capacity to resist exploitation.
The Repeating Cycle of History
History keeps playing the same song on repeat:
1. People get comfortable and stop being tough
2. A bully (God-King) takes advantage of them
3. Things get SO bad that people finally fight back
4. They win! New leaders take over
5. Everyone gets comfortable again...
6. Go back to step 1
This loop has been repeating for over 5,000 years. It's like a song that never ends: comfort, exploitation, revolution, new order, comfort, exploitation...
Human history follows a remarkably consistent cycle. Societies grow comfortable with their high-functioning belief systems and stop projecting physical power. As they become increasingly resource-abundant but increasingly less physically powerful and aggressive, their benefit-cost ratio of attack climbs. Predictably, these societies get devoured by predators.
Meanwhile, societies which employ the "grow physical power capacity first, then grow benefits" strategy survive and become the new dominant society. But this new society eventually becomes comfortable and complacent, stops increasing its physical power capacity, and the cycle repeats. Hard times create strong people, strong people create good times, good times create weak people, and weak people create hard times.
When populations become too docile or domesticated, either their territory gets physically captured or their belief system gets psychologically exploited. During the collapse of these complex agrarian societies, maybe a few will have the humility to recognize that their beliefs in imaginary power, combined with their condemnation of physical power, led them straight to the slaughter.
Lowery describes the cycle of human history (pp. 149-150) as a bowtie feedback loop repeating across 5,000 years of recorded testimony. Societies oscillate between comfort and exploitation: as populations grow complacent with their abstract power hierarchies, they stop projecting physical power, causing their CA to decrease and their BCRA to climb. They are then devoured by societies which maintained physical power projection capacity.
The thesis identifies two paths from the state of comfort: Path 1 ("Our belief system will protect us") leads to high BCRA and eventual destruction. Path 2 ("Veni, Vidi, Vici") leads to maintained physical power capacity and survival. The surviving society then enters its own comfort phase, and the cycle repeats. As G. Michael Hopf summarized: "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times."
"Rather than take accountability for their decisions and question the grossly unrealistic assumptions they made when they adopted their belief systems, many will instead choose to blame their invaders or their systemic oppressors for their losses."
— Lowery, Softwar, p. 150
Domestication of Humans
You know how wolves became golden retrievers? Strong, wild animals turned into cuddly pets that can't survive alone? The thesis says the same thing happened to us. We traded our toughness for comfy couches, and now we can't fight back even when we should.
The domestication parallel is one of the thesis's most provocative arguments. Just as animal domestication removes physical power capacity in exchange for comfort and dependency, human societies have undergone a similar process:
Trade physical power capacity for abstract power (comfort, convenience). Gradually reduce the inclination to project physical power. Create dependency on abstract hierarchies for safety and resources. The population becomes docile, compliant, and exploitable, "all honey, no sting."
Lowery's domestication thesis (pp. 181-187) argues that modern sapiens have been systematically domesticated through the same mechanisms applied to livestock: selective reduction of physical power projection capacity in exchange for abstract comforts. He cites Timur the Great's conquests, where populations dug their own mass graves without resistance, as an extreme example of domestication's endpoint.
"Modern domesticated sapiens eat meals in cushioned seats, watch sanitized nature documentaries, worship genetically deformed wolves, and sincerely believe they have transcended predation."
— Lowery, Softwar, pp. 184-185
Emergent Benefits of Warfighting
Here's a weird idea: wars actually help in some ways. Not because fighting is good, but because it keeps any one bully from taking over everything.
Think about it like this: if nobody could ever fight back, the biggest bully would just take everyone's lunch money forever. Wars are like a reset button. They're messy and terrible, but they stop one person from controlling everything.
That's why there are 195 countries instead of one giant empire. Fighting kept splitting things up! And here's a cool fact: the first people to walk on the moon got there on rockets originally built for war.
War has emergent benefits that are deeply uncomfortable to acknowledge. A primary value-delivered function of warfare is to decentralize zero-trust and permissionless control over valuable resources. No person or polity has ever been able to gain full and unimpeachable control over all of the world's natural resources, precisely because of the physical constraints caused by warfighting.
"Might is right" could also be called "physics is right." Wild animals which use physical power to establish their pecking order don't suffer God-Kings. Wolves may fight constantly, but they never fall to their knees before a peer wielding nothing but imaginary power. The 195 countries that exist today are largely the result of wars that decentralized control over territory and resources.
War functions as a proof-of-work protocol: by participating in a highly energy-intensive, global-scale physical power competition, agrarian society enjoys the complex emergent benefit of decentralized control over their resources. National borders function like fire doors in a building, containing and isolating hazardous power hierarchies, preventing a single oppressive regime from spreading unchecked across the globe.
The emergent benefits extend to technology and exploration. The Apollo program was a thinly-veiled military R&D effort. The Saturn V rocket was designed by Nazi scientists brought to the US through Operation Paperclip. The first moonwalkers were not just explorers but the apex predators of our species, riding oversized intercontinental ballistic missiles rebranded for peaceful exploration.
Lowery's analysis of the emergent benefits of warfighting (pp. 192-213) presents warfare as functionally identical to Bitcoin's proof-of-work protocol (p.199). Both involve participating in highly energy-intensive physical power competitions to achieve the complex emergent benefit of decentralized control over resources.
The thesis identifies several key emergent properties of warfare: it is zero-trust (requires no faith in the honesty of opponents), permissionless (requires no authority's approval to participate), and egalitarian (physics does not discriminate by rank or belief system). "Might is right" is reframed as "physics is right," since species which establish their pecking order using physical power competitions do not suffer the systemic psychological exploitation that plagues abstract-power-based hierarchies (p.197).
National borders are analyzed as "fire doors" (p.201), safety features that contain and isolate hazardous abstract power hierarchies, preventing the global consolidation of exploitative belief systems. The dry surface area of the Earth has been partitioned into 195 different countries largely as a result of wars fought to decentralize control over those territories (p.200).
The Apollo case study (pp. 203-204) illustrates how warfighting's emergent benefits extend to technological advancement. NASA's Director and chief engineer for the Saturn V program were Nazi rocket scientists brought to the US via Operation Paperclip. The first moonwalkers spoke English, the language of a kingdom which had spent centuries conquering and colonizing the planet through aggressive military campaigns. As Lowery frames it: "it was confounding effects, correlation, or pure coincidence that the first Earthen life to walk on the moon were English-speaking Americans riding on top of the missiles they originally developed to kill each other."
"Warfighting is functionally identical to Bitcoin's proof-of-work protocol."
— Lowery, Softwar, p. 199
General Billy Mitchell's court-martial
In the 1920s, Army General Billy Mitchell was court-martialed for insubordination after loudly insisting that airplanes would become as vital to warfare as battleships. The military establishment dismissed him as a crank. Mitchell died in 1936, nine years before the end of World War II, where air power proved decisive. Pearl Harbor, the very scenario he had warned about, validated everything he said. He was posthumously awarded a Congressional gold medal.
The moonwalkers were apex predators
The Apollo program is remembered as humanity's greatest peaceful achievement. But the Saturn V rocket was designed by Wernher von Braun, a Nazi scientist smuggled into the US through Operation Paperclip. The moonwalkers rode oversized intercontinental ballistic missiles, spoke the language of a centuries-long colonial empire, ate freeze-dried food grown by enslaved oxen, and launched from a continent their ancestors had conquered by force. Apollo was thinly-veiled military R&D rebranded with astronauts and inspiring TV footage during the Vietnam-era pacifist movement.
Chapter 2: Power Projection
The Evolution of Power Projection
Humans have always built better and better weapons to protect their stuff. From fists to swords to bombs, each one was more powerful than the last. But then we hit a ceiling: nuclear weapons are so destructive that using them means everyone loses. So what comes next?
The history of civilization is a history of escalating power projection, the ability to impose physical costs on adversaries across distance. Each revolution made the previous one obsolete, until nuclear weapons created a kinetic ceiling: a point where more physical force no longer yields strategic advantage. Bitcoin represents the first breakthrough beyond that ceiling.
Lowery traces the thermodynamic history of power projection (pp. 28-54), arguing that each technological revolution increased the watts per capita available for imposing physical costs. Nuclear weapons represent the "kinetic ceiling" (p. 46), the point of Mutually Assured Destruction where additional kinetic power yields diminishing or negative strategic returns. Bitcoin's proof-of-work, Lowery argues, represents "electro-cyber power projection" (p. 189), the first mechanism to project physical power in cyberspace without kinetic destruction.
Chinese alchemists and black powder
Chinese alchemists discovered black powder while searching for an elixir of immortality. For centuries, they thought it was medicine. Nobody seriously investigated military applications. Eventually, that same substance became gunpowder, the most transformative military technology in human history.
The Kinetic Ceiling
Then humans invented nuclear bombs. Problem: they're SO powerful that if you use them, everyone dies. So nobody can use them. It's like having a super-weapon that destroys you too. Stalemate!
But if nobody can fight, the God-Kings can do whatever they want...
Nuclear weapons represent the kinetic ceiling kinetic ceiling The paradox where weapons become too destructive to use. Nuclear weapons created a stalemate that prevents physical power competitions. Chapter 2 , the paradox where physical power projection technology becomes too efficient to use. The very capability that should provide ultimate security instead creates mutual annihilation. If you get too good at physical power projection, it becomes useless.
This stalemate is a God-King's paradise. With physical power competition neutralized, populations lose the ability to reset exploitative hierarchies through force. The nuclear deterrent that prevents war also prevents revolution.
The kinetic ceiling thesis (pp. 220-243) argues that thermonuclear weapons represent a terminal paradox in kinetic power projection. Lowery invokes Peter Turchin's research showing that warfare historically drove increasingly larger cooperation scales, but nuclear weapons broke this cycle by making kinetic competition existentially self-defeating. The resulting stalemate eliminates the "physical power reset" mechanism that historically constrained abstract power exploitation.
Humans Need Antlers
So here's the big question: can we build something like antlers, something that lets us compete fairly, prove who's strong, and protect what's ours, without anyone getting hurt? Something that uses ENERGY instead of WEAPONS?
What would "electronic antlers" even look like? 🤔
The chapter climax poses the central question: humanity needs a non-kinetic form of physical power projection. One that is zero-trust, permissionless, and egalitarian, yet non-lethal. Energy competition (charges across resistors) instead of kinetic competition (forces displacing masses).
Tesla predicted it in 1900: "merely machines will meet in a contest without bloodshed." Einstein showed the path with E=mc²: matter and energy are interchangeable, so wars can be fought with energy, not mass.
The chapter's culminating argument (pp. 239-243) synthesizes the preceding analysis into a design specification for a novel power projection technology: it must be physically costly (not abstract), non-lethal (below the kinetic ceiling), permissionless (no gatekeepers), and globally accessible (egalitarian). Lowery invokes Tesla's 1900 prediction and Einstein's mass-energy equivalence to argue that electromagnetic power competitions are the logical successor to kinetic ones.
"What would electronic antlers look like?"
— Lowery, Softwar, p. 243
Einstein's reversal
Albert Einstein initially said that nuclear energy was impossible: 'There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable.' Years later, he wrote the most famous letter in history, urging President Roosevelt to develop atomic weapons before Nazi Germany did.
Constantinople refuses cannons
In 1453, a Hungarian engineer offered the Byzantine Emperor a massive cannon. He declined. The engineer walked to the enemy and offered the same weapon to Sultan Mehmed II. The sultan used it to breach walls that had held for a thousand years. The Byzantine Empire fell.