Polycrisis
singularity

01.1 Systemic convergence

THE POLYCRISIS SINGULARITY

The central systemic threat lies not in individual changes, but in their mutual reinforcement. The convergence of climate destabilization, mass extinction, and resource depletion creates a single synergistic mechanism of cascading failures. The interaction among these factors acts as a global threat multiplier, producing nonlinear consequences.

The epistemological gap

The situation is compounded by an epistemological gap: the scale and impact of such consequences exceed human cognitive perception and the forecasting capacity of existing models. Even for the climate crisis alone, science still lacks a single integrated model capable of calculating every feedback loop and cascading effect.

We are moving blindly through a bifurcation point that creates existential risks, or risks incompatible with the preservation of organized civilization. IEvoH’s Navigator project is intended to address precisely this problem.

02.1 Available solutions

THE PARADOX OF AVAILABLE SOLUTIONS

Civilization’s critical vulnerability is not a shortage of technology or the absence of a strategy. Most of the problems listed have solutions. The methods and technologies required to mitigate climate change, for example, already exist, are scalable, and are economically superior to the fossil-fuel paradigm.

02.2 Regulatory systems

INSTITUTIONAL DEADLOCK

The attempt to solve these problems through regulatory institutions—legal and international—has proved largely ineffective. Deception, corruption, vorruption, and the prioritization of private gain over the common good have become normalized and pervasive practices.

The critical vulnerability is that both the architects and operators of these restraining systems possess the same biological architecture. History shows that institutions degrade or are weaponized because the human nature they are meant to regulate exists on both sides of the fence.

Hierarchical power systems also create mechanisms of negative selection. Neurobiological traits that help seize power in competitive environments—a hypertrophied ego, suppressed empathy, and aggression—often correlate with the Dark Triad profile. Planetary-scale safety systems can therefore fall into the hands of leaders whose cognitive architecture is biologically disinclined or unable to place public interests above private ones. This produces a strategy of parasitic gain: individual success is achieved by depleting shared resources, eroding the system’s safety margin and pushing global risks into progressive destabilization.

03.1 Positive feedback

PARASITIC HOMEOSTASIS

The capture of key control nodes by people with destructive neurobiological traits initiates a positive-feedback mechanism. When actors prone to exploitation and manipulation become the architects of institutions, the system itself is reshaped around their needs.

This inverts incentives: honest, cooperative, and sustainable behavior becomes evolutionarily disadvantageous, while corruption and vorruption become dominant survival strategies. The environment begins to reproduce and reinforce the pathology, suppressing attempts at reform.

This is probably one of the key reasons for the absence of initiatives aimed at fundamentally changing the world order. Congresses and summits convene to discuss consequences, yet no event at the highest level is dedicated to eliminating the root causes—still less the Sapiens Problem as their source.

03.2 Perception of reality

THE COGNITIVE GAP AND INFORMATION ASYMMETRY

The status quo is reinforced by a fundamental gap in the perception of reality. Exponential growth in the complexity of global processes and the accelerating pace of life can create cognitive overload, obstructing deep analysis. The shortage of time and expertise is compounded by the fact that key information channels are controlled by beneficiaries of the current system.

The result is a distorted picture of the world in which predatory elite practices are normalized, while the true scale of managerial incompetence and risks remains hidden from public awareness.

03.3 Defense mechanisms

THE ILLUSION OF CONTROL AND EXISTENTIAL DENIAL

The ship-without-a-pilot syndrome. The mind can defend itself through denial. Accepting that the planetary system is moving toward collapse—and that this is driven not by a single malicious design but by the chaotic sum of selfish decisions made by many agents—creates a psychological burden incompatible with the familiar worldview.

It is easier to believe in conspiracy theories or in leaders’ wisdom than to acknowledge that no one truly controls the global trajectory and that civilization is drifting toward disaster solely because of its own biological irrationality.

03.4 Isolation of knowledge

THE EXPERTISE PARADOX

The only community equipped with a methodology for objectively assessing our trajectory—the scientific community—finds itself systemically isolated. Expert knowledge is often ignored when it conflicts with the short-term interests of individuals or elite groups, or cynically instrumentalized to serve convenient narratives, including rationalization and propaganda.

Evidence-based forecasts are systematically deprioritized in favor of short-term struggles over resource redistribution, while science itself remains substantially underfunded.

04.1 Investment inversion

THE SUICIDE ECONOMY

Global investment in activities that destroy the biosphere is 30 times greater than investment in its protection: $7.3 trillion versus $0.22 trillion [UNEP, 2026]. Destroying the biosphere—the foundation of human life—may be incompatible with survival even at today’s technological level.

Global government subsidies that harm the environment are almost three times larger than even an optimistic estimate of government R&D investment: $2.6 trillion [Earth Track, 2024] versus an estimated ceiling of about $0.9 trillion. The latter is calculated as 30%—the maximum government share under UNESCO methodology—of total global R&D spending of $2.9 trillion [WIPO, Global R&D Spending, 2025].

04.2 Biospheric limits

ECOLOGICAL OVERSHOOT

Humanity has entered a critical state of overshoot, consuming resources 1.8 times faster than the biosphere can regenerate them [Global Footprint Network, 2025]. Human pressure has reached an unprecedented scale: the global population has more than doubled in 50 years, while humans and livestock now account for 96% of all mammalian biomass, leaving wildlife only 4% [Bar-On et al., 2018].

Under basic principles of population ecology, a species that exponentially exceeds the carrying capacity of its habitat faces a forced population correction under pressure from a depleted ecosystem [Rees, 2023]. Technological progress has delayed, but not abolished, this constraint.

The World Economic Forum reports that deepening divisions and fragmentation are weakening existing structures’ ability to solve collective problems precisely when stronger international cooperation is required [Global Risks Report, 2025].

In the 2026 outlook, 50% of more than 1,300 GRPS respondents expected a turbulent or stormy global environment over the next two years; the figure rose to 57% over a ten-year horizon. Only 1% expected a calm outlook [Global Risks Report, 2026].

04.3 Planetary selection

THE GREAT FILTER

The observed dynamics may be an empirical manifestation of the Great Filter: the planetary-scale operation of the same biological law of correction that filters out civilizations unable to adapt their core dispositions to the level of their own technology.