In our second installment of the conversation with Jim Rutt, we explore ways humans can better organize themselves to foster the flourishing of both people and the planet. Such includes Ruttian concepts such as “Game B,” “dynamic coherence,” and “membranes”. We also learn about Rutt’s “minimum viable metaphysics” and his notions of a Ruttian religion.
Humans Reorganize: A to B
Game A vs. Game B is the conceptual heart of the second half. Game A is our current operating system—10,000 years of agriculture, science, democracy, and financial markets, with profit as the sole pruning rule for what gets built next. Game B proposes replacing that pruning rule with two rules focused on human flourishing and ecological health.
Membranes
The practical pathway to Game B, Jim explains, runs through membranes—small, self-governing communities and organizations that experiment with different rules, share learnings through a “horizontal information bus,” and grow (or don’t) based on whether people actually want to live in them. It’s libertarian communitarianism: strong sauce inside the membrane, but zero imposition on other membranes.
Minimum Viable Metaphysics
Jim’s metaphysical framework rests on four pillars: the reality principle (the universe is real, even if we can’t prove it), built-in asymmetry (something had to cause clumpiness after the Big Bang), lawfulness (causality runs all the way back), and emergence (the real magic—traffic jams, stars, life, consciousness—none of which violate causality, but none of which are reducible to it either).
His nearest thing to a religion: treat complex systems as sacred, approach them with epistemic humility, and experiment modestly.
