In traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi centers on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. It is often described as the appreciation of beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.

権力は集中し、結局は一人の権力者を生む。官僚は腐敗し、前例主義や文書主義に陥る。企業は悪辣になり、利益だけを追求し社会的責任を忘れる。このようなことは、どこの国でも起きていることで、特定の国の文化や民族性の問題ではなく、近代国家という構造が必ず生む帰結です。
これは構造的傾向で、 国が違っても、宗教が違っても、歴史が違っても、同じパターンが繰り返されるのは、制度が人間の行動を一定方向に誘導するからです。

「強い社会・弱い国家」がもっとも鮮明に現れた歴史的事例は、江戸時代の日本と、東南アジアの伝統的社会（特にバリ島・ジャワ・タイ・ラオスなど）です。

◆ 江戸日本と東南アジアの共通点（「静かな秩序」「国家に頼らない自由」）

■ 1. 国家（中央）は弱い

• 官僚が少ない
• 法律が弱い
• 統治はゆるい
• 税収が少ない
• 中央集権が不完全

■ 2. 社会（地方）は強い

• 村・町が自律
• 慣習法が強い
• 互助が強い
• 宗教・祭礼が社会規範
• 秩序は社会が作る

■ 3. 秩序は「空気・慣習・共同体」で維持される

• 暴力や強制ではなく、 合意・恥・慣習・空気 で秩序が保たれる

According to our estimation results, growth rates in fudai domains/villages were approximately 10–16 percentage points lower than those of their counterparts. This is a substantial difference in growth rates for pre-industrial societies. Based on Maddison’s Historical Statistics, the GDP growth rate of China between 1600 and 1820—a time span which largely overlaps with the Edo Period (1600–1868)—was 72% while that of France in the same period was 89%. The difference in GDP growth rates between China and France across 220 years is merely 11 percentage points. Therefore, the difference caused by the insider-outsider distinction in Edo Japan is as large as the economic divergence between China and France in 1600–1820.

In 2023, hundreds of AI luminaries signed an open letter warning that artificial intelligence poses a serious risk of human extinction. Since then, the AI race has only intensified. Companies and countries are rushing to build machines that will be smarter than any person. And the world is devastatingly unprepared for what would come next.
For decades, two signatories of that letter—Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares—have studied how smarter-than-human intelligences will think, behave, and pursue their objectives. Their research says that sufficiently smart AIs will develop goals of their own that put them in conflict with us—and that if it comes to conflict, an artificial superintelligence would crush us. The contest wouldn’t even be close.
How could a machine superintelligence wipe out our entire species? Why would it want to? Would it want anything at all? In this urgent book, Yudkowsky and Soares walk through the theory and the evidence, present one possible extinction scenario, and explain what it would take for humanity to survive.
The world is racing to build something truly new under the sun. And if anyone builds it, everyone dies.