Summary
The ‘third attractor’ is Daniel Schmachtenberger’s name for a future that escapes the two outcomes he thinks the world is otherwise being pulled towards. In complexity science an attractor is a state a system tends to settle into. In a two-part 2022 Rebel Wisdom podcast series, ‘In Search of the Third Attractor’, he argues that fast-growing technological power makes two destinations likely; the episode notes summarise them as “some kind of chaotic breakdown” or, in response, “oppressive authoritarian control”.
The third attractor is whatever could avoid both: enough coordination to prevent catastrophe without concentrating power. As the series title suggests, it is posed as a search, not a finished design.
Rationale
His two feared outcomes are the backdrop Part 1 opens on: “an accelerating polycrisis” and “rising authoritarianism”. He searches for a coordination design; we ask what cultural habits any such design would rest on.