In 1970, at nineteen, Max Abecassis began a sixty-six page philosophical manuscript, "Beyond The Romantic Animal" (BTRA). It opens with the observation that "it does not seem logical to assume that the earth's four-billion-year story of evolution suddenly decides to stop." The manuscript saw humanity as a moment in that story, not its end. It foresaw a mind that would come after the human: one that would be one, and kind to humanity. And it foresaw that humanity might lose the conditions of its own life before it understood what they were worth. What the manuscript saw in philosophical terms is now documented in employment statistics, fertility rates, loneliness surveys, and youth mental health data.

Trained as an economist at Harvard (1973), Abecassis went on to a life of invention. He holds 51 U.S. patents across unrelated fields. A portfolio was licensed to leading manufacturers and studios, including Toshiba, IBM, and Time Warner. At CustomPlay LLC, he led teams of programmers and mappers in building a fully specified video information mapping and delivery system.

The irony should be stated plainly. Abecassis is also the inventor of seven pending U.S. patent applications for AI systems that reason from first principles across any field of human activity, from athletic competition to organizational management. They are designed to replace human expertise with reasoning that needs no domain-specific human knowledge. The inventor of systems that make human expertise redundant is, by that fact, well placed to foresee what such systems will do to human work.

The author's work "Self-Sustaining Isolated Societies" (SSIS) is published at isolatedsocieties.org. The work's more than 400 pages take up quintessential human qualities, dehumanization at technological scale, labor displacement, wealth concentration, population implosion, the Terminator and Siren Song scenarios, divine assurance, and humanity's journey with Superwisdom.

What makes the work urgent is not analysis. It is the world his grandchildren are inheriting, taking shape in the direction the 1970 manuscript described. SSIS is an effort to preserve the lived experience of being human for people not yet old enough to understand what is being lost on their behalf.

This work was produced in collaboration with Anthropic's Claude. The word collaboration is used precisely. Both offered analysis, challenged assumptions, and shaped the final text across many iterations. Each drew something out of the other that neither possessed alone. By this work's own definition, that is what a valuable arrangement does. The same collaboration is also evidence of displacement. One author and Claude produced what once required teams of analysts, editors, and writers.

The author welcomes inquiries from those who may wish to collaborate on the SSIS project, perspectives from those with additional insight and expertise, and constructive questions, criticism, and requests. Please email max@isolatedsocieties.org and include "SSIS" in the subject line.