This article was co-written with Claude AI for translation, structure, and technical documentation. It is the fruit of real dialogue and systems thinking exploration, not automated content. I wish everyone a good read.
A Note on Intellectual Humility
As I share these thoughts on intellectual resources and geopolitics, I want to emphasize that I express my opinion very humbly as a responsible citizen with a certain—but limited—systemic understanding. My limitations stem from many factors: my modest intellectual capacities, my cultural background, and the simple fact that I am only human.
I am by no means an authority on these subjects, and I certainly don’t want to be interpreted as such. These are metaphors and insights intended for educational purposes, but the real work lies in deep, practical project implementation. For my part, I spend my life learning—if only for the pleasure of it—and I appreciate being challenged and reminded of my humility, because humility facilitates curiosity.
Intellectual Resources as Geopolitical Assets: A Humble Systems Perspective
1. The Missing Dimension in Strategic Analysis
While studying geopolitics and resource management over recent months, I’ve noticed something curious: most analyses focus intensively on material resources—oil, rare metals, agricultural land, water—but rarely discuss what I consider a fundamental strategic asset: intellectual resources.
What if we enriched traditional geopolitical frameworks by introducing the concept of intellectual resources, that famous “available brain time”? This resource can be quantified as human attention time multiplied by each human’s capacity to mobilize computational, interpretive, and expressive power—whether analytical, emotional, philosophical, or across different scales.
But first, let me define what I mean by this “intellectual resource.”
2. Defining the “Human CPU Load”
Think of it like measuring the CPU load accessible at any given moment by the entire human system for processing internal tasks. This load depends on the number of humans, their connectivity, but also critically on the development of each individual.
A human rendered inert or vegetative contributes less intellectual resource than one who is kept sharp, alert, available, creative, innovative, engaged, listening, sensitive, stable, and developing. Important clarification: I’m not saying humans are resources—I’m talking about the intellectual capacity they can contribute to collective problem-solving.
This leads me to a crucial distinction that’s often overlooked.
2.1 Beyond Professional Intellectual Resources: The Brain-Dryout Problem
Here I want to distinguish clearly between intellectual resource as professional capacity—which is already considered through phenomena like brain drain, the movement of startups, researchers, and generally qualified people—and something I’d call “brain-dryout.”
Brain-dryout is where we drain people’s motivations and desires, redirecting them toward consumption at best, but sometimes the content consumption itself is sufficient to render someone “brain-dead.” This doesn’t only apply to so-called educated people or those in high-value-added professional categories.
A crucial point: There are many extremely intelligent people (far more intelligent than me) who haven’t had the circumstances or desire for long, certified education or careers recognized as important intellectual resources. Raw intelligence and wisdom exist across all backgrounds, education levels, and social categories.
The brain-dryout phenomenon is perhaps more insidious than brain drain because it affects intellectual capacity regardless of formal credentials. A brilliant mind can be dulled by purposeless consumption, lack of stimulating challenges, or environments that discourage curiosity and critical thinking.
Before exploring this further, I need to address a critical perspective issue.
2.2 Avoiding Generational Blame: A Systems Perspective
I want to be clear: this isn’t about criticizing younger generations as “dumber” or “less focused.” Every generation in history has criticized the next as lazier or less capable. Films like Idiocracy have explored these themes, but I’m not interested in that kind of discourse.
The goal isn’t to blame individuals but to observe humanity-scale effects that touch many people across generations, effects that are growing and can prevent new talents from developing due to insufficient cognitive environments—spaces that lack the richness, encouragement, and motivating diversity our brains need to flourish.
Crucially: We are all responsible for systemic effects, especially the generations in power today who have more influence than younger generations whom we cannot blame for building these systems—at most, they participate in what they inherited. The responsibility lies primarily with those who designed and control these “magic salt shakers” of content distribution, not with those who grew up within these systems.
This brings me to a powerful analogy that changed my perspective.
3. The Informational Nutrition Framework
I recently began reading “Your Brain on Art” by Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross, and I find their perspective extraordinarily intelligent. Despite having barely developed my artistic relationship with the world, I’m discovering new, unexplored territory. This book demonstrates that working on our environment isn’t just about cramming everyone with math, code, and sciences (though I’d personally love that!), but about changing our relationship to self and information when we ingest information.
Just as with nutrition, we ingest our “own components”—here, informational ones. It’s not just about the pleasure of ingestion, but balancing that with the long-term effects of what we consume. The same applies to content distribution.
3.1 The Magic Salt Shaker Thought Experiment
If I gave the entire world a magic salt shaker capable of adding condiments of choice to millions of people’s meals—in micro-doses, certainly—would it make sense to pour condiments that destroy the brain and taste buds through this magical device?
Well, it’s the same thing with content. We have these “magic salt shakers” of content distribution—platforms capable of reaching millions with micro-doses of information. The question becomes: what are we seasoning humanity’s cognitive diet with?
The issue isn’t the technology itself, but how we use it. Are we providing cognitive nutrition that strengthens intellectual capacity, or cognitive junk food that satisfies immediate cravings while degrading long-term thinking ability?
This realization led me to what I consider our fundamental responsibility.
3.2 Fighting Digital Sugar: Our Moral Duty to Intellectual Public Commons
This brings me to what I consider a fundamental responsibility: we have a moral duty to publish and enrich the public library of content that trains wisdom and judgment—both human AND AI—rather than succumbing to the ease of instant engagement.
The “digital sugar” problem: Content that’s “good in the short term, horrible in the long term.” Just as we’ve created an epidemic of nutritional problems with processed foods designed for immediate pleasure over long-term health, we’re creating cognitive malnutrition with content designed for engagement over intellectual development.
I want to give back space on the Internet for complex thought. There’s a real risk of Dead Internet Theory manifesting through normalized low-level thinking, and I find this harmful to humanity. We’re in a short-termist mode that seems to have lost its systemic consciousness, considering only transactional approaches where everything reduces to “making money quickly with whatever means available.”
Important nuance: I’m not saying short-form content creators are all incompetent—far from it. I’ve learned many things from them and through their content. But the risk of an invasion of content that’s “good short-term, horrible long-term”—digital sugar—is immense.
This creates a fundamental tension we must acknowledge.
3.3 The Economic Pressure vs Long-term Impact Dilemma
Who could morally blame quick monetization in such times? We’ve distorted the system to the point where it’s about survival—social existence survival rather than conscious choice about the consequence we want for humanity.
But this creates a vicious cycle: short-term economic pressure → produce engaging content → contribute to cognitive junk food → degrade collective thinking capacity → create more complex problems requiring even more sophisticated solutions → more pressure for quick fixes.
Which brings us to a fundamental choice we all face.
3.4 Content Creators as Curators of Human Intelligence
Those of us creating content face a choice: Are we seasoning humanity’s information diet with ingredients that enhance cognitive capacity, or with digital sugar that satisfies immediately but harms long-term intellectual health?
This isn’t about format—short content can be nutritious, long content can be junk. It’s about intention and long-term impact. When we have the “magic salt shakers” of content distribution, what are we choosing to add to the collective human cognitive diet?
If we collectively “dumb down” everyone, the system has less intellectual resource to solve its problems. This creates more problems, which can loop into “it’s complicated, when in doubt I’ll dumb down others to save myself in the short term”—but systemically, this doesn’t work.
But there’s an even more concerning dimension when we add AI to this equation.
4. The AI Paradox: Two Fears, One Overlooked
When we add AI and massive learning to this picture, a fascinating paradox emerges. Humans often express fear that artificial intelligence will surpass them, but they rarely mention the fear that global human intelligence might decline.
Because to be surpassed, it’s not just about the acceleration of one party—it can be the slowing down of the other on the road, or both, my dear Watson!
While everyone watches AI progress, almost no one is measuring whether global human intelligence is regressing. This could be the more dangerous scenario.
This insight reveals a systemic trap that’s often invisible.
5. The Vicious Cycle of Intellectual Degradation
Here’s the systemic trap I observe:
- Complex system → Difficult problems emerge
- Reaction: “Dumb down others to save myself in the short term”
- Result: Reduction of global intellectual resource
- Consequence: Less collective capacity to solve problems
- Outcome: More complex problems → Return to step 1
This creates a downward spiral where short-term survival strategies systematically degrade our collective problem-solving capacity.
But here’s where my perspective becomes fundamentally optimistic.
6. My Evolutionary Hope: The Survival of Intelligent Superminds
But here’s what grounds my hope, and why Komyu works on these subjects and #OpenSeriousGame exists: in complex worlds, collective intelligence becomes a survival criterion.
6.1 The Darwinian Logic of Superminds
Superminds—groups of humans equipped with technologies—that develop their collective intelligence will survive more and tend to reproduce this DNA that promotes intelligence. I’m adapting Richard Dawkins’ idea of the selfish gene, but applied not to individual humans fighting each other to make their genes or memes survive, but to human groups fighting to make their collective intelligence memes survive.
These intelligence memes will continue to propagate because intelligent groups will be more creative, inventive, perhaps better strategists. On complex worlds, collective intelligence as superminds (for example, two groups of humans equipped with computers are two different superminds) becomes a competitive criterion for survival and success.
Here’s how this might work in practice.
6.2 The Mechanism of Intelligent Propagation
- Intelligent superminds → Better adaptation and survival
- Visible success → Imitation by other groups
- Propagation of memes of collective intelligence
- Positive evolution of global intellectual resource
Every small intelligent act becomes a meme that propagates. The groups that optimize their intellectual resource become more creative in facing challenges, more inventive in solutions, better long-term strategists, and more resilient in facing complex crises.
This understanding shapes everything I do professionally.
7. My Practical Response: Building the Infrastructure for Intelligent Superminds
This understanding shapes everything I do professionally:
7.1 Komyu: Optimizing Existing Superminds
My job is to accompany leaders of human groups to optimize their collective intelligence:
- Developing facilitation capacities
- Improving collective decision-making processes
- Strengthening team cohesion and effectiveness
7.2 #OpenSeriousGame: Viral Educational Tools
I created educational viruses through OpenSeriousGame so that good practices spread through groups:
- Creating tools/methods that naturally spread between groups
- Viral transmission of collective intelligence best practices
- Democratizing supermind optimization techniques
Note on evolution: With generative AI, OSG has lost some of its differentiating value, but the principle of viral propagation remains relevant.
7.3 Open Source Philosophy: Accelerating Collective Evolution
I push for open source because sharing innovations accelerates collective evolution:
- More groups access collective intelligence tools
- Collaborative improvement of methods
- Resistance to intellectual resource hoarding
This brings us to the larger strategic implications.
8. Geopolitical Implications: A New Strategic Landscape
If this perspective holds, we’re looking at a fundamental shift in how we understand strategic power:
8.1 New Metrics of National Strength
- Evaluation of population “intellectual health”
- Impact of educational/media policies on intellectual resources
- Optimization vs degradation strategies for this resource
8.2 Information Warfare Redefined
- Objective: Degrade the adversary’s intellectual resource
- Means: Disinformation, polarization, systematic dumbing down
- Defense: Preservation and development of collective intelligence
8.3 Intellectual Alliances
- Cooperation to preserve/develop global intellectual resources
- Sharing “best practices” for cognitive development
- Collective resistance to intellectual degradation
8.4 The Long-term Geopolitical Map
Nations and organizations that master collective intelligence will dominate. We might see the emergence of new types of alliances based on intellectual affinity rather than just geography, and the relative decline of powers that neglect this resource.
9. Why I Remain Optimistic: The Evolutionary Pressure
Despite the risks of intellectual degradation, I believe intelligent collective intelligence will ultimately prevail because:
- Selective pressure: Complex challenges favor intelligent groups
- Reproductive advantage: Effective superminds attract more talent
- Network effects: Collective intelligence strengthens through interconnection
- Learning mechanism: The failures of “dumbed down” groups serve as examples
10. The Role of Collective Intelligence Practitioners
Those of us working in this space have a responsibility to:
- Accompany the emergence of more intelligent superminds
- Document and share best practices
- Resist forces of intellectual degradation
- Accelerate the propagation of intelligence memes
11. A Humble Call for Systemic Thinking
These are metaphors and frameworks I offer as educational tools, born from my limited but evolving understanding of complex systems. The real work lies in practical implementation—in the daily practice of building more intelligent, more collaborative, more resilient human groups.
I share these thoughts not as definitive truths, but as contributions to a larger conversation about how we might navigate an increasingly complex world. Because in the end, our collective intelligence—human and artificial working together—may be our greatest asset for addressing the challenges ahead.
The future belongs to those who can effectively combine human wisdom with technological capability, while continuously developing both. And perhaps most importantly, to those who remain humble enough to keep learning, questioning, and adapting as the world evolves around us.
12. A Practical Application: Human Connection as Intellectual Resource
To conclude with a concrete example, I want to share a speech I delivered for my Harvard rhetoric course (“Rhetoric: The Art of Persuasive Writing and Public Speaking” by Professor James Engell), which addresses a critical form of intellectual resource waste in our modern world:
Ladies and gentlemen, dear fellow learners and public speakers,
I stand here before you, offering a peek through the screens into my soul and hoping this speech will reach yours, connecting thoughts, feelings and willingness to act.
I would like to tell how we lost the meaning of the word connection, why we can get it back and why the time is now.
The world now counts 5 billion social media users, which means that 60% of the human population can reach out to planetary-wide relationships. While influencers can have followers in the hundreds of millions, globalized broadband access allows humanity to create billions of videos. Never before have we been able to show so much emotions, sharing so many passions, discussing so many local or global matters in ways that seem more spontaneous than ever. Never before have we been so connected.
Yet, even if we bathe in such abundant content, diving in the foam of trending bubbles and constantly streaming what some of us binge watch, a growing thirst dries us out: the thirst for human connections.
In the last years, developed countries like UK, Japan, Canada, France, Australia, some of them being in the top ranks of technology users, have massively invested in large initiatives to fight loneliness. In the USA, a whole thirty percent of young Americans, the most connected generation ever, feels loneliness several times a week. And as the emerging countries join the race, so do they join the isolation.
Loneliness has been identified as a source of increased risk in cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and, of course, mental health issues. Have you felt lonely recently? Have you felt despair, pain, crippling doubt winding in your heart and mind? Some of you have, and most of you know someone who probably had.
Most pandemics, like Covid-19, spread because people can sometimes stand too close to each other. The loneliness pandemic happens because we have grown too far apart from each other.
We took the word “connected” for granted because devices and accounts are. We’ve built technical bridges between people worldwide, yet fewer and fewer of us are actually crossing them. We share intense feelings and cultural content about fictional characters and celebrities, beamed onto our desks or into our pockets, yet we sometimes declare not having time to call our own acquaintances.
We need to push ourselves beyond technical answers, and not let technology push us beyond our natural needs.
I myself studied engineering, and for years I have been in love with the depth and power of technological advancement. As I have learned job to job, study to study, group to group, technical progress must be balanced with behavioral progress.
This call is neither another unconstructive rant against social media, nor a fearmongering conspiracy theory about large companies taking our freedoms away. These platforms offer unprecedented technical possibilities: some use them to achieve impacts that would have been inconceivable 20 years ago, some use them to cyberbully kids into depression or worse. This is no time for self-deresponsibilizing thoughts, given the vast range of possibilities available to us.
This is no time for guilt or moral accusations either. We could spend countless hours condemning each other and finding excuses in our difficult lives. We could expend our energy looking backwards and commenting. We could stay within our comfort zone, blaming increasing social anxiety and growing relational distance. But we will not. We understand that the challenge is not as simple as it sounds. We also know that we can be way more determined than we appear.
The hands we use to shake another’s are still under our control. The arms we use to warmly embrace are still under our control. The smile that radiates joy, the shoulders for friends to lean on in their pain, the ears to listen attentively are still under our control. We can use high-tech means to connect virtually beyond borders, avoid carbon-heavy itineraries, and even cross conflicting countries. We can use low-tech means to meet and greet local neighbors and contribute to local communities. We can learn to connect at work and work on ourselves by learning how to connect.
The Harvard Study of Adult Development, potentially the longest continuous study of adult life that the social sciences have produced up to now, shows that high-quality relationships can significantly and positively impact health, longevity, and happiness. Other sociology and business studies also show that quality of relationships at work fosters engagement, satisfaction, innovation, operational performance and even commercial performance.
At home or at work, we have no excuses. We have all the reasons to connect. We have the technical means. We are in a state of emergency. We have the scientific evidence. What we lack now is the sum of individual decisions to actively weave the fabric of our lives, our communities, our humanity.
This speech illustrates the practical application of intellectual resource thinking: when we fragment human connections despite having unprecedented connectivity tools, we’re creating brain-dryout at scale. The paradox of being “hyperconnected yet isolated” represents exactly the kind of systemic inefficiency that wastes our collective intellectual capacity.
From material resources to intellectual assets: A systems perspective on collective intelligence as geopolitical strategy
“In complex worlds, the groups that optimize their intellectual resources don’t just survive—they help elevate the entire human system’s problem-solving capacity.”