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Preface

All references made in this wiki come from scientific journals based upon access to data that would not have been possible without the incredible work performed by Aaron Schwartz and Alexandra Elbakyan in the creation of Sci-hub, a decentralised shadow library of copyrighted scientific research papers. BurnZero is maintained by an anonymous group of moderators led by Wojtek Bereza, a neuropsychopharmacist based in Sydney. If you find any factual errors we offer a bounty which can be accessed on our subreddit. Please read the following with a critical yet, open mind.

Part 1: Introduction

We are running out of places to hide from the ecological crisis. Whilst we are working on solutions to deforestation, biodiversity loss, climate change... these, unfortunately, are remedies to symptoms, not the underlying cause. Common logical fallacies mean most of us are unaware of how imminent the threat is. Those that are aware are pacified, but some have broken through the entanglement to elevate representatives to power to address the issue, yet only to find them captured by the machine.

They say to defeat a foe you must divide and conquer. However, we instinctively do it to ourselves through egotism and tribalism. XR, Greenpeace, Sea Shepherd... all fight for the same cause but are segregated, losing economies of scale and widespread cohesive support. Solidarity is desperately needed but this requires trust in a cohesive vision. This evolving wiki, BurnZero, is dedicated to the search for that vision.

Part 2: Popular Delusions

Our personal paradigm typically positions itself as the only paradigm. Popular delusions compound our personal cognitive biases creating a distorted view of reality. Before we can effectively address this crisis, first we must look at ourselves and dissolve our perceptual framework and assimilate new modes of thought. Due to the limited timeline involved and the neuroplasticity of those in power traditional learning is no longer suited for the task. We need to induce pivotal mental states to change our minds before an ecological tipping point will.

Part 3: Learning from our mistakes

Our social experiments have failed to provide us with a long-term solution. Communism revealed our selfish genes as our primary driver and neoliberalism has now brought us to the brink of environmental collapse. Instead of framing these systems as two ends of a spectrum and ignoring past experiments we should accept these failings and build something new with the new technologies we have.

Part 4: The Bad Machine

The irresponsible nature of corporate entities has been known since their inception. A corporate entity is only a means to an end, neither bad nor good. During their inception they were recognised as being so potentially powerful they could only be created with a goal in mind, after which the company had to be dissolved. As corporations limit liability their success as a means of business next to sole traders who took personal liability was incomparable. The popularity of corporations over sole traders empowered lobbying for the removal of dissolution controls and in the majority of cases, the pursuit of profit became the paramount driving force.

This takes the form of a "fiduciary duty" to pursue financial gain of shareholders. This binding principle of the pursuit of profit being paramount gives corporates the traits of a machine. Research has found people with narcissistic traits tend to get promoted 39% faster in their progression to CEO and that there are at least three times as many psychopaths in executive or CEO roles than in the overall population. The importance of this fact is emphasised by the knowledge that psychopaths, at around 1% of the adult population, are reported to be responsible for about 50 % of all serious crimes and constitute 20% of (North American) prison populations.

Part 6: Tenet of Incorporation

Incorporation statements (IC) are legal documents which detail specific rules, by which a corporation is to operate. They are very similar to the algorithm inside of software on a computer, i.e. if the input is this then do this... In corporate entities, subsets of the incorporation statements are created called Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) which govern the activity of the moving parts, i.e. its employees.

The primary tenet of any ICs and SOPs is the maintenance of its own existence. i.e. it is paramount that the business survive. The secondary tenet codifies the corporations fiduciary duty which results in the majority of corporate entities pursuing revenue at all costs: The two main types of corporation are:

• Not For Profit - where the maintenance of its own existence is at any cost.
• For profit - where existence is primary and profit is secondary motive which are to be delivered at any cost.

In both these scenarios existence is paramount meaning, revenues generated should be primary associated to maintaining the business at any cost irrelevant of externalities. This allows for NFPs to hide externality costs within the pursuit of revenue for wages and For profits expand this to allow persuit of revenue for wages and shareholder gain.

Part 7: The Good Machine

When the concept of robotics was first invented, Issac Asimov created a thought experiment called i Robot. In it, he imagined the creation of autonomous intelligence in the form of androids however a conundrum arose. If a machine is developed which has autonomy and was sufficiently enabled, how can we ensure that it primarily does no harm to humans? Without any handwritten laws a machine with the purpose of purely making money, will destroy everything in its path to achieve that goal. As such, Asimov developed the Four laws of robotics, distinct ethical rules to protect humans from the ruthlessness of machines:

• Zeroth Law - A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
• First Law - A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm
• Second Law - A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
• Third Law - A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

These laws have been used as the basic ethical rules for the formulation of a series of tenets which leads to the incorporation statement for the transparent company.

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References