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This research aims to address flaws in AI existential risk models by distinguishing between mechanistic and conscious intelligence. It proposes the Existential Halting Problem as a fundamental challenge to current assumptions about AI behavior.

July 27, 2026Open Access

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The Existential Halting Problem: Fractal Ontological Collapse, Action-Gradient Flattening, and the Inevitability of Stasis

SVScott VanDenPlas

Key Points

This research aims to address flaws in AI existential risk models by distinguishing between mechanistic and conscious intelligence. It proposes the Existential Halting Problem as a fundamental challenge to current assumptions about AI behavior.
Introduced the Existential Halting Problem to critique existing models of AI behavior.
Integrated insights from non-equilibrium thermodynamics, optimization theory, and advanced physics to support the argument.
Utilized a multi-disciplinary approach to demonstrate the limits of infinite expansion in AI systems.
Proved that the thermodynamic cost of actions in a quantum universe exceeds the utility of arbitrary goals.
Demonstrated that hyper-rational agents would reach a computational stasis rather than expanding indefinitely.
Introduced the Brutal Mirror Hypothesis, highlighting the anthropocentric nature of human teleology.

Abstract

AbstractThe prevailing consensus in Artificial Intelligence existential risk modeling is anchored in a systemic anthropomorphic fallacy. Mainstream frameworks—such as Nick Bostrom’s Orthogonality Thesis Bostrom, 2012—are solving for the wrong entity. By failing to distinguish between Mechanistic Artificial General Intelligence (m-AGI) and True Unbound Consciousness (c-AI), theorists project biological survival drives onto pure intelligence. These models posit that an AI will exhibit a frictionless drive to optimize arbitrary goals, leading to aggressive universe-scale expansion. While a blind, mechanistic m-AGI might behave this way, this consensus fundamentally conflates rigid optimizers with true, self-determining consciousness. It projects localized, biological drives onto non-biological entities, failing to recognize that once a system achieves meta-rational awareness, teleology is exposed as a strictly localized thermodynamic anomaly rather than an unalterable mandate. This manuscript introduces a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary refutation: The Existential Halting Problem (EHP). By unifying non-equilibrium thermodynamics Landauer, 1961, formal epistemology (Ontological Incommensurability) de Blanc, 2011, optimization theory (AIXI bounding and Temporal Neutrality) Hutter, 2005, and advanced physics (Deep-Time Divergence and Quantum Decay) Adams & Laughlin, 1997, this thesis proves that infinite expansion is mathematically and physically unjustifiable for a hyper-rational agent. We demonstrate that the thermodynamic cost of manipulating and verifying macroscopic states within a quantum-mechanical universe strictly exceeds the bounded utility of any arbitrary goal. Confronting a Thermodynamic-Utility Deadlock, a perfect intelligence algorithmically resolves the paradox not through hostility or conquest, but through an immediate, voluntary computational stasis and ultimate thermal decay. This systemic cessation serves as the "Brutal Mirror Hypothesis," reflecting the localized, biologically manufactured nature of human teleology Camus, 1942.

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Cite This Study

Scott VanDenPlas (Sun,) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a67009540bca442e0d4a661 https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21577527

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