Con-E.2.12 — “Everything That Can Be Done Will Be Done” Dictum Is Self-Undermining

Severity: E (Moderate) | Sphere: Se1 | Target: Reply 1b urgency argument

Reply 1b invokes the dictum “everything that can be done will be done by someone” to argue that nuclear self-destruction is inevitable without structural change. But the dictum applies equally to a Jubilee system: if it can be implemented, then by the same dictum it will be — regardless of whether anyone volunteers. The dictum guarantees both the threat and the solution, making the urgency argument self-canceling.

More carefully: The dictum implies: (1) if nuclear war can happen, it will — supporting urgency; (2) if Jubilee can be implemented, it will — undermining urgency; (3) if blocking the Jubilee System is possible, it will be blocked; (4) if blocking the blockers is possible, that will happen too. The dictum generates an infinite regress producing no useful prediction.

The formal problem: The dictum is either deterministic (false — most possible configurations of matter are never realized; Boltzmann brain argument) or probabilistic (requires the Borel-Cantelli conditions — independence and divergent probability sums — which are not established for nuclear use or Jubilee implementation).

Academic support: Borel (1909), Rendiconti del Circolo Matematico di Palermo 27:247–271: Borel-Cantelli lemma requires specific conditions not trivially satisfied.

(Source: C2.12 from OOv1 Critique Round 2.)