Blog Talk Radio seems to be experiencing technical difficulties, and so far no archive of our interview last night with Philippe Van Nedervelde of the Lifeboat Foundation has been published. Stephen is in touch with BTR and working on the problem. Stay tuned. We hope to have the recorded show up soon.
Monthly Archives: February 2008
FastForward Radio
Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon interviewed the Lifeboat Foundation’s International Spokesperson Philippe Van Nedervelde. They wanted to know, can a nonprofit foundation protect against existential risk?
They spoke with Van Nedervelde about the risks humanity faces and how the Lifeboat Foundation intends to “safeguard humanity.”
Click “Continue Reading” for listening options and the show notes:
Safeguarding Humanity
I was born into a world in which no individual or group claimed to own the mission embodied in the Lifeboat Foundation’s two-word motto. Government agencies, charitable organizations, universities, hospitals, religious institutions — all might have laid claim to some peace of the puzzle. But safeguarding humanity? That was out of everyone’s scope. It would have been a plausible motto only for comic-book organizations such as the Justice League or the Guardians of the Universe.
Take the United Nations, conceived in the midst of the Second World War and brought into its own after the war’s conclusion. The UN Charter states that United Nations exists:
- to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
- to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
- to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
- to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom
All of these are noble, and incredibly important, aims. But even the United Nations manages to name only one existential risk, warfare, which it is pledged to help prevent. Anyone reading this can probably cite a half dozen more.
It is both exciting and daunting to live in an age in which a group like the Lifeboat Foundation can exist outside of the realm of fantasy. It’s exciting because our awareness of possibility is so much greater than it was even a generation or two ago. And it is daunting for exactly the same reason. We can envision plausible triumphs for humanity that really do transcend our wildest dreams, or at least our most glorious fantasies as articulated a few decades ago. Likewise, that worst of all possible outcomes — the sudden and utter disappearance of our civilization, or of our species, or of life itself — now presents itself as the end result of not just one possible calamity, but of many.
I’ve spent the last few years writing about many of those plausible triumphs, while paying less attention to the possible calamities. But I’m not sure that this is a clear-cut dichotomy. Pursuing the former may ultimately provide us with the tools and resources we will need to contend with the latter. So my own personal motto becomes something of a double-edged sword. I encourage everyone to strive to “live to see it.” But maybe we also need to figure out how we can see it…to live.
With that in mind, perhaps “safeguarding humanity” takes on a double meaning, too. We must find a way for humanity to survive in the face of these very real threats. Moreover, we must find a way for humanity — the values, the accomplishments, the sense of purpose which has defined the entire human experience — to survive. And that may be the most audacious mission statement of all.
Stephen and I will be interviewing the Lifeboat Foundation’s International Spokesperson Philippe Van Nedervelde on the next FastForward Radio.
(Cross-posted to the Lifeboat Foundation blog.)
CERN, the Russians, and Time Travel
Here’s a bit of a potential mind-blower:
Time travel could be a reality within just three months, Russian mathematicians have claimed.
They believe an experiment nuclear scientists plan to carry out in underground tunnels in Geneva in May could create a rift in the fabric of the universe.
The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) hopes its “atom-smashing” tests – which aim to recreate the conditions in the first billionth of a second after the “Big Bang’” created everything – will shed invaluable light on the origins of the universe.
But Irina Aref’eva and Igor Volovich, of Moscow’s Steklov Mathematical Institute, say the energy produced by forcing tiny particles to collide at close to the speed of light could open the door to visitors from the future.
Interestingly, Aref’eva and Volovich claim that the wormhole they believe the CERN experiment will open up will not provide us with the means to travel through time, or at least not back through time. Our end of the rift in time would be the day that the experiment is conducted — and that is the farthest back anyone could travel using the wormhole. They talk about visitors from the future potentially coming through the wormhole to our era, but the linked article doesn’t say whether we would have the ability to use the wormhole to move rapidly forward in time and then back again to this era.
Presumably, even with the wormhole, it would take some sophisticated technology to travel through time. People in the future might have that technology, and thus be able to use the CERN-created rift in time to travel back to our era. So our first time machine is really of more use to people in the future than it is to us. Still, if they use it to come back here and pay us a visit, that will be pretty darned interesting.
The CERN scientists are understandably skeptical:
But Dr Brian Cox, a member of CERN and one of Britain’s leading experts in particle physics, is highly sceptical about the Russian claims, calling them “nothing more than a good science fiction story”.
“Stephen Hawking has suggested that any future theory of quantum gravity will probably close this possibility off, not least because the universe usually proceeds in a sane way, and time travel into the past isn’t sane.”
Not to take issue with Brian Cox (much less Stephen Hawking), but I can’t help but note that this argument is predicated on the idea that the universe usually proceeds in a sane way. Well, hey — close only counts in hand grenades and horseshoes. What Cox and Hawking are saying is that they find the idea of travel back through time intellectually unpalatable, even though it can’t be ruled out altogether.
Of course, the fact that something can’t be ruled out altogether is no reason to think it might be true. But then again…
In any case, what the Russians are saying about time travel seems to sync up pretty well with the ideas about time travel espoused by University of Connecticut professor Ron Mallett — at least the part about not being able to travel further back in time than the day the time machine was built. Mallett is one of the few serious academics currently studying time travel; he says it will be achieved within this century.
In fact, as I feel duty-bound to point out — time travel is going on all the time. We’re all doing it right now. We just don’t think anything of it, because we’re all doing it all the time. Nobody cares about that model of time travel because there’s nothing out of the ordinary about it. When people talk about time travel they mean:
1. Traveling back in time
or
2. Traveling into the future faster than everyone else
But even by those criteria, time travel has already occurred. At least item number 2 has. As Mallett points out:
“To physicists, time is what’s measured by clocks. Using this definition, we can manipulate time by changing the rate of clocks, which changes the rate at which events occur. Einstein showed that time is affected by motion, and his theories have been demonstrated experimentally by comparing time on an atomic clock that has traveled around the earth on a jet. It’s slower than a clock on earth.â€
That clock effectively traveled into the future. When the jet landed, the clock showed an earlier time than the clocks which had stayed behind. The clock –and the pilot of the jet — had effectively leaped forward a few milliseconds into the future.
So if the second kind of time travel is demonstrably possible, why not the first? We shall see.
All in good time.
NowTell Me the Sace Program Isn't Worth the Money
Zero-g Alka-Seltzer:
Via GeekPess.
UPDATE: Michael Darling seems to want to turn every posting on this blog into an episode of Tales of the Paranormal (see comments). I think what he’s missing out on, here, is that we don’t buy in to every crackpot theory that shows up in the blog comments section. We need compelling evidence before we are moved to take a stand on any paranormal phenomenon.
So with that in mind, here is the “face” that shows up at 4:35 on the Youtube video, above:
I’ll grant Michael one thing — it doesn’t look much like my dog!
NowTell Me the Sace Program Isn’t Worth the Money
Zero-g Alka-Seltzer:
Via GeekPess.
UPDATE: Michael Darling seems to want to turn every posting on this blog into an episode of Tales of the Paranormal (see comments). I think what he’s missing out on, here, is that we don’t buy in to every crackpot theory that shows up in the blog comments section. We need compelling evidence before we are moved to take a stand on any paranormal phenomenon.
So with that in mind, here is the “face” that shows up at 4:35 on the Youtube video, above:
I’ll grant Michael one thing — it doesn’t look much like my dog!
Less Gas is Always Greener
Without looking, what would you guess is the subject of the Wired article “‘Misinformed Craze’ For Hybrids Delays Greener Technology?”
Guess 1:
I was sure initially that the author was suggesting that standard hybrids are delaying plug-in hybrids.
Thanks to the nickel batteries in standard hybrids, there’s a good argument that these “green” cars are worse for the environment than my Ford Explorer. This is tragic because, well, it exposes my witty title as a lie.
Plug-in hybrids will be doubly better for the environment. We will be able to drive emission-free for most commuting and the batteries necessary to power a plug-in hybrid are environmentally friendly too.
But it doesn’t look like plug-ins are being held back by the standard hybrids. Most major car companies, plus a few upstarts, are getting into the plug-in business as fast as they can. In ten years we’ll probably look back at standard hybrids as a brief, necessary bridge to plug-ins.
Prediction: the word “standard” won’t describe non-pluggable hybrids for much longer.
But that’s not what the Wired article is about.
Guess 2:
Perhaps the author is arguing that somehow hybrids as a whole – standards and plug-ins – are holding back the development of full EV’s.
Now this would be an interesting article too. But hybrids aren’t holding EV’s back any more than standard hybrids are holding back plug-ins.
EV’s are being held back by a chicken/egg problem. Few people will buy EV’s until they are comparable to gas guzzlers in range, speed, and the ability to fuel up quickly at convenient stations. No EV’s, no infrastructure. No infrastructure, no EV’s.
Plug-ins will, I think, serve as a proving ground for the EV’s that follow. They could also provide the infrastructure for EV’s. Plug-in owners will buy gas for long trips until enterprising station owners offer quick charge service that’s cheaper than gas. Once that service is widespread, we’d have a network of stations that full EV’s could use. Perhaps Congress should mandate standardized quick charge jacks in plug-ins to encourage this.
But no, that’s not what the Wired article is about either.
The Big Reveal:
The article states that hybrids are holding back other technologies like…hydrogen. This according to two French researchers who also concede that hydrogen won’t be commercially viable until 2025 at the earliest.
If we ever do get hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (a rather big if) they will also be electric vehicles. A hydrogen fuel cell would power a car with electricity. Wouldn’t it be beneficial to have already perfected electric vehicles? Right now the best path to electric vehicles is through hybrids.
There’s no need to wait to 2025 to do something. We will experiment with many possibilities between now and then.
Unintended Consequences
We talked a little about the risks associated with genetic modification of crops on the most recent FastForward Radio. Where the danger exists, it is not so much a matter of crops being deliberately modified to do some kind of harm — Stephen pointed out that there are probably easier, more direct, and harder to detect ways of causing destruction than modifying crops — but rather due to unintended consequences of modifications that are aimed at achieving some good outcome.
Here’s an interesting case in point:
First documented case of pest resistance to biotech cotton
A pest insect known as bollworm is the first to evolve resistance in the field to plants modified to produce an insecticide called Bt, according to a new research report.
Bt-resistant populations of bollworm, Helicoverpa zea, were found in more than a dozen crop fields in Mississippi and Arkansas between 2003 and 2006.
“What we’re seeing is evolution in action,” said lead researcher Bruce Tabashnik. “This is the first documented case of field-evolved resistance to a Bt crop.
“Resistance is a decrease in pest susceptibility that can be measured over human experience,” said Tabashnik, professor and head of UA’s entomology department and an expert in insect resistance to insecticides. “When you use an insecticide to control a pest, some populations eventually evolves resistance.”
So the bollworms are now immune to the insecticide the cotton produces, meaning either that
1.The entire exercise was pointless?
or
2. We need to move on to the next round of genetic modification to find a way to wipe out these super-bugs?
Well, not so fast:
Even so, the researchers found that most caterpillar pests of cotton and corn remained susceptible to Bt crops.
“The resistance occurred in one particular pest in one part of the U.S.,” Tabashnik said. “The other major pests attacking Bt crops have not evolved resistance. And even most bollworm populations have not evolved resistance.”
Bollworm, Helicoverpa zea, moths have a wingspan of 1. 5 to 2 inches. Their caterpillars, known as bollworms, are serious pests of cotton in the southeastern US and Texas….
Click here for more information.The field outcomes refute some experts’ worst-case scenarios that predicted pests would become resistant to Bt crops in as few as three years, he said.
So let’s wait and see what other species do before we modify cotton any further. Meanwhile — if the Bt-resistant strain spreads beyond the small area they currently occupy — what about genetically modifying the bollworms? Right now it is probably well beyond our capacity to introduce a strain of bollworm into the wild that has some distinct reproductive advantage over the standard bollworms, but if we could do that, and if the modified bollworms were wired to re-develop the susceptibility to Bt, we might bring the situation into stasis.
Every few generations, the bollworms would evolve resistance to Bt, and every few generations, the susceptibility to it would be forcefully reintroduced. Rather than upping the amount of change to the cotton, just change the bollworms enough to keep them at bay.
One way to control unintended consequences is to control the number of variables in play. So we have a plant producing a natural insecticide and a pest developing a resistance to that insecticide. Rather than introducing new variables, the smart approach would be to find a way to work just with those
While not “natural” in the strictest sense, this approach would follow a more natural model of equilibrium than, say, allowing a strain of super-bugs to evolve through injecting multiple kinds of insecticide into the plant’s genetic makeup or through doing something really wonky like modifying bollworms such that they want to feed on other bollworms.
This won’t eliminate all risks, of course, but this kind of approach (if it ever becomes feasible) would help to keep the risks manageable.
Now He's Slumming
First Aubrey de Grey was on 60 Minutes.
Then he was on FastForward Radio.
I guess all glory is fleeting. Poor Aubrey is reduced to doing Stephen Colbert. Well, what the hey — let’s tune in anyhow.
UPDATE: Aubrey did great. I figured Colbert would tear him to shreds, but not at all. He held his own and then some — recommended that McCain should get serious about funding the Methuselah Foundation before being elected president seeing as “he doesn’t have much time.”
Good stuff.
UPDATE II: Here’s the clip…
Now He’s Slumming
First Aubrey de Grey was on 60 Minutes.
Then he was on FastForward Radio.
I guess all glory is fleeting. Poor Aubrey is reduced to doing Stephen Colbert. Well, what the hey — let’s tune in anyhow.
UPDATE: Aubrey did great. I figured Colbert would tear him to shreds, but not at all. He held his own and then some — recommended that McCain should get serious about funding the Methuselah Foundation before being elected president seeing as “he doesn’t have much time.”
Good stuff.
UPDATE II: Here’s the clip…