Tonight Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon spoke with guests Alvis Brigis and Marisa Vitols about how to get the word out about the Singularity to a broader audience.
Our chat host Michael Darling led the chat discussion. Get all the details on listening live at our audio host, Blog Talk Radio.
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 Dispatches from a rapidly changing, rapidly improving world |
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The good news keeps rolling in. I hope to do a few more of these before
real life resumes. Enjoy!
Item:
Use Energy, Get Rich and Save the Planet
By the 1990s, researchers realized that graphs of environmental impact didn’t
produce a simple upward-sloping line as countries got richer. The line more
often rose, flattened out and then reversed so that it sloped downward, forming
the shape of a dome or an inverted U — what’s called a Kuznets curve.
(See nytimes.com/tierneylab for an example.)In dozens of studies, researchers identified Kuznets curves for a variety
of environmental problems. There are exceptions to the trend, especially in
countries with inept governments and poor systems of property rights, but
in general, richer is eventually greener. As incomes go up, people often focus
first on cleaning up their drinking water, and then later on air pollutants
like sulfur dioxide.As their wealth grows, people consume more energy, but they move to more
efficient and cleaner sources — from wood to coal and oil, and then to
natural gas and nuclear power, progressively emitting less carbon per unit
of energy. This global decarbonization trend has been proceeding at a remarkably
steady rate since 1850, according to Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University
and Paul Waggoner of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station.
The Good News
These Kuznets graphs confirm that the best way forward for the environment is
by way of technological and economic development. Technological progress gives
us the means of producing energy in increasingly clean ways and adds to our
ability to mitigate damage that’s already been done. Malthusian
and Luddite approaches are
wrong because they assume a zero-sum world (which this is not) and they ask
the developing world to forego many of the benefits of technology and economic
growth that we in the developed world take for granted, meanwhile demanding
that the developed world to take this whole standard of living thing down a
notch. Yet somehow a philosophy which is as indifferent to the human misery
it allows (and causes) as it is ineffective in protecting the environment —
the developing world will just revert to burning charcoal and peat once you
take all the other infrastructure away — dubs itself Sustainability.
True sustainability requires adopting an approach that improves the lives of
the people involved. There is only one truly sustainable direction for humanity…forward.
UPDATE: Check out these 10 Technologies on the Green Frontier.
Live to see it!
I started writing a comment in the thread on my Better All the Time piece from Friday when I realized that, length-wise, it was growing into a post of its own. So here we go.
Leo wrote:
Until humans know that happiness results from virtuous behavior and that such knowledge informs and directs our own behavior, we will continue to pursue the gratification of our sensory appetites. Such behavior leads to an every increasing level of vice, accelerating one on the downward spiral into the abyss of despair and unhappiness. It is happiness, so understood, that is the basis of the phrase in our Declaration of Independence, “Pursuit of Happiness”.
Sally responded:
[T]he kind of capabilities Singulatarians are projecting for future people and societies allow people to pursue all kinds of fun and take care of their responsibilities and themselves. They want more, more, more, and they get it.
The dissipation of alcohol, sex, drugs noted yesteryear and today are a function of comparatively low level of technological capability as expressed in our amusements rather than punishment for sinners.
I agree. While we do see individuals from time to time falling into the spiral that Leo describes (and that’s a tragedy), humanity as a whole pushes on.
If anything, I believe that material progress has aided humanity in becoming more virtuous. I pointed out in my post that we are less violent than our primitive ancestors. Look at how much progress has been made over the past few centuries in recognizing and realizing the idea of human rights. The abolition of first the slave trade and then the practice of slavery was a by-product of the industrial revolution. History shows that more capable people, with better resources at their disposal, tend to be nicer than less capable people with fewer resources.
This doesn’t mean that there aren’t still bad people, nor does it mean that those same resources never get used to do terrible things. But the trend is towards greater empathy with our fellow human beings. Our future selves are highly compassionate beings — that’s one of the things that makes them so darn sexy.
Mark wrote:
If you extrapolate the evolution from single cell to human (more power, knowledge and longevity) into the future, you eventually get to omnipotence, omniscience and immortality which is a common definition of God. So, perhaps God did not create man, but man’s destiny is to evolve into God.
Tracing the progression of humanity towards godhood is something akin to tracing the the progression of our present state of affairs towards “the most wonderful world imaginable.” The closer we get to any one conception of it, the more we have to refine what we mean by the term. Let’s just take one of your characteristics of God, omnipotence, and give it a fairly standard definition: infinitely powerful. (Omnipotent actually means “all-powerful,” not “infinitely powerful,” but I think most of us would agree that God is widely described as having infinite power.)
Eliezer Yudkowsky (no fan of the God meme) does an excellent job of showing the fallacy of glibly tossing the term “infinite” around, when in reality we can barely get our heads around very large numbers. He writes:
Graham’s number is far beyond my ability to grasp. I can describe it, but I cannot properly appreciate it. (Perhaps Graham can appreciate it, having written a mathematical proof that uses it.) This number is far larger than most people’s conception of infinity. I know that it was larger than mine. My sense of awe when I first encountered this number was beyond words. It was the sense of looking upon something so much larger than the world inside my head that my conception of the Universe was shattered and rebuilt to fit. All theologians should face a number like that, so they can properly appreciate what they invoke by talking about the “infinite” intelligence of God.
If human beings are currently at a capability level represented by the number 1, perhaps the powerful beings I described in my piece would be represented by the number 100. If those sexy immortal billionaires with super powers then become a thousand times more powerful than that, and then a million times more powerful than that, and then a billion times more powerful than that, they are still roughly as far from being infinitely powerful as we are right now. Going back to my analogy of a one-celled organism trying to figure out what it needs to do to become human, that woefully simplistic creature is much, much closer to us than we are to an infinite being. (In fact, it is infinitely closer.)
Interestingly, if we were to reach a capability level represented by the vast-beyond-imagining number that Yudkowsky describes above, we would be much more powerful than “God” as conceived in the minds of most believers. In fact, we wouldn’t need to go nearly that far to achieve a level of capability that far transcends what most people picture when they think of “God.” I don’t think this means that we’re moving in on divinity. Rather, I think we need vastly expanded imagination when it comes to contemplating human potential, much less the nature of God.
Some sexy immortals / folks with super-powers.
Unfortunately, the only actual billionaire pictured is not immortal,
but you get the idea. (Bet he would be a big contributor, though.)
Hitnrun wrote:
“I think they would laugh at that question. The answer is so obvious. Likewise, if we had even a rough approximation of what life will be like for people in the future, we would be equally amused at the suggestion that those folks might be less happy than we are.”
That’s quite an amazing fallacy. Just because something seems “obvious” to an outsider with no data doesn’t make it true.
Of course, in the examples I gave there is some data although it’s hardly exhaustive. However, these people aren’t entirely “outsiders.” Human beings of any era will agree that being eaten by bears is negatively correlated with happiness, while having a warm and dry place to sleep is positively correlated with happiness. The net human experience is that over time we have fewer of the former type of factor to contend with and get many more of the latter as given.
In any case, if it’s a fallacy to make assumptions about the level of happiness of people living in other eras, then those who claim that people were happier or just as happy in the past are committing precisely that fallacy.
SparcVark wrote:
Man will make it his purpose to master his own feelings, to raise his instincts to the heights of consciousness, to make them transparent, to extend the wires of his will into hidden recesses, and thereby to raise himself to a new plane, to create a higher social biologic type, or, if you please, a superman.
. . . Man will become immeasurably stronger, wiser and subtler; his body will become more harmonized, his movements more rhythmic, his voice more musical. The forms of life will become dynamically dramatic. The average human type will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe, or a Marx. And above this ridge new peaks will rise.
-Leon Trotsky, Literature and Revolution
Is the “new transhuman man” just the “new socialist man” with slightly updated wishful thinking?
Sally responded:
Good prognosis from Trotsky, but Marxism was a very bad treatment.
Turns out Trotsky was right for all the wrong reasons.
Marx KNEW technological development was accelerating in the 19th century, but failed miserably by not studying the tech itself and not extrapolating those trends.
Well, that was ONE of his many mistakes.
Marx looked at human history and saw an ancient power struggle between classes. He saw technology as an enabler of conducting and winning a war between classes rather than as an evolutionary catalyst to societal change. In his view, it takes an armed uprising to put the means of production into the hands of the workers. Wrong. It turns out that technological development ultimately puts the means of production into the hands of the workers, and that a capitalist system fully supports the transition. The singularity, particularly the economic variety, promises to bring about much of what 19th century communists and other Utopians envisioned. Are we just touting a new version of their “wishful thinking?” I suppose we are, in much the same way that the Wright brothers carried forward a new version of Leonardo’s “wishful thinking” about heavier-than-air flight.
Donald Fagen wrote:
A just machine to make big decisions
Programmed by fellas with compassion and vision
We’ll be free when their work is done
We’ll be eternaly free, yes, and eternally youngWhat a beautiful world this will be!
What a glorious time to be free!
You know, Donald, I always assumed that your namesake was being sarcastic with this song. But the idea suggested here is pretty much where I think we’re headed. The basic programming for that machine ought to be something along these lines.
Same conflicts as last week. The show will definitely be back next week.
Dispatches from a rapidly changing, rapidly improving world |
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Inspired by some extraordinarily
positive developments from last week, we are running a series of Better
All the Time special dispatches this week and next.Articulating the Future of Humanity
I’m a big believer in the Human
Imperative, which states that human beings are, essentially, reconfigurers
of the universe in search of an optimum configuration. What will that eventual
configuration look like? I can’t begin to describe it. If the first single-celled
organism had been capable of thinking, it might have imagined — given the
hint that its descendants would eventually evolve into something called “human
beings” — that the primary advantage of being human would be a vastly
expanded capacity for finding food. And, yes, that is an advantage,
but I think we can all agree that — from where we sit — it misses the point
by a fairly significant margin.Likewise, I can assert that the endgame for the Human Imperative is a vastly
expanded capacity for, and realization of, human understanding, capability,
and happiness. And, yes, our optimum configuration of the universe will
provide those things. But it will provide so much more. If we as a species
continue in the direction that we’re currently going, we will at some point
achieve the most wonderful world imaginable. At that point, we will carry
on in the direction of improvement towards eithera) an unimaginably wonderful world, or
b) a newly defined most wonderful world imaginable, provided courtesy
of a great leap forward in our ability to imagine.Trying to define the most wonderful world imaginable is challenge enough.
If I try to tell you anything about the world described by either a) or b),
above, I’m in the position of that single-celled organism attempting to wrap
its metaphorical head around string theory or a Mozart aria or even — keeping
it within that creature’s sphere of interest — a pint of Haagen Dazs.It just can’t be done.
So we have to stick with what we’ve got, even though it is, at best, the
faintest shadow of what the reality will be. Just to reiterate, what we’ve
got is “a vastly expanded capacity for, and realization of, human understanding,
capability, and happiness.” So we’ll all be smarter. We’ll all be more
capable. And we’ll all be happier. (And by the way, that’s a lot smarter,
a lot more capable, and a lot happier.)Some might want to argue that third point. After all, haven’t people always
been happy and unhappy? Isn’t it fair to say that our modern technological
society has brought as much grief and misery as it has goodness? Weren’t,
say, our hunter-gatherer ancestors just as happy as we are today?I would have to say yes, no, and definitely not.
Yes, there have always been happy and unhappy people.
No, technology has not brought as much grief and misery as it has goodness.
Granted, it has brought a lot of grief and misery. But keep in mind
that we are reconfigurers of the universe. Each new configuration seeks to
build on improvements from the past. Our aim, however misguided our attempts
to achieve it might be, is to increase the amount of human understanding,
capability, and happiness. We get it wrong a lot — a lot – but we
get it right more often. Besides, if technology really brought more misery
than happiness, we would see massive efforts to relinquish and suppress it.
But those movements are by and large fringe affairs.No, the hunter-gatherers were not as happy as we are. I would venture to
guess that they had pretty much the same capacity for happiness that
we have, but daily hand-to-mouth survival tends limit opportunities for exploring
that capacity. Many of them lived under constant threat of being eaten by
predators. Oh, and their chances of being killed by one of their fellow human
beings were about 20
times as great as what we face today. It wasn’t quite the idyllic existence
many like to picture.So we’ll be happier. Why? Because our material needs will be met better?
Um, yes.
Maybe money doesn’t buy happiness, but not having to worry about money
could sure buy a lot of peace of mind for a lot of folks. It’s like our ancestors
and being eaten. Take another item off the list of human woes and you’ve got
a happier human population.Or put it this way. Take your time machine back to the middle ages. Find
some locals and explain to them that in the era you’re from, most people live
better than the king
does in their day. What do they think — will people be happier in such a
world? I think they would laugh at that question. The answer is so obvious.
Likewise, if we had even a rough approximation of what life will be like for
people in the future, we would be equally amused at the suggestion that those
folks might be less happy than we are.So what will their lives be like? Again, this is just a sketch:
They will be able to do more and understand more. They will be physically
perfect–healthier than we are, as well as stronger and less prone to injury
or illness. There lives will go on indefinitely and they will be young and
healthy throughout. They will live in what we would take for unbelievable
luxury and opulence (although they won’t see it that way.) Their improved
understanding of how the world works, coupled with their vastly improved technology,
will give them the ability to perform amazing feats, things that today can
be done only in science fiction and fantasy stories.To summarize — and I repeat, this is a single-celled organism describing
humanity — they will be sexy immortal billionaires with super powers. And
even at that stage, we’ll be a long way from the optimum configuration. But
that at least gives us something to work with.
Image by Romana Machado
Live to see it!
Dispatches from a rapidly changing, rapidly improving world |
||
|
Inspired by some extraordinarily
positive developments from last week, we are running a series of Better All the Time special dispatches this week and next.
Articulating the Future of Humanity
I’m a big believer in the Human Imperative, which states that human beings are, essentially, reconfigurers of the universe in search of an optimum configuration. What will that eventual configuration look like? I can’t begin to describe it. If the first single-celled organism had been capable of thinking, it might have imagined — given the hint that its descendants would eventually evolve into something called “human beings” — that the primary advantage of being human would be a vastly expanded capacity for finding food. And, yes, that is an advantage, but I think we can all agree that — from where we sit — it misses the point by a fairly significant margin.
Likewise, I can assert that the endgame for the Human Imperative is a vastly expanded capacity for, and realization of, human understanding, capability, and happiness. And, yes, our optimum configuration of the universe will provide those things. But it will provide so much more. If we as a species continue in the direction that we’re currently going, we will at some point achieve the most wonderful world imaginable. At that point, we will carry on in the direction of improvement towards either
a) an unimaginably wonderful world, or
b) a newly defined most wonderful world imaginable, provided courtesy of a great leap forward in our ability to imagine.
Trying to define the most wonderful world imaginable is challenge enough. If I try to tell you anything about the world described by either a) or b), above, I’m in the position of that single-celled organism attempting to wrap its metaphorical head around string theory or a Mozart aria or even — keeping it within that creature’s sphere of interest — a pint of Haagen Dazs.
It just can’t be done.
So we have to stick with what we’ve got, even though it is, at best, the faintest shadow of what the reality will be. Just to reiterate, what we’ve got is “a vastly expanded capacity for, and realization of, human understanding, capability, and happiness.” So we’ll all be smarter. We’ll all be more capable. And we’ll all be happier. (And by the way, that’s a lot smarter,
a lot more capable, and a lot happier.)
Some might want to argue that third point. After all, haven’t people always been happy and unhappy? Isn’t it fair to say that our modern technological society has brought as much grief and misery as it has goodness? Weren’t, say, our hunter-gatherer ancestors just as happy as we are today?
I would have to say yes, no, and definitely not.
Yes, there have always been happy and unhappy people.
No, technology has not brought as much grief and misery as it has goodness. Granted, it has brought a lot of grief and misery. But keep in mind that we are reconfigurers of the universe. Each new configuration seeks to build on improvements from the past. Our aim, however misguided our attempts to achieve it might be, is to increase the amount of human understanding, capability, and happiness. We get it wrong a lot — a lot – but we get it right more often. Besides, if technology really brought more misery than happiness, we would see massive efforts to relinquish and suppress it. But those movements are by and large fringe affairs.
No, the hunter-gatherers were not as happy as we are. I would venture to guess that they had pretty much the same capacity for happiness that we have, but daily hand-to-mouth survival tends limit opportunities for exploring that capacity. Many of them lived under constant threat of being eaten by predators. Oh, and their chances of being killed by one of their fellow human beings were about 20 times as great as what we face today. It wasn’t quite the idyllic existence many like to picture.
So we’ll be happier. Why? Because our material needs will be met better?
Um, yes.
Maybe money doesn’t buy happiness, but not having to worry about money could sure buy a lot of peace of mind for a lot of folks. It’s like our ancestors and being eaten. Take another item off the list of human woes and you’ve got a happier human population.
Or put it this way. Take your time machine back to the middle ages. Find some locals and explain to them that in the era you’re from, most people live better than the kingdoes in their day. What do they think — will people be happier in such a world? I think they would laugh at that question. The answer is so obvious. Likewise, if we had even a rough approximation of what life will be like for people in the future, we would be equally amused at the suggestion that those
folks might be less happy than we are.
So what will their lives be like? Again, this is just a sketch:
They will be able to do more and understand more. They will be physically perfect–healthier than we are, as well as stronger and less prone to injury or illness. There lives will go on indefinitely and they will be young and healthy throughout. They will live in what we would take for unbelievable luxury and opulence (although they won’t see it that way.) Their improved understanding of how the world works, coupled with their vastly improved technology, will give them the ability to perform amazing feats, things that today can be done only in science fiction and fantasy stories.
To summarize — and I repeat, this is a single-celled organism describing humanity — they will be sexy immortal billionaires with super powers. And even at that stage, we’ll be a long way from the optimum configuration. But that at least gives us something to work with.
Image by Romana Machado
Live to see it!
| Dispatches from a rapidly changing, rapidly improving world |
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It’s tax day here in the good old US of A: as good a time as any to remember
that, whether your take is that it’s happening because of massive government
spending or in spite of massive government spending, life in this country
— and pretty much everywhere else — is improving.
Item:
Doctors confirm woman’s imaginary third arm
A 64-year-old woman has reported to doctors at Geneva University Hospital
the presence of a pale, milky-white and translucent third arm.After examining the case, the woman’s neurologist, Asaid Khateb of the hospital’s
experimental neurophysiology laboratory, called the rare phenomenon credible.The arm appeared to the woman a few days after suffering a stroke, doctors
said.But this case of what is known as a supernumerary phantom limb (SPL) is a
genuine head-scratcher.The upshot is that the woman can use the apparitional extremity to relieve
very real itches on the cheek. It cannot penetrate solid objects.Khateb and his colleagues examined the patient’s brain using functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI), a tool that allows doctors to see whether the brain
is truly stimulated, and to pinpoint where. In this case, the investigations
revealed that the woman actually experienced what she described.Researchers instructed the woman to move her right hand. As expected, the
motor cortex and visual processing areas in the left side of her brain became
mobilised.The same effects were observed to a lesser extent when the woman simply imagined
moving her right hand. Imaginary movements of the woman’s paralysed left hand
prompted the same activity in the brain, but on the right side.But when doctors asked her to move her phantom arm, her brain reacted as
though the arm really existed and could be moved. In addition, the patient’s
visual cortex was also activated, indicating the she actually saw the imaginary
limb.And when she was instructed to scratch her cheek, regions of the brain relating
to touch were activated
The Good News
Yes, this item is Better All the Time, not Astounding Science Facts (or Tales
of the Paranormal.)
Here’s why: it is extremely significant that the doctors treating this woman
were able to use an MRI to take a peek at what’s happening inside her brain
and confirm that it is sending signals that mean move the arm and receiving
signals that mean the hand is feeling something. Mapping brain activity
to physiological phenomena is one of the biggest breakthroughs of the past few
decades, and its promise is already being realized in a number of different
prevention and treatment options.
Consider this: earlier this week, my newborn
daughter was subjected to her first-ever hearing test. The pediatrician
hooked her up to an electroencephalograph, put headphones on her, and started
piping in sounds. In a matter of minutes, the brainwave scan confirmed that
she is hearing everything she should be hearing in each ear. Great news for
new parents when there is no problem, and extremely useful in the unfortunate
cases where there is a problem. Rather than waiting months or years for
a child’s behavior to reveal that something is amiss, these parents know what
they are up against from the very beginning.
Mapping the motions and sensations of a real limb to brain activity makes
it possible to treat paralysis by overriding existing damaged nerve connections
in order to return mobility to a paralyzed limb. Such mapping is also crucial
to developing a direct interface between the brain and electronically controlled
prosthetic limbs when there is no possibility of reviving the lost function,
as in the case of amputation. These kinds of treatments are already
under
development.
But that’s just the beginning. Understanding how a phantom limb is represented
within the brain gives us a glimpse of how one day — probably not that far
in the future — we will be able to have very real experiences in virtual worlds.
The woman described is experiencing something that seems perfectly real to her,
as real as the actual experience of her actual arms. Essentially, her brain
has written and is executing a "program" for a virtual arm. Seeing
as this came about as the result of a stroke, and the woman probably wasn’t
looking for an extra limb, we tend to view this new bit of mental software as
a bug. But that bit of spontaneous buggy "software code" embeds some
powerful capabilities. That her doctors are able to watch it in action is a
very good sign. In time, it’s reasonable to expect that someone will figure
out how to reverse engineer this program, and begin to improve on it.
Live to see it!
| Dispatches from a rapidly changing, rapidly improving world |
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I don’t know how much time I’ll have for blogging while I’m on paternity
leave from work, but it’all going to be good news stories. Let’s get this
party started.
Item:
Lightning Hybrids Develops Biodiesel-Hydraulic Hybrid
The LH4 was designed by a company called Lightning hybrids and as stated
above, is powered by a Biodiesel engine. Only 3 cylinders are needed to get
the vehicle moving and power the hydraulic pump that takes the place of a
traditional electric motor. Combined, the system is good for 100mpg, which
will do very well in the race for the Automotive X Prize.The Biodiesel-Hydraulic combination is also a wonderful choice in terms of
performance. When the need arises, the LH4 can launch to 60mph in just under
6 seconds, which is nothing to sneeze at given the high fuel economy number
it is able to return. The looks of the LH4 aren’t bad either.
The Good News
When I first read about hybrid automobiles 20 years or so ago, two models were
on the table: electric and hydraulic. With the advent of the Prius a few years
back, and the rush of other car companies to follow suit, the term "hybrid"
has become almost synonymous with "electric hybrid." There were a
few announcements early on that some automakers were looking at the hydraulic
approach, but announcements have been few and far between and production vehicles
available to the consumer or commercial markets have been non-existent.
Please correct me if I’m wrong on this; if anyone is selling hydraulic hybrids
I’d like to hear about it. Plus I’d be very interested to know how they’re doing…
I always liked the elegance of the hydraulic model for hybrid automobiles:
capture the forward momentum you normally lose every time you brake in the form
of hydraulic compression. Then turn around and unleash that pressure next time
you want to acelerate. This approach may provide a better fuel savings than
electric hybrids can — it certainly will for larger vehicles whose greater
mass will pump massive amounts of force into the hydraulics system. You’ve got
to love that 0 to 60 in six seconds. That’s some pretty nice acceleration for
a car that gets 100 MPG. Plus, the expectation is that hydraulics systems are
more economical than the battery systems used in electric hybrids — giving
the hybrid shopper less sticker shock.
Perhaps most imortantly, having two working models for how to deploy a hybrid
vehicle means competition. Hydraulic hybrids will drive improvements to electric
hybrid systems and vice-versa. And one day, these two models might meet to provide
the ultimate hybrid. Get that fossil-fuel-burning engine out of the loop and
provide your primary power with an electric engine. Then use hydraulic brakes
to capture your lost forward momentum. Now that would be an efficient model.
Live to see it!
Her name is Sefra Rose Bowermaster. She arrived on the scene this morning at 7:41 Am MDT. Weighing an impressive 8 lbs. 14 oz and measuring 19 3/4 inches long, she is an American / Malaysian hybrid and clearly destined for greatness. What a future she will see! The pictures tell the whole story.
The Mother
The Father
The Baby
First Ever Group Shot
Spending Time with Big Sister
I, for one, welcome our new adorable baby overlord.
Via GeekPress.