9:00 AM Eliezer Yudkowsky
Simplified Humanism and Positive Futurism
Opposition to life extension has a long pedigree. From pious clergymen saying it was wrong to cure smallpox because it’s God’s perogative to smite whom He wishes to a recent (tragic) case about a British couple delayed from having a second child who would be a bone marrow match and would have offered hope for their terminal son.
Death doesn’t make life meaningful. Life makes life meaningful.
“You know what makes this sunset beautiful? The fact that one day I will no longer exist.”
Yeah, right.
If no one had ever heard of old age or death, would anybody buy the “benefits” of it? Absolutely not.
Life doesn’t have to complicated. Sometimes the obvious answer is right.We need simplified Humanism.
Typical: Curing disease is good, unless genes are involved
Simplified: Curing disease is good.
Shape matters not: fishes and chickens are non-persons because they’re differently brained, not differently shaped. (We wouldn’t eat Yoda, for example.)
Simplified humanism — embrace the goal of success rather than making excuses for failure.
In the hunter-gatherer age, 15-65% of men died violently. 100 million people died in wars in the 20th century, if we were still killing each other at the hunter-gatherer rate, it would have been 2 billion. (Stepehn Pinker.)
Futurism: Rational first, then positive.
1. What you want doesn’t control how the world is.
2. There’s no destiny that helps you.
3. Magic doesn’t work.
4. You can’t just make stuff up.
Positive futurism doesn’t mean foretelling a golden age. It means that “a much nicer place to live” is still on the table as a stake.
Technophile — technology is good
Technophobe — technology is bad
Technonormal — talk of golden age and catastrophe is childish
Technovolatile — most likely scenario is a godlen age or a catastrophe (not “normailty’)
Eliezer is a technovolatile. Most serious thinkers on these subjects are. They are the heirs of the Enlightenment.
9:40 AM Ramez Naam
The Digital Biome
Massive climate change is a possibility. Not the projections of the IPCC, but consequences of enough warming to release huge amounts of methane into the atmosphere. We don’t know it will happen, but it is a possibility and one that we should take precautions against.
Fish catch is leveling off. The amount of effort required to bring fish in is going up dramatically. Boats are going ten times the distance they used to go and bringing back fewer fish.
Fresh water. Major North American aquifer dropping fast.
Food yields have been mostly good news. In 08 there was a major spike in food prices (due partly to push to biofuels.)
Endangered species. Each species is a source of information — we’re losing data.
Peak oil. We’ll run out eventually. May be occuring now, may not be until mid century.
Bio science is now digital. Shows us a picture of a bio sequencing center — looks like a data center.
George Church wants to sequence 100,000 genomes by 2020 — thinking too small. It should cost about ten bucks by then. It will be possible to do millions.
If the genome is digital, can we edit it? Short answer — yes.
Benefits:
Energy — current biofeuls are not efficient. Craig venter is creating designer organisms that will produce highly efficient and clean fuels. Turning alage into ethanol or hydrogen. Algae doesn’t compete with food crops — uses waste water. By 2013, DARPA plans to produce biofuels on site for the entire US armed forces fleet. Tobacco virus has been modified to create photovoltaice cells via tobacco.
Increase the photosynthetic capabilites of the planet by 6%, offsets our Co2 increases.
Genetically modified salmon — grows to maturity much faster.
Pathogens are moving more quickly, but we’re moving more quickly as well.
Direct solar energy looking more and more promising. Unlocking more energy is the key to solving the water problem — we can desalinate the ocean to get more fresh water.
There is no guarantee of success. How do we make it more likely that we get a good future, not one of the many bad ones? US energy R&D spending $1.8 billion; defense R&D $78 billion (some of which does trickle down to energy.)
Meanwhile, we spend a trillion a year on energy.