How to save the world by Sabine Hossenfelder

Nice system :-( That was my comment.

But IF my theory is right then the outcome might be catastrophic. Can you ignore my chances of being right? I hope not.

Sabine,

Beautifully argued analysis and ideas. I just can't help thinking; a) They can't be effectively implemented (and who draws prejudice free maps!?) And; b) If implemented they'll fail due to how brains work. I agree about attention span, but feedback to a database (lobes) has scant connection to the front cerebral cortex which takes the fast intuitive decisions, often wrong despite 'knowledge'. Once those lessons of youth are imprinted we're indoctrinated. Too late for non surgical cure. But focussed on the young you refer to, then perhaps!

The problem is that we're now beyond Planck's solution, the indoctrinated are cloning the young. The SM you laud is near death in practice. Information overload (your 'reading time' problem) means retrenchment, stifling advancement in understanding. You wrote; "There MUST be more to find than we have found so far" and; "We know the theory MUST exist". Fine and true words, but now just words. When put before our eyes the truth is now only ignored or denied. Read my essay and falsify that statement.

I should explain my view is that of an implementer. Scientist and theorist perhaps but largely exo-academia and Architect trained. I was lead consultant for a North Sea petro-chem consortium bringing home the largest UK project, then recently on the largest UK windafarm (Vestas). All fast-track from blank sheets of paper. Good decision taking methods and feedback are implicit.

Advising on appointing other consultants we've learned to avoid academics as most can't cope with rapid (or any!) advancement. That's what I see really needs to change. Academic theoretical inertia. I've watched it steadily worsen!

I almost wrote the essay on that, and the poor use most make of the brilliant quantum computer in our heads. We need to be trained when young how to use it properly, not just as a database! I decided implementing unified physics is a far more important advancement for science and mankind, thus my essay (and previous).

But while I can make things happen elsewhere, in academia I'm entirely powerless. Many see it as an ego led 'closed shop' but I see the fear, confusion and poor rewards. Whatever the problem it need major surgery! I do like your ideas but they look like darts to me not arrows, and getting close to the target, but not hitting it. I'd love to work with you to help focus and develop your ideas, but of course there's probably no time.

I think if anyone can prove part of the solution not part of the problem it may be you Sabine, but it may need courage and wider vision to see it.

Best of luck. You're my favourite for top spot.

Peter

Well said, Bee!

T'was I. Why do we let computers lie to us? Let's ban all deception.

I omitted an intended comment on gamification. I agree entirely, and it's an excellent way to inspire and motivate, essential components for implementation.

I also note your comment; "the academic system too isn't able to learn". Indeed the root of the problem, from Infant age upwards. We do have the means, but so few seem to have the ability.

Best

Peter Jackson (just in case it's lying about login again!

Hi Sabine,

You are right, I think, that distribution and application of available information is often a greater problem than acquisition of additional information. I also agree that providing people with better means to achieve their goals will be more productive than trying to persuade people to change their goals. As I understand the requirements of the question, we were asked to make suggestions for concrete action, and you have done that very well. It is a natural question, then, whether some group or institution will start implementing your five-step plan. I would think that a good start would be to set up a step-one process for a group of scientists. They might be in a particular geographical area, or they might work in a particular field. This would be a substep of step 1. We might think of it as step 1.1. After that, it would be possible to implement further substeps of step 1. Before completing all of step 1, we could begin with the appropriate substeps of step 2. At least this seems to me a reasonable approach.

Laurence Hitterdale

Sabine,

We are in agreement that "science matters for steering the future of humanity" and that "we just have to make it easier for them to convert caring into action." We also agree that the primary initiative lies with scientists.

Where, I believe, we differ is in what we can ask or force individual people to do. Your approach and mine differ (in your five step approach) in step 3. I contend that converting "caring into action" is a very personal and individual thing. While scientists, or others, can rank and prioritize from a BIG picture perspective, the BIG picture is generally not meaningful for the general public or even many countries and institutions. e.g. China and India give lip service to global warming because they see it ranking below economic development.

Please read my essay here and tell me if you agree with our only real difference in thinking.

- Ajay

Dear Sabine,

You operate the thesis that "Only then, when we can make informed decisions by feeling rather than thinking, will we be able to act and respond to the challenges we face."

I see the possibility that someone instead invents a technology by which we may "feel" (or ask questions of) ourselves and cumulatively of our collective consciousness. That thing will then represent a kind of oracle/real life virtual community. You call it "systems that are able to learn and in return help let us learn about the system. "

I foresee in my own approach that this technology may even replace governments! Don't think it is too farfetched. Once we can properly read/calibrate the individual human (so it represents an individual computer/ip address i.e. a "personal priority map" ) then the de facto "government", "god" or collective us would be same as what we call now the internet (the individual being an "intranet").

This situation seems to me sure to come by but it may not be entirely rosy as you imagine. Remember how we used to be all proud of an "industrial revolution" that saved us from servitude to nature? Many years down the line we are now faced with environmental concerns.

Of course in your essay you expressly do not pretend to tell humanity WHERE to steer to but rather HOW to steer. Now I ask you what of that possibility of the "how" getting in the way of the "where" (replacing it) and creating a system of zombie humans?

This is because our intuitive/free will abilities must be like our muscular abilities (I suppose); the less you actually use your muscles, the more you lose them. What do you say about us loosing that critical "liberty" that also makes us human?

Regards,

Chidi Idika

Dear Sabine,

Tommaso Bolognesi suggested we read your essay since he saw many similarities between yours and ours. In a standard cop-out that you obviously will recognize, we only wish we had the time to devote to our essay to make it is clear as yours, although, we still are likely to have fallen short of your compelling and passionate (and at times very funny!) proposal.

We agree that there are clear parallels in our summaries of current problems, although our proposed solutions are quite different. You doubt human abilities to derive meaning from large data sets and to think about long-distance and long-term consequences of our actions, and you say "what little grasp we have is prone to cognitive biases and statistical errors." And then you crystallize these issues thusly: "These cognitive shortcomings are not only obstacles to solving our problems, they are the problem". We couldn't agree more or have stated the problem more clearly.

We also are in complete agreement with your analysis of education: "It is time to wake up. We've tried long enough to educate them. It doesn't work. The idea of the educated and well - informed citizen is a[n] utopia. It doesn't work because education doesn't please people. They don't like to think. It is too costly and it's not the information they want." But, then it appears your solution is to provide training and feedback frameworks, and education on how to implement them. You state very clearly that technology is not an integral piece of the solution: "We have a social problem, not a technological one."

The primary differences between your proposal and ours are as follows:

- We believe the solution to our problems is partly priority and partly technology, i.e. first deciding that we need better brains and other thinking machines, and then creating the technologies to implement the solutions. You appear to agree on the first part, but not the second.

- You believe that training will work this time if we just do it a certain way.

- To guide long-term decisions, your proposal places trust in current human priorities, and thus current levels of rationality. Substantial research by Kahneman and Tversky, Keith Stanovich, Tom Gilovich, Dan Ariely, and many others convince us that people are neither rational nor good forecasters, even when they are focused on the future. You clearly understand these issues, but this doubts about bias and irrationality seem to be overwhelmed by the apparent practicality of your proposal.

After saying the problem is not technological, your essay appears to acknowledge that an engineering solution is preferred: "In the future, information about matches with personal priorities may be delivered wirelessly to brain implants, constituting an upgrade of humanity for global interactions." But given current limitations, you rely on a less reliable but practical solution "With presently existing technology we have to settle for visualizing a match or mismatch rather than feeling it." But this is what education has been doing for centuries: translating data into an intuitive graph, or a problem into another kind of problem, using analogies and other abstractions.

Here is the key question for you: why not simply commit to fixing the intrinsic problems you identify, rather than playing tricks of substitution of a long-term goal for a short-term one, or making someone believe they are eating ice cream when they are actually eating vegetables? Why not instead engineer the brain to be better at understanding data (or to like vegetables more than ice cream)? Without question these are challenging undertakings, but why continue to apply band-aids on top of dozens of previously applied band-aids?

We think our proposal is the only truly efficient (albeit, long-term) approach and, while our proposed solution is not as specific as yours, we want people to engage in a serious conversation about the issues we raise and how to create better brains and other thinking machines - especially the best scientists and engineers who typically have little motivation to consider these issues because they are comfortable with their own intellects. However, we think that this is another illusion of spacetime proximity (close), which is why our essay asks the reader to consider an imaginary being with god-like powers to do science and engineering (distant). The most rational and intelligent people only feel satisfied with their present mental status because human perceptions are selected to be relativistic about abilities, but the problems highlighted by both of our essays apply to everyone.

I hope your essay does well since the parallels of our two essays are striking and it is important that these issues take center stage. I also hope that you read our essay and that we persuade you to some degree of the soundness of our proposal. Whatever the outcome, we're glad to have made your acquaintance through this competition.

All the best,

Preston Estep (and Alex Hoekstra)

Sabine,

I am still waiting for your objection. Let me check whether or not you are ready to answer questions that I consider foundational ones. English is not our mother tongue. Therefore I looked into my dictionary for the meaning of the word humanity and found:

#1 "Humanity is the same as mankind." All essays I got aware of understood humanity in this sense which corresponds to the German word Menschheit.

#2 "A person's humanity is their state of being a human being, rather than an animal or an object, a formal use." While logically a bit imperfectly formulated, this corresponds to the German word Menschsein.

#3 "Humanity is also the quality of being kind, thoughtful, and sympathetic." The German word is Menschlichkeit, and this is what distinguishes your essay.

#4 "The humanities ..." does obviously not apply to the topic of our contest.

You will certainly agree on that #3 summarizes what is also called human values. Because I feel that Mohammed Khali cannot answer my belonging questions, I hope you will dare. To Muslims the doctrine "as many (Muslim) children as possible" is a value in the sense of #3, and when I lived together with a Tunesian he told me why: The more children, the more food for the elderly.

While the notion overpopulation lacks a reference value, it is indisputable that the consequences of unlimited growth cannot forever compensated. Ethics needs to be modified, and I consider this a pressing most fundamental necessity.

Let me refer to Nigeria where Boku Haram is said having kidnapped 200 non-Muslim school girls, possibly with the perspective of selling them. You will certainly agree that this is a crime against humanity #3.

Those who are fighting against polio in Nigeria are guided by #3. They are facing resistance because of distrust. Some Muslims suspect getting cheated with the aim to hinder them getting as many children as possible. While this is definitely not true, I see their attitude unacceptable. Isn't hindering the worldwide fight against polio a crime against humanity #3 too? Do you agree, and if so, is the modification of #3 justified?

Voluntary restriction to one or two children per couple worldwide may stop the rapid destruction of environment. Such modified ethics should be encouraged by demonstrating that life in non-growing states is much richer and more peaceful.

Any objection?

Eckard

P.S., I will use the following rating scale to rate the essays of authors who tell me that they have rated my essay:

10 - the essay is perfection and I learned a tremendous amount

9 - the essay was extremely good, and I learned a lot

8 - the essay was very good, and I learned something

7 - the essay was good, and it had some helpful suggestions

6 - slightly favorable indifference

5 - unfavorable indifference

4 - the essay was pretty shoddy and boring

3 - the essay was of poor quality and boring

2 - the essay was of very poor quality and boring

1 - the essay was of shockingly poor quality and extremely flawed

After all, that is essentially what the numbers mean.

The following is a general observation:

Is it not ironic that so many authors who have written about how we should improve our future as a species, to a certain extent, appear to be motivated by self-interest in their rating practices? (As evidence, I offer the observation that no article under 3 deserves such a rating, and nearly every article above 4 deserves a higher rating.)

Hi Sabine,

Thank you for a very entertaining and thought-provoking essay!

I really like your idea of personal AI assistants that know your values and suggest the right actions for you to take --- in fact, I want one right now, not just to help me make the right choices concerning the future well-being of the planet, but also to help me plan my day to day routine in order to be more productive!

I teach science to 18 and 19 year-old students, and it probably explains why, in my essay, I explore the idea of improving education in order to raise the collective knowledge and awareness of the world population towards the issues that are the most important for the future of humanity. You will perhaps disagree with my solution, since you write in your essay that

We've tried to educate [people]. It doesn't work. The idea of the educated and well-informed citizen is an utopia. It doesn't work because education doesn't please people.

And yet, you also say that

[T]he main problem [...] isn't to collect information, but feeding this information back into the system, back to the many humans who are the initiators of change.

In my experience as a teacher, I certainly have seen a lot of students whose attention span and interest is limited in the way you describe in your "split-second looks at photos" analogy. And yet, I still believe it is possible to teach differently, to teach better, in school settings but also in lifelong learning endeavors, such as YouTube videos, or accessible, entertaining and pedagogically sound MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses).

I agree with you that humans

do whatever they please. The only way to change their ways is to please them. Please them differently than before, and change will follow.

So I hope that the educators of the world can come together in a worldwide futurocentric education initiative, and find a way to "please" the people while raising their knowledge and awareness of what is going on in the world, and what is likely to come next. In doing so, to paraphrase what you said in your essay about your proposal, maybe we can "use people's priorities and values in a systematic way to discover shortcomings in the system and improve it".

And when your personal AI assistants become reality, perhaps we will be able to use some of what we learned in the Futurocentric Education Initiative in order to construct a better, less "costly" system to inform and guide mankind towards a better future!

I consider your essay one of the best in this contest, and I hope you do well in the final judging.

Marc

Hi Hossenfelder,

A very relevant essay here! An age where people are well enough to base decisions off of their feelings is indeed something to strive for! The mind ought to be updated in the way we use it. I wonder what all a brain can really do. Neuroscience does have a lot o explore, it seems. Your main first argument that we have simply done to much to change the world and can't seem to catch up goes along with the notion that the progressions and paradigm shifts people as a whole have experienced change at a greater rate today. They seem to be speeding up, and humans are caught with the tough task of jumping from treadmill to treadmill, each faster yet. So I would like to emphasize that that point is valid from what i see and have read elsewhere. It is important to note the issue because it means that something about us has to update quicker, or differently. Tech booms info past what our brains can incorporate into our ways of living. The internet informs everyone about everything, but nobody does or has experienced the majority of what the now know so much about. So some feedback would be appropriate to the sudden influx of info, and of cousre, some paving needs done to reach the day when humans are even more attached to the internet, like brain downloads or what-have-you. A good read that brought up many valid points, this essay also just had a bit of spark to it. It was presented with a personal touch that was refreshing to read. I hope people read this batch of essays in general. Read, and then do a little differently.

With warm wishes,

Amos

Dear Eckard,

Most essays considered the context of the word "humanity" in the contest question and it fits your definition #1 (mankind), though many also thought that our future would be brighter if we all acted more like definition #3 (show kindness).

You wrote: "To Muslims the doctrine "as many (Muslim) children as possible" is a value in the sense of #3, and when I lived together with a Tunesian he told me why: The more children, the more food for the elderly."

In a primitive society with no pension plans or social security, that certainly makes logical sense, don't you think?

Rich countries have fewer children, and they also take better care of their environment (even if they keep growing their population). So ask the next question (as Ted Sturgeon always urged): Why aren't you trying making everyone rich?

Again, ask the next question: Why do Muslim countries (on average, even with all that Middle East oil) have the lowest standard of living on this planet?

It's because they believe that Allah is utterly transcendent, and as Master over us slaves, he is not necessarily beneficent nor ordered. This is what Al-Ghazali, the 2nd-most influential prophet (after Mohammed himself), in fact did teach. The unintended consequence of this was that it destroyed the fledgling sciences in the once-great Islamic civilization--by denying that God's universe had predictable causes or that any causes would make sense. Science breeds technology, and technology is the lever of wealth, because it allows everyone to accomplish more with less. Hence the low standard of living for Islam.

You admitted that "the notion overpopulation lacks a reference value".

I'm not sure what you mean by that, other than the fact the carrying capacity of an environment can be (and has been) changed considerably; first by the evolution of photosynthesis (which poisoned the atmosphere and caused a 300 million year ice age), then the evolution of multi-cellularism (the most totalitarian regime possible), the development of consciousness (which made psychological suffering possible; as opposed to only physical pain), and more recently the invention of fire, agriculture, food preservation, and the green revolution. Each step significantly increased the carrying capacity of Earth, though it changed the environment significantly too. It seems that you cannot imagine the next step, so it cannot happen. Please read my essay on "Three Crucial Technologies" and tell me why nanotechnology and expanding into Space won't increase the carrying capacity of this solar system by many magnitudes.

Are a conservative in the traditional sense: afraid of change?

You also said, "It is indisputable that the consequences of unlimited growth cannot forever compensated."

I bed to differ. Our single-celled bacterial ancestors would probably have said the same thing 3.6 billion years ago. As Malthus said more than 200 years ago. Isn't it indisputable that the exponential growth of Moore's Law and Kurzweil's more general Law of Accelerating Returns have a much faster growth rate than human reproduction? (e.g. 18 months vs 30 years) I will concede that according to our best current scientific theories, Asimov's ball of flesh can't expand any faster than the speed of light.

Finally, you said, "Ethics needs to be modified, and I consider this a pressing most fundamental necessity."

Ethics *ought* to be modified? Do you realize the inherent contradiction in your statement? How can you apply an imperative to changing a set of imperatives? You can't. At any rate, Ethics is objective, not subjective. If it was subjective, then it would only be an individual's or group's changing opinion. How do you know that it isn't your "personal ethics" that needs to be changed?

What's wrong with having a ball of humanity augmented by silicon, diamondoid, biology, and superconducting machines expanding into the universe at light speed, transforming all the dead matter in the universe into life that thinks, feels, and loves?

The future of brain implants, Wall Street journal An interesting article on one of the themes of your essay.

It ends, Quote "Will these devices make our society as a whole happier, more peaceful and more productive? What kind of world might they create?It's impossible to predict. But, then again, it is not the business of the future to be predictable or sugarcoated. As President Ronald Reagan once put it, "The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave.""

"The augmented among us-those who are willing to avail themselves of the benefits of brain prosthetics and to live with the attendant risks-will outperform others in the everyday contest for jobs and mates, in science, on the athletic field and in armed conflict. These differences will challenge society in new ways-and open up possibilities that we can scarcely imagine."