How to avoid steering blindly: The case for a robust repository of human knowledge by Jens C. Niemeyer

Jens Niemeyer

Essay Abstract

Steering the future hinges on the availability of scientific and cultural data from the past. As humanity transitions into the digital age, global access to a condensed form of human knowledge becomes a realistic technological possibility and potentially a human right. At the same time, the risk of losing the vast majority of this information after a global disaster has never been greater. I argue that a collaborative effort to create a secure repository of human knowledge would not only protect humanity's cultural heritage for future generations, it could also define a minimum standard for the information that every human being should have a right to access. The basic requirements and challenges for creating the repository are discussed.

Author Bio

I am a faculty member of the Institute for Astrophysics at the University of Goettingen, Germany. My fields of research are theoretical and computational cosmology.

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James Hoover

Jens,

It seems that your assumption of a sudden cataclysmic event is your overriding concern. Certainly many future scenarios dramatize a return to a quite primitive survival. The solar flairs of the Carrington Evenent in 1859 does perhaps represent such a sudden event and its probability maybe is greater than that of an asteroid or a comet.

My scenario is that of climate change and the general inability of humankind to deal effectively with Earthly needs.

Your idea of a repository is sound and looks into assuring that knowledge is not lost, enabling decisionmaking to proceed with the latest knowledge. I'm just not sure we will have leadership with the right motives and how that can be achieved.

Jim

Jens Niemeyer

Jim,

I completely agree that access to information is only one piece of the puzzle, but I believe it is a necessary one and one that can (and should) be addressed as soon as possible. The issue of leadership is certainly important and highly complex - it is much harder to find consensus on the meaning of "global leadership" and on what constitutes the right motives. Obviously this doesn't mean we shouldn't work on the tough problems as well, but the one that I address seems to get a little less press coverage.

It is not only cataclysmic events that threaten the access to information by individuals. Any substantial decline in technological infrastructure, including one triggered by climate change and/or social instabilities, will suffice. In fact, just having the "wrong" kind of leadership prevents parts of the human population from getting access to essential information even now. Making sure that this cannot happen on a global scale is what concerns me.

Jens

Joe Fisher

Dear Doctor Niemayer,

I thought that your essay was quite extraordinary. Your careful analysis of the abstract effects of the abstract near, intermediate and far futures was truly inventive and showed the sharpness of your mind to good effect.

Regards,

Joe Fisher

Georgina Woodward

Hi Jens,

I agree it is important to try to preserve knowledge for the future.Not just to preserve it but in such a way that it can be accessed and used to help mankind. It would be a terrible thing to have a new Dark Ages and have to painstakingly relearn what was lost. That might not even be possible in a post calamity world.

The Moon is not a very safe place as its often battered by asteroids and I have heard that the dust is very abrasive. Though I suppose ironically putting it somewhere out of reach of human's might be the safest place.

Good luck, Georgina

Jens Niemeyer

Hi Georgina,

You are right, the lunar option is more like keeping a set of your house keys at your neighbor's place, just in case. You don't want them to be the only spare ones, but they might come in handy when you've locked yourself out. Asteroids and dust are definitely a problem, but simply maintaining any high-tech equipment on the Moon for extended periods of time is a major technological (not to mention financial) challenge, and probably will be for quite some time. Fortunately, this is not a critical ingredient for the overall idea.

Jens

Turil Cronburg

(Note: I haven't read your essay yet, it's on my list!) Are you familiar with the Long Now Foundation?

Jens Niemeyer

Turil,

No, I hadn't been, but it looks relevant and I will certainly look into it more closely. Thanks!

Jens

Turil Cronburg

Oh, and this global database is one of the core elements of my own architecture for a healthy system, which I've used Pascal's triangle to generate.

Jonathan Dickau

I enjoyed your essay Jens,

I also feel strongly that what you propose is something we must do, in order to preserve the continuity of human knowledge - crisis or no. Moreover; I think that all steps taken in that direction are needed and bound to be helpful in the long run. I think both a grass-roots effort and a government or corporate funded one are in order. You have my support for your project, and I can offer insights about how certain technical functionality might be implemented, but for now a comment about robustness.

Any attempt to make a truly robust repository faces the kind of human bias problem Phil Gibbs talks about in his current essay. You probably wouldn't want the same people running arXiv dot org in charge of your repository, because some essential information would be submitted but left out. And if you had an inclusive model, as with viXra dot org, some people might complain that the standards of those maintaining the repository were not sufficiently high. So a challenge would be to assure that there would be adequate peer-review and fact checking, without bias. I'll have more to say on this later.

Good Luck!

Jonathan

Jonathan Dickau

It would be nice...

One imagines that a physically stable 3-d medium is the ideal long-term storage - a laser-etched crystal perhaps - where information could be inscribed in a way that allowed it to be stored without application of power for a very long time, which could be read with a simple apparatus once the crystal was created. Taking this to the next level; given more advanced technology, one could create something requiring no apparatus to decode, as it would be keyed in to the structure of the human nervous system and communicate directly - perhaps when held to one's forehead. But this is way beyond current technology.

Present day computers are way too fragile to be long-term repositories of a knowledge base. They are too dependent on a stable infrastructure and don't perform well during or after a natural disaster. They lack the EMP hardness to survive a nuclear war or a massive CME event. And they are far too easily compromised or corrupted by hack attacks, to be considered a safe or secure place to store a repository such as the one you envision. Nonetheless; they are the de-facto standard for the foreseeable future, and they are necessary tools if we hope to create a comprehensive database of knowledge.

So the duplication of effort or even competing projects could be a good thing, in this kind of endeavor, as it assures that some essential knowledge is not so easily lost.

All the Best,

Jonathan

p.s. - you may also enjoy my essay. - jjd

Jens Niemeyer

Jonathan,

Thanks very much for your comments. Both points you raised - selection bias and physical robustness - are important and unsolved so far, but not unsolvable in principle.

Selection will always be necessary (as it defines "knowledge") but it can be made partially rule-based ("semi-autonomous" in the article), which would at least make the bias transparent and therefore controllable. However, human bias is, well, only human and perhaps we should also think of it as an opportunity to start a global discussion on what we consider "essential information". There may never be a definitive answer, but I believe the process itself will already be a healthy exercise.

As for physical robustness, I think that a combination of many different technologies, including present day computers as well as more futuristic chemical, biological, or solid state storage systems, should be pursued. Redundancy will be crucial, as nature has taught us.

I will certainly read your essay, I already agree with the abstract!

Jens

Rick Searle

Amazing essay, Jens.

I have been kicking around an idea for something like this for a while now:

http://utopiaordystopia.com/2013/12/29/preparing-for-a-new-dark-age/

Turil is right, the Long Now Foundation is something to keep in mind- I discuss their Rosetta Disk project in my piece at the link above.

If you ever thought this was something you would pursue in a practical sense, it would be a project I would love to be involved in and an endeavor I could see myself devoting my life to.

All the best,

Rick Searle

Jens Niemeyer

Rick,

Thank you very much for the encouragement, and especially for the link - excellent article! I only wish I had known it before I wrote mine.

If I find a good way to pursue this further, I will definitely try and keep you informed. Please let me know if you take any action or learn of other initiatives in this direction.

Jens

Rick Searle

Jens,

Thanks, glad you liked my article. I really love the idea of a repository of knowledge and intend to explore what is being done and could be done over the coming year once the machine ethics book I am currently working on is done. I will certainly keep you informed.

Here is my personal email should you want to contact me:

rsearle.searle@gmail.com

All the best in the contest and elsewhere,

Rick

[deleted]

This is easily one of the best essays I have read, Jens. I completely agree on the importance of preserving our store of knowledge. And you do a great job in your essay of working through all the technical and social issues.

One of the things we've been doing at the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute (with which I'm affiliated) is consider ways we can make human society more resilient to catastrophe. I think preserving our knowledge is second in importance only to preserving our own survival. And if we preserve our knowledge we will vastly improve our long-term chances of survival (in addition to all the other benefits of this kind of archive).

I feel the same way Rick does. This is the kind of project I would love to be able to work on someday.

Best,

Robert de Neufville

I just returned to this thread and saw that I somehow submitted my comment anonymously. I guess the system must have logged me out. So I thought I'd try to affix my name to my comment by posting again--let's see if I can get it right this time. If you get a chance to take a look at my own essay, I'd love to hear your thoughts. In any case, best of luck in the contest!

Robert

Jens Niemeyer

Robert,

Thank you for your encouraging comments, and for making me aware of the GCRI. Not sure if or how I can get engaged in a project like the one I wrote about, but it is great to get in touch with people who invest their time and efforts into these important questions. All the best!

Jens

Robert de Neufville

I think work like yours can begin to lay the groundwork for this kind of project. I hope you will continue to pursue the idea. And if you are at all interested in the GCRI, please stay in touch. We are always glad to connect with people whose expertise can help us think through these issues.

Heath Rezabek

Jens - Robert de Neufville pointed me to your excellent essay. (Rick, I'm glad to have found your own work this way as well.)

I feel, as you do, that comprehensive sampling and archival as an approach to mitigating existential risk (by placing a floor beneath civilization's potential or capabilities) is very important, perhaps moreso than is yet realized. I admire the multi-level approach you propose, radiating and scaling efforts out from concentrated, institutional instances to distributed, less formal instances.

This varied and scaled approach is the one I also support in my own work on this subject, a practical proposal called the Vessel project -- "vessel" in its various definitions as receptacle, container, conduit, medium. My own efforts are sketched at: http://labs.vessel.cc

The Long Now Foundation is mentioned above -- I have been working with them as an Intern over the last year, assisting in the initial curation of a core collection for their San Francisco headquarters called the Manual for Civilization. Though it is a small first step towards comprehensive archives centered on civilization's resilience, it's a crucial one. I think a key is to encourage as many approaches to this task as possible, and to strive for hybrid vigor in a diversity of solutions deployed around the world (and beyond its surface). http://blog.longnow.org/02014/02/06/manual-for-civilization-begins/

I'd love to correspond further, and for us to keep one-another informed and involved as our efforts progress. The more fully such proposals and efforts become aware of one-another, the more fully we can collaborate on this type of strategic approach to existential risk.

http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=28790

heath.rezabek@gmail.com

Great to become aware of your work,

- Heath

Jens Niemeyer

Heath,

Thanks for making contact, I'd be very happy to stay in touch. I have started to read the material you've linked to and I am impressed by how much thought you and others have already put into this. Hope to be able to contribute at some point.

Jens