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

Ajay,

Thank you for your thoughtful comments.

I emphatically agree that access to the repository must not be limited to those involved in decision making. In fact, I believe that access to this condensed source of human knowledge should be considered a human right (even though I doubt that this is a realistic near-term goal). We are completely on the same side on this issue.

While I put some emphasis on digital amnesia as an existential (and avoidable) risk, I also point out that the repository would serve an important purpose as a tool for education and research in "normal" times. Again, it seems that we basically agree on the goals, starting from different motivations. This makes both of our cases stronger, I think.

I am looking forward to reading your article this weekend. Good luck!

Jens

Dear Prof. Niemeyer,

This repository knowledge for humanity is a necessity for our humanity. Excellent essay and I especially like what you wrote here: "Ideally, a knowledge repository should allow flexible navigation in depth and breadth at an arbitrary level of detail ("multi-resolution") within the space of (appropriately linked) fields of knowledge ("multi-dimensional"). In other words, it should provide overlapping maps of the space of human knowledge with adjustable resolution, i.e. an atlas of knowledge space. Clearly, the atlas must continually evolve by ingesting new information and re-organizing existing correlations. This can only be achieved if the repository acquires a certain (and growing) degree of autonomy using artificial intelligence, combined with human supervision, for creating and updating maps."

Thanks for sharing your solution to us.

Best wishes,

Leo KoGuan

Jens,

Thank you for an inspiring essay. You brilliantly made the case that digital amnesia is a real danger in case of sudden civilization decline, and that it is important to think of ways to build a robust knowledge repository that could speed up civilization's "rebirth", if the need ever arises. You also rightly mentioned that building a knowledge repository is a worthwhile endeavor by itself, even if no catastrophe ever befalls us, because of its potential for research and education.

In our hyper-connected world, we are overwhelmed by a deluge of information, and I think that in our incessant drive towards the new, we do not spend enough efforts in synthesizing the information we already know. If we want to build a compact knowledge repository, we have to prioritize, make choices, even improve the pedagogical efficiency of our best learning materials in order to ensure that we could start again by using this information.

In my essay, I proposed that we should try to put forward a worldwide futurocentric education initiative, aimed at raising the knowledge and awareness of the citizens of the world about the issues that are the most important for the future of humanity. In order for the initiative to be successful, we will need to carefully construct an optimal futurocentric curriculum: I believe there could be a lot of overlap between the content of the futurocentric curriculum and what we would preserve in a knowledge repository... so there is certainly a lot of synergy between our proposals.

How about a Futurocentric Repository and Education Initiative? I think Leibowitz would be proud! :)

Marc

Hi Jens,

nice original ideas, well expressed, with adequate structure, and sufficiently topical - I think your essay deserves high positions in the ranking.

One aspect that could have been a bit more developed (or, that I did not grasp well enough) is this idea of `bootstrapping` after a global disaster. Is this qualitatively different from a huge data recovery process? How is this influenced by the status (in the widest sense of the word) of the `survivors`?

You also write: `until all the necessary infrastructure has been recreated to access the entire data (which might be centuries later)`. How can this process take so long? Which stages would you envisage in between? When you write `it must also provide the means for accessing and copying digital data without computers, data connections, or even electricity` what do you have in mind? New forms of stored energy that can power these systems for decades?

It occurred to me that a mention to Wolfram Alpha could have been appropriate, given its ambition to collect the body of human knowledge in a more easily accessible repository than Google.

The aspect that I found most original and stimulating is that of comparing the advanced smartest version of the repository to the human brain, with its ability to continuously store new data, integrate and learn. This scenario is perfectly in line with the complex-system-oriented vision at humanity, with the sphere of knowledge (the `noosphere`) implemented by the Web and its future versions representing the brain of the super-organism emerging from the interactions among humans and human societies. The puzzling and fascinating problem that I see, in this respect, is about the extent to which individual humans can eventually take conscious part to the super-life of the emergent super-organism (the ant-anthill duality).

Best regards

Tommaso

Hi Jens,

The repository you propose is indeed essential for a more secure human future. I believe that appropriate persons and institutions should step forward to work out the first steps that you mention at the top of page 8. We can begin now to implement your ideas.

Laurence Hitterdale

Jens,

Time grows short, so I am going back to my comments for rating. Your past response below to my questions do ring true:

"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."

My essay's contention does run along these lines and sees "looking beyond" our solar system and our greed concerns, as well as "looking within," our minds, the microcosm of the universe, as the solution. This while garnering leadership with reason.

Jim

Because it pertains here also..

I am re-posting this comment I made on the essay page of Leo KoGuan, hoping it will generate some interest or discussion.

But are people ready for a scientific ethical and legal system? I have been working for a number of years now to create a framework for qualitative or subjective search engines and databases, and I've even included some of the fruits of my research in that area in my FQXi essays, so it will be clear to all that this model follows from my prior work. Personally; I'd rather work with R2-D2 and C3PO than work for a Terminator style robot, and this is a necessary step in that direction. However; if we did create this technology, and fed into the computer works of the great philosophers, religious texts, legal documents, and so on; it would calculate percentage truth-values for various assertions contained therein.

Of course; it will cause the worst scandal in history when people realize that a computer is being made the arbiter of their religion. This is why such things must be handled with some sensitivity. It is also why I think the proposal of Jens Niemeyer for a repository of knowledge is important to humanity's survival, and deserves the development and use of such technology. This goes way beyond the Dewey decimal system, and could be a way to achieve a scientific level of fair representation - which is a necessary step in your plan - but will ordinary humans be willing to set cherished beliefs aside, in order to realize a bright future instead of dystopia?

What are your thoughts, Jens?

Regards,

Jonathan

I have a much simpler way of preserving knowledge in the event of a global collapse or dark age. It is to place it on more permanent media. Probably the most durable media for preserving knowledge is the clay tablet. Archeologists manage to find these from thousands of years back. The Egyptians made steles going back to 3000BC with stone, and these are readable. Of course we don't want to go back to that sort of thing, but paper printing is probably fairly good. The more modern the form of storage media it seems the less permanent it is.

The digital age is largely producing information that is not terribly valuable. The internet is filled with videos of cats and dogs, bloopers, pornography, social media pages, advertisements and so forth that are not really of any great intellectual depth. If people want to write accounts of what people were thinking and doing for posterity based on these data that could be done now. The percentage of information content that has any depth to it is a diminishing percentage of internet content.

To preserve humanity's basic knowledge content it might just be a matter of maintaining books in print, and of maintaining the technology required to print books. The older the technology it could well be that would serve our purposes for maintaining a durable knowledge base. This should also be duplicated in many places around the world. It is my suspicion that a new form of totalitarianism is beginning to take shape, particularly in the United States, and it would be best to have multiple repositories around the world with the ability to reproduce books. In that way fundamental knowledge is less likely to be lost in "book burnings."

For the long term, I deeply suspect that what we call civilization is really a rather transient period between two stone ages. Our species has been here for 150,000 years and only the last 10,000 in what is called civilization. Even if we manage to maintain civilization a few more centuries that is a blip of time. The duration of our species long into the future could be in the second stone age where it is impossible to build any civilization on a used up world. It make this point in my paper, which discusses the long term prospect for humanity and any intelligent life in the universe. The previous stone age is where the Earth was rich in biodiversity and life. The coming stone age is one where the planet will be depleted, polluted and in a post mass extinction period. Our species is likely engineering the next great mass extinction.

LC

Dear Jens,

I very much enjoyed your essay and I agree with the many others who have rated it as clearly one of the best in this contest. It is also one of the few that is highly complementary to our own proposal to focus on producing better minds and thinking. I think we can create the repositories you propose with a goal of not only storing essential knowledge, but to provide the basis for a capability to use the knowledge therein most wisely and efficiently. In other words, intelligently structured knowledge repositories could be created as part of a longer-term implementation of an overall system that would include specially engineered brains and interfaces to efficiently access the knowledge. If disaster struck (and if there are survivors), the latter stages of the project would be delayed, but with your system as an initial investment, the project could be resumed as soon as the enabling technologies allowed survivors to get back on track.

As an aside, it has been proposed to store information in DNA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_digital_data_storage) and on discs with a claimed 1000 year lifespan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC), but as your essay recognizes, technology to decode these storage media will have to be bootstrapped from access to other enabling information, allowing the production of the necessary decoding technologies.

Many thanks for the unique and thoughtful contribution to this contest. I hope your essay does very well.

All the best,

Preston Estep (and Alex Hoekstra)

The comment above somehow confused us as "Anonymous." I hope the work by us that is to be stored in your eternal database doesn't appear similarly uncredited!

Jens,

I disagree with the idea of half the world spending their lives chiselling data onto clay tablets, they'd never catch up! Your own ideas are much better, but with the information overload we now have I suspect the big problem will be selection!

A good essay, well written and readable if a little short, but you got the point across. While agreeing that information availability is important so a robust and extended archive library may be of use, I must ask if it has very much to do with 'steering' mankind to a better future in terms of finding a better direction and the most direct way to get there.

A rear view mirror is important of course, we need to better learn from our mistakes. Also instructions on how to rebuild after a crash, but if we steer properly perhaps we shouldn't crash. I think the niggling question I have really relates to 'renewal'. Most things in nature are cyclic, possibly even including the universe itself. Plants do better when pruned right back or re-rising from ashes. Certainly AGN's accrete and re-ionize matter.

Do you not agree that much of what we think we 'know' is nonsense (I agree with Einstein about not understanding 1,000th of 1%) so would nor perhaps any humanity surviving a cataclysm be better off with a fresh start, unencumbered by ancient beliefs!?

A nicely written and argued essay in any event, and an original view and topic. I point to a far more direct leap forward in my own. Of course actually getting man to let go of myth and legend and take that leap is another matter! I hope you can get to it. What I have done is sent Bob and Alice instructions to eject the the science database I discuss in capsules, one in the halo to avoid accretion by our AGN next time around! (but that's another paper).

Best wishes, and best of luck in the coming roller coaster run in!

Peter

Jens,

I see the new server's inherited the old one's bad habits. T'was I.

Peter