Essay Abstract

What matters is not where exactly we choose to steer humanity, but that we steer humanity safely. We do not have the knowledge or the right to decide for future generations how they should live. But we must make sure that they survive long enough to move off the Earth and expand into the galaxy. Although we are enormously successful as a species, this may nevertheless be the most dangerous time in our history. Simply surviving the transition to a species with the power to transform or destroy a planet will be a huge task. If we do not collectively demand that governments and other institutions take the technical and political challenges we face as a species more seriously, there is no guarantee we will escape extinction.

Author Bio

Robert de Neufville has degrees in political science from Harvard and Berkeley and is an associate of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute. Robert has contributed to The Economist and The Washington Monthly, and for several years wrote the Politeia column for Big Think.

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Robert,

A very well laid out and authoritative description of the dangers we face, yet it seems the solutions you point to are falling short of delivering. Foundational Questions Institute is a generally physics theory geek sort of culture and this particular question is a bit out of left field for the regulars and while it seems more suited to someone of your background, it seems any expectations this issue can be resolved as an expressly political situation does seem like wishful thinking. As I see it and try to express in my own entry, we really are dealing with conceptual issues that go the very nature of reality and since humanity is reaching the current peak of its ability to progress through physical expansion and even reaching limits of how quickly technological innovation can resolve these mounting problems, a far more profound review is in order. Given your background, you will be a positive addition to this discussion and so hopefully you find time to participate. Some seem to simply enter and ignore further discussions, which goes against any hope of reaching the sort of broad based solutions necessary.

Regards,

John Merryman

    Thanks for the comments, John. I haven't had a chance to look at anyone else's essay yet, but I look forward to reading yours.

    I would be happy to read and comment on your essay, Mike. I'm going to try to review as many as I can over the next week or so.

    Thanks Robert, (when you have time). Yours is a well rounded, well written overview of existential pitfalls and avoidance strategies. I don't feel (with John) that you over-emphasize the political vs. other stategies. But I too would have liked to find a little more that's novel in this (just speaking for myself) familiar theme of risk avoidance. - Mike

      Thanks for the fair and thoughtful review, Mike. I should have time to really read through your essay in the next few days. I'm very interested to hear your ideas.

      Great essay Robert.

      You and the Global Catastrophic Risks Institute are doing the most important work out there. Admire you guys a lot and have written about you here:

      http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/searle20130806

      You've got my vote, best of luck!

      Rick Searle

        Thanks, Rick. I really appreciate the support. I don't know how my essay will do in this contest, but I obviously think it's a really important issue. I'm looking forward to reading your essay and am excited to see your IEET piece, which somehow I hadn't seen before.

        You certainly deserve to do well, Robert, but there is a lot of luck involved in these things.

        I think I first heard of the GCRI through Seth Baum's pieces over at the IEET, and I have had some contact through email with Grant Wilson. I try to plug for you guys whenever it's relevant to the topic I am writing on. If ever you are in need of some writing for the GCRI I would love to help. The best way to reach me or get an idea of my writing is through the IEET or at my blog. http://utopiaordystopia.com/

        Again, best of luck in the contest and your endeavors.

        Rick

        Dear Mr. Neufville,

        You seem to have listed all of the horror items abstractions in the correct abstract chronological order, and I commend you for that. I do hope your essay does well in the competition.

        Regards,

        Joe Fisher

        Robert,

        To save you the time and effort of returning to my thread, I thought I'd post my response here.

        Necessarily the question and the parameters of the contest does require packing a lot of context into a short piece. As I said, the essay is the abstract. The point of it, the turn in the road, which you seemed to have missed, is that we need to start treating money as a contract, not a commodity. Necessarily this does require some appreciation for how society treats contracts, versus how it treats commodities, as well as some appreciation for how the financial world operates, but since delving into the nature of these would require far more development, I hoped most readers would have some appreciation for the situation. You may wish to read Stefan Weckbach's entry for some context on the effects of how finance operates as a giant vacuum. As it has been described, as everything from an octopus in the twenties, to a giant vampire squid today, sticking its tentacles into every aspect of life and the economy. Another point, which I presume you missed, is the opportunity to affect this change, the fork in the road, so to speak, will be the up coming financial crisis.

        If there is some hint of frustration in my tone, it isn't necessarily just your lack of appreciation, since I realize that on a certain level, especially in light of some, if not many of these entries, this is a hopeless cause and FQXI should stick to the sort of pure abstraction we are so good at.

        Regards,

        John

          Hi Robert,

          Thanks for a well-written, easy-to-read and well-researched essay. I particularly liked the way you frame the extinction issue as the prerequisite of all other goals. I find myself in agreement with most of what you say. The only objection I could make is that perhaps the reference to the eventual death of our species due to the Sun's enlargement is not a powerful argument because of the timescale invovled. I wonder if space colonisation, while being an absolutely vital project for Earth, might be a false hope in terms of solving the extinction problem. It seems we already have a perfectly configured "space colony" - the Earth itself. It seems if we are unable to master the sustainable management in such ideal conditions, then the far greater challenges of off-world colonies must be wildly speculative dreams. I hope not, because I agree how significant and exciting exploring the stars will be for our species.

          In any case I feel you list some of the most vital challenges and suggest some beginnings to solving them. I look forward to reading more details about the solutions you hint at!

          Thanks for your essay, and if you get a chance I'd love for you to take a look at my own entry!

          http://fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/2050

            You review the many reasons why we might want to steer humanities future, but then when it comes to your concrete suggestions all you say is that we should conduct more research, build inclusive global institutions, and watch for emerging threats. While it is hard to disagree much with these suggestions, it is also hard to see this as very responsive to the question. Which research should we conduct? What global institutions should be build? What threats should we watch for. We can't steer our future without far more specific answers to these questions.

              I know how frustrating having people with different ideas and opinions review your work can be, John. I'm afraid didn't get the point you were trying to make about the financial system from your essay. But I do wish you the best of luck in the contest.

              Robert

              Thanks, Ross. You make a fair point. Space colonization is important in the long run because as long as all our eggs are on the single basket of Earth, we will be vulnerable to disaster. But we do have more pressing problems. For now, as Carl Sagan put it, Earth is where we make our stand. I look forward to reading your essay.

              Best,

              Robert

              Thanks for the comments, Robin. My answer to the question was that we should steer so as to maximize our chances of survival rather than to construct some imagined utopia. Although I try to list the major dangers we face, I don't think we understand the risks well enough yet to honestly say exactly what we need to do. But I think you're right that I could have said more about the kind of research we need to undertake to understand the dangers we face and how to avoid them.

              Robert,

              The way it seems to be, but I keep trying.

              Money is a medium, like blood, or a road, or water in a convection cycle. When we treat it as property, then we seek to collect it, which means ever more must be added to keep commerce functioning and like a poor circulatory system, clots, tumors and high blood pressure result.

              The basis of our currency is national debt and yet it gets derided as 'fiat currency,' but this amounts to a contract between the community and its participants. You don't collect contracts, you honor them. Since one of the primary needs of a circulatory system is to keep it flowing and the primary reason most people seek to accumulate money is for emergencies, old age and large expenditures, more flexible means of reciprocity would reduce this need. Conversely people who do hoard excessively, or otherwise abuse the system, would get penalized.

              Quite simply we do not own money. We don't hold the copyright and are not responsible for its value. If people more broadly understood this, then they would realize that such things as a strong community and a healthy environment are viable stores of value that do provide for such needs as old age and emergency help, as well as general cooperation and not just sources to be mined in order to accumulate notational wealth.

              As I point out, this is pie in the sky thinking now in our atomized society and quantified economy, but we will eventually have a monetary crisis that simply adding more credit to the system is not going to resolve and when that happens, we are going to have to do some soul searching and likely some serious rebuilding. It's just a pale blue dot, even for those with billions.

              A lot of these ideas seem to be coming from the modern monetary theory folks, such as Michael Hudson, Ellen Brown and the public banking people, but I'm just putting up my own thoughts to add to the noise level on it.

              Regards,

              John M