One Cannot Live in the Cradle Forever by Robert de Neufville

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

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

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.

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

I agree that we should steer so as to maximize our chances of survival. I think this requires a reorganization of our political process.

Merely surviving must be enough. I think a secondary goal would dilute effort and neither would be achieved.

see Steering humanity's growth by John C Hodge

Dear Robert de Neufville

It's great when meet people with similar views, three methods that you are giving very useful and I also agree : we should not live in the cradle forever .

But why do you think that my solution is abstraction?

My absolute principle means: will must be the most specific and the most detailed.

Maybe our Earth was created by chance , but the by chance that certainly absolutely must be one certain sequence, and exactly that is an absolute recipe for us to build all types of the habitat for humanity in universe.

Can you have the absolute solution than ?

Once again with happy of the sympathetic when to meet you - Hải.CaoHoàng

Hi Robert,

a very well written, easy to read essay. I like the way you start with the very long term risks and get nearer and nearer in time with your tales of doom. The feeling I have reminds me of how I felt after reading "The Long Emergency. Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century" by James Howard Kunstler (Grove/Atlantic, 2005) A hopeless feeling.

You have clearly spelled out some helpful directions. More research, better governance, looking out for new threats and planning. Re. more research I found this is an interesting talk explaining why more investment on research is required to get really accurate climate models MIT Lorenz centre, John Carlson lecture

I don't think you have said how to make the world a better place other than it will be if we avoid catastrophe. My local district council has agreed to plant more fruit trees that the community will be able to harvest fruit from in the future. Which is not much but a small step towards 'future proofing' the community. It's a little ironic because in this fruit growing region vasts number of imperfect fruits are left on the trees to rot, as it is uneconomic to pay people to harvest them.

A very worrying read, expertly presented. Good luck, Georgina.

Unfortunately the rating system is poorly designed, encouraging the worst behaviour among people. (Or can anyone explain why Robert's essay should deserve such a low score?) I've pretty much given up on the contest myself and try to focus instead on the discussion. At least I get a few reviews of what I've written, which otherwise is difficult for me. Your review was especially thoughtful, as are your comments generally.

I hope your score improves. Some (like myself) won't be voting till near the end of the month. You only have 7 votes, so your score can climb pretty quickly. I hope someone kicks it upstairs where it belongs. It's sad to see an essay of this quality panned at 3.9. - Mike