One Cannot Live in the Cradle Forever by Robert de Neufville

Dear Robert,

A well written and interesting essay on the subject of existential risk and why we should care. Although I only touched on the topic of artificial intelligence in any depth, I enjoyed the broader scope of your essay. It is true that new technologies you mention hold great promise and peril and will most likely either end up being a solution to our problems or making them much worse depending on how they are used. AI in particular is difficult as it will literally have a mind of it's own. I agree too that become a space-fairing species is the only long term solution to our survival, hopefully SpaceX and similar organizations can help accelerate that development to the point where space travel becomes profitable, economical and sustainable (rather than mostly government funded).

Ropbert,

Thanks for your comment on mine. You ask about 'steering'. I suggest we're far too superficial about cause and effect, which is why we continually get unintended and even reverse outcomes. We need to look far deeper into what REALLY steer advancement.

The one thing that affects everything is our fundamental understanding of how nature works, i.e. what we are, at the smallest level. No amount of preaching or bumper stickers about what kind of people and society we 'should be' can have ANY real effect by comparison. Studying history proves the prime place of science and technology in advancement.

The key to unification is removing the illogical descriptions attached to QM by showing the real structure and classical mechanisms. Of course at higher order quantum gauges uncertainty remains, but then ceases to conflict with relativity (though both are slightly more consistently interpreted). It's a practical and immediately possible quantum leap in the right direction. It seems the real question is do we have the ability to adapt our 'beliefs' in old paradigms!

Very well done for yours, which I'm giving well earned top marks to now as I think the deadline approaches. I hope you agree mine's of similar value.

Best of luck in the judging, which is what really counts.

Peter

Hi Robert,

Thanks for your interesting essay. I especially appreciated your acknowledgment of human existence as only a tiny portion of Earth's history.

I found that your recommendations for improved decision-making, governance, and making plans for hazard avoidance resonated with my essay on computationally intelligent personal dialogic agents. I developed a prototype of this kind of dialogic web system as part of a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation that investigated ways to develop interaction skills. I see the development of a dialogic web as a clear path toward your recommendations.

I'd appreciate a rating, if you can do that, since I am a bit short on ratings. Also, if you know of some one that would be interested in collaborating with me on the further development of the dialogic web, I'd appreciate it if you would pass along my contact info. My gmail username is my first name, then a period, then my last name.

Thanks,

Ray Luechtefeld, PhD

Dear Robert de Neufville,

You begin "Life is a marvel of thermodynamics." And also "humanity must not squander the temporary miracle of its existence." And "we have to make sure that we survive" and "merely surviving... may seem an unambitious goal. We have to be free."

These are themes I base my essay on, with the same caveat that you note; Edmund Burke's observation "idealist schemes are never as well thought out as we imagine." And "decision makers almost invariably end up serving their own interests."

In another comment you said "we should steer so as to maximize our chances for survival, rather than construct some imagined utopia." Yes indeed!

As you focus on catastrophes, they maintain larger mind share for you than for me. That is the reason I'm happy to see your sober understanding of governments and utopias.

I hope you find time to read my essay and comment on.

Good luck in the contest.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Hello Robert,

I liked your essay. Two things: I completely concur with one of your opening statements - "First and most of all we have to make sure that we survive," and that is the whole premise of my essay. We will not solve all the worlds/species problems as we have been working on our problems for tens of thousands of years and our headway is questionable. Though through continued work we may be able to make things better for the majority in the long run.

Second: This later statement "In a sense, the future is a collective action problem" is only relevant in how well we can collectively, and at what level, accomplish anything. Sometimes humans need to be lead by the hand or guided even if they don't know why.

Good luck,

Don Barker

Dear Robert,

I appreciated the expertise and data about catastrophic events of the past, and the relatively wide spectrum of topics that you cover in the limited space of the essay.

I am curious about the estimate by physicist Richard Gott. Do you know whether this a purely abstract argument (reasoning in `geometric` terms of where a point might be on a segment, given that the segment be finite, etc.), or one more concrete and subtle, based on specific (historical) data?

You wrote:

`If we are really special it is also good news for us, because it means that the most stringent filtering steps - and therefore the greatest dangers - are already behind us.`

This triggers the discussion about the fact that we may be special/non-special. You seem to prefer the Copernican, NON-special option, but you also seem to argue about the opposite. I am definitely for the NON-special option, for the following reason.

We could only be special if we assumed that there is a threshold after which extinction becomes much more unlikely, but I do not see why this should be the case. Consider a remote village in which you find an unusual number of ultra centenary people. This does not guarantee to these very old people the chance to have more years left to live than the average person from a `normal` village. And if this example is not convincing, I would just say, more generally, that we cannot anticipate the nature and frequency of (natural or auto-induced) causes for the extinction of humanity that will occur in the future.

Best regards

Tommaso

Dear Robert,

You are correct, "Be Prepared" is a good policy. But focusing on catastrophe can bring you down. I hope you have other ways to counteract this.

Thanks for reading and commenting on my essay. While we agree on key points, you note that using statistical mechanics to model the behavior of a complex human system is problematic.

Yes, it is problematic, but that doesn't imply that there no insights to be gained. 10^10 humans is a statistically significant number, and for many purposes can be considered random.

Decades ago I realized/discovered that to accomplish my immediate goal [say to design, debug, document, produce, and market a new product] required a certain amount of time and a certain amount of effort, and there were no shortcuts. In other words, the fact that I was doing uniquely human and creative behavior did not cancel the fact that conservation of energy, momentum and general laws of physics could be bypassed. We live in a physical universe governed by physical laws, of which thermodynamics are some of the most significant. I think the approach I've taken is not entirely inappropriate although it is problematic.

Thanks again for your feedback, and your participation in this contest. Good luck.

My best regards,

Edwin Eugene Klingman

Robert,

Clear and well written. You touched on all the points outlined for the contest. We need to expand beyond the Earth. I see nothing wrong with your essay and I hope it wins.

I do enjoy the oddball and "a little bit out there" essays and part of me wishes you had a little whacky in this essay. That is the only negative I can see.

All the best,

Jeff

Hello Robert,

I posted an article giving some publicity to your piece:

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/searle20140705

All the best!

Rick Searle