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

    Thanks for your kind, thoughtful comments, Edwin. Sometimes I'm not sure it's healthy to think as much about catastrophes as I do, but I certainly believe it's better to prepare for every contingency. I haven't had a chance to read your essay yet, but I've been wanting to. I should be able to take a look at it over the weekend. Good luck to you too!

    Best,

    Robert

    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

      Thanks, Don. I think you're absolutely right that we have to try to make headway on our long-term problems. I'm not entirely sure whether I understand your second point. My own view is that it is difficult and potentially counterproductive for anyone--even technical experts--to try to determine unilaterally what we out to do. I would like to see us design institutions that encourage everyone to work intelligently in the common interest. Good luck to you too!

      Best,

      Robert

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      • Post #67

      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

        Thanks for the thoughtful comments, Tommaso.

        Gott's estimate is derived from the assumption--I think this is the geometric argument you refer to--that we are at a point chosen at random from human history. We can on that basis be 95% confident that we are not in the first or last 2.5% of human history. On similar grounds he could argue (correctly as it turns out) that the Great Wall of China was likely to last longer than the Berlin Wall. You can read Gott's paper here.

        I agree that it's methodologically safer to to proceed on the basis of the idea that we are not special (although I do think that intelligent life is special and valuable enough to be worth preserving). But I don't think the village of aging people is a good analogy, since there's no reason I know of to think that species senesce the way that individual people do. More broadly, although I agree that we can't anticipate all the threats to our survival, there's reason to think that once we spread across the galaxy we will be less vulnerable to the many disasters that could occur in one local region of space.

        Yours is one of the few highly-rated essays I haven't had a chance to read yet, but I'll take a look it today or tomorrow. Good luck in any case in the contest!

        Best,

        Robert

        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

        Thanks, Jeff. I think if I had time to expand upon my essay now I would like to make it whackier, or at least more speculative. I'm really glad you liked the essay in any case. One of the pleasures of this contest has been the chance to get to know and interact with people like you.

        Best,

        Robert

        a month later

        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