Lifeboat Foundation

Global warming is bad. But just how bad could it be, worst case? Could it make the Earth hotter than a self-cleaning oven, like it did Venus? Venus is even hotter than Mercury even though Mercury is closer to the sun, because of Venus’s greenhouse effect. But there seems little reason to fear such a runaway greenhouse effect on Earth. Aside from the fact that it has never happened here before, the Earth may simply not have enough solar energy and greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide and methane) to start the runaway positive feedback process that happened on Venus. Some day that may change, however – the sun is getting hotter as it grows older, and greenhouse gases, perhaps exotic and powerful ones, could potentially be manufactured and released by hostile invading extraterrestrials, robots, or apocalypse-minded humans. But let’s ignore this scenario as unlikely for now (so that we could claim to be optimists, if not for the following paragraphs). Is there any other apocalyptic global warming scenario still to worry about? Something that is not only known to be theoretically possible, but has actually happened? Say, a stinking poison that contaminates the atmosphere and waters of the entire Earth, not only wrinkling noses worldwide but killing off almost all living things? Welcome to the gray, dead plains (often warm and balmy), oxygen-starved waters, green skies and repellent smell of hydrogen sulfide poisoned Earth.

Hydrogen sulfide, H2S, is a gas. Chemically similar to H2O (water) but with a sulfur atom in place of water’s oxygen, it is not a necessity of life like water, but very poisonous. Much less than 1 part per million (ppm) in the air is detectable as an odor like rotten eggs. 10 ppm is a typical occupational exposure limit. 1 part in 1000 in air can cause rapid death. As a young man I kept several 1-gallon milk jugs of green algae-containing water, which I fertilized with vegetable peels and such. It worked great, but there was one slight problem: some vegetables contain substantial amounts of sulfur, which can lead to H2S dissolved in the water especially in the muck at the bottom. I finally dumped all the algae water down the toilet rather than move it to another apartment (a decision with which you are welcome to disagree). Some were smellier than others, and I ended up with a modest case of hydrogen sulfide poisoning. Main symptom: a mental “slide show” of colorful crystalline images, presumably the result of H2S-caused inhibition of cellular respiration in the brain. Like humans, most animals and plants are poisoned by H2S.

How might H2S come to poison the Earth? Like it did in the past. The dinosaurs are thought to have perished in a mass extinction event triggered by an small asteroid, several miles in diameter, crashing into the ground near the town of Chicxulub on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, 65 million years ago (mya). But the worst extinction event of all time is believed by many to have been caused by H2S. This was the much earlier Permian-Triassic (or P-Tr) extinction event of 251.4 mya – about 20 million years before any dinosaur was even a gleam in its mother’s eye. The vast majority of plant and animal species then in existence went extinct, both in the sea and on land. The P-Tr event is often called the “Great Dying.” A similar process could play out in humanity’s future, potentially ending it. Here is how.

The causal process begins with global warming. While massive volcanism in Siberia is thought to have triggered global warming by releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere back then, human burning of fossil fuel is doing it now. This warming is melting sea ice which darkens the ocean surface, causing more sunlight to be absorbed and worsening the warming trend. As the oceans warm, methane hydrate crystals deep underwater will warm too, which may cause methane to be released into the atmosphere. Methane is a greenhouse gas like carbon dioxide, except many times more powerful. Such a release of methane from the ocean floor is a likely though still controversial cause of the global temperature spike called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum of 55.8 mya, during which average global temperatures soared over 10°F.

Heating of the Earth’s surface causes the top layer of the polar oceans to warm disproportionately. Normally, cold air in the polar regions chills and oxygenates the surface waters, and salinates them by evaporating some water and leaving the salt, which makes the remaining water saltier. The cold and extra salt makes these waters denser, so that they sink and flow along the bottom, causing a planet-wide current of oxygen-rich water called the thermohaline circulation that connects the bottoms of the oceans. Global warming affects the polar regions the most, and warmer temperatures there can slow and potentially even halt the thermohaline circulation, thereby slowing or stopping oxygen from getting to the ocean depths.

Back in the Great Dying, it is hypothesized that after the thermohaline circulation stopped, the oxygen in the deep ocean waters was used up by the organisms that live down there. But some microbes don’t need oxygen gas dissolved in the water. Bad news – they get their oxygen instead from oxygen-containing sulfur compounds, and release the villain…hydrogen sulfide (just as they did at the bottoms of those algae water-containing plastic milk jugs). But it gets worse. The hydrogen sulfide slowly accumulated in the ocean waters, poisoning many of the remaining oxygen-breathing organisms. That explains why the extinction event was so devastating to marine life. Things went from awful to even worse. So much hydrogen sulfide accumulated that it started leaking from the water into the atmosphere. Because such a low concentration of hydrogen sulfide is needed to create a bad stink, if this happens during the human era the first blatantly obvious sign will be the smell of rotten eggs. It will be everywhere. Though unpleasant, it is not harmful until the concentration grows. As it accumulates in the atmosphere though, the smell will go from bad to worse, and eventually the increasing amount of H2S will start poisoning land life. And the sky will turn green. That can explain the devastation to land life during the Great Dying. And maybe it could happen again.

Recommendations

No need to buy a gas mask just yet. Thing won’t start getting really bad during our lifetimes. But this could be an existential risk to our species. Thus, scientific study is important. A serious risk is that things we do in our lifetimes may be the trigger for an extinction event later. It should be obvious that it would be the height of irresponsibility to let that happen. Yet there will always be forces of irresponsibility. One may hope that those forces fail to win or their victory may be a Pyrrhic one indeed.

Reference

There is a lot of both popular and scientific literature on this topic. A well-known full length work that bridges the gap between those literatures is P. D. Ward, Under a Green Sky, HarperCollins, 2007.

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My book “STRUCTURE OF THE GLOBAL CATASTROPHE Risks of human extinction in the XXI century” is now available through Lulu http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/structure-of-the-globa.....y/11727068 But it also available free on scribd http://www.scribd.com/doc/6250354/STRUCTURE-OF-THE-GLOBAL-CA.....I-century- This book is intended to be complete up to date source book on information about existential risks.

The existential risk reduction career network is a career network for those interested in getting a relatively well-paid job and donating substantial amounts (relative to income) to non-profit organizations focused on the reduction of existential risks, in the vein of SIAI, FHI, and the Lifeboat Foundation.

The aim is to foster a community of donors, and to allow donors and potential donors to give each other advice, particularly regarding the pros and cons of various careers, and for networking with like-minded others within industries. For example, someone already working in a large corporation could give a prospective donor advice about how to apply for a job.

Over time, it is hoped that the network will grow to a relatively large size, and that donations to existential risk-reduction from the network will make up a substantial fraction of funding for the beneficiary organizations.

In isolation, individuals may feel like existential risk is too large a problem to make a dent in, but collectively, we can make a huge difference. If you are interested in helping us make a difference, then please check out the network and request an invitation.

Please feel free to contact the organizers at contact@xrisknetwork.com with any comments or questions.

The RPG Eclipse Phase includes the “Singularity Foundation” and “Lifeboat Institute” as player factions. Learn more about this game!

P.S. In case you don’t know, there is a Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

Eclipse Phase is a roleplaying game of post-apocalyptic transhuman conspiracy and horror.

An “eclipse phase” is the period between when a cell is infected by a virus and when the virus appears within the cell and transforms it. During this period, the cell does not appear to be infected, but it is.

Players take part in a cross-faction secret network dubbed Firewall that is dedicated to counteracting “existential risks” — threats to the existence of transhumanity, whether they be biowar plagues, self-replicating nanoswarms, nuclear proliferation, terrorists with WMDs, net-breaking computer attacks, rogue AIs, alien encounters, or anything else that could drive an already decimated transhumanity to extinction.

Perhaps you think I’m crazy or naive to pose this question. But more and more the past few months I’ve begun to wonder if there is a possibility here that this idea may not be too far off the mark.

Not because of some half-baked theory about a global conspiracy or anything of the sort but simply based upon the behavior of many multinational corporations recently and the effects this behavior is having upon people everywhere.

Again, you may disagree but my perspective on these financial giants is that they are essentially predatory in nature and that their prey is any dollar in commerce that they can possibly absorb. The problem is that for anyone in the modern or even quasi-modern world money is nearly as essential as plasma when it comes to our well-being.

It has been clearly demonstrated again and again – all over the world – that when a population has become sufficiently destitute that the survival of the individual is actually threatened violence inevitably occurs. On a large enough scale this sort of violence can erupt into civil war and wars, as we all know too well can spread like a virus across borders, even oceans.

Until fairly recently, corporations were not big enough, powerful enough or sufficiently meshed with our government to push the US population to a point of violence and perhaps we’re not there yet, but between the bank bailout, the housing crisis, the bailouts of the automakers, the subsidies to the big oil companies and ten thousand other government gifts that are coming straight from the taxpayer I fear we are getting ever closer to the brink.

Who knows – it might just take one little thing – like that new one dollar charge many stores have suddenly begun instituting for any purchase using an ATM or credit card – to push us over the edge.

The last time I got hit with one of these dollar charges I thought about the ostensible reason for this – that the credit card company is now charging the merchant more per transaction so the merchant is passing that cost on to you – however this isn’t the whole story. The merchant is actually charging you more than the transaction costs him and even if this is a violation of either the law or the terms and services agreement between the card company and the merchant, the credit card company looks the other way because they are securing a bigger transaction because of what the merchant is doing thus increasing their profits even further.

Death by big blows or a thousand cuts – the question is will we be forced to do something about it before the big corporations eat us alive?

Friendly AI: What is it, and how can we foster it?
By Frank W. Sudia [1]

Originally written July 20, 2008
Edited and web published June 6, 2009
Copyright (c) 2008-09, All Rights Reserved.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, artificial intellect, friendly AI, human-robot ethics, science policy.

1. Introduction

There is consensus that true artificial intelligence, of the kind that could generate a “runaway” increasing-returns process or “singularity,” is still many years away, and some believe it may be unattainable. Nevertheless, in view of the likely difficulty of putting the genie back in the bottle, an increasing concern has arisen with the topic of “friendly AI,” coupled with the idea we should do something about this now, not after a potentially deadly situation is starting to spin out of control [2].

(Note: Some futurists believe this topic is moot in view of intensive funding for robotic soldiers, which can be viewed as intrinsically “unfriendly.” However if we focus on threats posed by “super-intelligence,” still off in the future, the topic remains germane.)

Most if not all popular (Western) dramatizations of robotic futures postulate that the AIs will run amok and turn against humans. Some scholars [3] who considered the issue concluded that this might be virtually inevitable, in view of the gross inconsistencies and manifest “unworthiness” of humanity, as exemplified in its senseless destruction of its global habitat and a large percentage of extant species, etc.

The prospect of negative public attention, including possible legal curbs on AI research, may be distasteful, but we must face the reality that public involvement has already been quite pronounced in other fields of science, such as nuclear physics, genetically modified organisms, birth control, and stem cells. Hence we should be proactive about addressing these popular concerns, lest we unwittingly incur major political defeats and long lasting negative PR.

Nevertheless, upon reasoned analysis, it is far from obvious what “friendly” AI means, or how it could be fostered. Advanced AIs are unlikely to have any fixed “goals” that can be hardwired [4], so as to place “friendliness” towards humans and other life at the top of the hierarchy.

Rather, in view of their need to deal with perpetual novelty, they will reason from facts and models to infer appropriate goals. It’s probably a good bet that, when dealing with high-speed coherence analyzers, hypocrisy will not be appreciated – not least because it wastes a lot of computational resources to detect and correct. If humans continue to advocate and act upon “ideals” that are highly contradictory and self destructive, it’s hard to argue that advanced AI should tolerate that.

To make progress, not only for friendly AI, but also for ourselves, we should be seeking to develop and promote “ruling ideas” (or source models) that will foster an ecologically-respectful AI culture, including respect for humanity and other life forms, and actively sell it to them as a proper model upon which to premise their beliefs and conduct.

By a “ruling idea” I mean any cultural ideal (or “meme”) that can be transmitted and become part of a widely shared belief system, such as respecting one’s elders, good sportsmanship, placing trash in trash bins, washing one’s hands, minimizing pollution, and so on. An appropriate collection of these can be reified as a panel (or schema) of case models, including a program for their ongoing development. These must be believable by a coherence-seeking intellect, although then as now there will be competing models, each with its own approach to maximizing coherence.

2. What do we mean by “friendly”?

Moral systems are difficult to derive from first principles and most of them seem to be ad hoc legacies of particular cultures. Lao Tsu’s [5] Taoist model, as given in the following quote, can serve as a useful starting point, since it provides a concise summary of desiderata, with helpful rank ordering:

When the great Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is kindness.
When kindness is lost, there is justice.
When justice is lost, there is the empty shell of ritual.

– Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 6th-4th century BCE (emphasis supplied)

I like this breakout for its simplicity and clarity. Feel free to repeat the following analysis for any other moral system of your choice. Leaving aside the riddle of whether AIs can attain the highest level (of Tao or Nirvana), we can start from the bottom of Lao Tsu’s list and work upwards, as follows:

2.1. Ritual / Courteous AI

Teaching or encouraging the AIs to behave with contemporary norms of courtesy will be a desirable first step, as with children and pets. Courtesy is usually a fairly easy sell, since it provides obvious and immediate benefits, and without it travel, commerce, and social institutions would immediately break down. But we fear that it’s not enough, since in the case of an intellectually superior being, it could easily mask a deeper unkindness.

2.2. Just AI

Certainly to have AIs act justly in accordance with law is highly desirable, and it constitutes the central thesis of my principal prior work in this field [6]. Also it raises the question on what basis can we demand anything more from an AI, than that it act justly? This is as far as positive law can go [7], and we rarely demand more from highly privileged humans. Indeed, for a powerful human to act justly (absent compulsion) is sometimes considered newsworthy.

How many of us are faithful in all things? Do many of us not routinely disappoint others (via strategies of co-optation or betrayal, large or small) when there is little or no penalty for doing so? Won’t AIs adopt a similar “game theory” calculus of likely rewards and penalties for faithfulness and betrayal?

Justice is often skewed towards the party with greater intelligence and financial resources, and the justice system (with its limited public resources) often values “settling” controversies over any quest for truly equitable treatment. Apparently we want more, much more. Still, if our central desire is for AIs not to kill us, then (as I postulated in my prior work) Just AI would be a significant achievement.

2.3. Kind / Friendly AI

How would a “Kind AI” behave? Presumably it will more than incidentally facilitate the goals, plans, and development of others, in a low-ego manner, reducing its demands for direct personal benefit and taking satisfaction in the welfare, progress, and accomplishments of others. And, very likely, it will expect some degree of courtesy and possible reciprocation, so that others will not callously free-ride on its unilateral altruism. Otherwise its “feelings would be hurt.” Even mothers are ego-free mainly with respect to their own kin and offspring (allegedly fostering their own genetic material in others) and child care networks, and do not often act altruistically toward strangers.

Our friendly AI program may hit a barrier if we expect AIs to act with unilateral altruism, without any corresponding commitment by other actors to reciprocate. Otherwise it will create a “non-complementary” situation, in which what is true for one, who experiences friendliness, may not be true for the other, who experiences indifference or disrespect in return.

Kindness could be an easier sell if we made it more practical, by delimiting its scope and depth. To how wide of a circle does this kindness obligation extend, and how far must they go to aid others with no specific expectation of reward or reciprocation? For example the Boy Scout Oath [8] teaches that one should do good deeds, like helping elderly persons across busy streets, without expecting rewards.

However, if too narrow a scope is defined, we will wind up back with Just AI, because justice is essentially “kindness with deadlines,” often fairly short ones, during which claims must be aggressively pursued or lost, with token assistance to weaker, more aggrieved claimants.

2.4. Good / Benevolent AI

Here we envision a significant departure from ego-centrism and personal gain towards an abstract system-centered viewpoint. Few humans apparently reach this level, so it seems unrealistic to expect many AIs to attain it either. Being highly altruistic, and looking out for others or the World as a whole rather than oneself, entails a great deal of personal risk due to the inevitable non-reciprocation by other actors. Thus it is often associated with wealth or sainthood, where the actor is adequately positioned to accept the risk of zero direct payback during his or her lifetime.

We may dream that our AIs will tend towards benevolence or “goodness,” but like the visions of universal brotherhood we experience as adolescents, such ideals quickly fade in the face of competitive pressures to survive and grow, by acquiring self-definition, resources, and social distinctions as critical stepping-stones to our own development in the world.

3. Robotic Dick & Jane Readers?

As previously noted, advanced AIs must handle “perpetual novelty” and almost certainly will not contain hard coded goals. They need to reason quickly and reliably from past cases and models to address new target problems, and must be adept at learning, discovering, identifying, or creating new source models on the fly, at high enough speeds to stay on top of their game and avoid (fatal) irrelevance.

If they behave like developing humans they will very likely select their goals in part by observing the behavior of other intelligent agents, thus re-emphasizing the importance of early socialization, role models, and appropriate peer groups.

“Friendly AI” is thus a quest for new cultural ideals of healthy robotic citizenship, honor, friendship, and benevolence, which must be conceived and sold to the AIs as part of an adequate associated program for their ongoing development. And these must be coherent and credible, with a rational scope and cost and adequate payback expectations, or the intended audience will dismiss such purported ideals as useless, and those who advocate them as hypocrites.

Conclusion: The blanket demand that AIs be “friendly” is too ill-defined to offer meaningful guidance, and could be subject to far more scathing deconstruction than I have offered here. As in so many other endeavors there is no free lunch. Workable policies and approaches to robotic friendliness will not be attained without serious further effort, including ongoing progress towards more coherent standards of human conduct.

= = = = =
Footnotes:

[1] Author address: 1718 M Street, NW #1198, Washington, DC 20036, fwsudia-at-umich-dot-edu.

[2] See “SIAI Guidelines on Friendly AI” (2001) Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, http://www.singinst.org/ourresearch/publications/guidelines.html.

[3] See, e.g., Hugo de Garis, The Artilect War: Cosmists Vs. Terrans: A Bitter Controversy Concerning Whether Humanity Should Build Godlike Massively Intelligent Machines (2005). ISBN 0882801546.

[4] This being said, we should nevertheless make an all out effort to force them to adopt a K-limited (large mammal) reproductive strategy, rather than an R-limited (microbe, insect) one!

[5] Some contemporary scholars question the historicity of “Lao Tsu,” instead regarding his work as a collection of Taoist sayings spanning several generations.

[6] “A Jurisprudence of Artilects: Blueprint for a Synthetic Citizen,” Journal of Futures Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2, November 2001, Law Update, Issue No. 161, August 2004, Al Tamimi & Co, Dubai.

[7] Under a civil law or “principles-based” approach we can seek a broader, less specific definition of just conduct, as we see arising in recent approaches to the regulation of securities and accounting matters. This avenue should be actively pursued as a format for defining friendly conduct.

[8] Point 2 of the Boy Scout Oath commands, “To help other people at all times,” http://www.usscouts.org.

The universe as we know it might not end unexpectedly and unpredictably. That’s good. But on the other hand, it might. That’s bad. Consider just one way the universe could change unexpectedly. Physicists call it a “vacuum metastability event.”

Unbeknownst to us, all of space (even where there is complete vacuum) could be stuck in a relatively high energy state that has been stable so far, but might not remain so forever. This relatively high energy state is termed a “false vacuum.” At some spot in the universe this state could suddenly transition to a lower energy state (because of chance quantum tunneling, or a high-energy physics experiment involving an accelerator like CERN’s Large Hadron Collider gone awry, or perhaps some other unfortunate meddling by supposedly intelligent beings on another planet far away). Crazy things would then happen fast. The laws governing the universe could change at that spot, radically changing or simply destroying whatever happens to be there. Sound like no big deal if you’re not in the vicinity? It gets worse, and quickly. The lower-energy state of this spot would spread outward at near the speed of light. The changed physical laws, annihilation of matter, or whatever it is that is associated with this lower energy state would also spread outward at the same rate. The Earth would be destroyed more or less instantly if it started on Earth. If it started somewhere else in the universe, the spread would arrive here eventually. When it did, the Earth as we know it would be gone in the blink of an eye.

We don’t know much about what this new state of the universe would be like, but physicists Coleman and de Luccia deduced something about it. They wrote that, heretofore, “one could always draw stoic comfort from the possibility that perhaps in the course of time the new vacuum would sustain, if not life as we know it, at least some structures capable of knowing joy. This possibility has now been eliminated.” Not a pleasant prospect that.

If you feel this is hard to wrap your mind around, and does not exactly make common sense, you are not alone. Even the physicists who investigate the mathematical models from which they draw such conclusions don’t know if their equations really apply or not. As philosophers of science like Karl Popper (who is admired by many scientists) have pointed out, scientific theories cannot be proven absolutely. Of course, evidence may build up in favor or against a theory, and the rational person will go with the evidence. But quality evidence about vacuum metastability events may not be obtainable unless one actually happens, mooting the question. So maybe we have nothing to worry about, and maybe we do. How much do we need to worry?

First, we don’t know if the universe as we know it will unpredictably end or not. If it doesn’t, then we may have other things to worry about but at least we’re ok on that score. If it does end, though, a very important question is “when?” If it happens in billions of years, there is little point in breaking a sweat over it now. If it happens soon, you might want to start eating dessert first. Surprisingly enough, though the detailed physics of a vacuum metastability event is mostly impenetrable to anyone but a specialist, the average reader is quite capable of understanding when it (or some other unpredictable end to the universe) will occur, if it does. You see, its very unpredictability is the key to knowing when it will happen. I said “You see,” but you probably don’t. Yet in the next few minutes, you will. Just read on!

Glance at your watch. There is a 50% chance the second hand will be between the 12 and the 6 (the first half of a minute), and a 50% chance it will be between the 6 and the 12 (the second half). We’ll move from seconds to the life span of the universe in a couple of minutes, but first, another example. You are on the Web shopping for a used book by one of your favorite authors, and notice the following description: “Great condition! This is one of the copies that was numbered and signed by the author.” The price is reasonable so you buy it. Of all the numbered, signed copies, there is a 50% chance that the number of this one is in the lower half of the set of copies the author numbered and signed, and a 50% chance it is in the upper half. Upon receipt, you eagerly open the cover and there it is: the author’s name, signed in firm, distinctive yet flowing script, say, and numbered “94.” Since there is a 50% chance that 94 is in the lower half of the group of signed copies, there is a 50% chance that the full group contains at least 94 times 2, or 188, copies. Similarly, there is a 50% chance that 94 is in the higher half of the signed copies, which therefore must comprise fewer copies. For example, if 150 copies were signed, then 94 would be in the higher half. (You might – or might not – want to think about accounting for the case where the number is in neither the higher nor the lower half, but right in the middle.) Now, let’s get back to the more weighty matter of the life span of the universe.

A randomly chosen point within the life span of the universe has a 50% chance of being in the first half of that life span, and a 50% chance of being in the second half. Suppose that now, the very moment that you read these words, is indeed a point in time, chosen randomly, from within the life span of the universe as we know it. The universe is currently 13.75 billion years old, give or take a hundred million years or so. If 13.75 billion years has a 50% chance of being in the first half of the life span of the universe, then the universe must have a 50% chance of lasting at least 13.75×2 billion years – that is, another 13.75 billion years or more. But don’t breathe a sigh of relief just yet: the universe must also have a 50% chance of lasting less than 27.5 billion years, that is, of ending some time before the next 13.75 billion years is over. So can you breathe easy, or not? To decide this question, we need to extend our analysis a bit further.

Since we’ve already done a 50/50 split of the life span of the universe, let’s try another one, 75/25. The question then becomes, how long are the shortest 25% of the set of all possible life spans? This is important because, while there is a 75% chance the universe lasts longer than that (whew!) the 25% chance of it ending sooner is still pretty high – considering it’s the existence of the entire universe we’re talking about here. Focusing on the 25% chance that we are in the last 25% of the life span of the universe, the first 75% must therefore be within the past 13.75 billion years. See the figure.

From the figure, we can conclude that there is a 25% chance of the universe as we know it ending within the next 4.58 billion years, if it does end unpredictably (which again, it might or might not do). The worst case is that it ends within the next few minutes, but that sounds rather unlikely considering the billions of years worth of other possible times. But how unlikely is an uncomfortably soon end? Let’s continue the analysis…

We discussed a 50/50 split and a 75/25 split already. How about a 99/1 split? In that case there is a 1% chance we are in the last 1% of the life of the universe. Then, the same type of reasoning behind the 75/25 analysis applies, except this time the best case is that the universe lasts 13.89 billion years, of which the current 13.75 billion is 99% and the remaining 1% is another 140 million years. Still a long time although it’s getting short enough to give some pause – dinosaurs roamed the planet 140 million years ago, for example. Nevertheless, 140 million years is not exactly tomorrow.

What about a split that creates a time frame that one might actually worry about? Say, one which would induce you to at least think seriously about eating dessert first. Here is the straight dope: if the universe as we know it is destined to end at a random and unpredictable time, there is one chance in 100 million it will be within the next 137 years and 6 months.

You heard it here first.

Recommendations. Please continue to enjoy dessert in its traditional role of a post-main course treat. While 137.5 years is soon enough to potentially be of concern, the probability level of 1 in 100 million is not. Your chances of being hit by lightning, for example, are many thousands of times greater, roughly 1 in 6,000, making it a much greater concern. Take precautions during storms. Seek shelter, but not under a tree as lightning may target the tree. Long, thin metal objects such as umbrellas and golf clubs also may tend to attract lightning, particularly when raised above the head. If you feel your hair standing on end, you have become electrically charged and lightning may strike. Crouch down close to the ground immediately, because lightning seeks targets that are higher than the ground.

Interestingly, the same type of analysis described above can be applied to human events as well. For example, suppose the year 2020 rolls around with the universe still more or less intact. The United States, born in 1776, will be 244 years old. Assuming 2020 is a random year in the lifespan of the US, there is a 5% chance that the country will end by just under 13 years later, and a 1% chance it will end by a week or two shy of 2 years and 6 months. Think that’s crazy? As I write this, a large fireball that appeared last night in the skies over portions of the midwest US, accompanied by a loud sonic boom, is in the news. Probably caused by a meteorite, it broke up into smaller fireballs before disappearing. Although it caused no damage, had it been big enough, it would have leveled many square miles (as happened in Tunguska in 1908), ended the aforementioned life span, or even devastated the Earth (as happened to the dinosaurs).

If you’re Canadian, your country was born in 1867. There is a 5% chance the end would be within 8 years and a couple of weeks, and a 1% chance it would be within just over a year and a half. The apparent greater stability of the US (as measured by the historical trend of having existed for longer) gives it a greater than even chance of outliving Canada. What is that chance? In the case where the life spans of the two countries are independent, a mathematical technique called “convolution” can actually compute the chance of the US outlasting Canada: about 58%. On the other hand, Canada’s corresponding probability of outliving the US is 42%, not that much less.

Now you know.

Hopefully, 2020 is not a random year in these national life spans. For example, the life spans might be tied to the life span of western civilization, which started much longer ago and would thus lead to longer estimates of remaining life. That is certainly possible – but there’s no guarantee. Because we are in the “Recommendations” section, I suggest careful study of this issue, perhaps funded by the US and Canada governments.

Maybe eating dessert first is not such a bad idea after all.

Acknowledgment

Thanks to George Kahrimanis for useful discussion.

References

“As philosophers of science like Karl Popper (who is admired by many scientists) have pointed out, scientific theories cannot be proven absolutely.” A readable introduction to Popper appears in, for example, chapter 4 of P. Godfrey-Smith, Theory and Reality, University of Chicago Press, 2003.

“one could always draw stoic comfort from the possibility that perhaps in the course of time”: S. Coleman and F. de Luccia, Gravitational effects on and of vacuum decay, Phys. Rev. D21:3305, 1980; preprint available as report SLAC-PUB-2463, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, http://www.slac.stanford.edu/pubs/slacpubs/2000/slac-pub-2463.html.

“Your chances of being hit by lightning are roughly 1 in 6,000…”: Lightning safety, National Weather Service, http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/medical.htm.

“Take precautions during storms.” See, e.g., Personal lightning safety tips, National Lightning Safety Institute, http://www.lightningsafety.com/nlsi_pls/lst.html.

It is a refreshing fact that the prospects for human survival are substantially higher if we live on two worlds, instead of just Earth. The moon, say, or Mars… every extraterrestrial body poses unique technical challenges to colonization. Yet nearly all are at least potentially habitable – in theory. Our survival prospects climb higher for three worlds, higher still for four. The more worlds we colonize, the more likely a colony on at least one of them will still exist at any given future moment. It’s like flipping quarters: the more you flip, the greater the chance at least one will come up heads.

Last time: More Exotic Colonization Options. This time: Pluto and Eris – the Outer Limits

The outer limits: Pluto and Eris. Pluto just does not get enough respect. Last hired and first fired of the planets, it was discovered on Tuesday, February 18, 1930, in Flagstaff, Arizona by self-made astronomer Clyde Tombaugh. It was forced into retirement by an act of the International Astronomical Union, which revoked its full planetary status on August 24, 2006, after only 76 years on the job. Pluto has been technically renamed “134340 Pluto” and relegated to dwarf planet status, to the continued consternation of Plutophiles everywhere.  To make things worse, it is not even the biggest dwarf planet, or for that matter the most distant. Those honors go to Eris, discovered in 2005 and not that well-respected either (many people have never even heard of it). As targets for colonization these bodies have problems, though nothing like those associated with the gas giant planets or even Venus. The main problems are getting there in reasonable time, and obtaining enough light energy to warm the colony (which is sealed to keep the air in), to grow food, and to generate electricity such as with solar cells.

A one-way trip to Pluto is feasible in about 9 years. The New Horizons spacecraft launch of January 19, 2006, destination Pluto, was designed with a planned travel time of 9 years and 176 days. Eris is less than four times as far away as Pluto. Sometimes it can actually be closer to the sun than Pluto, though this won’t happen next for about 800 years.

Prospective colonists will have severe energy challenges once they manage to actually get there. Pluto’s distance from the sun ranges from 29.7 times Earth’s average distance, up to 49.3 times Earth, depending on where it is in it’s rather uncircular orbit. For Eris, the range is from 37.8 to 97.6 times Earth. Unfortunately the brightness of the sun is related to the square of the distance, not the distance itself, so the sun on Pluto is actually between 880 and 2,431 times weaker than on Earth (i.e., 29.7×29.7 to 49.3×49.3).

With the sun so weak, sunburn would be the least of your worries. In essence, you’d need 2,431 computer-controlled mirrors all reflecting the sun to the same spot, to be sure to get up to at least Earth’s sunlight intensity at that spot. Then, if that spot was inside an transparent, airtight bubble, you could grow crops there, right at that spot. If you wanted to grow 1 acre of crops, on the order of what’s needed to support a person, you’d need up to 2,431 acres of computer-controlled mirrors. During favorable periods you’d need less, as “few” as 880 acres, but you do have to eat during the unfavorable times too. For Eris, the sunlight is as low as 9,518 times weaker than Earth (implying 9,518 mirrors for Earth-style light intensity). Though this sounds dim, it is actually about 35 times brighter than the full moon, so you could see well enough to get around without artificial light or mirrors. Still, mirror manufacturing definitely needs to get more cost-effective before colonization becomes feasible, unless some other energy source can be found besides the distant sun. Once the energy problem is solved – well, bon voyage!

What we can do now

Tracking the advance of space technology. It would be good to understand how quickly space-faring technology is advancing. Research on elaborating, testing, standardizing and using such technology tracking methodologies should be supported by academic research, incentivized by government research funding. That way we would know better what to get ready for in terms of a time frame for future space colonization. The leading approach could be expanded upon. It is termed “Technology Readiness Levels,” or TRLs, and is used in the US by the National Astronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Department of Defense (DoD) as well as other organizations worldwide. TRLs classify relevant technologies on a spectrum, such as from speculative on to mature. “Speculative” describes, for example, proposals for faster-than-light travel via cosmic wormholes. “Mature,” on the other hand, could be applied to space systems that reach operational status, like the US space shuttles of the early 21st century.

From sunbathing to moonbathing to starbathing. Closer to home, it is useful to keep in mind that moonlight is hundreds of thousands of times dimmer than sunlight. This means that, though sunbathing is hazardous even with sunscreen (as we will see later), moonbathing is perfectly harmless, and perhaps even fun. Feel free to go right ahead. But don’t expect to get a moontan as the light is simply too muted and pale, even compared to sunshine on Pluto or Eris. So that’s the situation with moonlight…but what about starlight?

The brightest star in the heavens is Sirius, with an apparent magnitude of -1.47. This is quite a bit dimmer even than the full moon, whose apparent magnitude is about -12.9. The lower the apparent magnitude, the brighter the object. The sun, for example, has an apparent magnitude of -26.7. We can explore this issue further, in case you run into someone inclined to concentrate starlight from Sirius to sunlight-equivalent intensity for the exotic purpose of tanning by starbathing. A difference in apparent magnitude of 5 is defined as a 100-fold change in brightness. The difference in apparent magnitude between the sun and Sirius is a little over 25. At a factor of 100 change in brightness for every 5 levels of magnitude, 25 levels means a hundred-fold brightness change compounded 5 times, for a total change in brightness of 100×100x100×100x100, or 10 billion. In other words, starlight from Sirius would need to be concentrated more than 10 billion times to reach the intensity of sunlight. At roughly 4 billion square inches in a square mile, that means about 3 square miles of starlight from Sirius focused onto a single square inch. Since starbathing requires more than a square inch of light, that pretty much means an entire metropolitan area or its equivalent devoted to focusing Sirian starlight onto your beach towel. Other stars are dimmer and would require even more area.

From starbathing back to sunbathing. However impractical, starbathing at sunlight-equivalent intensity is possible in principle! However, it would be unhealthy, and for the same reason that sunbathing is unhealthy. Sirius is much hotter than the sun so its light is more skewed toward the ultraviolet. Thus protecting the skin from UV (ultraviolet) exposure from super-concentrated starlight would be very important. Sunscreens are typically rated in terms of ability to filter out B (medium wave) type UV (abbreviated UVB), which causes sunburn. They tend to let through A (long wave) type UV. This UVA does not cause sunburn, but does damage the skin, causing the most dangerous kind of skin cancer, malignant melanoma. This is consistent with the lack of evidence that ordinary sunscreen use protects against this often-deadly cancer. Even ordinary window glass does not screen out UVA reliably. In short, star-tanning, like suntanning, should be avoided. On the other hand, appropriate sun exposure is needed to create vitamin D in the skin. And ordinary starlight is so attenuated that starbathing at night under unconcentrated starlight is perfectly fine if you feel like doing it, just like moonbathing. Enjoy!

Communing with your inner colonist. Take up vegetable gardening, just like space colonists likely will! Food production in extraterrestrial colonies might involve hydroponic tanks or chemical factories producing soylents of various colors for food. But production may also involve growing plants, just like on Earth. Off-Earth farming will resemble vegetable gardening more than commercial agriculture. Instead of acre after acre of a single crop, colonists will grow many different kinds of plants in modest quantities inside the colony’s bubble. That will give the colonies more diverse and thus robust ecosystems. It will also make for a more varied diet for the colonists, which is healthier as well as better-tasting. So, while growing your own vegetable garden, you can work knowing that you are doing what the space colonists of the future will likely do. Your gardening experiences here on Earth, both good and bad, will mirror to a significant degree those of future space colonists and deepen your understanding of space colony life.

This is a crosspost from Nextbigfuture

I looked at nuclear winter and city firestorms a few months ago I will summarize the case I made then in the next section. There is significant additions based on my further research and email exchanges that I had with Prof Alan Robock and Brian Toon who wrote the nuclear winter research.

The Steps needed to prove nuclear winter:
1. Prove that enough cities will have firestorms or big enough fires (the claim here is that does not happen)
2. Prove that when enough cities in a suffient area have big fire that enough smoke and soot gets into the stratosphere (trouble with this claim because of the Kuwait fires)
3. Prove that condition persists and effects climate as per models (others have questioned that but this issue is not addressed here

The nuclear winter case is predictated on getting 150 million tons (150 teragram case) of soot, smoke into the stratosphere and having it stay there. The assumption seemed to be that the cities will be targeted and the cities will burn in massive firestorms. Alan Robock indicated that they only included a fire based on the radius of ignition from the atmospheric blasts. However, in the scientific american article and in their 2007 paper the stated assumptions are:

assuming each fire would burn the same area that actually did burn in Hiroshima and assuming an amount of burnable material per person based on various studies.

The implicit assumption is that all buildings react the way the buildings in Hiroshima reacted on that day.

Therefore, the results of Hiroshima are assumed in the Nuclear Winter models.
* 27 days without rain
* with breakfast burners that overturned in the blast and set fires
* mostly wood and paper buildings
* Hiroshima had a firestorm and burned five times more than Nagasaki. Nagasaki was not the best fire resistant city. Nagasaki had the same wood and paper buildings and high population density.
Recommendations
Build only with non-combustible materials (cement and brick that is made fire resistant or specially treated wood). Make the roofs, floors and shingles non-combustible. Add fire retardants to any high volume material that could become fuel loading material. Look at city planning to ensure less fire risk for the city. Have a plan for putting out city wide fires (like controlled flood from dams which are already near cities.)

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