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A (Relatively) Brief Introduction to The Principles of Economics & Evolution: A Survival Guide for the Inhabitants of Small Islands, Including the Inhabitants of the Small Island of Earth

Posted by Matt Funk in asteroid/comet impacts, biological, complex systems, cosmology, defense, economics, existential risks, geopolitics, habitats, human trajectories, lifeboat, military, philosophy, sustainabilityTagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments on A (Relatively) Brief Introduction to The Principles of Economics & Evolution: A Survival Guide for the Inhabitants of Small Islands, Including the Inhabitants of the Small Island of Earth

(NOTE: Selecting the “Switch to White” button on the upper right-hand corner of the screen may ease reading this text).

“Who are you?” A simple question sometimes requires a complex answer. When a Homeric hero is asked who he is.., his answer consists of more than just his name; he provides a list of his ancestors. The history of his family is an essential constituent of his identity. When the city of Aphrodisias… decided to honor a prominent citizen with a public funeral…, the decree in his honor identified him in the following manner:

Hermogenes, son of Hephaistion, the so-called Theodotos, one of the first and most illustrious citizens, a man who has as his ancestors men among the greatest and among those who built together the community and have lived in virtue, love of glory, many promises of benefactions, and the most beautiful deeds for the fatherland; a man who has been himself good and virtuous, a lover of the fatherland, a constructor, a benefactor of the polis, and a savior.
– Angelos Chaniotis, In Search of an Identity: European Discourses and Ancient Paradigms, 2010

I realize many may not have the time to read all of this post — let alone the treatise it introduces — so for those with just a few minutes to spare, consider abandoning the remainder of this introduction and spending a few moments with a brief narrative which distills the very essence of the problem at hand: On the Origin of Mass Extinctions: Darwin’s Nontrivial Error.

But for those with the time and inclinations for long and windy paths through the woods, please allow me to introduce myself: I was born and raised in Kentland, Indiana, a few blocks from the train station where my great-great grandfather, Barney Funk, arrived from Germany, on Christmas day of 1859. I completed a BSc in Entrepreneurship and an MFA in film at USC, and an MA in Island Studies at UPEI. I am a naturalist, Fellow of The Linnean Society of London, PhD candidate in economics at the University of Malta, hunter & fisherman, NRA member, protective father, and devoted husband with a long, long line of illustrious ancestors, a loving mother & father, extraordinary brothers & sister, wonderful wife, beautiful son & daughter, courageous cousins, and fantastic aunts, uncles, in-laws, colleagues, and fabulous friends!

Thus my answer to the simple question, “Who are you?” requires a somewhat complex answer as well.

Continue reading “A (Relatively) Brief Introduction to The Principles of Economics & Evolution: A Survival Guide for the Inhabitants of Small Islands, Including the Inhabitants of the Small Island of Earth” | >

If nothing else, Japan’s recent tragedy has brought the risk of current nuclear power plants back into focus. While it’s far to early to tell just how grave the Fukushima situation truly is, it is obvious that our best laid plans are inadequate as they relate to engineering facilities to withstand cataclysmic scale events.

Few places on the globe are as well prepared as Japan for earthquakes and the possibility of subsequent tsunamis. However, in spite of their preparedness — which was evidenced by the remarkably small number of casualties given the nature of the events that took place (can you imagine how many people would have perished had this same disaster struck somewhere else in the world?) — Japan’s ability to manage a damaged nuclear power plant was severely compromised.

As frightening as Japan’s situation is, what ought to frighten us even more is that there are many more nuclear power plants in equally vulnerable locations all over the globe. In California, for example, both the San Onofre and Diablo Canyon facilities are right on the coast (they both use ocean water for cooling) and the Diablo Canyon facility in particular is perilously close to a major fault.

Given what we’ve seen in Japan, the widely varying degrees of preparedness around the world, the age of many of the existing power plants and the consequences for even a single catastrophic containment failure, shouldn’t we be taking a long, hard look at nuclear power as a viable means of providing energy for the planet? Have we learned so little from Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and now Fukushima? Just how capable are we [really] of dealing with a second, a third or a fourth disaster of this type? (and what if they were to happen simultaneously?) With so many existential risks completely beyond our control, does it make sense to add another one when there are other, lower risk alternatives to nuclear energy within our reach?

Continue reading “Are Current Nuclear Power Plants an Existential Risk?” | >

Forgive me my courage because I like you. The catastrophe at Fukushima is a testimony to human fallibility. For 3 years, an analogous trap has been opened up for the planet as a whole, but no one believes my proof: An 8-percent probability of the planet being shrunk to 2 cm in perhaps 5 years’ time if the LHC experiment at Geneva is continued.

500 planetary newspapers reported on my warnings in 2008, before the experiment fizzled. After it got resumed in 2010, there is a press curfew worldwide. Even the appeal by a court to at long last admit the scientific safety conference called for (my only request) is quietly skirted by CERN. Just finding out about the truth is asking too much.

The reason is painful and has to do with Einstein and Japan (“I made one mistake in my life,” he said). No one believes any more that he was even greater in his youth. This is what I found out: The famous equivalence principle (between gravity and horizontal acceleration) of 1907 is even more powerful than known. What is known is that clocks tick more slowly further down in gravity, as he proved. But this time-change result stands not alone: Length and mass and charge are equally affected (TeLeMaCh theorem, for T, L, M, Ch) as is easy to prove. Hence gravity is much more powerful than anticipated. Black holes have radically different properties, for example. And black holes are being tried to be generated at the LHC.

Why the planet-wide press curfew since 2008? Apparently a nobelist cooperating with the LHC gave the parole that the new result is “absolute nonsense,” which would be gratifying to believe if true. But the press for some reason forgot to ask back: “Did you discuss your counterclaim with the author?” (No.) “Has anyone proved it?” (No.) “Is anyone ready to defend it publicly in dialog?” (No.)

Continue reading “Short Speech to the World” | >
The field of life extension is broad and ranges from regenerative medicine to disease prevention by nutritional supplements and phytomedicine. Although the relevance of longevity and disease prevention to existential risks is less apparent than the prevention of large-scale catastrophic scenarios, it does have a high relevance to the future of our society. The development of healthy longevity and the efficiency of modern medicine in treating age-related diseases and the question of how well we can handle upcoming issues related to public health will have a major impact on our short-term future in the next few decades. Therefore, the prospect of healthy life extension plays important roles at both a personal and a societal level.
From a personal perspective, a longevity-compatible lifestyle, nutrition and supplementary regimen may not only help us to be active and to live longer, but optimizing our health and fitness also increase our energy, mental performance and capacities for social interaction. This aids our ability to work on the increasingly complex tasks of a 21st-century world that can make a positive impact in society, such as work on existential risk awareness and problem-solving. Recently, I wrote a basic personal orientation on the dietary supplement aspect of basic life extension with an audience of transhumanists, technology advocates with a high future shock level and open-minded scientists in mind, which is available here.
On a societal level, however, aging population and public health issues are serious. A rapid increase of some diseases of civilization, whose prevalence also climbs rapidly with advanced age, is on the march. For example, Type-II-Diabetes is rapidly on its way to becoming an insurmountable problem for China and the WHO projects COPD, the chronic lung disease caused by smoking and pollution, as the third leading cause of death in 2030.
While the currently accelerating increase of diseases of civilization may not collapse society itself, the costs associated with an overaging population could significantly damage societal order, collapse health systems and impact economies given the presently insufficient state of medicine and prevention. The magnitude, urgency and broad spectrum of consequences of age-related diseases of civilization currently being on the march is captured very well in this 5-minute fact-filled presentation on serious upcoming issues of aging in our society today by the LifeStar Foundation. Viewing is highly recommended. In short, a full-blown health crisis appears to be looming over many western countries, including the US, due to the high prevalence of diseases of aging in a growing population. This may require more resources than available if disease prevention efforts are not stepped up as early as possible. In that case, the required urgent action to deal with such a crisis may deprive other technological sectors of time and resources, affecting organizations and governments, including their capacity to manage vital infrastructure, existential risks and planning for a safe and sufficient progress of technology. Hence, not caring about the major upcoming health issue by stepping up disease prevention efforts according to latest biomedical knowledge may indirectly pose challenges affecting our capabilities to handle existential risks.
It should be pointed out that not all measures aimed at improving public health and medicine need to be complex or expensive to attain, as even existing biomedical knowledge is not sufficiently applied. A major example for this is the epidemic Vitamin D deficiency of the western population which was uncovered several years ago. In the last few years, the range of diseases that Vitamin D deficiency and –therapy can influence has grown to include most cancers, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, brain aging including Alzheimer’s disease and many infectious diseases. Ironically, Vitamin D is one of the cheapest supplements available. Moreover, correcting an existing Vitamin D deficiency, which may affect as much as 80% of western population, may cut mortality risk in half. The related mortality decrease would likely coincide with a reduced morbidity and illness of elderly people, resulting in large savings of public healthcare and hospital funds, since Vitamin D effectively prevents and treats some of the most costly age-related diseases. The Life Extension Foundation, for example, has already offered a free initial supply to the U.S. population and shown that massive healthcare costs (and many lives) could be saved if every hospitalized patient was tested for Vitamin D and/or given the supplement, however this offer was ignored by the US government. This is detailed in an article on the effects of widespread Vitamin D deficiency from the Life Extension Foundation, along with many references for the above health effects of Vitamin D at the end of that article.
To recapitulate, there are plenty of important reasons why the focus on disease prevention and regenerative medicine, by applying existing state-of-the-art biomedical knowledge, as well as advancing key areas such as stem-cell research, rejuvenation technologies and nanomedicine should be an urgent priority for advocates of existential risk management today and during the next few decades.

Common wisdom is that great companies are built by business leaders who out-vision and out-innovate their competitors. However, the truth is that groundbreaking businesses tend to come from entrepreneurs who were smart enough to out-execute everyone else in their space – which means getting products out there and growing a loyal customer base, instead of engineering a product until it’s supposedly perfect.

Microsoft is a great example of company that has succeeded by execution. They’ve rarely been first to market with any of their products, but they’ve successfully brought them to market, figured out how to improve them, and introduce them again and again. This is the approach that puts you in the Fortune 500.

Why do entrepreneurs believe so fervently in the myth that they need to be first to market with a never-before-seen innovation? Because that’s what they’re told in business school. The problem with this piece of wisdom is that it encourages business leaders to wait until the mythical breakthrough business idea is fully formed.

This myth is fed by the public perception of groundbreaking companies as having come out of nowhere to rock the world. But companies like Facebook rarely, if ever, spring into being with no antecedents: MySpace and Friendster were in the market first, but Facebook did social networking better than anyone else had done before. Google wasn’t the first search engine ever; AltaVista probably deserves that title. But Google advanced the search experience to the point that we all believe they were the breakthrough innovator.

Continue reading “Dear Entrepreneur, Stop Dreaming and Just Launch That Business” | >

How important is failure – yes, failure – to the health of a thriving, innovative business? So important that Ratan Tata, chairman of India’s largest corporation, gives an annual award to the employee who comes up with the best idea that failed. So important that Apple, the company gives us the world’s most beautifully designed music players, mobile phones, and tablets, wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t dared to fail. Remember the Apple Newton? Probably not, since it was a flop, but it was a precursor to today’s wildly successful iPad.

In a struggling economic climate, failure is what separates mediocre companies from businesses that break through and astound us with their creativity.

Yet failure has become a scenario to be avoided at all costs for most CEOs. Between fear of losing jobs to fear of rattling investors, business leaders are expected to deliver a perfect track record of product launches and expansion programs. They indirectly instill this attitude in their employees, who lack the confidence to spearhead any corporate initiative that isn’t guaranteed to work.

Call it the Tiger Mom effect: In the business world today, failure is apparently not an option.

Continue reading “Don’t be a Tiger Mom CEO — Celebrate Failure” | >

I deeply feel with the Japanese victims of a lack of human caution regarding nuclear reactors. Is it compatible with this atonement if I desperately ask the victims to speak up with me against the next consciously incurred catastrophe made in Switzerland? If the proof of danger stays un-disproved, CERN is currently about to melt the earth’s mantle along with its core down to a 2-cm black hole in perhaps 5 years time at a probability of 8 percent. A million nuclear power plants pale before the “European Centre for Nuclear Research.” CERN must not be allowed to go on shunning the scientific safety conference sternly advised by a Cologne court only six weeks ago.

I thank Lifeboat for distributing this message worldwide.

1) Mini black holes are both non-evaporating and uncharged.

2) The new unchargedness makes them much more likely to arise in the LHC (since electrons are no longer point-shaped in confirmation of string theory).

3) When stuck inside matter, mini black holes grow exponentially as “miniquasars” to shrink earth to 2 cm in perhaps 5 years time.

4) They go undetected by CERN’s detectors.

Continue reading “Five Results on Mini-Black Holes Left Undiscussed by CERN for 3 Years” | >

Ray Kurzweil is unique for having seen the unstoppable exponential growth of the computer revolution and extrapolating it correctly towards the attainment of a point which he called “singularity” and projects about 50 years into the future. At that point, the brain power of all human beings combined will be surpassed by the digital revolution.

The theory of the singularity has two flaws: a reparable and a hopefully not irreparable one. The repairable one has to do with the different use humans make of their brains compared to that of all animals on earth and presumably the universe. This special use can, however, be clearly defined and because of its preciousness be exported. This idea of “galactic export” makes Kurzweil’s program even more attractive.

The second drawback is nothing Ray Kurzweil has anything to do with, being entirely the fault of the rest of humankind: The half century that the singularity still needs to be reached may not be available any more.

The reason for that is CERN. Even though presented in time with published proofs that its proton-colliding experiment will with a probability of 8 percent produce a resident exponentially growing mini black hole eating earth inside out in perhaps 5 years time, CERN prefers not to quote those results or try and dismantle them before acting. Even the call by an administrative court (Cologne) to convene the overdue scientific safety conference before continuing was ignored when CERN re-ignited the machine a week ago.

Continue reading ““Too Late for the Singularity?”” | >

Strong AI or Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) stands for self-improving intelligent systems possessing the capacity to interact with theoretical- and real-world problems with a similar flexibility as an intelligent living being, but the performance and accuracy of a machine. Promising foundations for AGI exist in the current fields of stochastic- and cognitive science as well as traditional artificial intelligence. My aim in this post is to give a very basic insight into- and feeling for the issues involved in dealing with the complexity and universality of an AGI for a general readership.

Classical AI, such as machine learning algorithms and expert systems, are already heavily utilized in today’s real-world problems, in the form of mature machine learning algorithms, which may profitably exploit patterns in customer behaviour, find correlations in scientific data or even predict negotiation strategies, for example [1] [2], or in the form of genetic algorithms. With the next upcoming technology for organizing knowledge on the net, which is called the semantic web and deals with machine-interpretable understanding of words in the context of natural language, we may start inventing early parts of technology playing a role in the future development of AGI. Semantic approaches come from computer science, sociology and current AI research, but promise to describe and ‘understand’ real-world concepts and to enable our computers to build interfaces to real world concepts and coherences more autonomously. Actually getting from expert systems to AGI will require approaches to bootstrap self-improving systems and more research on cognition, but must also involve crucial security aspects. Institutions associated with this early research include the Singularity Institute [3] and the Lifeboat Foundation [4].

In the recent past, we had new kinds of security challenges: DoS attacks, eMail- and PDF-worms and a plethora of other malware, which sometimes even made it into military and other sensitive networks, and stole credit cards and private data en masse. These were and are among the first serious incidents related to the Internet. But still, all of these followed a narrow and predictable pattern, constrained by our current generation of PCs, (in-)security architecture, network protocols, software applications, and of course human flaws (e.g. the emotional response exploited by the “ILOVEYOU virus”). To understand the implications in strong AI first means to realize that probably there won’t be any human-predictable hardware, software, interfaces around for longer periods of time as long as AGI takes off hard enough.

To grasp the new security implications, it’s important to understand how insecurity can arise from the complexity of technological systems. The vast potential of complex systems oft makes their effects hard to predict for the human mind which is actually riddled with biases based on its biological evolution. For example, the application of the simplest mathematical equations can produce complex results hard to understand and predict by common sense. Cellular automata, for example, are simple rules for generating new dots, based on which dots, generated by the same rule, are observed in the previous step. Many of these rules can be encoded in as little as 4 letters (32 bits), and generate astounding complexity.

Continue reading “Security and Complexity Issues Implicated in Strong Artificial Intelligence, an Introduction” | >