What's Next

When we discuss things, we assume one or the other is true. Maybe both are true! Today is a tribute to my enjoyment of Sci-Fi and why we haven't met any aliens...maybe we can be the aliens

Very Good — Blind Optimism

This is a real place somewhere in Kentucky. I imagine the Chamber of Commerce hiring a creative consultant and we ended up with this.

A Change of Pace

What could be better than blind optimism? Regardless of the challenges we might face, we’ve never been better equipped to do the right thing.

An A to Z Story

I have friends and family who see the world as going to hell in a handbasket. They want a return to the past (the good old days). They could be right. Their mind and the media they consume provides an explanation of why. My opinion is perhaps too rosy. This is the very best time to be alive because we have never been in a better position to make an important decision. Why is that? We embraced the light during the aptly named Enlightenment. Progress toward perfecting this life we might shape on this planet has been steadily made. Is there a more wonderful outlook than imagining the world can become a better place for many? Is our approach pure? Far from it. Could we do better? Surely yes will always be the answer. Should we be satisfied? In my opinion, the centrality of how we treat each other holds the key to a better place. I think we are up to it.

Meanwhile, In Our Heads

For ages, people have waxed with fear because the world was falling apart, life won’t be better for their children, and the lot. I share a joke with one of my sons something like “I miss the good ol’ days when crime rates were higher and real GDP was lower”. The sum total of life is hardly covered just by fear of crime and living standards but it is instructional. Life has been getting steadily better for thousands of years — a good track record of declining crime and rising living standards.

It seems a central tenet to many that the climate is changing and it is important to assign blame to some actions of the past and present. Is this useful? Is this true?

New Ideas And Opinions Come By For A Visit

When a doomsayer OR denier about climate appears, their reasoning can get rather involved. They might be right but parsing the whole tale is going to take some time and thoughtfulness.

Maybe Both Be True?

• 200+ years of burning fossil fuels have created a wonderful world.

• 200+ years of burning fossil fuels have created an inflection point for living on this planet.

I believe the statements are both true! So am I just a get-along kind of person? Most importantly, if they are both true, what are the consequences and what should we do next?

Maybe This Gets Weird Now

I read a lot of history and sci-fi. If I were going to write a Sci-Fi short story or a book, my focus would be where are all the aliens?

1. There’s Lots of Stuff — Go out on a clear night. Look at the night sky. The vastness, now that we understand planets, stars, and galaxies is a wondrous story to be a part of. We’ve all heard versions of the scale. Our Sun, average in many ways, is one of 100B+ stars in the Milky Way galaxy. On average, stars have at least one planet orbiting them. The Milky Way is an average galaxy and there are billions of others. MAYBE, we are alone, but it seems highly unlikely. If we stumble upon life in our little neighborhood, that facade will be over forever. We aren’t looking very hard. Maybe, as an analogy, a couple of inches around our hut we see an earthworm. Uh oh, that theory we were alone is blown.

2. Why no visitors? — For starters, amoebas and cockroaches might be cool but they are not building spaceships. Maybe, it is as SIMPLE as once intelligent life emerges, maybe it just argues and destroys itself almost every time. We aren’t talking about traveling at the speed of light yet we’ve built more than enough weapons to end this experiment — maybe that’s what intelligent life does.

3. Life is Diverse, not Unique — Life and intelligent life is an enormous leap. Our piece of the rock seems to have come to be around 4.6 billion years ago while the greater universe is closer to 13.5 billion years old. Our methods are imperfect but we can quantify a MINIMUM of five BIG mass extinctions so far. When you embrace the wonder of DNA and the very best version of the Xerox machine (near-perfect replication), whether amoeba or Bill Clinton, the same mechanisms apply. I consider it INEVITABLE we will find life elsewhere very soon. With our very recent technology, we have explored the most absurd of conditions near vents at the bottom of the ocean (basically belching volcanoes). Guess what? We found life, albeit weird and basic life. A bit of water, some energy, some amino acids — the amino acids string themselves together (that’s what molecules do) and we end up with some weird creatures. My sensibility says if weird stuff can emerge and thrive near a volcano vent, why not underground on Venus or Mars (or even the Moon)? We are only going to check the places in the neighborhood. We already know they got water and they sure seem to have local heat sources. Stuff has been crashing into them for billions of years just like Earth. Everything necessary to start making stuff. The odds are finally greatly in our favor. Just our Earth observations make the emergence of life elsewhere trivial with a handful of basic ingredients.

4. Life » Intelligent Life is not Trivial — To me, with our limitations of what we can surmise, the path from life to intelligent life has meant AT LEAST five mass extinctions. What seems to be a wildcard, in my opinion, is “intelligent life” upends EVERYTHING. Emergent technology like CRISPR means a mutation that emerges by chance over millennia can be replicated in an afternoon. Intelligence makes this possible and upends the natural cycle.

5. Time for the Nutshell — So there you have it. While there are a bunch of steps from climbing trees to building nuclear weapons, once you get there, you have a world of MASSIVE ASYMMETRY. What do I mean? An angry tribal member could grab a spear and kill someone (after someone spent days sharpening the tip). Life was uncertain but remained symmetrical. Today, for $700 (cheaper during Amazon Prime Days) a person can buy a kit and play God with CRISPR. What recent acts of terrorism have taught is a single person can asymmetrically attack the human race. The 9/11 attacks have been estimated to be carried out for between $400K to $500K. That’s about what we pay Lebron James to play a single game of basketball and entertain us. We are fully experiencing an asymmetric world.

6. It’s a Wrap — So here is the part that is troubling to me. I figure, in the early days of humanity leading up to the trek out of Africa there may have been 35-40K homo sapiens left on Earth. We barely survived in a communitarian world where everyone sacrificed for the group because the world was so hostile. Chieftains, Kings, Queens, Czars, and Religious leaders build systems to control the masses and get them to serve them. By then there were nearly 1B of us. The Enlightenment, Democracy, and Technology changed this and created the empowered individual. This, coupled with economics and finance birthed a system based on money and intelligence exploded. In VERY SHORT order, technology, knowledge, and inequality emerged again on a scale never seen. A farmer can now manage thousands of acres. We live in an asymmetric world when billions of his brothers and sisters are unsure of what they will eat tomorrow. We arrive at a place where

   1. a creature with a primitive and contemplative brain rapidly ascends to the top of the food chain. The creature is built to consider happiness, sadness, envy, and grievance

   2. an individual with grievances, thanks to intelligent life creates tools and technology capabilities to destroy large portions of humanity and the natural world. The finance side of things ruthlessly innovates the technology and makes it available to nearly everyone at little or no cost. [think bombs, guns, viruses]

   3. a system of consumption reaches a scale where 25% of ALL RESOURCE UTILIZATION in the history of the planet has occurred in the last 30 years — we may very well be at the end of a dying system

   4. The pivot point might be upon us. Can intelligent life as it has expressed itself here change its stripes? If technology has emerged where NEARLY ANYTHING can be made at LITTLE OR NO COST, perhaps the economic system that governs us has outlived its usefulness. To set aside the greed in the system means the most intelligent of life must pivot before it is too late. While it may seem outlandish, the reality of our lives has likely out scaled the carrying capacity of the planet. As I stated in my previous post Biomass, simply consider the following:

      1. Humans are 0.01% of the carbon in our living world, the SINGULAR basis of all life in the system.

      2. The creature has created an existence wherein perhaps 1/4 of its members live above subsistence and the others retain asymmetric access to many of our most advanced tools

      3. The creature generates waste beyond 1/3 of all the living carbon on the planet — likely well beyond the carrying capacity of the planet and growing at harrowing speed. Consumption, goods production, and waste output continue with unabated exponential growth

      4. The creature is intelligent beyond measure and now even can leverage machines to extend its dominion. This means the tools can now emulate and perhaps surpass the creature itself

      5. The creature also has the means to support all of the other 3/4 of its members in short order but would have to change its outlook, consumption, and economic system, and accept a different understanding of its place in the natural system

      6. A system wherein 3/4 are disgruntled and possess the asymmetric capacity to air their grievances seems an unstable situation.

      7. I believe the creature’s decision will govern whether it takes the next step in exploring its world and finding its place in a greater existence. I am rooting for the creature to make this critical transition. At the rate it is learning, it might even be able to reach out into the greater universe and find other intelligent life that made the same critical decision. This decision is HARD and involves the powerful willingly acting in the interest of the powerless. It is my sense this might be the decision moderately intelligent life comes to face. My conjecture is intelligence and power in the hands of the few changing their stripes might be the rarest thing of all in our universe

      8. my sense is the decision is the most challenging we will ever face. I also believe, due to how we are wired, at least our form of intelligent life can only get to the right answer after exhausting the other options. Perhaps the brink becomes the destination for a settled mind

   5. Perhaps, the fate of most intelligent life is to come to a place where it comes together again and (1) work together to survive (2) develop systems to innovate and be independent and serve the group (3) eventually embrace when enough is enough and share an age of plenty in a sustainable way for everyone lest they outstrip the capacity of the only place they call home.

   6. Maybe if the creature can find a way to do these things, the anger and disconnect for all of its fellow creatures can be tamed. An audacious and exciting future of exploration awaits.

The Poll & Music

Today’s post covers a lot of ground and hints at a lot of change. The best song ever about changing the world entered my mind when I started writing this. By the end, I listened at least 3-4 times. Not a big ask since I’ve always loved the song anyhow. I remain disappointed to this day on a trip to Omaha where we missed an opportunity to hear him perform live. Having a benefactor like Warren Buffett in your town helps when you are wanting a summertime park concert performer. A bad miss. Let the music roll on YouTube and appreciate the guitar well played.

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