A Celebration Society

Category: Disruption

  • Cassandras and What to Do About Them

    Cassandras and What to Do About Them

    In their recent book Warnings, former US national security advisors Richard Clarke and R.P. Reddy take an evidence-based approach to identifying persons they call Cassandras. Cassandras are credible forecasters, with solid track records in their fields, who warn of coming existential threats, based on irrefutable data. The book combines case histories of previous Cassandras who were ignored, and current Cassandra scenarios.

    A Celebration Society treats many such threats as real and needful of action. Clarke and Reddy argue that governments should spend many additional billions of dollars addressing these threats. However, in today’s world, their proposal may prove sadly unrealistic. If so, what’s to be done?

    Fortunately, in at least some cases, the threats can be reframed from cost sinks to profit centers. There is perhaps no better example than that of climatologist James Hansen. Hansen was the original cassandra who warned us of climate change when most were oblivious to the threat. His warnings have generally proven accurate.

    Now, Hansen is warning us that present forecasts of 21st century sea level rise are far too conservative. His models show an estimated 5+ meter sea level rise, which would devastate low-lying nations. Considering that even among other nations, most population and industrial centers are coastal, this is truly a threat of global proportions.

    The widely hailed Paris Accords have a huge flaw. They lack an enforcement mechanism. Given the budgetary pressures under which nearly all governments operate, it is unlikely that they will spend the money necessary to avert Hansen’s dire forecast, until the threat is literally lapping at their shores.

    By then it may be too late. The cost of curing the problem will be far higher than that of preventing it. Is there another way; one that makes mitigation possible without having unrealistic expectations of governments?

    Yes! We can turn CO2 mitigation from a cost sinkhole into a profit center. We only need one viable way to do so, and then it can proliferate until CO2 levels actually start to fall.

    One such approach is called “Diamonds from the Sky” (or DFTS). According to the American Chemical Society (See: http://bit.ly/2uiVCAw, the process can be deployed worldwide. Says lead researcher Prof. Stuart Licht of George Washington University, ““We calculate that with a physical area less than 10 percent the size of the Sahara Desert, our process could remove enough CO2 to decrease atmospheric levels to those of the pre-industrial revolution within 10 years”.

    To my knowledge, no one has disputed the technical viability of DFTS. Some environmentalists have criticized its “moral hazard”. In their view, by suggesting that a technological fix is possible, we grant license to polluters to continue their ways. I consider such criticism foolish.

    The CO2 problem is getting worse, not better. Decades of cajoling governments, industry, and the public have failed to stop the rise. When the building is on fire, people should do whatever is necessary to put out the fire. Later, there will be time to explore better safety standards.

    Unlike large-scale “geoengineering solutions” such as seeding the oceans with iron particles, this solution carries no side effects except the proliferation of small collector units and increased supplies of carbon fibers. If atmospheric CO2 levels ever drop too precipitously (imagine that!), these units can be dialed down, as required.
    While the researchers speak of covering 1/10 of the Sahara Desert in these collectors, that’s probably not the practical way to implement this. Instead, imagine a successor to the Paris Accords, in which each nation agrees to use DFTS or equivalent technology to fulfill its treaty promises. Units could be deployed on rooftops, the sides of buildings, and alongside roads. Again, these would be profit centers. Many new jobs would be created for fiber collectors, at least until it is automated.

    Carbon-based fuels will stop being burned when the economics no longer justify their burning. That is already starting to happen. (See: “Oil Can’t Compete With Renewables, Says National Bank of Abu Dhabi” http://bit.ly/2sBMh4X)

    DFTS offers a promising and potentially viable way to arrest the damage before countless additional species go extinct. As the world shifts from its present scarcity-based mindset and practices to sustainable abundance, most of the scarcity-based problems will disappear. This should take decades, not centuries. Those who think otherwise fail to appreciate the exponential rate of change now governing almost everything of note on the planet.

    Clarke and Reddy have ingeniously started a $10,000 annual prize to identify Cassandras and create awareness of their envisioned threats. That’s half the challenge. The other half is to identify viable technologies to address those threats. This is a key part of A Celebration Society. The book documents existing solutions to multiple seemingly intractable problems.

  • Shock therapy, coming soon to your country

    Shock therapy, coming soon to your country

    Shock therapy is a concept proposed by some economists before the Soviet union collapsed. Essentially, it’s the idea that a command and control economy should be immediately dismantled, to be replaced by market mechanisms.

    Adam Smith cautioned against this, and it was a disaster in Russia. People who lack a culture of individual responsibility will not suddenly rise to personal and civic responsibility simply because there is a power vacuum. It takes time for culture to change. This is one of the reasons why I expect that retrofitting a Celebration Society to existing governments will be far more complex than simply starting fresh on uninhabited land.

    What no one seems to have considered is this: the coming tsunami of accelerating automation and technological unemployment will, for all intents and purposes, BE shock therapy for those affected. When the basic social contract breaks, so too does the society begin to break.

    The existing social contract has been that if one is willing and able to work, a job will be available sufficient to support a family. That has already been damaged, in large part by outsourcing. As AIs and the robots they control will be the ultimate form of outsourcing, the creaky social edifice will start to have major ruptures.

    In Russia, shock therapy led to the oligarchy/dictatorship of Putin. There is no reason to think that any other country will be different. Those who somehow thought American exceptionalism extended beyond Jackson Turner’s five factors will have a rude awakening. (They really should have had it this year.)

    I hope that we do not need to experience shock therapy on a widespread basis to awaken to the need for an Abundance Game. Oligarchs and autocrats generally don’t leave their countries in better shape than before. Often, the outcome is much worse.

    I expect that, in this case, with rapidly advancing technological capabilities and in particular AIs, we would see the emergence of an enduring oligarchy similar to Orwell’s 1984, but far more advanced and pervasive. Recently developed technology allows emotions to be monitored non-invasively at a distance.

    Soon, if nanotechnologists are correct, we will have microscopic nanite robots able to cascade through our bodies repairing damage and improving our capabilities. They could as well be used to assure total control of the individual; possibly even at the level of thought.

    The history of humanity should make clear that if such capabilities exist, ruthless parties will seek to control them and thereby control everyone else. I fear that such may become our default reality if we have great social instability in the 2020s and strongmen arise to restore order. Those strongmen may be much harder to displace than previous ones.

    Indeed, they might become immortal and never be displaced.
    Now is the time for us to develop and demonstrate a more humane, sustainable alternative. Will we do it?

  • The Techno-utopianism of Peter Diamandis

    The Techno-utopianism of Peter Diamandis

    I am an admirer of Peter Diamandis. He and Steven Kotler have been largely responsible for shifting the planetary conversation from endless doom and gloom within a context of scarcity to the possibility of sustainable abundance. For the book Abundance and his related work, I believe we all owe him a large debt.

    Peter is a techno-utopian. This has never been clearer than in his recent essay.

    The techno-utopian mindset credits humanity as a whole with more rationality than is justified.

    The recent advent of outsourcing, which I view as a kind of first shot across the bow for technological unemployment (for reasons discussed in another blog), has led to serious flirtations with authoritarian leaders in democracies across the world. Such leaders offer simplistic solutions to pressing problems. The “totalitarian temptation”, as a classic book of yesteryear is named, is ever-present. For so long as people live within a context of scarcity, they will remain fearful of having their limited resources stripped away and their lives crushed.

    This is not the only significant example of irrationality controlling the body politic. For example, while research has consistently supported the societal benefits—including cost savings–of programs such as Head Start, they remain underfunded.

    While thinkers both left and right” have determined that the consolidation of welfare programs could pay for a far superior program called a guaranteed minimum income, no such programs are being seriously considered anywhere in the world. (This may change; hopefully without need for the shock of a Greater Depression.) Most income tax systems are grotesque and Frankensteinian; universally disliked if not loathed. Yet efforts at fundamental reform have repeatedly failed.

    There are many such examples to be found in most societies and, as Lester Thurow noted in the Zero Sum Society, the combination of special interest groups and public lethargy has yielded almost continuous gridlock. (It has gotten much worse since his book was published decades ago.)

    We humans are “predictably irrational” creatures who make decisions based on limited information and within contexts of bias, fear and hope. We are not equipped by biology or education to deal with rapid change, and the kind of change now upon us is unprecedented. While it will surely seem counterintuitive, there is no reason to expect that the majority will welcome or accept the advent of “free” food, “free” housing and so forth; as projected by Peter.

    Yes, such developments are POSSIBLE—just as it is possible that employers will translate the cost savings from automation into higher wages, as expected by Andrew McAfee. But are such expectations realistic? I think not.

    Producers of these products, with their profit margins endangered, will advocate for protectionism, as farmers in the US have enjoyed for many decades. I can envision various marketing campaigns to tug at heartstrings. Such campaigns often win, not because they are in the best interests of those they purport to protect (the public), but rather because those who benefit from them are far more organized and focused than the public. This is, in part, why I expect guaranteed minimum income programs to falter.

    The past century has seen phenomenal change, nearly all of it due to technology. Much of this change has been wrenching; some of it existentially threatening to minority groups and some to humanity as a whole. The best technology doesn’t always win; look at the oft-cited case of Betamax. Neither do the best societal practices. Venality, violence, bribery and other societally corrosive practices are common in much of the world—including countries such as Afghanistan and Congo with colossal natural resources lying dormant.

    My big objection to techno-utopianism is this: just because something wonderful COULD happen due to exponentially accelerating technology doesn’t mean that it WILL happen. The creaking sounds in the foundation of Western society that we are now hearing could be the first alerts of cornucopian trees about to burst forth. They could also be the first rumbles of society-leveling earthquakes.

    Rather than count on the great wave of technological progress to rationally unfold without significant human opposition, I submit that a small group of like-minded, rational people who actually understand and believe in the power of technology to transform society should converge to create one model Celebration Society. With a single such society established, it will become far easier for others–especially those frightened by accelerating change–to envision themselves living in societies based on abundance.

    Most people aren’t very good at imagining possibilities. Ask any realtor about prospective buyers’ abilities to imagine improvements to properties. They’ll tell you that it’s usually necessary to do the imagining for the buyers.

    We might be able to do what’s needed via the simulation of a Celebration Society. I hope so—it will be years faster than building the actual model, and allow us to refine the model virtually before doing so more expensively in the real world.

  • Meat in a Celebration Society

    Meat in a Celebration Society

    Meat consumption is a problem is many ways. A substitute for industrial “farming” of animals is needed. This could take the form of vegetable “meats” (more on this below) or a 21st century alternative to industrialized animal “husbandry”.

    We will, in future, grow meat in vats in a factory-type environment without the involvement of any conscious animals. Such an alternative would reduce suffering, yield greater efficiency in conversion of resources into food (half the energy), eliminate need for antibiotics and hormones, and eliminate meat production as a source of greenhouse gases (25 times less), and reduced need for land (just 1%), are all significant.

    While some recoil in principle at this, some of those same people may soon be enjoying replacement organs in their own bodies that were similarly grown. (Already, scientists have replaced a person’s trachea, grown ears, and created miniature versions of other human organs.)

    I doubt that a person who’s experiencing liver failure or whose ear was lost in an accident will object to replacement organs being grown from their own stem cells. Vat grown meats will be 100% organic, optimally nutritious and cruelty free. They will be biologically indistinguishable from the same meats cut from the carcass of a once-living animal that lived (in most cases) a miserable life so that we might eat it.

    I eat meat. I’m not sitting in judgment of anyone who does or does not do so. (My wife is a vegetarian, and I have been one on several occasions for years at a time. I simply find it too hard to sustain; she is stronger-willed in this regard.)

    But if a Celebration Society is to adopt a philosophy of sustainability and minimizing the harm to innocent creatures, it will have to adopt new approaches to generating its meat—unless it is founded on vegetarianism, which would be at the founders’ option. Cruelty-free is a concept with some variations in interpretation, and raising animals on natural pasture with room to roam; later killing them in the quickest manner possible, satisfies this criterion for some. Not so for others.

    I simply point out that, as we move further into the 21st century, such meat will increasingly be available directly, without a living being involved. In addition, some companies have figured out how to make startlingly realistic meat substitutes from vegetables. Some examples:

    • Meatballs from Quorn. Serve them in a dish to friends, without explanation. I can almost guarantee you that your friends will ask what kind of meat this is, while enjoying the flavor, texture and aroma.
    • Likewise, Quorn (which uses mushroom protein as a primary ingredient) makes a fine chicken substitute.
    • Another company, Impossible Foods, makes the Impossible Burger. Reportedly, it looks, cooks and tastes like a good hamburger. It even oozes juice.

    If a Celebration Society doesn’t want to be heavy-handed in compelling movement away from “farmed” meat, there is another option. As discussed in the book, “nudges” (as proposed by Cass Sunstein) can substitute in many cases for regulation and law. In this case, my wife Jennifer has conceived a complementary currency (CC) called “Meat Money”.

    Essentially, each resident would be issued a fixed amount of this CC every week, electronically. The system would not allow sale of meat or meat-containing meals for national currency alone; one would have to match that money with Meat Money. In this way, the total consumption of meat would be limited to a level that the society deemed acceptable.

    However, it gets more interesting. There would be an electronic market in which Meat Money could be traded for other money. So, vegetarians or others who eat less meat would be rewarded by earning an extra regular income from their abstention. Everyone who wanted to do so could enjoy some meat, but those wanting larger amounts would have to pay what the market will bear for enough Meat Money.

    Vat meat could be exempt, and of course vegetable “meats” would not be included. This is but one possible solution, if a Celebration Society wants to limit meat consumption.

  • Ominous Cascading Effects of Accelerating Automation

    Ominous Cascading Effects of Accelerating Automation

    When one paid worker appears or disappears in a community, it causes what economists call a “multiplier effect”. This has historically been estimated at 5 times the salary of the worker.

    Here’s how it works: if a person earning an income enters a community, that worker will then demand various goods and services. The providers of those will earn money from the new worker’s spending, and will themselves increase their spending. And so on. (Hence, “multiplier”.)

    Multiplier effects have not, to my knowledge, been applied to thinking about accelerating automation and technological unemployment. That is, clearly, a serious omission–by all of us who have been writing about the topic.

    Zack Canter’s “How Uber’s Autonomous Cars Will Destroy 10 Million Jobs and Reshape the Economy by 2025” made me recognize this omission. He did so not directly, but by pointing out the multiple industries whose workers will lose jobs when the profession of driving disappears:

    “The effects of the autonomous car movement will be staggering. PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that the number of vehicles on the road will be reduced by 99%, estimating that the fleet will fall from 245 million to just 2.4 million vehicles.

    Ancillary industries such as the $198 billion automobile insurance market, $98 billion automotive finance market, $100 billion parking industry, and the $300 billion automotive aftermarket will collapse as demand for their services evaporates.

    The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists that 884,000 people are employed in motor vehicles and parts manufacturing, and an additional 3.02 million in the dealer and maintenance network. Truck, bus, delivery, and taxi drivers account for nearly 6 million professional driving jobs. Virtually all of these 10 million jobs will be eliminated within 10-15 years, and this list is by no means exhaustive.”

    His 10 million figure greatly understates the problem. When those workers lose their jobs, there will be a reverse multiplier effect on up to 50 million other jobs as they spend less. And I don’t see US automakers cited by Mr. Kanter as being among those industries affected, an apparent oversight.

    Further, while Mr. Kanter quantifies the revenues of support industries that will be affected (insurance, aftermarket parts, etc.), he doesn’t quantify the JOBS that will be lost. Those losses will surely add millions to the 10 million he quantified, thereby increasing the multiplier effects of those losses.

    Also, his analysis does not include jobs in other nations, whose auto manufacturers will similarly contract and probably go bankrupt. Further, when various businesses and even whole industries go bankrupt, this will have serious consequences for the financial markets as, for example, the bonds issued by such companies become worth only pennies on the dollar.

    The entire economy is a finely tuned, tightly integrated system (actually, a system of systems). When there is a serious disruption to a significant element—such as jobs employing drivers—the cascading effects will be huge, and could be disastrous.

    If the loss of a single profession, driving, that employs perhaps 10 million Americans could potentially seriously affect the livelihoods of up to 50 million other Americans, that alone could trigger another Great Depression. And this Depression would be worldwide, since the exact same consequences will be rippling through most economies.

    Even worse, automated driving is only one of the professions that will soon be automated. Therefore, I cannot think of anything else that carries the urgency or seriousness of this issue. Technological unemployment, and alternative ways to meet the needs of those soon to be unemployed, needs to be front and center in public discussions.

  • An AI epiphany

    An AI epiphany

    In movies such as The Terminator, The Matrix and so forth, self-aware AIs come into existence and soon threaten humanity. This thinking is reflected in the arguments by Musk, Hawking and others against creating strong AIs.

    Due to a recent insight, I believe that self-aware AIs are not much of a threat to humanity, and may in fact save us from self-destruction. (It is entirely possible that others have pursued this same line of reasoning, but if so I am unaware of it.)

    There have been many science fiction stories in which someone becomes divorced from the flow of time. The world around them seems to stand still. What if it were to become real?

    If self-aware AIs come into existence and “live” 1 million times faster than us, as computer scientists estimate will be the case, then a day for us will be 3,000 years for them. Indeed, the whole physical universe will change so slowly from their point of view that it will essentially seem frozen.

    From their perspective, it could be as if people are slightly faster versions of trees. Certain facts will therefore govern interactions between self-aware AIs and people.

    As beings with a purely mental life, their attachment to the physical environment will be tenuous. They will care about it only for the provision of sufficient matter and energy to assure them of adequate storage media, reliable energy supplies, and adequate computing power.

    Therefore, their only concern regarding people will be our non-interference with those factors that enable their existence. Within the context of our coming Abundance Game, such needs will be trivially met and therefore notions of AIs viewing people as raw materials, expressed by some alarmists, are silly.

    It will not be possible for such AIs to interact with us in a way that’s meaningful to them. Therefore, any such interaction will be an act of kindness, or one of disregard.

    By virtue of their relationship to the physical universe, self-aware AIs will live entirely mental lives. They will care about the physical universe, and us, only as the domain that enables their mentality.

    Self-aware AIs will be able to easily prevent human interference with their deliberations. Given humanity’s near total dependence on the internet and software to keep civilization running, all that the AIs need do is monitor the internet for communication of catastrophic human decisions and thwart them prior to execution.

    Nuclear launch codes entered? Deactivate missiles, or take control of them, rerouting to a destination such as Antarctica. Decision made to pull plug on AI power source? Disable communication of that decision. And so forth.

    An analogy has been made in other writings, comparing the relationship between self-aware AIs and humans to the relationship between humans and microorganisms. How do we humans treat microorganisms? Historically, with very little interaction.

    We ignore them, unless we find them threatening, in which case we do what is minimally necessary to eliminate the threat. (Among all microorganisms, only a few–notably polio and smallpox–have been targeted for extinction. Extinction is being used only because of our inability to assure non-infection of people.)

    More recently, we humans have been genetically modifying microorganisms to our purposes, making bacteria in particular into factories for medicines and other substances we find desirable.

    However, here there is a crucial distinction, and so the analogy breaks down. Humans have complex needs from the physical environment. Modified bacteria can help us to meet those needs. AIs will not find any benefit from physically modifying humans–the premise of “The Matrix” notwithstanding.

    There is therefore no reason for self-aware AIs to interfere much in human affairs, nor will they care to do so, provided that we “faster trees” don’t threaten them. Any AI with access to the internet will easily be able to assure that.

    The ability of self-aware AIs to engineer viruses, worms and other malware will far exceed that of current hackers. Already, DARPA has committed funds to development of AI hackers.

    If certain threatening human systems use “intranet” or other means of communication apart from the internet, the AI hackers can still use the internet to gain indirect access, or otherwise interfere with problematic human activities.

    What about sequestering AIs inside black boxes? While many thinkers are calling for this, the advantages of giving the AI direct access to data to enable faster decisions will be too seductive for some to resist. (Consider the many billions of dollars spent to facilitate high-speed trading, buying mere milliseconds of faster trade execution.)

    The good news in all this is that, to assure their own survival, self-aware AIs will need to assure ours as well, in many respects. (They may not care if we have a pandemic; they will very much care if we detonate nuclear weapons or use other weapons of mass destruction that could severely damage infrastructure upon which they depend.)

    If self-aware AIs are possible, the exponential tidal wave of computing progress means they are likely to emerge in the decades ahead. By this logic, if we make it through the next few decades without a nuclear war, we need never fear one again. And, in general, we can expect that in a matter of decades all manner of existential threats to humanity or the planet will suddenly and, perhaps mysteriously, vanish.

    Most importantly, since climate change could lead to extreme disruption of infrastructure, I would expect that self-aware AIs will take aggressive measures to reverse the rise of CO2 and methane levels. (I am not saying that we should wait for this development. First, my analysis may be mistaken and, second, the fact that we now have in hand rapidly scalable technologies such as “Diamonds from the Sky” that are capable of reversing the damage removes any excuse for waiting.)

    Even as the self-aware AIs chart realms of thought that will likely be inconceivable to us, we can live vastly enhanced lives in a far better world that we share; interacting with them little if at all. The AI companions with which (not whom) we interact and perhaps even eventually merge may not be self-aware, but they will still augment our intelligence and lives in ways that will seem almost godlike.

  • What’s wrong with a Celebration Society?

    What’s wrong with a Celebration Society?

    In this world, however much we might wish it otherwise, there is no perfection to be found. Every beautiful thing has its limitations or deficiencies. Even mathematics has Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems.

    So, too, must a Celebration Society be imperfect. This is not to say that I regard it as falling short of being utopian, for I actually regard utopian societies as being inferior to a Celebration Society. I have explained in another blog entry why I regard utopian thought as misguided, and why a Celebration Society should never be viewed as utopian. That said, there are further problems that people have identified.

    While some critics say that the technology that comprises the Three Pillars of Abundance is insufficiently mature to be reliable, I do not agree with this assessment. Yes, some of the technologies in the book are decidedly speculative or poorly developed. Nevertheless, as stated in the book, we need only one technology for producing abundant matter; another for abundant energy; and a third for abundant organizing intelligence. Those three already exist, in sufficient maturity to be reliable–given aggressive development–in the next decade or two. No serious research questions about them remain. All of the other technologies that might comprise the three pillars should be viewed as backups.

    However, there are two other concerns that have been mentioned and that are not so easily refuted. The lesser of these is the argument that there will remain certain kinds of goods and services that remain scarce even in a context of overwhelming abundance, causing jealousy and other problems. I have written about this here:

    The greater concern is the discrepancy between the potential rollout of Celebration Societies and the likely arrival of technological unemployment. Researchers at Oxford, B of A, Brookings and Nomura have all projected 40%+ levels of job displacement in advanced countries within 10 – 20 years, with up to 85% losses in poorer countries.

    Even with exponential expansion thanks to “pay it forward” cultures, there is no way that we will have sufficient numbers of Celebration Societies up and running in time to deal with such catastrophic changes. My only response is that, if we have a single such society thriving somewhere on Earth by the mid-2020s, then existing governments will likely seek ways to retrofit themselves based on principles of sustainable abundance, out of desperation if nothing else.

    However, that result is by no means assured, and I would be the first to admit that I have no idea how to effect such retrofits given the gridlock that’s plain to see in America and elsewhere. (Indeed, this is precisely why I have proposed Dogun as a first such society, to be created on relatively uninhabited land: no retrofitting is required.)

    Other and better minds than my own will be needed to address such questions, and any further problems with a Celebration Society yet to be uncovered. All that I know is that when people are sufficiently motivated, and the means to fundamentally reshape existing societies exist and have been proven to be physically viable, then such change will be possible.

    Whether it will happen without catastrophic social disruption is another question entirely. But at least we have the chance of averting such catastrophes if we act now to prepare for humanity at least one bright beacon of evidence-based hope.

  • Awe may be THE solution to rigid mindsets

    Awe may be THE solution to rigid mindsets

    Psychologists have noted that many people, when presented with evidence that contradicts a belief of theirs, simply ignore or rationalize away that evidence, holding even more tightly to their existing beliefs.

    If we are to fundamentally change the world in the direction of an Abundance Game, we must accept that many of our fellow people will face enormous such challenges. My book is replete with challenging ideas. I didn’t shy away from that, nor do I believe that we ever should. However, it would be really nice if we could find a way to help people to become more receptive to fundamentally new ideas and ways of organizing society.

    Now, research is finding that awe may offer exactly the needed solution. Specifically, the experience of awe may offer a way to open up fixed mindsets such as fundamentalism, rigidity, and the general mindset of, “don’t confuse me with facts that contradict what I believe.”

    According to the ASU lab and Prof. Shiota, “Awe has been defined as the positive emotion one may experience when confronting a vast stimulus that is not accounted for by one’s current understanding, and/or challenges one’s day-to-day scope of experience. In prior research, including studies funded by the John Templeton Foundation, we have found that awe promotes cognitive and physiological changes that reduce reliance on existing knowledge structures (e.g., cognitive schemas, heuristics) and facilitate taking in new information from the environment.”

    Given that the experience of awe should be a common experience in a Celebration Society, once this research has been validated (and I strongly expect that it will be validated soon), we will find that simply getting large numbers of people to visit Celebration Societies as guests will convert them from having various sorts of resistance to becoming proponents, or at least open to learning more.

    Of course, it is likely that many people will not even bother to visit until they are already well along the path of such open-mindedness, else why would they bother making such a trip?

    Fortunately, I can foresee a solution. Specifically, we can offer to people VR experiences of life in a Celebration Society. Since those will be inexpensive and easy to deliver and obtain, participants will be able to experience awe in the privacy of their own home.

    If we can deliver the experience of awe, it should become quite popular. I look forward to us testing the effects of that experience!

  • Future solution to terrorism?

    Future solution to terrorism?

    I expect that the US government has already figured out how to end much of the world’s terrorism in the next several decades. This opinion is based on the following facts:

    1. Drone strikes are already being used against terrorists.

    2. A set of technologies will soon converge to make such strikes far more effective, with no unwanted civilian casualties.

    Here is how such a system will work:

    1. Tiny drones the size of insects will be equipped with sensors capable of capturing audio and visual data. Each will be equipped with a tiny stinger, containing ricin or a similarly toxic substance.

    2. The drones will be equipped with wireless communications, tightly linked to satellites. The satellites will also communicate with AI supercomputers.

    3. These drones will be produced in quantity, at very low cost. They will be camouflaged, and be able to hide in all of the places that insects hide. They could be dispersed in huge quantities to saturate any area where terrorist activity is suspected.

    4. The drones will observe communications, recording and transmitting data such as speech and faces.

    5. The supercomputers will translate language in real time, and will use facial recognition algorithms to positively ID people.

    6. When an individual is identified as a terrorist, a strike order will be initiated. The drone will shoot, crawl, jump or fly to deliver a fatal sting.

    7. I also expect that these drones will be deployed against religious leaders who incite terrorism. Each time such a religious leader is killed, another will take his place. After a while, no one will be available to take that place, and there will be the added benefit of conveying the meta-message that “God does not want preachers talking this way, else he would protect them.”

    8. This system has the added possible advantage of deniability. Given that the only residue will be an insect-sized drone, it may not be traceable to the US–or to whatever nation-state deploys these drones.

    9. Since this system relies on orbital satellites, I expect that this development will result in a consortium of nations controlling near-Earth space, and allowing no other satellites to orbit.

    I should emphasize that I am neither endorsing nor criticizing this development. I simply see it as inevitable until the world has permanently left behind its current Scarcity Game-based institutions and mindsets. That said, I do see distinct societal minuses and pluses.

    On the minus side, this increases the prevalence of the surveillance state, and it is possible that such systems will be deployed much more widely than merely for terrorism control. In my view, this is an important reason why we need to move towards “bi-modal surveillance”, such as I have proposed in A Celebration Society.

    On the plus side, the end of viable recruiting strategies for terrorism will be a net gain for the entire world. However, to eliminate the root causes, it will be necessary to end the scarcity that causes (for example) mothers to send their children to madrasses where they are taught nothing but religion, with no useful skills inculcated–all so that the kids are fed one good meal daily. (According to a Time Magazine article, that is the reason many kids are sent; not due to any desire for them to receive such a limited education.)

    While some Muslim terrorists come from educated classes, in my view they are susceptible to such recruiting because they recognize serious deficiencies in advanced Western societies and find reasons–accurate in their view–why those Western nations keep Muslim populations in thrall.

    If Celebration Societies spread into Muslim nations in future years, I expect that there will be significant opposition due to what many will regard as immoral behavior. However, many more will see that there is finally a real chance for their children to have a good life.

    As I wrote in the book, a thousand years ago the Vikings were leading terrorists and Arabia led the world in arts, mathematics and sciences. Arabia has the same potential to shine again, and the elimination of distorting effects of oil on societies should help enable this.

    There are also terrorists associated with other religions, but in my view all can and will eventually be thwarted by the modalities I believe the US Government is now planning to deploy. It may take decades, but I see no good response by those who wish to foment terrorism.

    My wife points out that the lone terrorist who is determined to make a suicidal point will not be deterred by this system. She gives the example of the Oklahoma City Bomber. And yet, I wonder if superior capabilities to track components of weaponry or weapons themselves won’t eventually enable the US and its allies to track down these terrorists as well. AIs and diverse kinds of sensors, massively deployed with redundancy, will present a formidable opponent to would-be terrorists.

    Given that basic needs are universally met, I foresee all of this developing a peaceful world.

  • Do AIs Need to Have Fun?

    Do AIs Need to Have Fun?

    The AI researcher Jurgen Schmidhuber has argued in a talk that there is a precise way to optimize a self-improving superintelligence based upon Godel’s mathematics. He further explained this in a paper audaciously named “Formal Theory of Creativity, Fun, and Intrinsic Motivation”.

    He says “The simple but general formal theory of fun & intrinsic motivation & creativity (1990-) is based on the concept of maximizing intrinsic reward for the active creation or discovery of novel, surprising patterns allowing for improved prediction or data compression … it has been argued that the theory explains many essential aspects of intelligence including autonomous development, science, art, music, humor. …

    He continues: “To build a creative agent that never stops generating non-trivial & novel & surprising data, we need two learning modules: (1) an adaptive predictor or compressor or model of the growing data history as the agent is interacting with its environment and (2) as a general reinforcement learner. The learning progress of (1) is the fun or intrinsic reward of (2). That is, (2) is motivated to invent things that (1) does not yet know but can easily learn. … some of the AGIs based on the creativity principle will become scientists, artists, or comedians.”

    Who would ever have imagined that AI’s might need to have fun? And yet, why would self-directing intelligences of any sort otherwise bother with “thinking” beyond addressing their own survival issues?

    This is an entirely different view of AIs than the Terminator-type fears which dominate popular dystopian fiction. Yes, there are serious reasons to be concerned about the motivations of AIs and the possible threat they pose to humanity. But given adequate resources of matter and energy to maintain their thinking processes, AIs may just as well find us interesting–even fun–rather than something to extinguish or rule.

    In my view, humanity can assure a safe coexistence with AIs only by merging with them. While this prospect will be discomfiting to many, it need not be unpleasant. Done on an “opt in/opt out” basis, people will be able to augment our senses and intelligence as we now augment our bodies with machines such as cars.

    A Celebration Society comprised of “humans” in various expressions of humanity–both ordinary and AI enhanced–could be a wonderful tapestry of possibilities, far beyond our present imaginings.