Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Dear Lifeboat Foundation Family & Friends,

A few months back, my Aunt Charlotte wrote, wondering why I — a relentless searcher focused upon human evolution and long-term human survival strategy, had chosen to pursue a PhD in economics (Banking & Finance). I recently replied that, as it turns out, sound economic theory and global financial stability both play central roles in the quest for long-term human survival. In the fifth and final chapter of my recent Masters thesis, On the Problem of Sustainable Economic Development: A Game-Theoretical Solution, I argued (with considerable passion) that much of the blame for the economic crisis of 2008 (which is, essentially still upon us) may be attributed the adoption of Keynesian economics and the dismissal of the powerful counter-arguments tabled by his great rival, F.A. von Hayek. Despite the fact that they remained friends all the way until the very end, their theories are diametrically opposed at nearly every point. There was, however, at least one central point they agreed upon — indeed, Hayek was fond of quoting one of Keynes’ most famous maxims: “The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else” [1].

And, with this nontrivial problem and and the great Hayek vs. Keynes debate in mind, I’ll offer a preview-by-way-of-prelude with this invitation to turn a few pages of On the Problem of Modern Portfolio Theory: In Search of a Timeless & Universal Investment Perspective:

It is perhaps significant that Keynes hated to be addressed as “professor” (he never had that title). He was not primarily a scholar. He was a great amateur in many fields of knowledge and the arts; he had all the gifts of a great politician and a political pamphleteer; and he knew that “the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is generally understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else” [1]. And as he had a mind capable of recasting, in the intervals of his other occupations, the body of current economic theory, he more than any of his compeers had come to affect current thought. Whether it was he who was right or wrong, only the future will show. There are some who fear that if Lenin’s statement is correct that the best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency, of which Keynes himself has reminded us [1], it will be largely due to Keynes’s influence if this prescription is followed.…

Perhaps the explanation of much that is puzzling about Keynes’s mind lies in the supreme confidence he had acquired in his power to play on public opinion as a supreme master plays on his instrument. He loved to pose in the role of a Cassandra whose warnings were not listened to. But, in fact, his early success in swinging round public opinion about the peace treaties had given him probably even an exaggerated estimate of his powers. I shall never forget one occasion – I believe the last time that I met him – when he startled me by an uncommonly frank expression of this. It was early in 1946, shortly after he had returned from the strenuous and exhausting negotiations in Washington on the British loan. Earlier in the evening he had fascinated the company by a detailed account of the American market for Elizabethan books which in any other man would have given the impression that he had devoted most of his time in the United States to that subject. Later a turn in the conversation made me ask him whether he was not concerned about what some of his disciples were making of his theories. After a not very complimentary remark about the persons concerned, he proceeded to reassure me by explaining that those ideas had been badly needed at the time he had launched them. He continued by indicating that I need not be alarmed; if they should ever become dangerous I could rely upon him again quickly to swing round public opinion – and he indicated by a quick movement of his hand how rapidly that would be done. But three months later he was dead [2].

As always, any and all comments, criticisms, thoughts, and suggestions are welcome!

Bidding you Godspeed,

Matt Funk, FLS, PhD Candidate, University of Malta, Dept. of Banking & Finance

[1]. KE YNES, J. (1920). The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (Palgrave Macmillan, London).

[2]. HAYEK, F. (1952). Review of R.F. Harrod’s ‘The Life of John Maynard Keynes’. J of Mod Hist 24:195–198.

Perhaps the most important lesson, which I have learned from Mises, was a lesson located outside economics itself. What Mises taught us in his writings, in his lectures, in his seminars, and in perhaps everything he said, was that economics—yes, and I mean sound economics, Austrian economics—is primordially, crucially important. Economics is not an intellectual game. Economics is deadly serious. The very future of mankind —of civilization—depends, in Mises’ view, upon widespread understanding of, and respect for, the principles of economics.

This is a lesson, which is located almost entirely outside economics proper. But all Mises’ work depended ultimately upon this tenet. Almost invariably, a scientist is motivated by values not strictly part of the science itself. The lust for fame, for material rewards—even the pure love of truth—these goals may possibly be fulfilled by scientific success, but are themselves not identified by science as worthwhile goals. What drove Mises, what accounted for his passionate dedication, his ability to calmly ignore the sneers of, and the isolation imposed by academic contemporaries, was his conviction that the survival of mankind depends on the development and dissemination of Austrian economics…

Austrian economics is not simply a matter of intellectual problem solving, like a challenging crossword puzzle, but literally a matter of the life or death of the human race.

–Israel M. Kirzner, Society for the Development of Austrian Economics Lifetime Achievement Award Acceptance Speech, 2006

Dear Lifeboat Foundation family & friends,

This 243-page thesis and this 16-page executive summary deliver a tenable, game-theoretical solution to this complex global dilemma:

Our narrative tables evolutionarily stable strategy for the problem of sustainable economic development on earth and other earth-like planets. In order to accomplish the task at hand with so few words, we hit the ground running with an exploration of Bertrand Russell’s conjecture that economic power is a derivative function of military power. Next we contextualize the formidable obstacle presented of teleological thinking. Third, we introduce Truly Non-cooperative Games – axioms and complimentary negotiation models developed to analyze a myriad of politico-economic problems, including the problem of sustainable economic development. Here we present The Principle of Relative Insularity, a unified theory of value which unites economics, astrophysics, and biology. Finally, we offer a synthetic narrative in which we explore several crucial logical implications that follow from our findings.

Those interested in background details and/or a deeper exploration of the logical implications that follow from this theoretical development may wish to pursue a few pages of an comprehensive, creative, and thoroughly exhaustive letter of introduction to this abridged synthesis: The Principles of Economics & Evolution: A Survival Guide for the Inhabitants of Small Islands, Including the Inhabitants of the Small Island of Earth.

Those interested in considering how this game-theoretical solution informs “evolutionarily stable” investment strategy may also wish to take in a brief overview of my PhD research: On the Problem of Modern Portfolio Theory: In Search of a Timeless & Universal Investment Perspective.

Please feel free to post all thoughts, comments, criticisms, and suggestions.

Thanks for reading!

Sincerely,

Matt Funk, FLS, BSc, MA, MFA, PhD Candidate, University of Malta, Department of Banking & Finance

PS: The author would like to thank the Lifeboat Foundation, Linnean Society of London, Property and Environment Research Center, Society for Range Management, Professors Kurial, Nagarajan, Baldacchino, Fielding, Falzon (University of Malta), Lockwood (University of Wyoming), MacKinnon (Memorial University), Sloan (Lancaster University), McKenna (Notre Dame), Schlicht (Ludwig-Maximilians- Universität München) and his dedicated team at MPRA, author & astronomer Jeff Kanipe, Dr Willard S. Boyle, Dr John Harris, fellow students, family, and friends for their priceless guidance, support, and encouragement. He also sends out a very special thanks to Professors Frey (Universität Zürich), Selten (Universität Bonn), and Nash (Princeton University) for their originality, independence, and inspiration.

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.

But time is short and I am well-positioned to simplify because all of the hats I wear fall under a single umbrella: I am a friend of the Lifeboat Foundation (where I am honoured to serve on the Human Trajectories, Economics, Finance, and Diplomacy Advisory Boards), a foundation “dedicated to encouraging scientific advancements while helping humanity survive existential risks.”

Almost everything I do – including the roles, associations, and relationships noted above, supports this mission.

It’s been nearly a year since Eric generously publish Principles of Economics & Evolution: A Survival Guide for the Inhabitants of Small Islands, Including the Inhabitants of the Small Island of Earth, and since that time I have been fortunate to receive many interesting and insightful emails packed full of comments and questions; thus I would like to take this opportunity to introduce this work – which represents three years of research.

Those interested in taking the plunge and downloading the file above may note that this discourse

tables an evolutionarily stable strategy for the problem of sustainable economic development – on islands and island-like planets (such as Earth), alike, and thus this treatise yields, in essence, a long-term survival guide for the inhabitants of Earth.

Thus you may expect a rather long, complex discourse.

This is indeed what you may find – a 121 page synthesis, including this 1,233 page Digital Supplement.

As Nassim Nicholas Taleb remarked in Fooled by Randomness:

I do not dispute that arguments should be simplified to their maximum potential; but people often confuse complex ideas that cannot be simplified into a media-friendly statement as symptomatic of a confused mind. MBAs learn the concept of clarity and simplicity—the five-minute manager take on things. The concept may apply to the business plan for a fertilizer plant, but not to highly probabilistic arguments—which is the reason I have anecdotal evidence in my business that MBAs tend to blow up in financial markets, as they are trained to simplify matters a couple of steps beyond their requirement.

But there is indeed a short-cut — in fact, there are at least two short-cuts.

First, perhaps the most direct pleasant approach to the summit is a condensed, 237 page thesis: On the Problem of Sustainable Economic Development: A Game-Theoretical Solution.

But for those pressed for time and/or those merely interested in sampling a few short, foundational works (perhaps to see if you’re interested in following me down the rabbit hole), the entire theoretical content of this 1,354-page report (report + digital supplement) may be gleamed from 5 of the 23 works included within the digital supplement. These working papers and publications are also freely available from the links below – I’ll briefly relate how these key puzzle pieces fit together:

The first publication offers a 13-page over-view of our “problem situation”: On the Origin of Mass Extinctions: Darwin’s Nontrivial Error.

Second is a 21-page game-theoretical development which frames the problem of sustainable economic development in the light of evolution – perhaps 70% of our theoretical content lies here: On the Truly Noncooperative Game of Life on Earth: In Search of the Unity of Nature & Evolutionary Stable Strategy.

Next comes a 113-page gem which attempts to capture the spirit and essence of comparative island studies, a course charted by Alexander von Humboldt and followed by every great naturalist since (of which, more to follow). This is an open letter to the Fellows of the Linnean Society of London, a comparative study of two, diametrically opposed economic development plans, both put into action in that fateful year of 1968 — one on Prince Edward Island, the other on Mustique. This exhaustive work also holds the remainder of the foundation for our complete solution to this global dilemma – and best of all, those fairly well-versed in game theory need not read it all, the core solution may be quickly digested on pages 25–51:
On the Truly Noncooperative Game of Island Life: Introducing a Unified Theory of Value & Evolutionary Stable ‘Island’ Economic Development Strategy.

Fourth comes an optional, 19-page exploration that presents a theoretical development also derived and illuminated through comparative island study (including a mini-discourse on methods). UPEI Island Studies Programme readers with the time and inclination for only one relatively short piece, this may be the one to explore. And, despite the fact that this work supports the theoretical content linked above, it’s optional because there’s nothing new here – in fact, these truths have been well known and meticulously documented for over 1,000 years – but it may prove to be a worthwhile, engaging, and interesting read nonetheless, because these truths have become so unfashionable that they’ve slipped back into relative obscurity: On the Problem of Economic Power: Lessons from the Natural History of the Hawaiian Archipelago.

And finally I’ll highlight another optional, brief communique – although this argument may be hopelessly compressed, here, in 3 pages, is my entire solution:
Truly Non-Cooperative Games: A Unified Theory.

Yes, Lifeboat Foundation family and friends, you may wish to pause to review the abstracts to these core, foundational works, or you may even wish to review them completely and put the puzzle pieces together yourself (the pages linked above total 169 – or a mere 82 pages if you stick to the core excerpt highlighted in my Linnean Letter), but, as the great American novelist Henry Miller remarked:

In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest.

Why?

That’s yet another great, simple question that may require several complex answers, but I’ll give you three:

#1). First and foremost, because explaining is a difficult art.

As Richard Dawkins duly noted:

Explaining is a difficult art. You can explain something so that your reader understands the words; and you can explain something so that the reader feels it in the marrow of his bones. To do the latter, it sometimes isn’t enough to lay the evidence before the reader in a dispassionate way. You have to become an advocate and use the tricks of the advocate’s trade.

Of course much of this depends upon the reader – naturally some readers may find that less (explanation) is more. Others, however, may find benefit from reading even more (more, that is, than my report and the digital supplement). You may find suggested preliminary and complimentary texts in the SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY (below). The report itself includes these and many more. In short, the more familiar readers may be with some or all of these works, the less explaining they may require.

#2). No matter how much explaining you do, it’s actually never enough, and, as Abraham Lincoln wisely noted at Gettysburg, the work is never done. For more one this important point, let’s consider the words of Karl Popper:

When we propose a theory, or try to understand a theory, we also propose, or try to understand, its logical implications; that is, all those statements which follow from it. But this… is a hopeless task: there is an infinity of unforeseeable nontrivial statements belonging to the informative content of any theory, and an exactly corresponding infinity of statements belonging to its logical content. We can therefore never know or understand all the implications of any theory, or its full significance.
This, I think, is a surprising result as far as it concerns logical content; though for informative content it turns out to be rather natural…. It shows, among other things, that understanding a theory is always an infinite task, and that theories can in principle be understood better and better. It also shows that, if we wish to understand a theory better, what we have to do first is to discover its logical relation to those existing problems and existing theories which constitute what we may call the ‘problem situation’.
Admittedly, we also try to look ahead: we try to discover new problems raised by our theory. But the task is infinite, and can never be completed.

In fact, when it comes right down to it, my treatise – in fact, my entire body of research, is, in reality, merely an exploration of the “infinity of unforeseeable nontrivial statements belonging to the informative content” of the theory for which Sir Karl Popper is famous: his solution to David Hume’s problem of induction (of which you’ll hear a great deal if you brave the perilous seas of thought in the works introduced and linked herewith).

#3). Okay, this is a tricky one, but here it goes: Fine, a reasonable skeptic may counter, I get it, it’s hard to explain and there’s a lot of explaining to do – but if 100% of the theoretical content may be extracted from less than 200 pages, then doesn’t that mean you could cut about 1,000 pages?

My answer?

Maybe.

But then again, maybe not.

The reality of the situation is this: neither I nor anyone else can say for sure – this is known as the mind-body problem. In essence, given the mind-body problem, not only am I unable to know exactly how to explain something I know, moreover, I’m not even able to know how it is that I know what I know. I’m merely able to guess. Although this brief introduction is not the proper time nor place to explore the contents of this iteration of Pandora’s Box, those interested in a thorough exploration of this particular problem situation would be well-served with F.A. von Hayek’s The Sensory Order: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Theoretical Psychology (1952). But, in short, the bulk of the Digital Supplement and much of the report itself is merely an attempt to combat the mind-body problem – an attempt to put down as much of the history (and methodology) of this theoretical development as possible. As Descartes remarked at the outset of a treatise on scientific method:

This Tract is put forth merely as a history, or, if you will, as a tale, in which, amid some examples worthy of imitation, there will be found, perhaps, as many more which it were advisable not to follow, I hope it will prove useful to some without being hurtful to any, and that my openness will find some favor with all.

Perhaps you may grasp my theoretical development – but perhaps you may grasp it in a matter by which I did not intend for you to grasp it – perhaps I had stumbled upon a truth in another work within my digital supplement that may make it all clear. Or, perhaps I’ve got it all wrong, and perhaps you – by following in my footsteps through the historical course of this theoretical development (faithfully chronicled in the digital supplement) – may be able to help show me my error (and then, of course we may both rejoice); Malthus felt likewise:

If [the author] should succeed in drawing the attention of more able men to what he conceives to be the principal difficulty in… society and should, in consequence, see this difficulty removed, even in theory, he will gladly retract his present opinions and rejoice in a conviction of his error.

Anticipating another point regarding style: This report is very, very unusual insofar as style is concerned. It’s personal, highly opinionated, and indulges artistic license at almost every turn in the road. In fact, you may also find this narrative a touch artistic – yet it’s all true. As Norman Maclean remarked in A River Runs Trough It, “You like to tell true stories, don’t you?’ he asked, and I answered, ‘Yes, I like to tell stories that are true.’”

I like to tell stories that are true, too, and if you like to read them, then this epic journey of discovery may be for you. I speak to this point at length, but, in short, I submit that there is a method to the madness (in fact, the entire report may also be regarded as an unusual discourse on method).

Why have I synthesized this important theoretical development in an artistic narrative? In part, because Bruno Frey (2002) clearly stated why that’s the way it should be.

But I also did so in hopes that it may help readers grasp what it’s really all about; as the great Russian-American novelist Ayn Rand detailed:

Man’s profound need of art lies in the fact that his cognitive faculty is conceptual, i.e., that he acquires knowledge by means of abstractions, and needs the power to bring his widest metaphysical abstractions into his immediate, perceptual awareness. Art fulfills this need: by means of a selective re-creation, it concretizes man’s fundamental view of himself and of existence. It tells man, in effect, which aspects of his experience are to be regarded as essential, significant, important. In this sense, art teaches man how to use his consciousness.

Speaking of scientific method: I have suggested that my curiously creative narrative may offer some insight into the non-existent subject of scientific method — so please download for much more along these lines — but I want to offer an important note, especially for colleagues, friends, students, and faculty at UPEI: I sat in on a lecture last winter where I was surprised to learn that “island studies” had been recently invented by Canada research chair – thus I thought perhaps I should offer a correction and suggest where island studies really began:

Although it is somewhat well known that Darwin and Wallace pieced the theory of evolution together independently, yet at roughly the same time – Wallace, during his travels through the Malay archipelago, and Darwin, during his grand circumnavigation of the island of Earth onboard the Beagle (yes, the Galapagos archipelago played a key role, but perhaps not as important as has been suggested in the past). But what is not as commonly know is that both Darwin and Wallace had the same instructor in the art of comparative island studies. Indeed, Darwin and Wallace both traveled with identical copies of the same, treasured book: Alexander von Humboldt’s Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent. Both also testified to the fundamental role von Humboldt played by inspiring their travels and, moreover, developing of their theories.

Thus, I submit that island studies may have been born with the publication of this monumental work in 1814; or perhaps, as Berry (2009) chronicled in Hooker and Islands (see SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY, below), it may have been Thomas Pennant or Georg Forster:

George Low of Orkney provided, together with Gilbert White, a significant part of the biological information used by pioneering travel writer Thomas Pennant, who was a correspondent of both Joseph Banks and Linnaeus [Pennant dedicated his Tour in Scotland and Voyage to the Hebrides (1774–76) to Banks and published Banks’s description of Staffa, which excited much interest in islands; Banks had travelled with James Cook and visited many islands; Georg Forster, who followed Banks as naturalist on Cook’s second voyage inspired Alexander Humboldt, who in turn Darwin treated as a model.

But whomever it may have been — or whomever you may ultimately choose to follow — Humboldt certainly towers over the pages of natural history, and Gerard Helferich’s Humboldt’s Cosmo’s: Alexander von Humboldt and the Latin American Journey that Changed the WayWe See the World (2004) tells Humboldt’s story incredibly well. This treasure also happens to capture the essence of Humboldt’s method, Darwin’s method, Wallace’s method, Mayr’s method, Gould’s method, and it most certainly lays out the map I have attempted to follow:

Instead of trying to pigeonhole the natural world into prescribed classification, Kant had argued, scientists should work to discover the underlying scientific principles at work, since only those general tenets could fully explain the myriad natural phenomena. Thus Kant had extended the unifying tradition of Thales, Newton, Descartes, et al.… Humboldt agreed with Kant that a different approach to science was needed, one that could account for the harmony of nature… The scientific community, despite prodigious discoveries, seemed to have forgotten the Greek vision of nature as an integrated whole.… ‘Rather than discover new, isolated facts I preferred linking already known ones together,’ Humboldt later wrote. Science could only advance ‘by bringing together all the phenomena and creations which the earth has to offer. In this great sequence of cause and effect, nothing can be considered in isolation.’ It is in this underlying connectedness that the genuine mysteries of nature would be found. This was the deeper truth that Humboldt planned to lay bare – a new paradigm from a New World. For only through travel, despite its accompanying risks, could a naturalist make the diverse observations necessary to advance science beyond dogma and conjecture. Although nature operated as a cohesive system, the world was also organized into distinct regions whose unique character was the result of all the interlocking forces at work in that particular place. To uncover the unity of nature, one must study the various regions of the world, comparing and contrasting the natural processes at work in each. The scientist, in other words, must become an explorer.

With these beautiful words in mind and the spirit of adventure in the heart, I thank you for listening to this long story about an even longer story, please allow me to be your guide through an epic adventure.

But for now, in closing, I’d like to briefly return to the topic at hand: human survival on Earth.

A few days ago, Frenchman Alain Robert climbed the world’s tallest building – Burj Khalifa – in Dubai.

After the six hour climb, Robert told Gulf News, “My biggest fear is to waste my time on earth.”

I certainly share Robert’s fear – Alexander von Humboldt, Darwin, and Wallace did, too, by the way.

But then Robert added, “To live, we don’t need much, just a roof over our heads some food and drink and that’s it … everything else is superficial.”

I’m afraid that’s where Robert and I part ways – and if you would kindly join me on a journey through The Principles of Economics & Evolution: A Survival Guide for the Inhabitants of Small Islands, Including the Inhabitants of the Small Island of Earth – I would love to explain why Robert’s assertion is simply not true.

Please feel free to post comments or contact me with any thoughts, comments, questions, or suggestions.

MWF
Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island

PS: My report suggests many preliminary and complimentary readings – but I’ve revisited this topic with the aim of producing a selected bibliography of the most condensed and readily accessible (i.e, freely available online) works which may help prepare the reader for my report and the foundational theoretical discourses noted and linked above. Most are short papers, but a few great books and dandy dissertations may be necessary as well!

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

BERRY, R. (2009). Hooker and islands. Bio Journal Linn Soc 96:462–481.

DARWIN, C., WALLACE, A. (1858). On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection. Proc Linn Soc 3:45–62.

DARWIN, C., et. al. (1849). A Manual of Scientific Enquiry; Prepared for the use of Her Majesty’s Navy : and Adapted for Travellers in General (Murray, London).

DOBZHANSK Y, T. (1973). Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution. Amer Biol Teacher 35:125- 129.

EINSTEIN, A. (1920). Relativity: The Special and General Theory (Methuen & Co., London).

FIELDING, R. (2010). Artisanal Whaling in the Atlantic: A Comparative Study of Culture, Conflict, and Conservation in St. Vincent and the Faroe Islands. A PhD dissertation (Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge).

FREY, B. (2002). Publishing as Prostitution? Choosing Between One‘s Own Ideas and Academic Failure. Pub Choice 116:205–223.

FUNK, M. (2010a). Truly Non-Cooperative Games: A Unified Theory. MPRA 22775:1–3.

FUNK, M. (2008). On the Truly Noncooperative Game of Life on Earth: In Search of the Unity of Nature & Evolutionary Stable Strategy. MPRA 17280:1–21.

FUNK, M. (2009a). On the Origin of Mass Extinctions: Darwin’s Nontrivial Error. MPRA 20193:1–13.

FUNK, M. (2009b). On the Truly Noncooperative Game of Island Life: Introducing a Unified Theory of Value & Evolutionary Stable ‘Island’ Economic Development Strategy. MPRA 19049:1–113.

FUNK, M. (2009c). On the Problem of Economic Power: Lessons from the Natural History of the Hawaiian Archipelago. MPRA 19371:1–19.

HELFERICH, G. (2004). Humboldt’s Cosmo’s: Alexander von Humboldt and the Latin American Journey that Changed the Way We See the World (Gotham Books, New York).

HOLT, C., ROTH, A. (2004). The Nash equilibrium: A perspective. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 101:3999–4000.

HAYEK, F. (1974). The Pretense of Knowledge. Nobel Memorial Lecture, 11 December 1974. 1989 reprint. Amer Econ Rev 79:3–7.

HUMBOLDT, A., BONPLAND, A. (1814). Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent (Longman, London).

KANIPE, J. (2009). The Cosmic Connection: How Astronomical Events Impact Life on Earth (Prometheus, Amherst).

MAYNARD SMITH, J. (1982). Evolution and the Theory of Games (Cambridge Univ, New York).

MAYR, E. (2001). What Evolution Is (Basic Books, New York).

NASH, J., et., al. (1994). The Work of John Nash in Game Theory. Prize Seminar, December 8, 1994 (Sveriges Riksbank, Stockholm).

NASH, J. (1951). Non-Cooperative Games. Ann Math 54:286–295.

NASH, J. (1950). Two-Person Cooperative Games. RAND P-172 (RAND, Santa Monica).

POPPER, K. (1999). All life is Problem Solving (Routledge, London).

POPPER, K. (1992). In Search of a Better World (Routledge, London).

ROGERS, D., EHRLICH, P. (2008). Natural selection and cultural rates of change. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 105:3416 −3420.

SCHWEICKART, R., et. al. (2006). Threat Mitigation: The Gravity Tractor. NASA NEO Workshop, Vail, Colorado.

SCHWEICKART, R., et. al. (2006). Threat Mitigation: The Asteroid Tugboat. NASA NEO Workshop, Vail, Colorado.

STIGLER, G. (1982). Process and Progress of Economics. J of Pol Econ 91:529–545.

TALEB, N. (2001). Fooled by Randomness (Texere, New York).

WEIBULL, J. (1998). WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED FROM EVOLUTIONARY GAME THEORY SO FAR? (Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm).

WALLACE, A. (1855). On the Law Which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species. Ann of Nat History 16:184–195.

California Dreams Video 1 from IFTF on Vimeo.

INSTITUTE FOR THE FUTURE ANNOUNCES CALIFORNIA DREAMS:
A CALL FOR ENTRIES ON IMAGINING LIFE IN CALIFORNIA IN 2020

Put yourself in the future and show us what a day in your life looks like. Will California keep growing, start conserving, reinvent itself, or collapse? How are you living in this new world? Anyone can enter,anyone can vote; anyone can change the future of California!

California has always been a frontier—a place of change and innovation, reinventing itself time and again. The question is, can California do it again? Today the state is facing some of its toughest challenges. Launching today, IFTF’s California Dreams is a competition with an urgent challenge to recruit citizen visions of the future of California—ideas for what it will be like to live in the state in the next decade—to start creating a new California dream.

California Dreams calls upon the public look 3–10 years into the future and tell a story about a single day in their own life. Videos, graphical entries, and stories will be accepted until January 15, 2011. Up to five winners will be flown to Palo Alto, California in March to present their ideas and be connected to other innovative thinkers to help bring these ideas to life. The grand prize winner will receive the $3,000 IFTF Roy Amara Prize for Participatory Foresight.

“We want to engage Californians in shaping their lives and communities” said Marina Gorbis, Executive Director of IFTF. “The California Dreams contest will outline the kinds of questions and dilemmas we need to be analyzing, and provoke people to ask deep questions.”

Entries may come from anyone anywhere and can include, but are not limited to, the following: Urban farming, online games replacing school, a fast food tax, smaller, sustainable housing, rise in immigrant entrepreneurs, mass migration out of state. Participants are challenged to use IFTF’s California Dreaming map as inspiration, and picture themselves in the next decade, whether it be a future of growth, constraint, transformation, or collapse.

The grand prize, called the Roy Amara Prize, is named for IFTF’s long-time president Roy Amara (1925−2000) and is part of a larger program of social impact projects at IFTF honoring his legacy, known as The Roy Amara Fund for Participatory Foresight, the Fund uses participatory tools to translate foresight research into concrete actions that address future social challenges.

PANEL OF COMPETITION JUDGES

Gina Bianchini, Entrepreneur in Residence, Andreessen Horowitz

Alexandra Carmichael, Research Affiliate, Institute for the Future, Co-Founder, CureTogether, Director, Quantified Self

Bill Cooper, The Urban Water Research Center, UC Irvine

Poppy Davis, Executive Director, EcoFarm

Jesse Dylan, Founder of FreeForm, Founder of Lybba

Marina Gorbis, Executive Director, Institute for the Future

David Hayes-Bautista, Professor of Medicine and Health Services,UCLA School of Public Health

Jessica Jackley, CEO, ProFounder

Xeni Jardin, Partner, Boing Boing, Executive Producer, Boing Boing Video

Jane McGonigal, Director of Game Research and Development, Institute for the Future

Rachel Pike, Clean Tech Analyst, Draper Fisher Jurvetson

Howard Rheingold, Visiting Professor, Stanford / Berkeley, and theInstitute of Creative Technologies

Tiffany Shlain, Founder, The Webby Awards
Co-founder International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences

Larry Smarr
Founding Director, California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), Professor, UC San Diego

DETAILS

WHAT: An online competition for visions of the future of California in the next 10 years, along one of four future paths: growth, constraint, transformation, or collapse. Anyone can enter, anyone can vote, anyone can change the future of California.

WHEN: Launch – October 26, 2010
Deadline for entries — January 15, 2011
Winners announced — February 23, 2011
Winners Celebration — 6 – 9 pm March 11, 2011 — open to the public

WHERE: http://californiadreams.org

For more information on the California Dreaming map or to download the pdf, click here.

Did you know that many researchers would like to discover light-catching components in order to convert more of the sun’s power into carbon-free electric power?

A new study reported in the journal Applied Physics Letters in August this year (published by the American Institute of Physics), explains how solar energy could potentially be collected by using oxide materials that have the element selenium. A team at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, embedded selenium in zinc oxide, a relatively affordable material that could make more efficient use of the sun’s power.

The team noticed that even a relatively small amount of selenium, just 9 percent of the mostly zinc-oxide base, significantly enhanced the material’s efficiency in absorbing light.

The main author of this study, Marie Mayer (a fourth-year University of California, Berkeley doctoral student) affirms that photo-electrochemical water splitting, that means using energy from the sun to cleave water into hydrogen and oxygen gases, could potentially be the most fascinating future application for her labor. Managing this reaction is key to the eventual production of zero-emission hydrogen powered motors, which hypothetically will run only on water and sunlight.

Journal Research: Marie A. Mayer et all. Applied Physics Letters, 2010 [link: http://link.aip.org/link/APPLAB/v97/i2/p022104/s1]

The conversion efficiency of a PV cell is the proportion of sunlight energy that the photovoltaic cell converts to electric power. This is very important when discussing Pv products, because improving this efficiency is vital to making Photovoltaic energy competitive with more traditional sources of energy (e.g., fossil fuels).

For comparison, the earliest Photovoltaic products converted about 1%-2% of sunlight energy into electric energy. Today’s Photo voltaic devices convert 7%-17% of light energy into electric energy. Of course, the other side of the equation is the money it costs to produce the PV devices. This has been improved over the decades as well. In fact, today’s PV systems generate electricity at a fraction of the cost of early PV systems.

In the 1990s, when silicon cells were 2 times as thick, efficiencies were much smaller than nowadays and lifetimes were reduced, it may well have cost more energy to make a cell than it could generate in a lifetime. In the meantime, the technological know-how has progressed significantly, and the energy repayment time (defined as the recovery time necessary for generating the energy spent to produce the respective technical energy systems) of a modern photovoltaic module is generally from 1 to 4 years depending on the module type and location.

Usually, thin-film technologies — despite having comparatively low conversion efficiencies — obtain significantly shorter energy repayment times than standard systems (often < 1 year). With a normal lifetime of 20 to 30 years, this means that contemporary photovoltaic cells are net energy producers, i.e. they generate significantly more energy over their lifetime than the energy expended in producing them.

The author — Rosalind Sanders writes for the solar pool cover ratings blog, her personal hobby weblog focused on tips to help home owners to save energy with solar power.

Abstract

J. Storrs Hall’s Weather Machine is a relatively simple nanofabricated machine system with significant consequences in politics and ethics.

After a brief technical description, this essay analyzes the ends, means, and circumstances of a feasible method of controlling the weather, and includes some predictions regarding secondary effects.


Article

When a brilliant person possesses a fertile imagination and significant technical expertise, he or she is likely to imagine world-changing inventions. J. Storrs Hall is the epitome of those geniuses, and his Utility Fog [1] and Space Pier [2] are brilliant engineering designs that will change the world once they are reduced to practice. His most recent invention is the Weather Machine [3], which has been examined by none other than Robert Freitas and found to be technically reasonable—-though Freitas may have found an improved method for climate control that avoids some of the problems discussed below [4].

The Hall Weather Machine is a thin global cloud consisting of small transparent balloons that can be thought of as a programmable and reversible greenhouse gas because it shades or reflects the amount of sunlight that hits the upper stratosphere. These balloons are each between a millimeter and a centimeter in diameter, made of a few-nanometer thick diamondoid membrane. Each balloon is filled with hydrogen to enable it to float at an altitude of 60,000 to 100,000 feet, high above the clouds. It is bisected by an adjustable sheet, and also includes solar cells, a small computer, a GPS receiver to keep track of its location, and an actuator to occasionally (and relatively slowly) move the bisecting membrane between vertical and horizontal orientations. Just like with a regular high-altitude balloon, the heavier control and energy storage systems would be on the bottom of the balloon to automatically set the vertical axis without requiring any energy. The balloon would also have a water vapor/hydrogen generator system for altitude control, giving it the same directional navigation properties that an ordinary hot-air balloon has when it changes altitudes to take advantage of different wind directions at different altitudes.

Four versions of balloons are possible, depending on nature of the bisecting membrane.

  • Version 1. Transparent/Opaque: The bisecting membrane is opaque, and rotates from the horizontal to the vertical in order to control the amount of solar radiation that it allows through (the membrane might be replaced by a immobile liquid crystal that has two basic states: transparent and opaque).
  • Version 2. Emissivity Control: The membrane is white on one side, black on the other. When it is horizontal, either side can be presented upwards; white to scatter the solar radiation into space, black to absorb it into the upper atmosphere.
  • Version 3. Reflection Control: The membrane is black on one side, with a reflective metallic coating on the other. This can direct solar energy in specific directions to increase the effectiveness of solar farms, or to steer hurricanes. Another feature of this version is that it enables the multiple reflection of light from sunlit to dark areas.
  • Version 4. Advanced Photon Control: The balloon would be filled with an aerogel-density metamaterial that could not only control reflectivity via diffraction, but also control the frequency and phase of outgoing photons (with or without stimulated emission). Technically, designing and controlling these kinds of balloons would be a magnitude or two more complex than the earlier versions.

What is impressive about the Weather Machine is that by controlling a tenth of one percent of solar radiation is enough to force global climate in any direction we want. One percent is enough to change regional climate, and ten percent is enough for serious weather control.


The Problems

Every human-designed system has unintended bugs, and may cause negative consequences. That is why we have professional engineering societies, non-profit standards organizations, and government bureaucracies—to help protect the public. There is, therefore, some concern that the Weather Machine will accidentally cause catastrophic weather. However, given the accuracy of weather predictions and global warming models, and the slow movement of masses of air, and the fact that humans are in the loop (and in an emergency, could use a failsafe mode to force all the balloons to drop from the sky), the danger of accidental harm is minimal. At any rate, this article is more concerned with the ethical issues, with accidental unintended consequences to be examined elsewhere.

Many people would be happy to stop global warming, though others (currently living in Siberia or Iceland) might be happier without brutally cold winters. This level of climate control raises some problematic issues that may pit one group of people against another. The intended results could be taken care of the same way we normally take of similar issues in a representative democracy—we vote. This sounds nice, except that we’re not just talking about the United States (or any single nation), but the entire world. And we all know how well the United Nations handles its affairs. Perhaps deciding whether or not we want global warming is a small enough decision that the U.N. can handle it. If not, we can always rely on the world government that evil geniuses want to run, and that conspiracy theorists worry about.

Within the USA, trial lawyers would be especially interested in unintended effects, including trivial ones like rain on parades, or more serious ones like floods and tornadoes. The tremendous inefficiency of this legal nightmare might be meliorated by a “weather tax” that would fund a program to recompense people who are willing to put up with bad weather.

The more advanced versions of balloons are problematic because then the Weather Machine wouldn’t just control the intensity of solar and terrestrial radiation, but could also redirect and concentrate energy. In addition to increasing the effectiveness of solar farms, this would give more powerful and precise control over the weather. Unfortunately, energy concentration is exactly the capability that transforms the Weather Machine into an awesome weapon of mass destruction. Concentrated solar energy has not been used much since 212 BCE [5] when Archimedes used it to set fire the Roman ships that were attacking his city-state of Syracuse. However, the global coordination of the reflective Weather Machine allows bouncing concentrated solar energy around the globe, making it possible to set cities on fire. By fire, I mean the type of fire caused by dropping a nuclear bomb per second for as long as you want. The potential for abuse is rather large.

The most advanced version of the balloon is even better or worse—it contains an aerogel-density (i.e. extremely light and porous) programmable metamaterial that controls the frequency, direction, and phase of the reflected or transmitted radiation. Fully deployed, such a Weather Machine could become a planet-sized telescope—or laser. Small portions of such a system could be used as an effective missile defense system. Configured as a planetary laser, it might be able to defend Earth against stray asteroids such as Apopois, which is due for a flyby in 2029 (and might impact in 2036—especially if some terrorist group places an ion motor on it). Also, a planetary laser could push fairly large rockets rather quickly to Alpha Centari. But if you thought Version 3 was a weapon of mass destruction, Version 4 makes them, and the Transformers look like children’s toys (No wait—that’s what they are ). Optical divergence (currently 1 miliradian for commercially available lasers) will not keep planets from shooting at each other and frying them in their orbits, but the lack of energy density will—unless the balloons can store energy. On the other hand, even primitive laser focusing mechanisms will work fine for lunar infighting.

Given the almost unimaginable weaponization of the Hall Weather Machine, an important reaction is to ask if there any defenses against them. There are two types: those that attack the control algorithms (i.e. cyberware attacks) and those that physically attack the balloons, such as swarms of hunter-killer balloons or larger high-flying “carnivores”. In addition, there are some de-weaponization strategies that will be discussed below.


Ethical Issues

In some ways, ethics is like engineering–solving big problems is most easily done by splitting the problem in to smaller pieces. This means that the best way to determine the ethics of any action (such as building and operating a weather machine) is to determine the ethical considerations of each of the ends, means, and circumstances.

As far as “ends” are concerned, the weather machine passes with flying colors, if nothing else because it can fix global warming (or impending ice ages). Depending on a number of variables, we might even increase the number of nice weekends and increase the biome sizes of certain species.

One counter to these benefits claims that by controlling the weather we would be playing God and that the Weather Machine is equivalent to eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. In my view, if God didn’t like us messing with technology, then He should have let us know a long time ago. At any rate, the Bible doesn’t speak against technology per se. Admittedly, the Bible’s tower of Babel story does condemn the pride and arrogance that may result from technology, but that is another story.

A non-theistic (but just as religious) counter to the main intent of the weather machine is made by deep ecology environmentalists. They often claim that controlling the weather is unnatural, that Mother Nature bats last, or that the very idea of weather control is the reason that the global human population should be reduced to the low millions. These sort of arguments represent metaphysical differences regarding the value of individual human beings and the stewardship role we should have with the environment, and I’m not sure how we can address those issues in a book, much less in 3,500 words or less.

The “means” judges the actual methods used to control the climate and the weather. In this case, modulating the Sun’s energy with many small, high-altitude balloons seems ethically neutral. Even the transformation of a 100 million tons of carbon into diamondoid balloons is ethically neutral (unless one gets the carbon from the living bodies of endangered animals, pre-born fetuses, ethnic minorities, or other humans). By some viewpoints, the sequestering of 100 million tons of atmospheric carbon would be considered virtuous (except that this particular sequestration makes the global warming problem go away, to be possibly replaced by bigger ones).

The ethical analysis leaves “circumstances” as the remaining issue, and here is where things get complicated. Circumstances include things like unintended (especially foreseeable) and secondary consequences, such as whether the means or the end may lead to other evils. In general, a consequentialist argument would likely accept some small risk of some harm, and might accept mechanisms (like lawsuits or something more efficient) to provide feedback to fix any inequities. But this is where things get really complicated.

The first possibility, and most often raised, is that building and operating the Weather Machine might result in severe, unpredictable, unintended consequences. There are a few classes of these consequences, the most obvious centered on out-of-control superstorms or droughts. After all, we aren’t that great at predicting hurricane paths. On the other hand, this is because hurricane paths are inherently unstable—precisely because we don’t have any weather control. If we take a car out to the Bonneville salt flats, tie a car’s steering wheel absolutely straight, and then put a brick on the pedal, we cannot predict whether it will eventually circle left or right. But we allow cars on the road all the time precisely because we have such good feedback and control systems (well, except when they’re getting home late on a Saturday night).

Increased predictability would ameliorate the unintended weather problem, and could be reached by using altitude control (and differently-directed winds) for the balloons to remain over a particular piece of land. Then many tests could be run better predict possible harms and to lower the risk of them ever happening. In general, almost all accidental problems caused by a misbehaving Weather Machine (including computer viruses, rogue controllers, broken balloons, and the environmental toxicology of a million tons of inert diamond falling all over the earth) can be ameliorated by good design, adequate testing, and accurate modeling [6].

Others classes of severe, unintended consequences are secondary effects in the environment, the world economy, politics, and other areas. For example, by successfully moving heat from the tropics to the northern areas, we might turn off the Gulf Stream and other important ocean currents? How will the stock market react to California constantly selling it’s bad weather to Michigan? How will a totalitarian tropical country react if Iceland buys 20% of their neighbors’ sunlight for a much higher price than for theirs?

A second possibility is that the Weather Machine is impossible, and working on it may be a waste of money that could be better spend on more worthwhile projects. Given our knowledge of physics, however, this is unlikely. A caveat is that it will be a race to 2030, when diamond mechanosynthesis should be able to crank out the 100 million tons (the equivalent of 100 miles of freeway) of diamond balloons, and when the worst-case scenarios predict the beginning of serious negative effects of anthropogenic carbon [7]) . Will the Hall Weather Machine be built in time to stop Florida from being inundated by the ocean? The answer depends on when nanosystems will achieve top-down bootstrapping or bottom-up Turing equivalence (which is a technical topic for another time).

A third possibility—if the balloons are not location-controllable—might occur if a nation doesn’t want a foreign nation’s balloons over its territory. The obvious hostile response would be to build hunter-killer balloons to destroy any invaders, as this seems to be permitted by current concepts of sovereignty. Such an arms race could (and probably will) escalate ad infinitum, but open source hardware and software might help prevent it. Any military or intelligence personnel (of any country) would freak at the idea of handing the keys to a weapon of mass destruction to the public, but that may be the only viable solution if the control algorithm works using genetic or market mechanisms — maybe like American Idol or Wikipedia. After all, distributed systems should have distributed control systems. Imagine the balloons controlled by many different radio frequencies with a many different authentication algorithms with open source software. Unfortunately, if such public control is our solution against weather weaponization, we will still need to worry about the “tragedy of commons” and “not in my backyard” secondary effects.

There are other issues of international policy. Suppose we want more sunlight in the Dakotas for growing crops. We could buy it from poor tropical countries, or take it from international ocean territories, where it might affect other countries. Depending on the state of the art and it’s acceleration, but especially at the beginning, it is likely that only rich countries will be able to build Weather Machines. More certainly, only rich countries will be able to fund the early experiments to understand what large numbers of balloons will actually do.

Some might object that knowledge is free and can travel anywhere via the Internet. This is true, but consider the BP disaster. Technical expertise on underwater drilling is international; marine science is international; the disaster receiving tons of press coverage; and yet there is large disagreement within the largely free scientific community about the importance of the spill, how long it will take to clean up, etc. In contrast, connecting a large base of nanofactories to the Internet will enable the global spread of atomically-precise physical devices (such as balloons) in seconds, whether or not the experiments are ever done.

A fourth possibility is that the Weather Machine could be used as a weapon of mass inconvenience—a means of unjust coercion by making possible the threat of bad weather. But the ethics of this application use the same principles as the ethics regarding weapons of mass destruction. I have already pointed out the possible use of the Weather Machine as a weapon—the ethical issues surrounding the more advanced versions of the Weather Machine are basically the same as those concerning weapons of mass destruction, though amplified somewhat by their power (tens of megatons of TNT equivalents per second) and precision of control (+/- one degree Fahrenheit).

Fifth, there is the possibility that psychologically, being in control of the weather is not good for developing character. What if human beings are supposed to cower in their caves when lightning and blizzards strike? After all, that is how we evolved, and there are many things we enjoy that are bad for us [8]. Perhaps having so much control and power over the vicissitudes of life is psychologically bad for us. For evidence, look at the rates of depression in advanced nations.

Finally, what is the cost of not building a Weather Machine? If the cost drops low enough, some nation with the chutzpah will build one. And if they are at all successful, the rest of the world will jump in. But what will the cost be if they design it wrong?

Are the Ethics of the Hall Weather Machine Relevant?

The main problem with thinking about the ethics of the Hall Weather Machine is that by the time we can build 100 million tons of atomically precise anything, controlling the weather is going to be the least of our problems. This is because the nanotechnology revolution will bring about a new set of big, hairy problems—some of which I’ve written about elsewhere [9][10], but I fear that most of them we can’t even imaging yet.

May we live in interesting times!

Tihamer Toth-Fejel, MS
General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems
Michigan Research and Development Center

Acknowledgements

Thanks to James Bach and Chris Dodsworth for valuable contributions.


Footnotes

[1] J. Storrs Hall, Utility Fog: The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of, http://autogeny.org/Ufog.html

[2] J. Storrs Hall, The Space Pier: A hybrid Space-launch Tower concept, http://autogeny.org/tower/tower.html

[3] J. Storrs Hall, The Weather Machine, (transcript from Global Catastrophic Risks 2008 conference, posted by Jeriaska on December 20th, 2008), http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/people-blog/?p=2637

[4] Robert A. Freitas, Diamond Trees (Tropostats): A Molecular Manufacturing Based System for Compositional Atmospheric Homeostasis, 2010 IMM Report 43, 10 February 2010; http://www.imm.org/Reports/rep043.pdf

[5] Before the Christian Era smile

[6] The details will be examined elsewhere (as time permits).

[7] Coincidentally, it is also when the USA Social Security System is supposed to collapse.

[8] “The killer app for medical nanotechnology will be compensating for poor lifestyle choices like overeating and indiscriminate sex—i.e. diabetes II and AIDS” — a grad student at the 2010 Gordon Conference on Nanostructure Fabrication.

[9] T. Toth-Fejel, “Humanity and Nanotechnology”. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly, V4N2, Summer 2004.

[10] T. Toth-Fejel, “A Few Lesser Implications of Nanofactories: Global Warming is the least of our Problems.” Nanotechnology Perceptions, March 2009.


Paul J. Crutzen

Although this is the scenario we all hope (and work hard) to avoid — the consequences should be of interest to all who are interested in mitigation of the risk of mass extinction:

“WHEN Nobel prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen coined the word Anthropocene around 10 years ago, he gave birth to a powerful idea: that human activity is now affecting the Earth so profoundly that we are entering a new geological epoch.

The Anthropocene has yet to be accepted as a geological time period, but if it is, it may turn out to be the shortest — and the last. It is not hard to imagine the epoch ending just a few hundred years after it started, in an orgy of global warming and overconsumption.

Let’s suppose that happens. Humanity’s ever-expanding footprint on the natural world leads, in two or three hundred years, to ecological collapse and a mass extinction. Without fossil fuels to support agriculture, humanity would be in trouble. “A lot of things have to die, and a lot of those things are going to be people,” says Tony Barnosky, a palaeontologist at the University of California, Berkeley. In this most pessimistic of scenarios, society would collapse, leaving just a few hundred thousand eking out a meagre existence in a new Stone Age.

Whether our species would survive is hard to predict, but what of the fate of the Earth itself? It is often said that when we talk about “saving the planet” we are really talking about saving ourselves: the planet will be just fine without us. But would it? Or would an end-Anthropocene cataclysm damage it so badly that it becomes a sterile wasteland?

The only way to know is to look back into our planet’s past. Neither abrupt global warming nor mass extinction are unique to the present day. The Earth has been here before. So what can we expect this time?”

Read the entire article in New Scientist.

Also read “Climate change: melting ice will trigger wave of natural disasters” in the Guardian about the potential devastating effects of methane hydrates released from melting permafrost in Siberia and from the ocean floor.

For any assembly or structure, whether an isolated bunker or a self sustaining space colony, to be able to function perpetually, the ability to manufacture any of the parts necessary to maintain, or expand, the structure is an obvious necessity. Conventional metal working techniques, consisting of forming, cutting, casting or welding present extreme difficulties in size and complexity that would be difficult to integrate into a self sustaining structure.

Forming requires heavy high powered machinery to press metals into their final desired shapes. Cutting procedures, such as milling and lathing, also require large, heavy, complex machinery, but also waste tremendous amounts of material as large bulk shapes are cut away emerging the final part. Casting metal parts requires a complex mold construction and preparation procedures, not only does a negative mold of the final part need to be constructed, but the mold needs to be prepared, usually by coating in ceramic slurries, before the molten metal is applied. Unless thousands of parts are required, the molds are a waste of energy, resources, and effort. Joining is a flexible process, and usually achieved by welding or brazing and works by melting metal between two fixed parts in order to join them — but the fixed parts present the same manufacturing problems.

Ideally then, in any self sustaining structure, metal parts should be constructed only in the final desired shape but without the need of a mold and very limited need for cutting or joining. In a salient progressive step toward this necessary goal, NASA demonstrates the innovative Electron Beam Free Forming Fabrication (http://www.aeronautics.nasa.gov/electron_beam.htm) Process. A rapid metal fabrication process essentially it “prints” a complex three dimensional object by feeding a molten wire through a computer controlled gun, building the part, layer by layer, and adding metal only where you desire it. It requires no molds and little or no tooling, and material properties are similar to other forming techniques. The complexity of the part is limited only by the imagination of the programmer and the dexterity of the wire feed and heating device.

Electron beam freeform fabrication process in action
Electron beam freeform fabrication process in action

According to NASA materials research engineer Karen Taminger, who is involved in developing the EBF3 process, extensive simulations and modeling by NASA of long duration space flights found no discernable pattern to the types of parts which failed, but the mass of the failed parts remained remarkably consistent throughout the studies done. This is a favorable finding to in-situe parts manufacturing and because of this the EBF³ team at NASA has been developing a desktop version. Taminger writes:

“Electron beam freeform fabrication (EBF³) is a cross-cutting technology for producing structural metal parts…The promise of this technology extends far beyond its applicability to low-cost manufacturing and aircraft structural designs. EBF³ could provide a way for astronauts to fabricate structural spare parts and new tools aboard the International Space Station or on the surface of the moon or Mars”

NASA’s Langley group working on the EBF3 process took their prototype desktop model for a ride on the microgravity simulating NASA flight and found the process works just fine even in micro gravity, or even against gravity.

A structural metal part fabricated from EBF³
A structural metal part fabricated from EBF³

The advantages this system offers are significant. Near net shape parts can be manufactured, significantly reducing scrap parts. Unitized parts can be made — instead of multiple parts that need riveting or bolting, final complex integral structures can be made. An entire spacecraft frame could be ‘printed’ in one sitting. The process also creates minimal waste products and is highly energy and feed stock efficient, critical to self sustaining structures. Metals can be placed only where they are desired and the material and chemistry properties can be tailored through the structure. The technical seminar features a structure with a smooth transitional gradient from one alloy to another. Also, structures can be designed specifically for their intended purposes, without needing to be tailored to manufacturing process, for example, stiffening ridges can be curvilinear, in response to the applied forces, instead of typical grid patterns which facilitate easy conventional manufacturing techniques. Manufactures, such as Sciaky Inc, (http://www.sciaky.com/64.html) are all ready jumping on the process

In combination with similar 3D part ‘printing’ innovations in plastics and other materials, the required complexity for sustaining all the mechanical and structural components of a self sustaining structure is plummeting drastically. Isolated structures could survive on a feed stock of scrap that is perpetually recycled as worn parts are replaced by free form manufacturing and the old ones melted to make new feed stock. Space colonies could combine such manufacturing technologies and scrap feedstock with resource collection creating a viable minimal volume and energy consuming system that could perpetually repair the structure – or even build more. Technologies like these show that the atomic level control that nanotechnology manufacturing proposals offer are not necessary to create self sustaining structure, and that with minor developments of modern technology, self sustaining structures could be built and operated successfully.

May 2: Many U.S. emergency rooms and hospitals crammed with people… ”Walking well” flood hospitals… Clinics double their traffic in major cities … ER rooms turn away EMT cases. — CNN

Update May 4: Confirmed cases of H1N1 virus now at 985 in 20 countries (Mexico: 590, 25 deaths) — WHO. In U.S.: 245 confirmed U.S. cases in 35 states. — CDC.

“We might be entering an Age of Pandemics… a broad array of dangerous emerging 21st-century diseases, man-made or natural, brand-new or old, newly resistant to our current vaccines and antiviral drugs…. Martin Rees bet $1,000 that bioterror or bioerror would unleash a catastrophic event claiming one million lives in the next two decades…. Why? Less forest, more contact with animals… more meat eating (Africans last year consumed nearly 700 million wild animals… numbers of chickens raised for food in China have increased 1,000-fold over the past few decades)… farmers cut down jungle, creating deforested areas that once served as barriers to the zoonotic viruses…” — Larry Brilliant, Wall Street Journal


Jacob Haqq-Misra and Seth D. Baum (2009). The Sustainability Solution to the Fermi Paradox. Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 62: 47–51.

Background: The Fermi Paradox
According to a simple but powerful inference introduced by physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950, we should expect to observe numerous extraterrestrial civilizations throughout our galaxy. Given the old age of our galaxy, Fermi postulated that if the evolution of life and subsequent development of intelligence is common, then extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) could have colonized the Milky Way several times over by now. Thus, the paradox is: if ETI should be so widespread, where are they? Many solutions have been proposed to account for our absence of ETI observation. Perhaps the occurrence of life or intelligence is rare in the galaxy. Perhaps ETI inevitably destroy themselves soon after developing advanced technology. Perhaps ETI are keeping Earth as a zoo!

The ‘Sustainability Solution’
The Haqq-Misra & Baum paper presents a definitive statement on a plausible but often overlooked solution to the Fermi paradox, which the authors name the “Sustainability Solution”. The Sustainability Solution states: the absence of ETI observation can be explained by the possibility that exponential or other faster-growth is not a sustainable development pattern for intelligent civilizations. Exponential growth is implicit in Fermi’s claim that ETI could quickly expand through the galaxy, an assumption based on observations of human expansion on Earth. However, as we are now learning all too well, our exponential expansion frequently proves unsustainable as we reach the limits of available resources. Likewise, because all civilizations throughout the universe may have limited resources, it is possible that all civilizations face similar issues of sustainability. In other words, unsustainably growing civilizations may inevitably collapse. This possibility is the essence of the Sustainability Solution.

Implications for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI)
If the Sustainability Solution is true, then we may never observe a galactic-scale ETI civilization, for such an empire would have grown and collapsed too quickly for us to notice. SETI efforts should therefore focus on ETI that grow within the limits of their carrying capacity and thereby avoid collapse. These slower-growth ETI may possess the technological capacity for both radio broadcasts and remote interstellar exploration. Thus, SETI may be more successful if it is expanded to include a search of our Solar System for small, unmanned ETI satellites.

Implications for Human Civilization Management
Does the Sustainability Solution mean that humanity must live sustainably in order to avoid collapse? Not necessarily. Humanity could collapse even if it lives sustainably—for example, if it collides with a large asteroid. Alternatively, humanity may be able to grow rapidly for much longer—for example, until we have colonized the entire Solar System. Finally, the Sustainability Solution is only one of several possible solutions to the Fermi paradox, so it is not necessarily the case that all civilizations must grow sustainably or else face collapse. However, the possibility of the Sustainability Solution makes it more likely that humanity must live more sustainably if it is to avoid collapse.