Perspectives on SETI and Aliens... and more science

Responding to Stephen Hawking's new Discovery Channel program, I debated the "alien threat" on Larry King Live with Michio Kaku, Seth Shostak, and actor Dan Aykroyd (who pushed UFOs.)

The format - four smart. sure-of-themselves egotists, being interviewed by a fifth - made for some very short but avid sound bites. (The videos have been take down, but you can read a transcript of the show.)

In this field, as in the furor over Transparency, my attitude is one of fierce moderation. My fundamental point is that nobody knows a damned thing about aliens!  Alas, that doesn’t keep almost everybody from behaving like children, weighing in with their “of course” explanations for how advanced sapient races would “naturally” behave, or why ETs haven’t been seen, or what they would do if we encountered them.  I know a lot of very bright people who have opined in this field, and nearly all of them proceed to sigh and roll their eyes, expressing contemptuous disdain for anyone daring to have a different notion about Alien Life.

Sure, one explanation comes to mind -- any field suffering from a complete lack of data can become a mirror, in which even (especially) bright people see only a reflection of their own dreams and biases.  Still, please! Does the reflex have to be followed by everybody? Frankly, watching the same phenomenon occur over and over, I am getting fatigued.

 let me try one more time, since the topic is public and hot right now. I've been at this a long time.  Back in 1983, my Great Silence paper was... and remains... the only genuine review article ever published in the SETI field. Because almost every other paper has had a particular axe to grind, I attempted to catalogue and compare 100+ theories, covering the wide range of possibilities, re alien life, thus demonstrating just how little we yet know. While suggesting some avenues for research, I concluded by pleading for a tentative, contingent, openminded attitude, of the sort we’ll desperately need, if contact ever does occur.

For a general, popularized account see "Xenology."  More recently I argued against messages” to ETI in "Shouting at the Cosmos"  and pungently suggest "what to say to an ET lurker."

But, as I just stated, it seems this topic brings out the amateur sci fi author in every person who touches it.  Hence, Stephen Hawking, Stephen Jay Gould, Jared Diamond and Freeman Dyson... four of the very smartest human beings who ever lived... have all recommended that we not shout into the cosmos to draw attention to ourselves, because it might be dangerous -- (I agree so far) -- only then each of them goes on the fantasize some particular simplistic scenario for why aliens could be hostile or dangerous. In Hawking’s new show, for example, he posits that super-advanced civilizations might come charging in to exploit our solar system’s resources, use them up and then move on, leaving us in a trashed wasteland.

Now, at one level, Hawking’s fear is not entirely off target. I’ve pointed out elsewhere: “All living creatures inherently use resources to the limits of their ability, inventing new aims, desires and ambitions to suit their next level of power. If they wanted to use our solar system, for some super project, our complaints would be like an ant colony protesting the laying of a parking lot.”

In contrast to this trend that’s seen across nature, we now have a new, tentative value system that’s arisen in the most recent generation of the Modern West, wherein some initial signs of self-restraint and satiability have started to appear.  We relish this new trait of altruistic self-control and wishfully imagine that we’ll do even better, in our Start Trek future.  Moreover, we hope that aliens will do the same, progressing in this new direction that we dream for ourselves -- toward universal altruism. And sure, I deeply hope this will turn out to be true.

On the other hand it ain’t necessarily so. This projection of our present culture’s idealized trend onto ALL star travelling races could be viewed as incredibly arrogant cultural myopia, even chauvinism! (Will the descendants of pack carnivores or stalking predators or paranoid herd beasts view such things the same way as we descendants of gregarious apes?)  In fact, “altruism” is rare in nature, compared to Darwinistic predation or opportunism, or even quid pro quo.  Those who declare that “of course” aliens would “outgrow all that” are engaged in bizarre wish projection, without any basis at all, other than their hopes.

On the other hand, Hawking’s scenario isn’t just about aliens rapaciously using up solar systems. It is about us foolishly attracting aliens who thereupon do such things. And this makes no sense at all. The Earth has been prime real estate ever since it got an oxygen atmosphere, a billion years ago.  If ETs wanted a nice planet to colonize, or a system to loot, they could have come during any of that time. Paul Davies makes this point in his new book THE EERIE SILENCE: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence, as I did in my 1983 paper.

A foolish METI “yoohoo!” message from us isn’t going to make them come for resource rapine. Though, in fact, Hawking’s scenario does have some plausibility as an explanation of the Great Silence (Fermi Paradox), along a different path of logic. Ponder this; if such a wave of greedy exploitation DID once pass through our region of the galaxy, and it just happened to miss Earth, then that might explain our current loneliness... the paucity of other new races around us.  Because that prairie fire knocked down every other promising race or planet in the region, leaving Earth like an isolated oasis in a desert.  I talk about this scenario (and many others) elsewhere.

No, Hawking’s reasoning does not make sense as a reason not to shout. On the other hand, there are dozens of other possible reasons why a Yoohoo Message could be dangerous  I could go into lots of them...

... but I won’t!  Not here. Because I am NOT trying to argue that METI will cause invasion or directed havoc.  Personally, I think the odds of that outcome are low. 

No, I am trying to get people to stop leaping to unjustified assumptions and conclusions and especially to stop proclaiming that things are so, just because you made a glib sounding assertion. (Isn’t that bad habit doing enough harm, in Culture War?)

For example, Paul Davies and George Dvorsky and Michio Kaku and many other smart guys have asserted “if they wanted to harm us, they would have done so by now.”

Say What?  Oh, this is just more blithe, dismissive nonsense, with so many sub-variations and counter-hypotheses to ponder you could shake a stick at them all day. Leaping to make such a generalized statement is no less than an expression of the most outrageous smugness and incuriosity, especially unworthy, coming from such smart fellows.

Just like the idiotic cliche that “I Love Lucy” has already made Earth a blaring beacon in the sky, so why bother restraining ourselves now? (Here’s an illustrative experiment: go to a lake with a rock and a laser pointer. Now drop the rock into the pond, making ripples. Then aim the laser pointer at the other shore. Which wave front will be detected on the opposite side? That is “I love Lucy” vs a high-power, colimated, coherent transmission from Arecebo.  Sure, in theory, advanced scientists on the other shore, who are passionately eager and who know where to look, might detect the rock-ripples. But Jesus, have some scale and some sense, before you blithely declare that everybody on all shores will always detect all ripples!)

 These positions are arrant nonsense and deeply illogical. (Here’s another. If we’re “already blatantly visible” out there, then what is METI trying to accomplish, by deliberately making our Earth SEVEN ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE brighter? Hm?)

I do not have time to get into this vast topic in detail.  I have spent decades on it, exploring countless ramifications like --

Xenology: Why we might be alone (a popularized account):

Or, (for the real scholar) the much deeper and more scholarly 'classic' review of the field -- The Great Silence -- which appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Royal Astronomical Society, fall 1983, v.24, pp 283-309,

Or might a lurker probe already be here?

Or a sci fi novella that thoroughly explores the variants of possible Von Neumann self-replicating interstellar probes.

Or my answer to UFOs.

A collection of articles on SETI and METI.

Or a dozen other stories illustrating unusual possibilities for alien life.

But the crux is this.

Stop assuming that asserting something makes it so!

It doesn’t. Nor does positing an "of course" pre-explanation of the Great Silence make you wise.

 In fact, it’s time for a much wider conversation about this, bringing together our best minds from dozens of fields and opposing viewpoints.  This is a topic where nobody is right, who blithely rolls off cliches and says “of course the answer is this."

=======

PS... re my suggestion - on Larry King - that SETI shift from one expensive and ridiculously over-specialized telescope to 10,000 net-linked backyard receivers... the SETI League is a real outfit that tries to do this. They believe the "WOW" signal would be detectable by a few thousand dollars worth of electronics attached to a 12-ft satellite dish. They're all about getting thousands of amateurs into the SETI field. While the sensitivity could never match the Allen array, the Allen array cannot hope to cover the entire sky, full time, over the entire radio spectrum. Only a large number of receivers give us any chance of detecting signals beamed our way.  (By the way, on Larry King I should have pointed out a side benefit... that such a system would also help catch Dan Ayckroyd’s UFO saucer guys!)

Finally, some of the researchers in this field have expressed deep contempt for science fiction. This ready dismissal of the entire field of gedankenexperimentation by thoughtful and scientifically deep authors is nothing but flat out - and proud - ignorance.  Such people dismiss - without having ever read them - mind-blowingly original thought experiments by the likes of Bear and Banks and Vinge (and me), which make up the only real library of what-if extrapolations that our committees could quickly turn to, in the event of a post-contact situation!  To call such explorations "simpleminded" and unimaginative and based solely on copying the human experience is to declare openly "I am satisfied that B-Movies typify 'science fiction.' I have never cracked the spine of a grownup science fiction contact scenario... nor will I, ever."

That’s just dunderheaded and closeminded and especially unworthy of people who have earned great merit in other fields. People who now propose to represent us, if and when we meet the alien.

======

And while we’re on a similar topic.... According to a new book: We Are Not Alone: Why We May Already Have Found Extraterrestrial Life, by astrobiologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch and science writer David Darling, we’ve had good evidence of microbial life on Mars since NASA’s Viking missions in the late 1970s. Now, they argue, all that’s needed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that we are not alone is another ambitious mission to Mars—one that, like Viking, carries a life-detection experiment.My friend Joe Miller (prof. USC) has been saying this for years... that Viking found life on Mars, back in the 1970s.) 

Solar Sails At Last? With its May 18 launch date fast approaching, Japan’s  hybrid sail mission is at last getting a bit of press attention, long overdue in my opinion. The Daily Mail, at least, has just run a  on IKAROS, which will combine two mission concepts within a single spacecraft. Its solar sail works conventionally, using the momentum of photons from the Sun to accelerate the craft. But the JAXA designers have added thin film solar cells on the sail membrane. These produce the electricity that could be used in future (and larger) iterations to drive an ion engine.

Oh and for you lazy Sci Fi fans... a Brightness Reef promo -- in case you need to be convinced to start the Second Uplift Trilogy.

==Science and Tech Miscellany==

HP Designjet 3D Printer Now On Sale, Churns Out Solid Plastic Objects From the Desktop.

Wow! “Anesthesiologist Lakhmir Chawla of George Washington University Medical Center and his colleagues recently published a retrospective analysis of brain activity in seven sedated, critically ill patients as they were removed from life support. Using EEG recordings of neural electrical activity, Chawla found a brief but significant spike at or near the time of death—despite a preceding loss of blood pressure and associated drop in brain activity....The jolts lasted 30 to 180 seconds and displayed properties that are normally associated with consciousness, such as extremely fast electrical oscillations known as gamma waves. Soon after the activity abated, the patients were pronounced dead. Chawla posits that the predeath spikes are most likely brief, “last hurrah” seizures originating in brain areas that were irritable from oxygen starvation. If these seizures were to occur in memory regions, they could explain the vivid recollections often reported by people who are resuscitated from near death, Chawla says.”

Leaking Oil Well Lacked Safeguard Device.

See a way-cool student film “preview” of Rendezvous With Rama by Athur. C. Clarke. 

Quickie T-Shirt advice for making contact with an alien.

Instead of fast food, we need fast fuel. A new time-saving recipe for bio-fuel: Make an algae soup. Heat to 300 degrees in a pressure-cooker for one hour. The result: crude bio-oil -- without waiting millions of years as in nature’s original formula. A possible replacement for today’s fossil fuels?

Did extinction events nearly wipe out humans–-causing a population bottleneck, as measured by decreased genetic diversity?  One may have occurred 1.2 million years ago, when there were only 55,000 members of genus Homo. Another - an enormous eruption 70,000 years ago near Sumatra. At these bottlenecks, genetic mutations have had a greater likelihood of being passed on…and shifting the course of human evolution.

Just rediscovered a classic: Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland (1940) by physicist George Gamow. A bank clerk, Mr. Tompkins attends a lecture on relativity, falls asleep & dreams of a city where the speed of light is only 6 mph. He experiences the effects of relativity in everyday life, i.e. riding a bicycle: “if I step harder on the pedals city blocks become shorter and shorter.” Charming even if a bit dated.

A new solar driven method to de-oxidize magnesium. 

It is officially described as an orbital test vehicle. However, one of its potential uses appears to be to launch a surge of small satellites during periods of high international tension. This would enable America to have eyes and ears orbiting above any potential troublespot in the world. The X37B can stay in orbit for up to 270 days, whereas the Shuttle can last only 16 days. This will provide the US with the ability to carry out experiments for long periods, including the testing of new laser weapon systems.

Piezo-electric, shoe-based battery charger. 

Or else... an energy-harvesting device using stacked thermocouples that generates a few microwatts of electrical power from body heat or any environment where there is a temperature gradient.

The brain's power will turn out to derive from data processing within the neuron rather than activity between neurons.

A Russian company is marketing a devastating new $10-20 million cruise missile system that can be hidden inside a shipping container, giving any merchant vessel the capability to wipe out an aircraft carrier.

Everyone in America pays some sort of taxes, which may take the form of income, sales or property taxes imposed by state and local governments, in addition to federal income, payroll and excise taxes. Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) estimates that the share of total taxes (federal state and local taxes) paid by taxpayers in each income group is quite similar to the share of total income received by each income group in 2009. For example, the share of total taxes paid by the richest one percent (22.1 percent) is not dramatically different from the share of total income received by this group (20.4 percent). (Nevertheless... I feel there should be some kind of MINIMUM tax. Everfybody, even the poor, should have to fork over something... and thereupon care where it goes.  Even better, ,make it $100 when the budget is in surplus. and $300 when in deficit.  Then even the poor will want a balanced budget!)

John Peterson suggested this one:
"I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past." - Thomas Jefferson

Ah sci fi....

Here comes the debate over the other kind of aliens...

Alert!  There's a 60% chance I will be on LARRY KING LIVE (CNN) Friday at 9 ET (6 PT) in a rushed-together debate about “aliens” with Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute and the actor Dan Aykroyd....

 ...all in response to a flurry of interest that’s been stirred by Stephen Hawking's new Discovery Channel show.  Specifically, his lead-in episode about extraterrestrials, wherein he recommended against our calling attention to ourselves. (He made it look pretty dire!)

This happened in a sudden whirl. Larry King's people contacted me just hours ago and I must rush to a studio on my way to the airport, before flying right off to keynote an investor conference in Las Vegas, talking about "our economic future." (Yes, I get spread thinner, by the day.)

Okay, I’ll offer a hurried little riff here, about Hawking and aliens, with added contributions by and about Paul Davies, Robin Hanson and others. (Please excuse the first draft quality and lack of participation in the comments section.)

In his show (a while before he rooted for my alma mater, Caltech, to “win the Superbowl”), Professor Hawking said that aliens are almost certainly out there and that Earthlings had better beware. Instead of seeking them out, humanity should be doing all it that can to avoid any contact. His simple reasoning? All living creatures inherently use resources to the limits of their ability, inventing new aims, desires and ambitions to suit their next level of power. If they wanted to use our solar system, for some super project, our complaints would be like an ant colony protesting the laying of a parking lot.

Want an irony?  I am actually a moderate on this issue (as I am regarding Transparency).  My top aim, in these recent arguments, has been pretty basic; I want more discussion. And for arrogant fools to stop blaring into space “on our behalf” without at least offering the rest of us the courtesy of first openly consulting top people in history, biology, anthropology - and guys like Hawking - in an honest and eclectic way.  Their refusal to do this constitutes just about the most conceited and indefensible behavior by scientists that I have ever seen.

Now, everybody and his cousin appears to have an opinion about aliens. In fact, I know almost nobody who seems willing to wait and entertain a wide variety of hypotheses, in this “field without a subject matter.”  It seems that the very lack of data makes people more sure of their imagined scenario, rather than less. And more convinced that those who disagree are dunderheads.

Renowned science philosopher Paul Davies has weighed in with a new book, The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence, which seems a bit of a take off my own classic “The Great Silence” paper -- (still the only overall review-survey that has ever attempted to cover more than 100+ hypotheses that are out there, to explain our loneliness in the universe.)  Alas, Paul seems never to have heard of that paper, or most of the hypotheses in question -- he cites me only as a grouch toward METI (“message to ET.”)  And, while I have long admired Paul’s work and consider him to be quite amazing, I feel he got a bit lazy with this one.

Space Law scholar Nicholas Szabo is much harsher on him than I am, I’m afraid:

“Paul Davies’s arguments are pretty lame, and possibly quite disturbing; for example saying:  "Just because we go around wiping out our competitors doesn’t mean aliens would do the same."  But that doesn't mean they wouldn't, either. The example of life on earth is all we have to go on, and life on earth is Darwinian.”
 
Szabo continues: “Davies also says: "A civilization that has endured for millions of years would have overcome any aggressive tendencies"  But I (Szabo) find that utopian nonsense. By the same reasoning humans should have "overcome any aggressive tendencies" that chimpanzees have.  Davies adds: "By comparison, humans would quite likely be considered dangerous warmongers, posing a possible menace to our galactic neighbors in centuries to come. If so, then ET may act to eliminate the threat..." 

Um, so much for their peacefulness.  George Mason University economist and philosopher Robin Hanson responds:

”Many species here on Earth have endured for millions of years while retaining “aggressive” tendencies, and even very “mildly” bellicose aliens, ones who would only exterminate us if they could make a plausible case that we might pose a future menace, should still be of great concern to us.  I sure don’t want to be exterminated “just in case.”  Wouldn’t it make more sense to shut up until either we don’t look so menacing, or until we are strong enough to defend ourselves?”  (See Robin’s extensive response.)

 Another quotation from Szabo:

“Davies continues: "...if we didn’t mend our violent ways. Ironically, the greatest danger from an alien encounter may be ourselves." In other words, ETI really does pose a threat after all, but it's our own fault, so we shouldn't (we are presumably left to conclude) try to protect ourselves from this threat beyond taking a profound moral lesson from this flight of imagination and mending our own ways.

This "reasoning" from splendidly fashionable PC attitudes combined with his own imputation of human psychology to imaginary entities leads to a rather grotesquely self-loathing conclusion: Davies puts humans on trial against aliens he has conjured up from his imagination and find the humans guilty and deserving of genocide. Fortunately, we have much better reasons to try to be more peaceful than the conjectured attitudes of hypothetical ETI. A good start to achieving human peace would be to withdraw moral support from people who hate their fellow human beings.”

While I react less pungently than Szabo... and in fact see a bit of merit in Paul’s point... it remains rather tiresome for the reflex to always be to assume that aliens will automatically be more elevated than us. (Yer, willing to judge and crush us, rather than help us get better.)

In fact, out of sheer ornery contrariness and a habitual wish to avoid limits on thinking, I'm tempted to wonder if humanity may be among the MOST pleasant sapient races in the galaxy! 

Just imagine a high tech species descended from solitary stalking carnivores, like tigers, or loner infanticides, like bears, or pack carnivores, or paranoid herd herbivores, or mammoth harem-keepers like elephant seals. We come from tribes of long-lived, relatively patient and contemplative, reciprocal-grooming, gregarious apes, whose male female differences are relatively small...

...all traits that mitigate toward some degree of otherness-empathy, which may not happen very often, across the stars.  And STILL we are violent MoFo's!

Furthermore, suppose we concede the common SETI talking point that aliens “would have to have learned to avoid much war, given the destructive power of advanced weaponry.” Hm, well, maybe.  But is the only way to avoid armageddon massive racial reprogramming to pacifism?  A FAR more likely way for aliens to stop war and save themselves from self-destruction is the method implicitly commended by Jared Diamond, in his book COLLAPSE: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed..

Hegemony.

The creation of a perfectly stable and perfectly repressive oligarchy that protects itself by maintaining a rigid status quo.

And yes, that kind of stable hegemony can become internally "peaceful" as in Ming China... and more-briefly in many other human cultures.  And yet, a perfect, control-freak autarchy ain't exactly utopian by our terms, or altruistic. Moreover, it remains capable of violence, especially when it sees something outside of itself that it may not like.

Oh, but the most frustrating thing is this.  When people leap to their own “pat” explanations for the Great Silence, sighing that “of course” the answer is this and such, and then dismissing all contrary views as foolish, they are cheating themselves, and the rest of us, out of what could be the most fascinating and wondrously open-ended argument/discussion of all time! 
A marvelous set-to that juggles every science, every bit of history and biology and astronomy and... well everything!  It is the great puzzle of who we are, how we may be different, or the same as those mysterious others, out there.

THAT is what makes me sad, when nearly everybody in this field leaps so quickly -- on almost zero evidence -- to say “of course the answer is....”  I am, above all, a lover of the greatest enlightenment invention -- argument... and its accompanying virtues, curiosity, experimentation, reciprocal accountability, and even the aching joy of being forced, now and then, to admit “Okay, you got me, that time.  I may have been wrong.”

-------- David Brin http://www.davidbrin.com ----

PS… See more articles on SETI and METI,
as well as my more extensive explanation of this fight over prudent caution in wagering the future of humanity. 

Concerning Robert Heinlein... socialist or libertarian?

In some other places, the topic of legendary science fiction author Robert Anson Heinlein has repeatedly come up, along with shouting matches -- "He was a libertarian!" "No, a socialist!" "No, a fascist!"  I finally had enough and weighed into one of these discussions, with a comment I'll append below... along with more snippets of science.

Robert Heinlein was hard to classify.  If one had to make a political caricature, I’d say he was a compassionate libertarian, in that he believed that humans have an obligation to be both competitively independent and generous.

Think of Ayn Rand with a soul…and with some historical perspective. (Yeah, that’s hard to picture, at a fundamental level. But Heinlein proved it needn't by an oxymoron.) Alas, while this label came close, he evades it as slippery as Schrodinger's Cat.

Heinlein was a loyal member of the American branch of the Enlightenment, a believer in democracy, markets, science, etc… but far more the rule-constrained competitive spirit of positive sum games that underlies all those arenas.

He distrusted government as a sole arbiter--but recognized the need for it.  For example, after disdaining politics in many books, he dared himself to make politicians the heroes, in DOUBLE STAR.

After disdaining socialism in many stories, he praised anarcho-socialism in STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND and became a hippie icon.

See his prescriptive utopia, BEYOND THIS HORIZON.  Usually, the 1st half of a Heinlein novel is dynamite and then (alas) the 2nd half kind of devolves into turgid lectures.  But in this case the action-packed 1st half is a silly-ass homage to J. W. Campbell’s loony “armed society” cliché… but the 2nd half is what turns into one of the most brilliant musings on social and biological matters ever written. Future generations may refer to the "Heinlein Solution" for how to manage human self-improvement through genetic engineering, for example... a way to get the benefits without doing crazy things.

In this brief, future speculation, clearly his favorite prescription, we see a future wherein all things creative are flaming competitive (as they should be) but “of course, food is free!”  Does that fit into any simplistic dogma?  I think not.

No, the real misunderstanding is in trying to pigeonhole RAH at all.  Because, above all, Robert A. Heinlein was a science fiction author.

I do not mean the mere profession but the religion.  I refer to a basic personality type that was probably recurrent as a fluke in most human generations, but quickly garroted or burnt at the stake in most other cultures (e.g. Giordano Bruno). Until, at long last, a society came along that would pay us, instead of burning us, for our madness.  For our ornery, contrary, inbuilt need to say “yes... but what if...?”

To those of us born with this affliction, there is something far more important than any and all political views or polemics. That thing is summed up by Einstein's word gedankenexperiment.   The thought experiment that fully utilizes those marvelous organs -- the "lamps on our brows" -- the prefrontal lobes, the things that most make our brains unlike any others.  It is this honest eagerness for the What-if that makes Greg Bear and Kim Stanley Robinson modern blessings and that transforms guys like Bruce Sterling and Jerry Pournelle from mere offensive blowhards into men with real and impressive value to their era. (At times, seemingly, despite themselves.)

To us, "What-if?" is like prayer. We do have doctrines, opinions, political and polemical views.  But they all take second place to the itch. A sci fi author (a true member of the breed) who is deeply conservative will be more curious than hostile to a smart Marxist, and pester her with questions while buying drinks, not heckling her with simplistic/smug insults... much to the disappointment of his allies on the right, who will (rightly) suspect that his heart is not in the take-no-prisoners version of politics. And it goes both ways, I've seen it.

I know about this.  I consider myself a feminist and GLORY SEASON had some pretty strong feminist premises... in some ways far more honest and bold than anything by Tepper or Charnas. So why do  polemical feminists hold that novel (and me) in deep suspicion? Because to me the Thought Experiment was more important than any polemical point.  And they could sense my priorities; I followed the implications, and did not force them to follow dogma.  First, above all, I am a science fiction author.

And it was the thought experiment that was most important to Robert Heinlein.  In fact, the only person I knew who was more devoted (and a far better storyteller) was Poul Anderson.  But more on that elsewhere.

People who understand Heinlein know that “fascist” and “socialist” are silly terms.  They apply to people who are so weak they must clutch onto simplistic nostrums.  The kind of oversimplifying stupidity that we see on both the left and right and that is now tearing America apart.

But not us.  Not we who love a complex and weird and wonderfully surprising world.  When the prefrontal lobes function with mutant, superhero power, that is when you get people like Robert Heinlein, who did not dwell on left or right wings, but in the future.

To support the ideals and memory of Robert Heinlein, support the Heinlein Society, an organization devoted to Paying It Forward.

For more: See Speculations on Science Fiction

= MORE SCIENCE =

Any of you who love the notion of asteroid mining, see this amateur but enthusiastic paper by Dr. Michael Montague. Frankly, I am not at all sure the world’s public would put up with anyone targting Earth for a very near miss (for aeocapture) of even a small asteroid.  Alas, this is not an era of can-do daring and ambitious guts.

The Biracy Project seeks to use fan-generated crowd-sourcing to make and distribute a new science fiction film.  Sounds daring and fun.  

See the latest cool gedanken-fiction from Eliezar Yudkowsky... a cute riff on Harry Potter.

This fascinating paper argues that neo-classical economics is clueless about fraud, and gives several real-world examples of global-scale harm. The examples reinforce one (of many) interesting points in the paper: that in the early stages of fraud, the faked results appear to support the neo-classical economic policies. Alas, what had been an interesting theoretical set of economic conjectures has mutated into something deeply delusional, threatening the health of the republic and the world.

Julie Korenberg has identified a gene, STX1A (which helps control electrochemical processes at synapses), whose expression can be linked to intelligence.

Fascinating article about human endurance and people who go beyond.

More Insights into the Future

Here in this catch-all posting, there will be a potpourri of treasures including some science below.
- I was interviewed on the BBC World Service regarding President Obama’s new space plan.  See if you can find the podcast! (And somebody send in the link?) 

- My longstanding push for more emphasis on citizen-involvement, in preparing for robust reaction to crises, is finally getting some traction.  Apparently, my editorial suggesting a change in National Security priorities (to emphasize resilience, as a partner to anticipation) has gone viral, with hit rates up toward five figure in each of the last three months.   

Moreover, some companies and groups have started their own endeavors to create the kinds of enabling technologies that can keep us agile and ready for an ever-changing tomorrow. Take for example “CiviGuard” which offers cell phone aps that allow location based govt-to-citizen alerts. Now to vastly expand this all the way to something that could unite the country, should even the worst happen. 

In a measure of whether we are wise enough to support cogent/important art - I see that the magnificent - though under-rated - online graphic storyteller Patrick Farley has started a Kickstarter fundraiser; if he succeeds he figures he'll has enough support to try to make a go of resurrecting Electric Sheep as a paying proposition. Suggested donation is $2.00 . . . maximum $25. The donations don't actually happen unless the full $6,000 limit is reached. He's got ten days to go and needs to raise about $2,800. I highly recommend him and hope that folks will take part in reviving his career. 


EMPOWERING THE CREATIVE ACT OF DISAGREEMENT

- As most of you may know, I consider “discourse” one of the core problems of our day. We desperately need to recall that our entire Enlightenment Experiment... and the American Branch, in particular... was based upon the notion of moderate/calm and rule-centered competition. Conflict is a fecund generator of creativity -- e.g. in markets, democracy, the arts and science -- but only if we find ways to keep it positive-sum.  That-is, focused on finding whatever true things may lurk amid the morass of indignant opinion, and not on the “kill my enemies” emotion set that we inherit from the bad-old past.

In my novel EARTH (1989), I portray people using the internet (in our time) in ways that exclude differing views. A tech empowered reiteration of delusion.  To combat this, I depicted hackers finding ways to expose folks to alternative points of view. Now comes a beta experiment from Intel -- Dispute Finder -- which will let you scan documents and sites and find places where someone credible out there disagrees with the statement in question. 

It seems to be the embryo of a terrific and sophisticated and necessary tool. Though there are a myriad problems to solve, including aspects of reputation management, topic gisting, etc.  Some folks give it a try and report back here?

Along related lines... Brian Douglas writes in to tout Morgan Spurlock's show, "30 Days" - “I discovered it on Netflix and he's essentially doing what you talked about in Evaluating Horizons about getting the reds and blues to walk in each others shoes. In each episode, Spurlock, or some other person or group of people, spend 30 days immersing themselves in a particular lifestyle with which they are unfamiliar (e.g. working for minimum wage, being in , a  living as a etc.), while discussing related social issues.” Aye, it sounds wise... and hence something that will never run on the media channels - like Fox - where eyes need it most.


A BRIEF POLITICAL ASIDE... IN FAVOR OF ASSERTIVE WISDOM

Restoring the Office of Technology Assessment or OTA - and other independent advisory agencies - was one of my core suggestions, during and after the last election.   No action proved the GOP’s commitment to Know-Nothing anti-sicence than their elimination of a nonpartisan technological advisory board. Hence, I heartily concur with efforts to restore funding to the agency and I urge anybody who cares about having a technologically savvy and well-informed Congress to learn more, and sign the petition on the bottom.  ONE TRICK?  The Republicans never disbanded the OTA.  They simply zeroed out all funding.  The Dems should respond by pre-funding the agency for 20 years.


BACK TO RESILIENCY

From Publishers Weekly re: Rebecca Solnit’s new book, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster.  ” Natural and man-made disasters can be utopias that showcase human solidarity and point the way to a freer society, according this stimulating contrarian study. Solnit (River of Shadows) reproves civil defense planners, media alarmists and Hollywood directors who insist that disasters produce terrified mobs prone to looting, murder and cannibalism unless controlled by armed force and government expertise. Surveying disasters from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, she shows that the typical response to calamity is spontaneous altruism, self-organization and mutual aid, with neighbors and strangers calmly rescuing, feeding and housing each other. Indeed, the main problem in such emergencies, she contends, is the elite panic of officials who clamp down with National Guardsmen and stifling regulations. Solnit falters when she generalizes her populist brief into an anarchist critique of everyday society that lapses into fuzzy what-ifs and uplifting volunteer testimonials. Still, this vivid book makes a compelling—and timely—case for the ability of ordinary people to collectively surmount the direst of challenges.”  I’ve reviewed solnit before.  A quirky, sometimes self-indulgent, but often wonderfully on-target author who has a knack of choosing fascinating topics. 


MISCELLANY

- A movie based on Marvel Comics' "Thor" superhero character is now scheduled to be released some time around May of 2011.  Marvel once threatened to sue me over the title of my (Hugo runner-up) novella "Thor Meets Captain America" which DC Comics later asked me to expand (with the great graphic artist Scott Hampton) into THE LIFE EATERS.  Alas, DC printed maybe twenty copies, in America, though the graphic novel did very well overseas and came in third for the grand prize in France, where they adore such things. Only now, DC may have a second chance!  They have, in hand, a GN that can leverage on any "Thor" hysteria, next spring.  Oh, and it would be a great dig at Marvel, since my GN portrays Thor as the villain! ;-)

- See this!  Remember, these guys have waged four wars and have nuclear weapons. Pompous and strange.... And yet the silliness seems rather dignified and cordial.

- See incredible footage of San Francisco, just days before the 1906 quake. The number of automobiles is staggering for 1906. The clock tower at the end of Market Street at the Embarcadero wharf is still there.  And no traffic lights, no cross walks, no painted lanes, no road signs, no cell phones (!)  AND NO RULES - yet folks seem to survive okay...!

- Some libertarians are starting to get it. 

- The usual 3D technology uses a stereoscopic principle in which a slightly different image is presented to each eye, thanks to the special glasses the viewer has to wear. Now a device named pCubee gives you the experience of 3D without the need for the glasses. The pCubee consists of five LCD screens arranged as a cubic "fish tank" box that viewers can pick up, tilt, shake or turn to watch the 3D content or play games with virtual objects that seem to be within the box.  Kind of like the alien artifact in my next novel!!


SCIENCE STUFF COURTESY OF RAY KURZWEIL

The brain can handle two tasks by distributing them between the two hemispheres of the brain, assuming it perceives a worthy reward for doing so, but with large dual-task costs.

A quantum random number generator called Quantis can produce truly random numbers.

A gold nanoelectrode that can extract one picoampere
(generated by photosynthesis) from algae cells. 

A hand-held projector called Twinkle can now create virtual characters and objects that interact with the real world.

Researchers from around the world are gathering this week in San Jose, Calif., for the largest conference on psychedelic science held in the United States in four decades.  Now that takes me back...

wow! 5 Axis Robot Carves Metal Like Butter (Video) 

DARPA is starting a new program called "The Mind's Eye" to create an AI-based camera that can report back on war-zone activity with the same detail a trained human operative could offer.

GM Develops Augmented Reality Windshield

General Motors has unveiled a trio of concept electric "urban mobility vehicles" that are about one-sixth the size of a conventional car.

NASA's WISE mission has spotted 16 formerly hidden near-Earth objects with orbits close to Earth's. WISE is expected to discover as many as 1000 near-Earth objects, but astronomers estimate that the number of unknown objects with masses great enough to cause ground damage in an impact runs into the tens of thousands.

The real Avatar: ocean bacteria act as 'superorganism' .

Recognizr, an application that lets users point a smart phone at a stranger and immediately learn about them -- combining computer vision, cloud computing, facial recognition, social networking, and augmented reality ....

A midday 90-minute stage 2 non-REM sleep (takes place between deep sleep and the dream state known as Rapid Eye Movement or REM) period refreshes the mind and can make you smarter, UC Berkeley researchers have found.

IBM researchers have developed a system called Catchup, designed to summarize (verbally) in almost real time what has been said at a business meeting so newcomers can quickly catch up. It identifies the important words and phrases in an automatic speech recognition transcript and edits out the unimportant ones.

Turkish scientists have developed spray-on liquid glass that is transparent, non-toxic, and can protect virtually any surface against almost any damage from hazards such as water, UV radiation, dirt, heat, and bacterial infections, making cleaning products unnecessary. The invisible coating is also flexible and breathable.

Cool?
Thrive on and fight for the Enlightenment.

General Insights into the Future

I've continued posting my new series of intellectually stimulating 10 minute monologues on YouTube:

Grand-scale reasons to explore space.

Space Exploration:Planning our next steps in beyond Earth

Space Exploration: - Mining the sky: Are there economic incentives? 

Space Exploration: The Big Picture, excitement? warp drive?

Space Exploration:Ambitious tech- tethers, solar sails, space elevators.

The Transparent Society: Part 1: 

The Transparent Society: Part 2: 

      =====     =====     =====

I’m offline for a little while, so here’s just a dump of some cool/interesting items I’ve collected...

Anybody on Google Buzz?  I am now!

The online comic Schlock Mercenary had this bit about Uplift... funny! (Thanks Robert.)

See a couple of eye-opening brief articles from the Globalist:
Ending Gridlock in the U.S. Senate and
Shanghai's Coming Out Party

See a directory of ways to participate in space exploration. interact + connect with the space community.  Great signs of an age of amateurs!  But it isn’t as recent as some think.  I was an active amateur variable star observer as a teenager, way back in the 1960s!  See:

See what a boy did with a GPS tracking device, a weather balloon, and some duct tape. 

MIT neuroscientists demonstrated that they can influence people's moral judgments by disrupting a specific brain region — the  right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). This sheds light on  how the brain constructs morality.They found that the subjects' ability to make moral judgments that require an understanding of other people's intentions — for example, a failed murder attempt — was impaired when this region was subjected to an electrical burst. 

Wiki Leaks is now under attack by the same people who campaigned against ACORN.  At least ACORN had some sins to atone for, but burying WikiLeaks is all about destroying hopeful trends in general transparency. Visit their site.  Make a donation!

“Dark Flow” of galactic clusters indicates a “direction” in our universe and possibly lots of matter “beyond” it. 

Fascinating article about the quirks and “buts” in evolution theory.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/19/evolution-darwin-natural-selection-genes-wrong

The the blogger at “Asymptosis” seems an especially bright fellow. Worth a look For example in this posting, he comments on research by Jonathan Haidt (that I’ve talked about many times) to the effect that:

Republicans (on an oversimplifying average) care equally about five spheres of morality: avoiding harm, fairness, group loyalty, respect for authority, and purity.

Democrats mostly care about only two: avoiding harm and fairness. 

The blogger adds that, according to Stephen Pinker: Libertarians look much more like liberals than like conservatives on most measures, EXCEPT those that have anything to do with compassion, on which libertarians are lower than liberals AND conservatives....  But here’s where it gets even more interesting (for me at least). A commenter suggests that “libertarianism essentially amounts to is the political expression of autism.”

Yipe!  Of course, this could help explain why a movement whose basic premise is so attractive to American psyches does so badly in elections.  Or the fact that libertarians who extol cut-throat competition tend to have done very badly at it, in real life.  Or their historical amnesia, ignoring who - across 4,000 years - were the real oppressors.  I do quibble with Haidt’s simplistic “2 vs 5” morality check, though.  In fact, many liberals are VERY attentive to “group loyalty, respect for authority, and purity.”  Their loyalty is often to more abstract versions of group, authority and purity... and it is that level of abstraction that I believe constitutes the real difference between them and conservatives.

     =====     =====     =====

Finally, do not let your tea-drinking brother in law avoid acknowledging two facts:

1) that the "socialist" Obamacare bill was first written at the Heritage Foundation as the GOP alternative to Hillarycare, in 1993, therefore the neocon screeching hate-fest is entirely fact-free.

2) that a certain foreign, hostile (but brilliant) royal family owns up to 20% of Fox.  Now how would they be using that influence?

Enough.  I am off line for a while.  Keep up the fight.  NOT for "the left" or even liberalism.  I care little about narrowing my range of choices, which is why I most despise those who have made the Right an impossible  shopping ground for modern solutions. No. Fight for the general Western Enlightenment, for the American Experiment, and a return to sanity among many of our brothers and sisters who've mixed Koolaid with their tea.

A historic victory for the manic side.

Okay, phew.  So it is done. Journalists call the Health Care Bill "epochal and transforming"... even though it merely (and gradually) tweaks what remains by far the most capitalistic and least "socialist" system in the industrial world.  Despite armageddon rhetoric, watch how quickly (I give it 4 years) Republicans will come to accept this status quo as motherhood and apple pie, as untouchable and sacred as Medicare and Social Security.

Just look at how they now view "don't ask don't tell."  A dozen years ago, the standard Republican cant pictured DADT as purely Satanic, a plot to destroy the US military.  Now, it is the established thing, to be defended, like all sacred traditions. Never let it be said that conservatives are inflexible.

This flexibility is displayed by their current ire toward a Health Care Bill that is, in fact,  basically the same as one that the same Republican's proposed as an alternative to the Clinton health care plan in 1993.

Pause and go over this carefully, because it may be your best ammo yet, with that Fox-addict uncle of yours. (Other than pointing out that Saudi/Arab interests own as much as 20% of Fox; that's a good one, too. See below.)

Here's a core fact and towering irony: the general outlines of Obama's plan were originally worked out at the conservative Heritage Foundation and proposed under sponsorship of GOP Senator Chafee and the entire GOP leadership in 1993. In other words, the Democrats just passed the Republican health care reform plan -- without a single Republican vote. See more details on Russ Daggett's blog -- (one of the best political blogs anywhere!) 

Moreover, if there are particular planks in the bill that your uncle detests (heck there are some I don't like), remind him that that is what "negotiation" is for, and the dems were fall-down eager to trade for republican votes.  If there are particular points he finds odious, they are there because the GOP did nothing to eliminate them, even though they could have.


SO WHAT'S WITH ALL THE ANGER AND REFUSAL TO NEGOTIATE?

Which brings up my first -- among several -- "contrarian" observation about the recent Health Care Imbroglio. This was never about socialism/capitalism... or indeed, any superficial "left-right" issue at all. 

Lest we forget -- George W. Bush and the GOP Congress passed Medicare Part D, an expansion of federal entitlement largesse that was easily as large as Obama's. Though with one crucial difference. The Democrats' new Health Insurance Bill was designed to add nothing to the federal deficit. In fact, it is revenue neutral and even promises some black ink.  The Republicans' Medicare B entitlement, in contrast, passed without a scintilla of provision for how to fund it. It simply said "bill our grandkids."

Of course, it is ironic how often facts run blatantly and diametrically opposite to common wisdom.  Take the absolute truth that Republicans talk a lot about being tough on illegal immigration... while their presidents always savagely cut border enforcement. (Reagan and both Bushes did it.) In contrast, Democratic presidents talk about immigrant rights and take care of immigrant kids... but they also double the active manpower of the Border Patrol. (Clinton did it and so has Obama.) It's an easily demonstrable fact that creates mind-blowing cognitive dissonance in dogmatists; try it some time!  Then have fun figuring out why the parties act this way!

The list of counter-intuitive facts goes on and on.  For example, all US Army brigades were "combat ready" under Clinton and none were under Bush. Or take the fact that  democrats inarguably "do" capitalism far better than republicans. The statistics -- on economic health, GDP growth, small business startups, market competition, budget balancing, de-regulation and dozens of other solid metrics -- make this abundantly clear; even though doctrinal delusion makes us ignore it.

So don't swallow the "left-right" hallucination. This is not about collectivism vs propertarianism. The "left-right" axis is hallucinatory.

No, at one level, our two political parties differ far more as a matter of personality psychology.  We Americans appear to be a bipolar people. We have what used to be called "manic depressive" disease.  Of course, in this model, clearly, democrats represent the manic side -- always frenetically eager to be doing something -- and republicans blatantly manifest the depressive side.  Hence we can see why:

1) Starting when they took over Congress in 1995, amid promises of diligent reform, the Republican members of Congress have proved to be the laziest clade of legislators in US history. While pouring forth invective against big government, abortion and what-not, they actually submitted fewer bills, held fewer hearings or votes, heard less testimony and met fewer hours than any other Congress in a hundred years.  While serving up lip-service to the social conservative ground troops, they actually only roused themselves to concerted action when it came to one issue... arranging tax cuts for the rich.  

That they did diligently, in good times and bad, during peace and war. Even going so far as to try hard to "privatize" Social Security... thrusting a hundred million new purchasers into the stock market at its peak. Purchasers who would have lost trillions buying from then-owners at top prices. But, aside from this one priority, for the most part, the GOP lawmakers just sat around and grumbled and cussed and did nothing, even when they held all of the levers of power, every branch of government, and had clearly stated goals.

2) Since World War II, Democrats have done more DE-regulating of government control over economic sectors than Republicans... with the sole exception of the financial industry, where it was the GOP who insisted that most supervision be removed, with clear results. Sound counter-intuitive?  Aren't liberals inherently Regulators and government-loving meddlers?  But again, facts inconveniently defy stereotypes. It was the Dems who eliminated the powerful Interstate Commerce Commission, the Civil Aeronautics Board and many other "captured" regulatory agencies that had kept regulated prices high and stymied competition.  Not the lefty thing to do.  But certainly the manic, busy thing.

(Again: note which industry the GOP deregulated. and how thoroughly their deregulation served their real masters. Meanwhile, their ground troops got nothing.)

I'll stop here.  Except to make a few minor followup points.  Just please take away the basic ironiy here.  That the real, underlying issues often aren't what we're told they are.


==  Devastating Followup ===

Who wants culture war?  Who promotes it, as the best way to divide and weaken America?

“Saudi billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal held meetings this week with  Chairman and Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch to discuss investments, including "future potential alliance with News Corp., the statement said about a deal that would see News Corp. Talal, expanding his ownership, plans to buy 10% of the existing shares in the company (The parent company of Fox) could be completed this month.”

Actually, it goes both ways.  Rupert Murdoch is buying 10% of Prince Talal’s media group... and Talal is not the only Saudi or rich Arab owning big chunks of Fox.  By some estimates, the total owned by Middle Eastern interests may be as high as 20+%

Is it possible to ponder a hypothesis?  That the messages that seem aimed at tearing America apart are deliberately spread by interests who want exactly that? 

Okay, is it time yet for the Fox News Boycott ?

Oh, see a piece by David Brooks in the New York Times talks about  recent terorism matters in terms that I have been raising since before 9/11... "citizen empowerment and resilience."

Alas, as I point out elsewhere, this should be a matter of prioritization and resource allocation.  1% of the the homeland security budget should be applied to the only thing that worked on 9/11.  The only thing that worked against the shoe bomber or Abdulmutallab.  The thing that wasn't allowed to work during Katrina.I'm in no position to push for it.  It doesn't feather institutional nests.  It just happens to be the one thing that could help us to survive, if and when something awful happens.  Alas.

Finally, also see: Where your money goes 2010.

 .... No ... at the last minute I must add this.  Apparently the Hutaree "McVeigh Radicals" planned to go on a cop-killing spree in April, coinciding both with the dates ofthe Oklahoma City bombings and Hitler's Birthday -- a commonlly targeted date in Aryan Nations circles.  It also happens to have been chosen as the date of the coming, big Tea Party rally.

A Sensible - if Radical - Solution for Greece

=== ABOUT THE GREEK/EUROPEAN CISIS... ===

If you haven't been following this, it's pretty important. The "Club Med" countries of Europe -- Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy -- seem to have gone on a spending binge, since joining the Euro-zone (using the Euro as currency) and now Greece, especially, is asking to be bailed out - big time - by the richest nations, especially Germany.  This seems unlikely.  But the alternative, draconian budget cuts, could stir major social unrest, as well as a national depression.

You know me, I always look for the most obvious thing that is going un-mentioned.  In the case of Greece, I am wondering why nobody mentions the blatant extent to which Greeks are notorious tax scofflaws.  Tax compliance rates in Greece are known to be dismal.  Isn't this an important side of any budget crisis?

I am wondering if Greece might be helped by a dose of radical transparency. 

See my more extensive article: Solving World Debt Through Radical Economic Transparency.

Tax evasion is mediated by corruption, which thrives in shadows.  Were the Greek economy radically opened to light, laws would be enforced, simply because citizens would spot their neighbors' evasions -- (yes I am talking radical transparency! So?) -- and therefore that side of the ledger should dramatically improve.

This approach has an added advantage.  Radical transparency could be achieved with some simple changes in law, unleashing citizens and media to do the rest.  If combined with an amnesty for those who report and pay-up on past evasions, this approach could offer the poor and middle class something to counterbalance their own sacrifices in setting things right.

 This sort of thing could be a big piece in helping the "Club Med" countries transform their balance books and take up a new position of leadership in an era of change.


=== NOW... SOME SCIENCE===

Citizen news network with credibility ratings. (EARTH predictive hit?

Mars Express buzzes Phobos, one of the Red Planet's two tiny moons.

Creatures found under 600 ft of Antarctic ice suggest possible life under Jovian moon surfaces.

Your next cool board game?

Researchers Turn Mosquitoes Into Flying Vaccinators.

Stop the Ug99 Fungus Before Its Spores Bring Starvation

Well, it certainly is reciprocal accountability....

Wow re lunar ice.

A site that answers questions or computations.

Efficient, low-cost water treatment (membrane .02 microns) may be useful in third world countries.

Five stellar ways to explore space using social media

Women and Posthumanity: The future looks large and sexy. The media is driving females to manipulate their bodies to increasingly unnatural idealized images. We've lost touch with what natural bodies look like; we have no acceptance of natural aging.

==Brin-news==

I'll offer my own, typically off-angle, view of the Health Care Bill and its implications for America's ongoing civil war, soon.  Till then, I just want to jot down a quick thought on another matter -- the current European economic crisis, precipitated by near bankruptcy of the nation of Greece.

Now, some announcements…

1) I've continued my series of ten-minute intellectual "YouTube Feasts." First concluding my series about spaceflight withPart V: The  Grand-scale reasons to explore space.

And then with the first part of a series about transparency, privacy and freedom. The Transparent Society: Part 1: the coming era of cameras everywhere. 

 2) The George Marshall Foundation has honored me by prominently posting my 1999 essay touting George Marshall as the "Man of the 20th Century."

Spread the word and enjoy!

On Denialism, Altruism, Breaking filibusters and... space!

Denialism includes “denial of progress.”

One of the most insidious poisons going around, spread not only by the mad right but also by the lazier and more self-indulgent portions of the left, has been the notion that progress has failed.

Even when wagging their fingers at us, in hope that we’ll become better people, Hollywood films like Avatar emphasize guilt and despair as motivators to become better people. Say what?  Exactly how is that supposed to work? Instead of ... well, how about pride in what we’ve accomplished and encouragement that we can do more? Directors like James Cameron are sincere. They mean well.  They really do want to propel us forward. They genuinely hope their guilt trips will make us better people... while showing in their films a belief that the goal is impossible to achieve!  Which makes it all the more tragic that their messages kill the very ambitions they aim to stoke.  The ambition to accomplish great things.

In fact, civilization is not vile and useless.  Progress happens.  It has never been happening faster.  See just this one short summary for a partial list of reasons to feel restored faith in our can-do spirit.  Of course, the list was compiled by some folks at Cato, who give all the credit to globalization and none to intelligent planning.  But the facts still are what they are.

Lesson number one in human motivation, Jim.  Guilt trips aren’t as effective as pep talks that positively reward and praise people for the great stuff they have already done, encouraging them to strive harder to move forward even faster.  Go back to school.  Re-take psych 1.

=== On Altruism ===

What benefit does altruism serve?

I provided two papers in the psychological research volume Pathological Altruism, edited by Barbara Oakley, Ariel Knafo, Guruprasad Madhavan and David Sloan Wilson. Published by Oxford University Press.

This volume takes on a once verboten topic -- can surficially beneficent or altruistic behavior sometimes be motivated by more unsavory drives like aggression, egotism or even rapacious self-interest?  Can it even hurt the one who is being helped?

My chapters are: "Self-Addiction and Self-Righteousness" and "A Contrarian Perspective on Altruism: The Dangers of First Contact". Those interested will have to wait at least half a year for Oxford to publish the volume.  But  make note, now.  It will be worth the wait.  (It also proves I am still doing science... albeit in the form of continuing guerilla raids outside my formal PhD!)

Not that I disagree... but the study was done by a liberal atheist. ;-) In fact, the lurid headline disguises an interestingly more complex article about whether higher general intelligence is associated with “evolutionarily novel” traits -- or much more recent adaptations -- like nocturnal activity (dependent upon artificial light), complex discourse.

The author argues that humans are evolutionarily designed to be conservative, caring mostly about their family and friends, and being liberal, caring about an indefinite number of genetically unrelated strangers they never meet or interact with, is evolutionarily novel.  So more intelligent children may be more likely to grow up to be liberals.  This jibes closely to my “horizons” model that saitiation trades off against the radius of inclusion, how widely you feel your sense of kinship extends, in space, time, and kind.  The satiation tradeoff only works if a person has both certain personality traits (including satiability) and enoigh empathy-imagination.

==A  Trick to Defeat the Filibuster==

I've mentioned before that the New York Times ran an especially cogent article -- Mr. Smith Rewrites the Constitution, by Thomas Geoghegan -- about the absurd filibuster, its unjustified constitutional context, and possible ways around it.  It’s one of the most enlightening legal articles I've read.  I like especially Gohegan’s recommendation that Vice President Joe Biden simply rule from the bench that his own constitutional powers have been abridged.

On further consideration, in fact, the “Biden Option” could be even simpler than Gohegan suggests.  Instead of the vice president using his presiding powers to rule against the cloture process, he can arrange for circumstances that simply bypass cloture, on a constitutional quirk. Here’s how. Simply coordinate enough Democratic Senators in order to arrange for a perfect match of the predictable, lockstep GOP nay vote.  Say the result is a 41-41 tie, at which point Biden says:

 "The vote for cloture being a tie, the US Constitution takes precedence over any mere Senate procedural rule. I shall now cast the tie-breaking vote. I vote 'Yes' for cloture. The motion carries, and debate on this bill shall close 30 hours hence."  BANG!

The great thing about this approach is that it leaves Republicans with no wriggle room at all. Their sole option is to evade the tie, by changing some Republican votes from nay to yea! But the Democrats have far more inherent flexibility.  Up to twenty extra Democratic senators may lurk in the cloakroom, ready to descend and vote either way -- to restore the tie or else using those GOP "yeas" to help add up toward a regular 60-vote cloture.

Sure it will be decried as trickery.  So?

==Hollywood and Our Notion of Progress==

I was also interviewed for the new documentary “The People vs. George Lucas.”  I have no idea - yet - whether they used their footage of me appropriately.  I attempted to be circumspect and speak well of Lucas -- where he deserved it. For example, I loved the “Young Indiana Jones Chronicles” and adored “The Empire Strikes Back.”  So my disappointment in the films that followed came honestly... leading to my participation as editor and “prosecutor” in the book STAR WARS ON TRIAL. (by far the best and most fun way to explore these issues!)

Those guys at the SETI Institute sure have chutzpah!  They plan to turn their first SETIcon August 13-15 at the Hyatt Regency, Santa Clara. “The Search for Life in the Universe in Science Fact and Science Fiction!” Thus perpetuating the myth that they love science fiction.... only don’t mention any possibility that the universe might -- just might -- be different, even slightly, than their standard model.  Watch how quickly any alternate scenario is dismissed as “crazy science fiction stuff.”  Anybody planning to attend? Oh, don’t get me wrong, it should be fun and interesting in its own right.  The topic has fascinated my, all my life and I am glad the are pursuing the worthy search... (as opposed to some of their other, cultlike activities.)  But if anyone is interested in some questions to raise....

==Podcasting Outer Space==

I've been recording and posting some brief (for me) monologues on YouTube, starting with

Space Exploration Part 1 - Planning our next steps in beyond Earth  ... followed by

Space Exploration Part 2 - Mining the sky: Are there economic incentives out there?    ... and then

Space Exploration Part 3: The Big Picture, Where is the excitement? And what about warp drive? Finally, and just posted, there is

Space Exploration Part 4: Ambitious technologies for space: Space tethers, solar sails and space elevators.

More space-related postings will go up soon, plus some fun rants about SETI, andon the (crazy) notion of "cycles" of falling civilizations.

Nature interviews David Brin on scientists writing fiction.


=== On the Brain, Health Care and more! ===

The worlds first commercial brain-machine interface.

See Mike Treder, of the Institute on Ethics in Technology, write about basics of health care.

Another for the predictions registry... e-readers like the Amazon Kindle.  Now see this from EARTH (1989)   “That's enough for now. More than enough. Go feed your pets. Get some exercise. I slipped some readings into your plaque. Go over them by next time. And don't be late.”   Hm?  Anybody know an earlier hit on this?

I wish I could find where I also predicted this! That nerves are only the flashiest active elements in the brain.  The so-called “support” cells may be just as important, multiplying vastly the number of “active” elements and making the human brain that much harder to emulate! 

And finally, some some political items I had lying around...


===  Miscellanea ==

The fundies have made it blatant and open: ”Science fiction is intimately associated with Darwinian evolution. Sagan and Asimov, for example, were prominent evolutionary scientists. Sci-fi arose in the late 19th and early 20th century as a product of an evolutionary worldview that denies the Almighty Creator. In fact, evolution IS the pre-eminent science fiction. Beware!”

See an interesting, if myopic, discussion of why economists failed to see the bubble crisis coming.  And sure, none of them mention crackpot theories like my “Betrayal of the Smarter Sons.”  I can’t blame them.  That one was pretty bizarre, even if it contained some possible validity.

The honest truth is that I suspect other reasons.  Oligarchy is an especially pernicious human trend that's rooted in our genes and also in capitalism's very roots.  Marx was right that it is the ultimate, recurring threat. He was wrong to say that there aren't solutions that can keep capitalism vibrant, competitive and creative, for generations at a stretch.  But those solutions tend to be "captured" by smart proto-oligarchs, much in the way that parasitic viruses and bacteria adapt to attack hosts in new ways.

Right now our immune system cannot adapt to oligarchy-driven distortions because our immune system (politics) has been suppressed by "culture war."  Throw in some deliberate sabotage by certain hostile foreign elements and you have a theory that is more than adequate... if far too dramatic for anyone but a science fiction author to concoct or credit.

Too bad, since economic and political thinkers used to ponder a bigger picture.  Krugman and Galbraith are peering at individual trees.  They do not see the forest.

-- Is the Iraq War over? ---

enough for now....

Space Exploration, Methane Blurps and Podcast Rants

 A couple of hurried announcement-notes, then a quick-drafted thought on methane blurps and cycles of history:

1) With the help of a techie-camerawoman (for whom I feel considerable fondness), I've begun recording and posting some brief (for me) monologues on YouTube.

Space Exploration Part 1: Planning our next steps in Space  

...followed by...

Space Exploration Part 2 - Mining the sky: Are there economic incentives for exploring space? Can space exploration pay for itself? More space-related postings will go up soon, as well as another on the notion of "cycles" of falling civilization.

2) See a thought provoking snippet from the Globalist: "In the 1980s and 1990s, workers from China, India and the former Soviet bloc contributed 1.47 billion new workers to the global labor pool — effectively doubling the size of the world's now-connected workforce, bringing little capital with them. Even Marx knew that the capital/labor ratio is critical. The more capital each worker has, the higher their productivity and pay. A decline in the global capital/labor ratio shifts the balance of power as more workers compete for working with scarce capital."

This ratio of scarcity explains some of the strong position of capital today and even (perhaps) the present hard push toward revived oligarchy, restoring the normal human governance model, recently displaced by the Enlightenment.  That push may be all the more intense because new capital is forming at a furious rate, especially in Asia. Hence the ratio should correct itself within a couple of decades, especially as population levels off.  The would-be restorers of that ancient pattern may feel they only have a little time.

WELL THIS IS ONE BIG THING I WORRIED ABOUT...

For years I've prophesied that the biggest shoe in the climate mess had yet to drop... the potential (and possibly sudden) release of vast stores of methane that had been sequestered, either in permafrost or in hydrate ices under polar arctic seas.

John Barnes also wrote of this possibility in his fine novel MOTHER OF STORMS (1994). Now come signs it has begun."The amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world's oceans," said Shakhova, a researcher at UAF's International Arctic Research Center. "Subsea permafrost is losing its ability to be an impermeable cap." Earlier periods of rapid climate change have been associated with sudden releases of methane from the seabed.

If this proves to be a true tipping point event, and if dire consequences ensue, it will require re-adjustments on all sides. On the right, it will mean eating crow and admitting they were wrong - something no conservative ever does without prying the words out of him, with a crowbar of facts.  It might also be time to hold the top leaders of the Denialist Cabal accountable in civil court, if their tactics involved deliberate obstruction of informed palliation of harm, as in the Tobacco judgments.

But the left will have to adapt, as well. And one thing they must surrender is their monomania that Global Climate Change can only be dealt with at the demand side -- through conservation, energy efficiency, sustainable development and almost puritanical self-control.  Hey, I am in favor of much of that, as shown by my novel EARTH (1990)  But clearly, liberals may also have to suck it up and accept the need for measures that address global warming directly.  For example via a suite of methods called Geoengineering.

I know some workers in this field.  Many of the schemes are presently impractical -- e.g. giant sunshades to reduce light levels striking the Earth.  Others have potentially dangerous hysteresis effects or are inherently hard to control, like sending plumes of sunlight-scattering aerosols into the upper atmosphere.  Certainly, any prudent attempts at geoengineering should start with things that

1) have no overshoot potential
2) emulate natural processes
3) are easy to stop, cold
4) have side benefits.

Hands down, that means going back to experiments in ocean fertilization.  Earlier attempts, dumping iron dust into the sea, had mixed results and resulted in some worrisome acidification. My favorite alternative would be to create tide-driven bottom-stirrers... as depicted in EARTH -- that simply emulate the natural process by which ocean currents raise nutrients from the ocean floor in some regions, stimulating plankton to draw CO2 out of the air, and also turning sea-deserts into rich fisheries. This possible win-win seems worth a few more-than-tepid experiments.

----------
ENLIST THIS SMART GUY IN THE CAUSE

Finally, I was cued onto a cogent and well-written "big perspective" by Mark Rosenfelder - of the kind that I am wont to spin off, now and then. It can be seen at the zompist site, and though written in 2000, it reads as if written yesterday. Rosenfelder addresses contemporary ironies, like "If liberalism won all its battles, why is it retreating?"

The general topic that he tries to cover is one that I call "What ever happened to the can-do, problem-solving spirit called modernism?"  Way back in 2005, I penned a 20 part series about this, exploring the question from many angles, then waited for some journalist to come and offer to expand it into a book (!)

Among many things I like about this essay -- Rosenfelder distinguishes (as I do) between Liberalism and The Left, two very different movements that are often allies toward particular goals, e.g. civil rights, but that are at-odds over their fundamental models of both human nature and how a better society might unleash human potential. Other topics... (no time to address them all)... he dallies with "two dimensional" political spectra... none of which are as good as my own (naturally ;-) But decide for yourself.

But at least he shares my contempt for the current, absurd (and French) "left-right" axis. His appraisal of the bestiary of American politics is interesting and insightful, though here I diverge in several ways.  For example, I think I have a better explanation for the right's abortion fixation. (The "Jesus Problem.")  His analysis of libertarianism, while hilariously on-target, misses some core points, like the way I challenge libertarians to tell me who was oppressing freedom in any decade, on any continent, across the last 4,000 years. Read Adam Smith, and then tell me how you'll prevent the recurrence of feudalism. All told, a fascinating romp by a fellow who truly qualifies as an open-minded, contrary-ornery wiseguy.

===Misc stuff! ===

Neil de Grasse Tyson on the space elevator.

Brilliant, if true.

What has happened to the Atlantic, though!  Formerly a cesspool of grumbling, anti-future maunderings, it now runs vigorous articles appraising the future, from Nicholas Carr’s dyspeptic but interesting ”Is Google Making Us Stoopid?” to this recent piece by my fellow hard-charging modernist, Jamais Cascio, “Get Smarter.”  Go look. 

Another prediction from EARTH (1992) -- Tidal power is taking off, in Europe. (Now a further prediction.  These “snakes” will also be designed to stir bottom mud and fertilize currents. )

Further articles about my opposition to METi - or “Message to ET.” One ran in the New York Times, another in the New Scientist.

See a wiki about a fun, mind-stretching concept by the renowned singularitarian John Smart.

World’s weirdest animals!  I knew of maybe half of these.  The rest?  Eewww!  Use em as aliens in a scifi pic. 

“A two-year-long interview with Slawek Wojtowicz” the Polish SF scholar.  Mostly for a Polish audience of readers.