Land of the Lost

I am going to break with my typical "bad blogging" habits... my penchant for writing long, carefully edited and punctiliously argued screeds dealing with serious topics (everyone says that is NOT the way to blog!)...

...and instead issue a short, ill-edited rant on popular culture.
(Ah! Now Brin is catching on top what the Internet is FOR!)

The topic? That infuriating television show LOST.

I'm going to list the inconsistencies and frustrations that most vex me in this series. They are probably not the same as what you'll read at, say, one of the fan sites, because I view it through the lens of a professional plot-smith.

First, I do try to view art in the spirit that it is offered -- and I know that the writers and producers of LOST are engaged in the art form known as the Grand Tease. Hence I won't complain about the fundamental premise -- that no character ever asks any crucial questions, not even when they had the leisure of 3 years to ask them. No, that is a central theme of the series and anyone who can't abide it simply should not watch.

But some things were revealed and made explicit. earlier. They should have been kept in mind as the series developed. They were huge clues. They deserved payoff. And, although some may seem minor, ignoring them should be cause for the producers to be (figuratively) shot!

1) The children and stewardesses etc of the crashed Oceanic flight. They were taken away by the Others. Dozens of them We even glimpsed them, near the Polar Bear cages, in one episode. A major plot element, they are now (in show-year 2006) the main group of survivors left. Above all they are the only true INNOCENTS left, and hence the ones who deserve any loyalty or attention or moral duty in the story.

2) Plot elements left hanging: The "disease"... the mysterious lethality of childbirth... the SOURCE of the "others" -- who apparently were recruited by "a magnificent man..." the deGroots and Hanso and their goals...

3) The air drop of Dharma supplies. Yes, when the Oceanic survivors found parachuted supplies meant for the last Dharma outpost in the Hatch... sure it only happened once , but the implications were HUGE! It meant that there was still a Dharma initiative out there! It implied another route to the island than by submarine. Did it bother ANYBODY else out there? It ought to.

4) Heck, what happened to the Dharma and the guys backing them and the group in Ann Arbor? Did they learn ANYTHING after all that expense and effort?

An side -- what IS it with the obsession in all TV series, of leaving contemporary society unchanged? STARGATE was a great show, but their excuses for NOT FREAKING TELLING THE WORLD that Earth was fast becoming an intergalactic imperial power started getting really, really lame. Would it have hurt to show what WE might have done, reacting to such news?*

5) There is only one character in the tale who is not relentlessly clueless and stupid. The one character who is always, always right. Hurley. The writers always show him suggesting openness and wisdom, and getting contemptuously, patronizingly spurned by his friends. He's the only one who wanted simply to tell the world about the island! And thus... render all sides in the silly "war" moot and let all humanity learn all about something miraculous that we could all share.

Is Hurley EVER going to be listened-to?

6) What the $%#! have all the governments of the world been doing, all this time? Not ONE person, anywhere or anytime, ever told any responsible group of adults about all the shenanigens going on, with incredible powers? Sure, it's more dramatic to leave the government out of it. That is... unless a pair of FBI agents - looking suspiciously like Mulder and Sculley - were to arrive and speak out for telling the world....

6) Death guilt. There were hints, throughout the first two seasons, that you were either chosen by the Others - or not - depending on whether you had killed somebody or done something else that caused you to feel guilty. Jack and Hurley felt INDIRECTLY guilty, and so we left on the beach. Locke at the time had no guilt and I thought that was his reason for being "chosen". He even avoided "re-killing" his own father...

...that is, till he outright committed unprovoked MURDER by hurling a knife into the back of an innocent woman. Wha???? HAve the writers forgotten all about that thread? When Ethan told the murderer female cop "you're not worthy" they made this point very clear! Only, then they show the Others committing murder like crazy! So, WTF?

7) Speaking of Locke's father... wasn't he taken out of a "magic box" by Benjamin Linus? What ever happened to that?

Okay okay... I should have just turned off the damned box, a couple of years ago. The last season is already filmed (though a few minutes of spliced in conversation is still possible). Maybe we are best served simply by boycotting the final season, to teach a lesson to Abrams and others like him, who do not care about fealty to plot.

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* I'll go see DISTRICT 9 soon. I hear good things. Still, I think the same concept, done in the 1980s, was intrinsically more courageous. Rent ALIEN NATION and see how that brave film did something no other ever even tried -- either before or since. It portrayed our civilization -- and its citizens -- actually behaving as they might, if such things ever happened for real.

In other words... a majority of us actually trying to behave decently and well, with tolerance and courage and smarts and a will to face the future.

Hollywood, it seems, not only cannot ever portray such things... people there cannot even seem to wrap their minds around the idea! Hence, alas, we come full circle to poor Hurley.

He represents the rest of us. The ones with more brains and heart than movie star looks. The poor schlumps with common sense.

--See also Ruminations on Lost (before the Finale).

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The Real Way to Feel Safe with Artificial Intelligence

Sorry to have posted so little, of late.  We have been ensnared by a huge and complex Eagle Scout Project here... plus another kid making Black Belt, and yet another at Screenwriting camp... then the first one showing me endless online photos of "cars it would be cool to buy..."

And so, clearing my deck of topics to rant about, I'd like to post quickly this rumination on giving rights to artificial intelligences.  Bruce Sterling has lately raised this perennial issue, as did Mike Treder in an excellent piece suggesting that our initial attitudes toward such creatures may color the entire outcome of a purported "technological singularity."

==The Real Reason to Ensure AI Rights==

No issue is of greater importance than ensuring that our new, quasi-intelligent creations are raised properly.  While oversimplifying terribly, Hollywood visions of future machine intelligence range from TERMINATOR-like madness to admirable traits portrayed in movies like AI or in the BICENTENNIAL MAN.

I've spoken elsewhere of one great irony -- that there is nothing new about this endeavor.  That every human generation embarks upon a similar exercise -- creating new entities that start out less intelligent and virtually helpless, but gradually transform into beings that are stronger, more capable, and sometimes more brilliant than their parents can imagine.

The difference between this older style of parenthood and the New Creation is not only that we are attempting to do all of the design de novo, with very little help from nature or evolution, but also that the pace is speeding up. It may even accelerate, once semi-intelligent computers assist in fashioning new and better successors.

Humanity is used to the older method, in which each next generation reliably includes many who rise up, better than their ancestors... while many others sink lower, even into depravity.  It all sort of balanced out (amid great pain), but henceforth we cannot afford such haphazard ratios,  from either our traditional-organic heirs or their cybernetic creche-mates.

I agree that our near-future politics and social norms will powerfully affect what kind of "singularity" transformation we'll get -- ranging from the dismal fears of Bill Joy and Ted Kaczynski to the fizzing fantasies of Ray Kurzweil.  But first, let me say it's not the surface politics of our useless, almost-meaningless so-called Left-vs-Right axis. Nor will it be primarily a matter of allocation of taxed resources. Except for investments in science and education and infrastructure, those are not where the main action will be.  They will not determine the difference between "good" and "bad" transcendence.  Between THE MATRIX  and, say, FOUNDATION'S TRIUMPH.

No, what I figure will be the determining issue is this.  Shall we maintain momentum and fealty to the underlying concepts of the Western Enlightenment? Concepts that run even deeper than democracy or the principle of equal rights, because they form the underlying, pragmatic basis for our entire renaissance.

==Going With What Has Already Worked==

These are, I believe, the pillars of our civilization -- the reasons that we have accomplished so much more than any other, and why we may even succeed in doing it right, when we create Neo-Humanity.

1.  We acknowledge that individual human beings  -- and also, presumably, the expected caste of neo-humans -- are inherently flawed in their subjectively biased views of the world.

In other words...  we are all delusional! Even the very best of us.  Even (despite all their protestations to the contrary) all leaders.  And even (especially) those of you out there who believe that you have it all sussed.

This is crucial. Six thousand years of history show this to be the one towering fact of human nature.  Our combination of delusion and denial is the core predicament that stymied our creative, problem-solving abilities, delaying the great flowering that we're now part-of.

These dismal traits still erupt everywhere, in all of us.  Moreover, it is especially important to assume that delusion and denial will arise, inevitably, in the new intelligent entities that we're about to create.  If we are wise parents, we will teach them to say what all good scientists are schooled to say, repeatedly: "I might be mistaken."  But that, alone, is not enough.

2.  There is a solution to this curse, but it is not at all the one what was recommended by Plato, or any of the other great sages of the past.

Oh, they knew all about about the delusion problem, of course.  See Plato's "allegory of the cave," or the sayings of Buddha, or any of a myriad other sage critiques of fallible human subjectivity.  These savants were correct to point at the core problem... only then, each of them claimed that it could be solved by following their exact prescription for Right Thinking. And followers bought in, reciting or following the incantations and flattering themselves that they had a path that freed them of error.

Painfully, at great cost, we have learned that there is no such prescription. Alack, the net sum of "wisdom" that those prophets all offered only wound up fostering even more delusion.  It turns out that nothing -- no method or palliative applied by a single human mind, upon itself -- will ever accomplish the objective.

Oh, sure, logic and reason and sound habits of scientifically-informed self-doubt can help a lot.  They may cut the error rate in half, or even by a factor of a hundred!  Nevertheless, you and I are still delusional twits.  We always will be!  It is inherent.  Live with it.  Our ancestors had to live with the consequences of this inherent human curse.

Ah, but things turned out not to be hopeless, after all!  For, eventually, the Enlightenment offered a completely different way to deal with this perennial dilemma.  We (and presumably our neo-human creations) can be forced to notice, acknowledge, and sometimes even correct our favorite delusions, through one trick that lies at the heart of every Enlightenment innovation -- the processes called Reciprocal Accountability (RA).

In order to overcome denial and delusion, the Enlightenment tried something unprecedented -- doing without the gurus and sages and kings and priests.  Instead, it nurtured competitive systems in markets, democracy, science and courts, through which back and forth criticism is encouraged to flow, detecting many errors and allowing many innovations to improve.  Oh, competition isn't everything! Cooperation and generosity and ideals are clearly important parts of the process, too. But ingrained reciprocality of criticism -- inescapable by any leader -- is the core innovation.

3.  These systems -- including "checks and balances" exemplified in the U.S. Constitution -- help to prevent the kind of sole-sourcing of power, not only by old-fashioned human tyrants, but also the kind of oppression that we all fear might happen, if the Singularity were to run away, controlled by just one or a few mega-machine-minds. The nightmare scenarios portrayed in The Matrix, Terminator, or the Asimov universe.

==The Way to Ensure AI is Both Sane and Wise==

How can we ever feel safe, in a near future dominated by powerful artificial intelligences that far outstrip our own? What force or power could possibly keep such a being, or beings, accountable?

Um, by now, isn't it obvious?

The most reassuring thing that could happen would be for us mere legacy/organic humans to peer upward and see a great diversity of mega minds, contending with each other, politely, and under civil rules, but vigorously nonetheless, holding each other to account and ensuring everything is above-board.

This outcome -- almost never portrayed in fiction --  would strike us as inherently more likely to be safe and successful.  After all, isn't it today's situation?  The vast majority of citizens do not understand arcane matters of science or policy or finance.  They watch the wrangling among alphas and are reassured to see them applying accountability upon each other.... a reassurance that was betrayed by recent attempts to draw clouds of secrecy across all of our deliberative processes.

Sure, it is profoundly imperfect, and fickle citizens can be swayed by mogul-controlled media to apply their votes in unwise directions.  We sigh and shake our heads... as future AI Leaders will moan in near-despair over organic-human sovereignty.  But, if they are truly wise, they'll continue this compact.  Because the most far-seeing among them will recognize that "I might be wrong" is still the greatest thing than any mind can say.  And that we reciprocal criticism is even better.

Alas, even those who want to keep our values strong, heading into the Singularity Age, seldom parse it down to this fundamental level.  They talk - for example - about giving AI "rights" in purely moral terms...  or perhaps to placate them and prevent them from rebelling and squashing us.

But the real reason to do this is far more pragmatic.  If the new AIs feel vested in a civilization that considers them "human" then they may engage in our give and take process of shining light upon delusion. Each others delusions, above all.

Reciprocal accountability -- extrapolated to a higher level -- may thus maintain the core innovation of our civilization: its central and vital insight.

And thus, we may find that our new leaders -- our godlike grandchildren -- will still care about us... and keep trying to explain.

David Brin

http://www.davidbrin.com

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The Notion of Disputation Arenas

Over in the closed discussion group of the Lifeboat Foundation, there's been discussion of the concept of "Disputation Arenas."  Or the notion that the art of argument badly needs an upgrade for modern times.

 Back during the middle ages, there were occasional attempts to bring together the wisest members of disparate, bickering factions in order to hear out both sides.  The most famous of these disputations involved Catholic prelates vs prominent Rabbis and they were anything but fair - always aimed at a foregone conclusion.  Yet, the rabbis came, nonetheless.  Why?  Because a little bit of light, in the darkness, is better than none at all.

And so, as the fellow who coined the term "Disputation Arenas," I have decided to post my response to the Lifeboat group here, for public tasting...

(For detailed background, see the lead article in the American Bar Association' s Journal on Dispute Resolution (Ohio State University), v.15, N.3, pp 597-618, Aug. 2000.

My article is now available on my website: Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict and Competition for Society's Benefit.

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Regarding the basic notion behind Disputation Arenas...
...I never envisioned a single forum where "truth" would be decided. rather, the notion was simply to empower Already-existing enlightenment processes to do better at their task of pragmatic problem-solving. One of the core elements of the Enlightenment, after all, is argument... the harnessing of inter-human competition toward the discovery of both errors and increasingly more effective models of the world.

An aside -- while I deeply respect my pal Robin Hanson for his lively mind and far-reaching intellect, I never did understand his argument (with which I disagree) that disagreement, in itself, is inherently flawed and not solvable by argument. (Alliteration is intentional. )

Rather, what seems inherent is our human propensity -- nay, genius -- at self-delusion. It is the core human quandary and one that puts the kiabosh on all platonic notions of rule by simple reason. The very best of us fall for delusions -- and moreover, we have no clear way of determining which of us is "the best of us." The one method by which human beings can reliably be made aware of their delusions is through interaction with others -- (a crucial point that we need to make clear to burgeoning artificial intelligences! )

YOU are capable of noticing the delusions that I am too in-love-with to spot or correct. In pointing them out, you do me the service of reciprocal accountability (RA) -- or criticism -- a great boon, allowing self-improvement, and a boon which I'll be only too happy to serve back to you, in plenty. As a favor, of course.

The irony -- that competition thus overcomes our resistance to criticism, and thus fosters a form of (involuntary) cooperation -- is rich and thick and delicious as cake.

(As ironic as the fact that the most vociferous "defenders of competitive markets" are all-too often those who do not get it, and strive always to harm the core process.  And yes, Cato Institute, I am talking about you.)

(See how all this fits into the Big Picture .  Those with immense patience and stamina might even try my way-over-caffienated (but entertaining) talk at Google about "Discourse and Problem Solving in the 21st Century!") 

Am I suggesting that Twitter and Second Life and Facebook are helping to lobotomize us, at a time when we really need technologies that might help bring out our best and most mature problem-solving skills?  Well, yes, though I am not invested in pessimism, like Bill Joy or Nicholas Carr.  I feel that these "attention spreading" systems might have some positive effects (perhaps even 1% as much as zealots like Clay Shirky envision!)  But only if they are augmented by other methodologies - mostly not invented yet - that also help us to rediscover focus.

 The crux point is that current fads and trends DO enhance self-expression, vastly, but they also make it trivial to avoid criticism... or, rather, to avoid having to note or notice or respond to or perform self-modification as a result of criticism.  Those who praise ONLY vastly-enhanced self-expression, while ignoring the other half of the Creative Cycle, may be very bright, but they are being zealous fools.

Parse this carefully.  The pessimist curmugeons urge us to step back from the cliff of lobotomization-by-technology, by renouncing some of them and restoring older ways -- a method that never, ever worked in the past. 

Meanwhile, the fervid optimists cry out hossanahs to Twitter. 

Both sides are silly.  To guys like me, who are skeptical of every broad-brush generalization, who love technology but want it to empower pragmatic problem-solvers, it is clear what's missing. And, yes, the solution is more technology...  only much better balanced technology.

 Hence - getting back on-topic - the key features of any Disputation Area system must not only include excellent tools for argument-management , position-parsing, analytic tools and all that. It must also address to problem of how to get people (or advocacy groups) to come! And how to encourage an environment where ALL participants have to grudgingly acknowledge "Hm... I guess I need to take that into account."

Note that that is PRECISELY what happens in the four existing "accountability arenas"... markets, democracy, courts, and especially science. In the first two, it is filthy and inefficient, but also glorious, compared to all past, delusion-drenched civilizations. So, what I am asking for is not impossible.

It would, however, require some focus... and money... to implement. I can think of no more valuable thing for a billionaire to sponsor. But, then, I am not a billionaire and the delusion that I can tell billionaires what to do is... well, a rich one that's been subject to the criticism of life experience.

david brin

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ADDENDUM

See a fascinating appraisal of the way that Amazon recently sent fingers into every Kindle device that had George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" on it, removed the book and refunded the purchase price, without notification -- an act with ironic resonance in many ways. 

The author goes on to offer some interesting comparisons of Kindle to the eReader.  What fascinates me is the extent to which we have allowed the new media to eliminate the freedoms that we had, in the time of videotape, audio cassettes and early computer disks.  True, copyright piracy is (generally) bad.  But the bloody inconvenience and blithering incomprehensibility of simply using a modern DVD player to watch a film that you already own - let alone record an episode of NOVA - it is why I keep three VCRs in the house, still.

Online events and other coolstuff

First: Looking back 40 years: On June 20th, 1969: My brief essay in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the firsr moon landing is now up on Tor.com. A surprising perspective on art, ambition and the problem of ennui

Third Millennium Problem-Solving: My recent talk for the USENIX Conference is available for viewing online.  A bit nerdier than my usual speeches about the future, for more general audiences.  This bunch of technies seemed to really get into it! So I went a little long.

H+ asked David Brin, Ben Goertzel, J. Storrs Hall, Vernor Vinge, and others: "Is a Terminator-like scenario possible? And if so, how likely is it?"  Extrapolation! Peering into tomorrow!  What fun.

Here’s the latest compilation of my Five Star Rated You Tube appearances. 

COOL QUICKIES

A fascinating look at how your native language alters the way that you think.

See a terrific (and sfnally philosophical) comic strip Dresden Codak. 

"Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future" is co-authored by Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum, and is now available in stores across the country and online. (See my review of the book.)

Curtis Wong, a Microsoft researcher I’ve had some cool exchanges with, has brought to life -- partly at Bill Gates’s encouragement -- “project Tuva,” which will now bring you some of the greates, inspirational physics lectures of Richard Feynman.  (Remind me, some time, to tell you some of my own stries about the man, how Feynmen once stole my date at a dance... well, for a while... and how he tricked me into becoming (alas) a physics major.)

FASCINATING

Researchers report that rapamycin, a compound first discovered in soil of Easter Island, extended the expected lifespan of middle-aged mice by 28 percent to 38 percent. In human terms, this would be greater than the predicted increase in extra years of life if cancer and heart disease were both cured and prevented.  (BTW “rapa” comes from Rapanui, the island’s real name. See EARTH) (Thanks Stefan.)

Monkeys that consumed 30 percent less calories than average peers were one third as likely to get a age-related disease and were likely to live longer.   Yeah yeah... I have heard it all before.  So why do we so almost ZERO sign of such an effect in humans? (Putting aside obesity, of course.)  After 4,000 years, we’d know if ascetic monks lived longer, by now.

In fact, everybody has it bass-ackwards!  Semi starvation triggers switches in mammals that say “delay your programmed burnout in case better times may give you a better chance to breed.”  But it doesn’t happen in humans  - because we have ALREADY thrown all those switches!  Our lifespans are already HUGE for mammals.  We get three times as many heartbeats.  Because for a million years it benefited tribes to have some elders around as repositories of lore.  Result?  We are already picking all the low-hanging longevity fruit.  In the case of humans, further increases are gonna need some real sophisticated intervention.

Funny thing.  Not a single researcher in this topic has (to my knowledge) posited this “thrown switches” way of looking at things.  My theory is actually a hybrid of the two big models of ageing -- that it is programmed-in vs that it is an accumulation of genertic and organc errors.  What I am saying is that it is clearly programmed in, for all mammalian species EXCEPT humans, who have already pegged and maxed-out all the dials.  For us, ageing really is about accumulated errors and running out of steam.  Which means that animal analogues and models are of very limited utility.

Watch this one to figure out the joke. Be sure to watch it to the "end"...as the stewardess walks away.

Does the Moon Beckon Us Back?

As the father of three teenagers, I share with millions of other boomers a head-scratching perplexity. Why don’t today’s youth care about outer space?

The easy answer would be to seize upon a simple nostrum -- about each era rejecting the obsessions of the one before it. But then, in that case, why is the very opposite true about popular music? Back in the hippie era, music divided the generations. But today? Well, my kids adore classic 60s and 70s Rock. In a surf shop or bike store, all I have to do is mention a few of the concerts that I snuck into, long ago, and the brash young fellers are at my feet, saying “tell us more, gramps!”

So why do they yawn, when we turn to the NASA Channel or tape the latest shuttle launch to show them after dinner, or when we talk about colonizing Mars?

Or when we brag about being members of a species who walked on the Moon? For certain, you don’t hear astronaut mentioned on any list of dream jobs.

Puzzling over this quandary, I was reminded of something Norman Mailer said, when he wrote his 1960s tome Of A Fire on the Moon. Mailer had begun researching the book amid feelings of smug, intellectual hostility toward the crewcut engineers and fliers he encountered... only then his attitude shifted when he realized, in a startled epiphany that: “They were achieving not one, but two bona fide miracles.”

Feats that -- when Mailer really thought about it -- struck him as truly Biblical in proportion.

1. They were actually going to the Moon!

2. They were actually succeeding in making such an adventure boring.

Mailer’s insight came to mind, while I was talking to my kids about the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing. Of all the predictions* ever made about spaceflight, I figure the least imaginable outcome would have been ennui.

*(Speaking of predictions. In a 1959 comic strip Jeff Hawke, the writers forecast that the first human landing on the Moon would happen on 4 August 1969, missing the real-life date by only two weeks.

Of course, policy has had a lot to do with it. Members of the astronaut corps were always willing to accept a level of calculated risk similar to -- if more carefully managed than -- the adventurous pioneers of aviation. Perhaps the public might also have accepted the kind of casualty rates that usually occur on a frontier -- they did in Lindbergh’s time. But politicians could not. They wanted promises of “routine access to space.” And so, the shuttle proved an expensive and awkward mix of overblown promises, lost opportunities, relentless nit-pickery and mind numbing sameness. Not at all what we expected, back when my peers sat in dazed wonder, in the front row, watching Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

Nor is that entirely a bad thing. As I point out elsewhere, we may have failed to build magnificent, rolling space hotels and moonbases that frolic to Strauss waltzes. But our civilization is a better one, than was depicted in that film. And if I had to choose...

Now consider a few other perspectives. For example: ever since the invention of the steam locomotive, human beings (or their machines) managed, every passing year and decade, to keep traveling faster at an accelerating rate -- a curve that kept spiking ever more vertical, until we launched the Voyager space probes on their pellmell fling past Jupiter and beyond the Solar System, in the mid 1970s. Extrapolating that curve of ever-greater speed, some expected that we would, by 2010, dispatch probes to distant stars! We might easily have landed humans on Mars, using Freeman Dyson’s marvelous Orion-drive ships. It all appeared as inevitable and obvious as Moore’s Law of computer development seems to a different generation of techie-transcendentalists.

Only then, quite suddenly, the curve of acceleration abruptly stopped -- after 150 years. The Voyagers still represent, in many ways, a high water mark of humanity’s progress in space, culminating and concluding our raucous search for speed. At least, for now.

Indeed, millions now look at the Space Race obsession as a mark of earlier immaturity. Sure, we benefit from weather and communication satellites, and reconnaissance-sats spread the worldwide strategic transparency that arguably save all our lives, during the Cold War. People are moderately proud of robotic space probes like Hubble and Cassini and Spirit and Opportunity. But, when it comes to dreams of men and women, venturing into vacuum waste, well, you can hardly even find that happening in movie sci fi anymore, let alone our rel-life ambitions.

Certainly, when it comes to the actual Moon itself, I look with skepticism upon any thought of hurrying back there. My own graduate research advisor was the fellow who predicted there might be ice in lightless crater-bottoms, at the north or south lunar poles -- and if it turns out to be true, there may be something useful about the place, someday. But, despite a politician's grandiose boondoggle, it hardly seems a useful destination. Not compared to the riches that await us at near-Earth crossing asteroids, for example. Or that prime piece of real estate that has already caught the Russians' eye -- Phobos. Or the possible abode of life that is Europa.

And yet, in honor of this anniversary, I want to make two points, in defense of those quaint old missions to the Moon.

First, they serve as a backstop against the gloom and pessimism that seem to be preached by cynics of both right and left, at every turn. How many of the arguments for some ambitious enterprise or another begin with: “If we could go to the moon...” Damn right. If we could do that... well... we could do a heckuva lot of cool things, with some gumption, that is.

Finally - I believe the Apollo missions helped to create some of the most important art in human history.

That's a bold and strange statement. But let me dare to define effective visual art as some work or representation that subtly changes human beings just by the sight of it, transforming hearts and minds without verbal or logical persuasion.

By that reckoning, the 20th century featured two hugely effective works of visual art, both of them gifts of physics! First, the terrifying image of the atom bomb altered forever our little-boy romantic attachment to war, beckoning us instead us to grow up a bit in dealing with this new and awesome power to destroy. Defense became the business of serious grownups. Even (especially) among soldiers, war itself is now seen as evidence of failure - an urgent and risky measure arising out of inadequate diplomacy, preparation or deterrence.

The second image that changed us was a gift that arrived at the very end of one of the most difficult years any of us can remember - 1968 - a year that brought most Americans to the brink of exhaustion and despair.

Only then, a final token arrived -- like a gleam of hope shining at the bottom of Pandora’s Box...when the Apollo 8 astronauts brought home that first perfect image of the Earth, floating as a blue marble in space. A picture that moved even the most cynical hearts and changed forever our outlook towards this fragile oasis world.

I'm willing to argue that it was that image -- a work of art that was purely created by humanity’s scientific boldness and ambition -- that transformed us more than anything else. Perhaps making us better, more responsible citizens and world-managers. But also -- one can hope -- possibly sending us down roads that will make us more ready and more worthy, when that day comes for our childrens’ children to reverse things yet again, to once again resume chanting:

“Let’s go!”

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For a somewhat expanded version of this essay... and other goodies(!)... drop in at the wonderful site TOR.com.

More Science

More from More Science High!  Continuing the cornucopia of interesting things....

I'm on the BBC World Service yet again, this time commenting on "geo-engineering"... or proposals to cool the Earth artificially and compensate for global warming.  I'll announce the posted podcast site.  Till then, read this background article:

A GIANT inflatable tower could carry people to the edge of space without the need for a rocket, and could be completed much sooner than a cable-based space elevator, its proponents claim.  he team envisages assembling the structure from a series of modules constructed from Kevlar-polyethylene composite tubes made rigid by inflating them with a lightweight gas such as helium.My colleague Jeff Hecht has a cool article on this in the New Scientist.  Of course, I described this system in SUNDIVER, back in 1979 -- the "Vanilla Needle" - named after my friend, Ron Finnila, who first mentioned the idea to me.  I even have extensive notes for a way-cool graphic novel that would have featured Jacob Demwa saving the huge, inflated needle.

Ah, but priority is difficult to establish.... Still, will someone add this to the Brin Prediction wiki, please?  Anyone know how to contact the authors? ;-) 

Breakthroughs in understanding how memories form in the brain.
“unpleasant memories are stored by the persistent action of the enzyme PKMzeta, a form of protein kinase C,” and that “these memories can be rapidly erased by injecting a PKMzeta inhibitor into the brain.” Researchers confirmed that by using ZIP, “unpleasant long-term memories in the hippocampus, a region of the brain critical for storing spatial information, are rapidly erased.”  This raises many questions. If human memory can be erased like a computer's hard drive, what happens to the “overwritten” memories? Is there a biochemical equivalent to disk restoration software?

A girl who looks and acts one or two years old is actually 16 years old.  In an almost perfect real life version of Harlarn Ellison's famous short story "Jefty is Five," she seems not to suffer from dwarfism.  Albeit with some uneven dysfunctions, she has simply stayed two.  Science (performed gently of course) is going to learn a LOT from this special person.

More intelligent people don't have more connections, but they have more efficiently placed connections (??) Other studies have shown that physical connections between brain regions via white matter that doesn't contain neurons are also related to intelligence. 

It seems the particles that Enrico Fermi dubbed neutrinos, meaning "little neutral ones", might stretch across billions of light years. The big bang produced huge numbers of "relic" neutrinos, which are quantum-mechanical superpositions of three different mass-energy states. In the early universe, all of these states would have moved at close to the speed of light. But according to calculations by George Fuller and Chad Kishimoto of the University of California, San Diego, as the universe expanded, the most massive of these states slowed down in the relic neutrinos, stretching them across the universe. This raises the possibility that only one of the neutrino's states could fall into a black hole. It's unclear what would happen to the others if this occurred, says Fuller. Wow. 

A cell phone that never needs recharging might sound too good to be true, but Nokia says it's developing technology that could draw enough power from ambient radio waves to keep a cell-phone handset topped up.  Ambient electromagnetic radiation--emitted from Wi-Fi transmitters, cell-phone antennas, TV masts, and other sources--could be converted into enough electrical current to keep a battery topped up. Hey, my sons just built crystal (diode) radios.  They were excited to hear a station, clear as a bell, without battery or wall power!  That is, till they found it was K-Praise Fundamentalist station... and no adjustment of the variable capacitor or coil would change it!  How can that be?  It appears that the diode, itself, is tuned to one station!  Help!

The three researchers published a manifesto in Nature in 2001, declaring that the way to make a synthetic cell was to get a protocell and a genetic molecule to grow and divide in parallel, with the molecules being encapsulated in the cell. Simple fatty acids, of the sort likely to have been around on the primitive Earth, will spontaneously form double-layered spheres, much like the double-layered membrane of today’s living cells. These protocells will incorporate new fatty acids fed into the water, and eventually divide.

Living cells are generally impermeable and have elaborate mechanisms for admitting only the nutrients they need. But Dr. Szostak and his colleagues have shown that small molecules can easily enter the protocells. If they combine into larger molecules, however, they cannot get out, just the arrangement a primitive cell would need.  

Nucleotides consist of a sugar molecule, like ribose or deoxyribose, joined to a base at one end and a phosphate group at the other. Prebiotic chemists discovered with delight that bases like adenine will easily form from simple chemicals like hydrogen cyanide. But years of disappointment followed when the adenine proved incapable of linking naturally to the ribose.

Last month, John Sutherland, a chemist at the University of Manchester in England, reported in Nature his discovery of a quite unexpected route for synthesizing nucleotides from prebiotic chemicals. Instead of making the base and sugar separately from chemicals likely to have existed on the primitive Earth, Dr. Sutherland showed how under the right conditions the base and sugar could be built up as a single unit, and so did not need to be linked.

Another big breakthrough: Researchers l at Imperial College London have discovered that a mixture of left-handed and right-handed molecules can be converted to just one form by cycles of freezing and melting.

See a review of a book about the subtle ways even the simplest life forms "compute:"Wetware: A Computer in Every Living Cell, by Dennis Bray.

Political side note.  See Russ Daggatt's excellent compilation of views about events in Iran.

Heck while I'm at it: these are the best of the old Outer Limits:  Now available on Hulu!

"The Architects of Fear" is the episode that inspired the graphic novel WATCHMEN.  I hope soon they'll post season two... with the incredible Harlan Ellison story "The Demon With The Glass Hand."

http://www.hulu.com/watch/63098/the-outer-limits---original-the-architects-of-fear

http://www.hulu.com/watch/63087/the-outer-limits---original-the-sixth-finger

http://www.hulu.com/watch/63086/the-outer-limits---original-the-man-who-was-never-born

http://www.hulu.com/watch/63097/the-outer-limits---original-second-chance

http://www.hulu.com/watch/63091/the-outer-limits---original-the-bellero-shield

http://www.hulu.com/watch/63077/the-outer-limits---original-moonstone

http://www.hulu.com/watch/63076/the-outer-limits---original-fun-and-games

http://www.hulu.com/watch/63080/the-outer-limits---original-a-feasability-study

http://www.hulu.com/watch/63081/the-outer-limits---original-the-forms-of-things-unknown

The World Moves Ahead to More Cool Stuff

Time for my monthly  cornucopia of cool (and non-political) news from the exciting world around us.
Brin-volved Items:

"FiRe CTO Design Challenge": Author, physicist, and host David Brin leads the challenge of "Water Beyond Tomorrow: Using Technology and Innovation to Provide San Diego (and the World) with Adequate Safe Water for Future Decades"  at this year’s “FiRe Conference (Future in Review). 

I had the honor of hosting and stimulating and challenging some of the brightes high technology officers in modern business, including: Sophie Vandebroek, CTO, Xerox, and President, Xerox Innovation Group; Eric Openshaw, Vice Chair and U.S. Technology Leader, Deloitte; Per-Kristian (Kris) Halvorsen, SVP and Chief Innovation Officer, Intuit; Ty Carlson, Architect, SiArch Group, Microsoft; and Joe Burton, CTO, Cisco.

I was interviewed on the BBC World Service on the issue of “bombing” a lunar crater to discover whether there is ice on the moon.  The interviewers worried deeply about littering... but it turned into a delightful and fairminded treatment of the topic.  If it is no longer up, I hope to post it at http://www.davidbrin.com

See an excellent and eye-opening article about The Participatory Panopticon, by Jamais Cascio, that includes an interview with David Brin about our ongoing rush toward a transparent society.


Non-Brinvolved Items:

See a fascinating interview with Robert Wright, one of the most important authors of our time, about his new book, Evolution of God, about the roots of religion.

  HPlus Magazine finally releases their new summer issue! It describes the already-existing brain/computer interfaces - and where they could take us - and explains Dartmouth-built robots whose artificial neurons can mimic the human learning process. There's 84 pages of online-only goodness, including laser-stimulated brain cells, artificial muscles, and an interview with NASA's director of research (who suggests robot exploration of Mars). And NPR's Moira Gunn assays the implications of the U.S.'s abrupt welcome for stem cell therapy.

Incredible!  The next game intreractive technology:

See the blog of the production company making "The People Vs George Lucas” --  a full length film, due next year, riffing off my book STAR WARS ON TRIAL.

Think Link appears to address some serious deficits in the current, sad state of "discourse" online.  I envision combining it with a good reputation system.  The result could be a real step toward the kind of "disputation arenas" I described in the American Bar Association's Journal of Dispute Resolution.

Somebody's thinking about What Comes After Email.  I have received several emails from people who think there are similarities to my Holocene Project... which I pitched at Google the same day that the patent was awarded, a while back.  Me?  At a first, hurried glance, I don’t see a whole lot of Holocene in Google Wave... but I can see that it would be vastly improved by incorporating Holocene concepts.  Alas, I have found that many bright fellows cannot see the hand in front of their face.  Ah well, I wish them well.  Opinions?

Stunning. And right now this volcano is affecting our sunsets and dipping global warming.

The issue of cyberwarfare.

A simple way has been found to convert plant cellulose into , a basic building block for fuel, polyesters, and other petroleum-based chemicals...  to extract HMF from plants by using a mixture of copper chloride and chromium chloride to break down the cellulose without creating unwanted byproducts. The chlorides didn’t degrade, which meant that the process could be repeated using the same chemicals, reducing the cost of creating HMF while yielding a product with fewer impurities.  While still a ways off from commercial applications, the process shows promise in creating an alternative to plastics.

"Near-Term Beamed Sail Propulsion Missions: Cosmos-1 and Sun-Diver", James Benford and Gregory Benford, Beamed Energy Propulsion, AIP Conf. Proc. 664, pg. 358, A. Pakhomov, ed., 2003   Um...see my novel, "Sundiver?

Apropos of tweeting, I couldn't resist sharing this find of Laurie Morrow's!  Do have a look

...and finally...

=== Are We inherently Empathic? ===

New research from Vanderbilt University indicates the way our brain handles how we move through space—including being able to imagine literally stepping into someone else's shoes—may be related to how and why we experience empathy toward others.  

Empathy involves, in part, the ability to simulate the internal states of others. The authors hypothesized that our ability to manipulate, rotate and simulate mental representations of the physical world, including our own bodies, would contribute significantly to our ability to empathize.  The researchers compared performance on the test with how empathetic the subjects reported themselves to be. They found that higher self-reported empathy was associated with paying more attention to the right side of space. Previous research has found that the left side of the face is more emotionally expressive than the right side. Since the left side of the face would be on the right side of the observer, it is possible that attending more to the expressive side of people's faces would allow one to better understand and respond to their mental state. These findings could also point to a role of the left hemisphere in empathy.  (contributed by Stefan.)

Yin vs Yang on Health Care: Conservatives make a few points

=== A contrarian view of health care ===

In case any of you have come to the false conclusion that I am a reflexive liberal democrat -- simply because I oppose the hijacked monstrosity that the Republican Party has become, let me make clear that I retain plenty of ways that I can exercise contrary orneriness toward the American left. There are times when even the Frankenstein, undead monster than conservatism has become can startle you, by uttering cogent and reasonable “Goldwater-style” objections, instead of the shrill mania pouring from the Murdoch-Limbaugh-Fox nexus.  We should be ready, whenever this happens, to heap on positive reinforcement rewards!  The biggest reward of all?  To actually listen.

One example is where decent conservatives point out genuine drawbacks to the state-run, “universal single payer” health care systems so widely touted in liberal circles.  As one who lived for extended periods in both Britain and France, I have to tell you that their systems have much we can learn from.. and also some serious flaws.  Without any doubt, they are vastly more fair than ours, and do a far better job at both preventive care and ensuring healthy lives for all kids -- which (as I said last time) should be the core goal of any system.

If we must make a zero-sum choice between Canadian and US health care, then by all means, let’s dump a horror story, in favor of dull, unimaginative and paternalistically meddlesome decency.  But I am always suspicious of zero-sum games. If we’re to improve, we should recognize what the current U.S. system does well.

Let’s start by giving conservatives their say. Here’s a quote from Dennis Gartman's eponymous newsletter. "Canada is a wonderful place to have a nasty gash on one's forehead stitched, or to break one's nose in a game of pickup baseball; but have cancer, or need eye surgery, or want an MRI, and the business of medicine in Canada and/or the UK breaks down badly in favor of medical care here in the US. For example... and we wish to thank The Investor's Business Daily for the data noted here this morning…

           "... here in the US men and women survived cancer at an average of just a bit better than 65%. In England only 46% survive. In the US, 93% of those diagnosed with diabetes receive treatment within six months; in Canada only 43% do, and in the UK only 15% do! For those seniors needing a hip replacement and getting one within six months, 15% get it done in the UK; 43% get it done in Canada ... and in the US 90% do! For those waiting to see a medical specialist, 23% of those in the US (fail to) get in within four weeks, while 57% in Canada have not yet done so, and in the UK 60% are still waiting after four weeks.  ......  When it comes to proper medical equipment, in the US there are 71 MRI or CT scanners available per million people. In Canada there are but 18, and in the UK there are only 14! Ah, but the best figure of all is this: 11.7% of those 'seniors' in the US with 'low incomes' say they are in excellent health, which in and of itself sounds rather low ... rather disconcerting ... and an indictment of the system itself, doesn't it? But in Canada only 5.8% do!

            "Yessiree bob, ya' jus' gotta' luv that collectivized, socialized medical care! Let's all go break a collective arm and enjoy the benefits of socialized medicine in the Commonwealth! (Canada) ... but heaven help you if you've got something really, really wrong. If that's the case, you'll be running south to the border faster than you can reach a specialist anywhere in Canada; of that we are certain."

Oh, sure, you can spot the use of cherry-picked statistics, right away. (See below.).  And you’ll note how Gartman airily dismisses the general preventive care that should be the heart and soul of any national system, especially aimed at kids, waving it away as stitching a “gash in the forehead.”  Also, I’d like to see comparison of his figures broken down by age group!  And, frankly, I’d like to smack his smug, dismissive face.  (He is not one of the of those “reasonable conservatives” I was talking about.)

Nevertheless, putting aside his reactionary reflex and total lack of humility, after his side allowed the calamity of the Bush years, still, Gartman has a point. Because what people tend to ignore is that all health care systems practice rationing.  There is simply no way to avoid it, as we all would pay any price, for any chance of health.  Thus, there is very little market elasticity.  We’ll take our dying loved one to the best doctor, period, and screw the price and screw second best.  Capitalist principles are very dicey here.  So are paternalistic ones.

The chief difference between the US and the rest of the civilized world is that we let profit-driven insurance companies do the rationing, and they do it based solely on profit considerations and whatever they can get away with.  By exiling people who have health conditions, by eliminating the poor, by refusing service for the passive or meek or less influential or less-litigious.  On the other hand, those who can pay, and fiercely enforce their insurance contracts, can get their companies to cover vast and endless expenses for procedures aimed even at extending, futilely, the very last and most painful phases of life.  The phases that take up to a fourth of all medical expense, in the United States.

Europe etc are different.  There, socialist-oid state committees ration procedures, based on criteria that seem to make sense both to those committees and to generally accepted social consensus.  While it seems both logical and laudable that they prioritize children and young adults and illnesses that can likely be cured -- a proper role for paternalistic single-payer systems -- it still seems heartless and callous that they pay for this by telling old people, or those with chronic or “hopeless” conditions that little will be spent on them.  Indeed, this is why many of the elderly rich, all over the world, fly to America for treatment.

What is seldom mentioned is an added drawback to that system.  All the money that America spends (or grotesquely overspends) on unpleasantly difficult conditions - those with a poor prognosis - often results in improved science, treatment and success! In other words, the American system serves as the world’s medical R&D test bed.  This is why MRI machines were available here - for those who could pay out the nose - long before state commissions would buy them overseas.  (And boy, was I glad to get home and use one, back in 1992, even though it cost me $1,000!  Back in Europe, where I had lived, there simply weren’t any available.  At all.)

Is the rightwing wrong about Health Care?  Sure they are, as they have made a habit of being wrong about just about everything, ever since their movement and party drank Rupert Murdoch’s Koolaid and slid into mania, years ago.  The present US Health Care System is a travesty and outrage, period.  Nevertheless, the insistence of the Left upon simply adopting what they see overseas, without discussing the drawbacks, is both lazy and doctrinaire.  It is not worthy of a nation of innovators.

=== Start Down the Road Incrementally ===

Hence, let me return to something I said  before. We could derive the topmost benefit of European style health care if we start by simply providing health care to all kids!  Now, immediately.  Without any “insurance” rigmarole.   Take care of children.  Period. Right away.  Just do it!

One method that would take a one page piece of legislation?  Simply take Medicare and extend it to the other end of the spectrum, the other demographic group that is both helpless and deserving, by simple definition.  Or else, use the kids to experiment with single-payer.  Either way, the political opposition would be in a tough spot putting up much resistance!  Americans are inherently more socialistic when it comes to children than we feel toward adults (who, we think, almost instinctively, should stand on their own two feet.)  Moreover, it lets us act upon prevention and lifelong health investment in youth, by far the best use of medical care dollars.

Seriously, why isn’t this a no-brainer?  A win-win that would let Obama achieve wonders at a stroke, while keeping both cost and complexity down and achieving the greatest bang for the buck.  Poor parents would be relieved of their greatest fear and then be able to bargain better for their own, narrower coverage.  Can anyone explain why this isn’t even mentioned?

And then, with our future safeguarded and the very worst injustice solved, we can gather the best and most sensible people from all sides to compare apples, oranges, grapes and every possible plan for dealing with adult working Americans.

==A bit on Politics==

Lighting the political lamp...  Let’s start with evidence that something special is going on. Everybody, you must watch this. Get to know the guy.  And make your conservatives watch, too. 

Of course, if there are folks on the right who remain impervious to reality.  (As there are some on the left.)  Indeed, the more sensible and moderate and consually wise Obama seems, the more extreme the fantasies concocted by the crazies.  And the more imperative it becomes, for reasonable conservatives to choose the real world.

Speaking of which...

=== Some Conservatives Really Are Openminded ===

My friend, John Mauldin, the brilliant economic analyst, appears to have joined PIMCO’s Bill Gross and other “conservative realists” in breaking away from the standard right-wing doctrine about taxes.  Not in all ways or on all issues. But enough to declare independence form Rupert Murdoch’s party line.

For example, they are much more concerned about trillion dollar deficits than about the purported investment-stifling effects of somewhat higher taxes on the upper class.  Not only are they resigned (and imply some contentment) at seeing the Bush Era’s biggest set of “largesse” breaks for the wealthy expire, next year, they hint that a modest increase might be the least-bad way to reduce both those deficits and inequities in society.  You haven’t seen the punditocracy comment on this trend very much, on TV.  But it is a sea change among the brightest, reality-oriented conservatives and may represent the front of real change in republican circles, at least among those who see reason and patriotism and pragmatism as higher virtues than dogmatism.

And now... partly in order to honor those rational conservatives, and meet them partway, here’s something sure to rile a number of you.  A remise on last time’s topic of health care.  Only from an alternative perspective.

=== ADDENDA ===

“The Obama administration is warning lawmakers that the trust fund that pays for highway construction will go broke in August unless Congress approves an infusion of as much as $7 billion...  Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, said it's clear that Congress must raise the federal gas tax, which is now 18.4 cents per gallon.”

Naturally, I agree with Voinovich.  Our gas taxes are among the lowest on the planet and have encouraged wastrel attitudes for two generations.  Still, I’d like to add one suggestion.  While the gas tax is being raised, also transform it from a flat rate to a PERCENTAGE of the cost at the pump.   That way, it can automatically be indexed to rise when consumption does, and some of that rise can be dedicated to filling strategic reserves and a rainy day fund, to kick in when hard times next return.

*  One of you said:
     “I sincerely hope that those who would mock Dr. Brin’s "10,000 McVeighs" prediction are paying some attention.The murder of Officer Johns at the Holocaust Museum, the murder of Dr. Tiller, the murder of five chilean students in Miramar Beach Florida by a man obsessed with "Illegals" , and now the murder of a nine year old girl and her father by the Minutemen.”   
 Alas. Folks, you ain’t seen nothing, yet.

And finally, oooog.  See why libertarianism is often its own worst enemy. What a shame.