First Impressions of WolframAlpha

WolframAlpha came finally came online a few days ago (you can try it at www.wolframalpha.com). It is touted by some as the most serious competitor for Google, and possibly its eventual replacement. The major advancement in WolframAlpha is it's ability to actually gather data available on the web and answer questions, as opposed to just supplying you with links that may contain the answer to your questions. Of course if this is successful, nobody expects Google to sit passively by and loose market share. Google will undoubtedly come out with its own capabilities similar to WolframAlpha in the near future. We are on the verge of the next major revolution in making the knowledge on the web more accessible and useful to people, spurred on by the competition between WolframAlpha and Google.

I spent some time test driving WolframAlpha recently, and here are my first impressions.

My first test was to try to get a table of life expectancy listed by nation. I typed in “life expectancy by nation” and hit enter. WolframAlpha gave me a list of possible data, and the very first item was exactly the type of table I was looking for. Score one for WolframAlpha. (The United States was number 50 on the rankings by the way, in spite of the fact that we spend far more than any other nation on health care. Those of you involved in promoting health care reform probably already knew that.) Another great feature at the bottom of the data was a little link that points you to the source of the information. This is actually a critical feature for anyone expecting to use WolframAlpha for serious research. Score two for WolframAlpha.

As a second test, I tried to get a table of the carbon footprint of each nation. I typed in “carbon footprint by nation” and the response was “WolframAlpha isn't sure what to do with your input.” I tried to simplify the query and just typed in “carbon footprint”, but still got the same response. Oh my, it seems there is a lot of work to do still.

To be fair, WolframAlpha is described as “an ambitious, long-term intellectual endeavor that we intend will deliver increasing capabilities over the years and decades to come.” Clearly this is a major advance over the current Google search capabilities which will eventually change the way we use the web to gather data, but it is clearly also early in a long development process.

Unfortunately the creator of WolframAlpha, Stephen Wolfram, has left us all with a difficult problem to wrestle with. Somehow the phrase “I'm going to WolframAlpha that” just doesn't quite work. They will have to come up with a better verb if this is to enter the popular lexicon and replace "googling a question".

Swine Flue Conspiracy Theories and Their Consequences

And so the conspiracy theories about the swine flu begin. One example is this YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBeKB7aKzOs that claims at a minimum that the company Novavax, which claims it could produce a swine flu vaccine in as little as 12 weeks, is hyping the dangers of the swine flu just to boost its stock. The stock (NVAX) has risen by over 300% in the past week.

But the YouTube video goes on to make the charge that people associated with the company deliberately created the swine flu through genetic engineer and released it for personal profit. In cases like this I prefer to stick with the old maxim “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. It has served me well in the past. Such evidence is certainly not available at this time. Nevertheless, this conspiracy theory will no doubt spread wider than the actual flu before this is over.

It does raise an interesting question though. With so many companies involved in genetic engineering, it is certainly possible that the first mass epidemic from a genetically engineered disease won't come from a terrorist group pursuing some political cause, it may instead come from a company pursuing financial gain. Is this really such an extraordinary claim? Given the carnage caused to the world economy by a small group of executives pursuing large personal financial gains, I find it hard to dismiss such an idea by simply waving your hands and saying “nobody would act that irresponsibly”. If anything, it could be argued that the extraordinary claim is that this would never happen given the tremendous financial windfall that could occur to any company with the right vaccine or antibiotic to combat a major outbreak. Perhaps this episode will be the beginning of a wake-up call about the need to bring genetic engineering under some stricter controls, and to admit that it is just one of those things that is not appropriate for open pursuit in a lightly regulated free market.

Tim Berners-Lee on the Future of the Web

I just watched a TED Talk by Tim Burners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web. His main point was that the current Web was mainly a collection of linked documents, and what we need to do next is transform it into a collection of linked data. Once a major portion of our data becomes freely available on the web, it will start generating major social benefits.

Tim mentions two items that resonated with me. First, ALL government data should be freely available on the Web. After all, we paid for it, and we should rightly claim free access to it. (There may be some exceptions, such as personal data of government employees, but this is a relatively small portion of the government data). It seems to me that in a truly free open society, the "Freedom of Information" act should become almost obsolete since everything that it would have been used for in the past is now readily available. That would be a wonderful principle for the Obama administration to follow.

The second issue is medical data. Three years ago I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. We caught it early and now I'm cured, but it is a much more common problem than many people realize. One thing that really surprised me is that I was not asked to fill out any survey on my lifestyle or exposure to various chemicals. It would seem to me that such detailed background data should be collected about everyone who has a major disease and made available to researchers looking for common links. This is just one example of data that should be on the web. In this case it has potential for major health benefits if links can be established to various things that increase the risk of a disease.

There are two interesting items that Tim Berners-Lee did not mention about the future of the web. First, it is establishing new business models. Old ones, such as newspapers and the music recording industry are having to make substantial changes to survive. Significant new developments, specifically the open source software movement and Wikipedia could not have been predicted by any business model analysis before they happened. Yet they are becoming increasingly important.

The second unforeseen development is the use of the web for organizing mass social movements. Moveon.org and various other political movements are examples of this. Allowing groups of people to come together and organize in ways that were previously impractical may be one of the most profound impacts of the web in the long run.

The Key Assets of Our Society

Dmitry Orlov wrote an interesting comparison of how much better the former USSR was prepared for a financial collapse than the current USA is. In short, much of the USSR was already functioning closer to a subsistence economy, with people making due with what could be supplied locally instead of relying almost completely on a complex interconnected national economy. Additionally, the USSR had large oil supplies that could be exported to relatively rich and financially stable neighboring countries in order to help finance its recovery recovery. As the USA undergoes a financial crisis, it doesn't have that luxury of unaffected rich stable neighboring economies to help pull it out.

While this report paints a rather pessimistic picture, I think the author misses some fundamental differences between the former USSR and the current USA. First and foremost, we have a collection of what is probably the largest, most creative, best educated, and most motivated group of civic and entrepreneurial leaders that ever existed. We have a culture that enables and even encourages a massive grass roots campaign to rebuild a new and revitalized economy. We have communications systems that enables rapid organizing and sharing of information on a level that is order of magnitudes greater than anything we had in the past . Nothing like this ever existed in the former USSR, or it could be argued anywhere else at any other time in history. Finally, though our leadership in Washington cannot act as a messiah to deliver us from all our problems, we are fortunate at this critical time to have some of the best new leadership for responding to these new problems that we've had in many decades.

Van Jones, a Yale educated lawyer and social activists, has been leading a grass roots drive to spur an economic rebuilding based on environmentally sustainable green jobs for many years now. When he was first asked if there would be a role for him in the Obama administration, he just laughed at the absurdity of the thought of himself being in a formal government position. Earlier this month he was officially appointed as a Special Advisor at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. This is an example of why there is some long term hope for building a new revitalized economy despite the prevailing short term pessimism.

The Great Disruption is Here

In what could be a landmark description of what is happening, Thomas Friedman wrote a fascinating column on March 7th in which he speculates on the question:

What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both said: “No more.”

While this is certainly not a new theme, to see it so well expressed in a national newspaper op-ed represents a major step forward in our culture's attitude about the current situation in our society. It may be a key part of a growing rallying cry around the need for dramatic social change. He goes on to quote a number of experts, including Paul Gilding, an Australian environmental business expert, who coined a term for this period as “The Great Disruption.”

Thomas Friedman finishes by saying that both he and Paul Gilding are somewhat optimistic about our future given the changes that are starting to happen. As Gilding says, “When we look back, 2008 will be a momentous year in human history.” I'll add that in terms of a great transformation starting in 2008, let's not forget the single biggest transformative event of all that year, the November elections.

Pew Research on Evolution and Religion

The Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life recently published an interesting article on the public attitudes towards evolution among various religious groups. Interestingly, the religion with the greatest acceptance of evolution was Buddhism at 81%. Unitarian Universalism was not listed in the groups of religions, but I suspect they may be even higher because of the emphasis they put on science and reason. The lowest group listed? Jehovah's Witnesses at 8%. The article also listed a number of other useful links to related resources.

People often ask "Is evolution a theory or a fact?" It's confusing because it's actually both. It is considered to be an observed fact from the fossil evidence that life started out as a comparatively small number of simpler forms, and over time gradually evolved into a larger number of forms including some of which are very complex. There have now been a number of cases where the evolution of new species in nature have actually been observed over the course of many decades.

However, the explanation of how this happens, natural selection operating on random genetic changes, is the theory part of evolution. This theory is very well supported by the evidence and is about as well confirmed as the theory of gravity. Yet it continues to generate a great deal of conflict in the public sector because of it's theological implications. Unfortunately, I don't see this conflict being reduced anytime in the near future. According to the Pew research, only 48% of the US population accepts evolution as the most likely explanation of the origins of life on earth. Other polls suggest that this number has actually been declining over the last two decades or so. This is an indication of how much trouble people will have adjusting to the rapidly changing understanding of the world brought on by the exponential growth in scientific knowledge and technology.

Are we really any poorer now? - part 2

In my previous append, I talked about how relationships and trust are an important part of the economy. These are things of value - economic assets just as real as factories and tools. Many of these relationships are formalized in our financial institutions, and their breakdown is directly related to the breakdown of these relationships in our economy.

Another vitally important asset in society is the attitude of people. Do people have confidence in their ability, and confidence that putting in some hard work will pay off? Or is a sense of despair and hopelessness prevalent? The general public attitude can have a tremendous impact on economic well being and growth. But attitude is something that must be built up over time. When it is damaged, as it seems to be now, it takes time to mend.

I don't want to leave this topic with the implication that our society and economy are falling apart. That would be falling into the trap of viewing all value in monetary terms. In reality many of the other components of our society are still doing quite well. I'm not aware of any data showing a significant decline in relationships between families and friends, or in the strength of churches or other civic organizations. Non-profit donations are down, and that will hurt many of them, but for the most part our non-profit infrastructure continues to do good work. Our health care and education sectors are holding together and most people still have access to them. Looking around where I live, I still have the impression that our communities are still strong and providing many of the non-monetary benefits that they were doing last time this year. If anything, for many people the hope and trust in government has increased considerably since last year. Many things of value in our society have been little impacted by the current economic slowdown.

Are we really any poorer now?

There is a painfully obvious agreement that our economy is not as good as it was 6 months ago. But from a high level, you might ask how could that be? We still have the same number of factories, the same number of farms, the same number of hospitals, the same roads, water systems, and electrical systems. We still have roughly the same number of people with the same skills and know-how. And we have almost the same amount of natural resources. There has been a slight ongoing decline in nonrenewable resources, with oil being the prime example, but that is unrelated to the current sudden decline in the economy in the last 6 months. So how can our economy be poorer in any real tangible way?

For any economy to function, what’s needed besides all the above artifacts is a set of organized relationships between the different parts of the economy. Because of a high degree of specialization, no parts of the economy are self sufficient. They all depend on a set of trusting relationships with other parts of the economy to function. The other important aspect of the economy is that it is full of time delays. A factory worker may go to work on a daily basis knowing that he won’t get paid for his effort until the end of the month. A farmer who plants a field knows that it will be several months before any crops can be harvested. When a new business is started or construction on a new factory is begun, it can often take a few years before the effort generates any profit. Investments in research can sometimes take more than a decade to pay off. In all these cases, there is a set of relationships and trust with the rest of the economy that there will be a future payback for the investment and work done today.

So yes, the economy really is not as good as it was 6 months ago, and we are really poorer. What we lost was the set of organize relationships and trust between different parts of the economy. We lost trust in many of the large institutions, and we lost trust that there will be a worthwhile future payback for current investment and efforts. Though not as tangible as physical factories and infrastructure, trusting relationships are a painfully obvious key component of a healthy functioning economy. One of the fallouts of the current economic crisis is that the vital role of relationships will be viewed with more respect from now on.

Will the Economic Bailouts Fail?

The economic bailout

Doug Muder pointed out that if you add up all of the recent economic bailout packages for our nation, including loans, guarantees, and direct investments, you wind up with something in the $5-$10 trillion range. To get a good perspective of what we just did, keep in mind that the total federal debt run up from the beginning of our nation to the end of the Clinton administration was about $5.7 trillion. Look at what we’ve added to that in just the last 2 months. It's hard to comprehend the enormity of what just happened.

Admittedly we may not have to pay all of this economic bailout package. Hopefully we won’t have to pay out on most of the loan guarantees, and hopefully we can get back most of the value of our direct investments at some point. It’s a big risk we’re taking to boost the economy. Unfortunately, it looks uncomfortably like a gambler who’s deep in the hole with debts he can’t pay off, deciding to “doubling up” on his bets in a desperate attempt to get out of the hole by placing ever larger bets. The desperate gambler adopts this approach because he doesn’t know what else to do. The end result is usually very very tragic.

The real concern I have is that this bailout package, as huge as it is, won’t work. It does little to address the fundamental problems in the economy. We will still have an enormous trade deficit with the rest of the world. We will still be spending more than we earn. Our dependency on foreign oil will still be increasing. We will still have an enormous obligation to social security and Medicare payments in the coming years that we can’t afford. Our manufacturing base will still be in decline. And the unsustainable federal deficit will not only still be there, it will be made considerably worse.

Our family has run up our own personal debt in the last few years. A major chunk of that is from investing in our children’s education. It’s an investment that we expect will pay off in a major way in the future with increased earning potential and quality of life. I don’t mind our nation also incurring a temporary increase in debt to invest in a major economic stimulus package if it really enables increase economic well being in the future. This would include investing in our infrastructure, reducing our dependency on foreign oil, other research and development, helping new business start or current ones expand. I don’t see any of that happening with the economic bailout package. There seems to be no focus on investing to improve our economy in the future. I’m afraid that we’ll see little long term benefit from the enormous gamble we’re taking. And like the desperate gambler deep in the hole, the end result will not be pleasant.

Growing Conflict Between Science and Fundamentalist Religion

There may be little or no conflict between science and some religions. I'm a member of a local Unitarian Universalists congregation and I personally don't see any conflict between the teaching of that religion and science. However, there are some real and undeniable conflicts between science and some of the more fundamentalist religions. The conflict over accepting the facts of evolution is one of the more well known examples. But this is just a warm-up to the new conflicts starting to surface regarding the mind and morals.

Before Darwin, the existence of complex living things was one of the best arguments for the existence of a supernatural creator that directly intervened in the world. Once evolution was understood, we now know that complex life can be explained without the need of such a supernatural creator. This argument has been replaced by the existence of the conscious intelligent human mind in general, and our moral system in particular, as the remaining best argument for the existence of a supernatural creator. As we understand more and more about the physical basis for how the mind operates, this has generated a growing backlash by religious fundamentalists who assert that the mind is some sort supernatural thing separate from the physical brain. A good summary of this movement was recently provided in an article in New Scientist Magazine titled Creationists declare war over the brain

Going beyond the basis for consciousness, there is a large amount of progress being made in the last few decades understanding how human morals can naturally arise and how many of our moral "feelings" actually have their basis in our physical brains and were produced by evolutionary processes. Progressive religions will be able to deal with this just as they came to terms with evolution. But it is even more damaging to the claims of fundamentalist religions than evolution itself, and they would probably be fighting against this even stronger than evolution if they fully understood the scientific progress being made in this area. I expect that it will be only a mater of time before the science vs. fundamentalist religion conflicts shifts to focus on the natural basis of consciousness and morals.

$700B Bailout Doesn't Solve Our Real Problems

I’ve been trying to figure out what to write about the current economic turmoil. I’ve stated in several past appends that the economy was in deep trouble in the near future, and we are as a nation technically bankrupt by any reasonable accounting standard. Now it appears that this view was not far off the mark.

The $700 billion bailout package passed by Congress last week was certainly much better than the original plan which actually prohibited any oversight on how that money was to be spent. Given some time, I expect an even better plan could have been created than the one that was passed. How much better, and would the delay have caused more harm than good? These are questions I am not qualified to answer. But there is a key concern that I do have about the package – namely that it won’t fix the problem.

The fundamental basis for the current problem is that too many people have mortgages larger than they can afford. The package does nothing to resolve that problem in any way. We also have a major problem with the federal deficit. Not only is that not resolved, but it is potentially made much worse. We have a global military operation that is vastly overstretched and financially unsustainable. Again, nothing is done to address that portion of the problem. But given that this is the middle of a heated election campaign season, that shouldn’t surprise anyone.

The one bright spot is that the economic tax incentives for some renewable energy will be renewed by the new plan. They were set to expire at the end of this year. This is a really important issue for our long term economic health, so it’s at least a small bright spot in a plan that otherwise falls far short of addressing the real problems in the economy.

Preaching Politics form Church Pulpits

I’ll argue that one of the greatest innovations in government that made America so successful was the notion of separation of church and state. In our current version of that, religious organizations can get involved in promoting causes, but should stay out of party politics and elections. This may be challenged soon.

The socially conservative Alliance Defense Fund is recruiting several dozen pastors to endorse political candidates from their pulpits Sept. 28, in defiance of IRS rules. Click here for an article on this.

Personally I think partisan political campaigning from the pulpit would be an absolute disaster for both religions and our political process. Democracy is supposed to be about building consensus through debate, discussions, and compromise. Admittedly it doesn't always work quite that way, and we suffer whenever such failures occur. But if religious leaders start routinely preaching that it is immoral and a sin to vote for a specific candidate, and that it is your moral duty to support some other one, than rational debate, discussion, and compromise get thrown out the window. Who would want to support listening to and compromising with "evil"? A more preferred view would be to do everything possible to defeat "evil", with the ends justifying the means in such an important struggle. Such extreme demonization of people in the political process is where I think this will quickly lead.

I also think that political parties and lobbying groups would start putting considerably more pressure on religious organizations to support them, with funds flowing to those who are willing to adjust their stances to match those of the political parties. Congregations would become scenes of bitter disputes and end up highly polarized, and in the end many would become branches of other political organizations. Are you worried about corporations controlling the government? Then you should be really scared about giving them the motivation to start controlling religions too. It's not a good circumstance for promoting the spiritual development of the membership of religious congregations.

Someone once said that when it comes to politics, religions work best when they are "outside forces" acting as checks and balances and providing independent moral direction to the political process. I completely agree. I think the historical record supports this too.

Keep in mind that religious leaders are free under law to say anything they want, including from the pulpit. It's just that if they want to keep the tax breaks of a non-profit non-political group they need to follow the tax rules.

I am getting concerned that there could be a major movement to change this though, especially after watching how religious groups influenced the selection of Sarah Palin as a vice-presidential candidates recently. I would hope that there would be a strong backlash against this from many religious and secular organizations.

Obama's Speach Condensed

I had somewhat mixed feelings about Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention. To be realistic, it was almost impossible to live up to the hype and expectations that arose leading up to the speech. The speech did contain some very good and moving lines. But sometimes they seemed to get buried inside a more standard partisan political speech.

So here is my condensed version of the speech, focusing on the key lines that seemed to be the most inspirational about the need for a change and our moment in history. This is after all one of the most historically significant elections in our nation's history. Let's keep that in mind. The following are all direct words from Obama's speech - with sections of intervening text removed. Do you like it better?

It is that promise that's always set this country apart, that through hard work and sacrifice each of us can pursue our individual dreams, but still come together as one American family, to ensure that the next generation can pursue their dreams, as well.

That's why I stand here tonight. Because for 232 years, at each moment when that promise was in jeopardy, ordinary men and women -- students and soldiers, farmers and teachers, nurses and janitors -- found the courage to keep it alive.

We meet at one of those defining moments, a moment when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil, and the American promise has been threatened once more.

America, now is not the time for small plans.

I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring. What the naysayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me; it's about you.

It's about you.

For 18 long months, you have stood up, one by one, and said, "Enough," to the politics of the past. You understand that, in this election, the greatest risk we can take is to try the same, old politics with the same, old players and expect a different result.

You have shown what history teaches us, that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington.

Change happens -- change happens because the American people demand it, because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time.

America, this is one of those moments.

I believe that, as hard as it will be, the change we need is coming, because I've seen it, because I've lived it.

America, we cannot turn back... not with so much work to be done.

America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone.

At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise, that American promise, and in the words of scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.

Falling Behind China's Energy Policy

While China and the Olympics is on everyone's mind, here is an interesting set of comments on China's environmental policies from Jim Rogers, chief executive of Duke Energy Corp.

China, he said, already leads the world in manufacturing solar energy panels. Next year the country will become the world's top manufacturer of wind turbines. Rogers said China is creating the technology and developing "the creativity and the brain power to blow by the United States" on green energy. And it is creating jobs for its future. “They are making it happen while we are still talking about it...It’s time the United States and its leaders — including the two presidential candidates — face the fact that this country can no longer claim to be a leader on global-warming and clean-energy issues."

When you add up the cost of what the United States squandered by its decisions in the last decade or so, don't forget to include this.

Economics of the Singularity from IEEE Spectrum

As I mentioned, the article that I found most fascinating in the IEEE Spectrum issue on the Singularity was the “Economics of the Singularity” by Robin Hanson, in part because I was unfamiliar with this take on the singularity issues.

He argues that we can “…view past history as a series of abrupt, seemingly unheralded transitions from one economic era to another, transitions marked by the sudden and drastic increase in the rate of economic growth.” In some sense there have already been multiple singularities on the earth. The rise of human society, the industrial revolution, the current technological revolution we are in the middle of are examples Hanson gives. Perhaps it is better to change our terminology and call these “the great transitions” or perhaps “the phase transitions” rather than the singularity. Nevertheless, we are still talking about changes as profound as the singularity.

Robin Hanson points out that when humans were basically at the hunter gather stage of social development, we were doubling in population about every 250,000 years. When the agricultural revolution happened roughly 10,000 years ago, human society started doubling every 900 years. With the advent of the industrial revolution, our overall human economy started growing even faster eventually approaching the current 15 year doubling rate. If there is another major “transition” as the result of the technological revolution reaching a suitably advanced stage, extrapolating from the past suggest that the world economic output would start doubling in somewhere from a week to a month.

Obviously doubling the world’s economic output every month seems absurd on multiple levels. After two years it would have increase by a factor of 16 million. We are currently consuming many of our renewable and non-renewable resources at rates that are not sustainable. We could not increase their consumptions by 2x or 4x, let alone 16 million times. Obviously the economic output would be completely dominated by activity that did not require substantial physical resources – such as the development of software, information, music, education, art, etc. If people are exceeding wealthy compared to today, they still could not buy all the oil or beachfront property they want. If the access to limited natural resources is controlled by market forces, then in such a wealthy economy the relative cost of any limited natural resources would climb to astronomical heights. And of course it is exceedingly hard to imagine how human society could possibly adjust to the rate of change implied by a one month doubling period.

But my point is not that predicting a major change in the economic growth rate is nonsensical. Rather it is that such a change has consequences so profound that it is hard to imagine the implications. And a truly profound transition does not require a new extreme growth rate of doubling each month. I suspect that a world economy that starts doubling in anything under 5 years very quickly leads us into a world that is profoundly different from what you could envision just by extrapolating current trends. Such a transition seems entirely plausible in the next few decades given the exponential growth rate in computer and biological technologies.

IEEE Spectrum issue on the Singularity

I finally spent some time reading through the IEEE Spectrum special issue on the Singularity. I won’t attempt to define the Singularity and the many different versions of it, Wikipedia has some good background if you’re interested. Here are some initial thoughts about the articles in the IEEE special issue.

My first impression was that there was a great deal of skepticism and criticism about the concept of the Singularity among many of the authors. But they tended to focus their scorn on the issues of immortality, uploading your mind to a computer, and uncontrollable runaway artificial intelligence. I’ve concluded that these topics are just emotional distractions of some of the real key issues.

I prefer to define the singularity as “that future period beyond which you cannot make any accurate predictions about what society will be like because the technological and social changes will have become so profound”. Looking at the explosive rate in computer and biological technology, and the profound changes that peak oil/water/resources will usher in, it is indeed impractical to make any predictions about what society will be like beyond about 2050. This fits in well with Ray Kurzwiel’s 2045 date for the Singularity.

Although I consider the IPCC reports on climate change to be some of the most significant and well researched scientific documents of our time, I sometimes wonder if their climate predictions for 2100 are essentially meaningless. Yes, they state that these are predictions of what will happen if nothing changes (or if change follows certain scenarios). And yes, it’s important that they try to make the case for the importance of the long term impact of climate change. However, there will be such profound technological and social changes in the next 2 to 4 decades that trying to project what will really happen beyond about 2050 has so much uncertainty as to be almost meaningless. I suspect that many of the scientist involved had the same concerns, but couldn’t think of any alternative approach that still illustrated the long term dangers of climate change.

The article that I found most fascinating was the “Economics of the Singularity” by Robin Hanson, in part because I was unfamiliar with this take on the singularity issues. More on that one later…

The Singularity on IEEE and Andrew Sullivan

The singularity, to oversimplify it somewhat, is the concept that science and technology are achieving such rapid exponential growth that there will come a time in the next few decades where this growth achieves such runaway speed that very little about what society is like beyond that point can be predicted. I discuss this and related topics in a little more detail in my presentation Sustainability or Apocalypse. Ray Kurzweil is one of the more famous authors to write about this. His most recent book is The Singularity is Near – by which he means around 2045.

The subject of the singularity has long been an esoteric topic of the futurist community, but lately it has been achieving some great public exposure. The IEEE Spectrum magazine, which is well respected for its covering of technology issues, has devoted the entire June 2008 issue to the Singularity. It is available online here. I started reading it recently and will comment on it in the coming days. There are now plans to make Kurzweil’s book The Singularity is Near into a movie. And the most recent appearance of the singularity in the popular press has been on Andrew Sullivan’s blog The Daily Dish, which is one of the most read political blogs on the web.

I have set up “Google Alerts” for both Singularity and Raymond Kurzweil, and there has been a definite increase in the frequency of references to these two topic across the web. By the way, “Google Alerts” are a great way to watch for new developments in any topic of interest. I highly recommend them.

The TED talks and Al Gore

I'd like to recommend to everyone that they check out the collection of inspiring talks at TED, which stands for Technology, Environment, and Design. TED is an annual conference started in 1984. The best talks are now available online here.

As an example, here are some quotes I copied down from Al Gore's talk on optimism and climate change

Those of us who are alive today, especially those of us in the United States, have to understand that History has presented us with a choice... we have to find a way to create a sense of generational mission... we are the generation, about which 1000 years from now, poets and singers will celebrate by saying "they were the one that found it within themselves to solve this crisis and lay the basis for a bright and optimistic human future".

Science is a way of life

I have a degree in science as do some of my friends, and I've noticed when talking to non-scientist that we seem to "think differently" then they do at times. It's not a situation where we simply know more background facts than the other person and so come to different conclusions. It sometimes seems to be a more fundamentally different way we approach problems, evaluate evidence and reach conclusions. And I believe that it's due to the training we have in science (and math) that we integrated into our lives.

Part of this is employing a healthy dose of skepticism, part is knowing that there can be a big difference between what we want to be true and what really is true, and part of this is knowing that the facts can sometimes point to one true answer (or at least firmly eliminate some options) and that everything is not just "a matter of opinion".

It is interesting to note that at no time do I consciously decide to "look at something from a scientific perspective". It's something that is so integrated into my way of thinking that it applies to almost everything I do. Believe me, the way I evaluate which clothes to buy in a store can drive my artistic wife up the wall :-)

With that in mind, I read an interesting Op-Ed by Brian Greene in the NY Times today (He is the author of “The Elegant Universe”). In the article he comments that:

It’s striking that science is still widely viewed as merely a subject one studies in the classroom or an isolated body of largely esoteric knowledge that sometimes shows up in the “real” world in the form of technological or medical advances.

He further explains:

But here’s the thing. The reason science really matters runs deeper still. Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable — a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional. To be able to think through and grasp explanations — for everything from why the sky is blue to how life formed on earth — not because they are declared dogma but rather because they reveal patterns confirmed by experiment and observation, is one of the most precious of human experiences.

It's disappointing, and a failure of science education that this feeling is not more widely shared. The full op-ed is available here.

Ben Stein's view on what science leads to

Ben Stein is the producer and main actor in the movie "Expelled", which is a propaganda piece promoting intelligent design. Ben is a well educated and seemingly intelligent person, so his production of this movie is disappointing enough, but even more depressing is the following quote from him during an interview on the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

"When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you."

I listened to the actual interview to see if really was as bad as it sounds, and it was. There was an additional jewel not mentioned in the above quote. He talked about the need to promote the teaching of alternative religious based theories of how life began, the origin of different species, and what keeps the planets in their orbits. Planets in their orbits?

We are facing an exponential growth in science and technology that is much bigger than what we experienced in the last century, and yet there are people who are still having trouble accepting the radical scientific advances from Isaac Newton in the 1600's. Ben Stein is not alone in this. This suggest a growing (exponentially growing?) cultural gap within society about understanding and accepting the scientific advances in the coming years. My hunch is that our advancing knowledge of how the human mind works and the nature of our moral instincts will be the next big new area of controversy.

By the way, the interview of Ben Stein is at http://tbn.org/video_portal/ . Click on "Behind the Scenes" and look for the April 21st show. It's a 30 minute video, mostly promoting Ben's movie. The above quote is near the end.

The top 6 largest banks

According to results compiled by the Boston Consulting Group, the top 6 largest banks in the world are now (in order):

1. Commercial Bank of China
   
2. China Construction Bank
   
3. HSBC of Britain
   
4. Bank of China
   
5. Bank of America
   
6. Citigroup of the United States
   

These results were for end of 2007. The values of the American banks have fallen since then. Say goodbye to the 20th century (and with it the American empire) and hello to the the 21st.

Updated "Sustainability or Apocalypse" Presentation

I had a chance to present an updated version of my Sustainability or Apocalypse talk at the SUNY New Paltz campus to a group of about 30 people Thursday evening. The presentation was followed by an enthusiastic audience comment period. The copy of the new updated and expanded charts is available on the link in the right hand column. The basic premise of the presentation is:

1. The rate of technological and social change this century will be even greater than in the past century, and many of our current social structures are not set up to deal with this.
   
   
2. We will also be facing a “perfect storm” of problems in the next few decades, both nationally and as a global society
   
   
3. These will be the some of the most important decades in the history of humankind, with some very big long term effects from the choices we make
   
   
4. We could usher in a era of sustainability or major turmoil. The outcome is not predetermined, but will depend on preparations we make to handle moments of opportunity and the vision we promote about what is possible and desirable.
   

Take a look and feel free to post your comments below. I am very interested in any feedback on how to improve this presenation.

The Collapse of American Power

In a recent column Paul Craig Roberts points out that

In his famous book, The Collapse of British Power (1972), Correlli Barnett reports that in the opening days of World War II Great Britain only had enough gold and foreign exchange to finance war expenditures for a few months. The British turned to the Americans to finance their ability to wage war. Barnett writes that this dependency signaled the end of British power.

The comparison to modern times is obvious. The United States had no money to finance the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and borrowed the entire amount, mainly from China and Japan. Historians may very well look back at this moment in our history as signaling the end of the American empire.

As I mentioned before, an organization is technically bankrupt when it is deep in debt and there is no foreseeable way it can ever pay off those debts. Paul Craig Roberts goes on to say

Moreover, the GAO report pointed out that the accrued liabilities of the federal government "totaled approximately $53 trillion as of September 30, 2007." No funds have been set aside against this mind boggling liability.

The US "superpower" cannot even finance its own domestic operations, much less its gratuitous wars except via the kindness of foreigners to lend it money that cannot be repaid.

The US will never repay the loans... The dollar is failing in its role as reserve currency and will soon be abandoned. When the dollar ceases to be the reserve currency, the US will no longer be able to pay its bills by borrowing more from foreigners.

By the way if you don't know who Paul Craig Roberts is, you might be tempted to think he is some sort of left wing "doom and gloom" radical who doesn't really know what he is talking about. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. Scarry, isn't it?

State of the Planet 08

I recently attended the State of the Planet conference at the Earth Institute at Columbia University. It's a conference put on every other year by Jeff Sachs and the Earth Institute. Videos from this year's presentations are available here.

Two years ago I went to this conference for the fist time. The focus that year was on sustainable development, and I have to say that the overall tone was rather depressing. In terms of achieving anything remotely resembling a sustainable society, the overall conclusion from most presenters was that we weren't even close.

This year's conference was much more optimistic. Here are some of the interesting points that were made:

• "We're in a process of heading towards a new global society. Yet our institutions and mindset is not ready for this. Much of the rest of the world is further along than we are at coming to grips with this."
  
• Greening of the world' infrastructure will become a trillion dollar industry. But timing is important. Business needs to move ahead aggressively on this. There was confidence that the private sector will lead in adaptation in the 21st century, but government has an important role to play as a partner.
  
• Kenya moved from civil war to a negotiated settlement in a few short weeks. There should be a real sense of optimism after seeing that such things are possible.
  
• Big business has much power to effect the world's problems. We need to ask them what they have done with that influence and power?
  
• We also need to ask the churches the same thing. Religions organizations have failed when they took sides based on identity politics. When they talk about "my people", they need to be talking about all of humankind.
  

Other signs of progress - we are actually succeeding when there is political will to change things for the better.

• The Millennium Development Goals call for cutting poverty in half between 2000 and 2015. We are actually likely to reach that goal in all areas except sub-Saharan Africa.
  
• 20 years ago there were 20 million refugees. Now there are 10 million.
  
• In 1989 there were 10 genocides unfolding in the world. Today there are one or two.
  
• There used to be 10 to 20 military coups per year in the world. Now there are typically 3 or 4.
  
• There is 50% less warfare today than in 1989
  

One nagging thought that occurred to me during the conference was that they were literally flying in people from around the world to give 20 minute presentations on environmental responsibility. This problem was also noted by Jeff Sachs at the end. He talked about the possibility that this may be the last of these conferences they hold in this form. The next one in two years may be in the form of a globally connected broadband video conference connecting cities all around the world. Such an approach will obviously take some experimentation before they get it right, but I can't think of a better conference to take such a bold step and start developing the techniques to hold such a conference on a global scale while minimizing the number of miles traveled. I'm looking forward to seeing what they come up with.

Star Wars civilizations ruled by Stone Age emotions

E.O. Wilson is a famous biologist who has been making news for his recent efforts to bring attention to the critical nature of the environmental problems we are currently facing. I recently heard a quote from him that has been getting more attention than I was aware. The line below marked in bold sums up the current state of humankind nicely. I included the surrounding context, which came from a May 2007 article in Vanity Fair by E.O. Wilson titled Problems Without Borders.

...in rising to power, beginning with the invention of agriculture a scant 10 millennia ago, we carried along with us the heavy baggage of ancient primate instincts. Today, as a result, we live in Star Wars civilizations ruled by Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.

We haven't really figured out yet, as a species, what we are, where we are going, and what we will be when we get there. But at least we have discovered that we are fast ruining the global environment. The scientific evidence for that conclusion is now massive and compelling.... The bottom line is that we have created a real mess. In order to avoid wrecking our planetary home, we have to settle down and together devise the means to achieve sustainable development while preserving our biosphere. The good news is that the same thing that has gotten us into trouble—those brains of ours—can get us out. We're smart. We can do it."