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The Human Race to the Future: What Could Happen - and What to Do Kindle Edition
Daniel Berleant (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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What might life, technology, and the world be like in the future? Today’s future is tomorrow’s reality—the future is on its way! Twenty-nine complete, independently readable chapters of valuable and stimulating information on what could happen, when, and in some cases even how to prepare.
Contains "some of the most readable (and movie-ready) scientific literature ever published" - Neal Ungerleider, writer for Fast Company, Senior Content Strategist, etc.You will get an engaging and thought provoking ride. Future scenarios are written to make science and technology readable and intriguing. The author weaves imagination, science, and even occasional dry humor into a gripping whole. The future possible realities described in these speculative essays, with time scales ranging from the current century to nearly eternity, may inspire readers young and old as well as thinkers, writers and leaders.Updated edition. Includes over 400 references and links to more information. Peer reviewed for scientific accuracy.Here are just some of the topics you will read about:
A week’s worth of food can be produced with just one hour of labor, so could we all have lives of leisure?
Cognitive enhancement the easy way: from pills to ultrasound to electrical stimulation and more.
When computers can read our minds we won’t need WIMP (windows-icons-mouse-pointer) based computers any more.
A telepresence robot is a long distance extension of yourself, and some day could allow you to work anywhere while living wherever you want.
Colonizing the moon, Mars, and other planets and moons is possible in principle, so how might we actually do it?
“It doesn’t grow on trees” is a problem whose future solution is genetically engineered trees.
An asteroid ended the dinosaurs and one could end us too, but there are ways to protect against them.
These topics and many more (32 independent essays, mostly but not exclusively nonfiction) describe what could happen—and in many cases, what we can do.“… could inspire ... students to be more creative, their parents and grandparents to be more future aware, and leaders of nations around the world to take heed and act.” —Donald Maclean, MBChB“As a technology futurist I am extremely interested in the topics of this book. Thank you so much for writing this excellent book!!” —Elina Hiltunen, PhD, CEO“... whizzes past the future and then loops back to look it in the eye. This is a … brilliant book.” —Sabiha Rumani Malik, President of Sanghata Global“I have been pleasantly surprised at the quality and depth of the material in this book.” —Luke Hutchison, PhD (MIT), Google; TED fellow; Singularity University alumnus“Although many foresight and futurism books belong in the science fiction section, Berleant grounds his writing in scientific facts and knowledge, while maintaining the excitement the material deserves. … the book can expand your view of the possible.” —33rd Square
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateJanuary 15, 2020
- File size6540 KB
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To find out more, join the facebook group for this book (www.facebook.com/groups/thehumanracetothefuture), see the publisher's web page (lifeboat.com/ex/book), or send inquiries to us at thehumanracetothefuture@gmail.com. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
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- ASIN : B083XH9X8R
- Publisher : Lifeboat Foundation; 4th edition (January 15, 2020)
- Publication date : January 15, 2020
- Language : English
- File size : 6540 KB
- Simultaneous device usage : Unlimited
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 414 pages
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About the author
A scientist educated at the University of Texas at Austin and MIT, Daniel Berleant communicates an understanding of what the future may hold and what we can do about it. The book "The Human Race to the Future: What Could Happen - and What to Do" is a set of independent essays, based on science and aimed at a popular audience.
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The author still includes arguments that I consider wacky and/or specious (that might at first sound, on the surface, like they are logical, but actually completely “miss the mark”). However, these arguments are still fun to encounter and hopefully it will cause others (as it did for me) to ponder why they disagree (or agree) with them.
First, I will mention what I liked; then I will address some of the arguments I found unconvincing.
PARTS I LIKED:
A) Wiki-wiki-wikipedia (Chapter 4) — Berleant explains how wikipedia could be much more useful if it could, in the near future, generate articles (on the fly) that consist of appropriate intersections of pre-existing wiki articles. For example, if one wants to know about the use of computers in developing, say, different perfumes, one currently has to search wikipedia for perfume topics; then search for computer topics, in the hope of finding an intersection. With a wiki-wikipedia, portions of articles would be accessed and combined automatically, based on both topic and context (e.g. perfumes in the context of computers). This future capability would enable anyone to find articles about topic A within the context of some topic B. Extending this idea would involve intersections of, say, topics A+B+C (thus the term wiki-wiki-wikipedia).
It’s interesting that, since I made the above comments (in my review of edition 3), the dangers of: auto-generated web “fake” (political, conspiracy, climate-denial etc.) articles and articles that are biased toward a user’s belief-preferences profile — have become a major cause for concern. The unfortunatel result is that users could remain inside what is now being called “filter bubbles”. Could this faux-meme creation/trolling behavior undermine the development of the automatic creation of wiki-wiki articles?
B) Highly Centralized to Highly Decentralized (Chapter 6) — Berleant points out where society is currently centralized; along with the disasters that could happen as a consequence. He predicts that future societies (in addition to decentralized use of solar panels) will make use of “agribots” to create decentralized food supplies.
I think it’s hard to predict which types of centralized vs decentralized resources are vulnerable (to what or when). Consider an attack by EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse, from a high-altitude atomic bomb, perhaps lobbed above the US by N. Korea). Centralized resources are more easily hardened against EMP than decentralized resources. All laptops and autos (i.e. decentralized) would have their electronics “fried” while any centralized energy plant (or centralized large cloud-storage facility) could be hardened to withstand EMP. So in this case, centralized would be superior to decentralized.
C) Meat from genetically engineered microbes (Chapter 9) — There are those who argue that humanity will be eating insects in large quantities in the future. I disagree and side with Berleant. I think that future meat products will come from both (a) combining essential components of meats (e.g. heme) extracted from plant sources and (b) growing meat within vats of genetically modified bacteria. These technologies will eliminate the need for large cattle farms containing methane-burping cows (a potent green-house gas).
D) Difficulties with prediction (Chapter 14) — It’s very savvy of the author, who is making predictions (sometimes way into the future), to discuss reasons why accurate predictions are often impossible. Berleant presents what he calls 7 “wet blankets” (barriers to accurate prediction). Some of these “wet blankets” stem from Quantum theory and Chaos theory. The first “wet blanket” he calls the “observer effect” which is the fact that the act of observing a system will perturb it.
I suggest that Berleant add another “wet blanket”: second-order chaos. Yuval Harari, in his book Sapiens (2014), distinguishes second-order chaos from first-order chaos (first-order chaos is the “butterfly effect”). Second-order chaos occurs in systems that have human agents. Second-order chaos is exponentially more unpredictable because humans change their behavior as they become aware of the predictions made (about such systems) by other agents. Harari describes a case in which an emperor asks scientists to build a sophisticated model to make political predictions WRT his empire’s future. Using the predictions the scientists have generated, the emperor changes the way he treats his subjects and thus avoids the revolution that the model had predicted. The emperor then refuses to pay the scientists, because their prediction never came about (but that was due to the changes the emperor made, as a result of his awareness of those predictions). Stock markets are example of second-order systems because models concerning the market’s future behaviors will cause agents to change their own behaviors (thus undermining those predictions).
I found wet blanket #6 (i.e., that predictions are useless because the future might not matter) and wet blanket #7 (the “so what?” horizon effect) to be very similar. In both cases, as we look farther into the future, we have less personal vested interest in the outcome.
E) Warm, Poison Planet (Chapter 15) — Over 15 years ago I first read about the ocean chemocline (a gradient change in the deep layers of the oceans). Below the chemocline the ocean is anoxic (lacking oxygen) and only anaerobic bacteria live. Above the ocean chemocline layer exist aerobic life forms, which produce the majority of oxygen in our atmosphere (more than produced by trees on land). The anaerobic bacteria produce hydrogen sulfide (H2S), which is highly toxic to aerobic forms of life (i.e. toxic to all fish in the seas and to all animals on land). If the chemocline were ever to rise up to the surface and “burp” large quantities of hydrogen sulfide, such an event would kill all fish in the oceans (as it rose upward) and then kill all land animals (as it “burped” into the atmosphere).
It is speculated by some scientists (studying super-massive extinctions), that such an event could have caused the Permian-Triassic extinction. In this event 96% of all marine species (and 70% of all vertebrate land species) went extinct, along with extinctions of many species of insects. A component of this theory is that increased carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere heated up the oceans, which then could not hold as much oxygen. Increased CO2 also caused stagnation in ocean currents, leading to a rise in the chemocline. It is speculated that volcanic eruptions spewed out carbon dioxide to raise CO2 levels during past massive extinction events and when the levels went above 1000 ppm such massive extinction events occurred.
Recent human activity has been rapidly raising CO2 levels, now reaching 400 ppm. If the rate of increase continues, CO2 could rise — in just 2 centuries — to bring about an H2S-belching massive extinction event. Berleant does a good job in explaining how such an event might come about. (For those climate deniers, current rises in CO2 are not due to volcanic eruptions. Scientists know this because the radiocarbon isotopes associated with man-made CO2 and volcanic CO2 are different and so they can prove that the CO2 rise is being caused by human activity. Anthropogenic CO2 emissions exceed volcanic emissions by over 100 times.)
F) Science vs pseudo-science (Chapter 19) — It’s useful for readers who are not scientists to know how to tell the difference. In addition to Kuhnian paradigm shifts and Popper’s falsifiability criteria, I would suggest adding a new advance in scientific methodology: Judea Pearl (winner of Turing Award, equivalent to a Nobel prize in computer science) has shown under what circumstances causation can be extracted from correlations. Pearl has achieved this impressive feat through developing a formal language (and algorithms) for reasoning about counterfactuals. (See his 2018 publication: The Book of Why).
G) Melankovitch cycles (in Chapter 21) — These are astronomical cycles involve the Earth’s movements in space, which go a long way toward explaining recurring ice ages over the past hundreds of millions of years. I came upon these cycles maybe 10 years ago and was really fascinated by them. Berleant’s book is the only book I have encountered (outside of geology texts) that includes a discussion of these cycles. In addition, he does a very good job of explaining (and visualizing) them.
H) New Plant Paradigms (Chapter 22) — I enjoyed the discussion of how some plants reproduce via seeds while others reproduce via spores and how plants could be genetically engineered in the future to produce by both methods, along with the benefits/dangers that might come about. I also enjoyed the discussion of how plants could be genetically engineered to extract and concentrate various precious metals.
ARGUMENTS THAT ARE WACKY, WEAK AND/OR SPECIOUS:
(a) Omphalos hypothesis (in Chapter 17) — For some (unknown) reason, Berleant is enamored with this hypothesis (first named “omphalos” in 1857) and he claims that it is the perfect hypothesis to eliminate conflict between religious fundamentalists and evolutionary scientists.
Omphalos is greek for “navel” (belly button). Based on biblical analysis, religious fundamentals believe that God created the Universe (along with Adam and Eve) about 6000 years ago. On the other hand, scientists have very strong evidence that the known universe if around 13.8 billion years old and that humans (and all life on Earth) evolved from earlier life forms, e.g. humans (such as Adam and Eve) evolved from early primates that were common ancestors to both humans and modern great apes.
The omphalos hypothesis is that, when God (de novo) created Adam and Eve, he would have given them navels (along with all other human characteristics, such as tiny facial hairs on their foreheads, which all humans have). Thus, if scientists were to find Adam and Eve’s remains, they would (incorrectly) conclude that Adam and Eve must have had parents, when in fact they did not, since God created them as the FIRST man and woman. For Berleant, the mystery is not the omphalos hypothesis itself, but why it is either ignored or, if known, not accepted by both groups.
Why does this hypothesis eliminate fundamentalism vs. evolution conflict? According to Berleant, if it were accepted by both groups, then the fundamentalists could keep on claiming that the Earth is only 6000 years old and the scientists could go along with this (absurdity) by stating that, although God created the universe just 6,000 years ago, He created it to APPEAR AS THOUGH it is really 13.8 billion years old. Berleant does not seem to understand why both groups might reject this hypothesis and so I will supply reasons here.
From the fundamentalists’ point of view: If fundamentalists were to accept that God made the universe to APPEAR to conform to Evolution and the Big Bang, then they might as well accept both theories, thus undermining Biblical analysis. Therefore, fundamentalists are not going to embrace this hypothesis. Fundamentalists hate any science that disagrees with their biblical interpretations and they don’t understand how science works and progresses.
From the scientists’ point of view: For God to make the universe APPEAR as though it is billions of years old, He would have had to have performed all the calculations involved in passing the universe though all of its prior periods of time. Consider the placement of tiny hairs on human foreheads. If you mutate just one gene you would get humans with thick coarse hair in that area (e.g. consider the hairy “wolf boys” of Loreto, Mexico). If we presume that (along with creating Adam and Eve with navels) God created Adam and Eve with tiny hairs on their foreheads, then to geneticists, it would appear that human body hair placement evolved from genetic variations, over time, in common ancestors (thus adding support to evolution). Thus, for God to create Adam and Eve with human-like hairs, positioned appropriately, with varying levels of length and coarseness, over their entire bodies, God would have had to calculate the evolution of the genes involved in hair growth and placement.
For an infinite being, simulating the entire past development of the universe (from the Big Bang) could be done in an instant, but the fact is that this labor WOULD have to have been done, in order to create the appearance of a 13.8 billion-year past. Since the labor was done anyway, why pick an arbitrary point, i.e. 6,000 years ago, to have the universe created by God? Why not pick one minute ago? We could claim that God created the universe just one minute ago, but gave us our memories so that we have the illusion that we have already lived for many years.
The reason the 6,000 year time period has been chosen (by fundamentalist nut-jobs) is due to their absurd insistence that the Bible is some sort of infallible document from God (as opposed to a set of weak histories and stories that were intended to convey moral principles).
Berleant attempts to rebut the objection — that God would be tricking both scientists and fundamentalists — with this highly specious statement: “It [ omphalos ] would really be a trick only if it were not possible to figure out!” It drove me crazy that the author insisted on arguing FOR this wacky hypothesis and yet, I did enjoy reading his attempts at taking it seriously.
(b) Chances that we exist in a simulated universe (Chapter 17) — Berleant argues that it is highly likely that we are in a simulated universe because, for each (habitable) universe there will exist many simulated universes that might be created within that “base” universe (by computers scientists existing in that base universe, with our own universe being a “spun-off” simulation on one of their computers.)
I am unconvinced by this argument because each simulated universe will have to be an enormously DEGRADED version of each base universe. Consider what it would take to simulate our universe (on some hypothetical computer in the base/parent universe). That computer would need a memory that could hold every smallest fragment of our universe’s space-time (at the tiniest levels known which, given current quantum theory, is Planck space and Planck time). The simulation would also have to simulate the application of physical laws (across all of space), at the level of Planck time, starting at the Big Bang (at the very least) and executing to simulate over 13.8 Billion years.
The construction of such a computer is completely impossible within our own universe. Therefore, the base universe would have to be vastly more enormous (and probably vastly more complex, in terms of its physical laws) than our own universe. That is, each universe simulated within another universe much be enormously DEGRADED with respect to the base (parent) universe.
To accept the conclusion of that we-are-simulated-because-there-are-many-more-simulations requires us to imagine an inverted tree of universes — each being a base (parent) universe to DEGRADED simulated universes immediately below it. Each set of universes simulated within a degraded universe will be enormously MORE degraded. So a universe simulated within another universe that is simulated within yet another universe would be mind-bogglingly DEGRADED with respect to the grandparent universe. Given the vast and ancient nature of our universe, I think it’s highly unlike that we are a simulation (unless most parent universes are vastly more vast and ancient than our own, with their parents being vaster, etc.). There is absolutely no evidence for this state of affairs.
(c) Guesstimating when the universe might end (Chapter 28) — Berleant spends a lot of time discussing how one might guesstimate the chance of a largely unknown event occurring, based on how long it’s been without that event having yet occurred. I found this analysis very unconvincing because it does not rely on any sampling (of multiple prior occurrences of the event in question). Normally, when we calculate the probability of an event, we do the following: (1) assume that the future will be like the past and (2) we examine multiple prior occurrences of the event in question to determine the likelihood of its occurrence in the future.
With the universe ending, normally cosmologists look at the expansion rate (cosmological constant). Currently, it appears that the expansion is accelerating (which, by the way, is completely counterintuitive and requires the postulation of some kind of “dark energy” anti-gravitational cosmological force) and so it appears that the universe will end in a “Big Rip”. Berleant’s analysis (e.g. taking 1/60 vs 59/60 of some lifespan remaining) has little to do with any cosmological evidence.
(d) A bone to pick about Chapter 23 (humans changing 10M Years INTO THE FUTURE) — Ironically, Berleant has little to say about the biological nature of humans in the distant future. Instead, he spends that entire chapter talking about how our hominid ancestors were different from modern humans when going back INTO THE PAST 100,000 years and then back INTO THE PAST 1M and then 10M years.
I recommend that, in a subsequent edition, he discuss changes to humans going INTO THE FUTURE (since his book is supposed to be about the future). All he says here is that humans would have bigger brains and wide hips so that those big-headed babies can be born. He doesn’t consider in this chapter that humans, with genetic-modification technology already rapidly progressing, might cause more changes to their bodies and brains in the next 100 to 1000 years than all changes wrought by evolution over the last 10M years. In such a scenario, what changes might humans make to their own biological makeup in the next 100,000 to 1M to 10M years?
Final Comment: Throughout the book, Berleant’s writing style is light and breezy, with a nice sense of humor. As a result, it is one of the the most pleasant books you will ever read about possible futures (whether near, far or exceedingly distant).
In this book by Daniel Berleant, a reader can go at her or his own pace, and readers of any age can feel inspired, something we all need in these times of uncertainty at home and abroad, and for those who want to get into greater depth, this thoughtful and beautifully written book ends with a brief series of suggested questions, followed by References and Further Reading relative to each chapter and finally a detailed index.
How much time and energy does it take to provide us with what we need in food, shelter, the essentials of modern, life, versus what we want? Do we need, or is it that we want, bigger and bigger houses, more and more suburbs?
Let’s think of how we go about conducting our affairs, personal and business. Must we congregate in cities that grow out of control? In parts of the world, it’s happening, but is there an alternative? What if we were to scatter in an organized way into attractive scenic rural regions and conduct our affairs via modern information technology? It’s a thought. Of course it wouldn’t be easy, but once started it might initiate a trend. Or is there some deep seated psychological desire to settle in huge cities? In the relatively near future we’ll progress from tapping into keyboards to talking into machines, then to mind/computer operations, and later on to relative degrees of human machine hybrid operations. Singularity itself, however, might be elusive.
How about work? Will it always true that those who don’t work don’t deserve to eat? Will the majority of human beings always desire work? Is there something in us that requires us to work? Does work help us feel more worthy? Is there something about work that makes us confront ourselves, makes us solve problems? Do we feel less worthy if don’t work? Of course there are those who avoid work, avoid responsibility, and of course there is work that is uplifting and there is work that might be labor intensive. In today’s world, we see young people who can’t find work turning to violence, but these are people who see themselves as disenfranchised and without hope. It’s a complicated situation seen from different perspectives.
Do you want to think faster, be more creative, be smarter? Who doesn’t? Well, why not take a pill, or use an electric current? On the other hand, better be careful, caveat emptor.
As sometimes happens in life, our strength, our technological status, may also be a vulnerability, in that we are so centralized, so dependent upon systems that we do not personally control that, should they be disrupted, our civilization would soon confront destabilization. What if our electricity were cut off? What if our toilets failed? Our food supplies? If our infrastructure were to collapse? We had better think about options.
As for our battered healthcare system, will our ancient model of diagnosis and treatment be replaced by futuristic diagnostics via nanobots, our treatment methods by biological genetic manipulation based on advances in understanding the human genome? As opposed to applying band aids to a foundering system.
We spend a great part of our lives engaged in education, both receiving and delivery, and as in our health care system, so it is in our education system, in that it is delivered by ancient methods, which surely will have to adapt to the 21st century and beyond. The pressure is on, and will escalate, and Berleant raises some profound questions. How about thinking skills? What is thinking? What is critical thinking? How about short term thinking versus long term thinking? Should we be teaching creative thinking? Are we still educating the young to be workers in manufacturing that is no longer part of modern life? What are we doing to our young?
Now to nuclear weapons: The number of nations with nuclear weapons is increasing and unless the trend changes the risk of nuclear detonation and nuclear disaster, intentional or unintentional, will increase. What are we to do?
Berleant reviews the lure of interplanetary colonization and its difficulties in all possible localities around the solar system. I have never seen this done as well in any other publication.
More about the singularity: Some question he asks: Has a monkey ever tried to reach the moon by climbing a tree? Well, maybe one has tried, we don’t know.
Berleant lists the seven ‘wet blankets’ raised regarding our attempts at predicting the future, and of course we all know we can’t ever be certain about the future, but Berleant tells us-and I agree-that it is important that we make the future matter. How about future generations? How about the future of our planet? Is that not important?
He devotes a chapter to science, pseudoscience, solipsism, and he considers strategies for improving the productivity of scientists.
As for climate change, Berleant reminds us that our planet is actually in a warm phase in between glacial phases, that this may be the result of the earth’s motion over millions of years and that this will continue, probably in cycles.
The earth being a giant magnet has magnetic poles and every now and again the system undergoes reverse polarity, when North magnetic become South magnetic and vice versa. Evidence is in iron particles distributed geologically over millions of years.
How about the genetic engineering of plants? It will be possible with profound consequences, including multiple forms of food, plants programmed to produce to work, to walk, to perform terraforming in places where that is deficient. The potential for genetic engineering of plants is wide open.
From genetic engineering of plants, Berleant switches to possible Apocalypse by asteroid, something that has happened before a number of times and will undoubtedly happen again, although no one can possibly know when. And in the unlikely event that a large asteroid approaches Earth in the near future, scientists are preparing a number of strategies for encountering these undesirables.
Berleant sees human beings of about 10,000 years ago being like us apart from clothing, culture and daily habits.
What about genetic vulnerability to addiction? Over time in some cases addiction appears to be bred out of the human genome and consequently culture changes in ways yet to be determined. It’s possible that each human being culturally desirable or not serves a purpose.
100,000 years ago things were different. Then, as opposed to now they were two races, one being the Neanderthals, which over time were integrated with mainstream human beings. And there was a time when most human beings were still on the continent we call Africa and very likely 100,000 years into the future human beings will look different. What about brain anatomical physiology? To what extent is physiology antecedent to, concomitant with and or consequent to usage and interaction with the culture.? How will brain physiology 100,000 years into the future differ from what it is today? We don’t know, but we can speculate.
Berleant discusses how people might have looked 1 million years ago, how a major evolutionary modification occurred about 1 million years ago, and he speculates that in another million years, our descendants will be remarkably alien to our understanding of today. He speculates about brain organization in size in the next 2 million years, but here there might be a limiting factor in that a larger brain might be less efficient, given that brain physiology is much slower than digital processing in computers. A brain can organize to adapt, as opposed to simply enlarging.
There are rare individuals who are different from the majority. Sometimes the culture laughs at these, or has contempt for them, but wait: what if they are major contributors to life and to the future? How do we know what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad?’ Psychologically authoritarian cultures-and what culture isn’t-want conformity, but that is not necessarily desirable.
The ocean might be cultivated, possible eliminating scarcity, dramatically increasing the number of human beings capable of innovative thinking?
Mass extinctions seem to occur approximating every 62 million years. Why so? Maybe it’s needed. How do new species come into existence? Berleant reviews a number of possible mechanisms.
Then, in Chapter 30, Berleant ask the big question: If the universe as we know it ends, when will it happen? Well, he says, if indeed space is a high-energy situation, then it might at any time become low energy, which would cause the laws of physics, at least at that location to change radically, and destruction would follow around the universe at the speed of light.
Once I got this far into this remarkable book, I felt I had had a life changing experience.