Sentient Developments

How Skynet Might Emerge From Simple Physics

2013-05-11T14:55:00.000-04:00

A provocative new paper is proposing that complex intelligent behavior may emerge from a fundamentally simple physical process. The theory offers novel prescriptions for how to build an AI — but it also explains how a world-dominating superintelligence might come about. We spoke to the lead author to learn more.

In the paper, which now appears in Physical Review Letters, Harvard physicist and computer scientist Dr. Alex Wissner-Gross posits a Maximum Causal Entropy Production Principle — a conjecture that intelligent behavior in general spontaneously emerges from an agent’s effort to ensure its freedom of action in the future. According to this theory, intelligent systems move towards those configurations which maximize their ability to respond and adapt to future changes.

Causal Entropic Forces

It’s an idea that was partially inspired by Raphael Bousso’s Causal Entropic Principle, which suggests that universes which produce a lot of entropy over the course of their lifetimes (i.e., a gradual decline into disorder) tend to have properties, such as the cosmological constant, that are more compatible with the existence of intelligent life as we know it.

“I found Bousso’s results, among others, very suggestive since they hinted that perhaps there was some deeper, more fundamental, relationship between entropy production and intelligence,” Wissner-Gross told me.

The reason that entropy production over the lifetime of the universe seems to correlate with intelligence, he says, may be because intelligence actually emerges directly from a form of entropy production over shorter time spans.

“So the big picture — and the connection with the Anthropic Principle— is that the universe may actually be hinting to us as to how to build intelligences by telling us through the tunings of various cosmological parameters what the physical phenomenology of intelligence is,” he says.

To test this theory, Wissner-Gross, along with his MIT colleague Cameron Freer, created a software engine called Entropica. The software allowed them to simulate a variety of model universes and then apply an artificial pressure to those universes to maximize causal entropy production.

“We call this pressure a Causal Entropic Force — a drive for the system to make as many futures accessible as possible,” he told us. “And what we found was, based on this simple physical process, that we were actually able to successfully reproduce standard intelligence tests and other cognitive behaviors, all without assigning any explicit goals.”

For example, Entropica was able to pass multiple animal intelligence tests, play human games, and even earn money trading stocks. Entropica also spontaneously figured out how to display other complex behaviors like upright balancing, tools use, and social cooperation.

In an earlier version of the upright balancing experiment, which involved an agent on a pogo-stick, Entropica was powerful enough to figure out that, by pushing up and down again repeatedly in a specific manner, it could “break” the simulation. Wissner-Gross likened it to an advanced AI trying to break out of its confinement.

“In some mathematical sense, that could be seen as an early example of an AI trying to break out of a box in order to try to maximize its future freedom of action,” he told us.

The Cognitive Niche

Needless to say, Wissner-Gross’s idea is also connected to biological evolution and the emergence of intelligence. He points to the cognitive niche theory, which suggests that there is an ecological niche in any given dynamic biosphere for an organism that’s able to think quickly and adapt. But this adaptation would have to happen on much faster time scales than normal evolution.

“There’s a certain gap in adaptation space that evolution doesn’t fill, where complex — but computable — environmental changes occur on a time scale too fast for natural evolution to adapt to,” he says, “This so-called cognitive niche is a hole that only intelligent organisms can fill.”

Darwinian evolution in such dynamic environments, he argues, when given enough time, should eventually produce organisms that are capable, through internal strategic modeling of their environment, of adapting on much faster time scales than their own generation times.

Consequently, Wissner-Gross’s results can be seen as providing an explicit demonstration that the cognitive niche theory can inspire intelligent behavior based on pure thermodynamics.

A New Approach to Generating Artificial Superintelligence

As noted, Wissner-Gross’s work has serious implications for AI. And in fact, he says it turns conventional notions of a world-dominating artificial intelligence on its head.

“It has long been implicitly speculated that at some point in the future we will develop an ultrapowerful computer and that it will pass some critical threshold of intelligence, and then after passing that threshold it will suddenly turn megalomaniacal and try to take over the world,” he said.

No doubt, this general assumption has been the premise for a lot of science fiction, ranging from Colossus: The Forbin Project and 2001: A Space Odyssey, through to the Terminator films and The Matrix.

“The conventional storyline,” he says, “has been that we would first build a really intelligent machine, and then it would spontaneously decide to take over the world.”

But one of the key implications of Wissner-Gross’s paper is that this long-held assumption may be completely backwards — that the process of trying to take over the world may actually be a more fundamental precursor to intelligence, and not vice versa.

“We may have gotten the order of dependence all wrong,” he argues. “Intelligence and superintelligence may actually emerge from the effort of trying to take control of the world — and specifically, all possible futures — rather than taking control of the world being a behavior that spontaneously emerges from having superhuman machine intelligence.”

Instead, says Wissner-Gross, from the rather simple thermodynamic process of trying to seize control of as many potential future histories as possible, intelligent behavior may fall out immediately.

Seizing Future Histories

Indeed, the idea that intelligent behavior emerges as an effort to keep future options open is an intriguing one. I asked Wissner-Gross to elaborate on this point.

“Think of games like chess or Go,” he said, “in which good players try to preserve as much freedom of action as possible.”

The game of Go in particular, he says, is an excellent case study.

“When the best computer programs play Go, they rely on a principle in which the best move is the one which preserves the greatest fraction of possible wins,” he says. “When computers are equipped with this simple strategy — along with some pruning for efficiency — they begin to approach the level of Go grandmasters.” And they do this by sampling possible future paths.

A fan of Frank Herbert’s Dune series, Wissner-Gross drew another analogy for me, but this time to the character of Paul Atreides who, after ingesting the spice melange and becoming the Kwisatz Haderach, could see all possible futures and hence choose from them, enabling him to become a galactic god.

Moreover, the series’ theme of humanity learning the importance of not allowing itself to become beholden to a single controlling interest by keeping its futures as open as possible resonates deeply with Wissner-Gross’ new theory.

Recursive Self-Improvement

Returning to the issue of superintelligent AI, I asked Wissner-Gross about the frightening prospect of recursive self-improvement — the notion that a self-scripting AI could iteratively and unilaterally decide to continually improve upon itself. He believes the prospect is possible, and that it would be consistent with his theory.

“The recursive self-improving of an AI can be seen as implicitly inducing a flow over the entire space of possible AI programs,” he says. “In that context, if you look at that flow over AI program space, it is conceivable that causal entropy maximization might represent a fixed point and that a recursively self-improving AI will tend to self-modify so as to do a better and better job of maximizing its future possibilities.”

Is Causal Entropy Maximization Friendly?

So how friendly would an artificial superintelligence that maximizes causal entropy be?

“Good question,” he responded, “we don’t yet have a universal answer to that.” But he suggests that the financial industry may provide some clues.

“Quantitative finance is an interesting model for the friendliness question because, in a volume sense, it has already been turned over to (specialized) superhuman intelligences,” he told me. Wissner-Gross previously discussed issues surrounding financial AI in a talk he gave at the 2011 Singularity Summit.

Now that these advanced systems exist, they’ve been observed to compete with each other for scarce resources, and — especially at high frequencies — they appear to have become somewhat apathetic to human economies. They’ve decoupled themselves from the human economy because events that happen on slower human time scales — what might be called market “fundamentals” — have little to no relevance to their own success.

But Wissner-Gross cautioned that zero-sum competition between artificial agents is not inevitable, and that it depends on the details of the system.

“In the problem solving example, I show that cooperation can emerge as a means for the systems to maximize their causal entropy, so it doesn’t always have to be competition,” he says. “If more future possibilities are gained through cooperation rather than competition, then cooperation by itself should spontaneously emerge, speaking to the potential for friendliness.”

Attempting to Contain AIs

We also discussed the so-called boxing problem — the fear that we won’t be able to contain an AI once it gets smart enough. Wissner-Gross argues that the problem of boxing may actually turn out to be much more fundamental to AI than it has been previously assumed.

“Our causal entropy maximization theory predicts that AIs may be fundamentally antithetical to being boxed,” he says. “If intelligence is a phenomenon that spontaneously emerges through causal entropy maximization, then it might mean that you could effectively reframe the entire definition of Artificial General Intelligence to be a physical effect resulting from a process that tries to avoid being boxed.”

Which is quite frightening when you think about it.

Read the entire paper: A. D. Wissner-Gross, et al., “Causal Entropic Forces,” Physical Review Letters 110, 168702 (2013).

This article originally appeared at io9.

11 of the Weirdest Solutions to the Fermi Paradox

2013-05-11T14:45:00.000-04:00

Most people take it for granted that we have yet to make contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. Trouble is, the numbers don’t add up. Our Galaxy is so old that every corner of it should have been visited many, many times over by now. No theory to date has satisfactorily explained away this Great Silence, so it’s time to think outside the box. Here are eleven of the weirdest solutions to the Fermi Paradox.

There's no shortage of solutions to the Fermi Paradox. The standard ones are fairly well known, and we’re not going to examine them here, but they include the Rare Earth Hypothesis (the suggestion that life is exceptionally rare), the notion that space travel is too difficult, or the distances too vast, the Great Filter Hypothesis (the idea that all sufficiently advanced civilizations destroy themselves before going intergalactic), or that we’re simply not interesting enough.

But for the purposes of this discussion, we’re going to look at some of the more bizarre and arcane solutions to the Fermi Paradox. Because sometimes it takes a weird explanation to answer a weird question. So, as Enrico Fermi famously asked, “Where is everybody?”

1. The Zoo Hypothesis

Though it sounds like something from a Twilight Zone episode, it’s quite possible that we’re stuck inside some kind of celestial cage. ETI’s may have stumbled upon our tiny blue marble a long time ago, but, for whatever reason, they’re observing us from afar. It might be that we’re entertainment for them (like watching monkeys in the zoo), or that they’re studying us for scientific purposes. Regardless, they’ve invoked a hand’s off policy and they’re leaving us alone.

This idea was first proposed by John Ball in 1973, who argued that extraterrestrial intelligent life may be almost ubiquitous, but that the “apparent failure of such life to interact with us may be understood in terms of the hypothesis that they have set us aside as part of a wilderness area or zoo.” We could be part of a vast nature preserve that has been set off limits, free to grow unperturbed by intelligent life. It’s an idea that somewhat related to Star Trek’s Prime Directive in which civilizations are left alone until they attain a certain technology capacity. It’s also an idea that UFOlogists are partial to — the suggestion that aliens are essentially here, but observing us from a distance. Image: ssi.org.

2. Self-Imposed Quarantine

This is pretty much the opposite of the zoo hypothesis. Extraterrestrials have the potential to be dangerous. Like, extremely dangerous. So rather than fart around the Galaxy in spaceships and hope that everyone’s super friendly, ETI’s may have collectively and independently decided to stay the hell at home and not draw attention to themselves.

And why not? It would be perfectly reasonable to conclude, especially in light of the Fermi Paradox, that the cosmos is filled with perils — whether it be an imperialistic civilization on the march, or a wave of berserker probes set to sterilize everything in its wake. And to ensure that nobody bothers them, advanced ETIs could set up a perimeter of Sandberg probes (self-replicating policing probes) to make sure that nobody gets in. Image: Cardens Design/Shutterstock.

3. The Whack-a-Mole Hypothesis

Imagine if there’s a kind of Prime Directive in effect, but that ETIs are hovering over us with a giant hammer ready to smack it down should it suddenly not like what it sees. These ETI’s would be like Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still, intent on preserving the galactic peace. "There's no limit to what Gort could do,” said Klaatu, “He could destroy the Earth." So what is Gort or other advanced ETIs waiting for, exactly? One possibility is the technological Singularity. In the space of possible survivable Singularities, a sizeable portion of them might result in an extremely dangerous artificial superintelligence (SAI). The kind of SAI that could set about the destruction of the entire Galaxy. So, in order to prevent the bad ones from emerging — while giving the good ones a fair chance to get started — the Galactic Club keeps watch.

4. We’re Made Out of Meat

From the Nebula Award-nominated short story, “They’re Made Out of Meat” by Terry Bisson:

"They're made out of meat."

"Meat?"

"Meat. They're made out of meat."

"Meat?"

"There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."

"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?"

"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."

"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."

"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."

"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."

"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they're made out of meat."

A little while later:

"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"

"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."

"I thought you just told me they used radio."

"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."

"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"

"Officially or unofficially?"

"Both."

"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."

"I was hoping you would say that."

"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?"

"I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say? 'Hello, meat. How's it going?'

5. The Simulation Hypothesis

We haven’t been visited by anyone becausewe’re living inside a computer simulation — and the simulation isn’t generating any extraterrestrial companions for us.

If true, this could imply one of three things. First, the bastards — I mean Gods — running the simulation have rigged it such that we’re the only civilization in the entire Galaxy (or even the Universe). Or, there really isn’t a true universe out there, it just appears that way to us within our simulated bubble (It’s a ‘If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?’ type thing).

Another more bizarre possibility is that the simulation is being run by a posthuman civilization in search of an answer to the Fermi Paradox, or some other scientific question. Maybe, in an attempt to entertain various hypotheses (perhaps even preemptively in consideration of some proposed action), they’re running a billion different ancestor simulations to determine how many of them produce spacefaring civilizations, or even post-Singularity stage civilizations like themselves.

6. Radio Silence

This one is similar to the quarantine hypothesis, but it’s not quite as paranoid. But it’s still pretty paranoid. It’s possible that everyone is listening, but no one is transmitting.

And for very good reason. David Brin has argued that the practice of Active SETI would be like shouting out into the jungle (Active SETI is the deliberate transmission of high-powered radio signals to candidate star systems). Michael Michaud has made a similar case: “Let’s be clear about this,” he has written, “Active SETI is not scientific research. It is a deliberate attempt to provoke a response by an alien civilization whose capabilities, intentions, and distance are not known to us. That makes it a policy issue.” The concern, of course, is that we may draw undue attention to ourselves prematurely. It’s conceivable, therefore, that our collective governments may some day decide to shut down all Active SETI efforts. We should just be content to listen. But what if every civilization in the cosmos were to adopt the same policy? That would imply that everyone has gone radio silent.

As an aside, it could also be dangerous to listen: SETI may be at risk of downloading a malicious virus from outer space.

7. All Aliens Are Homebodies

This one isn’t so much weird as it might actually be possible. An advanced ETI, upon graduating to a Kardashev II scale civilization, could lose all galactic-scale ambitions. Once a Dyson sphere or Matrioshka Brain is set up, an alien civilization would have more action and adventure in its local area than it knows what to do with. Massive supercomputers would be able to simulate universes within universes, and lifetimes within lifetimes — and at speeds and variations far removed from what’s exhibited in the tired old analog world. By comparison, the rest of the galaxy would seem like a boring and desolate place. Space could very much be in the rear view mirror.

8. We Can’t Read the Signs

Now, it’s totally possible that the signs of ETIs are all around us, but we just can’t see them. Either we’re too stupid to notice, or we still need to develop our technologies to detect the signals. According to the current SETI approach, we should be listening for radio signatures. But a civilization far more advanced than our own might be using a different technique entirely. They could be signaling with lasers, for example. Lasers are good because they’re tightly focused beams with excellent informational bandwidth. They’re also able to penetrate our galaxy’s dusty interstellar medium.

Or, ETIs could use “calling cards” by exploiting the transmit method of detection (e.g. by constructing a massive perfectly geometrical structure, like a triangle or a square, and put in orbit around their host star).

And and as Stephen Webb has pointed out, there’s also the potential for electromagnetic signals, gravitational signals, particle signals, tachyon signals, or something completely beyond our understanding of physics. It’s also quite possible that they are in fact using radio signals, but we don’t know which frequency to tune into (the EM spectrum is extremely broad). More conceptually, we may eventually find a message buried in a place where we least expect it — like within the code of our DNA. Image: Arnold/Observatoire de Haute-Province in Paris.

9. They’re All Hanging Out At the Edge of the Galaxy

This interesting solution to the Fermi Paradox was posited by Milan M. Ćirković and Robert Bradbury.

“We suggest that the outer regions of the Galactic disk are the most likely locations for advanced SETI targets,” they wrote. The reason for this is that sophisticated intelligent communities will tend to migrate outward through the Galaxy as their capacities of information-processing increase. Why? Because machine-based civilizations, with their massive supercomputers, will have huge problems managing their heat waste. They'll have to set up camp where it’s super cool. And the outer rim of the Galaxy is exactly that.

Subsequently, there may be a different galactic habitable zone for post-Singularity ETIs than for meat-based life. By consequence, advanced ETIs have no interest in exploring the bio-friendly habitable zone. Which means we’re looking for ET in the wrong place. Interestingly, Stephen Wolfram once told me that heat-free computing will someday be possible, so he doesn’t think this is a plausible solution to the Fermi Paradox.

10. Directed Panspermia

Or maybe we haven’t made contact with ETI’s because we’re the aliens. Or least, they’re our ancestors. According to this theory, which was first posited by Francis Crick (yes, that Francis Crick), aliens spark life on other planets (like sending spores to potentially fertile planets), and then bugger off. Forever. Or maybe they eventually come back.

This idea has been tackled extensively in scifi, including the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “The Chase” in which the uber-generic humanoid Salome Jens explains that its species is responsible for all life in the Alpha Quadrant, or Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, in which an alien can be seen seeding the primordial Earth with life. Even Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001 is a take on this idea, with the monoliths instigating massive evolutionary leaps.

11. The Phase Transition Hypothesis

This one is similar to the Rare Earth hypothesis, but it suggests that the universe is still evolving and changing. Subsequently, the conditions to support advanced intelligence have only recently fallen into place. This is what cosmologist James Annis refers to as the phase transition model of the universe — what he feels is an astrophysical explanation for the Great Silence.

According to Annis, a possible regulatory mechanism that can account for this is the frequency of gamma-ray bursts — super-cataclysmic events that can literally sterilize large swaths of the galaxy.

“If one assumes that they are in fact lethal to land based life throughout the galaxy,” he wrote, “one has a mechanism that prevents the rise of intelligence until the mean time between bursts is comparable to the timescale for the evolution of intelligence.” In other words, gamma-ray bursts are too frequent, and intelligent life is constantly getting wiped out before it develops the capacity to go interstellar. Looking to the future, however, given that gamma-ray bursts are decreasing in frequency, things are set to change. “The Galaxy is currently undergoing a phase transition between an equilibrium state devoid of intelligent life to a different equilibrium state where it is full of intelligent life,” says Annis.

Which would actually be good news.

This article originally appeared at io9.

Why you should starve yourself a little bit each day

2013-04-13T12:38:00.000-04:00

We've been told since we were children that we need to eat three square meals a day. But new research shows that we don't need to be eating throughout the course of the day. And in fact, it might even be undermining our health. These insights have given rise to what's known as "intermittent fasting" — the daily restriction of meals and caloric intake. Here's why some health experts believe you should starve yourself just a little bit each day.

Most people associate fasting with juice cleanses or religious rituals — a torturous affair that lasts an entire day if not longer, and the sort of thing that should only be done a couple of times each year. But fasts can encompass any number of different strategies, including routines that simply limit the times when you eat each day, or on certain days of the week.

For example, there's Alternate Day Fasting (ADF) and the Two Day Diet (also known as the 5:2 diet). We'll get into these in just a bit, but what's really starting to take off is daily fasting — the practice of eating only during an 8-hour window of your choosing, and then fasting for the remaining 16 hours of the day.

While some might be inclined to cynically dismiss intermittent fasting as just another fad diet, the scientific evidence in support of daily fasting (or any fasting for that matter) is compelling. Restricting caloric intake for extended periods seems to do a remarkable job of staving off a number of health problems, while yielding some definite benefits.

Now before we get into the details, it's important to note that intermittent fasting is not for everyone. Before you try any of this, you should probably check with your doctor to make sure you're healthy enough to go without food for an extended period — even if it's just a 16 hour stretch. It's also important to note that intermittent fasting is not really meant as a way to lose weight — though it happens to be a good way to regulate food intake.

Time restricted feeding

One of the most important studies in this area was conducted just last year at Salk's Regulatory Biology Laboratory. In an experiment, biologist Satchidananda Panda and colleagues restricted the feeding of mice to — conveniently enough — an 8-hour period each day. The researchers were attempting to study whether obesity and metabolic diseases like diabetes were the result of high-fat diets, or from the disruption of metabolic cycles.

To that end, Panda gave the mice lots of fat to eat. In fact, 60% of the calories consumed were derived from fat (which was meant to simulate foods like chips and ice-cream). The researchers also created a control group that ate the same thing, but these mice could eat any time they wanted (interestingly, as nocturnal creatures, they ate half their meals at night, while grazing on the remainders during the day). As for the restricted group, their 8-hour window was at night.

One hundred days later, the free-for-all group was a mess. They gained weight, developed high cholesterol, high blood glucose, and experienced liver damage and diminished motor control (ouch).

But as for the mice who practiced the intermittent fast, they weighed 28% less and showed no signs of adverse health. And what's remarkable is that both groups ate the same amount of calories from the same fatty food. Not only that, the fasting mice also performed better on exercise tests — including a control group of mice who were eating normal food. (You can check out the study for yourself: "Extended Daily Fasting Overrides Harmful Effects of a High-Fat Diet: Study May Offer Drug-Free Intervention to Prevent Obesity and Diabetes")

As a result, the scientists concluded that time restricted feeding can prevent metabolic diseases — and without having to restrict caloric intake. At least in mice. They theorize that eating willy-nilly throughout the day creates metabolic disturbances to naturally occurring metabolic cycles. Essentially, the scientists say that spreading caloric intake throughout the day perturbs metabolic pathways that are regulated by circadian clocks and nutrient sensors.

It's possible to extrapolate this to humans, too. Though anthropologists are not entirely sure how our paleolithic ancestors ate, it's unlikely that they sat down for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Those are eating routines from a more modern era — and even then, it's likely that only the wealthy could afford multiple meals in one day. In all likelihood, our ancestors ate one or two big meals a day. And that was it. Consequently, their bodies were likely both adapted for and accustomed to going for extended periods without food during much of the day.

Go Mode

Other studies point to similar conclusions. Take the work of Valter Longo, for example. Longo, who works out of the University of Southern California's Longevity Institute, has studied the effects of intermittent fasting on IGF-1, an insulin-like growth factor.

When we consume food, this hormone keeps our body in "go" mode, where our cells are driven to reproduce and facilitate growth. This is great when we need it, but not so much when we're trying to keep off the weight. Moreover, while it's good for growth, it can also speed up the aging process. And in fact, Longo compares the effect to "driving along with your foot hard on the accelerator pedal."

Intermittent fasting, on the other hand, decreases the body's expression of IGF-1. And it also appears to switch on a number of DNA repair genes. Restricted feeding, says Longo, makes our body go from "growth mode" to "repair mode."

Just As Effective as Caloric Restriction

Other research by Krista Varady of University of Illinois in Chicago has looked at the way fasting impacts chronic diseases, like cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer. Her work, which involves both animal and human test subjects, seeks to compare the effects of intermittent fasting with caloric restriction (an extended low-calorie dietary routine that has known health benefits).

What her animal models showed was that intermittent fasting (in this case, alternate-day fasting) lowers the chances of acquiring diabetes, while also lowering fasting glucose and insulin concentrations — and at rates comparable to caloric restriction.

Her tests on human subjects were not much different, which showed greater insulin-mediated glucose uptake. Her evidence suggested that fasting can increase HDL-cholesterol (that's the good kind), while lowering triacylglycerol concentrations. Fasting had no effect on blood pressure. She concluded her study by suggesting that fasting can modulate several risk factors that are known to bring about various chronic diseases.

Moreover, her study showed that intermittent fasting can offer many of the same benefits of caloric restriction, which includes a slight increase in longevity (though this has been recently thrown into question) and increased insulin sensitivity.

Varady recommends an alternate-day fasting routine in which there's no need to restrict the quantity of foods for one day (yes, really), followed by a day in which no more than 600 calories can be consumed.

Another typical intermittent fast is the so-called "5:2 diet." People using this strategy are encouraged to eat normally for five days of the week, but two days are set aside for the fast in which no more than 600 calories are consumed.

Other benefits

And there's more. In addition to Varady's study, other research shows that intermittent fasting can offer neuroprotective benefits. Studies on humans show that it can help with weight loss and reduce disease risk.

And incredibly, there may even be a link to cancer. Another study study by Varady and M. Hellerstein on mice indicated that both caloric restriction and alternate-day fasting can reduce cancer risk and reduce cell proliferation rates.

Short-term fasting can induce growth hormone secretion in men (which is a problem for guys after they hit 30), it reduces oxidative stress (fasting prevents oxidative damage to cellular proteins by decreasing the accumulation of oxidative radicals in the cell — what contributes to aging and disease onset), and it's good for brain health, mental well-being, and clarity.

And as a study published just last week has shown, restricting calories can also lengthen telomeres — which has a protective effect on our DNA and genetic material, which in turn helps with cellular health (i.e. it helps us extend healthy lifespan).

And for people who wish to maintain a ketogenic diet — a metabolic state in which the body is in a perpetual state of fat burning instead of carbohydrate burning — intermittent fasting is a good way to help the body stay in ketosis.

Not As Hard As It Sounds

I actually practice daily intermittent fasting, and I've been doing it for about five months. Admittedly, the first week was difficult, but now I don't give it a second thought. My cravings have largely disappeared, but my stomach starts to grumble in the late stages. I feel great, though, my mood is upbeat, and I'm often full of energy (I also do strength-and-conditioning work, which helps).

My particular routine — which is quite typical for daily intermittent fasters — sees me having my last meal of the day sometime between 6:00 and 8:00 PM. But then I don't eat until 1:00 PM the next day. My lunch is usually a big deal, and I savor every bite (a neat benefit of the daily fast is how much better food suddenly tastes). Likewise, my dinner is also a grand affair. So I basically eat two solid meals each day, and fast for a 16 hour stretch.

I also drink coffee and tea during the fasting period (both without cream and sugar). These are zero calorie foods that have little impact on the body's metabolism. And not only that, caffeine is a known appetite suppressant.

Lastly, I also tend to eat very little carbs. As many people know, carbohydrates are notorious for creating food cravings — carbs cause a kind of negative feedback loop. But as all this new research it's showing, it's not necessarily the kind of foods you eat. Rather, it's the fasting that's important. But that said, I wouldn't tempt fate; it's probably prudent to keep the foods healthy.

As a final note, given that this is a restrictive dietary routine, it's important to keep our health goals in mind as they relate to our daily enjoyment of life. Limiting our eating to such a small window of time could certainly be construed as a draconian measure. If a routine like this threatens to make you miserable, it may simply not be worth the bother.

But for me, it's not a problem, and fits in rather nicely with my overall health strategies.

This article originally appeared at io9.

Images: lev dolgachov/Shutterstock, cath5/Shutterstock, Valter Longo, Krista Varady.

How Much Longer Before Our First AI Catastrophe?

2013-04-12T16:52:00.002-04:00

With everyone’s attention focused on a pending technological Singularity, few give consideration to the immediate period of time leading up to it. If things continue apace, this could prove to be the most dangerous time in human history. It will be the era of weak and narrow artificial intelligence, a highly problematic combo that could wreak tremendous havoc on human civilization. Here’s why we’ll need to be ready.

As opposed to the Technological Singularity, which is defined as the advent of recursively improving greater-than-human artificial intelligence (or artificial superintelligence), or the development of strong AI (human-like artificial general intelligence), this particular concern has to do with the rise of weak AI, expert systems that match or exceed human intelligence in a narrowly defined area, but not in broader areas. As a consequence, many of these systems will work outside of human comprehension and control.

But don't let the name fool you; there's nothing weak about the kind of damage it could do.

Before the Singularity

The Singularity is often misunderstood as AI that’s simply smarter than humans, or the rise of human-like consciousness in a machine. Neither are the case. To a non-trivial degree, much of our AI already exceeds human capacities. It’s just not sophisticated and robust enough to do any significant damage to our infrastructure. The trouble will start to come when, in the case of the Singularity, a highly generalized AI starts to iteratively improve upon itself.

And indeed, when the Singularity hits, it’ll be like, in the words of mathematician I. J. Good, anintelligence explosion — and it will indeed hit us like a bomb. Human control will forever be relegated to the sidelines, in whatever form that might take.

A pre-Singularity AI disaster or catastrophe, on the other hand, will be containable. But just barely. It’ll likely arise from an expert system or super-sophisticated algorithm run amok. And the worry is not so much its power — which is definitely a significant part of the equation — but the speed at which it will inflict the damage. By the time we have a grasp on what’s going on, something terrible may have happened.

Narrow AI could knock out our electric grid, damage nuclear power plants, cause a global-scale economic collapse, misdirect autonomous vehicles and robots, take control of a factory or military installation, or unleash some kind of propagating blight that will be difficult to get rid of (whether in the digital realm or the real world). The possibilities are frighteningly endless.

Our infrastructure is becoming increasingly digital and interconnected — and by consequence, increasingly vulnerable. In a few decades, it will be brittle as glass, with the bulk of human activity dependant upon it.

And it is indeed a possibility. The signs are all there.

Accidents Will Happen

Back in 1988, a Cornell University student named Robert Morris scripted a software program that could measure the size of the Internet. To make it work, he equipped it with a few clever tricks to help it along its way, including an ability to exploit known vulnerabilities in popular utility programs running on UNIX. This allowed the program to break into those machines and copy itself, thus infecting those systems.

On November 2, 1988, Morris introduced his program to the world. It quickly spread to thousands of computers, disrupting normal activities and Internet connectivity for days. Estimates put the cost of the damage anywhere between $10,000 to $100,000. Dubbed the “Morris Worm,” it’s considered the first worm in human history — one that prompted DARPA to fund the establishment of the CERT/CC at Carnegie Mellon University to anticipate and respond to this new kind of threat.

As for Morris, he was charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and given a $10,000 fine.

But the takeaway from the incident was clear: Despite our best intentions, accidents willhappen. And as we continue to develop and push our technologies forward, there’s always the chance that it will operate outside our expectations — and even our control.

Down to the Millisecond

Indeed, unintended consequences are one thing, containability is quite another. Our technologies are increasingly operating at levels beyond our real-time capacities. The best example of this comes from the world of high-frequency stock trading (HFT).

In HFT, securities are traded on a rapid-fire basis through the use of powerful computers and algorithms. A single investment position can last for a few minutes — or a few milliseconds; there can be as many as 500 transactions made in a single second. This type of computer trading can result in thousands upon thousands of transactions a day, each and every one of them decided by super-sophisticated scripts. The human traders involved (such as they are) just sit back and watch, incredulous to the machinations happening at break-neck speeds.

“Back in the day, I used to be able to explain to a client how their trade was executed. Technology has made the trade process so convoluted and complex that I can’t do that any more,” noted PNC Wealth Management's Jim Dunigan in a Markets Media article.

Clearly, the ability to assess market conditions and react quickly is a valuable asset to have. And indeed, according to a 2009 study, HFT firms accounted for 60 to 73% of all U.S. equity trading volume; but as of last year that number dropped to 50% — but it's still considered a highly profitable form of trading.

To date, the most significant single incident involving HFT came at 2:45 on May 5th, 2010. For a period of about five minutes, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted over 1,000 points (approximately 9%); for a few minutes, $1 trillion in market value vanished. About 600 points were recovered 20 minutes later. It's now called the 2010 Flash Crash, the second largest point swing in history and the biggest one-day point decline.

The incident prompted an investigation by Gregg E. Berman, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The investigators posited a number of theories (of which there are many, some of them quite complex), but their primary concern was the impact of HFT. They determined that the collective efforts of the algorithms exacerbated price declines; by selling aggressively, the trader-bots worked to eliminate their positions and withdraw from the market in the face of uncertainty.

The following year, an independent study concluded that technology played an important role, but that it wasn’t the entire story. Looking at the Flash Crash in detail, the authors argued that it was “the result of the new dynamics at play in the current market structure,” and the role played by “order toxicity.” At the same time, however, they noted that HFT traders exhibited trading patterns inconsistent with the traditional definition of market making, and that they were “aggressively [trading] in the direction of price changes.”

HFT is also playing an increasing role in currencies and commodities, making up about 28% of the total volume in futures markets. Not surprisingly, this area has become vulnerable to mini crashes. Following incidents involving the trading of cocoa and sugar, the Wall Street Journalhighlighted the growing concerns:

"The electronic platform is too fast; it doesn't slow things down" like humans would, said Nick Gentile, a former cocoa floor trader. "It's very frustrating" to go through these flash crashes, he said...

..The same is happening in the sugar market, provoking outrage within the industry. In a February letter to ICE, the World Sugar Committee, which represents large sugar users and producers, called algorithmic and high-speed traders "parasitic."

Just how culpable HFT is to the phenomenon of flash crashes is an open question, but it’s clear that the trading environment is changing rapidly. Market analysts now speak in terms of “microstructures,” trading “circuit breakers,” and the “VPIN Flow Toxicity metric.” It’s also difficult to predict how serious future flash crashes could become. If insufficient measures aren’t put into place to halt these events when they happen, and assuming HFT is scaled-up in terms of market breadth, scope, and speed, it’s not unreasonable to think of events in which massive and irrecoverable losses might occur. And indeed, some analysts are already predicting systems that can support 100,000 transactions per second.

More to the point, HFT and flash crashes may not create an economic disaster — but it’s a potent example of how our other mission-critical systems may reach unprecedented tempos. As we defer critical decision making to our technological artifacts, and as they increase in power and speed, we are increasingly finding ourselves outside of the locus of control and comprehension.

When AI Screws Up, It Screws Up Badly

No doubt, we are already at the stage when computers exceed our ability to understand how and why they do the things they do. One of the best examples of this is IBM’s Watson, the expert computer system that trounced the world’s best Jeopardy players in 2011. To make it work, Watson’s developers scripted a series of programs that, when pieced together, created an overarching game-playing system. And they’re not entirely sure how it works.

David Ferrucci, the Leader Researcher of the project, put it this way:

Watson absolutely surprises me. People say: 'Why did it get that one wrong?' I don't know. 'Why did it get that one right?' I don't know.

Which is actually quite disturbing. And not so much because we don’t understand why it succeeds, but because we don’t necessarily understand why it fails. By virtue, we can’t understand or anticipate the nature of its mistakes.

For example, Watson had one memorable gaff that clearly demonstrated how, when an AI fails, it fails big time. During the Final Jeopardy portion, it was asked, “Its largest airport is named for a World War II hero; its second largest, for a World War II battle.” Watson responded with, “What is Toronto?”

Given that Toronto’s Billy Bishop Airport is named after a war hero, that was not a terrible guess. But why this was such a blatant mistake is that the category was “U.S. Cities.” Toronto, not being a U.S. city, couldn't possibly have been the correct answer.

Again, this is the important distinction that needs to be made when addressing the potential for a highly generalized AI. Weak, narrow systems are extremely powerful, but they’re also extremely stupid; they’re completely lacking in common sense. Given enough autonomy and responsibility, a failed answer or a wrong decision could be catastrophic.

Moreover, because expert systems like Watson will soon be able to conjure answers to questions that are beyond our comprehension, we won’t always know when they’re wrong. And that is a frightening prospect.As another example, take the recent initiative to give robots their very own Internet. By providing and sharing information amongst themselves, it’s hoped that these bots can learn without having to be programmed. A problem arises, however, when instructions for a task are mismatched — the result of an AI error. A stupid robot, acting without common sense, would simply execute upon the task even when the instructions are wrong. In another 30 to 40 years, one can only imagine the kind of damage that could be done, either accidentally, or by a malicious script kiddie.

The Shape of Things to Come

It’s difficult to know exactly how, when, or where the first true AI catastrophe will occur, but we’re still several decades off. Our infrastructure is still not integrated or robust enough to allow for something really terrible to happen. But by the 2040s (if not sooner), our highly digital and increasingly interconnected world will be susceptible to these sorts of problems.

By that time, our power systems (electric grids, nuclear plants, etc.) could be vulnerable to errors and deliberate attacks. Already today, the U.S. has been able to infiltrate the control system software known to run centrifuges in Iranian nuclear facilities by virtue of its Stuxnet program — an incredibly sophisticated computer virus (if you can call it that). This program represents the future of cyber-espionage and cyber-weaponry — and it’s a pale shadow of things to come.

In future, more advanced versions will likely be able to not just infiltrate enemy or rival systems, it could reverse-engineer it, inflict terrible damage — or even take control. But like the Morris Worm incident showed, it may be difficult to predict the downstream effects of these actions, particularly when dealing with autonomous, self-replicating code. It could also result in an AI arms race, with each side developing programs and counter-programs to get an edge on the other side’s technologies.

And though it might seem like the premise of a scifi novel, an AI catastrophe could also involve the deliberate or accidental takeover of any system running off an AI. This could include integrated military equipment, self-driving vehicles (including airplanes), robots, and factories. Should something like this occur, the challenge will be to disable the malign script (or source program) as quickly as possible, which may not be easy.

More conceptually, and in the years immediately preceding the onset of uncontainable self-improving machine intelligence, a narrow AI could be used (again, either deliberately or unintentionally) to execute upon a poorly articulated goal. The powerful system could over-prioritize a certain aspect, or grossly under-prioritize another. And it could make sweeping changes in the blink of an eye.

Hopefully, if and when this does happen, it will be containable and relatively minor in scope. But it will likely serve as a call to action in anticipation of more catastrophic episodes. As for now, and in consideration of these possibilities, we need to ensure that our systems are secure, smart, and resilient.

A different version of this article appeared at io9.

Images: Shutterstock/agsandrew; Washington Times; TIME, Potapov Alexander/Shutterstock.

What is the purpose of the Universe? Here is one possible answer.

2013-03-30T10:00:00.000-04:00

It’s often said that Jupiter — or any gas giant for that matter — is a failed star. This sentiment riles a lot of people, who bristle at the suggestion that Jupiter is deficient somehow, or that it was even meant to do something in the first place. But the conjecture belies a larger, more important question. What is it, exactly, that the universe and all the stuff that’s in it supposed to do aside from just floating in space?

Well, it just so happens that there is a theory that gives a kind of raison d'etre to our universe and all the objects flying through it. If true, it would mean that our universe is nothing more than a black hole generator, or a means to produce as many baby universes as possible. To learn more, I spoke to the man who came up with the idea.

It's called the theory of Cosmological Natural Selection and it was conjured by Lee Smolin, a researcher at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and and an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Waterloo.

"It's a scenario that explains how the laws of nature are chosen," Smolin told me, "and if true, these parameters are geared to maximize the number of black holes made in the universe."

Of cosmological singularities and baby universes

Indeed, black holes — and the cosmological singularities they produce — are central to Smolin's theory. These are regions of space-time where the quantities used to measure gravitational fields or temperature become infinite. It's also where general relativity stops being useful, making any kind of prediction impossible. Classical general relativity says that a singularity exists inside each black hole. But both string theory and loop quantum gravity suggest that black hole singularities can be eliminated — and when this happens, it may be possible to describe the future evolution of the space-time region within it.

"Everything that falls into a black hole doesn't just hit the cosmological singularity and just stop evolving so that time simply comes to an end," he says, "Time continues and everything that fell into the black hole would have a future where the singularity was, and that region is what we call a baby universe."

Moreover, Smolin says these baby universes are immune to whatever happens in the parent universe, including eternal inflation and its ultimate heat death.

"Black holes are predicted to evaporate by making radiation — what's called the Hawking Process," he says, "but only until they get down to an equilibrium with the temperature of the cosmic microwave background." This process, says Smolin, has to do with the properties of the horizon — and it's only the horizon that evaporates.

"The baby universe may come into a kind of contact with the original universe in a way it didn't before, but whether this happens or not depends on the details of the quantum gravity theory," he says.

A Darwinian model

And like Darwin's theory of variation and selection, Smolin also surmises that baby universes are slightly different than the parent who spawned them. In turn, this cosmological "mutation" — in which the parameters of nature have been slightly modified — may result in a new universe that's either better or worse in terms of its replicative ability.

For example, if the cosmological constant and speed of light were slightly tweaked, or if the law of gravity became too weak or strong, the new universe could be suboptimal in its ability to make massive quantities of massive stars. In such a universe, matter might not be able to coalesce into stars, or galaxies might be unable to form.

In this model, a "fit" universe, therefore, is one that has evolved such that its ability to produce black holes has been optimized. And this may explain why we observe a universe that produces large swaths of giant stars — each one an attempt to make a baby.

The idea of cosmological variation, however, is one of pure conjecture. "It's an hypothesis," Smolin concedes.

But that said, Smolin points to string theory as a potential mechanism. "There could be a connection there," he told me, "it describes a landscape of different cosmological parameters — different phase transitions between them — and this is almost exactly the kind of example I had in mind when trying to explain the variation of the constants."

Smolin is also unsure how many baby universes each black hole is able to produce — though he suspects that it's one per black hole. "The answer," he says, "will ultimately depend on quantum gravity theory."

Life as epiphenomenon?

We asked Smolin if life in the universe is therefore an accident — that humans and all other organisms are mere epiphenomenon, a sideshow to a much larger process.

"If the hypothesis of Cosmological Natural Selection is true, then life — and the universe being biofriendly — is a consequence of the universe being finely-tuned to produce black holes by producing many, many massive stars."

But he added: "Those if statements are important."

Other scientists have conversely argued that the universe is freakishly biophilic — that the laws of nature appear to be geared towards making life. Some even suggest that this is the ultimate purpose of the universe — that it's fine-tuned to spawn biological organisms (the so-calledbiocosm hypothesis).

Similarly, philosophers like to talk about the Anthropic Principle — the notion that any analysis of the universe and what happens within it must take into account the presence of observers (i.e. intelligent life). We're subject to an observational selection effect, they argue, which means we can only ever observe a universe that's friendly to life.

Smolin, on the other hand, brushes these lines of argumentation aside, saying that cosmologists should study and understand the properties of the universe in a way that doesn't connect it to life. The Anthropic Principle, he says, is simply incapable of making a falsifiable prediction for any kind of testable experiment.

At the same time, however, "Cosmological Natural Selection," he says, "is very capable of doing just that."

Moreover, the laws of the universe — and all the stuff that's within it — can all be explained without referencing it to life.

"It's not a coincidence," he says, "that we live in a world which has lots of carbon and oxygen in it, along with long list of suitable stars, and so on." The presence of these apparent life-friendly elements — like carbon and oxygen — has a perfectly good explanation outside of the biophilic paradigm. These elements, says Smolin, creates the conditions necessary for the efficient formation of sufficiently massive stars that form black holes.

The claims made as evidence by Anthropic Principle supporters, he says, can be explained in an alternative way.

The critics

Needless to say, Smolin's Big Idea has received its fair share of criticism. It's an extraordinary idea, after all, and extraordinary ideas often undergo extraordinary levels of scrutiny.

Cosmologist Joe Silk, for example, says the universe we observe is far from being an optimal producer of black holes. He speculates that other "versions" of the universe could do a much better job.

Similarly, Alexander Vilenkin argues that the rate of black hole formation can be improved by increasing the value of the cosmological constant. Smolin is wrong, he says, to hypothesize that the current values of all the constants of nature are perfectly adjusted to maximize black hole production.

Ruediger Vaas complains that Smolin's first mistake was to start making analogies to Darwinian processes. The fitness of Smolin's universes, he says, aren't constrained by their environments, but by the numbers of black holes. Moreover, although Smolin's universes have different replication rates, they aren't competing against each other — what he feels is a crucial component of any Darwinian process.

Writing in the Edge, Leonard Susskind — Felix Bloch Professor in theoretical physics at Stanford University — had this to say:

Smolin...believes that the constants of nature are determined by survival of the fittest: the fittest to reproduce that is. Those properties which lead to the largest rate of reproduction will dominate the population of universes and the overwhelming likelihood is that we live in such a universe. At least that's the argument.

But this logic can lead to ridiculous conclusions. In the case of eternal inflation it would lead to the prediction that our universe has the maximum possible cosmological constant, since the reproduction rate is nothing but the inflation rate.

When we asked Smolin about these objections, he said that many of these concerns were addressed in his book, The Life of the Cosmos, and that his upcoming book, Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe, will also tackle many of these questions (the book also dispels the idea that time is a kind of illusion). And when possible, Smolin has addressed individual concerns (for example, the entire Smolin-Susskind debate can be readhere; and his retort to Vilenkin can be seen here).

Ultimately, however, the objections leave him unfazed.

"My impression is the idea has not been refuted even though several people have tried," he told me. "It doesn't mean the idea is true, but the idea has stood up to attempts to falsify it."

Pausing for a moment, and speaking more quickly now, he continued:

"Look, for me, the important part of the claim is that it is a scientific argument. The idea itself is not the most important thing — it's a very interesting idea, sure — but it instantiates a general claim that — if you want to explain the universe — one of the things you're going to have to explain is why we see certain laws of nature and not others. And the claim I'm making is that this question can in fact be answered scientifically — one that will lead toward a way for us to make predictions to see if the laws of nature are not fixed for all time, but evolved. That is the key point for me."

As for the exact mechanism of cosmological evolution, he says that a certain model or scenario might be right, or it might be wrong. The important point, says Smolin, is that science can only be completed to the extent of our ability to explain why the laws of nature are they way they are if they evolved over time.

"As far as the scenario of Cosmological Natural Selection is concerned," he says, "it's just an hypothesis just as much as it was for Darwin and Mendel — two scientists who figured out how natural selection worked before knowing anything about DNA or the molecular instantiation of genes."

This article originally appeared at io9.

Images: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Smolin pic: ideacityonline; galaxy/dna: physics.sfsu.edu.

10 of the Weirdest Futurist Scenarios for the Evolution of Humanity

2013-03-29T17:58:00.003-04:00

When science fiction writers and futurists imagine humans of the far future, they never think our descendants are going to look exactly the same as we do now. After all, we'll have access to powerful tools to turn us into cyborgs and hack our DNA, so there's no limit to how we could reinvent ourselves.

But just how weird could our progeny become? Here are 10 of the absolute strangest visions of our post-human future.

Top illustration drawn by Dougal Dixon and taken from a 1980s issue of Omni Magazine about what humans might look like in 50 million years.

1. Voluntary devolution

What better way to start a top 10 list of the weirdest visions for humanity than by considering the possibility that we take a massive step backwards rather than forward? Voluntary devolution is the idea that we should re-engineer the human species to the point where we're no longer advanced enough to be considered human. The basic premise here is that humans basically suck, and we should take it upon ourselves to regress, from an evolutionary standpoint, to a state of harmlessness. By becoming pre-civilizational, we would stop being a threat to ourselves, the animal kingdom, and the planet itself. This perspective could be interpreted as a kind of oxymoronic uber-Luddism, where progress is measured not by the increase and refinement of human capacities, but instead by its regression. The ultimate goal would be the end of civilization and our return to the jungle.

2. Voluntary human extinction

But why stop there when you can eliminate the human species altogether — and better yet, do it in such a way that everybody buys into it? Such is the goal of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT), an activist movement that is actively working to phase out the human species, by asking us (very politely) to stop breeding. Armed with the slogan, "May we live long and die out," VHEMT's eventual goal is to return the Earth to its natural, healthy state. With humanity gone, all the remaining creatures on Earth could be free to live, die, and evolve on their own. Adherents of the voluntary human extinction model maintain that they're not misanthropic, they're just providing an "encouraging alternative to the callous exploitation and wholesale destruction of Earth's ecology."

3. The rise of the eco-human

Some environmentally conscious futurists aren't content to see humanity devolve or wither away into extinction — but they're also not convinced of our ability to address climate change and other ecological disasters. The solution to such problems, they argue, is to have humans voluntarily modify ourselves, to better live in harmony with the planet. In a paper titled "Human Engineering and Climate Change," philosophers S. Matthew Liao, Anders Sandberg, and Rebecca Roache make the case that humans should resort to such measures as pharmacologically induced meat intolerance (since meat production is exceptionally hard on the environment), genetically engineering cat-eyes to reduce our need for lighting, and reducing our physical size to lessen our ecological footprint (they recommend a 21% reduction in body mass for men, and 25% for women). They're also hoping to see us increase our will-power, which they argue will have the peripheral effect of improving our feelings of empathy and altruism.

4. Transgenic humans

But, why limit ourselves to adding a few new traits, when we can borrow wholesale from the animal kingdom? Transgenic technologies, which allow for the genetic intermingling of human and animal characteristics, could allow for a nearly endless array of human-animal hybrids. There's plenty to envy among our non-human friends, too: Dogs hear and smell much better than we do, cats can see in the dark, some primates have better memorization skills than us, and birds have remarkably strong vision. Looking ahead to the day when we can apply transgenic modifications to ourselves, many would-be transhumans would like to acquire the eyes of a hawk, the scales of a lizard, or the seaworthiness of cetaceans — imagine being able to swim alongside a pod of bottlenosed dolphins.

5. All brain, and no brawn

This is the classic vision of a humanity that has evolved a massive brain at the expense of its body. In his obscure 1893 story, "The Man of the Year Million," H.G. Wells posited the idea that humanity's dependence on technology will ultimately result in a decreased reliance on the body, and more on the brain. Even the simple knife and fork, argued Wells, would eventually make the human jaw redundant. Modern conveniences like motorised transportation woud result in the withering away of legs, torsos, and practically all muscles — so our descendants would essentially become huge brains that walk around on their hands. But just how realistic is this vision? According to Darwinian principles, physical characteristics will in fact start to disappear if they're not continually reinforced by selectional pressures. The human appendix is a prime example — a classic case of "use it or lose it." As for massive, bulbous craniums like the ones displayed by theTalosians of Star Trek, that's probably unlikely, given that brain size is not correlated with intelligence, and the fact that we're progressively offloading our thinking to external devices. That said, American heads are getting bigger.

6. The Hive Mind

The hive mind, as portrayed by the insectoid-humans of Frank Herbert's Hellstrom's Hive or the infamous Borg of Star Trek, is a possible future state in which human social organization has taken on the form of a superorganism much like ants or bees. In such a state, individual human will is largely trumped by the demands of the collective, or some kind of overarching central intelligence or modus operandi. The totalitarian experiments of the 20th century were prototypes of this idea, mercifully limited by the primitiveness of their technologies. But looking to the future, it's easy to imagine the frightening prospect of renewed state efforts to control the thoughts and actions of the populace — using such things as ubiquitous surveillance and mind-controlling technologies (like nanobots or cyber-brain hacking). But an emerging hive mind could also be seen as a positive step forward in human communication and social organization — what some have referred to as the global brain or Noosphere. The big question to ask, however, is how much of the individual can be retained in an open sea of competing conscious thoughts?

7. Postgendered humans

Advanced reproductive and cybernetic technologies will have a profound impact on our biological nature. Currently bound by sexual reproduction, we are a binary species, consisting of females and males. But given the potential for cyborgization and such developments as exosomatic wombs, we may cease to become biological organisms in the traditional sense. Future humans, or what would really be posthumans at this point,could choose to be postgendered in the sense that they wouldn't be tied to one particular biological sex, instead acquring the best characteristics that each has to offer (a kind of technologically-enabled androgenization). Future humans could also choose to discard gendered traits altogether and become asexual. Even more radical is the possibility of creating brand new biological sexes, or amorphous gendered traits that could be altered on the fly.

8. Out of control morphological arms races

Assistive reproductive technologies like genomics will allow future couples to partake in the practice of human trait selection, or what is more commonly referred to as "designer babies." It's also possible that advanced somatic gene therapy will allow individuals to modify and enhance their genetic constitutions well after they're born. But a number of physical endowments could be used by people to gain an advantage in certain domains, thus instigating a kind of "arms race". Take sports, for example. Basketball players are competing for height, while swimmers are competing for the length of their limbs. Today, athletes have to come by these characteristics naturally, but in the future, those looking to gain a physical edge could take the extra step of seeing their genome modified to suit (or by parents hell-bent on seeing their child succeed at a particular sport). The modifications could exceed anything seen before by nature, leading to some bizarre and extreme physical forms.

9. Humans modified for space

It's no secret that humans in their current form have no business being in space. The long term effects of zero gravity and solar radiation make it a poor environment for the fragile creatures that we are. But this hasn't stopped some from speculating about how humans could be modified to withstand the rigours of space — and their solutions are anything but subtle. Nanotechnology expert Robert Freitas has outlined a plan for the elimination of lungs, making breathable air unnecessary. Ray Kurzweil has speculated that future humans won't require food, equipped instead with nanobots that can energize our cells. And even Craig Venter has chimed in, putting out the call to develop an advanced inner ear that can allow people to escape motion sickness, genes for bone regeneration, and DNA repair for radiation He's also suggested that we develop a small stature, higher energy utilization, hairlessness, and slower skin turnover. And yet others have speculated about transforming humans into gangly octopus-like creatures who would be far more adapted to slithering around in zero gravity environments.

10. Uploads

While the idea of uploading human consciousness into a supercomputer is weird unto itself, some of the visions of life after uploading are even weirder. Take Hansonian Uploads for example — the suggestion that uploaded minds might take it upon themselves to create virtually unlimited copies of themselves in order to compete in tough economic markets. Driving this suggestion is the suspicion that copying yourself will be fast and cheap, resulting an explosion of uploads. Another scenario could see an uploaded mind adjust its relative clock speed. With an agonizingly slow clock speed, for example, an uploaded mind could literally watch the unfolding of geological-scale events like the rising and falling of mountains. Uploaded minds could also hop from robotic body to robotic body, forever changing their real-world physical form. Another fascinating possibility could come in the form of altering the fundamental parameters of the computer-generated environment. This could result in something far beyond human comprehension, both in terms of the physical space (like adding dimensions or changing the physics of the environment) and the nature of psychological and subjective awareness itself.

This article originally appeared at io9.

Top image composed by Dougal Dixon. Inset images via (1) RedIce, (2) VHEMT, (3) Ecoliteracy, (4) StarTrek.com, (5) FutureMan, (6) Vegans of Color, (7) New York Fashion, (8) andrie-basket (Bol Manute) (9) Dougal Dixon, (10) FutureTimeLine.

Would It Be Boring If We Could Live Forever?

2013-03-23T14:06:00.000-04:00

Some futurists predict that we'll be able to halt the aging process by the end of this century — if not sooner. The prospect of creating an ageless society is certainly not without its critics, with concerns ranging from the environmental through to the spiritual. One of the most common objections to radical life extension, however, is the idea that it would be profoundly boring to live forever, and that by consequence, we should not even attempt it.

So are the critics right? Let's take a closer look at the issue and consider both sides.

To help us make sense of the problem, we spoke to two experts who have given this subject considerable thought: Bioethicist Nigel Cameron, the President of the Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies, and philosopher Mark A. Walker, Assistant Professor and Richard L. Hedden Chair of Advanced Philosophical Studies at New Mexico State University.

It was through my conversations with them that I realized how difficult this question is to answer — mostly because no one has ever lived long enough to know. But given what's at stake, it's an issue certainly worth considering.

Now, before we get into the discussion, there are a couple of things to note.

First, this is not idle speculation. An increasing number of gerontologists, biologists, and futurists are predicting significant medical breakthroughs in the coming decades that could result in so-called ‘negligible senescence' — the indefinite prolongation of healthy human life.

And second, this discussion is limited to the question of boredom. Clearly, there are many other serious implications to radical life extension, but those are outside the scope of this article.

Boredom, Mortality, and the Meaningful Life

Most of us know what it feels like to be bored, and it's not pleasant. Thankfully, we're often able to change things up and move on to new experiences and settings. But what if things got so tedious and so repetitive that death actually seemed preferable? Given the potential for radically extended lives, could we risk being tired of literally everything — including life itself?

This is the concern of bioethicist Nigel Cameron who worries that extreme longevity will cause people to become listless and utterly dissatisfied with their existence owing to a complete lack of engagement, novelty — and purpose. It's the prospect of death, says Cameron, that spurs us to be motivated and to meaningfully engage in life. Living an exceedingly long life without the threat of death, he argues, will only impose meaninglessness to our lives.

Moreover, Cameron worries that extended lives will make an already bad situation even worse.

"If we assume an indefinite lifespan in a situation broadly similar to our present one," he told me, "the issue is not so much whether we would be bored as how most westerners, at least, would cope with the prospect when in our current situation they are already bored nearly to death — that's the baseline."

Cameron is concerned that we risk the extension of what are already exceedingly boring and diminished lives. "I am thinking of the blank expressions of reality TV viewers," he said, "and the bloated living corpses of Wall-E."

Chris Hackler, head of the Division of Medical Humanities at the University of Arkansas, agrees:

Let's face it, most peoples' jobs aren't all that fascinating. They put in a 9-to-5 and they're glad to have the weekend. So you wonder if having twice as much of this is a good thing, or if you'd get totally burned out.

Cameron makes the case that it's our mortality — and not necessarily the dearth of novelty — that contributes to a life worth living. "It is the prospect of our demise that gives richness and joy and anguish to each measure of our human experience, symbolized better than anywhere by the 'til death us do part' of the marriage ceremony," he told me. "To enjoy an indefinite human experience would require a willing commitment to constant reinvention, a kind of reincarnation, to which few current humans aspire."

Another concern is the suggestion that humans are not psychologically primed for living an indefinitely long life — that our psychologies didn't evolve to handle such long expanses of time and experiences. Cameron, like others, are worried that life would start to seem dull and without any kind of spontaneous spark. It would be dangerous and reckless, therefore, for us to go down that path.

It's All in Your Head

Boredom, along with the related condition of ennui (which is the general tiring of life), are at a fundamental level psychological conditions. While we can describe someone's life as being "boring", it's ultimately an emotional state that each of us feels.

It's because of this, says Dr. Mark Walker, that the question of boredom and extreme longevity must be framed as an empirical one. "There's only so much about psychology that you can figure out in your armchair," he told me. "We simply have no way of knowing if extreme boredom would kick-in after thousands or millions of years."

Walker notes that the elderly population don't tend to complain about being bored. He points to the example of Jean Calment who lived to be 122 years old, and was once quoted as saying, "I never get bored." And in fact, studies have shown that satisfaction with life increases with age. It's only when sickness and infirmary kicks in that most people lose their lust for life.

But satisfaction at 122 years of age is far removed from what a 1,222 year-old might feel like.

Walker is fairly convinced that some people will be bored in the future. "The larger question that needs to be asked," says Walker, "is if life could ever get so boring that death would be preferable?"

And indeed, Walker predicts that some people will get so profoundly tired of life that they will choose to opt out. "The unhappiest people may commit suicide," he says, "but the remaining people will be less likely to be dissatisfied with their lives." He contends that, as time goes by, a kind of self-selection effect will occur, resulting in a remaining population that's more impervious to boredom.

He also points to the realization that humans of the future will be something very unlike version 1.0. "By that stage," says Walker, "humans will have dramatically changed themselves."

And because boredom is an inherently psychological issue, he speculates that future humans will choose to deal with the condition from a neurological perspective. "I can imagine, for example, a way to compartmentalize memory, "he said, "by putting blocks around memories so that we can revisit experiences as if for the first time."

Essentially, Walker believes that we'll eventually develop the the technological means to overcome psychological boredom.

Walker advocates what he calls ‘experimental ethics.' His general sentiment is that we should give radical life extension a try and see what happens. We may very well discover that, after a certain period of time, people start to get weary of life and opt right out of it.

A Very Different Kind of Future

The bigger issue, however, is whether or not the threat of boredom is so severe that we should forgo the radical life extension project altogether.

Given that we all deal with boredom from time-to-time, and that most of us are able to move on in life, the concern may be dramatically overstated. Or perhaps Cameron is right, and that prolonged lives will be stripped of meaning and purpose.

That said, it's important to note that radical life extension does not imply immortality. No matter how advanced our medical technologies get, people will always be subject to traumatic deaths and other unforeseen accidents. We won't be able to bring everybody back. Life, therefore, will always have a certain degree of uncertainty to it.

Moreover, the future is likely to present an entirely new set of experiences and opportunities far more diverse than what we're accustomed to today. Extreme longevity will likely be accompanied by other forms of human augmentation (such as intelligence and heightened emotional states), along with a dazzling array of technological gadgetry to keep us all titillated. In fact, a strong case can be made that, even today, we are a society that's so wired in that we very rarely have an opportunity to be bored. The future could very well extend our levels of engagement to even new heights (for better or worse).

Lastly, it's worth noting that the human mind, even in its current configuration, is capable of conjuring up a tremendously large number of variable mental states. Writing in The Blank Slate, neuroscientist Steven Pinker has suggested that the human brain is capable of generating and experiencing an infinite number of thoughts:

With a few thousand nouns that can fill the subject slot and a few thousand verbs that can fill the predicate slot, one already has several million ways to open a sentence. The possible combinations quickly multiply out to unimaginably large numbers. Indeed, the repertoire of sentences is theoretically infinite, because the rules of language use a trick called recursion. A recursive rule allows a phrase to contain an example of itself, as in She thinks that he thinks that they think that he knows and so on, ad infinitum. And if the number of sentences is infinite, the number of possible thoughts and intentions is infinite too, because virtually every sentence expresses a different thought or intention.

All this said, the question of boredom as it pertains to radical life extension will have to remain unanswered for now. But regardless of where one stands on the issue, the future, it would seem, will be anything but dull.

This article originally appeared at io9.

Top image via Semmick Photo/Shutterstock.com. Inset images courtesy Nigel Cameron, Mark Walker, and Mondolithic Studios.

Shannon Larratt, 1973-2013

2013-03-17T19:16:00.000-04:00

Shannon Larratt died this past Friday of a rare genetic myopathy. You've probably never heard of Shannon, but he was a big deal in the radical body modification community — a community that is absolutely reeling right now. He was their advocate, role model, and hero.

I first met Shannon at TransVision 2004, a futurist conference I organized in Toronto. Shannon showed up, along with an entourage of fellow body modders, to hear what we all had to say about transhumanism and the future of radical body modification. A fan of science and science fiction, he was curious to hear about the potential for cybernetics, genetics and other biotechnologies as they pertained to altering human function and form. It also didn't hurt that Australian performance artist Stelarc was also at the conference, another hero of the body modders on account of his cyborg sensibilities and suspension performances. You can watch Shannon's interview of Stelarc here. His write-up of the TransVision conference is here.

He was the founder and former editor and publisher of BMEzine (in 1994), the oldest and largest body modification website on the Internet. He also wrote the book, ModCon: The Secret World Of Extreme Body Modification. He was also an outspoken critic of censorship, and, in the late stages of his life, an advocate for right-to-die legislation.

Shannon, who was born in Victoria, British Columbia, will be remembered for his ceaseless advocacy of body modification and the right to alter our own bodies in any way we see fit -- even if it might seem extreme, dangerous, or offensive to some.

I interviewed Shannon for an io9 article several months ago called "What Does The Future Have In Store For Radical Body Modification." He was frustrated that I had to cut and trim the article (he wrote a very lengthy and detailed response). So, he decided to publish his entire response at his blog, and I suggest you check it out.

You can read Shannon's final words here. An excerpt:

Thank you to everyone who made my life wonderful. I love you all. I wish there had been more of it, and I wish I had more to give. I’m sorry there is so much unfinished, so much left to do, but I am glad to know many wonderful people who will complete it. Last minute reflections and bits of advice… seize every opportunity that’s in front of you and live life to the fullest. Even with everything I’ve done, there is so much more I wish I’d squeezed in. Don’t let a single day (well, maybe a single day) be idle. Have every adventure you can, and explore every street — although treat the one-way streets with caution. Don’t fritter you life away into television, random browsing, and pointless substance abuse (I have at times been guilty of all of these) — although remember there are valid uses for them, both for growth and entertainment. Have passion about the future, and in the present. Especially if you’re young, push your education and your skills to their limits on every level. Don’t just graduate highschool, get a degree, get a doctorate if you can. I know these things aren’t for everyone, they are for most, and they also open doors to some of the most special adventures. Even if you can’t afford proper schooling there are many, many ways to learn, free courses to volunteering, and so on. Value your health, and the health of our planet, and strive beyond its borders. We have such a glorious future, but never forget that your part in that future could end at any moment, so live a life that you can be proud of. And of course love and treat each other well.

As much as these last years have been the most difficult I can imagine, and there are still many deeds to be done, please know that I have had a wonderful adventure and enjoyed it immensely on the whole.

Live Long and Prosper!

Love always,

Shannon Larratt

This is a pic of me and Shannon back in 2004:

How to Measure the Power of Alien Civilizations Using the Kardashev Scale

2013-03-01T17:57:00.000-05:00

We have yet to make contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. If they're out there — and surely they must be — we haven't the foggiest idea what they might be like. Or do we?

Given what we know about the universe and our own civilization, we should be able to make some educated guesses. And in fact, several decades ago, a Russian astrophysicist came up with a classification system to describe hypothetical aliens. Here's how the Kardashev Scale works.

Top image by Steve Burg.

The scale was devised by Nikolai S. Kardashev, a Soviet-era cosmologist who is still active today. Though he's 81, Kardashev works as the deputy director of the Russian Space Research Institute at Moscow's Russian Academy of Sciences. During the 1950s, while both his parents were in Stalin's slave labor camps, he became an astronomy student at Moscow University's Mechanics and Mathematics department. His primary interest was in astrophysics and the theoretic potential for wormholes, but he also shared a fascination with the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (ETIs).

It was around this time that Frank Drake launched Project Ozma — a pioneering attempt to locate ETI's by scanning the sky for radio emissions. Accordingly, Kardashev began to wonder if a good number of alien civilizations might be millions of years ahead of us, and if so, what their radio signatures might be like. Just how "loud," he surmised, could alien transmissions truly get?

This prompted Kardashev to write his seminal 1963 paper, "Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilizations." In it, he proposed a simple numbering system — from one to three — that could be used to classify hypothetical alien civilizations according to the amount of energy at their disposal. More specifically, he wanted to quantify the power available to them for their radio transmissions.

Today, Kardashev's scale has been expanded and re-interpreted to include more than just the capacity for communications technology. Astrobiologists and cosmologists now use the scale to simply describe the amount of energy available to an ETI for any kind of purpose. As a result, the scale is often used to speculate about the kinds of technologies and existential modalities that characterize advanced civilizations.

Here's how it works.

Kardashev Type I

In his paper, Kardashev wrote that a Type I civilization would be at a "technological level close to the level presently attained on the Earth, with energy consumption ~4 x 10¹⁹ erg/sec." That's about 4 x 10¹² Watts.

Kardashev's initial intention was to describe a civilization not too far removed from our own (again, for the purpose of rating its communicative capacities) — but one that has yet to exploit all of the solar system's resources (i.e. a pre-stellar ETI).

A Type I is typically associated with a hypothetical civilization that has harnessed all the power available to it on its home planet. As physicist Michio Kaku has said, it's a planetary scale civilization that can "control earthquakes, the weather — and even volcanoes." It will have taken advantage of every inch of space, and build "cities on the oceans."

For a civilization to attain Type I status, therefore, it needs to capture all of the solar energy that reaches the planet, and all the other forms of energy it produces as well, like thermal, hydro, wind, ocean, and so on.

More radically, Type I status would only truly be achieved once the entire planet is physically reconfigured to maximize its energy producing potential. For example, the entire mass of a planet could be reconstituted to take the form of a massive solar array to energize a civilization's power-hungry machinery.

Quite obviously, we are not a Type I civilization (at least not by this re-imagining of Kardashev's original description). Not even close. But Kaku predicts that we'll get there eventually, perhaps in a century or two.

But it could happen sooner if computational growth continues at its current breakneck pace (see Moravec, Kurzweil, and Bostrom). Hypothetically speaking, an artificial superintelligence (SAI) could get started in about three to four decades (either unilaterally, or by design).

Kardashev Type II

The next step is a big jump. And indeed, each increment of the Kardashev scale is an order of magnitude greater than the last.

Pre-dating Moore's Law and Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns, Kardashev noticed that the rate of humanity's energy consumption was increasing steadily. He wrote, "...the annual increase in this energy expenditure is placed at 3-4% over the next 60 years, on the basis of statistical findings." Consequently, he predicted that, in about 3,200 years, "the energy consumption will be equal to the output of the Sun per second...i.e. 4 x 10³³ erg/sec."

This led him to speculate about a Type II civilization. For an ETI to reach K2, it would need to capture the entire energy output of its parent star.

The best way to achieve this, of course, is to build a Dyson Sphere.

Conjured by Freeman Dyson in 1959, this hypothetical megastructure would envelope a star at a distance of 1 AU and cover an inconceivably large area of 2.72 x 10¹⁷ km2, which is around 600 million times the surface area of the Earth. The sun has an energy output of around 4 x 10²⁶ Watts, of which most would be available to do useful work.

It's difficult to predict when we ourselves could become a Type II, but physicist Stuart Armstrong says we could start the project in a few decades. And once underway, it would be subject to rapidly escalating construction speeds (fleets of robots would be powered by the newly-constructed portions of the Dyson shell).

With all this energy, an advanced civilization — probably one that's postbiological in nature — would use it to power its supercomputers and fuel its other endeavors (like interstellar colonization waves).

Kardashev Type III

Which leads to the next increment in the scale. Kardashev described a Type III like this: "A civilization in possession of energy on the scale of its own galaxy, with energy consumption at ~4 x 10⁴⁴ erg/sec." Needless to say, that's a tremendous amount of energy — somewhere between 10³⁶ Watts to 10³⁷ Watts (give or take one or two).

Every inch of a K3 galaxy would be colonized, with every scrap of matter — and all its billions of stars — exploited for energy. From the perspective of an outside observer, a galaxy occupied by a K3 civ would appear completely invisible, save for the heat leakage which would register in the far infrared (around 10 microns in wavelength).

It would take a civilization anywhere from 100,000 to a million years to transition itself from a Type II to a Type III. Even at modest speeds, it wouldn't take a civilization very long (from a cosmological perspective) to completely colonize a galaxy.

From our vantage point, this would look like a hole in a galaxy, or an inexplicably large swath of open space.

Take the Boötes Void, for example, a huge chunk of the universe that's almost completely devoid of stars and galaxies. Speculatively speaking, this could be a large portion of the universe that has been overtaken by K3 civilizations.

Interestingly, Fermilab's Richard Carrigan has argued that we should look for signs of extraterrestrial civilizations not in our own galaxy, but in neighboring galaxies. His idea is that we should look for civilizations that are transitioning from Type II to Type III. These colonization waves would look like a massive bubble that's spreading outwards from the originating star.

Discovery's Ray Villard elaborates:

It's imaginable that a super-civilization would begin a wave of colonization that spread out to neighboring solar type stars from its home base. Each offshoot would "astro-form" the colonized planetary system by constructing a Dyson sphere around the host star.

Carrigan envisions seeing "Dyson bubbles" in nearby galaxies. These would be clusters of Dyson spheres that enclosed a grouping of stars colonized by a Type II Kardashev civilization. The logic is that after you've built a backyard fence you can start to conceptualize building the Great Wall of China and still hope to gain perspective on the process, Carrigan writes.

These would be detected as anomalous dark voids in a galaxy's disk. When these voids were observed in infrared light they would glow brightly with the heat radiation from the surfaces of Dyson spheres. This would show that they are not that simply voids where solar-type stars are conspicuously missing.

A good candidate for such a search would be the Andromeda Galaxy, which is only 2.5 million light years away. At most, we'd be glancing back a couple of million years into the past, which is not significant from a cosmological perspective.

What would an advanced civ do with all this energy? Well, if many futurists are to be believed, flipping one's and zero's. A Type II and III civilization may be completely based in digital substrate.

Kardashev Type IV? V?

Though Kardashev never went past a Type III, others have taken his idea to the next level. A Type IV would be an ETI (or merging groups of ETIs) that has harnessed all the power of a galactic supercluster, and a type V would — you guessed it — have the entire power of the universe at its disposal.

Unfounded assumptions?

While the Kardashev scale offers considerable food for thought, it is not without its problems.

First and foremost, and stating the obvious, no empirical evidence exists indicating the presence of K2 or K3 civilizations in our galaxy and/or galactic neighborhood. In fact, the Fermi Paradox — what's been dubbed "The Great Silence" — would indicate that civilizations never become migratory, thus making a Type III very unlikely. If Kardashev civilizations exist, we should expect to see large swaths of neighboring galaxies "disappear" from the visual spectrum — yet we do not.

We haven't found any Dyson spheres, either. But that doesn't mean they don't exist. Dysonian SETI is largely underway — an attempt to find the "gaps" in the stars.

Another problem with the Kardashev Scale is the assumption that advanced civilizations have an insatiable appetite for energy. No doubt, a K3 civ seems a bit excessive. It's not a stretch to suggest that a Type II civilization might be as far as these things go. Even a Type I for that matter. Ultimately, it all comes down to the consumptive needs of an "end stage" civilization — one that has successfully adapted to postbiological, post-SAI (artificial super-intelligence) existence.

Alternately, civilizations may choose to avoid these trajectories, either to honor some kind of Prime Directive, or for self-preservational purposes.

Indeed, turning a galaxy into a massive supercomputer may be the last thing an advanced civilization wants to do. ETIs may have other desires and goals that preclude it from this kind of intergalactic imperialism.

But we don't know for sure. So in the meantime, let's be sure to keep listening and looking.

This article originally appeared at io9.

Who should pay when your robot breaks the law?

2013-02-16T14:04:00.000-05:00

Robots are unquestioningly getting more sophisticated by the year, and as a result, are becoming an indelible part of our daily lives. But as we start to increase our interactions and dependance on robots, an important question needs to be asked: What would happen if a robot actually committed a crime, or even hurt someone — either deliberately or by mistake?

While our first inclination might be to blame the robot, the matter of apportioning blame is considerably more complicated and nuanced than that. Like any incident involving an alleged criminal act, we need to consider an entire host of factors. Let's take a deeper look and find out who should pay when your robot breaks the law.

To better understand this issue I spoke to robot ethics expert Patrick Lin, the Director of Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group at California Polytechnic State University. It was through my conversation with him that I learned just how pertinent this issue is becoming. As Lin told me, "Any number of parties could be held responsible for robot misbehaviour today."

Robot and machine ethics

Before we get too far along in the discussion, a distinction needs to be made between two different fields of study: robot ethics and machine ethics.

We are currently in the age of robot ethics, where the concern lies with how and why robots are designed, constructed, and used. This includes such things as domestic robots like Roomba, self-driving cars, and the potential for autonomous killing machines on the battlefield. These robots, while capable of "acting" without human oversight, are essentially mindless automatons. Robot ethics, therefore, is primarily concerned with the appropriateness of their use.

Machine ethics, on the other hand, is a bit more speculative in that it considers the future potential for robots (or more accurately, their embodied artificially intelligent programming) to have self-awareness and the capacity for moral thought. Consequently, machine ethics is concerned with the actual behavior and actions of advanced robots.

So, before any blame can get assigned to a robot for any nefarious action, we would need to decide which of these two categories apply. For now and the immediate future, robot ethics most certainly qualifies, in which case accountability should to be attributed to either the manufacturer, the owner, and in some cases even the victim.

But looking further into the future to a time when robots match our own level of moral sophistication, the day is coming when they will very likely to have to answer for their crimes.

Manufacturer liability

For now and the foreseeable future, culpability for a robot that has gone wrong will usually fall on the manufacturer. "When it comes to more basic autonomous machines and systems," said Lin, "a manufacturer needs to ensure that any software or hardware defect should have been foreseen."

He cited the hypothetical example of a Roomba that experiences a perfect storm of confusion — a set of variables that the manufacturer could not have anticipated. "One could imagine the Roomba falling off an edge and landing right on top of a cat," he said, "in which case it could be said that the manufacturer is responsible."

Indeed, because the robot is just operating according to the limits of its programming, it cannot be held accountable for its actions. There was absolutely no malice involved. And assuming that the robot was being used according to instructions and not modified in any way, the consumer shouldn't be held liable either.

Outside intended use

Which, as Lin pointed out, raises another issue.

"It's also possible that owners will misuse their robots and hack directly into them," he said. Lin pointed to the example of home defense robots that are being increasingly used in Asia — including robots that go on home patrol and can shoot pepper spray and paint-ball guns. "It's conceivable that someone might want to weaponize the Roomba," he told me, "in which case the owner would be on the hook and not the manufacturer." In such a scenario, the robot would act in a way completely outside of its intended use, thus absolving the manufacturer from liability.

But as Lin clarified for us, it's still not as cut-and-dry as that. "Just because the owner modified the robot to do things that the manufacturer never intended or could never foresee doesn't mean they're completely off the hook," he said. "Some might argue that the manufacturer should have foreseen the possibility of hacking, or other such modifications, and in turn build in safeguards to prevent this kind of manipulation."

Blame the victim

And there are still yet other scenarios in which even the victim could be held responsible. "Consider self-driving cars," said Lin, "and the possibility that a jay-walker could suddenly run across the street and get hit." In such a case it's the victim that's really to blame.

And indeed, one can imagine a entire host of scenarios in which people, through their inattention or recklessness, fall prey to the growing number of powerful and autonomous machinery around them.

Machines that are supposed to kill

Complicating all this yet even further is the potential for autonomous killing machines.

Currently, combat drones are guided remotely by human operators, who are in turn responsible for any violent action committed by the device. If an operator kills a civilian or fellow soldier by mistake, they will have to answer for their mistake and likely face a military tribunal depending on the circumstances.

But that said, there are already sentry bots on duty in Israel and S. Korea. What would happen if one of these robots were to kill somebody by mistake? Actually, as Lin informed us, it's already happened. Back in October 2007 a semi-autonomous robotic canon deployed by the South African army malfunctioned, killing nine "friendly" soldiers and wounding 14 others.

It would be all too convenient, and even instinctive, to blame the robot for an incident like this. But because these systems lack any kind of moral awareness, they cannot be held responsible.

Who, therefore, should account for such an egregious mistake? The person who deployed the machine? The procurement officer? The developer of the technology? Or as Lin asked, "Just how far up the chain of command should we go — and would we ever go so far as to implicate the President, who technically speaking is the Commander-in-Chief?"

Ultimately, suggested Lin, these incidents will have to be treated on a case-by-case basis. "It will all depend on the actual scenario," he said.

Quasi-persons

Looking ahead to the future, there's the potential for a kind of behavioral grey area to emerge between a fairly advanced AI and a fully robust moral machine. It's conceivable that a precursor moral AI will be developed that has a very limited sense of self-awareness and personal responsibility — but a sense of subjectivity and awareness nonetheless. There's also the potential for robots to have ethics programmed right into them.

Unlike more simple automatons, these machines would be capable of actual decision making — albeit at a very rudimentary level. In a sense, they'd be very much like children — who, depending on their age, aren't entirely held accountable for their actions.

"There's a kind of strange disconnect when it comes to robot ethics," noted Lin, "in that we're expecting near perfect behavior from robots when we don't really expect it from ourselves." He agrees that children are a kind of special case, and that they're essentially quasi-persons. Robots, he argues, may have to regarded in a similar way.

Consequently, owners of robots would have to serve as parents or guardians, ensuring that they learn and behave appropriately — and in some cases even take full responsibility for their actions. "It's the same with children," said Lin, "there will have to be a sliding scale of responsibility for robots depending on how sophisticated they are."

The rise of moral machines

And finally, there's the potential for bona fide moral machines — those robots capable of knowing right from wrong. But again, this is still going to prove a tricky area. An artificially intelligent robot will be endowed with a very different kind of mind than one possessed by a human. By its very nature it will think very different than we do. And by consequence, it will be very difficult to know its exact inner cogitations.

But as Lin noted, this is an area that, as humans, we're still struggling to deal with ourselves. He noted how the latest neuroscience suggests that we may not have as much free will as we think. Indeed, courts are beginning to have difficulty in assigning blame to those who may suffer from biological impairments.

All this said, could we ever prove, for example, that a robot can act out of free will? Or that it truly understands the consequences of its actions? And does it really feel empathy?

If the answers are yes, then a robot could truly be made to pay for its crimes.

But more conceptually, these questions are important because, as a society, we tend to confer rights and freedoms to those persons capable of such thoughts. Thus, if we could ever prove that a robot is capable of moral action and introspection, we would not only have to hold it accountable for its actions, we would also have to endow it with fundamental rights and protections.

It would appear, therefore, that we're not too far from the day when robots will start to demand their one phone call.

This article originally appeared at io9.

Is SETI at risk of downloading a malicious virus from outer space?

2013-02-08T17:49:00.000-05:00

We take it for granted that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is a safe endeavor. Seriously, what could possibly go wrong with passively searching for interstellar radio signals? Unfortunately, the answer is quite a lot –- especially if the incoming signal contains something malicious, like a computer virus or Trojan horse.

And according to the experts, this isn't just idle speculation – the threat is very real. So, just how concerned do we need to be?

To get a better sense of this possibility, I spoke to two experts on the matter: Andrew Siemion, a PhD candidate in astronomy at SETI-Berkeley, and Milan Cirkovic, Senior Research Associate at the Astronomical Observatory of Belgrade and a leading expert on SETI.

We'll get to their answers in just a second, but it's worth doing a quick review to understand where this idea came from –- and not surprisingly, it's science fiction inspired by science.

Visions of viral doom

Science fiction writers have been worried about this possibility ever since the advent of SETI, back in the early 1960's.

Soon after the launch of Frank Drake's Project Ozma in 1960, which was the pioneering attempt to listen for extraterrestrial radio signals, the BBC produced A for Andromeda, a television series that was written by the acclaimed cosmologist and science fiction writer Fred Hoyle. The story concerns a group of scientists who detect a radio signal from a distant galaxy that contains instructions for the design of an advanced computer. The scientists decide to go ahead and build the computer, which in turn produces a new set of instructions for the creation of a living organism, named Andromeda. It's at this point where one of the scientists raises an objection, amid fears that Andromeda's purpose is to subjugate humanity.

In 1968, Stanislaw Lem reprised this issue in his novel His Master's Voice. In the story, scientists work to decode what seems to be a message from outer space, specifically a neutrino signal from the Canis Minor constellation. As the scientists decode the data, they conclude that it is a mathematical description of an object, possibly a molecule or even an entire genome. They go on to construct two strange substances that exhibit odd properties, a glutinous liquid and a solid object that looks like a slab of red meat. They learn that the liquid can cause an atomic blast at a remote location –- which, if used as a weapon, would make deterrence impossible. As a result, many of the scientists become convinced that it's an extraterrestrial weapon of some sort.

And more recently, the idea of receiving instructions from aliens was explored by Carl Sagan in his 1985 novel Contact (which was made into a major motion picture in 1997). But unlike his worrywart sci-fi predecessors, Sagan portrayed aliens as being genuinely friendly.

In Sagan's story, extraterrestrial contact is made, with the aliens transmitting the blueprints to a massive engineering project — supposedly for us to build. After much consideration, the device is constructed, and it turns out to be a transportation device for a single human occupant.

Carl Sagan always held firmly to his belief in benign aliens. He was convinced that any advanced civilization had to be friendly by default — that overly aggressive or misguided aliens would have destroyed themselves prior to advancing to such a stage. His theory suggested that an interstellar selectional effect was happening, and the only advanced aliens left standing would be the good ones.

Be careful

Sagan's optimism notwithstanding, we should probably be more than a little bit wary of receiving a signal from a civilization that's radically more advanced than our own.

When we spoke to SETI-Berkeley's Andrew Siemion, he admitted that SETI is aware of this particular risk, and that they've given the issue some thought. He stressed that SETI's primary objective is just to detect a signal. "Detecting signals is far easier than decoding them," he told me. "Our searches don't attempt to decode or decipher any information content from signals that trigger our algorithms." In other words, the folks at SETI-Berkeley are only concerned with whether or not a signal is present, and whether it's real.

But that doesn't mean they're still not careful. When we asked Siemion about the possibility of inadvertently receiving or downloading a virus, he stressed that the possibility is extraordinarily low, but not impossible.

"Our instruments are connected to computers, and like any computers, they can be reprogrammed," he warned. "Our software receives input that ultimately comes from unknown sources, and again, while this input is never executed or decoded, we don't perform rigorous checks to validate this unknown input like a computer security conscious programmer might do with an internet application."

Siemion speculated that, if an extraterrestrial intelligence had very deep knowledge of the software systems we use for our experiments and the architecture of our computers, they might be able to send a sequence of signals that would cause a memory buffer to overflow and perhaps allow arbitrary code execution.

"However, if ET had this level of knowledge about terrestrial technology," he said, "it would make far more sense to use a similar technique with the thousands of satellite downlink stations dotting the globe, or the billions of cell phone radios constantly listening for a ping from a cellphone tower."

Siemion stressed that this doesn't apply to such projects as SETI@Home and Astropulse, which he said are "thoroughly vetted by very competent computer security professionals, and every effort is made to ensure [their] safety."

In regards to the threat of a Trojan horse, Siemion admitted the possibility, but doubted that humanity would ever blindly follow a set of blueprints or instructions that we received from another intelligent civilization.

"Just as human cultures establish trust over many decades and centuries moving in small steps, humanities' relationship with an extraterrestrial civilization would likely evolve slowly over perhaps many millennia," he told me. "Maybe after many thousands of years, when humanity has established some level of rapport with our cosmic neighbors, we might feel comfortable accepting and utilizing their technology."

Be afraid

Like Siemion, Milan Cirkovic also believes that the risk of acquiring something nasty from an ETI is very real. But he's a bit more worried. Alien invaders won't attack us with their spaceships, he argues — instead, they'll come in the form of pieces of information. And they may be capable of infiltrating and damaging or subverting our computing networks, in a manner that's similar to the computer viruses we're all too familiar with.

Cirkovic admits, however, that the possibility should be taken with a grain of salt. In order to work, an alien virus would have to somehow know or intuit our protocols and operating systems.

"The efficiency of a virus in achieving its malicious task is proportional to the degree of its specialization. More general viruses are, therefore, less efficient," he said. "To be able to infiltrate our networks, the alien virus should be general to a fantastic degree."

When we asked Cirkovic what the purpose of an ET virus might be, he responded, "If we discard anthropocentric malice, it seems that the most probable response is that they have evolved autonomously in a network of an advanced civilization -– which may or may not persist to this day." If this is the case, speculated Cirkovic, these extraterrestrial viruses would probably just replicate themselves and subvert our resources to further transmit themselves across the Galaxy. In other words, the virus may or may not be under the control of any extraterrestrial civilization –- it could be an advanced AI that's out of control and replicating itself by taking over the broadcast capabilities of each civilization it touches. A very frightening thought.

To prevent this, Cirkovic suggests that we should sever any connection between the SETI and METI (messages to ET) equipment, and the rest of the human info-sphere. He admits that this is easier said than done.

Cirkovic's fear is not without warrant — after all, people write viruses here on Earth all the time, for no particular reason. Perhaps signals such as these are the ultimate manifestation of computer viruses — a self-replicating information system that finds compatibility with others, thereby infecting it.

It's clear from our conversations with Siemion and Cirkovic that extraterrestrial life may be more bizarre and dangerous than we can imagine. Should humanity eventually receive a transmission from the depths of space, we would do well to treat it with great caution and consideration.

This article originally appeared at io9.

Top image via x264-bb. Inset images via TechnoFile, Discovery.

7 Best-Case Scenarios for the Future of Humanity

2013-02-02T12:48:00.000-05:00

Most science fictional and futurist visions of the future tend towards the negative — and for good reason. Our environment is a mess, we have a nasty tendency to misuse technologies, and we're becoming increasingly capable of destroying ourselves. But civilizational demise is by no means guaranteed. Should we find a way to manage the risks and avoid dystopic outcomes, our far future looks astonishingly bright. Here are seven best-case scenarios for the future of humanity.

Above image courtesy Gary Tonge.

Before we get started it's worth noting that many of the scenarios listed here are not mutually exclusive. If things go really well, our civilization will continue to evolve and diversify, leading to many different types of futures.

1. Status quo

While this is hardly the most exciting outcome for humanity, it is still an outcome. Given the dire warnings of Sir Martin Rees, Nick Bostrom, Stephen Hawking, and many others, we may not be around to see the next century. Our ongoing survival — even if it's under our current state of technological development — could be considered a positive outcome. Many have suggested that we've already reached our pinnacle as a species.

Back in 1992, political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote The End of History and the Last Man in which he argued that our current political, technological, and economic mode was the final stop on our journey. He was wrong, of course; Fukuyama's book will forever be remembered as a neoconservative's wet dream written in reaction to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of the so-called New World Order. More realistically, however, the call for a kind of self-imposed status quo has been articulated by Sun Microsystems cofounder Bill Joy. Writing in his seminal 2004 article, "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," Joy warned of the catastrophic potential for 21st century technologies like robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech. Subsequently, he called for technological relinquishment — a kind of neo-Luddism intended to prevent dystopic outcomes and outright human extinction. The prudent thing to do now, argued Joy, is to make do with what we have in hopes of ensuring a long and prosperous future.

2. A bright green Earth

Visions of the far future tend to conjure images of a Cybertron-like Earth, covered from pole-to-pole in steel and oil. It's an environmentalist's worst nightmare — one in which nature has been completely swept aside by the onslaught of technology and the ravages of environmental exploitation. Yet it doesn't have to be this way; the future of our planet could be far more green and verdant than we ever imagined. Emerging branches of futurism, including technogaianism and bright green environmentalism, suggest that we can use technologies to clean up the Earth and create sustainable energy models, and even to transform the planet itself.

An early version of this sentiment was presented via Bruce Sterling's Viridian Design Movement, an aesthetic ideal that advocated for innovative and technological solutions to environmental problems. Looking to the far future, the ultimate expression of these ideas could result in a planet far more lush and ecologically diverse than at any other point in its geological history. In such a future, humans could be re-engineered to live in harmony with the environment. All our energy needs would be completely met (a true and sustainable Kardashev I civilization). Using advanced models as our guide, we could also redesign and overhaul the Earth's ecosystem (including the elimination of predation and animal suffering), There's also the possibility for weather control. And we might finally be able to implement defensive measures to counter the effects of natural disasters (like asteroid impacts, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions). Given an Earth like this, why would anyone want to leave?

Image: Thomas Cole's The Arcadian or Pastoral State, 1834.

3. Watched over by machines of loving grace

Regrettably, it's very possible that the technological Singularity will be an extinction event. The onset of radically advanced machine intelligence — perhaps as early as 30 years from now — will be so beyond our control and understanding that it will likely do us in, whether it happens deliberately, accidentally, or by our own mismanagement of the process. But the same awesome power that could destroy us could also result in the exact opposite. It's this possibility — that a machine intelligence could create a veritable utopia for humanity — that has given rise to the Singularitarian movement.

If future AI designers can guide and mould the direction of these advanced systems — and most importantly their goal orientation — it's conceivable that we could give rise to what's called ‘friendly AI' — a kind of Asimovian intelligence that's incapable of inflicting any harm. And in fact, it could also serve as a supremely powerful overseer and protector. It's a vision that was best expressed by Richard Brautigan in his poem, "Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace."

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

4. To boldly go where no one has gone before...

We need to get off this rock and start colonizing other solar systems — there's no question about it. Not only does our ongoing survival depend on it (the ‘all our eggs in one basket problem'), it's also in our nature as a species to move on. Indeed, by venturing beyond our borders and blowing past our biological limitations we have continually pushed our society forward — what has resulted in ongoing technological, social, political, and economic progress. Even today, our limited ventures into space have reaped countless benefits, including satellite technologies, an improved understanding of science — and even the sheer thrill of seeing a high-definition image streamed back from the surface of Mars.

Should our civilization ever be capable of embarking upon interstellar colonization — whether it be through generation ships, self-replicating Von Neumann probes, or an outwardly expanding bubble of digital intelligence, it would represent a remarkable milestone, possibly for all life in the Milky Way. As it stands, we appear to live in a Galaxy devoid of interstellar travelers — a troubling sign that has given rise to the Fermi Paradox. So assuming we can start planet hopping, it might just turn out that we are the first and only civilization to embark upon such a journey. It's something that we must try; the future of life in our Galaxy could depend on it. But more to the point, interstellar colonization would also allow our species to expand into the cosmos and flourish.

5. Inner space, not outer space

Alternatively (or in conjunction with space travel), we could attain an ideal existential mode by uploading ourselves into massive supercomputers.

It's an idea that makes a lot of sense; given the computational capacity of a megascale computer, like a Matrioshka Brain (in which the matter of entire planet is utilized for the purpose of computation) or Dyson Sphere (which can capture the energy output of the sun), there would be more to experience in a simulated universe than in the real one itself. According to Robert Bradbury, a single multi-layer Matrioshka Brain could perform about 10⁴² operations per second, while Seth Lloyd has theorized about a quantum system that could conceivably calculate 5x10⁵⁰ logical operations per second carried out on ~10³¹ bits. Given the kinds of simulated worlds, minds, and experiences this kind of power could generate, the analog world would likely appear agonizingly slow, primitive, and exceptionally boring.

6. Eternal bliss

Virtually every religion fantasizes about a utopian afterlife. This only makes sense given the imperfections and dangers of the real world; religion gives people the opportunity to express their wildest projections of an ideal state of existence. Given our modern materialist proclivities, many of us no longer believe in heaven or anything else awaiting us in some supposed afterlife. But that doesn't mean we can't create a virtual heaven on Earth using our technologies.

This is what the British philosopher David Pearce refers to as the Hedonistic Imperative — the elimination of all suffering and the onset of perpetual pleasure. This could be as simple as eliminating pain and negative emotional states, or something far more dramatic and profound, like maximizing the amount of psychological, emotional, and physical pleasure that a single consciousness can experience. Given that we live in a hostile universe with no meaning other than what we ascribe to it, who's to say that entering into a permanent state of bliss is somehow wrong or immoral? While it may be offensive to our Puritan sensibilities, it most certainly appeals to our spiritual and metaphysical longings. A strong case can be made that maximizing the human capacity for pleasure is as valid a purpose as any other.

7. Cosmological transcension

This is basically a placeholder for those far-off future states we can't possibly imagine — but are desirable nonetheless. While this line of speculation tends to venture into the realms of philosophy and metaphysics (not that many of the other items on this list haven't done the same), it's still interesting and worthwhile to consider some super-speculative possibilities. For example, futurist John Smart has suggested that human civilization is increasingly migrating into smaller and smaller increments of matter, energy, space, and time (MEST). Eventually, he argues, we'll take our collective intelligence into a cosmological realm with the same efficiency and density as a black hole — where we'll essentially escape the universe.

Alternatively, forward-looking thinkers like Robert Lanza and James Gardner have speculated about a universe that's meant to work in tandem with the intelligence it generates. This idea, called biocentrism, suggests that the universe is still in an immature phase, and that at some future point, all the advanced intelligent life within it will guide its ongoing development. This would result in a Universe dramatically different from what we live in today. And then there are other possibilities such as time travel and the exploitation of quantum effects. Indeed, given just how much we don't know about what we don't know, the future may be full of even more radical possibilities than we're currently capable of imagining.

This article originally appeared at io9.

Images: Top | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Interview: Journalism, Human Enhancement and the Singularity

2013-02-02T12:10:00.001-05:00

I was recently interviewed by Adam Ford while attending the Humanity+ conference in San Francisco.

Why getting physically stronger will help you live longer

2013-01-31T16:24:00.000-05:00

Fitness trends come and go, but weight training in particular never seems to come into style. Part of the problem is that most people associate it with bodybuilding culture, and women in particular are reluctant to join the guys at the back of the gym.

But as the latest studies show, strength is a key factor in longevity and an extended healthy life. And in fact, resistance training may be the single most important thing you can add to your fitness regimen. Here's how getting stronger will make you harder to kill.

Top image: Annie Thorisdottir, winner of the 2011 and 2012 CrossFit Games, and considered the world's fittest female.

Gradual muscle decline

Simply put, we get physically weaker as we get older. Most people tend to reach the apex of their physical strength during their 20s and 30s, and it gradually declines from there. Exceptions to this rule exist, however, including genetic outliers and people who begin their resistance training later in life.

But once our strength starts to go, so too do other things. For most people, extreme declines in strength tend to happen in their 80s and 90s. Frailty as a condition results in lower levels of physical activity, decreased muscle strength, increased fatigue, slower walking speed, and unwanted weight loss. It's also associated with adverse health outcomes, an increased dependency on others, decreased mobility, disability, institutionalization — and even mortality. Weaker elderly people also tend to fall more frequently and have greater difficulty standing from sitting or lying positions.

Gerontologists place the blame on our defective mitochondria — the powerhouses of our cells. As we age, our mitochondria start to degrade, resulting in weaker cells and muscle fibres. We experience this as decreased levels of endurance, strength, and function.

Another fundamental problem of aging is our decreased production of telomerase. This is a crucial enzyme that maintains and repairs the little caps on the ends of our chromosomes. When we can't produce enough telomerase, our genetic integrity is compromised, and so too is cellular division. Chromosomal degradation is to is the human body what rust is to a car.

Our testosterone production also decreases as we get older (what is a natural anabolic steroid), resulting in a decrease in muscle and bone mass.

Muscular strength and longevity

As a consequence of all this, muscular weakness is indelibly tied to not just our quality of life, but our life expectancy as well. And the science proves this.

Two recent studies published in the British Medical Journal (here and here) revealed that muscular strength is a remarkably strong predictor of mortality — even after adjusting for cardiorespiratory fitness and other health factors.

This conclusion was reached after an analysis of over 30 studies that recorded physical attributes like bench press strength, grip strength, walking speed, chair rising speed, and standing balance. What the researchers found was that poor performance on any of the tests was associated with higher all-cause mortality — anywhere from a 1.67 to a threefold increase in the likelihood of earlier mortality (the study primarily looked at people over the age of 70 — though five looked at people under 60; but across all ages, poor physical performance was associated with increased mortality).

Now, here's the good news: To a non-trivial degree, and despite the inexorable effects of aging, physical strength is an attribute we can control. As the science is increasingly showing, resistance training can literally add years to your life — and the earlier you get to it, the better.

Resistance training and rejuvenation

Weight training (and functional exercise in general) offers innumerable positive effects on our physical, cognitive, and emotional well being. Taken as a whole, exercise has been shown to add between six and seven years to a life span — if not more.

As noted earlier, mitochondrial degradation is a primary culprit in dwindling muscle mass. But recent evidence indicates that exercise can slow down this effect. According to Mark Tarnopolsky, a professor of pediatrics and medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, resistance training activates a muscle stem cell called a satellite cell. In a physiological process known as ‘gene shifting,' these new cells cause the mitochondria to rejuvenate. Tarnopolsky claims that after six months of twice weekly strength exercise training, the biochemical, physiological and genetic signature of older muscles are "turned back" by a factor of 15 to 20 years. That's significant — to say the least.

Studies involving middle-aged athletes indicate that high intensity exercise protects people at the chromosomal level as well. It appears that exercise stimulates the production of telomerase, what allows for the ongoing maintenance of genetic information and cellular integrity. Exercise also triggers the production of antioxidants, which boosts the health of the body in general.

And indeed, other studies are successfully linking athleticism to longevity. A recent analysis published in Deutsches Ärzteblatt International of more than 900,000 athletes (ranging in age from 20 to 79) showed that no significant age-related decline in performance appeared before the age of 55. And revealingly, even beyond that age the decline was surprisingly slow; in the 65 to 69 group, a quarter of the athletes performed above average among the 20 to 54 year-old group.

Essentially, exercise helps the body regenerate itself. This likely explains why older athletes are less susceptible to age-related illnesses than their sedentary counterparts. Moreover, ongoing exercise has been shown to preserve lean tissue, even during rapid and substantial weight loss. It also helps to maintain strength and mobility, which can significantly reduce risk of injury and stave off health problems that would otherwise linger.

Even more remarkable is how resistance training can stave off cognitive decline — what is arguably just as important as physical well being. In a study led by Teresa Liu-Ambrose of the University of British Columbia, women between the ages of 70 and 80 who were experiencing mild cognitive impairment were put through 60-minute classes two times per week for 26 weeks. They used a pressurized air system (for resistance) and free weights, and were told to perform various sets of exercises with variable loads. The results were remarkable: Lifting weights improved memory and staved off the effects of dementia. It also improved the seniors' attention span and ability to resolve conflicts.

Hit the weights, everyone

Now, as these studies indicate, not all exercise is equal. Resistance training (like lifting weights), in conjunction with high intensity workouts (like aerobics and running), are key. And it's never too late to start — and yes, ladies, this means you, too ("bulking up" is a myth; moreover, it's arguably more important for women to lift weights on account of a higher propensity for osteoporosis). Most gyms offer a weightlifting area, but even workouts at home involving dumbbells, kettlebells, or even functional body weight movements will work just as effectively (things like squats, push-ups, burpees, and pull-ups).

Seniors also need to lift weights. Actually, they really need to lift weights.

Studies show that elderly people still experience the benefits of gene shifting — even if they've never lifted weights before. It also results in an increased production of growth hormone and testosterone, and lower levels of dangerous cholesterol. And as already noted, it can stave off the awful effects of neurodegenerative disorders and depression.

Unfortunately, however, many doctors and healthcare workers are hesitant to make elderly people do anything too strenuous. Today, doctors and trainers are content to advise their elderly clients to simply walk or make circles with their arms in a swimming pool. This is not enough.

Clearly, it's only common sense that seniors should exercise within their limits — but it's also fair to say that it's okay to have them engage in workouts that are more intense than what convention normally dictates.

For seniors, strength training can be something as simple as doing curls with a 2 lbs weight, or getting up and down from a chair multiple times. It's good to get the heart rate up, and it's good to be sore the next day — and in fact, those are strong indicators that the workouts are hitting the right marks.

All this said, it's important to note that any exercise of this type should be done in consultation with a doctor and under the supervision of trained professionals.

Other sources: NYT (1), NYT (2), Globe & Mail.

This article originally appeared at io9.

Inset images: Joe Belanger/Jim David/Dmitriy Shironosov/shutterstock.

Should we eliminate the human ability to feel pain?

2013-01-11T18:05:00.000-05:00

Though pain has clearly served an important evolutionary purpose, not everyone is convinced that we still need it. A growing number of forward-looking thinkers are suggesting that we need to get rid of it — and that we'll soon have the technological know-how to do this. But should we choose to embark on such a radical experiment, we'll need to pay close attention to the risks and those aspects of humanity we might risk losing.

Above image: "Ascension" by Hank Akins.

To help us better understand the perspective of the so-called "pain abolitionists," I spoke to philosopher and ethicist David Pearce. Back in 1995 he authored The Hedonistic Imperative, an influential online manifesto that urged the use of biotechnology to abolish suffering throughout the living world.

After speaking with Pearce, it became clear that the technologies required to pull off such a feat will soon be within our grasp — and that there's a strong moral argument to back his case. But as Pearce admitted to us, a pain-free world doesn't necessarily imply a perfect world — just one that would be considerably more comfortable to live in.

 David, before we get into the ethics of creating a pain-free humanity, it's important to consider the technological viability of such a project. Will it really be possible to remove physical pain from the human experience? 

  In a nutshell, yes.

Technically, physical pain could be banished in humans and nonhumans alike. Today, the lives of hundreds of millions of people are blighted by chronic pain. Mercifully, most of us are normally pain-free. But at some point in our lives, pain of nightmarish intensity can strike - and then we're shocked at how dreadful the experience can be.

From an engineering perspective, however, pain is unnecessary. Nonbiological robots don't suffer its nasty "raw feels" at all. Our silicon robots can be programmed to respond adaptively to noxious stimuli without the slightest discomfort. So we know that the function of nociception and the experience of phenomenal pain are distinct.

Indeed, rare humans born with congenital analgesia never experience phenomenal pain in the course of their entire lives. The problem with congenital analgesia is that phenomenal pain normally plays a signalling role in human and nonhuman animals. So people born with congenital analgesia are at risk from all sorts of health problems. They must lead sheltered, cosseted lives. They wouldn't survive on the African savannah. Therefore the challenge we face is to find ways of replicating the functional, information-signalling role of physical pain minus its nasty raw feels. 

 How soon before we'll be able to start doing this?

 Well, we could start right now. Pain and pain-thresholds are modulated by a number of different genes. Let's focus on just one of them here: SCN9A.

The SCN9A gene codes for the Nav1.7 sodium ion channels present at endings of pain-sensing nociceptors. The SCN9A gene has numerous variant alleles. Nonsense mutations of the SCN9A gene abolish the capacity to feel pain. Other alleles confer an unusually high pain-sensitivity or an unusually low pain-sensitivity.  

So prospective parents have a choice. We can continue playing genetic roulette as now, putting our faith in God or Mother Nature. Alternatively, if we're ethically serious about reducing the burden of suffering in the world, we could use preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to choose benign "low pain" variants of the SCN9A gene for our future children. Prudence dictates that we shouldn't (yet) abolish the capacity for phenomenal pain altogether. But we can still ensure that pain has a negligible impact on our children's quality of life by selecting "low pain" alleles for their genomes.

Time out: This sounds a little bit like eugenics. Isn't all of this just genetic experimentation on our kids?

All children are genetic experiments. If we're going to create life, we should at least ensure we don't create suffering.  

And you're right — critics of the reproductive revolution in process will raise the spectre of eugenics. Pessimists warn of "designer babies" and discrimination against the poor. Some of their worries may be well-founded. Potential pitfalls abound. But it's worth stressing that PGD doesn't entail creating designer babies. PGD just screens for what Nature has thrown up "naturally". True designer zygotes will certainly be an option to explore; but they aren't essential to pain-reduction.

Moreover, the biggest users of PGD aren't prospective parents in the developed western nations. Its biggest users are Indians and Chinese eager to prevent the misfortune of having a girl. Arguably our ethical priorities are skewed.

  For now, adults seeking to banish pain from their lives are stuck with "analgesics" and narcotics. So-called analgesics are weak. Strong opioid painkillers have well-known problems of tolerance and dependence. Pain clinics exist "to help you manage your pain". Yet developments in gene-editing technologies will shortly allow mature humans to edit our own genetic source code. We'll be able to modulate our own pain thresholds, not just the pain-thresholds of our prospective children.

The advent of user-friendly genome-authoring and editing tools will potentially be hugely empowering. We won't all need to become molecular biologists to take control of our own genetic destiny.   Realistically, autosomal gene-editing tools for the home user are decades away. But just as we need a Hundred Year Plan to tackle global warming, I think we need a Hundred Year Plan to tackle the scourge of physical pain.

   Studies have shown that people without the capacity for pain have shorter life expectancies compared to normally functioning people. Clearly, pain has a life preserving purpose. So, without it, how will we know if we're hurt or harming ourselves?  

Just to be clear, a post-genomic world of minimal pain is not the same as a pain-free world. But if we want to phase out physical pain altogether, then its abolition needn't force us to embrace the cotton-wool existence of congenital analgesics. Instead, a regime of robust, healthy, pain-free life is technically feasible for us all.

Two long-term options for total pain-replacement deserve to be considered. One option is to replace the signalling role of pain as it exists today with information-signalling gradients of bodily well-being — with dips in bodily well-being signalling potentially noxious stimuli. Intuitively, mere dips in well-being wouldn't adequately motivate us to action. But empirically, this doesn't seem to be the case. Compare two people making love. Some aspects of lovemaking are more rewarding than others. Yet sensitive lovers can still respond and adapt to hedonic dips and peaks without ever finding their experience less than enjoyable. In principle, this lesson could be transposed to everyday life.

 A more radical option for dealing with the problem of pain would be to replace the signalling role of the pleasure-pain axis in its entirety — for noxious stimuli, at any rate. This is because we could offload its current role in nociception onto smart prostheses. If equipped with smart sensors and smart prostheses, then you could painlessly and automatically withdraw your hand in the vicinity of a hot stove, say, before you inadvertently injure yourself. Or rather, your hand would withdraw automatically. Presumably, such technology would standardly be fitted with manual overrides to avoid any perceived loss of bodily autonomy.

Such enhancement technologies promise to make us "cyborgs". Not everyone finds the prospect of cyborgization appealing. Would your body software be licensed or owned? What if your body were hacked? Despite the potential snags in store, bioconservative critics might wish to reconsider their opposition to a world without pain next time they are writhing in agony. Either way, the point is that later this century the experience of phenomenal pain of any kind will become optional. Ethically speaking, we should be free to choose. 

 There's got to be some other trade-offs for losing the capacity for pain. Doesn't physical pain serve any other sort of purpose, such as building character or making us tougher, better — even more empathetic human beings?

  Bioconservatives often quote a line from Nietzsche: "That which does not crush me makes me stronger." But alas pain often does crush people: physically, emotionally, morally. Chronic, uncontrolled pain tends to make the victim tired, depressed and weaker. True, some people are relatively resistant to physical distress. For example, high testosterone function may make someone "tougher", more "manly", more resilient, and more able to deal with physically painful stimuli. But such strength doesn't necessarily make the subject more empathetic or a better person. Indeed, if I may quote W. Somerset Maugham, "It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive."

Of course, suffering doesn't always enfeeble and embitter. By analogy, someone who is emotionally depressed may feel that despair is the only appropriate response to the horrors of the world. But the solution to the horrors of the world is not for us all to become depressed. Rather it's to tackle the biology of depression. Likewise, the solution to the horrors of physical pain is not to flagellate ourselves in sympathy with the afflicted. Instead it's to tackle the biological roots of suffering.   

There is another possibility in terms of unanticipated side-effects: Won't we be more inclined to physically hurt or coerce people if they don't experience pain?

The infliction of physical pain is used by abusive regimes — and also by abusive parents — the world over to coerce the vulnerable. So conferring immunity to pain is more likely to promote resistance to coercion, not increased vulnerability. But phasing out the biology of physical pain is not some utopian blueprint for a perfect world, any more than the development of pain-free surgery was a panacea for the ills of the body.

Rather, the creation of a world without involuntary pain is a precondition for a civilized society.

This article originally appeared at io9.

Inset images via 1: David Pearce | 2:nobeastsofierce/shutterstock | 3:Vladimir/shutterstock.

The Great Filter theory suggests humans have already conquered the threat of extinction

2012-12-22T11:55:00.000-05:00

It's difficult to not be pessimistic when considering humanity's future prospects. Many people would agree that it's more likely than not that we'll eventually do ourselves in. And in fact, some astrobiologists theorize that all advanced civilizations hit the same insurmountable developmental wall we have. They call it the Great Filter. It's a notion that's often invoked to explain why we've never been visited by extraterrestrials.

But there is another possible reason for the celestial silence. Yes, the Great Filter exists, but we've already passed it. Here's what this would mean.

Before we can get to the Great Filter hypothesis we have to appreciate what the Fermi Paradox is telling us.

The Fermi Paradox and the Great Silence

The so-called "Great Silence" is the contradictory and counter-intuitive observation that we have yet to see any evidence for the existence of aliens. The size and age of the Universe suggests that many technologically advanced extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs) ought to exist -- but this hypothesis seems inconsistent with the lack of observational evidence to support it.

Despite much of what popular culture and sci-fi would lead us to believe, the fact that we haven't been visited by ETIs is disturbing. Our galaxy is so ancient that it could have been colonized hundreds, if not thousands, of times over by now. Even the most conservative estimates show that we should have already made contact either directly or indirectly (such as from dormant Bracewell communication probes).

Some skeptics dismiss the Fermi Paradox by suggesting that ETI's have come and gone, or that they wouldn't find us interesting.

Unfortunately, most solutions to the FP don't hold for a number of reasons, including the realization that a colonization wave of superintelligent aliens would likely rework the fabric of all life in the cosmos (e.g. uplifting), or that these solutions are sociological in nature (i.e. they lack scientific rigor and don't necessarily apply to the actions of all advanced civilizations; all it would take is just one to think and behave differently -- what astrobiologists refer to as the non-exclusivity problem).

There have been many attempts to resolve the Fermi Paradox, including the herculean attempt by Stephen Webb in his book, Fifty Solutions to Fermi's Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life.

But one solution stands out from the others, mostly on account of its brute elegance: The Great Filter.

The Great Filter

Conceived in 1998 by Robin Hanson, the GF is the disturbing suggestion that there is some kind of absurdly difficult step in the evolution of life -- one that precludes it from becoming interstellar.

And like the immutable laws of the universe, the GF is a stumbling block that holds true across the board; if it applies here on Earth, it applies everywhere.

Many look upon the GF as evidence that we'll destroy ourselves in the future. The basic idea is that every civilization destroys itself before developing space-faring technologies. Hence the empty cosmos. Given our own trajectory and the ominous presence of apocalyptic weapons, this scenario certainly seems plausible. We're not even close to going interstellar, yet we're certainly capable of self-annihilation.

But that doesn't mean this interpretation of the GF is the correct one. Rather, it's quite possible that human civilization has already passed the Great Filter. Should this be the case, it would be exceptionally good news. Assuming there's no other filter awaiting us in the future, it means we might be the first and only intelligent civilization in the Milky Way.

It's a possibility, however, that demands explanation. If the filter is behind us, what was it? And how did we manage to get past it? Interestingly, there are some excellent candidates.

Rare Earth

First and foremost there's the Rare Earth Hypothesis (REH), the suggestion that the emergence of life was extremely improbable for a confluence of reasons. The theory essentially suggests that we hit the jackpot here on Earth.

This argument, which was first articulated by geologist Peter Ward and astrobiologist Donald E. Brownlee, turns the whole Copernican Principle on its head. Instead of saying that we're nothing special or unique, the REH implies the exact opposite -- that we are freakishly special and unique. What we see here on Earth in this solar system and in this part of the Galaxy may be a remarkable convergence of highly unlikely factors -- factors that have resulted in a perfect storm of conditions suitable for the emergence of complex life.

It's important to note that Ward and Brownlee are not implying that it's one or two conditions that can explain habitability, but rather an entire array of happy accidents. For example, stars might have to be of the right kind (including adequate metallicity and safe distance from dangerous celestial objects), and planets must be in a stable orbit with a large moon. Other factors include the presence of gas giants, plate tectonics, and many others.

But even with all the right conditions, life was by no means guaranteed. It's quite possible that the Great Filter involved the next set of steps: the emergence of life and its ongoing evolution.

The improbability of life

Indeed, in addition to all the cosmological and chemical prerequisites for life, there were at least three critical stages that could all be considered candidates for the Great Filter: (1) the emergence of reproductive molecules (abiogenesis and the emergence of RNA), (2) simple single-celled life (prokaryotes), and (3) complex single-celled life (eukaryotes).

Chemists and biologists are still not entirely sure how the first self-replicating molecules came into existence. Unlike its big brother, DNA, RNA is a single-stranded molecule that has a much shorter chain of nucleotides. Moreover, it usually needs DNA to reproduce itself -- which would have been a problem given the absence of DNA in those early days.

That said, scientists know that RNA is capable of reproducing through autocatalysis. It does this by storing information similar to DNA, which allows it to become its own catalyst (a ribosome). This so-called RNA World Model suggests that RNA can function as both a gene and an enzyme -- a pre-DNA configuration that eventually became the basis for all life.

Given that we've never detected life elsewhere, it's difficult to know how difficult this initial step was. But that said, this form of life emerged super-early in the Earth's history -- about a billion years after its formation, and immediately after the cooling of rocks and the emergence of oceans.

But what we do know is that the next few steps -- the leap from single-celled life to complex single-celled life -- was exceedingly difficult, if not highly improbable. The process of copying a genetic molecule is extremely complex, involving the perfect configuration of proteins and other cellular components.

Here's how it likely happened: Once a self-replicating molecule emerged, the presence of RNA allowed for the formation of protobionts, a theoretic precursor to prokaryotic cells. These tightly bound bundles of organic molecules contained RNA within their membranes -- which could have evolved into proper prokaryotic cells.

And here's where it gets interesting. After the formation of prokaryotes -- about 3.5 billion years ago -- nothing changed in the biological landscape for the next 1.8 billion years. Life in this primitive form was completely stuck. Imagine that -- no evolution for almost two billion years. It was only after the endosymbiosis of multiple prokaryotes that complex single-cell life finally emerged -- a change that was by no means guaranteed, and possibly unlikely.

And it's this highly improbable step, say some scientists, that's the Great Filter. Everything that happened afterward is a complete bonus.

Now that said, there may have been other filters as well. These could include the emergence of terrestrial organisms, hominids, and various civilizational stages, like the transition from stone age culture to agricultural to industrial. But unlike the first primordial stages already discussed, these are porous filters and not terribly unlikely.

More filters ahead?

So, if the GF is behind us, it would do much to explain the Fermi Paradox and the absence of extraterrestrial influence on the cosmos. Should that be the case, we may very well have a bright future ahead of us. The Milky Way Galaxy is literally ours for the taking, our future completely open-ended.

But before we jump to conclusions, it's only fair to point out that we're not out of the woods yet. There could very well be another GF in the future -- one just as stingy as the filters of our past. The universe, while giving the appearance of bio-friendliness, may in reality be extremely hostile to intelligent life.

This article originally appeared at io9.

_{Image: Top via; NASA, Igor Zh./shutterstock, Ron Miller, primordial soup.}

When will we finally have a world government?

2012-12-22T11:32:00.001-05:00

Political scientists and science fiction writers alike have long been taken with the idea that humans would one day form a global government. Yet few of us take this prospect very seriously, often dismissing it as an outright impossibility or very far off in the future. Given the rapid pace of globalization, however, it would seem that humanity is inexorably headed in this direction. So how long will it take us to build a world government? We talked to an expert to find out.

Top image of Star Trek's United Federation of Planets council chamber courtesy CBS.

To help us better understand this issue, we contacted sociologist James Hughes from Trinity College in Connecticut. Hughes, an ardent supporter of global government, feels that it's an idea whose time has come.

"We need world government for the same reason that we need government in general," he told us. "There are a number of things -- what we can agree are collective goods -- that individuals, markets, voluntary organizations, and local governments aren't able to produce -- and which can only be provided through the collective action of states."

Hughes, whose thinking was significantly influenced by the Star Trekian vision of a global-scale liberal democracy, argues that there a number of things that only a world government is capable of doing -- like ending nuclear proliferation, ensuring global security, intervening to end genocide, and defending human rights. He also believes that it will take a global regime to finally deal with climate change, and that it's the best chance we have to launch civilization-scale projects, including the peaceful and controlled colonization of the solar system.

The trick, he says, is to get there. But by all accounts, it appears that we're on our way.

The thrust of history

Indeed, it certainly looks as if humanity is naturally headed in this direction; the prospect of a global government has been on the political radar for centuries.

The ancient Greeks and Romans prophesied of a single common political authority for all of humanity, as did many philosophers of the European Enlightenment, especially Immanuel Kant.

More recently, the urge has manifest in the form of international organizations like the League of Nations, which later re-emerged as the United Nations -- efforts that were seen as a way to bind the international community together and prevent wars from occurring.

But today, cynicism rules. The great powers, countries like the United States, Russia, and China, feel they have the most to lose by deferring to a higher, more global-scale authority. It's for this and other reasons that the UN has been completely undermined.

But as Hughes points out, opposition or not, the thrust of history certainly points to the achievement of a world government. Citing the work of Robert Wright and Steven Pinker, Hughes argues that our units of government are increasingly expanding to cover larger numbers of people and larger territories -- a trend that has encouraged the flourishing of commerce and the suppression of violence.

A quick survey shows that the world is undergoing a kind of political consolidation. In addition to cultural and economic globalization, human societies are also bringing their political entities together. Various regions of the world have already undergone successful unions, the most prominent being China. The United States has already done it, but it took a hundred years and a civil war that killed 2% of its citizens.

And of course, there's Europe. It's currently undergoing a well-earned and peaceful political unification process. But like Americans, Europeans didn't take the easy path. The two World Wars of the twentieth century are often seen as a part of the same overarching conflict -- a European civil war in which various colonial, political, and ideological interests fought to force the direction of the consolidation process.

"The process is messy and fitful, but inexorable," says Hughes. "Every time Europe seems ready to unravel, the logic of a tighter union pushes them forward -- as it did just last week into the new European banking union agreements."

But as Hughes notes, the problems Europe faces in convincing states to give up sovereignty to transnational authorities are precisely the same problems that are faced at the global level -- but with a hundred times the difficulty.

"That is if this century doesn't create new economic, cultural and communication forces for political globalization, and then new catastrophic threats to make the need for global governance inescapable, which it is very likely to do," says Hughes. And by "catastrophic threats," he's referring to the ongoing perils of climate change, terrorism, and emerging technologies.

And indeed, there are other examples of political consolidation outside of Europe. Africa is slowly but surely moving towards an African Union, as is South America. North America is currently bound by NAFTA, and Canada has even considered forging an agreement with the EU.

The end of isolationism

As Hughes is quick to point out, the threat of being shunned and outcast by the larger international community is a powerful motivator for a country to adopt more beneficent policies.

"This has provided an ecological advantage to larger governments and federal structures so that holdouts like Burma eventually give up their isolation," he says. "The irony of the process is that the creation of federal transnational structures supports the political independence of local groups."

Without the political pressure and direct military intervention of NATO, the European Union, and the United Nations, says Hughes, we would have never realized an independent Kosovo, South Sudan, or East Timor. Moreover, he argues, if Turks weren't anxious to remain on good terms with Europe and other international actors, they would likely be far more repressive to the Kurds -- and the same is probably true vis-à-vis Israelis and Palestinians, and other conflicts.

"Transnational governance already puts pressure on the nation-states that limit how much repression they can enact against minorities, but it is obviously inadequate when we are still powerless to help Tutsis, Tibetans, Chinese Muslims, or Chechens," says Hughes. "The stronger our transnational judiciaries, legislatures, and military and economic enforcement of world law gets, the more effectively we can protect minority rights."

Moreover, the withering away of the sovereign nation-state could be seen as a good thing. As Kenneth Waltz noted in his seminal 1959 book, Man, the State, and War, the ongoing presence of the traditional nation-state will only continue to heighten the possibility of armed conflict.

Hughes agrees. He sees political globalization as a developmental path that will eventually limit government powers.

"As George Orwell graphically depicted in 1984, the endless pitting of nation-states against one another is the most powerful rationale for the power of oppressive government," he told us.

A danger of global repression?

There is, of course, a dark side to having a global government. There's the potential, for example, for a singular and all-powerful regime to take hold, one that could be brutally oppressive -- and with no other nation states to counter its actions.

It's well known, for example, that the Nazis envisioned a global government, what the democracies correctly assessed as a threat to liberal values, democracy, freedom of thought -- and the lives of millions (if not billions) of innocent people. As a result of the ensuing tragedy, some critics of global government warn that we shouldn't put all our eggs in one political basket. Having sovereign and politically disparate nation-states is a safeguard against the rise of a monolithic and all-encompassing regime.

But Hughes contends that political expansion has helped to suppress despotism and the defense of individual and minority rights -- from the establishing of voting rights for black Americans to the European Court of Justice's decisions on reproductive and sexual minority rights.

"That was not, of course, the case with the Soviet Union, so the anxiety that a powerful United Nations full of undemocratic states would be an anti-democratic force in the world was entirely justified during the Cold War," he told io9. "While the spread of democracy has made a liberal democratic global federalism increasingly likely, progressives will nonetheless sometimes face issues where global policy would be reactionary, and local autonomy needs to be defended until the balance of forces change."

Indeed, should a global governance arise, it would be prudent to enshrine fundamental constitutional rights and freedoms to prevent an authoritarian or totalitarian catastrophe. And at the same time, charters should be implemented to guarantee the rights of minority groups.

Global government when?

It's obviously difficult to predict when a global government can be achieved given that there's no guarantee that it will ever happen. As noted, the great powers will be very reluctant to give up what they consider to be sovereignty rights. And in the case of China and other countries, there are other potential deal-breakers, such as the ongoing isolationist urge, xenophobia, and incompatible political/ideological beliefs.

But given the pace of accelerating change across virtually all human domains, it may happen sooner than we think. It's not unreasonable to predict some manner of global governance taking shape in the latter half of the 21st century.

At the same time, however, a global government won't happen merely because it's deemed desirable.

"Without a vision the people perish," says Hughes. "If we want to see democratic globalization we have to openly point towards it as the goal."

He recommends that supporters join world federalist organizations like the Citizens for Global Solutions, the Union of European Federalists, or the World Federalist Movement.

"Advocates should put global federalist solutions forward as the most obvious way to address global problems -- even if such solutions appear currently chimerical. The world is changing quickly and what appears utopian today may appear obvious tomorrow," he says.

We asked Hughes if he thinks that global governance can actually be achieved.

"I do believe it is possible to eventually achieve a global directly-elected legislature, complemented by global referenda and a global judiciary, controlling a global law enforcement military, and supported by global taxes like the Tobin Tax," he responded.

But there are a lot of other ways that political globalization can provide peace and prosperity short of that.

For example, progress could be measured by the incremental strengthening of all the agencies of transnational governance, from regional bodies like the EU and African Union, to treaty enforcement mechanisms like the WTO, IAEA and ITU, to the United Nations.

"I believe all those bodies will grow in importance and clout over the coming century," he told us, "propelled by the growth of transnational political movements, such as the world federalist movement, NGOs, the Socialist International, and other social movements."

This article originally appeared at io9.

Other images: Makaristos, Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah / Reuters, PBS, CBS.

Best Songs of 2012

2012-12-09T21:44:00.000-05:00

Here's my second annual best songs of the year list. This was a particularly strong year as far as songs go; the first 20 tracks listed below are all monsters. Here are the top 100 tracks of 2012:

1. Cloud Nothings: “Wasted Days”

"I thought I would be more than this! I thought I would be more than this!!"

2. School of Seven Bells: “Lafaye”

3. Mykki Blanco: “Wavvy”

"I'm the muthafuckin' rookie of the year..."

4. El-P: “The Full Retard”
"Pump this shit like they do in the future!"

5. Beach House: “Lazuli”

6. Laurel Halo: ""Light + Space”
"Words are just words, words are just words, that you soon forget..."

7. Sharon Van Etten: “Give Out”

8. Death Grips: “Hacker”
"I know the first three numbers..."

9. DIIV: “How Long Have You Known”

10. Father John Misty: “Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings”
"Jesus Christ, girl."
"Someone's gotta help me dig..."

11. iamamiwhoami: “Sever”

12. Tame Impala: “Apocalypse Dreams”

13. Bear in Heaven: “Sinful Nature”

14. Grimes: “Genesis”

15. Rose Cousins: “One Way”

16. Unicorn Kid: “Pure Space”

17. Cloud Nothings: “No Sentiment"
"We started a war!!"

18. Frank Ocean: “Pyramids”

19. Miike Snow: “The Wave”

20. Purity Ring: “Fineshrine”

"My little ribs around you"

The entire list:

Cloud Nothings: “Wasted Days”
School of Seven Bells: “Lafaye”
Mykki Blanco: “Wavvy”
El-P: “The Full Retard”
Beach House: “Lazuli”
Laurel Halo: ""Light + Space”
Sharon Van Etten: “Give Out”
Death Grips: “Hacker”
DIIV: “How Long Have You Known”
Father John Misty: “Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings”
iamamiwhoami: “Sever”
Tame Impala: “Apocalypse Dreams”
Bear in Heaven: “Sinful Nature”
Grimes: “Genesis”
Rose Cousins: “One Way”
Unicorn Kid: “Pure Space”
Cloud Nothings: “No Sentiment"
Frank Ocean: “Pyramids”
Miike Snow: “The Wave”
Purity Ring: “Fineshrine”
Pallbearer: "Devoid of Redemption"
Blut Aus Nord: "Epitome XIV"
Black Moth Super Rainbow: “Spraypaint”
Chairlift: “Met Before”
DIIV: “Doused”
Dirty Projectors: “Gun Has No Trigger”
Django Django: ""Default”
Father John Misty: “Nancy From Now On”
Frankie Rose: “Know Me”
Jessie Ware: “Wildest Moments”
Lambchop: “Gone Tomorrow”
Mister Lies: “I Walk”
Porcelain Raft: “Drifting In and Out”
Purity Ring: “Lofticries”
Ramona Falls: “Spore”
Blut Aus Nord: "Epitome XVI"
Swans: “A Piece of the Sky”
Pallbearer: "An Offering of Grief"
Thee Oh Sees: “Lupine Dominus”
Ty Segall Band: “I Bought My Eyes”
The Walkmen: “Heaven”
Baroness: "Board Up the House"
Perfume Genius: “Hood”
The Shins: “Simple Song”
Ty Segall & White Fence: “Time”
Ty Segall Band: “Wave Goodbye”
White Fence: “It Will Never Be”
Burial: “Ashtray Wasp”
David Byrne & St. Vincent: “Who"
Frankie Rose: “Interstellar"
Japandroids: “The House That Heaven Built”
Nas: “Accident Murderers”
Chromatics: “Kill For Love”
The Shins: “Bait And Switch”
Sky Ferreira: “Everything is Embarassing”
Tame Impala: “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards”
Ty Segall & White Fence: “I Am Not A Game”
Beach House: “Myth”
Frank Ocean: “Bad Religion”
Baroness: "Stretchmarker"
Lotus Plaza: “Strangers”
Lower Dens: ""Brains”
The Men: “Open Your Heart”
Ty Segall & White Fence: “Scissor People”
Four Tet: “Ocoras”
Grimes: Oblivion”
Twin Shadow: “Five Seconds”
Django Django: ""Love’s Dart”
Death Grips: “I’ve Seen Footage”
Nicholas Jaar: “And I Say”
Thee Oh Sees: “Floods New Light”
Wild Nothing: “Through the Grass”
Bobby Womack: “Please Forgive My Heart”
Chairlift: “I Belong in Your Arms”
Chromatics: “Back From the Grave”
El-P: “Tougher Colder”
Frank Ocean: “Sweet Life”
Kendrick Lamar: “Backstreet Freestyle”
Laurel Halo: ""MK Ultra”
Spiritualized: “Hey Jane”
The Walkmen: “Song for Leigh”
Hot Chip: “Flutes”
The Men: “Candy”
Eternal Summers: “Millions”
Baauer: “Harlem Shake”
Cloud Nothings: “Stay Useless"
Flying Lotus: “Between Friends”
Frankie Rose: “Night Swim”
Killer Mike: “Reagan”
Tame Impala: “Elephant”
Torche: “Kicking”
Death Grips: “Get Got”
Kendrick Lamar: “The Art of Peer Pressure”
Lotus Plaza: “Monoliths”
Alcest: ""Faiseurs De Mondes"
Chairlift: “Amanaemonesia”
Dirty Projectors: “Dance For You”
Grimes: “Circumambient”
Kendrick Lamar: “Swimming Pools”
Beach House: “Wild”

Best Albums of 2012

2012-12-09T17:51:00.003-05:00

As is the annual tradition here at Sentient Developments, I have put together a list of my favorite albums from the past year. Here are the best albums of 2012.

1. Cloud Nothings: Attack on Memory

2. Father John Misty: Fear Fun

3. Death Grips: The Money Store

4. Ty Segall & White Fence: Hair

5. Pallbearer: Sorrow And Extinction

6. Laurel Halo: Quarantine

7. El-P Cancer for Cure

8. Beach House: Bloom

9. Grimes: Visions

10. Blut Aus Nord: Cosmosophy

11. Tame Impala: Lonerism

12. Ty Segall Band: Slaughterhouse

13. Japandroids: Celebration Rock

14. Frankie Rose: Interstellar

15. DIIV: Oshin

16. iamamiwhoami: Kin

17. Django Django: Django Django

18. Grizzly Bear: Shields

19. The Men: Open Your Heart

20. Swans: The Seer

Here's the entire list:

Cloud Nothings: Attack on Memory
Father John Misty: Fear Fun
Death Grips: The Money Store
Ty Segall & White Fence: Hair
Pallbearer: Sorrow And Extinction
Laurel Halo: Quarantine
El-P Cancer for Cure
Beach House: Bloom
Grimes: Visions
Blut Aus Nord: Cosmosophy
Tame Impala: Lonerism
Ty Segall Band: Slaughterhouse
Japandroids: Celebration Rock
Frankie Rose: Interstellar
DIIV: Oshin
iamamiwhoami: Kin
Django Django: Django Django
Grizzly Bear: Shields
The Men: Open Your Heart
Swans: The Seer
Purity Ring: Shrines
Thee Oh Sees: Putrifiers II
White Fence: Family Perfume
Perfume Genius: Put Your Back N 2 It
Chromatics: Kill for Love
Baroness: Yellow & Green
Shins: Port of Morrow
Burial: Street Halo/Kindred
Patrick Watson: Adventures In Your Own Backyard
Ty Segall: Twins
Bear in Heaven: I Love You, It’s Cool
Chairlift: Something
Wild Nothing: Nocturne
Converge: All We Love We Leave Behind
Andy Stott: Luxury Problems
Modeselektor: Monkeytown
Frank Ocean: channel ORANGE
Four Tet: Pink
Lower Dens: Nootropics
Sharon Van Etten: Tramp
Spiritualized: Sweet Heart Sweet Light
Nas: Life is Good
The Walkmen: Heaven
Orbital: Wonky
School of Seven Bells: Ghostory
Dirty Projectors: Swing Lo Magellan
Jessie Ware: Devotion
...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead: Lost Songs
High on Fire: De Vermis Mysteriis
Hot Chip: In Our Heads
Bat For Lashes: The Haunted Man
Deftones: Koi No Yokan
Lotus Plaza: Spooky Action at a Distance
Killer Mike: R.A.P. Music
Tim Hecker & Daniel Lopatin: Instrumental Tourist
Twin Shadow: Confess
Ramona Falls: Prophet
Woods: Bend Beyond
Dr. John: Locked Down
Alcest: Les Voyages De L’Ame
Kendrick Lamar: Good Kid, m.A.A.d city
Porcelain Raft: Strange Weekend
Actress: R.I.P.
Torche: Harmonicraft
Flying Lotus: Until the Quiet Comes
Now, Now: Threads
Godspeed You Black Emperor!: Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!
Conan: Monnos
Tallest Man on Earth: There’s No Leaving Now
Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs: Trouble
Squarepusher: Ufabulum
Violens: True
First Aid Kit: Lion’s Roar
The Soft Moon: Zeros
Lambchop: Mr. M

I am now a Contributing Editor at io9

2012-06-02T12:11:00.001-04:00

Big news! I have joined Gawker Media as a full-time Contributing Editor for io9.com. My first day of work is this coming Monday June 4. You can expect to see my articles posted there on daily basis as I report on a wide variety of topics.

This marks an amazing opportunity for me to change things up a bit and steer my career into a direction more amenable to my talents and passions. I'll be writing about science, culture, and futurism -- themes that are near and dear to the readers of Sentient Developments. I'm excited to have the opportunity to bring my interests and insights to the io9 community. I certainly hope you'll join me and continue to follow my work as I make the jump to io9.

I will certainly keep on blogging here at Sentient Developments, though I expect the volume of posts will decrease. At the very least I will keep you all abreast of my work and projects, while linking back to my posts at io9.

Today marks ten years of blogging

2012-05-26T13:51:00.000-04:00

It was 10 years ago today that I started blogging here at Sentient Developments. I initially set it up to be a sounding board for my thoughts on various matters, but it grew in sophistication over the years as my articles (and thoughts) became more detailed and robust. Now, 10 years and 2,204 posts later, I am set to embark on the next phase of my writing and personal development.

Thanks to all of you who have followed and supported my work over the years. Here's to many, many, more.

Harper's war on the environment

2012-05-17T12:04:00.000-04:00

I don't normally post about Canadian politics on my blog, but we're starting to run into a serious problem, here. And his name is Stephen Harper.

I shuddered last year when Harper won a majority government, worried about what he might do with the added power. Now, his intentions are becoming increasingly clear: He's going to wage war on the environment. And he's going to do it in the most insidious way possible, using obfuscation and nasty tricks — and all driven by the myopic need to milk the Canadian landscape for all its got.

Specifically, the Conservative government is looking to pass Bill C-38, the Budget Implementation Act. The act itself is deliberately misnamed, as fully 30% of the 420 page bill has nothing to do with the budget at all. Instead, the bill serves as an attack on environmental legislation. Bill C-38, once passed, will repeal the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and introduce a watered-down approach to environmental assessment. It also re-writes the Fisheries Act, the Species at Risk Act, and the Navigable Waters Protection Act. In addition, it repeals the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, and cancels outright the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. A complete itemized list of Bill C-38's proposed changes can be found here.

Just as disturbing is the way the Harper government hopes to muzzle interest groups concerned with the environment. The charities sections now preclude gifts which may result in political activity. In addition, Harper's new counter-terrorism strategy lists environmentalism next to white supremacy as an “issue-based” terrorist threat. In other words, legitimate environmental groups, such as Greenpeace and Sierra Club Canada, could face some serious troubles should their efforts work to thwart the Conservative agenda. The strategy even lists animal rights groups as potential terrorist threats.

Even worse has been Harper's attack on scientists. It's gotten so bad in Canada that the journal Nature had to come out and slam the Conservative government for tightening the media protocols applied to federal government scientists and employees. Harper is doing his damnest to ensure that the Canadian public remain ignorant of the devastating impacts of his unchecked strategy on resource extraction.

Essentially, Harper is crippling anything that could undermine his scorched earth policy as far as resource extraction is concerned. The corporatist Conservatives are hellbent on exploiting the tar sands and building pipelines. It's all about squeezing the Canadian environment for every ounce its got, with no reflection on consequences — and with no sustainable vision for the future.

This will end badly for Canada and all Canadians.

Doom how?

2012-05-16T15:50:00.000-04:00

When invoking the Great Filter as an explanation for the Great Silence, we have yet to determine the exact nature of the filter. It's conceivable, though unlikely, that it resides in our past (fingers are crossed that this is the case). If so, the rise of prokaryotes and eukaryotes is probably what we're looking for.

But, if the filter resides in our future, the question needs to be asked, What is it exactly that prevents civilizations from embarking on interstellar colonization?

One of the stronger, though more disturbing suggestions, is that all civilizations destroy themselves before they can send out a wave of self-replicating colonization probes. For the sake of this particular argument, let's assume that doom is in fact the Great Filter. If this is the case, what could it be, and when would it happen?

It's probably not environmental devastation, as that's a weak force for something that's supposed to be existentially catastrophic, nor does it seem universal as far as extraterrestrial civilizations are concerned. It's more reasonable to suggest, therefore, that something in our technological arsenal will destroy us. It's clearly not nuclear weapons, as we've figured out a way to live alongside their presence; there's even talk of disarmament. So, it has to be something we come up with in our future. And whatever that technology is, it has to be completely uncontainable and catastrophic.

Only two things come to mind: molecular nanotechnology and machine superintelligence.

Given that doom has to come before the launch of self-replicating probes, this indicates that we have to experience doom prior to the invention of diamondoid data storage and nanocomputing along with the requisite robotics and AI capacities; these are the ingredients to von Neumann probes. It also means doom before, or at the point of, the advent of strong artificial general intelligence (because an SAI could develop probe-enabling technologies). This would suggest that either (1) the onset of machine superintelligence is somehow causing the filter or (2) the precursors to probe-enabling nanotechnology are fatally catastrophic in all instances (e.g. weaponized molecular nanotechnology).

If this is the case, then I would expect doom no earlier than 25 years from now, but no later than 50-75 years from now.

There's also the possibility, of course, of a wildcard technology (either through convergence or something we haven't considered yet).

Again, I'm not suggesting that doom is certain — there are other non-doom explanation for the Fermi Paradox. I'm just venturing down this particular line of inquiry.

Is death bad for you?

2012-05-15T09:44:00.000-04:00

Yale philosopher Shelly Kagan asks a question that should be of interest to both radical life extension advocates and utilitarians who argue that we should bring as much life into the universe as possible: Is death bad for you?

Much of Kagan's argument is derived from an interesting question posed by the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus who wrote, "So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more." In other words, non-existence cannot be said to be a bad thing in-and-of-itself. But Kagan aptly notes that this issue is much more complicated than that:

Moreover, there are a lot of merely possible people. How many? Well, very roughly, given the current generation of seven billion people, there are approximately three million billion billion billion different possible offspring—almost all of whom will never exist! If you go to three generations, you end up with more possible people than there are particles in the known universe, and almost none of those people get to be born.

If we are not prepared to say that that's a moral tragedy of unspeakable proportions, we could avoid this conclusion by going back to the existence requirement. But of course, if we do, then we're back with Epicurus' argument. We've really gotten ourselves into a philosophical pickle now, haven't we? If I accept the existence requirement, death isn't bad for me, which is really rather hard to believe. Alternatively, I can keep the claim that death is bad for me by giving up the existence requirement. But then I've got to say that it is a tragedy that Larry and the other untold billion billion billions are never born. And that seems just as unacceptable.

Amputees increasingly choosing more extensive amputations to take advantage of hi-tech prosthetics

2012-05-14T20:30:00.000-04:00

As prosthetic limbs become more sophisticated and realistic, amputees are increasingly wanting to take full advantage of what cutting-edge technology has to offer. But in order to do so, some are having to make a very difficult decision. From Alexis Okewo of the New York Times:Approximately two million people in the United States are living with amputations, according to the Amputee Coalition, a national advocacy group. But as artificial limbs are infused with increasingly sophisticated technology, many amputees are making a once-unthinkable choice. Instead of doing everything possible to preserve and live with whatever is left of their limbs, some are opting to amputate more extensively to regain something more akin to normal function.

Occasionally this choice is made by someone with a missing hand or arm. But more common are amputations below the knee, which permit patients like Ms. Kornhauser to take advantage of robotic and fleshlike prosthetics.

Bionic, or lifelike, prosthetics with custom skins, motors and microchips that replicate natural human motions are edging older models out of the market. The South African runner Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee, has even been accused of having an unfair advantage over competitors because he runs on J-shaped carbon fiber blades.

Amputees “are realizing they can do everything that they did before,” said Amy Palmiero-Winters, 39, a celebrated ultramarathon runner who lost her left leg in a motorcycle accident when she was 24. She now works at A Step Ahead, a Long Island prosthetics clinic. “They look at people today and see the different things that they’re doing and how it’s more out in the open and accepted.”