Sentient Developments

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.”

Tali Sharot on the optimism bias and what we can do about it

2012-05-14T13:07:00.000-04:00

Neuroscience is increasingly showing that we are predisposed for optimism instead of realism. In this TED Talk, Tali Sharot shares new research that suggests our brains are wired to look on the bright side — and how that can be both dangerous and beneficial. Toward the end of her talk, she goes on to show that there are things we can do about it from a neurological perspective. She argues that we can and should reduce the optimism bias while at the same time maintain a person's sense of hope.

Sentient Developments Podcast 2012.05.14

2012-05-14T12:15:00.001-04:00

Sentient Developments Podcast for the week of May 14, 2012. Topics discussed in this week's episode:

Tracks used in this episode: Lower Dens: "Nova Anthem", "Propagation", "Alphabet Song", and "Lamb".

Podcast Feed | Subscribe via iTunes

NYT: Can You Call a 9-Year-Old a Psychopath?

2012-05-13T18:53:00.000-04:00

There's a must-read article in the New York Times titled "Can You Call a 9-Year-Old a Psychopath?" It's a long read, but very worth it.

Among the many take-aways from the piece is the realization that virtually all psychopaths exhibit anti-social traits as children, but that half of them "grow out of it". This gives therapists hope that the condition could somehow be treated environmentally.

There's also a reluctance to brand children as psychopaths (which is fair given the stigma and the fact that many children act-out in age-appropriate ways). Consequently, therapists and researchers are instead using the term 'Unemotional-Callous" (C.U.) in describing what might actually be protopsychopathology.

Lastly, the piece reaffirms other observations which show that behavioral therapy can actually make psychopaths worse, in that it teaches them to be better manipulators. Unreal.

As an aside, I believe that putting these C.U. kids together in the same "camp" is an exceptionally bad idea. It's just throwing fuel in these kids' fire.

Some excerpts from the piece:Then last spring, the psychologist treating Michael referred his parents to Dan Waschbusch, a researcher at Florida International University. Following a battery of evaluations, Anne and Miguel were presented with another possible diagnosis: their son Michael might be a psychopath.

For the past 10 years, Waschbusch has been studying “callous-unemotional” children — those who exhibit a distinctive lack of affect, remorse or empathy — and who are considered at risk of becoming psychopaths as adults. To evaluate Michael, Waschbusch used a combination of psychological exams and teacher- and family-rating scales, including the Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits, the Child Psychopathy Scale and a modified version of the Antisocial Process Screening Device — all tools designed to measure the cold, predatory conduct most closely associated with adult psychopathy. (The terms “sociopath” and “psychopath” are essentially identical.) A research assistant interviewed Michael’s parents and teachers about his behavior at home and in school. When all the exams and reports were tabulated, Michael was almost two standard deviations outside the normal range for callous-unemotional behavior, which placed him on the severe end of the spectrum.

Currently, there is no standard test for psychopathy in children, but a growing number of psychologists believe that psychopathy, like autism, is a distinct neurological condition — one that can be identified in children as young as 5. Crucial to this diagnosis are callous-unemotional traits, which most researchers now believe distinguish “fledgling psychopaths” from children with ordinary conduct disorder, who are also impulsive and hard to control and exhibit hostile or violent behavior. According to some studies, roughly one-third of children with severe behavioral problems — like the aggressive disobedience that Michael displays — also test above normal on callous-unemotional traits. (Narcissism and impulsivity, which are part of the adult diagnostic criteria, are difficult to apply to children, who are narcissistic and impulsive by nature.)
And on the benefits of early detection and treatment:

The benefits of successful treatment could be enormous. Psychopaths are estimated to make up 1 percent of the population but constitute roughly 15 to 25 percent of the offenders in prison and are responsible for a disproportionate number of brutal crimes and murders. A recent estimate by the neuroscientist Kent Kiehl placed the national cost of psychopathy at $460 billion a year — roughly 10 times the cost of depression — in part because psychopaths tend to be arrested repeatedly. (The societal costs of nonviolent psychopaths may be even higher. Robert Hare, the co-author of “Snakes in Suits,” describes evidence of psychopathy among some financiers and business people; he suspects Bernie Madoff of falling into that category.) The potential for improvement is also what separates diagnosis from determinism: a reason to treat psychopathic children rather than jail them. “As the nuns used to say, ‘Get them young enough, and they can change,’ ” Dadds observes. “You have to hope that’s true. Otherwise, what are we stuck with? These monsters.”

Why humanists need to make the shift to post-atheism

2012-05-10T14:18:00.000-04:00

I'm getting increasingly annoyed by all the anti-religious propaganda that litters my Facebook newsfeed.

Look, as a fellow humanist and atheist, I get it. Organized religion is a problem on so many levels that I don't even know where to begin. I'd be the first person to say that something needs to be done about it and I'm delighted to see atheism become normalized in our society and culture.

But seriously, folks, what are you hoping to achieve by posting such facile and inflammatory material? Who are you speaking to? Are you doing it to make yourself feel better? Or do you really feel that through this kind of mindless slacktivism that you're making a difference and actually impacting on real lives?

It's time to put these toys away and consider the bigger picture. Humanists need to start helping people make the transition away from religion, while at the same time working to create a relevant and vital humanist movement for the 21st century.

The intellectual battle against religion has already been won — and a strong case can be made that the victory came at the time of the Enlightenment. The struggle now is to find out why religion continues to persist in our society and what we can do about it. I have a strong suspicion that posting pictures of silly church signs isn't helping.

For those of you who have been part of organized religion, you know how hard it is to break free. I'm one of them. Compounding the inner turmoil and cognitive dissonance is the problem of breaking free from the in-group. It is not easy for people to just pack up and leave their communities, nor is it easy for them to face the inevitable backlash from their families. The thought of leaving religion can be completely debilitating on so many levels. Posting a rabid comment or image on your Facebook wall isn't going to help anyone get through this. In fact, all you're doing is re-enforcing a tribalistic urge and alienating those most in need of help. These actions can only serve to stratify and polarize the lines even further.

Instead, what I'd rather see are more focused efforts on understanding how and why religion continues to spread, and what kinds of interventions and approaches are most effective at helping individuals move past it. There's been amazing work done in this area by such thinkers as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, both of whom subscribe to the meme theory of religious propagation. I myself have argued that religious fundamentalism is a kind of disease and that religion works best by dictating the reproductive processes of its hosts. I'd like to see more work done in this area as we work to improve our cultural health.

In addition, we need to figure out the best way to pull religious people out of their situation. This is probably the most difficult challenge, and there are no easy answers. I'm a staunch believer in education and the idea that we need to equip children at a young age with the powers of free thought, critical thinking, and skepticism. We can't make decisions for others, but we can give them the tools to help them make the right decisions for themselves. More radically, for those deeply entrenched in fundamentalist religions and cults, there's always the possibility of deprogramming. The trick is to start the intervention.

Lastly, I'm hoping to see atheists move past the religion bashing and start thinking about more substantive issues. This is what I mean when I say post-atheism. It's time to set aside the angst and work more productively to help those who need it, while working to develop a world view and set of guidelines for living without God. It's unfortunate and tragic that so many humanists have equated the movement with atheism, while completely forgetting their progressive roots.

Humanism is about the betterment of all humanity and the contemplation of what it is we wish to become. It's about taking control of our own lives in the absence of divine intervention. And it's about taking responsibility for ourselves and doing the right thing.

This is where our energies and attention needs to be focused. Not in ridiculous Facebook timeline posts that serve no one.

Are humans becoming more or less psychopathic?

2012-05-10T11:24:00.003-04:00

Readers of this blog know that I've started to develop a bit of a fascination with psychopathy. It all got started after attending the Moral Brain conference at NYU last April. The more I look into this subject, the more I understand why so many neuroscientists are making such a big fuss about it.

The one statistic that has stuck with me is the observation that 1-2% of the general population is psychopathic. As previously noted, psychopathic traits don't always lead to crime or violence. In fact, studies have shown that 3-5% of business-minded persons are psychopathic; the realization that ruthlessness and indifference can lead to an interest and/or proclivity in business shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. What I would like to know, however, is whether or not there is a correlation between psychopathy and business success. Any bets that there isn't?

On a similar note, I'd like to know what degree of psychopathy exists amongst politicians and those who seek influence. I'm sure that, historically speaking, psychopathic traits have worked well for those hell bent on attaining and maintaining power.

The 1-2% figure also got me thinking about genetics. This ratio is exceedingly high, an indication that this trait is more than just the result of random mutation. Humans, it would seem, are predisposed for psychopathy. It's a personality condition that may have some adaptive qualities to it. The question we need to ask now, therefore, is: are we evolving out of it, or into it?

A strong case can be made for both. But whatever the answer, we will increasingly be able to do something about it through the use of neurological interventions and genetic engineering.

The psychopathic brain

Psychopathy is a personality disorder defined as severe emotional dysfunction, especially a lack of empathy. Psychopaths are completely unable to recognize such things as anger and fear in individuals, whether it be from facial expressions or verbal exclamations. It can also defined by the expression of anti-social behaviors. Psychopaths are generally regarded as callous, selfish, dishonest, arrogant, aggressive, impulsive, irresponsible, and hedonistic. Yet, psychopaths often exhibit higher than average intelligence and a superficial kind of charm.

Neuroscience is indicating that that psychopaths have a brain that is markedly different from neurotypicals. This difference can come about through genetic causes, or through injury.

In a recent study, neuroscientists showed that the psychopathic brain has significantly less grey matter in the anterior rostral prefrontal cortex and temporal poles than the brains of non-psychopathic offenders and non-offenders. These areas of the brain are important for reading other people’s emotions and intentions and are activated when people think about moral behaviour.

Neuroscientists have also implicated the amygdala in psychopathy. The amygdala is responsible for stimulus-reinforcement learning and responding to emotional expressions, particularly fearful expressions. It is also involved in the formation of both stimulus-punishment and stimulus-reward associations. Psychopaths show impairment in stimulus-reinforcement learning (whether punishment- or reward-based) and responding to fearful and sad expressions. Neuroscientists believe that this impairment drives much of the syndrome of psychopathy.

Are we becoming more psychopathic?

Scientists have determined that there is a genetic component to psychopathy. They argue that genetic factors may generally influence the development of psychopathy while environmental factors affect the specific traits that predominate. Geneticists have calculated that the heritability coefficient for psychopathy is around 50%.

Psychologist Robert Hare has argued that psychopathy does indeed have a genetic component. He has observed how many (male) psychopaths have a pattern of mating with, and quickly abandoning women, and as a result, have a high fertility rate. His contention is that these children may inherit a predisposition to psychopathy.

Evolutionary psychologists theorize that psychopathy represents a frequency-dependent, socially parasitic strategy. This may only work, however, as long as there are few other psychopaths in the community. More psychopaths means that there's an increased risk of encountering another psychopath as well as non-psychopaths likely adapting more countermeasures against cheaters.

That said, this "social parasite" theory doesn't take into account the ways in which psychopaths can be successful in modern society. It might be an increasingly adaptive trait. As already noted, there's a heightened tendency for psychopaths to enter into the business world. Similarly, there's the (potentially) increased likelihood for political success. Thus, a case can be made that psychopathy remains an adaptive trait in Homo sapiens, and that success in business and political domains increases reproductive success (i.e. wealth and status). Should this be the case, it's not unreasonable to suggest that the rates of psychopathy in the general population will remain stable — if not increase over time (given the same conditions).

A worthwhile study would be an analysis of the human genome to determine if the genetic factors required for psychopathy are more prevalent today than they were in the past. It's an open question as to how we could conduct such a study given the dearth of genetic material from our ancestors.

Are we becoming less psychopathic?

It's also quite possible that humans are evolving away from psychopathy. Perhaps the 1-2% is the smallest proportion yet in our species' history. It's generally thought, for example, that women are selecting for kinder, gentler males. This self-domestication has resulted in an increase in empathetic traits over time. It's quite possible that we're the "kindest" version ever to appear in our evolutionary trajectory.

On a similar note, we may have had a higher predominance of psychopathy in our past in consideration of our carnivorous legacy. We are a meat eating species, which implies predation. A carnivore would do well to not have too many feelings of empathy (particularly the ability to read fright, pain, and fear) for others, particularly prey. Humans don't tend to hunt anymore, a change in routine that works to un-enforce the presence of those psychological characteristics in our gene pool.

Despite these possibilities, there's little question that we may be able to weed-out psychopathy through biotechnological interventions. Genomics and the pending practice of human trait selection will alert prospective parents, not to mention their fertility doctors, to the possibility that their offspring could be psychopathic. Genetic technologies will let parents screen for what is essentially a genetic disorder.

On this note, a pair of interesting sidebars come to mind: (1) Given the high rate of heritability, it's very likely that one of the parents is a psychopath, and (2) Would parents be compelled to abort a child with a proclivity towards psychopathy?

Looking further ahead, and given further insights into how the brain works, it's very possible that psychopaths will be helped through pharmacological interventions, or even surgery, to fix the deficient areas in the brain (including the amygdala). This is speculative at this point, but it's not terribly unreasonable to consider such possibilites. Interventions like these would bode well for those who have developed psychopathic traits on account of brain trauma in which there is no genetic factor involved.

It's very possible that psychopathy as a personality disorder will eventually be eliminated. This will clearly bode well for individuals. But an unanswered question suddenly emerges: What are the broader social consequences, if any, to eliminating the psychopaths among us?

Paralyzed woman completes marathon with help of robotic suit

2012-05-09T12:11:00.000-04:00

Okay, this is pretty cool: A paralysed woman has become the first person to complete a marathon in a bionic suit.

Claire Lomas finished the London Marathon, crossing the finishing line 16 days after the race began.

The 32-year-old said she was "over the moon" as she completed the 26.2-mile route, which she started on April 22 with 36,000 other participants.

The former chiropractor was in tears as she became the first person to complete any marathon using a bionic ReWalk suit.

Hundreds lined the streets as she made her final steps to complete the race.

Mounted members of the Household Cavalry gave her a guard of honour as she crossed the finishing line on The Mall.

Jewellery designer Ms Lomas, who was left paralysed from the chest down following a horse-riding accident in 2007, said: "I'm over the moon.

Lomas was able to accomplish this task by using the ReWalk "wearable bionic suit."

Sentient Developments Podcast 2012.05.07

2012-05-07T13:20:00.000-04:00

Sentient Developments Podcast for the week of May 7, 2012. Topics discussed in this week's episode:

Tracks used in this episode:

Unicorn Kid: Pure Space
Atlas Sound: Te Amo
Death Grips: Hacker
Black Moth Super Rainbow: I Think It Is Beautiful That You Are 256 Colors Too

Podcast Feed | Subscribe via iTunes

New Lower Dens album inspired by transhumanism

2012-05-06T17:36:00.000-04:00

Lower Dens is one of my favourite bands going right now, so you can imagine both my surprise and delight when I discovered that their upcoming album, Nootropics, was inspired by transhumanist themes. Nootropics is the band's follow-up to their critically acclaimed Twin Hand Movement which came out in 2010. The new album is an attempt to expand upon some of the themes explored on their previous album to create a kind of consistent thematic arc.

And that newfound direction, says the band, was inspired by transhumanist ideas. Inspired by such thinkers as Ray Kurzweil, Lower Dens began an internal conversation about transhumanism and what it might eventually lead to. They all had different takes on the matter and in how they felt about humanity's relationship with technology. A fundamental question that they ask on Nootropics is about radical change — wondering what things we might want to alter, and what things to keep.

Check out the full interview of the band:

My io9 round-up

2012-05-04T16:08:00.000-04:00

I was a guest blogger over at io9 this past week. Here's my article round-up:

Monday April 30:

Tuesday May 1:

Wednesday May 2:

Thursday May 3:

Center for Inquiry offering online seminar on transhumanism, May 1-31

2012-04-27T08:47:00.000-04:00

The Center for Free Inquiry is offering an online four week seminar on transhumanism—and I'll be teaching it alongside John Shook, CFI director of education and AHA education coordinator. The cost is $70 for general registration, $60 for Friends of the Center, and $30 for students. The course will run from May 1 to May 31 so there's still time to register. You can get more information and register here.

Course Objectives:

This four week, four-module short course, running from May 1 to May 31, introduces the philosophy and socio-cultural movement that is Transhumanism. We will survey its core ideas, history, technological requirements, potential manifestations, and ethical implications. Topics to be discussed include: the various ways humans have tried to enhance themselves throughout history; the political and social aspects of Transhumanism; the technologies required to enhance humans (including cybernetics, pharmaceuticals, genetics, and nanotechnology); and the various ways humans may choose to use these technologies to modify and augment their capacities (including radical life extension, intelligence augmentation, and mind uploading). Along the way we will discuss social and ethical problems that might be posed by human enhancement.

I've put together an amazing curriculum and reading list, so I hope to see you in the virtual classroom.

Guest blogging on io9 next week

2012-04-24T21:33:00.000-04:00

I'll be guest blogging on io9 next week, from April 30 to May 3. I'm sure most of you are aware of io9, but for those of you who are unfamiliar it is a popular daily publication that covers science, science fiction, and the future. In other words, a perfect place for my content. Stay tuned for more.

Mining the Sky for Resources? (guest blog by David Brin)

2012-04-23T15:16:00.001-04:00

It appears that a small cabal of the Good Billionaires -- those who got rich through innovation and who feel loyal to the future -- are about to to fund a new effort worth some excitement and attention. It aims at transforming not just our Earth -- but the whole solar system. And, along the way, this endeavor may help bootstrap us back into our natural condition... a species, nation and civilization that believes (again) in can-do ambition.

Can that be achieved - while making us all rich - through asteroid mining?

In its Tuesday announcement, Space exploration company Planetary Resources will claim a goal to "create a new industry and a new definition of 'natural resources.'... adding trillions of dollars to the global GDP."

Resources from space? It's not a wholly new concept. Way back in the 1980s, in his prophetic book - Mining The Sky: Untold Riches From The Asteroids, Comets, And Planets, my friend and colleague John S. Lewis explored in detail the range of minerals, volatiles and other useful materials to be found in all the different types of small bodies we know to be drifting about the solar system, from carbonaceous chondrites to stony or iron meteoroids, to dormant comets which (according to my doctoral thesis) may make up to a third of the asteroids we find out there.*

Back then, as a young fellow at the California Space Institute, I recall many long conversations with John and the few others working in the field, striving to come up with ways to get some movement in this area. Before it became clear that the Space Shuttle would suck up every gram of funding or attention.

What makes this new effort unique is its high-profile support group. The venture is backed by Google executives Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, film director James Cameron, and politician Ross Perot's son, among others. Moreover, I am pleased to note that John Lewis is, indeed, one of the major advisors for this new company, along with his former students, noted planetary scientists Chris Lewicki and Tom Jones.

The founders apparently did their homework. (A Cameron trademark.) They apparently mean business.

== A Long and Hard Road ==

But what kind of business? Is such a grand project feasible? As I see it, there are a several distinct general problem domains.

1) Prioritizing asteroidal science.  Naturally, as an astronomer who specialized in small solar system bodies, I approve of this phase one. (My wife, Cheryl, also did her doctoral work in this area - we're neighbors in the solar system.)

It also correlates well with President Obama's wise decision to abandon a fruitless return to the sterile Moon, in favor of studying objects that might make us all rich.

In fact, this seems an excellent time for private funding to make a big difference. New thresholds have been reached. The technologies needed for inexpensive asteroid rendezvous missions are coming to fruition rapidly, as we saw at the recent NASA NIAC meeting. Some, in fact, are downright amazing, opening the potential for missions that cost mere tens of millions, rather than billions of dollars, confirming and characterizing these fascinating - and possibly lucrative - bodies.

2) Shepherding and changing the trajectories of small meteoroids and asteroids.  There are several techniques on the table. Some of them surprisingly simple, using solar sails. We might as well get started! And if these guys can give the technologies a boost, more power to them.

3) Legal, safety and environmental impact considerations. Is it even permissible to grab and "own" space resources? The pertinent treaties were left deliberately vague and it may be time to update them, so that investors in wealth-generating processes can be sure of decent return.

Of much more public concern - and sure to dominate the headlines - will be the image of deliberately moving asteroidal bodies toward the Earth. That's sure to prompt a lot of fretting and talk of lurid disaster scenarios. Oh, we'll start small and aim them toward the Moon or Lagrangian Points (e.g. L5), giving plenty of time to discuss issues of law and care in space. But these fellows need to come up with just the right tone of prudence, avoiding the kinds of lines spoken by Michael Crichton's science-hubris villains. Like: "all contingencies are accounted for - there's no cause for concern!"

Worth pondering on the up-side: these same technologies might someday prove very useful, if we spot something dangerous, on a long-warning collision course toward Earth. If done right, this is a potential world-saver, not world-killer.

4) Mining, disassembly, smelting and refining in space.  Here we're still in a very tentative, sketching phase. Most concepts involve using large mirrors to concentrate sunlight and process the raw materials. Or else solar energy to drive heat and electro-mechanical processes indirectly. If this can be done robotically and efficiently, all the way off in L1 or Lunar Orbit, then much smaller masses of refined substance could be transported down to GEO... where electrodynamic tugs might bring it to LEO... where cheap, asteroid-made braking shells would deliver the goods safely to collection points on Earth.

5) Or, better yet, much of the iron and nickel and such could be used up there in orbit to make more cool things and reduce the burden of launching bulk material out of our planet's deep gravity well. Certainly, storing the volatile like water and carbon and nitrogen compounds in orbit-made tanks will be a major side-benefit, providing the materials needed most for both life support and rocket fuel. To derive those benefits would entail learning to do many other things in space. Larger habitats and radiation shielding. Possibly solar energy collectors of massive scale, beaming power 24/7 to Earth. Or grand vessels to explore the planets.

6) Economics. It's a lot more complicated than the first calculations might make you imagine. In Mining The Sky, John Lewis calculates that even just one asteroid a kilometer across - of a certain type - might (if smelted down) produce the world's entire steel production for 10 years!
It gets better. Try the entire world's gold and silver production for 100 years! That plus a thousand year's production of platinum-group elements.

The good news? We would be unleashed to do a myriad things with cheap raw materials, while cutting way back on wasteful, inefficient and polluting processes to mine and process the stuff here on Earth. Much less digging, grinding and greenhouse gas emissions. All that wealth, generated with solar mirrors melting rocks way out in space. Talk about improving the balance of payments....

One reality check? Downstream, after this ball gets fully rolling and initial R&D costs are paid off, you can expect the prices of gold and platinum to plummet. That's a good thing, overall! We have much better uses for gold than leering gleefully over stupid coins and bars. Still, bear this in mind when you start rubbing your hands over how rich you'll get from asteroid mining.
You won't be rich enough to own the world. Sorry. Just very very very rich, from doing a whole heap-loads lot of good for us all.

7) Which brings us to the final benefit of all this. We'll all benefit. But the top fellows who are taking the risks, who will reap a lot of the rewards, happen also to be the good billionaires. Archetypes of how capitalism ought to work. Self-made moguls who got wealthy by helping engender new-better products and services, not by means that Adam Smith himself derided as parasitism. These guys have proved, time and again, their loyalty to the positive-sum process that raises all boats. This is the kind of endeavor that will keep them up there as role models, instead of the new feudalists.
It's certainly how I plan to get rich. By delivering magnificent, daring products that help take us to the stars.

- David Brin (Thanks George!)

== NOTES ==

*  A little colorful aside:
In our 1984 novel Heart of the Comet (soon to be re-released) Gregory Benford and I portrayed a dramatized effort to harvest space resources, by sending a human crewed mission to Halley's Comet in 2065, intending to use the controlled evaporation of the comet's own material (an effect long-known) to divert it into orbit near the Earth.
A bit extravagant in its action-adventure aspects (though based on my doctoral work), the book still conveys the best science known about these mysterious and wonderful bodies, including the main process by which some of them evolve into dormant asteroids.
.
(See the original blog posting at Contrary Brin - http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2012/04/space-resources-re-igniting-can-do.html)

Remembering the art of Moebius (aka Jean Giraud)

2012-04-20T15:55:00.002-04:00

The French comic artist Jean Giraud, who also went by the name Moebius, died in Paris last month at the age of 73 after a long illness.

The influential Giraud, who drew for over 50 years under both names, was celebrated internationally for his fantastic works, particularly in the US and Japan.

He collaborated with some true legends, including Stan Lee and a number of manga artists. Giraud also worked on storyboards and design concepts for some science fiction films, including Alien, Tron, The Abyss and The Fifth Element.

Artists from around the world have cited Giraud as an important influence on their work, including Hayao Miyazaki, Federico Fellini, William Gibson, and Ridley Scott.

Giraud is a seminal figure in the aesthetic development of fantasy, science fiction, and cyberpunk. Upon hearing of his passing, Benoit Mouchart, artistic director at France's Angouleme International Comics Festival, had this to say of his importance to the field of comics:

France has lost one of its best known artists in the world. In Japan, Italy, in the United States he is an incredible star who influenced world comics. Moebius will remain part of the history of drawing, in the same right as Dürer or Ingres. He was an incredible producer, he said he wanted to show what eyes do not always see.

Dan Hurley: Can You Make Yourself Smarter?

2012-04-19T14:35:00.002-04:00

Dan Hurley has put together a comprehensive piece for the New York Times about using games like dual N-back training to improve intelligence.

Over the past three decades, theorists and researchers alike have made significant headway in understanding how working memory functions. They have developed a variety of sensitive tests to measure it and determine its relationship to fluid intelligence. Then, in 2008, Jaeggi turned one of these tests of working memory into a training task for building it up, in the same way that push-ups can be used both as a measure of physical fitness and as a strength-building task. “We see attention and working memory as the cardiovascular function of the brain,” Jaeggi says.“If you train your attention and working memory, you increase your basic cognitive skills that help you for many different complex tasks.”

Jaeggi’s study has been widely influential. Since its publication, others have achieved results similar to Jaeggi’s not only in elementary-school children but also in preschoolers, college students and the elderly. The training tasks generally require only 15 to 25 minutes of work per day, five days a week, and have been found to improve scores on tests of fluid intelligence in as little as four weeks. Follow-up studies linking that improvement to real-world gains in schooling and job performance are just getting under way. But already, people with disorders including attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (A.D.H.D.) and traumatic brain injury have seen benefits from training. Gains can persist for up to eight months after treatment.

Laura Carstensen: Older people are happier

2012-04-19T14:22:00.000-04:00

Another strong case for the longevity dividend!

In the 20th century we added an unprecedented number of years to our lifespans, but is the quality of life as good? Surprisingly, yes! At TEDxWomen psychologist Laura Carstensen shows research that demonstrates that as people get older they become happier, more content, and have a more positive outlook on the world.

Sentient Developments Podcast: Episode 2012.04.16

2012-04-18T11:55:00.000-04:00

Sentient Developments Podcast for the week of April 16, 2012. Topics discussed in this week's episode:

Tracks used in this episode:

Ty Seagall & White Fence: I Am Not a Game
Ramona Falls: Spore
Caveman: Thankful
Daft Punk: End of Line

Podcast Feed | Subscribe via iTunes

NASA gets serious about the 2018 launch opportunity to Mars

2012-04-17T10:54:00.000-04:00

We are six years away from the next best launch opportunity to Mars—and NASA wants to be ready. To that end, they are reformulating their Mars strategy, starting with a workshop this coming June to get the party started.

Titled, "Concepts and Approaches for Mars Exploration," the meeting will bring together a host of experts and groups, including scientists, engineers, graduate students and academics, NASA centers, federal labs, industry, and international partner organizations. The point of the workshop will be to provide an open forum for presentation, discussion, and consideration of any and all concepts, options, capabilities, and innovations that will advance Mars exploration. It's clear from the workshop description that NASA is hoping to inspire the innovation of some next-level capabilities. And it's also clear that the robotic exploration of Mars remains a high priority.

And it's not just the 2018 window that's being considered. NASA wants to start planning for both short-term and longer-term projects. Much of the agenda will be driven by the President's challenge of sending humans to orbit Mars in the decade of the 2030s. They've broken down their timeframes to two periods: 2018 through 2024, and a mid- to longer-term timeframe spanning 2024 to the mid-2030s.

NASA has outlined three basic challenge areas that they're hoping to address:

Instrumentation and investigation approaches
Safe and accurate landing capabilities, Mars ascent, and innovative exploration approaches
Mars surface system capabilities

NASA has opened these challenge areas to the wider public in an effort to out-source the work.

The workshop will be held from June 12-14, 2012, at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, which is located in the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) building in Houston Texas.

Beaming solar power to Earth with satellites

2012-04-16T13:40:00.003-04:00

There's no question that we need to seriously consider harvesting the sun's energy in space with massive solar panels. The big question, however, is how to get all that energy back to Earth.

NASA believes they have found the answer: Power-beaming solar-power satellites. It's a plan that was developed by John Mankins, leader of the first NASA solar-power-satellite development team in the 90s.

He calls his proposed project SPS-ALPHA, which stands for Solar Power Satellite via Arbitrarily Large PHased Array. Mankins claims that it's the “first practical solar-power satellite concept” that uses a novel “biomimetic” approach.

This project would make possible the construction of huge platforms from tens of thousands of small elements that can deliver remotely and affordably tens to thousands of megawatts using wireless power transmission to markets on Earth, as well as missions in space.

It would do this by using a large array of individually controlled thin-film mirrors, outfitted on the curved surface of a satellite. These movable mirrors would intercept and redirect incoming sunlight toward photovoltaic cells affixed to the backside of the solar power satellite’s large array.

The Earth-pointing side of this large modular circular array would be tiled with a collection of microwave-power transmission panels that generate the coherent, low-intensity beam of radio frequency energy and transmits that energy to Earth.

And what's particularly cool about this concept is that it would enable the construction of a solar-power satellite that can be assembled entirely from individual system elements that weigh no more than 110 to 440 pounds (50 to 200 kilograms), allowing all pieces to be mass produced at dramatically lower cost than traditional space systems.

Bonobo Chat: An app for communicating with apes

2012-04-16T13:23:00.000-04:00

Looking to communicate with your favorite bonobo, but you just don't know how?

Well, worry no more: Ken Schweller of the Iowa Great Ape Trust has launched a new kickstarter in an attempt to develop an iPad based app to assist with ape-human communication and interaction. The app will help apes and humans communicate through lexigrams—abstract symbols that represent words. By using the iPad, apes can arrange the lexigrams to convey they thoughts and requests. And in addition to this, the app will enable the apes to operate remote doors, vending machines, and even a "RoboBonobo" robot.

You can help Schweller and contribute to his kickstarter here.

Do "advanced" dinosaurs rule other planets? Uh, no.

2012-04-13T17:45:00.003-04:00

There's an article making the rounds from the American Chemical Society asking, "Could "advanced" dinosaurs rule other planets?"

It's a provocative title, but strangely, the article has virtually nothing to do with the question at hand, and instead addresses the issue of DNA/RNA left-right orientation and the problem of chirality in origin of life studies. It's kind of a bait and switch in which the researcher, Ronald Breslow, is clearly trying to draw attention to his work on the subject.

But to answer the question...in a word...no. And here's why:

A number of people speculate that, had an asteroid not wiped out the dinosaurs, they would have eventually spawned a species that would be human-like, and subsequently follow a similar developmental trajectory to our own. Unfortunately, however, this assumption misses two very crucial points: They didn't and they couldn't.

Dinosaurs ruled the Earth for an astounding 265 millions years. And within that time they produced nothing like our species.

The reason was that they couldn't. The environment wouldn't allow it. The age of the dinosaurs was marked by the presence of super-predators -- you know, T-Rexes and Spinosauruses -- nasty buggers like that. Super-predators force prey animals to adapt accordingly and along a very narrow band of morphological possibilities. In other words, animals back then needed to be able to run like hell or somehow fend for themselves. Back then it was all about physicality; intelligence had very little sway against the likes of super-predators.

Our species, on the other hand, was given the elbow room to evolve thanks to the absence of these super-predators. Sure, we still had nasties like saber toothed tigers, but nothing that compared to the dinosaurs.

The asteroid was a kind of reset button on evolution. We can be thankful for it, otherwise we wouldn't be here right now.