PDF of slides (only; slides+notes separate and more detailed) for 2012 100YSS Conference in Houston TX. Session is a proposal for a type of very-long-term archive as habitat.
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Existential Risk, Human Survival,and the Future of Life in the Universe:
Brief highlightsOnly a few key ideas could be covered in this 20 minute session. To save time, topics in breakout slides will not be explored in depth.
Refer to paper for detailsThe working Paper is 50 pages, and covers all key elements of this proposal. References are also cited there.
EXOPLANET TRANSIT / ESA / Illustration by AOES Medialab 2003
The Fermi Paradox and The Great Silence
EXOPLANET TRANSIT / ESA / Illustration by AOES Medialab 2003
Are we alone?
The Fermi Paradox and The Great Silence
EXOPLANET TRANSIT / ESA / Illustration by AOES Medialab 2003
Kepler and 0ther observations tell us that there is no shortage of worlds to be detected.
Billions of years for worlds to develop.Radiant life or von Neumann probes would need < 1 million years.Where are they?
This is the Fermi Paradox.The quiet in place of any other signs of life: the Great Silence.
biota.cc/vessel.pdf
Exploring further...
Possible answers to the Fermi Paradox
Responsibility to strive,regardless of the unknown status of other life
EXOPLANET TRANSIT
ESA / Illustration by AOES Medialab 2003
The Fermi Paradox and The Great Silence
EXOPLANET TRANSIT / ESA 2003 / Illustration by AOES Medialab
Is life widespread, or as uncommonas we seem to be?
Learning the truth through interstellar travel will take time.
We must foster a supporting—and surviving—interstellar civilization.
MASSIVE TERRESTRIAL STRIKE / Don Davis / NASA
MASSIVE TERRESTRIAL STRIKE / Don Davis / NASA
Existential Risk
Will we endure?
MASSIVE TERRESTRIAL STRIKE / Don Davis / NASA
Existential Risk
100 years to achieve our primary goal.Our endeavor could be cut short before that time has passed.
The risk that we may not endure is termed Existential Risk.
An existential risk is one that threatens the premature extinction of Earth-‐originating intelligent life or the permanent and drastic destruction of its potential for desirable future development.
-‐ Nick BostromExistential Risk Prevention as the Most Important Task for Humanity (2011)
MASSIVE TERRESTRIAL STRIKE / Don Davis / NASA
Existential Risk
“... the permanent and drastic destruction of its potential for desirable future development.”
Survival alone is not enough.
In some cases, a surviving society may be brutalized, stagnant, or diminished irreparably. Bostrom’s 2011 classification sets aside discussion of particular causes.
Strict focus on outcomes helps us envision possible recovery scenarios.
MASSIVE TERRESTRIAL STRIKE / Don Davis / NASA
Existential Risk
Classification of Existential Risk
Human Extinction Humanity goes extinct prematurely, i.e., before reaching technological maturity.
Permanent StagnationHumanity survives but never reaches technological maturity. Subclasses: Unrecovered Collapse, Plateauing, Recurrent Collapse
Flawed RealizationHumanity reaches technological maturity but in a way that is dismally and irremediably flawed. Subclasses: Unconsummated Realization, Ephemeral Realization
Subsequent RuinationHumanity reaches technological maturity in a way that gives good future prospects, yet subsequent developments cause the permanent ruination of those prospects.
-‐ Nick BostromExistential Risk Prevention as the Most Important Task for Humanity (2011)
MASSIVE TERRESTRIAL STRIKE / Don Davis / NASA
Existential Risk
Classification of Existential Risk
Human Extinction Humanity goes extinct prematurely, i.e., before reaching technological maturity.
Permanent StagnationHumanity survives but never reaches technological maturity. Subclasses: Unrecovered Collapse, Plateauing, Recurrent Collapse
Flawed RealizationHumanity reaches technological maturity but in a way that is dismally and irremediably flawed. Subclasses: Unconsummated Realization, Ephemeral Realization
Subsequent RuinationHumanity reaches technological maturity in a way that gives good future prospects, yet subsequent developments cause the permanent ruination of those prospects.
-‐ Nick BostromExistential Risk Prevention as the Most Important Task for Humanity (2011)
MASSIVE TERRESTRIAL STRIKE / Don Davis / NASA
Existential Risk
Classification of Existential Risk
Human Extinction Humanity goes extinct prematurely, i.e., before reaching technological maturity.
Permanent StagnationHumanity survives but never reaches technological maturity. Subclasses: Unrecovered Collapse, Plateauing, Recurrent Collapse
Flawed RealizationHumanity reaches technological maturity but in a way that is dismally and irremediably flawed. Subclasses: Unconsummated Realization, Ephemeral Realization
Subsequent RuinationHumanity reaches technological maturity in a way that gives good future prospects, yet subsequent developments cause the permanent ruination of those prospects.
-‐ Nick BostromExistential Risk Prevention as the Most Important Task for Humanity (2011)
MASSIVE TERRESTRIAL STRIKE / Don Davis / NASA
Existential Risk
Classification of Existential Risk
Human Extinction Humanity goes extinct prematurely, i.e., before reaching technological maturity.
Permanent StagnationHumanity survives but never reaches technological maturity. Subclasses: Unrecovered Collapse, Plateauing, Recurrent Collapse
Flawed RealizationHumanity reaches technological maturity but in a way that is dismally and irremediably flawed. Subclasses: Unconsummated Realization, Ephemeral Realization
Subsequent RuinationHumanity reaches technological maturity in a way that gives good future prospects, yet subsequent developments cause the permanent ruination of those prospects.
-‐ Nick BostromExistential Risk Prevention as the Most Important Task for Humanity (2011)
MASSIVE TERRESTRIAL STRIKE / Don Davis / NASA
Existential Risk
Imperative
To achieve an interstellar civilization while
addressing existential risk, we must do more than
survive: we must preserve our aspirations, our
capabilities, our cultural resources, and our
biodiversity.
DIATOM 1 (Sarah Parker-Eaton & Louise Hibbert)
Photo via Bradbury J: Nature's Nanotechnologists: Unveiling the Secrets of Diatoms. PLoS Biol 2/10/2004: e306. (CC-BY-2.5) 2004
What type of archive would answer to Permanent Stagnation or Flawed Realization?
Gregory Benford suggested one example in 1992, addressing catastrophic loss of biodiversity.
The Library of Life
DIATOM 1 (Sarah Parker-Eaton & Louise Hibbert)
Photo via Bradbury J: Nature's Nanotechnologists: Unveiling the Secrets of Diatoms. PLoS Biol 2/10/2004: e306. (CC-BY-2.5) 2004
The Library of Life
DIATOM 1 (Sarah Parker-Eaton & Louise Hibbert)
Photo via Bradbury J: Nature's Nanotechnologists: Unveiling the Secrets of Diatoms. PLoS Biol 2/10/2004: e306. (CC-BY-2.5) 2004
The Library of Life: A thought experiment on avoiding irreversible loss of biodiversity.
A broad program of freezing species in threatened ecospheres could preserve biodiversity for eventual use by future generations. Sampling without studying can lower costs dramatically. […] Much more information than species DNA will be saved, allowing future biotechnology to derive high information content and perhaps even resurrect then-‐extinct species.
-‐ Gregory BenfordAbstract for “Saving the Library of Life” (1992)
The Library of Life
DIATOM 1 (Sarah Parker-Eaton & Louise Hibbert)
Photo via Bradbury J: Nature's Nanotechnologists: Unveiling the Secrets of Diatoms. PLoS Biol 2/10/2004: e306. (CC-BY-2.5) 2004
Controversial, but galvanizing.
My main concern is that people will conclude that scientists have given up on preserving living biodiversity, or that future species extinctions are not so worrisome because we can always reconstitute the species and genera that we render extinct. But […] these potential obstacles can be circumvented: by stressing [...] that the very fact that such steps are being taken is an indication of how serious the problem is.
-‐ Carl SaganLetter to Benford in Deep Time (1999)
The Library of Life proposal was one of the deepest and earliest influences on my Vessel Archives proposal. It taught: We cannot be afraid to galvanize our efforts, when confronting existential risk.
The Library of Life
DIATOM 1 (Sarah Parker-Eaton & Louise Hibbert)
Photo via Bradbury J: Nature's Nanotechnologists: Unveiling the Secrets of Diatoms. PLoS Biol 2/10/2004: e306. (CC-BY-2.5) 2004
What type of facility would be needed to carry a Library of Life, or house a cultural equivalent, over the very-‐long-‐term?
Cultural archives would require different methods, and the facility itself could take on as many different forms as there are cultures...
A Vessel Archive is a self-‐contained, sustainable habitat, which harbors the traces of Earth's cultures and biomes.
These installations would serve in the near-‐term as examples of sustainability and as ambassadors for society's understanding of the 100 Year Starship Mission, and would serve in the long-‐term as protective vessels for humanity's aspirations, knowledge, and the traces of life itself.
Vessel Archives would be dedicated to their twin goals of education, and preservation.
One habitat for a few thousand will not solve our societal challenges or safeguard life on Earth. Connected communities of hundreds or thousands of Vessel Archives around the world, each sharing concrete methods for sustainable design with society at large, may do better...
A Vessel Archive’s outer exhibits, clearly visible to a curious public, would house resources and environments introducing the 100 Year Starship Mission.
At the heart of a Vessel Archive would be labs for research and development, core collections, and sample banks of the cultural and biological records.
This core archive (like a Library of Life) could be replicated, and transferred in whole or in part to a 100 Year Starship, to serve as its memory of Earth.
Many other approaches inform the Vessel Archive proposal, starting with the need to encourage hybrid vigor through an open specification...
biota.cc/vessel.pdf
Exploring further...
Creative CommonsSeed several instances of open specification and resource sites to explore, detail, and document the creation of Vessel Archives, encouraging hybrid vigor.
Given the time, I’d explore how we could inspire the public with the 100 Year Starship Mission, through interactive exhibits at existing, familiar institutions: Museums, Planetariums, Arboretums, Observatories, Universities, Libraries...
James Webb Space Telescope Mirror 37 / NASA / MSFC / David Higginbotham / Emmett Given 2010
The Great Filter
James Webb Space Telescope Mirror 37 / NASA / MSFC / David Higginbotham / Emmett Given 2010
James Webb Space Telescope Mirror 37 / NASA / MSFC / David Higginbotham / Emmett Given 2010
The Great Filter
We began with the Great Silence, and end by considering the Great Filter.
The Great Silence implies that one or more of these steps [from organic stellar material to expansive interstellar life and colonization] are very improbable; there is a “Great Filter” along the path between simple dead stuff and explosive life. The vast majority of stuff that starts along this path never makes it. [...] The fact that our universe seems basically dead suggests that it is very hard for advanced explosive lasting life to arise.
-‐ Robin HansonThe Great Filter -‐ Are We Almost Past It? (1998)
James Webb Space Telescope Mirror 37 / NASA / MSFC / David Higginbotham / Emmett Given 2010
The stakes are high, but the potential future benefits of undertaking this work are also vast, when considering the long-‐term potential of our interstellar civilization.
To calculate the loss associated with an existential catastrophe, we must consider how much value would come to exist in its absence. It turns out that the ultimate potential for Earth-‐originating intelligent life is literally astronomical. […] The relevant figure is not how many people could live on Earth but how many descendants we could have in total. ... Even if we use the most conservative of […] estimates, […] we find that the expected loss of an existential catastrophe is greater than the value of 1018 human lives. This implies that the expected value of reducing existential risk by a mere one millionth of one percentage point is at least ten times the value of a billion human lives.
-‐ Nick BostromExistential Risk Prevention as the Most Important Task for Humanity (2011)
“The most astounding fact ... is the knowledge that the atoms that comprise life on Earth, the atoms that make up the human body, are traceable to the crucibles that cooked light elements into heavy elements in their core ... under extreme temperatures and pressures. These stars ... went unstable in their later years. They collapsed and then exploded, scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy. Guts made of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and all the fundamental ingredients of life itself. These ingredients become part of gas clouds that condense, collapse, form the next generation of solar systems—stars with orbiting planets—and those planets now have the ingredients for life itself. So that when I look up at the night sky, and I know that—yes—we are part of this universe, we are in this universe... But perhaps more important than both of those facts, is that the universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up—many people feel small, because they're small and the universe is big; but I feel big. Because my atoms came from those stars.”
-‐ Neil deGrasse TysonTIME: 10 Questions for Neil deGrasse Tyson.