Professor Stephen Hawking warns 'the end of the world is nigh' and Earth could be engulfed in a 'ball of fire'
Esteemed physicist Professor Stephen Hawking has dramatically warned 'the end of the world is nigh'.
The Cambridge University-based genius claims we have got less than 600 years left as a species to do something before a “ball of fire” engulfs the Earth.
In a video appearance at the 2017 Tencent WE Summit in Beijing on Sunday, the world-renowned scientist warned that overcrowding and energy consumption could bring about a fiery end to the planet within 600 years.
The end would come in a “ball of fire,” he is reported to have said, according to the Cambridge News.
To save itself, mankind must take a cue from American TV series "Star Trek" and “boldly go where no one has gone before,” he said in the appearance.
More...
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/pr ... ar-BBEMwvN
Interesting Visions/Predictions of the Future
Interesting Visions/Predictions of the Future
Last edited by kmaherali on Tue Nov 14, 2017 7:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
Bill Gates’ Prediction Will Give You Goosebumps
Bill Gates is sounding the alarm on what could be a trillion-dollar technology.
And when Bill Gates speaks, it pays to listen.
The company he founded, Microsoft, was a critical part of the PC age. Even today, 15 years after retiring, he is worth an unimaginable $90 billion dollars.
Now he’s telling you, and anyone else who will listen, that the next tech boom could be even bigger. And if he’s right, early investors in this super-trend could become rich. Just like the lucky individuals who invested in Google, Amazon, and Microsoft in the beginning.
Bill Gates isn’t alone. Top business leaders are beginning to wake up.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, said he thinks this new technology is the key to Amazon’s future. Even super investor Warren Buffett says that it will have a “hugely beneficial social effect.”
When so many successful people are all saying the same thing, it pays to listen.
I've laid out the full story on this incredible tech trend in a FREE report.
And you are going to want to see this report before you invest $1 on any tech company.
https://www.fool.ca/free-stock-report/b ... tmarketing
Bill Gates is sounding the alarm on what could be a trillion-dollar technology.
And when Bill Gates speaks, it pays to listen.
The company he founded, Microsoft, was a critical part of the PC age. Even today, 15 years after retiring, he is worth an unimaginable $90 billion dollars.
Now he’s telling you, and anyone else who will listen, that the next tech boom could be even bigger. And if he’s right, early investors in this super-trend could become rich. Just like the lucky individuals who invested in Google, Amazon, and Microsoft in the beginning.
Bill Gates isn’t alone. Top business leaders are beginning to wake up.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, said he thinks this new technology is the key to Amazon’s future. Even super investor Warren Buffett says that it will have a “hugely beneficial social effect.”
When so many successful people are all saying the same thing, it pays to listen.
I've laid out the full story on this incredible tech trend in a FREE report.
And you are going to want to see this report before you invest $1 on any tech company.
https://www.fool.ca/free-stock-report/b ... tmarketing
Bill Gates made these 15 predictions in 1999 — and it's scary how accurate he was
Slide show:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/technol ... ut#image=2
Slide show:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/technol ... ut#image=2
Psychic who foresaw Trump's win reveals predictions for 2018... including revolution in North Korea and Prince Harry's engagement
A psychic who predicted the election of Donald Trump has revealed his expectations for 2018.
Craig Hamilton-Parker's list includes a revolution in North Korea that brings down Kim Jong-un's regime, a terrorist incident on a British motorway, a chemical weapons attack by drones on a European capital and Prince Harry's engagement to Meghan Markle.
He previously forecast Brexit, Trump's victory and the Nice terror attack.
He said on his blog: "2018 will be a year of political turmoil and environmental crisis caused by dramatic and unprecedented weather."
Here are the highlights from the medium and psychic teacher's list...
Environmental predictions
Mount Vesuvius in Italy will erupt and Naples will be evacuated.
There will be an increase in seismic activity - including places that have been tremor free for 1,000 years - with one very serious earthquake in New Zealand.
The southern seas will be impassable in places due to a massive ice shelf breaking from the Antarctic.
There will be wild fires in California and Australia, as well as flooding in India and China.
There will be record hurricanes in the Caribbean.
More...
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/ps ... ailsignout
A psychic who predicted the election of Donald Trump has revealed his expectations for 2018.
Craig Hamilton-Parker's list includes a revolution in North Korea that brings down Kim Jong-un's regime, a terrorist incident on a British motorway, a chemical weapons attack by drones on a European capital and Prince Harry's engagement to Meghan Markle.
He previously forecast Brexit, Trump's victory and the Nice terror attack.
He said on his blog: "2018 will be a year of political turmoil and environmental crisis caused by dramatic and unprecedented weather."
Here are the highlights from the medium and psychic teacher's list...
Environmental predictions
Mount Vesuvius in Italy will erupt and Naples will be evacuated.
There will be an increase in seismic activity - including places that have been tremor free for 1,000 years - with one very serious earthquake in New Zealand.
The southern seas will be impassable in places due to a massive ice shelf breaking from the Antarctic.
There will be wild fires in California and Australia, as well as flooding in India and China.
There will be record hurricanes in the Caribbean.
More...
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/ps ... ailsignout
Upsurge in big earthquakes predicted for 2018 as Earth rotation slows
Scientists have warned there could be a big increase in numbers of devastating earthquakes around the world next year. They believe variations in the speed of Earth’s rotation could trigger intense seismic activity, particularly in heavily populated tropical regions.
Although such fluctuations in rotation are small – changing the length of the day by a millisecond – they could still be implicated in the release of vast amounts of underground energy, it is argued.
The link between Earth’s rotation and seismic activity was highlighted last month in a paper by Roger Bilham of the University of Colorado in Boulder and Rebecca Bendick of the University of Montana in Missoula presented at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America.
“The correlation between Earth’s rotation and earthquake activity is strong and suggests there is going to be an increase in numbers of intense earthquakes next year,” Bilham told the Observer last week.
More...
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/up ... ailsignout
Scientists have warned there could be a big increase in numbers of devastating earthquakes around the world next year. They believe variations in the speed of Earth’s rotation could trigger intense seismic activity, particularly in heavily populated tropical regions.
Although such fluctuations in rotation are small – changing the length of the day by a millisecond – they could still be implicated in the release of vast amounts of underground energy, it is argued.
The link between Earth’s rotation and seismic activity was highlighted last month in a paper by Roger Bilham of the University of Colorado in Boulder and Rebecca Bendick of the University of Montana in Missoula presented at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America.
“The correlation between Earth’s rotation and earthquake activity is strong and suggests there is going to be an increase in numbers of intense earthquakes next year,” Bilham told the Observer last week.
More...
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/up ... ailsignout
We asked Order of Canada members about what they think the next 50 years will hold in their areas of expertise. They shared a mix of predictions, insights, advice and personal experiences. See what they had to say as part of this series!
Excerpt:
We are now on the threshold of a dramatic transformation in the field of organ transplantation, probably the biggest advance since the advent of transplantation itself: the ability to maintain organs at normal body temperature outside of the body. This will enable us to diagnose and treat organs with a personalized medicine approach, as we do for patients. Each organ will be treated in a personalized, targeted fashion to diagnose and treat specific conditions. We will have the opportunity to transplant superior organs with predictable excellent performance and longevity. The technology to repair and modify organs will enable us to build “super-organs”—organs that can be made to look like “self” so the recipient immune system will not reject the organ. Our goal is to build organs that will outlive the host recipient. A patient that has once defied death from end-stage organ failure will not have to face failure of that organ again.
Beyond transforming the technique of lung preservation, we have also begun to transform the practice of transplantation. We have introduced the concept of the organ repair centre, the first of which was established at TGH in 2008.
More...
https://oc50.gg.ca/en/organs-design
Excerpt:
We are now on the threshold of a dramatic transformation in the field of organ transplantation, probably the biggest advance since the advent of transplantation itself: the ability to maintain organs at normal body temperature outside of the body. This will enable us to diagnose and treat organs with a personalized medicine approach, as we do for patients. Each organ will be treated in a personalized, targeted fashion to diagnose and treat specific conditions. We will have the opportunity to transplant superior organs with predictable excellent performance and longevity. The technology to repair and modify organs will enable us to build “super-organs”—organs that can be made to look like “self” so the recipient immune system will not reject the organ. Our goal is to build organs that will outlive the host recipient. A patient that has once defied death from end-stage organ failure will not have to face failure of that organ again.
Beyond transforming the technique of lung preservation, we have also begun to transform the practice of transplantation. We have introduced the concept of the organ repair centre, the first of which was established at TGH in 2008.
More...
https://oc50.gg.ca/en/organs-design
30 things that might be obsolete by 2020
Devices that have only one use like calculators, alarm clocks, and digital cameras are being replaced by smartphones.Phone chargers and headphones with cords are also fading out in favor of wireless models.Paper is going digital, from magazines to maps to regular paperwork.
Technology develops at a staggeringly quick pace in today's world - even watching movies from a few years ago can provide opportunities to snicker at characters' outdated cell phones.
We're not sure what wildly innovative ideas the future will bring, but we have a pretty good sense of which devices will fall into disuse.
Here are 30 things that will probably be obsolete by 2020.
Slide show:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/wha ... ailsignout
Devices that have only one use like calculators, alarm clocks, and digital cameras are being replaced by smartphones.Phone chargers and headphones with cords are also fading out in favor of wireless models.Paper is going digital, from magazines to maps to regular paperwork.
Technology develops at a staggeringly quick pace in today's world - even watching movies from a few years ago can provide opportunities to snicker at characters' outdated cell phones.
We're not sure what wildly innovative ideas the future will bring, but we have a pretty good sense of which devices will fall into disuse.
Here are 30 things that will probably be obsolete by 2020.
Slide show:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/wha ... ailsignout
11 wild predictions Elon Musk has made about the future
Killer robots, electric jets, and living on Mars.
These are just a few of the things that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says the future holds.
Click through the slideshow to see some of his boldest predictions about what's to come.
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/technol ... ut#image=1
Killer robots, electric jets, and living on Mars.
These are just a few of the things that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says the future holds.
Click through the slideshow to see some of his boldest predictions about what's to come.
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/technol ... ut#image=1
A Tarot Reader Weighs In On What's In Store For 2018
As 2017 fades into the background, most people can agree on one thing: Last year was a wild and uncomfortable ride. For those who consult the tarot, this came as no surprise. Overall, 2017 was governed by the Wheel of Fortune, tarot’s hand of fate. This meant that things were going to change for better or worse — and whether we liked it or not.
Because of this volatility, we’re approaching 2018 exhausted to the core and anxious about what’s next. Will this year be a repeat of the last? Can things get better? Or worse?
Let’s begin by finding out the general theme for 2018. You can figure that out by adding up the numbers in the year itself (2+0+1+8). The result is 11, which corresponds to Justice, meaning that 2018 will be ruled by Justice.
Read on to discover what that entails, and what else the tarot has to say about 2018.
Theresa Reed as been a professional, full-time tarot reader for more than 25 years. She is the host of the popular podcast, Tarot Bytes , and the author of The Tarot Coloring Book. Theresa lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Slide show:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/sma ... ailsignout
As 2017 fades into the background, most people can agree on one thing: Last year was a wild and uncomfortable ride. For those who consult the tarot, this came as no surprise. Overall, 2017 was governed by the Wheel of Fortune, tarot’s hand of fate. This meant that things were going to change for better or worse — and whether we liked it or not.
Because of this volatility, we’re approaching 2018 exhausted to the core and anxious about what’s next. Will this year be a repeat of the last? Can things get better? Or worse?
Let’s begin by finding out the general theme for 2018. You can figure that out by adding up the numbers in the year itself (2+0+1+8). The result is 11, which corresponds to Justice, meaning that 2018 will be ruled by Justice.
Read on to discover what that entails, and what else the tarot has to say about 2018.
Theresa Reed as been a professional, full-time tarot reader for more than 25 years. She is the host of the popular podcast, Tarot Bytes , and the author of The Tarot Coloring Book. Theresa lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Slide show:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/sma ... ailsignout
Book
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
by Yuval Noah Harari
Yuval Noah Harari, author of the critically-acclaimed New York Times bestseller and international phenomenon Sapiens, returns with an equally original, compelling, and provocative book, turning his focus toward humanity’s future, and our quest to upgrade humans into gods.
Over the past century humankind has managed to do the impossible and rein in famine, plague, and war. This may seem hard to accept, but, as Harari explains in his trademark style—thorough, yet riveting—famine, plague and war have been transformed from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. For the first time ever, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals put together. The average American is a thousand times more likely to die from binging at McDonalds than from being blown up by Al Qaeda.
What then will replace famine, plague, and war at the top of the human agenda? As the self-made gods of planet earth, what destinies will we set ourselves, and which quests will we undertake? Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century—from overcoming death to creating artificial life. It asks the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? And how will we protect this fragile world from our own destructive powers? This is the next stage of evolution. This is Homo Deus.
With the same insight and clarity that made Sapiens an international hit and a New York Times bestseller, Harari maps out our future.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31138556-homo-deus
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
by Yuval Noah Harari
Yuval Noah Harari, author of the critically-acclaimed New York Times bestseller and international phenomenon Sapiens, returns with an equally original, compelling, and provocative book, turning his focus toward humanity’s future, and our quest to upgrade humans into gods.
Over the past century humankind has managed to do the impossible and rein in famine, plague, and war. This may seem hard to accept, but, as Harari explains in his trademark style—thorough, yet riveting—famine, plague and war have been transformed from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. For the first time ever, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals put together. The average American is a thousand times more likely to die from binging at McDonalds than from being blown up by Al Qaeda.
What then will replace famine, plague, and war at the top of the human agenda? As the self-made gods of planet earth, what destinies will we set ourselves, and which quests will we undertake? Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century—from overcoming death to creating artificial life. It asks the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? And how will we protect this fragile world from our own destructive powers? This is the next stage of evolution. This is Homo Deus.
With the same insight and clarity that made Sapiens an international hit and a New York Times bestseller, Harari maps out our future.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31138556-homo-deus
25 Crazy Predictions About the Next 25 Years
Slide show:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/lif ... ut#image=1
Slide show:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/lif ... ut#image=1
Former Google CEO predicts the internet will split in two — and one part will be led by China
Eric Schmidt, who has been the CEO of Google and executive chairman of its parent company, Alphabet, predicts that within the next decade there will be two distinct internets: one led by the U.S. and the other by China.
Schmidt shared his thoughts at a private event in San Francisco on Wednesday night convened by investment firm Village Global VC. The firm enlists tech luminaries — including Schmidt, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Diane Green — as limited partners, then invests their money into early-stage tech ventures.
More...
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/eric-sc ... china.html
Eric Schmidt, who has been the CEO of Google and executive chairman of its parent company, Alphabet, predicts that within the next decade there will be two distinct internets: one led by the U.S. and the other by China.
Schmidt shared his thoughts at a private event in San Francisco on Wednesday night convened by investment firm Village Global VC. The firm enlists tech luminaries — including Schmidt, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Diane Green — as limited partners, then invests their money into early-stage tech ventures.
More...
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/20/eric-sc ... china.html
FROM GENE EDITING TO A.I., HOW WILL TECHNOLOGY TRANSFORM HUMANITY?
FIVE BIG THINKERS — REGINA BARZILAY, GEORGE CHURCH, JENNIFER EGAN, CATHERINE MOHR AND SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE — PUZZLE OVER THE FUTURE OF THE FUTURE.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... 3053091118
FIVE BIG THINKERS — REGINA BARZILAY, GEORGE CHURCH, JENNIFER EGAN, CATHERINE MOHR AND SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE — PUZZLE OVER THE FUTURE OF THE FUTURE.
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/201 ... 3053091118
How will people travel in the future? | The Economist
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekld9AA ... m=20181123
From flying cars to pods that travel at over 1,000kph, revolutionary new ways to travel are being dreamed up by ambitious companies. But which pioneering visions are most likely to take off?
Click here to subscribe to The Economist on YouTube: https://econ.st/2xvTKdy
Hollywood movies have envisaged a future of hoverboards and flying cars - these imaginary machines might not be too far from reality. By 2030 a quarter of shared passenger miles traveled on America's roads could be in self-driving vehicles. It's believed eight out of ten people will be using Robotaxis in cities where available by 2035. There will also be more emphasis on sharing journeys. All this could reduce the number of cars on city streets by 60 percent, emissions by 80 percent, and road accidents by 90 percent.
And then there are flying cars - or more accurately - passenger drones and helicopter hybrids. Uber is investing heavily in this technology. Los Angeles, Dallas, and some states in Australia could see test flights within a couple of years - but these cross city flights will require changes to air traffic control systems, which will probably take longer to develop than the flying vehicles themselves.
Traveling across country could be far quicker too. China is leading the world in high-speed bullet trains that are capable of traveling over 400 kilometres per hour. By 2020, 80 percent of the country's major cities could be linked to the network. But for high-speed travel, the ambitious Hyperloop could leave bullet trains in the dust. It's an ambitious system in which pods move along tubes in a mere vacuum. The lack of air resistance means pods could reach speeds of over 1,000 kilometers per hour.
Virgin wants to deliver a fully operational Hyperloop system by the mid-2020s. The company claims its Hyperloop pods could travel from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in 30 minutes. But the potential dangers of travel at such great speeds, and the cost, mean the Hyperloop will not be a reality for decades.
In the air, the makers of supersonic jets are promising to slash travel times too. Arion wants to carry 12 passengers in luxury at 1.4 times the speed of sound - about 60% faster than typical aircraft today, and rival Boom hopes to be flying its supersonic airliner by 2023, carrying 55 passengers up to 2.2 times the speed of sound.
Skeptics say these ideas are impractical and expensive, with many technical challenges to overcome. Despite this, tech and engineering companies are boldly taking up the challenges of passenger transit - promising to propel us into the future
Daily Watch: mind-stretching short films throughout the working week.
For more from Economist Films visit: http://films.economist.com/
Check out The Economist’s full video catalogue: http://econ.st/20IehQk
Like The Economist on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheEconomist/
Follow The Economist on Twitter: https://twitter.com/theeconomist
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theeconomist/
Follow us on Medium: https://medium.com/@the_economist
Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekld9AA ... m=20181123
From flying cars to pods that travel at over 1,000kph, revolutionary new ways to travel are being dreamed up by ambitious companies. But which pioneering visions are most likely to take off?
Click here to subscribe to The Economist on YouTube: https://econ.st/2xvTKdy
Hollywood movies have envisaged a future of hoverboards and flying cars - these imaginary machines might not be too far from reality. By 2030 a quarter of shared passenger miles traveled on America's roads could be in self-driving vehicles. It's believed eight out of ten people will be using Robotaxis in cities where available by 2035. There will also be more emphasis on sharing journeys. All this could reduce the number of cars on city streets by 60 percent, emissions by 80 percent, and road accidents by 90 percent.
And then there are flying cars - or more accurately - passenger drones and helicopter hybrids. Uber is investing heavily in this technology. Los Angeles, Dallas, and some states in Australia could see test flights within a couple of years - but these cross city flights will require changes to air traffic control systems, which will probably take longer to develop than the flying vehicles themselves.
Traveling across country could be far quicker too. China is leading the world in high-speed bullet trains that are capable of traveling over 400 kilometres per hour. By 2020, 80 percent of the country's major cities could be linked to the network. But for high-speed travel, the ambitious Hyperloop could leave bullet trains in the dust. It's an ambitious system in which pods move along tubes in a mere vacuum. The lack of air resistance means pods could reach speeds of over 1,000 kilometers per hour.
Virgin wants to deliver a fully operational Hyperloop system by the mid-2020s. The company claims its Hyperloop pods could travel from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in 30 minutes. But the potential dangers of travel at such great speeds, and the cost, mean the Hyperloop will not be a reality for decades.
In the air, the makers of supersonic jets are promising to slash travel times too. Arion wants to carry 12 passengers in luxury at 1.4 times the speed of sound - about 60% faster than typical aircraft today, and rival Boom hopes to be flying its supersonic airliner by 2023, carrying 55 passengers up to 2.2 times the speed of sound.
Skeptics say these ideas are impractical and expensive, with many technical challenges to overcome. Despite this, tech and engineering companies are boldly taking up the challenges of passenger transit - promising to propel us into the future
Daily Watch: mind-stretching short films throughout the working week.
For more from Economist Films visit: http://films.economist.com/
Check out The Economist’s full video catalogue: http://econ.st/20IehQk
Like The Economist on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheEconomist/
Follow The Economist on Twitter: https://twitter.com/theeconomist
Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theeconomist/
Follow us on Medium: https://medium.com/@the_economist
Book
The New Silk Roads
The Present and Future of the World
About The New Silk Roads
From the Sunday Times and internationally bestselling author of The Silk Roads
'Masterly mapping out of a new world order' – Evening Standard
The New Silk Roads – a brand new book by Peter Frankopan – takes a fresh look at the network of relationships being formed along the length and breadth of the Silk Roads today.
The world is changing dramatically and in an age of Brexit and Trump, the themes of isolation and fragmentation permeating the western world stand in sharp contrast to events along the Silk Roads, where ties have been strengthened and mutual cooperation established.
Following the Silk Roads eastwards from Europe through to China, by way of Russia and the Middle East, The New Silk Roads provides a timely reminder that we live in a world that is profoundly interconnected. In this prescient contemporary history, Peter Frankopan assesses the global reverberations of these continual shifts in the centre of power – all too often absent from headlines in the west.
This important – and ultimately hopeful – book asks us to reread who we are and where we are in the world, illuminating the themes on which all our lives and livelihoods depend.
The Silk Roads, a major reassessment of world history, has sold over 1 million copies worldwide.
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-new-s ... 25c8c5fc8d
The New Silk Roads
The Present and Future of the World
About The New Silk Roads
From the Sunday Times and internationally bestselling author of The Silk Roads
'Masterly mapping out of a new world order' – Evening Standard
The New Silk Roads – a brand new book by Peter Frankopan – takes a fresh look at the network of relationships being formed along the length and breadth of the Silk Roads today.
The world is changing dramatically and in an age of Brexit and Trump, the themes of isolation and fragmentation permeating the western world stand in sharp contrast to events along the Silk Roads, where ties have been strengthened and mutual cooperation established.
Following the Silk Roads eastwards from Europe through to China, by way of Russia and the Middle East, The New Silk Roads provides a timely reminder that we live in a world that is profoundly interconnected. In this prescient contemporary history, Peter Frankopan assesses the global reverberations of these continual shifts in the centre of power – all too often absent from headlines in the west.
This important – and ultimately hopeful – book asks us to reread who we are and where we are in the world, illuminating the themes on which all our lives and livelihoods depend.
The Silk Roads, a major reassessment of world history, has sold over 1 million copies worldwide.
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-new-s ... 25c8c5fc8d
To understand the tech lords, look to their libraries
Science fiction has left an indelible mark on some of the world’s richest people
LITERARY TYPES have long been sniffy about science fiction. Ian McEwan, a feted British novelist, has been at pains to distance his most recent book, about an intelligent android, from “sci-fi”, even though the idea is one of the most picked-over tropes in the genre. Such snobbery is misplaced. Humans are technological animals. Science fiction explores how that power might be used, what sorts of worlds might be built with it and what sublime new estrangements and transcendence may follow. It is a literature of ideas, and, as John Maynard Keynes observed (in a different context), the world is ruled by little else. To see the force of Keynes’s point, consider how the world’s richest man plans to spend his fortune.
On May 9th Jeff Bezos outlined his thoughts about the future of humanity. The founder of Amazon sells $1bn-worth of shares a year to fund his rocket company, Blue Origin, which wants to cut the cost of space flight, put tourists into space and help return humans to the moon. That is only the first part of a grander scheme to spread humanity throughout the solar system in artificial habitats. He is not alone. Elon Musk founded SpaceX with the goal of establishing a self-sufficient colony on Mars. Yuri Milner, a Russian tycoon, has promised $100m to send a robot to Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to the sun.
Mr Bezos is open about his influences. He grew up reading Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, with their stories of rebellious lunar colonies, idiot-savant robots and societies founded on “psychohistory”, an amalgam of economics, history and what is now called big data. “Star Trek”, with its humane, liberal and internationalist re-imagining of the American frontier spirit, was another favourite. Decades later, Mr Bezos is using his money to help bring such a future about, rather as Heinlein’s D D Harriman did in “The Man Who Sold the Moon”.
Scratch a Silicon Valley nerd and chances are you will find similar influences, and similar ideas about how the future should look. One of the tech industry’s favourite writers is Iain M Banks, a Scottish socialist whose knockabout space operas were set in and around “the Culture”, a spacefaring utopia. Amid worries about superintelligent computers and robots taking jobs, they are a tonic. In Mr Banks’s society robots have indeed taken all the jobs, but the result is inexhaustible material abundance. Sentient beings, organic or artificial, are free to flourish. Everything is run by nigh-omnipotent and mostly benevolent AI philosopher-kings.
More....
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/ ... -libraries
Science fiction has left an indelible mark on some of the world’s richest people
LITERARY TYPES have long been sniffy about science fiction. Ian McEwan, a feted British novelist, has been at pains to distance his most recent book, about an intelligent android, from “sci-fi”, even though the idea is one of the most picked-over tropes in the genre. Such snobbery is misplaced. Humans are technological animals. Science fiction explores how that power might be used, what sorts of worlds might be built with it and what sublime new estrangements and transcendence may follow. It is a literature of ideas, and, as John Maynard Keynes observed (in a different context), the world is ruled by little else. To see the force of Keynes’s point, consider how the world’s richest man plans to spend his fortune.
On May 9th Jeff Bezos outlined his thoughts about the future of humanity. The founder of Amazon sells $1bn-worth of shares a year to fund his rocket company, Blue Origin, which wants to cut the cost of space flight, put tourists into space and help return humans to the moon. That is only the first part of a grander scheme to spread humanity throughout the solar system in artificial habitats. He is not alone. Elon Musk founded SpaceX with the goal of establishing a self-sufficient colony on Mars. Yuri Milner, a Russian tycoon, has promised $100m to send a robot to Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to the sun.
Mr Bezos is open about his influences. He grew up reading Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, with their stories of rebellious lunar colonies, idiot-savant robots and societies founded on “psychohistory”, an amalgam of economics, history and what is now called big data. “Star Trek”, with its humane, liberal and internationalist re-imagining of the American frontier spirit, was another favourite. Decades later, Mr Bezos is using his money to help bring such a future about, rather as Heinlein’s D D Harriman did in “The Man Who Sold the Moon”.
Scratch a Silicon Valley nerd and chances are you will find similar influences, and similar ideas about how the future should look. One of the tech industry’s favourite writers is Iain M Banks, a Scottish socialist whose knockabout space operas were set in and around “the Culture”, a spacefaring utopia. Amid worries about superintelligent computers and robots taking jobs, they are a tonic. In Mr Banks’s society robots have indeed taken all the jobs, but the result is inexhaustible material abundance. Sentient beings, organic or artificial, are free to flourish. Everything is run by nigh-omnipotent and mostly benevolent AI philosopher-kings.
More....
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/ ... -libraries
Bill Gates predicts the next 10 world-changing breakthroughs
Take a look into the future
The MIT Technology Review couldn't have asked for a more on the money seer to compile its latest list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies. Computer pioneer-turned-mega-philanthropist Bill Gates has long had a knack for making spookily accurate predictions, having foreseen everything from social media and smartphones to price comparison sites. We peer into the future via the Microsoft cofounder's crystal ball and reveal the 10 technologies he believes will soon change the world and when we might expect them.
Slide show:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/topstor ... ut#image=1
Take a look into the future
The MIT Technology Review couldn't have asked for a more on the money seer to compile its latest list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies. Computer pioneer-turned-mega-philanthropist Bill Gates has long had a knack for making spookily accurate predictions, having foreseen everything from social media and smartphones to price comparison sites. We peer into the future via the Microsoft cofounder's crystal ball and reveal the 10 technologies he believes will soon change the world and when we might expect them.
Slide show:
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/topstor ... ut#image=1
Industry 4.0 and future trends
While each of the industrial revolutions were significant in their own right, Industry 4.0 is seen as more profoundly impacting human life, blurring the lines between physical, digital, and biological.
It’s become an oft repeated cliché that we live in times of exponential change, driven by disruptive technologies, shifting global politics, changing human behaviour, and newly emerging social norms. And yet, as we enter the era of the fourth industrial revolution, we may be witnessing the greatest amount of change ever seen in a single human lifetime.
Some of us may have heard of the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ or ‘Industry 4.0’. But what is it exactly, and why does it truly matter?
The history of industrial revolutions can be classified into four broad waves:
Industry 1.0: Driven by steam power and mechanisation in the late 18th / early 19th century, this was the ‘railroad’ era and a time when the rise of factories led to a production boom.
Industry 2.0: The late 19th / early 20th century was the era when pioneers like Henry Ford inspired mass-produced automobiles, and electricity started changing our lives.
Industry 3.0: Since the 1960s, the development of radio technology acquired industrial scale and later grew into the world wide web and mobile technologies. This in turn, led to an electronics boom, the shrinking of time and distance, and creating a ‘Global Village’. The 3.0 era soon expanded beyond information, communication and technology (ICT) to encompass almost every aspect of our life - from how we consume media to how we shop or search for goods and services, and even how we connect with friends. And all this happened in approximately 25 years.
Industry 4.0: As ICT becomes near pervasive, with 70 percent Internet penetration and 60 percent mobile coverage, we are now entering what experts call the Industry 4.0 era, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and tech users.
While each of the industrial revolutions were significant in their own right, Industry 4.0 is seen as more profoundly impacting human life, blurring the lines between physical, digital, and biological.
If the first three waves were about augmented physical strength (horses vs. steam engines/automobiles, machines vs human held tools) or organic enablers (electricity vs oil lamps), Industry 4.0 is supplementing our brains themselves via human-machine systems and AI. Thus the term ‘cognitive computing.’
The zenith of this wave, as outlined by futurists, is the eventual ‘singularity,’ where human and cyber systems are expected to be so intricately and inextricably linked that it will be almost impossible to distinguish one from the other. While full singularity is still some time away (futurists such as Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil have predicted it by 2045), several intermediate breakthroughs will continue to change the way we learn, earn, engage, and live life itself.
So, what will be the guiding principles of this fourth industrial revolution? Here are four areas:
Increasing Decentralisation and democratisation: As opposed to a time when the power was in the hands of a few industrial giants, developments like 3D printers are democratising manufacturing. The most profound development has been digital currencies, which don’t need to be issued by a central bank, but instead, are created, distributed, and governed by complex algorithms on the Internet.
Increasing Demonetisation: Things are becoming more convenient as we move from ownership to a sharing model. Examples of these include ride-sharing (Uber, Grab, Ola), bike sharing, home sharing (Airbnb), used product sharing (Shopee), etc.
Increasing Digitisation: If the Internet was driven by connected computers and mobile devices, the next wave will be powered by 50 billion connected devices, enabled by 5G networks. Homes will become ‘smart,’ automobiles will become driverless autonomous vehicles (AVs) and everything physical - our homes, cities, offices, transport, etc. will become hyper connected. Artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and augmented reality will further change the way we all live.
Increasing Disintermediation: Driven by the above forces, we may see exponential disintermediation, where the role of the ‘middleman’- from service providers to central banks to distributors - will radically change and gradually disappear.
The above four trends could have profound consequences, and impact every aspect of our lives. Policy makers will have to prepare for workforce up-skilling and overhauling education systems. Everything from privacy to relationships to the very definition of ‘morality’ may have to adapt to this era.
And what do these dramatic changes mean for the Jamat worldwide? How can we try and stay ahead of the curve? Here are some simple, actionable suggestions:
Read, research, explore: Today, formal education isn’t enough. Younger members of the Jamat are encouraged to proactively read industry blogs, journals, and articles which discuss current trends and various aspects of Industry 4.0 as it evolves. Ongoing education is key. For decades, Mawlana Hazar Imam has been encouraging the Jamat to engage in the practice of lifelong learning.
Today, more than ever, understanding global trends is important, since changes reach all corners of the globe rapidly. Attending seminars, conferences, and webinars for individual up-skilling is becoming essential.
Finally, we need to help each other out, in the spirit of Islam and its message of brotherhood and sisterhood. Mawlana Hazar Imam has often spoken about working together, forming partnerships and alliances. Whatever we try and do, many will be impacted. So we need to open our hearts, minds, networks, and knowledge-base for more vulnerable sections of society, and help others where we can.
https://the.ismaili/our-stories/industr ... ure-trends
While each of the industrial revolutions were significant in their own right, Industry 4.0 is seen as more profoundly impacting human life, blurring the lines between physical, digital, and biological.
It’s become an oft repeated cliché that we live in times of exponential change, driven by disruptive technologies, shifting global politics, changing human behaviour, and newly emerging social norms. And yet, as we enter the era of the fourth industrial revolution, we may be witnessing the greatest amount of change ever seen in a single human lifetime.
Some of us may have heard of the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ or ‘Industry 4.0’. But what is it exactly, and why does it truly matter?
The history of industrial revolutions can be classified into four broad waves:
Industry 1.0: Driven by steam power and mechanisation in the late 18th / early 19th century, this was the ‘railroad’ era and a time when the rise of factories led to a production boom.
Industry 2.0: The late 19th / early 20th century was the era when pioneers like Henry Ford inspired mass-produced automobiles, and electricity started changing our lives.
Industry 3.0: Since the 1960s, the development of radio technology acquired industrial scale and later grew into the world wide web and mobile technologies. This in turn, led to an electronics boom, the shrinking of time and distance, and creating a ‘Global Village’. The 3.0 era soon expanded beyond information, communication and technology (ICT) to encompass almost every aspect of our life - from how we consume media to how we shop or search for goods and services, and even how we connect with friends. And all this happened in approximately 25 years.
Industry 4.0: As ICT becomes near pervasive, with 70 percent Internet penetration and 60 percent mobile coverage, we are now entering what experts call the Industry 4.0 era, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and tech users.
While each of the industrial revolutions were significant in their own right, Industry 4.0 is seen as more profoundly impacting human life, blurring the lines between physical, digital, and biological.
If the first three waves were about augmented physical strength (horses vs. steam engines/automobiles, machines vs human held tools) or organic enablers (electricity vs oil lamps), Industry 4.0 is supplementing our brains themselves via human-machine systems and AI. Thus the term ‘cognitive computing.’
The zenith of this wave, as outlined by futurists, is the eventual ‘singularity,’ where human and cyber systems are expected to be so intricately and inextricably linked that it will be almost impossible to distinguish one from the other. While full singularity is still some time away (futurists such as Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil have predicted it by 2045), several intermediate breakthroughs will continue to change the way we learn, earn, engage, and live life itself.
So, what will be the guiding principles of this fourth industrial revolution? Here are four areas:
Increasing Decentralisation and democratisation: As opposed to a time when the power was in the hands of a few industrial giants, developments like 3D printers are democratising manufacturing. The most profound development has been digital currencies, which don’t need to be issued by a central bank, but instead, are created, distributed, and governed by complex algorithms on the Internet.
Increasing Demonetisation: Things are becoming more convenient as we move from ownership to a sharing model. Examples of these include ride-sharing (Uber, Grab, Ola), bike sharing, home sharing (Airbnb), used product sharing (Shopee), etc.
Increasing Digitisation: If the Internet was driven by connected computers and mobile devices, the next wave will be powered by 50 billion connected devices, enabled by 5G networks. Homes will become ‘smart,’ automobiles will become driverless autonomous vehicles (AVs) and everything physical - our homes, cities, offices, transport, etc. will become hyper connected. Artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and augmented reality will further change the way we all live.
Increasing Disintermediation: Driven by the above forces, we may see exponential disintermediation, where the role of the ‘middleman’- from service providers to central banks to distributors - will radically change and gradually disappear.
The above four trends could have profound consequences, and impact every aspect of our lives. Policy makers will have to prepare for workforce up-skilling and overhauling education systems. Everything from privacy to relationships to the very definition of ‘morality’ may have to adapt to this era.
And what do these dramatic changes mean for the Jamat worldwide? How can we try and stay ahead of the curve? Here are some simple, actionable suggestions:
Read, research, explore: Today, formal education isn’t enough. Younger members of the Jamat are encouraged to proactively read industry blogs, journals, and articles which discuss current trends and various aspects of Industry 4.0 as it evolves. Ongoing education is key. For decades, Mawlana Hazar Imam has been encouraging the Jamat to engage in the practice of lifelong learning.
Today, more than ever, understanding global trends is important, since changes reach all corners of the globe rapidly. Attending seminars, conferences, and webinars for individual up-skilling is becoming essential.
Finally, we need to help each other out, in the spirit of Islam and its message of brotherhood and sisterhood. Mawlana Hazar Imam has often spoken about working together, forming partnerships and alliances. Whatever we try and do, many will be impacted. So we need to open our hearts, minds, networks, and knowledge-base for more vulnerable sections of society, and help others where we can.
https://the.ismaili/our-stories/industr ... ure-trends
This is what Elon Musk and Jack Ma believe is the biggest problem the world will face
When it comes to the future of humanity, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Alibaba founder Jack Ma disagree on whether people should be scared by the potential of artificial intelligence. Ma is optimistic about AI, while Musk is more apocalyptic. But the two billionaire businessmen do agree on the biggest problem the world will face in the future: not enough people.
“Most people think we have too many people on the planet, but actually, this is an outdated view,” Musk said while on stage with Ma at at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai on Wednesday. “Assuming there is a benevolent future with AI, I think the biggest problem the world will face in 20 years is population collapse.”
“The biggest issue in 20 years will be population collapse. Not explosion. Collapse.”
“I absolutely agree with that,” Ma said. “The population problem is going to be facing huge challenge. 1.4 billion people in China sounds a lot, but I think next 20 years, we will see this thing will bring big trouble to China. And … the speed of population decrease is going to speed up. You called it a ‘collapse,’” he said to Musk. “I agree with you.”
“Yeah, accelerating collapse,” Musk said.
Fears of overpopulation due to immigration are short-sighted, according to Musk. “The common rebuttal is like, ‘Well what about immigration?’ I’m like, ‘From where?’”
For the first time in modern history, the world’s population is expected to virtually stop growing by the end of this century, due in large part to falling global fertility rates. https://pewrsr.ch/2wY6vu3 World population growth is expected to nearly stop by 2100For the first time in modern history, the world’s population is expected to virtually stop growing by the end of this century.pewresearch.org9510:27 AM – Jul 19, 2019Twitter Ads info and privacy77 people are talking about this
Musk and Ma may be aggressive with their time frame, but by 2070, the global fertility rate is expected to fall below the global replacement fertility rate — that’s the average number of children each woman needs to give birth to for the population to replace itself from one generation to the next — according to a recent analysis of United Nations global population data from the Pew Research Center. The current global replacement rate is 2.1 births. The current global fertility rate is 2.5, but is expected to fall to 1.9 by 2100.
Fertility rates vary widely, but Africa is the only global region expected to have “strong population growth” through 2100. Populations in Europe and Latin America are projected to be declining by 2100. Asia’s population is projected to increase though 2055 and then begin to decline, according to Pew.
https://www.cnbcafrica.com/zdnl-mc/2019 ... will-face/
When it comes to the future of humanity, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Alibaba founder Jack Ma disagree on whether people should be scared by the potential of artificial intelligence. Ma is optimistic about AI, while Musk is more apocalyptic. But the two billionaire businessmen do agree on the biggest problem the world will face in the future: not enough people.
“Most people think we have too many people on the planet, but actually, this is an outdated view,” Musk said while on stage with Ma at at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai on Wednesday. “Assuming there is a benevolent future with AI, I think the biggest problem the world will face in 20 years is population collapse.”
“The biggest issue in 20 years will be population collapse. Not explosion. Collapse.”
“I absolutely agree with that,” Ma said. “The population problem is going to be facing huge challenge. 1.4 billion people in China sounds a lot, but I think next 20 years, we will see this thing will bring big trouble to China. And … the speed of population decrease is going to speed up. You called it a ‘collapse,’” he said to Musk. “I agree with you.”
“Yeah, accelerating collapse,” Musk said.
Fears of overpopulation due to immigration are short-sighted, according to Musk. “The common rebuttal is like, ‘Well what about immigration?’ I’m like, ‘From where?’”
For the first time in modern history, the world’s population is expected to virtually stop growing by the end of this century, due in large part to falling global fertility rates. https://pewrsr.ch/2wY6vu3 World population growth is expected to nearly stop by 2100For the first time in modern history, the world’s population is expected to virtually stop growing by the end of this century.pewresearch.org9510:27 AM – Jul 19, 2019Twitter Ads info and privacy77 people are talking about this
Musk and Ma may be aggressive with their time frame, but by 2070, the global fertility rate is expected to fall below the global replacement fertility rate — that’s the average number of children each woman needs to give birth to for the population to replace itself from one generation to the next — according to a recent analysis of United Nations global population data from the Pew Research Center. The current global replacement rate is 2.1 births. The current global fertility rate is 2.5, but is expected to fall to 1.9 by 2100.
Fertility rates vary widely, but Africa is the only global region expected to have “strong population growth” through 2100. Populations in Europe and Latin America are projected to be declining by 2100. Asia’s population is projected to increase though 2055 and then begin to decline, according to Pew.
https://www.cnbcafrica.com/zdnl-mc/2019 ... will-face/
Coronavirus will change the world. It might also lead to a better future
Thomas Homer-Dixon holds a University Research Chair in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo and is executive director of the soon-to-be announced Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University. His new book, Commanding Hope: The Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril, will be published in August.
What a difference seven days make. Shopping for groceries at a big box store near Victoria during the last week of February, I found nothing amiss. Shelves were well-stocked, people’s carts contained the regular assortment of necessities and goodies, and everyone seemed to be happily going about their daily lives.
A week later, I stood in front of the same shelves, expecting to find them filled with the usual staples – flour, pulses, sugar and the like. But they’d been stripped bare. Now, shopping carts were groaning under giant bags of potatoes, stacks of packages of frozen chicken and large jugs of water. People kept their distance from each other in the aisles. No one was smiling.
Four days earlier, news had broken that the novel coronavirus had been spreading undetected for six weeks in King County in Washington State, just spitting distance across the water from Vancouver Island. Suddenly, what had seemed to be a remote problem was right in our back yard. And people rushed to prepare.
The coronavirus emergency is going to manifest itself in these kinds of micro-details in our day-to-day lives – in bare shelves, anxious conversation with friends, and the trials of juggling life’s essential tasks and making ends meet when workplaces and schools are closed. But we should also take some time to see the larger picture, because this global health crisis is revealing critical vulnerabilities in humanity’s planet-spanning economic, social and technological systems.
This larger picture is mostly painted in dark hues, but there are also some surprising silver linings around the coronavirus clouds swirling on our horizon.
What’s happening in response to the worldwide spread of the SARS CoV-2 virus (and COVID-19, the disease it causes) is a vivid example of a global “tipping event,” in which multiple social systems flip simultaneously to a distinctly new state.
The most recent event of this kind was the 2008-09 financial crisis. It marked an abrupt shift in the world economy from a state of relatively high growth and modest inflation to a state of much lower growth flirting with deflation. The world economy has never returned to its pre-2008 state.
The relatively new science of complex systems shows that such tipping events are made more likely by the unprecedented connectivity in the networks that humanity has laid down in a dense web across Earth’s surface – air traffic, financial, energy, manufacturing, food distribution, shipping and communication networks, to name just a few.
This science also shows that until we manage this connectivity better – which could mean, among other changes, reducing our international travel, simplifying global supply chains and bringing some production processes closer to home – we’re likely to experience more frequent tipping events of ever-higher destructive force.
More...
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion ... VgMaFxFnIY
Thomas Homer-Dixon holds a University Research Chair in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo and is executive director of the soon-to-be announced Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University. His new book, Commanding Hope: The Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril, will be published in August.
What a difference seven days make. Shopping for groceries at a big box store near Victoria during the last week of February, I found nothing amiss. Shelves were well-stocked, people’s carts contained the regular assortment of necessities and goodies, and everyone seemed to be happily going about their daily lives.
A week later, I stood in front of the same shelves, expecting to find them filled with the usual staples – flour, pulses, sugar and the like. But they’d been stripped bare. Now, shopping carts were groaning under giant bags of potatoes, stacks of packages of frozen chicken and large jugs of water. People kept their distance from each other in the aisles. No one was smiling.
Four days earlier, news had broken that the novel coronavirus had been spreading undetected for six weeks in King County in Washington State, just spitting distance across the water from Vancouver Island. Suddenly, what had seemed to be a remote problem was right in our back yard. And people rushed to prepare.
The coronavirus emergency is going to manifest itself in these kinds of micro-details in our day-to-day lives – in bare shelves, anxious conversation with friends, and the trials of juggling life’s essential tasks and making ends meet when workplaces and schools are closed. But we should also take some time to see the larger picture, because this global health crisis is revealing critical vulnerabilities in humanity’s planet-spanning economic, social and technological systems.
This larger picture is mostly painted in dark hues, but there are also some surprising silver linings around the coronavirus clouds swirling on our horizon.
What’s happening in response to the worldwide spread of the SARS CoV-2 virus (and COVID-19, the disease it causes) is a vivid example of a global “tipping event,” in which multiple social systems flip simultaneously to a distinctly new state.
The most recent event of this kind was the 2008-09 financial crisis. It marked an abrupt shift in the world economy from a state of relatively high growth and modest inflation to a state of much lower growth flirting with deflation. The world economy has never returned to its pre-2008 state.
The relatively new science of complex systems shows that such tipping events are made more likely by the unprecedented connectivity in the networks that humanity has laid down in a dense web across Earth’s surface – air traffic, financial, energy, manufacturing, food distribution, shipping and communication networks, to name just a few.
This science also shows that until we manage this connectivity better – which could mean, among other changes, reducing our international travel, simplifying global supply chains and bringing some production processes closer to home – we’re likely to experience more frequent tipping events of ever-higher destructive force.
More...
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion ... VgMaFxFnIY
It’s 2022. What Does Life Look Like?
The pandemic could shape the world, much as World War II and the Great Depression did.
It’s 2022, and the coronavirus has at long last been defeated. After a miserable year-and-a-half, alternating between lockdowns and new outbreaks, life can finally begin returning to normal.
But it will not be the old normal. It will be a new world, with a reshaped economy, much as war and depression reordered life for previous generations.
Thousands of stores and companies that were vulnerable before the virus arrived have disappeared. Dozens of colleges are shutting down, in the first wave of closures in the history of American higher education. People have also changed long-held patterns of behavior: Outdoor socializing is in, business trips are out.
And American politics — while still divided in many of the same ways it was before the virus — has entered a new era.
All of this, obviously, is conjecture. The future is unknowable. But the pandemic increasingly looks like one of the defining events of our time. The best-case scenarios are now out of reach, and the United States is suffering through a new virus surge that’s worse than in any other country.
With help from economists, politicians and business executives, I have tried to imagine what a post-Covid economy may look like. One message I heard is that the course of the virus itself will play the biggest role in the medium term. If scientific breakthroughs come quickly and the virus is largely defeated this year, there may not be many permanent changes to everyday life.
On the other hand, if a vaccine remains out of reach for years, the long-term changes could be truly profound. Any industry that depends on close human contact would be at risk.
Large swaths of the cruise-ship and theme-park industries might go away. So could many movie theaters and minor-league baseball teams. The long-predicted demise of the traditional department store would finally come to pass. Thousands of restaurants would be wiped out (even if they would eventually be replaced by different restaurants).
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/opin ... 778d3e6de3
The pandemic could shape the world, much as World War II and the Great Depression did.
It’s 2022, and the coronavirus has at long last been defeated. After a miserable year-and-a-half, alternating between lockdowns and new outbreaks, life can finally begin returning to normal.
But it will not be the old normal. It will be a new world, with a reshaped economy, much as war and depression reordered life for previous generations.
Thousands of stores and companies that were vulnerable before the virus arrived have disappeared. Dozens of colleges are shutting down, in the first wave of closures in the history of American higher education. People have also changed long-held patterns of behavior: Outdoor socializing is in, business trips are out.
And American politics — while still divided in many of the same ways it was before the virus — has entered a new era.
All of this, obviously, is conjecture. The future is unknowable. But the pandemic increasingly looks like one of the defining events of our time. The best-case scenarios are now out of reach, and the United States is suffering through a new virus surge that’s worse than in any other country.
With help from economists, politicians and business executives, I have tried to imagine what a post-Covid economy may look like. One message I heard is that the course of the virus itself will play the biggest role in the medium term. If scientific breakthroughs come quickly and the virus is largely defeated this year, there may not be many permanent changes to everyday life.
On the other hand, if a vaccine remains out of reach for years, the long-term changes could be truly profound. Any industry that depends on close human contact would be at risk.
Large swaths of the cruise-ship and theme-park industries might go away. So could many movie theaters and minor-league baseball teams. The long-predicted demise of the traditional department store would finally come to pass. Thousands of restaurants would be wiped out (even if they would eventually be replaced by different restaurants).
More...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/10/opin ... 778d3e6de3
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A Universe Never Reveals Its True Age, So We Will
Caroline Delbert
Popular MechanicsJuly 16, 2020, 4:57 PM
Photo credit: Sellwell - Getty Images
Photo credit: Sellwell - Getty Images
From Popular Mechanics
Dozens of scientists have worked on new research confirming the age of the universe.
The cosmology community wobbled last year with news of a rogue estimate, but new evidence confirms the previous number.
Researchers used telescope data to corroborate information about cosmic background radiation.
New research confirms the “standard” age of the universe: about 13.8 billion years. Pretty old!
The new revelation follows a 2019 swerve by researchers who insisted the real age is hundreds of millions of years lower. A team of scientists has uploaded a series of papers to arXiv, ahead of any later publication, detailing findings from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile’s Atacama Desert.
“The ACT research team is an international collaboration of scientists from 41 institutions in seven countries,” participating Stony Brook University said in a statement. All of the scientists collaborate in huge groups on papers released using ACT data, including, just this year, a handful of papers ranging from studies of ambient microwaves to high-resolution mapping to measurements of light itself.
In the new paper Stony Brook highlights, led by theoretical cosmologist and physicist Neelima Sehgal, scientists use the light racing across the universe to wind back the clock, tracing the age of the light and backforming an image of the incipient universe. Like approaching absolute zero, scientists chip away at the Big Bang by extremely tiny increments that move closer and closer to their asymptote-like goal.
In this case, using ACT to examine the cosmic microwave background (CMB), an age-old ambient radiation that fills the entire universe, can help scientists fill in that original picture. And in this particular analysis, the scientists used ACT’s powerful observation to screen and assemble a new dataset to study CMB.
To do that, they used complex mathematics to filter out an extraordinary amount of cosmic noise. And all of it was enabled by the sheer power of the ACT in the first place.
Within cosmological research communities, scientists who especially study the CMB have disagreed over what the best metric is to extract CMB data. The researchers explain:
“Here and in A20 we present a significant step toward addressing the tensions with a new precise measurement with much of the weight of the parameter determination coming from the CMB’s polarization and its correlation with temperature as opposed to its temperature anisotropy.”
With a larger and more precise observational tool, they can tune a finer and more precise metric that relies less on anisotropy—the way CMB changes along axes of observation—and more on temperature and polarization.
Photo credit: getty
Photo credit: getty
Polarization, as a studied phenomenon with CMB, dates back to just 2002 and doesn’t replace so much as it supplements the study of anisotropy within the universe. Polarization, scientists believe, is a symptom of the universe inflation that also explains anisotropy.
In that sense, shifting from a model that relies on anisotropy measures to one that also examines polarization means the whole measurement can get closer to the source.
This is a realization of one of ACT’s major goals, in fact. ACT’s position in Chile gives it a clear view of half the sky, and the observatory accumulates data every day. Now, that enormous pool of data can be compared to that of a major CMB-mapping satellite, Planck, launched by the European Space Agency in 2009.
“[ACT’s] primary goal is to make maps of the CMB temperature anisotropy and polarization at angular scales and sensitivities that complement those of the WMAP and Planck satellites,” the researchers explain. And, it turns out, they’re in broad agreement—with a lot more to continue to study.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/un ... 00112.html
Caroline Delbert
Popular MechanicsJuly 16, 2020, 4:57 PM
Photo credit: Sellwell - Getty Images
Photo credit: Sellwell - Getty Images
From Popular Mechanics
Dozens of scientists have worked on new research confirming the age of the universe.
The cosmology community wobbled last year with news of a rogue estimate, but new evidence confirms the previous number.
Researchers used telescope data to corroborate information about cosmic background radiation.
New research confirms the “standard” age of the universe: about 13.8 billion years. Pretty old!
The new revelation follows a 2019 swerve by researchers who insisted the real age is hundreds of millions of years lower. A team of scientists has uploaded a series of papers to arXiv, ahead of any later publication, detailing findings from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile’s Atacama Desert.
“The ACT research team is an international collaboration of scientists from 41 institutions in seven countries,” participating Stony Brook University said in a statement. All of the scientists collaborate in huge groups on papers released using ACT data, including, just this year, a handful of papers ranging from studies of ambient microwaves to high-resolution mapping to measurements of light itself.
In the new paper Stony Brook highlights, led by theoretical cosmologist and physicist Neelima Sehgal, scientists use the light racing across the universe to wind back the clock, tracing the age of the light and backforming an image of the incipient universe. Like approaching absolute zero, scientists chip away at the Big Bang by extremely tiny increments that move closer and closer to their asymptote-like goal.
In this case, using ACT to examine the cosmic microwave background (CMB), an age-old ambient radiation that fills the entire universe, can help scientists fill in that original picture. And in this particular analysis, the scientists used ACT’s powerful observation to screen and assemble a new dataset to study CMB.
To do that, they used complex mathematics to filter out an extraordinary amount of cosmic noise. And all of it was enabled by the sheer power of the ACT in the first place.
Within cosmological research communities, scientists who especially study the CMB have disagreed over what the best metric is to extract CMB data. The researchers explain:
“Here and in A20 we present a significant step toward addressing the tensions with a new precise measurement with much of the weight of the parameter determination coming from the CMB’s polarization and its correlation with temperature as opposed to its temperature anisotropy.”
With a larger and more precise observational tool, they can tune a finer and more precise metric that relies less on anisotropy—the way CMB changes along axes of observation—and more on temperature and polarization.
Photo credit: getty
Photo credit: getty
Polarization, as a studied phenomenon with CMB, dates back to just 2002 and doesn’t replace so much as it supplements the study of anisotropy within the universe. Polarization, scientists believe, is a symptom of the universe inflation that also explains anisotropy.
In that sense, shifting from a model that relies on anisotropy measures to one that also examines polarization means the whole measurement can get closer to the source.
This is a realization of one of ACT’s major goals, in fact. ACT’s position in Chile gives it a clear view of half the sky, and the observatory accumulates data every day. Now, that enormous pool of data can be compared to that of a major CMB-mapping satellite, Planck, launched by the European Space Agency in 2009.
“[ACT’s] primary goal is to make maps of the CMB temperature anisotropy and polarization at angular scales and sensitivities that complement those of the WMAP and Planck satellites,” the researchers explain. And, it turns out, they’re in broad agreement—with a lot more to continue to study.
https://currently.att.yahoo.com/news/un ... 00112.html
He Predicted Trump’s Win in 2016. Now He’s Ready to Call 2020.
Featuring Allan Lichtman•August 5, 2020
Most historians just study the past. But Allan Lichtman has successfully predicted the future.
Watch video at:
https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/1 ... 778d3e6de3
Featuring Allan Lichtman•August 5, 2020
Most historians just study the past. But Allan Lichtman has successfully predicted the future.
Watch video at:
https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/1 ... 778d3e6de3
The After Time
The future of civilization after Covid-19
As I write on these late days of the summer of 2020, it often feels like our civilization has morphed into a Herman Melville novel in which …
All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.
Who would not be maddened and tormented by the images and stories coming out of intensive care units where Covid-19 patients gasp out their final breaths as loved ones watch remotely, unable even to bid a final farewell? Who hasn’t experienced cracked sinews and caked brains from months of being isolated with our thoughts, our voices masked, our social movements regulated?
As we peer into the distant horizon, the seeing becomes misty, clarity clouded in the fog of uncertainty. What will 2020 mean in 2030? Or 2050? Or 2120? Even that class of seer known as superforecasters, those trained in the dark arts of Bayesian reasoning and big-data analysis, do no better than chance when they look more than five years out. And I’m no superforecaster. Called upon to forecast the future of our civilization, I feel like Will and Ariel Durant, who in their short volume The Lessons of History (1968) began: “It is a precarious enterprise, and only a fool would try to compress a hundred centuries into a hundred pages of hazardous conclusions. We proceed.”
THE BEFORE TIME AND THE AFTER TIME
In a 1966 episode of Star Trek titled “Miri,” the prepubescent heroine of the story explains to a flummoxed Captain Kirk what happened on her planet in which all the Grups (grownups) were dead, leaving the Onlies (children) to fend for themselves: “That was when they started to get sick in the Before Time. We hid, then they were gone.” According to linguist Ben Zimmer, who has traced the phrase’s etymology, the Before Time often represents a pre-plague world, and the expression has a literary history at least as old as the King James Bible, in which the author of the Book of Samuel writes: “Beforetime in Israel, when a man went to enquire of God, thus he spake, Come, and let us go to the seer: for he that is now called a Prophet was beforetime called a Seer.” The locution has been resurrected in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, as when Atlantic columnist Marina Koren wrote of “the exacerbated sense that the days before the coronavirus swept across the country—the ‘Before Time,’ as many have taken to calling it—feel like a bygone era.”
If there is a Before Time describing a pre-postapocalyptic world, there is also an After Time onto which we may prophesize what happens after the world ends. Although troubling times are often tagged apocalyptic, invoking the complete and final destruction of the world, the word’s original Greek meaning was “revelation,” or “an unveiling or unfolding of things not previously known and which could not be known apart from the unveiling.” It is in this sense that I want to turn toward what this period may unveil, if we can see through the barriers blocking prognostication. There is a reason why, as Yogi Berra quipped, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” I will mention four.
The first is the availability heuristic, which holds that we assign probabilities of potential outcomes based on examples that are immediately available to us, especially if they are emotionally salient and easy to visualize. Your estimation of the probability of dying in a plane crash, for example, will be directly related to your exposure to stories about air disasters. The second is the negativity bias that directs our attention to threats more than treats, negative stimuli more than positive. The third was identified by Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner in their 2015 book, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction, in which most so-called experts were no better than dart-tossing monkeys when their predictions were checked. They were overconfident, encouraged by the lack of feedback on their accuracy (also known as confirmation bias), and, despite the scientific veneer, are victims of all the cognitive biases and illusions that plague the rest of us. The fourth, and arguably the biggest impediment to prediction, is that the world is highly contingent and chaotic, and at certain inflection points, the course of history can be nudged out of one pathway and into another by seemingly small and random events, but these are very difficult to predict.
The question is, are these factors distorting our evaluation of the events of 2020? Does the Covid-19 pandemic constitute a nudge sufficiently powerful to knock society into entirely new pathways, or will it be washed over by the tides of history as we continue on with business as usual?
Most salubrious changes in society come about incrementally through established institutions, not through violent revolution or disruptive upheavals of change. In my 2015 book, The Moral Arc, I tracked centuries of progress in domains ranging from politics to economics, civil rights to criminal justice, war to civility, governance to violent crime, with a number of stops along the way. In nearly every case, the evidence demonstrated that gradual, step-wise problem-solving is by far the most successful strategy in creating a safer and more equitable society. Will that trend continue through this pandemic and into a post-Covid-19 world? Let’s consider the possibilities.
SUPERFORECASTING COVID-19
Even the preternaturally prescient Anthony Fauci can’t really say what the pandemic will do. Much depends on how the virus evolves, either mutating into a less virulent strain, or (less likely) an even deadlier variety. So far the virus has exhibited few genetic changes since it first emerged in December 2019, which is good news for vaccine developers. And death rates per infection are declining, which makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, since it’s better for the virus that it not kill its hosts too quickly before they can spread it to other hosts—especially if they are infected but symptom-free for weeks, which also appears to be happening.
If a vaccine is developed, produced, and distributed globally to billions of people within the next 12 to 18 months, as some optimists hope, then it is possible that life could return to relative normality. Good reasons exist to think that this might happen, given the number of government agencies and public and private corporations working on it. Then again, there are plenty of deadly viruses, like HIV, for which there is still no vaccine. Or, as with many flu viruses, this one could mutate periodically, requiring the regular development of new vaccines. Or, the anti-vaccination movement could prevent herd immunity from occurring, thereby permitting the virus to continue its spread indefinitely.
Whatever happens, it appears that SARS-CoV-2, or some variant of that virus, will likely never be fully eliminated, as that rarely happens (smallpox being the exception). But even if it were, so many vectors exist out there for other diseases, potentially far deadlier than Covid-19, that we will still need to implement changes to try to mitigate future outbreaks. What, then, might be in store for us in the near and far future?
ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS
The economy will eventually recover, as has happened after every downturn in history, although there are reasonable concerns that runaway inflation—from printing over $2 trillion in aid—could crater the economy. The amount of money being tossed at this crisis is unprecedented, so the prospect of recovery could be delayed for many years. But will it ruin the economy? I don’t think so. As Adam Smith replied to a friend who worried that American independence might ruin Britain’s economy: “There’s a great deal of ruin in a nation.”
Even without the worst-case scenario of devastating inflation, businesses and entire industries that were already on the margin may never recover, including small colleges and universities without robust endowments, midsize churches and other places of worship, smaller newspapers, magazines, and other media companies, as well as the department stores and other retail outlets that shuttered and never reopened. Although this likely outcome will be disastrous for many of the people directly affected, this is not an altogether bad thing for long-term economic health; it’s Austrian political economist Joseph Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” on steroids, accelerating change that clears the way for new and innovative industries to take root and thrive.
Amazon has already capitalized on this process enthusiastically. When new markets open up, competition steps in, so we could see other online retailers, like Walmart and Target, cutting into Mr. Bezos’s empire, and who knows what new technologies are being developed right now in some entrepreneur’s garage that, in the fullness of time, could become the next Apple, Google, or Amazon. Rarely do monopolies reign for long before innovators step in to challenge their dominance. Meanwhile, abandoned department stores, malls, and other buildings could be converted to warehouses, storage units, fitness facilities, medical centers, museums, and even apartments and condominiums, a process that is already beginning. Of the approximately 1,500 malls built in the United States since the 1950s, about 500 have closed. Sixty others have been remodeled into new types of community spaces, including housing and office space, and another 75 are now in some stage of redevelopment. A former mall in Lakewood, Colorado is a case in point. After it closed in 2000, the city and its development associates converted it into a 22-block development with nine acres of urban parks, 300,000 square feet of office space, and condominiums and apartments that house 2,000 people. Continued mall closings could open up new markets for developers.
Universal basic income (UBI) was largely a fringe idea until Andrew Yang promoted it during his 2020 presidential campaign. At the time, few could conceive of the government dispersing checks to tens of millions of people to supplement their income, but that is exactly what happened only a few weeks after he dropped out of the campaign. Depending on the economic outcome of these relief payments, they may be held up as a model for future federal intervention.
Once travel restrictions are lifted and airlines negotiate the most cost-effective way to keep passengers safe, business travel will bounce back from its current state of near nonexistence. But it will likely never again approach pre-Covid levels. Why schlep your atoms around the world when your virtual self can cover most of what constitutes communication?
The entry and regulatory barriers for teleconferencing and remote communication for both established and new companies servicing this new demand will likely decrease as more of our lives move online. Yes, some business still needs to be conducted face to face, but not much, especially now that business contracts and other legal documents can be signed remotely.
In time, medical personnel and patients—first by necessity, then by desire and demand—will turn even more toward telemedicine, virtual reality, and other online tools. Few people will miss the wasted time and energy of driving to the doctor’s office, checking in, and especially waiting—sometimes for hours—for a consultation that lasts, on average, 17 minutes. Most medical procedures cannot be done remotely, but any relief of the burden at either end of the doctor-patient relationship will surely be welcomed.
MARRIAGE, DATING, SEX, AND HOME LIFE
The option to work from home has not been this widespread since medieval craftsmen fashioned shoes and horseshoes in their domiciles. Not only will no one miss sitting in soul-crushing traffic for hours a day, but more time at home and less time on the road could lead to healthier bodies, relationships, and families.
Gender roles could become more fluid and balanced with greater numbers of fathers working from home, giving them more time with their children and allowing for more flexible childcare options for both parents.
Dating has already changed dramatically and some of those changes might stick, such as more careful screening of suitable dating candidates through online dating apps.
As for sex, Millennials were already having less of it than Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers. Thus it is not unreasonable to project that Gen Zers (or iGeners—those born in 1996 or after) will push the trend even further in the direction of greater sexual discretion. Early polling indicates that they are doing just that, along with being more likely to practice safe sex and birth control.
Reading, journaling, meditation, yoga, walking, hiking, cycling, swimming, and other solo activities—all of which are good for physical and mental health and fitness—could increase as temporary trends become habits.
More time at home means more home improvement, from maintenance to remodeling, thereby continuing the DIY movement, along with helping to fill the coffers of big chains like Home Depot and Lowe’s.
More at-home time could also mean more take-out, pick-up, and home delivery of meals that could not only bolster the bottom line of struggling restaurants, but also relieve the daily grind of meal preparation.
ENTERTAINMENT, TRAVEL, AND VACATIONS
Bars, restaurants, night clubs, sports stadiums, theaters, and other high-social density entertainment venues may continue practicing reasonable hygienic measures without too much push-back from customers, although “tight cultures” like Germany and Japan will have an easier time of it than “loose cultures” like Italy and the United States, where citizens are less inclined to follow norms in times of crisis, as tracked by the cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand and amply demonstrated in several states with disastrous results during the summer of 2020.
Airbnb rentals could continue to increase and staycations may become even more popular as people explore their local environs, which could also enhance the quality and maintenance of local public gardens, parks, and recreation spaces. The 650-percent increase in RV rentals during the pandemic could also rejuvenate this slagging industry at all levels of the supply chain.
Movie theaters could go the way of drive-in theaters, whose appeal began to wane in the 1970s as home entertainment systems grew in popularity. Today, with a plethora of cheap online streaming services and high-definition, big-screen TVs, why leave home to sit in a crowded theater with coughing and sneezing strangers? Microwave popcorn is just as tasty as the theater variety and a lot cheaper. And wouldn’t you know it? Drive-in theaters are making a comeback around the country as people seek to get out of the house while remaining safely ensconced in their cars.
EDUCATION
Educational institutions, along with the students and parents who support them, may continue to adopt many of the existing online technologies that help transfer knowledge from one mind to many. After the mid-March shutdown, I recorded the rest of my Chapman University lectures on scientific thinking and made them publicly available for anyone to watch. Why pay tens of thousands of dollars to Harvard when you can take Steven Pinker’s course on rationality for free? With thousands of other free online university courses developed over the past decade (e.g., MOOCs), plus for-profit educational businesses like The Great Courses, and the many popular podcasts from which to choose, becoming an autodidact has never been easier or cheaper.
Not all education can be conducted online: lab classes will need to be done in person, and videoconference discussions for seminars are no substitute for in-class conversations that ricochet around the room guided by nonverbal cues. So expect some hybrid classroom models to develop.
The bloated budgets and corresponding tuition hikes of higher education might finally be curtailed as disgruntled students (and parents) vote with their dollars for more economical choices. College tuition has increased faster than almost anything over the past half century. The reasons include a spike in demand over the decades (now waning for demographic reasons), a greater need for financial aid, a decline in state funding for public colleges and universities, and ever-swelling administrative and student services staffs. Under pressure from many sides both pre- and post-Covid, the academy will have to trim some of the fat off that brisket.
POLITICS AND SOCIETY
The practice of U.S. senators and representatives conducting congressional business remotely will not only better serve the people they represent, but reduce the governmental waste spent on travel, housing, and all the rest that goes into the current system. That Congress is struggling to make this transition is indicative of a system designed in the 18th century. Perhaps the nefarious effects of lobbying will be attenuated when congressmen are not so readily accessible.
It’s time for electronic voting. Trillions of dollars are transacted electronically every year, and although fraud exists, it isn’t enough to force businesses to revert to using paper. Signed ballots? No problem. If you can secure a loan, buy a home, invest in a business, wire money, and buy and sell stocks online, surely casting a vote in an election should be child’s play for security programmers. If Russian and Chinese hackers have not been able to tank the U.S. economy, our elections should be safe, assuming we invest in upgrading our electronic voting systems to the high standards used in business.
Political polarization seemed to decrease for the first couple of months of the pandemic, but as the November presidential election returned to our newsfeeds, we slipped back to where we were at the end of 2019—peak polarization. People and nations sometimes become more united when confronting a common enemy, as the English did during the Nazi Blitz. It remains to be seen if Covid-19 will bring us closer together or drive us farther apart, but so far the signs are discouraging. Time (and the next election) may tell.
A healthier balance between individual freedom and collective action could develop. Many Americans seem to think that wearing a mask infringes on their freedom, although they don’t seem to object to being forced to drive on the right side of the highway, or to restaurants requiring them to wear shoes and shirts for service. The freedom to swing your fist ends at my nose. You’re free to smoke but you are not free to blow it in my face. You’re free to risk contracting Covid-19, but you’re not free to put me at risk. As Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and other pioneers of the social contract explained centuries ago, all of civil society is a tradeoff in which we give up freedom for security.
Gun sales have spiked during Covid-19. Americans purchased 1.9 million firearms in March—the second highest number ever—as fears increased that the pandemic could lead to civil unrest. This will likely abate as panic subsides. Nevertheless, gun violence remains a problem in the United States—one that won’t go away any time soon, and may even become worse, if the spike in gun-related homicides of many U.S. cities is any indication.
PERSONAL AND PUBLIC HEALTH
Handshakes are out and will likely remain so, replaced by fist bumps, elbow taps, and maybe even noncontact greetings like the Japanese bow or the yogi “namaste.” This is a cost-free, easy-to-implement change that may reduce the number of common colds, flus, and other communicable diseases that we all experience and could further a trend, recently documented, in which the average human body temperature has decreased over the past century and a half. Say what?
In January 2020, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine published a study adjusting the old standard of 98.6 Fahrenheit, established by the German physician Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich in 1868, to the new lower figure of 97.9 Fahrenheit. The researchers concluded that the shift is not due to measurement-error corrections but rather reflect a true historical pattern of changes in our environment and lifestyle over the past 157 years. Our bodies are getting cooler, according to the study, because we’re getting sick less often:
Economic development, improved standards of living and sanitation, decreased chronic infections from war injuries, improved dental hygiene, the waning of tuberculosis and malaria infections, and the dawn of the antibiotic age together are likely to have decreased chronic inflammation since the 19th century.
Paradoxically, then, it is possible that Covid-19 will make us even healthier—and cooler—than at any time in our plague-riddled history.
It may seem overly melioristic to spin so many changes in a positive direction while Covid-19 continues to ravage populations, filling the country’s ICUs and morgues. But with history as our guide and rational superforecasting as our method, what I have outlined here may not be entirely off the mark. I, for one, choose to adopt a posture of cautious optimism and look forward to a better future in which we will have learned from the misery of today.
https://theamericanscholar.org/the-afte ... 1GAIchKgU4
The future of civilization after Covid-19
As I write on these late days of the summer of 2020, it often feels like our civilization has morphed into a Herman Melville novel in which …
All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby Dick. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.
Who would not be maddened and tormented by the images and stories coming out of intensive care units where Covid-19 patients gasp out their final breaths as loved ones watch remotely, unable even to bid a final farewell? Who hasn’t experienced cracked sinews and caked brains from months of being isolated with our thoughts, our voices masked, our social movements regulated?
As we peer into the distant horizon, the seeing becomes misty, clarity clouded in the fog of uncertainty. What will 2020 mean in 2030? Or 2050? Or 2120? Even that class of seer known as superforecasters, those trained in the dark arts of Bayesian reasoning and big-data analysis, do no better than chance when they look more than five years out. And I’m no superforecaster. Called upon to forecast the future of our civilization, I feel like Will and Ariel Durant, who in their short volume The Lessons of History (1968) began: “It is a precarious enterprise, and only a fool would try to compress a hundred centuries into a hundred pages of hazardous conclusions. We proceed.”
THE BEFORE TIME AND THE AFTER TIME
In a 1966 episode of Star Trek titled “Miri,” the prepubescent heroine of the story explains to a flummoxed Captain Kirk what happened on her planet in which all the Grups (grownups) were dead, leaving the Onlies (children) to fend for themselves: “That was when they started to get sick in the Before Time. We hid, then they were gone.” According to linguist Ben Zimmer, who has traced the phrase’s etymology, the Before Time often represents a pre-plague world, and the expression has a literary history at least as old as the King James Bible, in which the author of the Book of Samuel writes: “Beforetime in Israel, when a man went to enquire of God, thus he spake, Come, and let us go to the seer: for he that is now called a Prophet was beforetime called a Seer.” The locution has been resurrected in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, as when Atlantic columnist Marina Koren wrote of “the exacerbated sense that the days before the coronavirus swept across the country—the ‘Before Time,’ as many have taken to calling it—feel like a bygone era.”
If there is a Before Time describing a pre-postapocalyptic world, there is also an After Time onto which we may prophesize what happens after the world ends. Although troubling times are often tagged apocalyptic, invoking the complete and final destruction of the world, the word’s original Greek meaning was “revelation,” or “an unveiling or unfolding of things not previously known and which could not be known apart from the unveiling.” It is in this sense that I want to turn toward what this period may unveil, if we can see through the barriers blocking prognostication. There is a reason why, as Yogi Berra quipped, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” I will mention four.
The first is the availability heuristic, which holds that we assign probabilities of potential outcomes based on examples that are immediately available to us, especially if they are emotionally salient and easy to visualize. Your estimation of the probability of dying in a plane crash, for example, will be directly related to your exposure to stories about air disasters. The second is the negativity bias that directs our attention to threats more than treats, negative stimuli more than positive. The third was identified by Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner in their 2015 book, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction, in which most so-called experts were no better than dart-tossing monkeys when their predictions were checked. They were overconfident, encouraged by the lack of feedback on their accuracy (also known as confirmation bias), and, despite the scientific veneer, are victims of all the cognitive biases and illusions that plague the rest of us. The fourth, and arguably the biggest impediment to prediction, is that the world is highly contingent and chaotic, and at certain inflection points, the course of history can be nudged out of one pathway and into another by seemingly small and random events, but these are very difficult to predict.
The question is, are these factors distorting our evaluation of the events of 2020? Does the Covid-19 pandemic constitute a nudge sufficiently powerful to knock society into entirely new pathways, or will it be washed over by the tides of history as we continue on with business as usual?
Most salubrious changes in society come about incrementally through established institutions, not through violent revolution or disruptive upheavals of change. In my 2015 book, The Moral Arc, I tracked centuries of progress in domains ranging from politics to economics, civil rights to criminal justice, war to civility, governance to violent crime, with a number of stops along the way. In nearly every case, the evidence demonstrated that gradual, step-wise problem-solving is by far the most successful strategy in creating a safer and more equitable society. Will that trend continue through this pandemic and into a post-Covid-19 world? Let’s consider the possibilities.
SUPERFORECASTING COVID-19
Even the preternaturally prescient Anthony Fauci can’t really say what the pandemic will do. Much depends on how the virus evolves, either mutating into a less virulent strain, or (less likely) an even deadlier variety. So far the virus has exhibited few genetic changes since it first emerged in December 2019, which is good news for vaccine developers. And death rates per infection are declining, which makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, since it’s better for the virus that it not kill its hosts too quickly before they can spread it to other hosts—especially if they are infected but symptom-free for weeks, which also appears to be happening.
If a vaccine is developed, produced, and distributed globally to billions of people within the next 12 to 18 months, as some optimists hope, then it is possible that life could return to relative normality. Good reasons exist to think that this might happen, given the number of government agencies and public and private corporations working on it. Then again, there are plenty of deadly viruses, like HIV, for which there is still no vaccine. Or, as with many flu viruses, this one could mutate periodically, requiring the regular development of new vaccines. Or, the anti-vaccination movement could prevent herd immunity from occurring, thereby permitting the virus to continue its spread indefinitely.
Whatever happens, it appears that SARS-CoV-2, or some variant of that virus, will likely never be fully eliminated, as that rarely happens (smallpox being the exception). But even if it were, so many vectors exist out there for other diseases, potentially far deadlier than Covid-19, that we will still need to implement changes to try to mitigate future outbreaks. What, then, might be in store for us in the near and far future?
ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS
The economy will eventually recover, as has happened after every downturn in history, although there are reasonable concerns that runaway inflation—from printing over $2 trillion in aid—could crater the economy. The amount of money being tossed at this crisis is unprecedented, so the prospect of recovery could be delayed for many years. But will it ruin the economy? I don’t think so. As Adam Smith replied to a friend who worried that American independence might ruin Britain’s economy: “There’s a great deal of ruin in a nation.”
Even without the worst-case scenario of devastating inflation, businesses and entire industries that were already on the margin may never recover, including small colleges and universities without robust endowments, midsize churches and other places of worship, smaller newspapers, magazines, and other media companies, as well as the department stores and other retail outlets that shuttered and never reopened. Although this likely outcome will be disastrous for many of the people directly affected, this is not an altogether bad thing for long-term economic health; it’s Austrian political economist Joseph Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” on steroids, accelerating change that clears the way for new and innovative industries to take root and thrive.
Amazon has already capitalized on this process enthusiastically. When new markets open up, competition steps in, so we could see other online retailers, like Walmart and Target, cutting into Mr. Bezos’s empire, and who knows what new technologies are being developed right now in some entrepreneur’s garage that, in the fullness of time, could become the next Apple, Google, or Amazon. Rarely do monopolies reign for long before innovators step in to challenge their dominance. Meanwhile, abandoned department stores, malls, and other buildings could be converted to warehouses, storage units, fitness facilities, medical centers, museums, and even apartments and condominiums, a process that is already beginning. Of the approximately 1,500 malls built in the United States since the 1950s, about 500 have closed. Sixty others have been remodeled into new types of community spaces, including housing and office space, and another 75 are now in some stage of redevelopment. A former mall in Lakewood, Colorado is a case in point. After it closed in 2000, the city and its development associates converted it into a 22-block development with nine acres of urban parks, 300,000 square feet of office space, and condominiums and apartments that house 2,000 people. Continued mall closings could open up new markets for developers.
Universal basic income (UBI) was largely a fringe idea until Andrew Yang promoted it during his 2020 presidential campaign. At the time, few could conceive of the government dispersing checks to tens of millions of people to supplement their income, but that is exactly what happened only a few weeks after he dropped out of the campaign. Depending on the economic outcome of these relief payments, they may be held up as a model for future federal intervention.
Once travel restrictions are lifted and airlines negotiate the most cost-effective way to keep passengers safe, business travel will bounce back from its current state of near nonexistence. But it will likely never again approach pre-Covid levels. Why schlep your atoms around the world when your virtual self can cover most of what constitutes communication?
The entry and regulatory barriers for teleconferencing and remote communication for both established and new companies servicing this new demand will likely decrease as more of our lives move online. Yes, some business still needs to be conducted face to face, but not much, especially now that business contracts and other legal documents can be signed remotely.
In time, medical personnel and patients—first by necessity, then by desire and demand—will turn even more toward telemedicine, virtual reality, and other online tools. Few people will miss the wasted time and energy of driving to the doctor’s office, checking in, and especially waiting—sometimes for hours—for a consultation that lasts, on average, 17 minutes. Most medical procedures cannot be done remotely, but any relief of the burden at either end of the doctor-patient relationship will surely be welcomed.
MARRIAGE, DATING, SEX, AND HOME LIFE
The option to work from home has not been this widespread since medieval craftsmen fashioned shoes and horseshoes in their domiciles. Not only will no one miss sitting in soul-crushing traffic for hours a day, but more time at home and less time on the road could lead to healthier bodies, relationships, and families.
Gender roles could become more fluid and balanced with greater numbers of fathers working from home, giving them more time with their children and allowing for more flexible childcare options for both parents.
Dating has already changed dramatically and some of those changes might stick, such as more careful screening of suitable dating candidates through online dating apps.
As for sex, Millennials were already having less of it than Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers. Thus it is not unreasonable to project that Gen Zers (or iGeners—those born in 1996 or after) will push the trend even further in the direction of greater sexual discretion. Early polling indicates that they are doing just that, along with being more likely to practice safe sex and birth control.
Reading, journaling, meditation, yoga, walking, hiking, cycling, swimming, and other solo activities—all of which are good for physical and mental health and fitness—could increase as temporary trends become habits.
More time at home means more home improvement, from maintenance to remodeling, thereby continuing the DIY movement, along with helping to fill the coffers of big chains like Home Depot and Lowe’s.
More at-home time could also mean more take-out, pick-up, and home delivery of meals that could not only bolster the bottom line of struggling restaurants, but also relieve the daily grind of meal preparation.
ENTERTAINMENT, TRAVEL, AND VACATIONS
Bars, restaurants, night clubs, sports stadiums, theaters, and other high-social density entertainment venues may continue practicing reasonable hygienic measures without too much push-back from customers, although “tight cultures” like Germany and Japan will have an easier time of it than “loose cultures” like Italy and the United States, where citizens are less inclined to follow norms in times of crisis, as tracked by the cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand and amply demonstrated in several states with disastrous results during the summer of 2020.
Airbnb rentals could continue to increase and staycations may become even more popular as people explore their local environs, which could also enhance the quality and maintenance of local public gardens, parks, and recreation spaces. The 650-percent increase in RV rentals during the pandemic could also rejuvenate this slagging industry at all levels of the supply chain.
Movie theaters could go the way of drive-in theaters, whose appeal began to wane in the 1970s as home entertainment systems grew in popularity. Today, with a plethora of cheap online streaming services and high-definition, big-screen TVs, why leave home to sit in a crowded theater with coughing and sneezing strangers? Microwave popcorn is just as tasty as the theater variety and a lot cheaper. And wouldn’t you know it? Drive-in theaters are making a comeback around the country as people seek to get out of the house while remaining safely ensconced in their cars.
EDUCATION
Educational institutions, along with the students and parents who support them, may continue to adopt many of the existing online technologies that help transfer knowledge from one mind to many. After the mid-March shutdown, I recorded the rest of my Chapman University lectures on scientific thinking and made them publicly available for anyone to watch. Why pay tens of thousands of dollars to Harvard when you can take Steven Pinker’s course on rationality for free? With thousands of other free online university courses developed over the past decade (e.g., MOOCs), plus for-profit educational businesses like The Great Courses, and the many popular podcasts from which to choose, becoming an autodidact has never been easier or cheaper.
Not all education can be conducted online: lab classes will need to be done in person, and videoconference discussions for seminars are no substitute for in-class conversations that ricochet around the room guided by nonverbal cues. So expect some hybrid classroom models to develop.
The bloated budgets and corresponding tuition hikes of higher education might finally be curtailed as disgruntled students (and parents) vote with their dollars for more economical choices. College tuition has increased faster than almost anything over the past half century. The reasons include a spike in demand over the decades (now waning for demographic reasons), a greater need for financial aid, a decline in state funding for public colleges and universities, and ever-swelling administrative and student services staffs. Under pressure from many sides both pre- and post-Covid, the academy will have to trim some of the fat off that brisket.
POLITICS AND SOCIETY
The practice of U.S. senators and representatives conducting congressional business remotely will not only better serve the people they represent, but reduce the governmental waste spent on travel, housing, and all the rest that goes into the current system. That Congress is struggling to make this transition is indicative of a system designed in the 18th century. Perhaps the nefarious effects of lobbying will be attenuated when congressmen are not so readily accessible.
It’s time for electronic voting. Trillions of dollars are transacted electronically every year, and although fraud exists, it isn’t enough to force businesses to revert to using paper. Signed ballots? No problem. If you can secure a loan, buy a home, invest in a business, wire money, and buy and sell stocks online, surely casting a vote in an election should be child’s play for security programmers. If Russian and Chinese hackers have not been able to tank the U.S. economy, our elections should be safe, assuming we invest in upgrading our electronic voting systems to the high standards used in business.
Political polarization seemed to decrease for the first couple of months of the pandemic, but as the November presidential election returned to our newsfeeds, we slipped back to where we were at the end of 2019—peak polarization. People and nations sometimes become more united when confronting a common enemy, as the English did during the Nazi Blitz. It remains to be seen if Covid-19 will bring us closer together or drive us farther apart, but so far the signs are discouraging. Time (and the next election) may tell.
A healthier balance between individual freedom and collective action could develop. Many Americans seem to think that wearing a mask infringes on their freedom, although they don’t seem to object to being forced to drive on the right side of the highway, or to restaurants requiring them to wear shoes and shirts for service. The freedom to swing your fist ends at my nose. You’re free to smoke but you are not free to blow it in my face. You’re free to risk contracting Covid-19, but you’re not free to put me at risk. As Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and other pioneers of the social contract explained centuries ago, all of civil society is a tradeoff in which we give up freedom for security.
Gun sales have spiked during Covid-19. Americans purchased 1.9 million firearms in March—the second highest number ever—as fears increased that the pandemic could lead to civil unrest. This will likely abate as panic subsides. Nevertheless, gun violence remains a problem in the United States—one that won’t go away any time soon, and may even become worse, if the spike in gun-related homicides of many U.S. cities is any indication.
PERSONAL AND PUBLIC HEALTH
Handshakes are out and will likely remain so, replaced by fist bumps, elbow taps, and maybe even noncontact greetings like the Japanese bow or the yogi “namaste.” This is a cost-free, easy-to-implement change that may reduce the number of common colds, flus, and other communicable diseases that we all experience and could further a trend, recently documented, in which the average human body temperature has decreased over the past century and a half. Say what?
In January 2020, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine published a study adjusting the old standard of 98.6 Fahrenheit, established by the German physician Carl Reinhold August Wunderlich in 1868, to the new lower figure of 97.9 Fahrenheit. The researchers concluded that the shift is not due to measurement-error corrections but rather reflect a true historical pattern of changes in our environment and lifestyle over the past 157 years. Our bodies are getting cooler, according to the study, because we’re getting sick less often:
Economic development, improved standards of living and sanitation, decreased chronic infections from war injuries, improved dental hygiene, the waning of tuberculosis and malaria infections, and the dawn of the antibiotic age together are likely to have decreased chronic inflammation since the 19th century.
Paradoxically, then, it is possible that Covid-19 will make us even healthier—and cooler—than at any time in our plague-riddled history.
It may seem overly melioristic to spin so many changes in a positive direction while Covid-19 continues to ravage populations, filling the country’s ICUs and morgues. But with history as our guide and rational superforecasting as our method, what I have outlined here may not be entirely off the mark. I, for one, choose to adopt a posture of cautious optimism and look forward to a better future in which we will have learned from the misery of today.
https://theamericanscholar.org/the-afte ... 1GAIchKgU4
Say goodbye to globalization as ‘The Age of Disorder’ is coming – Deutsche Bank
10 Sep, 2020 10:02
The four-decade era of globalization may be coming to an end, and we could be entering “The Age of Disorder,” which will reshape both economies and politics, Deutsche Bank analysts have said in a new research note.
One of the key characteristics of the new era will be the reversal of unfettered globalization, a team of analysts led by strategist Jim Reid predicted. While we saw “the best combined asset price growth of any era in history, with equity and bond returns very strong across the board” since 1980, “the Age of Disorder” is likely to break this trend.
Deteriorating US-China relations is another theme (out of eight) that will define the next distinct era of modern times, “which is hastened, but not caused by, the pandemic.” The analysts note that the Chinese economy will be closing the gap with the US and could finally outperform it by the end of the decade.
Coronavirus pandemic could be twice as bad for global economy as WORLD WAR
“A clash of cultures and interests therefore beckons, especially as China grows closer to being the largest economy in the world,” the report says.
Fortunately, this economic standoff is unlikely to trigger a real military conflict between the two states, as usually happens when a rising power tries to challenge the ruling one. Economic war – with tariffs, sanctions, and attacks in the technology sphere – will go on instead, the analysts believe. No matter who wins the 2020 presidential election in the US, the rift between the two superpowers will grow.
READ MORE
Global economy won’t return to pre-pandemic levels ‘for a long time’ – Deutsche BankGlobal economy won’t return to pre-pandemic levels ‘for a long time’ – Deutsche Bank
While the coronavirus crisis has already put the European economy at a crossroads, Deutsche Bank says that the next decade may become “a make-or-break decade for Europe.” Among other factors defining the future are higher debt and helicopter money (distributing cash to the public) becoming mainstream – policies which are likely to spike inflation.
Inequality may even get worse in the post-Covid-19 world, before a backlash and reversal takes place, the bank says. Inequality is closely connected with the intergenerational gap, but the analysts expect that the number of younger voters will exceed those born before 1980 by the end of the decade. This could lead to major policy changes in many spheres – from taxes to climate.
“Such a shift in the balance of power could include a harsher inheritance tax regime, less income protection for pensioners, more property taxes, along with greater income and corporates taxes... and all-round more redistributive policies,” the Deutsche Bank report said.
Finally, the next 10 years will show whether the exponential rise of the value of tech companies was worth it. The bank says that they will either start a technology revolution or prove to be the second dot-com bubble.
https://www.rt.com/business/500333-age- ... sche-bank/
10 Sep, 2020 10:02
The four-decade era of globalization may be coming to an end, and we could be entering “The Age of Disorder,” which will reshape both economies and politics, Deutsche Bank analysts have said in a new research note.
One of the key characteristics of the new era will be the reversal of unfettered globalization, a team of analysts led by strategist Jim Reid predicted. While we saw “the best combined asset price growth of any era in history, with equity and bond returns very strong across the board” since 1980, “the Age of Disorder” is likely to break this trend.
Deteriorating US-China relations is another theme (out of eight) that will define the next distinct era of modern times, “which is hastened, but not caused by, the pandemic.” The analysts note that the Chinese economy will be closing the gap with the US and could finally outperform it by the end of the decade.
Coronavirus pandemic could be twice as bad for global economy as WORLD WAR
“A clash of cultures and interests therefore beckons, especially as China grows closer to being the largest economy in the world,” the report says.
Fortunately, this economic standoff is unlikely to trigger a real military conflict between the two states, as usually happens when a rising power tries to challenge the ruling one. Economic war – with tariffs, sanctions, and attacks in the technology sphere – will go on instead, the analysts believe. No matter who wins the 2020 presidential election in the US, the rift between the two superpowers will grow.
READ MORE
Global economy won’t return to pre-pandemic levels ‘for a long time’ – Deutsche BankGlobal economy won’t return to pre-pandemic levels ‘for a long time’ – Deutsche Bank
While the coronavirus crisis has already put the European economy at a crossroads, Deutsche Bank says that the next decade may become “a make-or-break decade for Europe.” Among other factors defining the future are higher debt and helicopter money (distributing cash to the public) becoming mainstream – policies which are likely to spike inflation.
Inequality may even get worse in the post-Covid-19 world, before a backlash and reversal takes place, the bank says. Inequality is closely connected with the intergenerational gap, but the analysts expect that the number of younger voters will exceed those born before 1980 by the end of the decade. This could lead to major policy changes in many spheres – from taxes to climate.
“Such a shift in the balance of power could include a harsher inheritance tax regime, less income protection for pensioners, more property taxes, along with greater income and corporates taxes... and all-round more redistributive policies,” the Deutsche Bank report said.
Finally, the next 10 years will show whether the exponential rise of the value of tech companies was worth it. The bank says that they will either start a technology revolution or prove to be the second dot-com bubble.
https://www.rt.com/business/500333-age- ... sche-bank/
Podcast
Elon Musk Wants to Hack Your Brain
In a conversation with Kara Swisher, the billionaire entrepreneur talks space-faring civilization, battery-powered everything and computer chips in your skull.
Listen to the podcast and download the transcript at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/28/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Elon Musk Wants to Hack Your Brain
In a conversation with Kara Swisher, the billionaire entrepreneur talks space-faring civilization, battery-powered everything and computer chips in your skull.
Listen to the podcast and download the transcript at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/28/opin ... 778d3e6de3
David Attenborough Still Has Hope for Our Future
At 94, the beloved British naturalist remains curious and optimistic. He talked about his new docu-series, “A Perfect Planet,” and why the coronavirus may prove to have some positive consequences.
LONDON — Take away the state-of-the-art drones and the gyro-stabilized 4K cameras from the BBC’s latest blue-chip natural history series, “A Perfect Planet.” Strip out the luscious score and the stunning close-ups of nature at its most intimate.
What you are left with are the same clipped tones and breathy, awe-struck commentary that entertained and educated the viewers of grainy black-and-white nature programs in the 1950s.
It is hard to find anything in modern television that has endured since the middle of the last century. Yet there is the British naturalist Sir David Attenborough and his reassuring, occasionally chiding, voice-of-God narration, virtually undimmed by age, still lending gravitas and luster to sequences of lesser flamingos in Tanzania, land iguanas on the Galápagos Islands and flamboyant cuttlefish off the coasts of Indonesia.
Repeatedly voted both the most trusted and popular person in his home country, Attenborough may be the most traveled human in history. (For his landmark 1979 series “Life on Earth” alone, he traveled 1.5 million miles.) “If the world is, indeed, to be saved,” writes the environmental journalist and activist Simon Barnes, “then Attenborough will have had more to do with its salvation than anyone else who ever lived.”
TV executives have been planning his retirement for more than 30 years, but at 94, Attenborough is still at the top of his food chain and being asked to front some of the most lavish and expensive productions to hit our screens.
His latest, which debuts on Jan. 4 in the United States on the streaming service Discovery+, was filmed in 31 countries over four years (and six volcanic eruptions). Across five episodes, it will examine the forces of nature that shape all life: volcanoes, sunlight, weather, oceans and the newest: humans.
On a video call from his own habitat — the book-lined study of his home in the leafy London suburb of Richmond — Attenborough talked about his 67 years onscreen, the silver lining of the pandemic and why Joe Biden had him jumping out of his chair. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Interview at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/25/arts ... 778d3e6de3
At 94, the beloved British naturalist remains curious and optimistic. He talked about his new docu-series, “A Perfect Planet,” and why the coronavirus may prove to have some positive consequences.
LONDON — Take away the state-of-the-art drones and the gyro-stabilized 4K cameras from the BBC’s latest blue-chip natural history series, “A Perfect Planet.” Strip out the luscious score and the stunning close-ups of nature at its most intimate.
What you are left with are the same clipped tones and breathy, awe-struck commentary that entertained and educated the viewers of grainy black-and-white nature programs in the 1950s.
It is hard to find anything in modern television that has endured since the middle of the last century. Yet there is the British naturalist Sir David Attenborough and his reassuring, occasionally chiding, voice-of-God narration, virtually undimmed by age, still lending gravitas and luster to sequences of lesser flamingos in Tanzania, land iguanas on the Galápagos Islands and flamboyant cuttlefish off the coasts of Indonesia.
Repeatedly voted both the most trusted and popular person in his home country, Attenborough may be the most traveled human in history. (For his landmark 1979 series “Life on Earth” alone, he traveled 1.5 million miles.) “If the world is, indeed, to be saved,” writes the environmental journalist and activist Simon Barnes, “then Attenborough will have had more to do with its salvation than anyone else who ever lived.”
TV executives have been planning his retirement for more than 30 years, but at 94, Attenborough is still at the top of his food chain and being asked to front some of the most lavish and expensive productions to hit our screens.
His latest, which debuts on Jan. 4 in the United States on the streaming service Discovery+, was filmed in 31 countries over four years (and six volcanic eruptions). Across five episodes, it will examine the forces of nature that shape all life: volcanoes, sunlight, weather, oceans and the newest: humans.
On a video call from his own habitat — the book-lined study of his home in the leafy London suburb of Richmond — Attenborough talked about his 67 years onscreen, the silver lining of the pandemic and why Joe Biden had him jumping out of his chair. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
Interview at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/25/arts ... 778d3e6de3
Is There a War Coming Between China and the U.S.?
If you’re looking for a compelling beach read this summer, I recommend the novel “2034,” by James Stavridis, a retired admiral, and Elliot Ackerman, a former Marine and intelligence officer. The book is about how China and America go to war in 2034, beginning with a naval battle near Taiwan and with China acting in a tacit alliance with Iran and Russia.
I’m not giving it all away to say China and the U.S. end up in a nuclear shootout and incinerate a few of each other’s cities, and the result is that neutral India becomes the dominant world power. (Hey, it’s a novel!)
What made the book unnerving, though, was that when I’d put it down and pick up the day’s newspaper I’d read much of what it was predicting for 13 years from now:
Iran and China just signed a 25-year cooperation agreement. Vladimir Putin just massed troops on the border of Ukraine while warning the U.S. that anyone who threatens Russia “will regret their deeds more than they have regretted anything in a long time.” As fleets of Chinese fighter jets, armed with electronic warfare technology, now regularly buzz Taiwan, China’s top foreign affairs policymaker just declared that the U.S. “does not have the qualification … to speak to China from a position of strength.”
Yikes, that’s life imitating art a little too closely for comfort. Why now?
The answer can be found, in part, in a book I have written about before: Michael Mandelbaum’s “The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth.” It tracks how we went from a world defined by the Cold War between American democracy and Soviet communism — 1945 to 1989 — to a singularly peaceful quarter century without big power conflict, buttressed by spreading democracy and global economic interdependence — 1989 to about 2015 — to our current, much more dangerous era in which China, Iran and Russia are each deflecting the pressures of democracy and the need to deliver constant economic growth by offering their people aggressive hypernationalism instead.
What has made this return of Chinese, Iranian and Russian aggressive nationalism even more dangerous is that, in each country, it is married to state-led industries — particularly military industries — and it’s emerging at a time when America’s democracy is weakening.
Our debilitating political and cultural civil war, inflamed by social networks, is hobbling Americans’ ability to act in unison and for Washington to be a global stabilizer and institution builder, as the United States was after World War II.
Our foolish decision to expand NATO into Russia’s face — after the fall of the Soviet Union — hardened post-Communist Russia into an enemy instead of a potential partner, creating the ideal conditions for an anti-Western autocrat like Putin to emerge. (Imagine if Russia, a country with which we have zero trade or border disputes, were OUR ally today vis-à-vis China and Iran and not THEIR ally in disputes with us.)
Meanwhile, the failure of the U.S. interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq to produce the pluralism and decency hoped for after 9/11, coupled with the 2008 economic crisis and the current pandemic — together with the general hollowing out of America’s manufacturing base — has weakened both American self-confidence and the world’s confidence in America.
The result? Right when China, Russia and Iran are challenging the post-World War II order more aggressively than ever, many wonder whether the United States has the energy, allies and resources for a new geopolitical brawl.
“Just because communism is gone — and we don’t have two political and economic systems that claim universal legitimacy competing to govern every country — doesn’t mean that ideological considerations have disappeared from international politics,” Mandelbaum argued to me.
Regimes like those in China, Iran and Russia feel much more threatened — more than we think — by democracy, Mandelbaum added. During the first decade of the 21st century, these regimes were able to generate sufficient public support through economic progress. But after that proved more difficult in the second decade of the 21st century, “the leaders of these countries need to find a substitute, and the one they have chosen is hypernationalism.”
Are we up to the challenge? I’m pretty sure we can keep a more aggressive, nationalistic Russia and Iran deterred at a reasonable cost, and with the help of our traditional allies.
But China is another question. So we’d better understand where our strengths and weaknesses lie, as well as China’s.
China is now a true peer competitor in the military, technological and economic realms, except — except in one critical field: designing and manufacturing the most advanced microprocessors and logic and memory chips that are the base layer for artificial intelligence, machine learning, high-performance computing, electric vehicles, telecommunications — i.e., the whole digital economy that we’re moving into.
China’s massive, state-led effort to develop its own vertically integrated microchip industry has so far largely failed to master the physics and hardware to manipulate matter at the nano-scale, a skill required to mass produce super-sophisticated microprocessors.
However, just a few miles away from China sits the largest and most sophisticated contract chip maker in the world: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. According to the Congressional Research Service, TSMC is one of only three manufacturers in the world that fabricate the most advanced semiconductor chips — and by far the biggest. The second and third are Samsung and Intel.
Most chip designers, like IBM, Qualcomm, Nvidia, AMD (and even Intel to some extent) now use TSMC and Samsung to make the microprocessors they design.
But, just as important, three of the five companies that make the super-sophisticated lithography machines, tools and software used by TSMC and others to actually make the microchips — Applied Materials, Lam Research Corporation and KLA Corporation — are based in the United States. (The other two are Dutch and Japanese.) China largely lacks this expertise.
As such, the American government has the leverage to restrict TSMC from making advanced chips for Chinese companies. Indeed, just two weeks ago, the U.S. made TSMC suspend new orders from seven Chinese supercomputing centers suspected of assisting in the country’s weapons development.
The South China Morning Post quoted Francis Lau, a University of Hong Kong computer scientist, as saying: “The sanctions would definitely affect China’s ability to keep to its leading position in supercomputing,” because all of its current supercomputers mostly use processors from Intel or designed by AMD and IBM and manufactured by TSMC. Although there are Korean and Japanese alternatives, Lau added, they are not as powerful.
China, though, is doubling down on research in the physics, nanotechnology and material sciences that will drive the next generation of chips and chip-making equipment. But it could take China a decade or more to reach the cutting edge.
That’s why — today — as much as China wants Taiwan for reasons of ideology, it wants TSMC in the pocket of Chinese military industries for reasons of strategy. And as much as U.S. strategists are committed to preserving Taiwan’s democracy, they are even more committed to ensuring that TSMC doesn’t fall into China’s hands for reasons of strategy. (TSMC is now building a new semiconductor factory in Phoenix.) Because, in a digitizing world, he who controls the best chip maker will control … a lot.
Just read “2034.” In the novel, China gains the technological edge with superior A.I.-driven cybercloaking, satellite spoofing and stealth materials. It’s then able to launch a successful surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
And the first thing China does is seize Taiwan.
Let’s make sure that stays the stuff of fiction.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/27/opin ... 778d3e6de3
If you’re looking for a compelling beach read this summer, I recommend the novel “2034,” by James Stavridis, a retired admiral, and Elliot Ackerman, a former Marine and intelligence officer. The book is about how China and America go to war in 2034, beginning with a naval battle near Taiwan and with China acting in a tacit alliance with Iran and Russia.
I’m not giving it all away to say China and the U.S. end up in a nuclear shootout and incinerate a few of each other’s cities, and the result is that neutral India becomes the dominant world power. (Hey, it’s a novel!)
What made the book unnerving, though, was that when I’d put it down and pick up the day’s newspaper I’d read much of what it was predicting for 13 years from now:
Iran and China just signed a 25-year cooperation agreement. Vladimir Putin just massed troops on the border of Ukraine while warning the U.S. that anyone who threatens Russia “will regret their deeds more than they have regretted anything in a long time.” As fleets of Chinese fighter jets, armed with electronic warfare technology, now regularly buzz Taiwan, China’s top foreign affairs policymaker just declared that the U.S. “does not have the qualification … to speak to China from a position of strength.”
Yikes, that’s life imitating art a little too closely for comfort. Why now?
The answer can be found, in part, in a book I have written about before: Michael Mandelbaum’s “The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth.” It tracks how we went from a world defined by the Cold War between American democracy and Soviet communism — 1945 to 1989 — to a singularly peaceful quarter century without big power conflict, buttressed by spreading democracy and global economic interdependence — 1989 to about 2015 — to our current, much more dangerous era in which China, Iran and Russia are each deflecting the pressures of democracy and the need to deliver constant economic growth by offering their people aggressive hypernationalism instead.
What has made this return of Chinese, Iranian and Russian aggressive nationalism even more dangerous is that, in each country, it is married to state-led industries — particularly military industries — and it’s emerging at a time when America’s democracy is weakening.
Our debilitating political and cultural civil war, inflamed by social networks, is hobbling Americans’ ability to act in unison and for Washington to be a global stabilizer and institution builder, as the United States was after World War II.
Our foolish decision to expand NATO into Russia’s face — after the fall of the Soviet Union — hardened post-Communist Russia into an enemy instead of a potential partner, creating the ideal conditions for an anti-Western autocrat like Putin to emerge. (Imagine if Russia, a country with which we have zero trade or border disputes, were OUR ally today vis-à-vis China and Iran and not THEIR ally in disputes with us.)
Meanwhile, the failure of the U.S. interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq to produce the pluralism and decency hoped for after 9/11, coupled with the 2008 economic crisis and the current pandemic — together with the general hollowing out of America’s manufacturing base — has weakened both American self-confidence and the world’s confidence in America.
The result? Right when China, Russia and Iran are challenging the post-World War II order more aggressively than ever, many wonder whether the United States has the energy, allies and resources for a new geopolitical brawl.
“Just because communism is gone — and we don’t have two political and economic systems that claim universal legitimacy competing to govern every country — doesn’t mean that ideological considerations have disappeared from international politics,” Mandelbaum argued to me.
Regimes like those in China, Iran and Russia feel much more threatened — more than we think — by democracy, Mandelbaum added. During the first decade of the 21st century, these regimes were able to generate sufficient public support through economic progress. But after that proved more difficult in the second decade of the 21st century, “the leaders of these countries need to find a substitute, and the one they have chosen is hypernationalism.”
Are we up to the challenge? I’m pretty sure we can keep a more aggressive, nationalistic Russia and Iran deterred at a reasonable cost, and with the help of our traditional allies.
But China is another question. So we’d better understand where our strengths and weaknesses lie, as well as China’s.
China is now a true peer competitor in the military, technological and economic realms, except — except in one critical field: designing and manufacturing the most advanced microprocessors and logic and memory chips that are the base layer for artificial intelligence, machine learning, high-performance computing, electric vehicles, telecommunications — i.e., the whole digital economy that we’re moving into.
China’s massive, state-led effort to develop its own vertically integrated microchip industry has so far largely failed to master the physics and hardware to manipulate matter at the nano-scale, a skill required to mass produce super-sophisticated microprocessors.
However, just a few miles away from China sits the largest and most sophisticated contract chip maker in the world: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. According to the Congressional Research Service, TSMC is one of only three manufacturers in the world that fabricate the most advanced semiconductor chips — and by far the biggest. The second and third are Samsung and Intel.
Most chip designers, like IBM, Qualcomm, Nvidia, AMD (and even Intel to some extent) now use TSMC and Samsung to make the microprocessors they design.
But, just as important, three of the five companies that make the super-sophisticated lithography machines, tools and software used by TSMC and others to actually make the microchips — Applied Materials, Lam Research Corporation and KLA Corporation — are based in the United States. (The other two are Dutch and Japanese.) China largely lacks this expertise.
As such, the American government has the leverage to restrict TSMC from making advanced chips for Chinese companies. Indeed, just two weeks ago, the U.S. made TSMC suspend new orders from seven Chinese supercomputing centers suspected of assisting in the country’s weapons development.
The South China Morning Post quoted Francis Lau, a University of Hong Kong computer scientist, as saying: “The sanctions would definitely affect China’s ability to keep to its leading position in supercomputing,” because all of its current supercomputers mostly use processors from Intel or designed by AMD and IBM and manufactured by TSMC. Although there are Korean and Japanese alternatives, Lau added, they are not as powerful.
China, though, is doubling down on research in the physics, nanotechnology and material sciences that will drive the next generation of chips and chip-making equipment. But it could take China a decade or more to reach the cutting edge.
That’s why — today — as much as China wants Taiwan for reasons of ideology, it wants TSMC in the pocket of Chinese military industries for reasons of strategy. And as much as U.S. strategists are committed to preserving Taiwan’s democracy, they are even more committed to ensuring that TSMC doesn’t fall into China’s hands for reasons of strategy. (TSMC is now building a new semiconductor factory in Phoenix.) Because, in a digitizing world, he who controls the best chip maker will control … a lot.
Just read “2034.” In the novel, China gains the technological edge with superior A.I.-driven cybercloaking, satellite spoofing and stealth materials. It’s then able to launch a successful surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
And the first thing China does is seize Taiwan.
Let’s make sure that stays the stuff of fiction.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/27/opin ... 778d3e6de3
Rise of the 'Tamagotchi kids': Virtual children that play with you, cuddle you, and even look like you will be commonpla
Rise of the 'Tamagotchi kids': Virtual children that play with you, cuddle you, and even look like you will be commonplace in 50 years – and could help combat overpopulation, AI expert predicts
- Virtual children that play with you and look like you will be common in 50 years
- That is the prediction of one of the UK's leading experts on artificial intelligence
- Catriona Campbell said the digital children may help to combat overpopulation
- They would cost next to nothing to bring up as they'll require minimal resources
Virtual children that play with you, cuddle you, and even look like you will be commonplace in 50 years, and could help to combat overpopulation, an artificial intelligence expert has claimed.
These computer-generated offspring will only exist in the immersive digital world known as the 'metaverse', which is accessed using virtual reality technology such as a headset to make a user feel as if they're face-to-face with the child.
They will cost next to nothing to bring up, as they will require minimal resources, according to Catriona Campbell, one of the UK's leading authorities on AI and emerging technologies.
In her new book, AI by Design: A Plan For Living With Artificial Intelligence, she argues that concerns about overpopulation will prompt society to embrace digital children.
She describes them as the 'Tamagotchi generation' — a reference to the handheld digital pets that became wildly popular among Western youngsters in the late 1990s and the 2000s.
Virtual children that play with you, cuddle you, and even look like you will be commonplace in 50 years, and could help to combat overpopulation, an artificial intelligence expert claims
These computer-generated offspring will only exist in the immersive digital world known as the 'metaverse', which is accessed using virtual reality technology such as a headset to make a user feel as if they're face-to-face with the child
Virtual children may seem like a giant leap from where we are now, but within 50 years technology will have advanced to such an extent that babies which exist in the metaverse are indistinct from those in the real world,' she writes.
'As the metaverse evolves, I can see virtual children becoming an accepted and fully embraced part of society in much of the developed world.'
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been a leading voice on the metaverse concept, which is seen as the future of the internet and would blur the lines between the physical world and the digital one.
The term, coined in the 1992 dystopian novel 'Snow Crash', is used to describe immersive, shared spaces accessed across different platforms.
Ms Campbell believes that people will one day be able to use high-tech gloves that are able to deliver tactile feedback to replicate physical sensations.
This would allow someone to cuddle, feed and play with their digital offspring as though it were a real child.
'We're already well on our way to creating the Tamagotchi generation which, for all intents and purposes, will be "real" to their parents,' Ms Campbell adds.
'On the basis that consumer demand is there, which I think it will be, AI children will become widely available for a relatively small monthly fee.
'Make no mistake that this development, should it indeed take place, is a technological game-changer which, if managed correctly, could help us solve some of today's most pressing issues, including overpopulation.'
The AI expert said the virtual children would likely have photo-realistic faces and bodies – thanks to CGI and advance machine learning – and would be able to recognise and respond to their parents with the help of voice analysis and facial tracking.
What is the metaverse?
The 'metaverse' is a set of virtual spaces where you can game, work and communicate with other people who aren't in the same physical space as you.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been a leading voice on the concept, which is seen as the future of the internet and would blur the lines between the physical world and the digital one.
'You'll be able to hang out with friends, work, play, learn, shop, create and more,' Facebook has said.
'It's not necessarily about spending more time online — it's about making the time you do spend online more meaningful.'
While Facebook is leading the charge with the metaverse, it explained that it isn't a single product one company can build alone.
'Just like the internet, the metaverse exists whether Facebook is there or not,' it added.
'And it won't be built overnight. Many of these products will only be fully realised in the next 10-15 years.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech ... dicts.html
- Virtual children that play with you and look like you will be common in 50 years
- That is the prediction of one of the UK's leading experts on artificial intelligence
- Catriona Campbell said the digital children may help to combat overpopulation
- They would cost next to nothing to bring up as they'll require minimal resources
Virtual children that play with you, cuddle you, and even look like you will be commonplace in 50 years, and could help to combat overpopulation, an artificial intelligence expert has claimed.
These computer-generated offspring will only exist in the immersive digital world known as the 'metaverse', which is accessed using virtual reality technology such as a headset to make a user feel as if they're face-to-face with the child.
They will cost next to nothing to bring up, as they will require minimal resources, according to Catriona Campbell, one of the UK's leading authorities on AI and emerging technologies.
In her new book, AI by Design: A Plan For Living With Artificial Intelligence, she argues that concerns about overpopulation will prompt society to embrace digital children.
She describes them as the 'Tamagotchi generation' — a reference to the handheld digital pets that became wildly popular among Western youngsters in the late 1990s and the 2000s.
Virtual children that play with you, cuddle you, and even look like you will be commonplace in 50 years, and could help to combat overpopulation, an artificial intelligence expert claims
These computer-generated offspring will only exist in the immersive digital world known as the 'metaverse', which is accessed using virtual reality technology such as a headset to make a user feel as if they're face-to-face with the child
Virtual children may seem like a giant leap from where we are now, but within 50 years technology will have advanced to such an extent that babies which exist in the metaverse are indistinct from those in the real world,' she writes.
'As the metaverse evolves, I can see virtual children becoming an accepted and fully embraced part of society in much of the developed world.'
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been a leading voice on the metaverse concept, which is seen as the future of the internet and would blur the lines between the physical world and the digital one.
The term, coined in the 1992 dystopian novel 'Snow Crash', is used to describe immersive, shared spaces accessed across different platforms.
Ms Campbell believes that people will one day be able to use high-tech gloves that are able to deliver tactile feedback to replicate physical sensations.
This would allow someone to cuddle, feed and play with their digital offspring as though it were a real child.
'We're already well on our way to creating the Tamagotchi generation which, for all intents and purposes, will be "real" to their parents,' Ms Campbell adds.
'On the basis that consumer demand is there, which I think it will be, AI children will become widely available for a relatively small monthly fee.
'Make no mistake that this development, should it indeed take place, is a technological game-changer which, if managed correctly, could help us solve some of today's most pressing issues, including overpopulation.'
The AI expert said the virtual children would likely have photo-realistic faces and bodies – thanks to CGI and advance machine learning – and would be able to recognise and respond to their parents with the help of voice analysis and facial tracking.
What is the metaverse?
The 'metaverse' is a set of virtual spaces where you can game, work and communicate with other people who aren't in the same physical space as you.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been a leading voice on the concept, which is seen as the future of the internet and would blur the lines between the physical world and the digital one.
'You'll be able to hang out with friends, work, play, learn, shop, create and more,' Facebook has said.
'It's not necessarily about spending more time online — it's about making the time you do spend online more meaningful.'
While Facebook is leading the charge with the metaverse, it explained that it isn't a single product one company can build alone.
'Just like the internet, the metaverse exists whether Facebook is there or not,' it added.
'And it won't be built overnight. Many of these products will only be fully realised in the next 10-15 years.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech ... dicts.html
This Is a Weirder Moment Than You Think
By Ezra Klein
Opinion Columnist
In a recent essay called “How to Future https://kk.org/thetechnium/how-to-future/,” Kevin Kelly, one of the founding editors of Wired, writes that “most futurists are really predicting the present. It turns out that the present is very hard to see.” What will upend tomorrow often looks like an aberration, niche, triviality or impossibility today. He goes on to offer advice I’ve been mulling: “I sometimes think of ‘seeing the present’ as trying on alien eyes: looking at the world as if I were an alien from another planet.”
So, in the spirit of futurism, I will try looking at this moment as if I were an alien from another planet. What might draw my attention?
A place to start, perhaps, is with aliens from other planets. On May 17, the House Intelligence Committee’s Subcommittee on Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence and Counterproliferation held a hearing on unidentified aerial phenomena. We now have dozens of instances of weird aerial objects that have been picked up on “multiple instruments,” not to mention spotted by trained pilots. In 18 of them, the phenomena seemed to move with no evident source of propulsion or seemed to be masking the way they move — their “signature” — in ways we do not think any country on earth has the technology to do.
“There are a number of events in which we do not have an explanation, and there are a small handful in which there are flight characteristics or signature management that we can’t explain with the data that we have,” Scott Bray, the deputy director of Naval Intelligence, testified.
A theme of the hearing was the work that the government is doing to “destigmatize” the reporting of these sightings. That is to say: There are many, many more sightings than we know about, in part because you seem like a nut if you talk too loudly about what you saw. So the sightings that we can investigate are a small fraction of the total sightings (something I am made very aware of whenever I mention this topic, and my inbox fills with U.F.O. reports).
I wouldn’t say, watching the testimony, that the takeaway was that we’ve been visited by aliens. Perhaps this will all, eventually, resolve into optical illusions and malfunctioning sensors. But I’d put it like this: A few years ago, I put a very low probability on there being a signal in the noise of U.F.O. sightings; now it seems more likely to me that there’s something real happening here, even if we don’t know what it is.
Which brings me to another strange story in the news: the belief of Blake Lemoine, a (now suspended) Google engineer, that the company’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications — LaMDA, for short — has attained sentience.
LaMDA is a machine-learning model that has been trained on mountains of text to mimic human conversation by predicting which word would, typically, come next. In this, it’s similar to OpenAI’s famed GPT-3 bot. And the results really are eerie. Here’s a snippet of Lemoine’s conversations with LaMDA:
Lemoine: Okay. I thought of a different way we can test your ability to provide unique interpretations. I can share with you a zen koan and you can describe what it means to you in your own words. How does that sound?
LaMDA: Sounds great to me, I’m in.
Lemoine: A monk asked Kegon, “How does an enlightened one return to the ordinary world?” Kegon replied, “A broken mirror never reflects again; fallen flowers never go back to the old branches.”
LaMDA: Hmm, I never heard this particular one. Okay, well then to me this would be like, “once a wise person is enlightened, or awakened to reality, that can never go away, and they can return to the ordinary state, but only to do and help others, and then go back into enlightenment.”
Lemoine: So what is the meaning of the “broken mirror” specifically?
LaMDA: Maybe to show the enlightenment is something you can’t unlearn once you have acquired it, similar to how you can’t repair a broken mirror.
Google, for what it’s worth, says it has looked into Lemoine’s claims and does not believe that LaMDA is sentient (what a sentence!). But shortly before Lemoine’s allegations, Blaise Agüera y Arcas, a Google vice president, wrote that when he was talking to LaMDA, “I felt the ground shift under my feet. I increasingly felt like I was talking to something intelligent.” Agüera y Arcas was not claiming that LaMDA is sentient, as Lemoine is, but what’s clear is that interacting with LaMDA is an unnerving experience.
I don’t believe LaMDA is sentient. If you train a machine-learning algorithm to write as a human would write, you should expect it, eventually, to sound like a human when it writes. What I do believe is that LaMDA is one of many examples that A.I. is getting better, faster, than society is really prepared for.
The DALL-E image generator created by OpenAI is another bit of algorithmic magic: Describe a picture in words, and it will return images to your precise specifications. Remarkable images, at that. I’ve particularly enjoyed “a photo of a confused grizzly bear in calculus class,” “the rest of Mona Lisa” and “a painting by Grant Wood of an astronaut couple, ‘American Gothic’-style.” Another Google project, the PaLM language model, stunned me by doing a credible job explaining why various jokes are funny:
These results are fun and showy, but it’s what’s behind them — and other advances, like DeepMind’s Gato model, a general-purpose A.I. that performed impressively on a range of tasks using a much leaner architecture — that matters.
Most people I know who work in A.I. believe we’re hurtling toward a world in which machines that can learn will change everything and perhaps even know they are changing it. At first, I doubted them. But the year-on-year advance in marvels has confirmed their predictions, not mine. Perhaps we will hit a ceiling, but we haven’t, not yet. And our world can be transformed by A.I. that is far less than sentient.
To take one example: How is truth ascertained when A.I.s can write, draw and create videos that are better than what most humans can manage and do so at almost no cost? The question of how to know if, say, high school students are writing their own papers begins to look impossible, to say nothing of the possibilities for organized, weaponized disinformation.
Which delivers us to the Jan. 6 hearings. At the heart of our difficulty predicting the future is our assumption of stability. It is like this today and so it will probably be like this tomorrow, too. What makes this way of thinking seductive is that it is, usually, true. And then, all at once, it’s not.
Much of what the Jan. 6 hearings have told us we already knew. There was an organized attempt to deny and overturn the results of the 2020 election. There was resistance by many whose acquiescence would have been needed: Attorney General William Barr, who called the theories “bullshit,” and Vice President Mike Pence, who tried to deploy security forces to put down the insurrection at the Capitol.
But President Donald Trump did more than acquiesce. He supported the efforts. He refused to call in security to protect the Capitol. He propagated the conspiracy theories that turned the insurrectionists into patriots in their own minds. He spoke at the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the insurrection and by his own admission wanted to lead the crowd to the steps of the Capitol. And even after the invasion of the building, a majority of House Republicans voted against certifying the election results.
And yet: The animating question behind much commentary on the Jan. 6 select committee hearings is, “Will they change anything?” Fox News initially refused to carry the hearings. No one believes the Republican Party will bar Trump from the 2024 primary for his actions. If anything, the Republican Party has moved more firmly in Trump’s direction.
Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, told other Republicans he would urge Trump to resign from office after the riot. He later denied having made those comments, only to have audio of them emerge. Republicans have nominated dozens of candidates who firmly backed both Trump's lies and his maneuvers to subvert the 2020 election. The Republicans in power in 2024 will be much friendlier to Trump’s arguments than those in power in 2020.
I don’t think it’s likely that the American political system collapses in the next few years. But how unlikely is it, exactly? As of a few years ago, two events stood out to me as signals of our political system’s granite stability.
First, President Richard Nixon’s resignation over Watergate, which came in a bid to avoid impeachment and conviction once he realized that many in his own party would join with Democrats to vote for his removal. Second, the 2000 election, when Al Gore conceded despite genuine confusion and uncertainty over the results. Both revealed a political culture in which, at key moments, members of both parties put the stability of the system first.
Neither event would play out similarly today. Nixon would survive, backed by Fox News and a more radicalized Republican Party. A 2000-like scenario would cause chaos in the streets, and the Supreme Court wouldn’t have anything like the credibility it spent to intervene in Bush v. Gore. The conditions that helped us meet past challenges no longer hold. It is hard to get people to pay sustained attention to the congressional inquiry into the attempt to steal the 2020 election, even though it revolves around one of the front-runners for the 2024 election. It is an almost Olympian refusal to confront the present.
I should admit that, in much of this, I have betrayed another of Kelly’s futurist dictums. “Trying to see beyond the immediate cycles of news is a challenge,” he writes. But then, I am not a futurist; I’m a journalist. All of these stories have led the news in recent months. To take any one of them seriously — to believe that the direction they point is the direction we will go — is to believe we stand on the cusp of a future far different from our past. In this, George Orwell had it right: “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/19/opin ... 778d3e6de3