Filed under: Arthur C. Clarke, Charlie Stross, Nuclear weapons, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Space, tech, Travel, Wired
Bit over a year ago, I wrote about Charlie Stross’s pessimistic views on space colonization. Pointing out that Stross was correct in terms of the current technology curve, I said that the bigger issue was a failure to understand that forecasting breakthrough technologies is almost impossible. From my post:
The thing is, it is difficult in the extreme to make solid predictions more than a couple of decades out. In my own lifetime I have seen surprise wonders come on the scene, and expectations thwarted. Technology develops in ways that don’t always make sense, except perhaps in hindsight. 100 years ago, many people thought that commercial flight would never become a reality. 40 years ago, people thought that we’d have permanent bases on the Moon by now. You get my drift.
Everything that Charlie Stross says in his post makes sense. You can’t get to that future from here. But “here” is going to change in ways which are unpredictable, and then the future becomes more in flux than what we expect at present. For Communion of Dreams, I set forth a possible future history which leads to permanent settlements on the Moon, Mars, and Europa, with functional space stations at several other locations outside of Earth orbit. Will it happen? I dunno. I doubt that exactly my scenario would come about. But it is plausible.
And I have pretty much the exact same reaction to this item from Wired:
Rocket Scientists Say We’ll Never Reach the Stars
Many believe that humanity’s destiny lies with the stars. Sadly for us, rocket propulsion experts now say we may never even get out of the Solar System.
At a recent conference, rocket scientists from NASA, the U.S. Air Force and academia doused humanity’s interstellar dreams in cold reality. The scientists, presenting at the Joint Propulsion Conference in Hartford, Connecticut, analyzed many of the designs for advanced propulsion that others have proposed for interstellar travel. The calculations show that, even using the most theoretical of technologies, reaching the nearest star in a human lifetime is nearly impossible.
Well, yeah. And if you asked medieval blacksmiths about about building a weapon that could kill a million people instantly, they’d also say it was impossible. For them, it was. For us, it’s technology which is 63 years old as of last month.
I’m sure everyone attending that conference (professionally, anyway) knows more about rocket science than I do. And probably about any exotic propulsion technologies on the horizon as well.
But that doesn’t mean they’re right. In fact, even if they aren’t elderly, they’re very probably wrong.
And even they know it. From that same article in Wired, after saying this:
The major problem is that propulsion — shooting mass backwards to go forwards — requires large amounts of both time and fuel. For instance, using the best rocket engines Earth currently has to offer, it would take 50,000 years to travel the 4.3 light years to Alpha Centauri, our solar system’s nearest neighbor. Even the most theoretically efficient type of propulsion, an imaginary engine powered by antimatter, would still require decades to reach Alpha Centauri, according to Robert Frisbee, group leader in the Advanced Propulsion Technology Group within NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Frisbee says this:
As for interstellar travel, even the realists are far from giving up. All it takes is one breakthrough to make the calculations work, Frisbee said.
“It’s always science fiction until someone goes out and does it,” he said.
Perzactly.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Ballistics, Book Conservation, Feedback, Guns, Health, Migraine, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Ray Bradbury, Science Fiction, Sleep, Society, Writing stuff
As I have noted, I have been fairly busy of late. And in looking back over the last couple of months, I can see a real change in both my energy level and my ability to focus – it’s no longer the case that I want to nap most of the time. Yeah, I am still going through a detox process, still finding my way back to something akin to normalcy – but there has been a decided improvement. Fewer migraines. More energy. A willingness to take on some additional obligations.
So I had to debate a long time when I was recently contacted by a site wanting to expand their scope and impact. These folks. They were wanting me to do a column every two weeks, more-or-less related to Science Fiction (giving me a lot of latitude to define the scope of the column as I saw fit). They have a lot of good ideas, and seem to have a pretty good handle on where they want to go in the future. And the invitation was a real compliment to me – not only did they say nice things about my writing, but they have a good energy and attitude which is appealing.
But I declined the invitation. Why? Well, to a certain extent it’s like Bradbury says: “You have to know how to accept rejection and reject acceptance.”
I may come to regret this decision. It could possibly have helped my writing career, at least in terms of landing a conventional publishing contract. And I know from writing my newspaper column that the discipline can do good things for me – forcing me to address a specific topic rather than the more general musings I post here and at UTI. But I really do have a lot on my plate right now, and they are all things I want to do well, rather than just get done. Blogging here (which is really quite important to me). Participating at UTI. Crafting this book about being a care provider. Getting the ballistics project website up and running. All the book conservation work waiting for me. Eventually getting to work on St. Cybi’s Well again. And enjoying life. There’s been precious little of that these last few years.
So, I declined. But if you perhaps would be interested in the gig, they have contact info on their homepage.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Connections, Expert systems, General Musings, Health, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Synesthesia, tech, Titan, Writing stuff
[This post contains mild spoilers about Communion of Dreams.]
One of the difficulties facing computer engineers/scientists with developing expert systems and true Artificial Intelligence is the paradigm they use. Simply, working from structures analogous to the human brain, there has been a tendency to isolate functions and have them work independently. Even in modern computer science such things as adaptive neural networks are understood to analogous to biological neural networks in the brain, which serve a specific function:
Biological neural networks are made up of real biological neurons that are connected or functionally-related in the peripheral nervous system or the central nervous system. In the field of neuroscience, they are often identified as groups of neurons that perform a specific physiological function in laboratory analysis.
But what if the neuroscience on which these theories are based has been wrong?
Here’s the basics of what was Neuroscience 101: The auditory system records sound, while the visual system focuses, well, on the visuals, and never do they meet. Instead, a “higher cognitive” producer, like the brain’s superior colliculus, uses these separate inputs to create our cinematic experiences.
The textbook rewrite: The brain can, if it must, directly use sound to see and light to hear.
* * *
Researchers trained monkeys to locate a light flashed on a screen. When the light was very bright, they easily found it; when it was dim, it took a long time. But if a dim light made a brief sound, the monkeys found it in no time – too quickly, in fact, than can be explained by the old theories.
Recordings from 49 neurons responsible for the earliest stages of visual processing, researchers found activation that mirrored the behavior. That is, when the sound was played, the neurons reacted as if there had been a stronger light, at a speed that can only be explained by a direct connection between the ear and eye brain regions, said researcher Ye Wang of the University of Texas in Houston.
The implication is that there is a great deal more flexibility – or ‘plasticity’ – in the structure of the brain than had been previously understood.
Well, yeah. Just consider how someone who has been blind since birth will have heightened awareness of other senses. Some have argued that this is simply a matter of such a person learning to make the greatest use of the senses they have. But others have suspected that they actually learn to use those structures in the brain normally associated with visual processing to boost the ability to process other sensory data. And that’s what the above research shows.
OK, two things. One, this is why I have speculated in Communion of Dreams that synesthesia is more than just the confusion of sensory input – it is using our existing senses to construct not a simple linear view of the world, but a matrix in three dimensions (with the five senses on each axis of such a ‘cube’ structure). In other words, synesthesia is more akin to a meta-cognitive function. That is why (as I mentioned a few days ago) the use of accelerator drugs in the novel allows users to take a step-up in cognition and creativity, though at the cost of burning up the brain’s available store of neurotransmitters.
And two, this is also why I created the ‘tholin gel’ found on Titan to be a superior material as the basis of computers, and even specify that the threshold limit for a gel burr in such use is about the size of the human brain. Why? Well, because such a superconducting superfluid would not function as a simple neural network – rather, the entire burr of gel would function as a single structure, with enormous flexibility and plasticity. In other words, much more like the way the human brain functions as is now coming to be understood.
So, perhaps in letting go of the inaccurate model for the way the brain works, we’ll take a big step closer to creating true artificial intelligence. Like in my book. It pays to be flexible, in our theories, in our thinking, and in how we see the world.
Jim Downey
Hat tip to ML for the news link.
Filed under: Genetic Testing, Preparedness, Science, Science Fiction, Synesthesia, Titan, Writing stuff
I’ve written previously about the emergence of consciousness and the role that the biochemical stew in our heads plays in awareness and cognition. But let’s get a little more basic in our analysis. Let’s consider fire. No, not the slow fire of chemical reactions in our bodies, but actual burning of wood, and the role that it may have played in the development of human intelligence.
* * * * * * *
The Greek myth of Prometheus bringing the holy fire of Zeus to mankind, and thereby enabling civilization, has usually been understood as being an explanation of the role which technology plays in human development. After all, fire allows humans to control our environment, from living in colder climates to clearing land for farming to metallurgy. And, of course, to cook food, making a wider range of nutrients available.
But what if fire made human thought itself possible?
Cooking and Cognition: How Humans Got So Smart
After two tremendous growth spurts — one in size, followed by an even more important one in cognitive ability — the human brain is now a lot like a teenage boy.
It consumes huge amounts of calories, is rather temperamental and, when harnessed just right, exhibits incredible prowess. The brain’s roaring metabolism, possibly stimulated by early man’s invention of cooking, may be the main factor behind our most critical cognitive leap, new research suggests.
OK, that article is a little light on actual information. So I went to check the research paper. It’s a bit thick, but the basic idea was to study the rise of human cognition via two methods:
In this study, we attempted to identify molecular mechanisms involved in the evolution of human-specific cognitive abilities by combining biological data from two research directions: evolutionary and medical. Firstly, we identify the molecular changes that took place on the human evolutionary lineage, presumably due to positive selection. Secondly, we consider molecular changes observed in schizophrenia, a psychiatric disorder believed to affect such human cognitive functions as the capacity for complex social relations and language [6–12]. Combining the two datasets, we test the following prediction: if a cognitive disorder, such as schizophrenia, affects recently evolved biological processes underlying human-specific cognitive abilities, we anticipate finding a significant overlap between the recent evolutionary and the pathological changes. Furthermore, if such significant overlap is observed, the overlapping biological processes may provide insights into molecular changes important for the evolution and maintenance of human-specific cognitive abilities.
Got that? First, you determine the differences due to evolution (specifically as seen in DNA/mRNA divergence between us and chimpanzees), then you see where the brains of people who have schizophrenia are different from ‘normal’ brains. That can give you some indications of how cognition works, since schizophrenia is known to primarily impact cognition.
What did the researchers find?
In order to select human-specific evolutionary changes, we used the published list of 22 biological processes showing evidence of positive selection in terms of their mRNA expression levels in brain during recent human evolution [13]. Next, we tested whether expression of genes contained in these functional categories is altered in schizophrenia to a greater extent than expected by chance. To do this, we ranked 16,815 genes expressed in brain in order of probability of differential expression in schizophrenia, using data from a meta-analysis of 105 individuals profiled on 4 different microarray platforms in 6 independent studies [14]. We found that 6 of the 22 positively selected biological processes are significantly enriched in genes differentially expressed in schizophrenia (Wilcoxon rank sum test, p < 0.03, false discovery rate (FDR) = 11%), while only 0.7 would be expected to show such an enrichment by chance (Figure 1; Table S2 in Additional data file 1; Materials and methods). Strikingly, all six of these biological processes are related to energy metabolism. This is highly unexpected, given that there were only 7 biological processes containing genes involved in energy metabolism among the 22 positively selected categories (Figure 1; Table S2 in Additional data file 1). The mRNA expression changes observed in schizophrenia appear to be distributed approximately equally in respect to the direction of change, pointing towards a general dysregulation of these processes in the disease rather than a coordinated change (Table S3 in Additional data file 1).
Simply put: it’s metabolism. The brain eats up a lot of energy, about 20% of all the energy you take in as food. That’s a lot – for chimps the number is about 13%, and for other vertebrates it runs 2 – 8%. The conclusion:
In this study we find a disproportionately large overlap between processes that have changed during human evolution and biological processes affected in schizophrenia. Genes relating to energy metabolism are particularly implicated for both the evolution and maintenance of human-specific cognitive abilities.
Using 1H NMR spectroscopy, we find evidence that metabolites significantly altered in schizophrenia have changed more on the human lineage than those that are unaltered. Furthermore, genes related to the significantly altered metabolites show greater sequence and mRNA expression divergence between humans and chimpanzees, as well as indications of positive selection in humans, compared to genes related to the unaltered metabolites.
Taken together, these findings indicate that changes in human brain metabolism may have been an important step in the evolution of human cognitive abilities. Our results are consistent with the theory that schizophrenia is a costly by-product of human brain evolution [11,37].
When did this take place? From the LiveScience article first cited:
The extra calories may not have come from more food, but rather from the emergence of pre-historic “Iron Chefs;” the first hearths also arose about 200,000 years ago.
In most animals, the gut needs a lot of energy to grind out nourishment from food sources. But cooking, by breaking down fibers and making nutrients more readily available, is a way of processing food outside the body. Eating (mostly) cooked meals would have lessened the energy needs of our digestion systems, Khaitovich explained, thereby freeing up calories for our brains.
* * * * * * *
In Communion of Dreams, I posit the use of “auggies” – drugs designed to maximize the utilization of neurotransmitters in the brain. When combined with increased sensory information thanks to technology, an artificial kind of synesthesia occures, allowing for insights (artistic, cognitive) otherwise beyond human ability. But it is a cheat – you ‘burn up’ the available neurotransmitters quickly, accelerating brain function, but are left then less capable for a period of days after as the body replenishes. This is by and large a metabolic function – the same way an athlete can burn up energy stored in muscles in one brief period, but then needs time to recover.
I wrote this with an instinctive understanding of the mechanism involved – we’ve all experienced something akin to this phenomenon of pushing ourselves mentally for a short period, being tired and less able to think clearly afterwards. It’s a bit surprising to find that it may have literally been the same mechanism which lead to the rise of human intelligence to begin with.
And as for the alien artifact on Titan, which causes a similar phenomenon? Just coincidence that Prometheus was one of the Titans in Greek mythology.
No, really – just coincidence.
Jim Downey
*and yes, I realize that this isn’t quite what The Doors meant.
Filed under: 2nd Amendment, ACLU, Babylon 5, Civil Rights, Constitution, Daily Kos, Emergency, Failure, General Musings, Government, Guns, J. Michael Straczynski, JMS, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, RKBA, Science Fiction, Society, Survival
There’s a line from a Babylon 5 episode (I’m a big fan of the series) which has always stuck with me. Several characters are discussing the political situation on Earth following the imposition of martial law. One character says that people love it – crime is down, things are calm, peaceful.
“Yeah, the peace of the gun,” replies another character.
And that, my friends, is what we have today, here in the US. Specifically, in one small city in Arkansas:
HELENA-WEST HELENA, Ark. – Officers armed with military rifles have been stopping and questioning passers-by in a neighborhood plagued by violence that’s been under a 24-hour curfew for a week.
On Tuesday, the Helena-West Helena City Council voted 9-0 to allow police to expand that program into any area of the city, despite a warning from a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas that the police stops were unconstitutional.
Police Chief Fred Fielder said the patrols have netted 32 arrests since they began last week in a 10-block neighborhood in this small town on the banks of the Mississippi River long troubled by poverty. The council said those living in the city want the random shootings and drug-fueled violence to stop, no matter what the cost.
“Now if somebody wants to sue us, they have an option to sue, but I’m fairly certain that a judge will see it the way the way the citizens see it here,” Mayor James Valley said. “The citizens deserve peace, that some infringement on constitutional rights is OK and we have not violated anything as far as the Constitution.”
From another source:
Controversial Curfew in Helena-West Helena
Mayor James Valley has given residents in one high-crime neighborhood two choices…. go home or go to jail.
Valley’s issued a mandatory curfew for Second Street and the surrounding blocks — a place he considers to be a “hot spot” for crime. The curfew applies to anyone of any age at any time of day.
* * *
“This turf belongs to taxpaying citizens, not to hustlers and drug dealers….We are going to pop them in the head,” Mayor Valley said.
* * *
The mayor only has the power to issue a 48 hour curfew – so he says when this one expires, he’ll issue another one, and another one.
Predictably, the ACLU is taking a rather dim view of this:
The ACLU has written a letter to Helena-West Helena Mayor James Valley protesting the curfew he imposed on a portion of the city. The mayor says he’s received the letter, but believes it’s intentions are misplaced.
* * *
Mayor James Valley says no constitutional rights have been violated — he says they’re doing what’s needed to clean up the streets.
No doubt. And he’s willing to be reasonable:
Helena-West Helena Curfew Changes
Leaders in Helena-West Helena have come up with a new plan after criticism by the ACLU of the mayor’s recent curfew on a particular part of town.
This past weekend, Mayor James Valley issued a mandatory curfew for Second Street and the surrounding blocks — a place he considers to be a “hot spot” for crime.
* * *
Valley’s curfew will remain in place for all minors, but adults will be allowed out if they can answer questions about their need to be outside their homes.
See, like I said – he’s being perfectly reasonable about this. You can leave your house. If you can explain to authorities why you need to do so.
How could anyone possibly object to this?
*sigh*
This is nothing more or less than the peace of the gun. This is the abrogation of civil liberties as a solution for incompetent governance. Of course people like it – let things get bad enough that they fear for their lives more than they value their liberties, and you can get people to do almost anything. Mayor Valley is just applying the same logic as he applied in mid July when he, well, here’s the news report:
Mayor Orders Dogs Released Into Forest
You’ve heard it before…..Arkansas animal shelters struggling to take care of unwanted dogs and cats. One mayor has decided the best way to fix the problem in his town is to set the animals free.
KARK visited the Helena-West Helena animal shelter back in January. Conditions were dirty and animals were in poor health.
Thursday, KARK learned the town’s mayor James Valley has taken the unconventional approach of releasing the animals into the wild. In a press release, the mayor says “we fed and watered them and took them to the St. Francis National Forest.”
Yeah, he just turned them loose.
Like I said, incompetence. Let things get so bad, and then you can take absurd steps.
Like imposing martial law.
Is this just a trial run for other cities? Other levels of government? Because you can be damned sure that there are power-hungry people watching this situation very closely, and drawing their own conclusions. If a small-town mayor can get away with it, why not a large city mayor? Or a governor? Or a president?
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI and Daily Kos.)
Jon walked to the edge of the pool. He heard a noise behind him, turned slowly to look at it.
From beside a large bush a pile of boulders shifted. The air shimmied, light danced, and a crouching figure emerged, covered in a fabric drape that tried to keep up with the changing surroundings. One hand pulled the drape to the side. Another was holding a very large sidearm.
Excerpt from Chapter 18 (page 258 of the .pdf) of Communion of Dreams. That’s my description of a military ‘stealth suit’ being used by one of the characters. Why do I mention it? Because:
WASHINGTON – Scientists say they are a step closer to developing materials that could render people and objects invisible.
Researchers have demonstrated for the first time they were able to cloak three-dimensional objects using artificially engineered materials that redirect light around the objects. Previously, they only have been able to cloak very thin two-dimensional objects.
The findings, by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, led by Xiang Zhang, are to be released later this week in the journals Nature and Science.
The new work moves scientists a step closer to hiding people and objects from visible light, which could have broad applications, including military ones.
Wow. Another prediction coming true in my lifetime.
Jim Downey
Filed under: BoingBoing, Climate Change, Cory Doctorow, Emergency, Flu, General Musings, Global Warming, Government, Heinlein, Pandemic, Plague, Predictions, Robert A. Heinlein, Science Fiction, Society, Space, tech, Tor.com, Weather, Writing stuff
Via BoingBoing, an interesting discussion over on Tor.com: The Dystopic Earths of Heinlein’s Juveniles. An excerpt:
It’s funny how it’s overpopulation and political unpleasantness that cause the problems, never ecological disaster. Maybe that wasn’t on the horizon at all in the fifties and early sixties? I suppose every age has its own disaster story. It’s nice how little they worry about nuclear war too, except in Space Cadet which is all nuclear threat, Venusians and pancakes. They don’t make them like that any more. Come to think it’s probably just as well.
* * *
No individual one of these would be particularly noticeable, especially as they’re just background, but sitting here adding them up doesn’t make a pretty picture. What’s with all these dystopias? How is it that we don’t see them that way? Is it really that the message is all about “Earth sucks, better get into space fast”? And if so, is that really a sensible message to be giving young people? Did Heinlein really mean it? And did we really buy into it?
Yeah, he meant it. And further, he was right.
No, I’m not really calling into question the premise of the piece – that Heinlein had something of a bias about population and governmental control. And I’m not saying that he was entirely correct in either his politics or his vision of the future.
But consider the biggest threat facing us: No, not Paris Hilton’s involvement in the presidential election, though a legitimate case can be made that this is indeed an indication of the end of the world. Rather, I mean global warming.
And why do we have global warming? Because of the environmental impact of human civilization. And why is this impact significant? Because of the size of the human population on this planet.
And what is the likely response to the coming changes? Increased governmental control.
[Mild spoilers ahead.]
For Communion of Dreams I killed off a significant portion of the human race as part of the ‘back story’. Why? Well, it served my purposes for the story. But also because I think that one way or another, we need to understand and accept that the size of our population is a major factor in all the other problems we face. Whether it is limitations caused by peak oil or some other resource running out, or the impact of ‘carbon footprints’, or urban sprawl, or food shortages, all of these problems have one common element: population pressure. We have too many people consuming too many resources and generating too much pollution. In fact, when I once again turn my writing the prequel to Communion, I may very well make this connection more explicit, and have the motivation of the people responsible for the fireflu based on this understanding.
So yeah, Heinlein was right. He may not have spelled out the end result (ecological disaster) per se, but he understood the dynamic at work, and what it would lead to. Just because things haven’t gotten as bad as they can get doesn’t mean that we’re not headed that direction. Our technology can only compensate for so long – already we see things breaking down at the margins, and the long term problems are very real. You can call it ‘dystopic’, but I’ll just call it our future.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 