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Sunday night Phil and Stephen welcomed a whole gang from Memebox / FutureBlogger -- Jeff Hilford, Alvis Brigis, and Garry Golden -- for a panel discussion in which they looked back at the major technological, scientific, and social developments of 2008 and made some daring predictions for 2009 and beyond.
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...happens all the time. Of course, that's not news to us -- but it's always worth mentioning.
Viewing the past is just the beginning. Who wants to just see other times when we can actually move through time itself? And in fact, I'm traveling through time right now, and so are all of you.
Count to ten. See? You just moved into the future. Either we travel into the future or we die. Or some might argue that either we travel into a future in which we're dead, or we travel into another future in which we're still living. I personally recommend striving for the former.
"Live to see it," in other words.
Anyhow, that little binary is just the beginning. Either you travel into a future in which you marry your high school sweetheart, or you don't. Either you travel into a future in which you get a new job this year, or you don't. Either you travel into a future in which you lose 20 pounds or you don't.
All these folks making New Year's resolutions? They're would-be time travelers. But they're not trying to get to the future; they're trying to navigate time to get to a particular future. That is a version of time travel we are all capable of. Maybe we can't all get to the future we dream of, but we can all get to a future that's very different from the one that we would arrive at if we just did nothing.
A new year is dawning. You're a time traveler. So be a time traveler. Choose your future.
And find the way to get there.
John Tierney writes in his New York Times column:
If I’m serious about keeping my New Year’s resolutions in 2009, should I add another one? Should the to-do list include, “Start going to church”?
This is an awkward question for a heathen to contemplate, but I felt obliged to raise it with Michael McCullough after reading his report in the upcoming issue of the Psychological Bulletin. He and a fellow psychologist at the University of Miami, Brian Willoughby, have reviewed eight decades of research and concluded that religious belief and piety promote self-control.
I doubt that Tierney is seriously considering church attendance as a means of supporting his New Year's resolutions, but it's interesting that he even throws the idea out there. We talked about memes in back-to-back editions of FastForward Radio (here and here) back in September. One of the most important things to remember about these self-reproducing ideas is that it is not their truth content that makes them successful. To give just one example, there is no scientific evidence to support the idea that childhood vaccinations cause autism, and yet look at how successfully that idea has been transmitted all over the world. But I wouldn't suggest that the folks spreading that meme actually believe it to be untrue. Spreading such an idea while knowing it to be false would be an awfully strange thing to do.
Or would it?
Green Santa brings joy to children and helps save the planet.
Does it matter whether he really exists?
After all, isn't buying into (what he believes to be) a false meme exactly what Tierney is suggesting doing, albeit in an offhand and humorous way? Someone taking Tierney's advice would adopt religious belief -- or at least religious practice -- not because he or she believes it to be true, but simply because he or she finds it to be useful. And, in fact, this is one of the great critiques leveled against religion over the centuries, the idea that it has succeeded not because it is true, but because it has (take your pick):
Helped to keep the masses in line
Provided meaning and stability to otherwise empty lives
Served as a focus for organizing economic, social, and artistic activity
...and on and on
Tierney is suggesting doing on an individual level what these critics claim that we have done at a societal level -- buy into a set of ideas not because they are true, but because of the many side benefits they provide. The big difference is that it's hard to imagine society as a whole -- or even a large segment of society -- buying into something they know (or even strongly suspect) to be false. People don't necessarily believe in or spread memes because they are true, but by and large they have to believe in them in order to get behind them, right?
Well, maybe not.
Last week, a lot of us engaged in supporting the Santa Claus meme. Parents go out of their way to promote this idea to their children because it is a tradition, because it is meaningful, because it makes Christmas a more joyful time -- choose your reason -- but not because we believe it's true. I'm not criticizing the Santa meme; I enjoy it as much as the next dad. I'm just pointing out that it is, indeed, an example of a false meme spread by people who don't believe in it.
Are there others?
Consider this recent item on Digg Science:
Global Warming: Reasons Why It Might Not Actually Exist
telegraph.co.uk — 2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved, according to the Telegraph's Christopher Booker. Sceptics have long argued that there are other explanations for climate change other than man-made CO2 and here we look at some of the arguments put forward by those who believe that global warming is all a hoax.
Okay, disclaimers: I don't think global warming is a hoax. The temperature figures are what they are. However, I'm not ready to put human-caused-climate-change-by-means-of-CO2-emissions right up there with gravity just yet. There are criticisms of the prevailing models and projections, and some of these come from scientists, and, no, not all of those scientists are in the thrall of Big Oil (or the Freemasons or the Trilateral commission, for that matter, but let's keep it on one set of memes at a time.)
Interestingly, climate-change "denialists" are accused of doing the very thing we're talking about, here -- knowingly spreading a false meme that they don't believe in. Are there scientists who are doing that? I kind of doubt it. I'm going to allow that the scientists on both sides are sincere, if tending to be swayed by non-scientific factors such as politics. But obviously scientists aren't the only ones engaged in this discussion. Consider these comments from the Digg item quoted above:
who cares if its real or not, leaving fossil fuels is a good thing.
Just because global warming is a SCAM doesn't mean we should pollute.
who gives a ***** if global warming is real or not..... isn't it extremely important to use green energy sources to keep our air cleaner.. our water cleaner.. and earth happier in general?
I'm not convinced man-made Global Warming is real. But it doesn't really matter. I'd like to live life without polution, where I don't have that ugly brown cloud over my city. I'm all for clean energy. Lets do our best to not pollute.
Personally I believe in Global Warming. But you know what? It DOESN'T MATTER THAT MUCH! With or without global warming the global environment is in a rough enough state that serious action is required global warming or no global warming.
I'm just so sick of these articles saying it's not real, 'nothing to see here.' Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but I can't see a disadvantage to erring on the side of caution, and cleaning up our act. I can't see a problem with humans improving how we treat the planet, and this has been a good motivator. People, governments, and thusly corporations are not going to change unless there is motivation.
That last one is fairly close to my own views on the subject, but I have to admit that I'm a lot less comfortable with that position when I look at it in this light. Now, granted, Digg commenters can't be taken as representative of anything other than Digg commenters. And none of them (in the first few dozen, anyway) come right out and say "I believe this idea to be false, but I will support it anyway because of the environmental benefits it provides." Plus, anywhere that discourse gets politicized to this extent, there is another major driver behind both sides of the debate -- the need to have one's own side "win." Whether a proposition is true or false is apparently less important than whether it is useful or not, and even that fact is less important than the overarching consideration of whether it belongs to us or to them.
But still how different are the two following propositions?
X is false, but people should believe X because of the benefits it brings.
We don't know whether X is true or false, but people should believe X because of the benefits it brings.
Erring on the side of caution is all very well, but that is not what we do when we buy into a proposition irrespective of its truth content because belief in that proposition brings about certain benefits. This makes me wonder -- how much of what we believe as a society or as individuals are we bought into not because it is true, but because it is useful? And then how much of what we believe do we believe simply because it belongs to our side?
UPDATE: Just found the following via James Taranto and The Best of the Web Today:
As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God
That's about as straightforward as it gets, isn't it? "X is false," etc. Very interesting.
New Year's greetings:
Hat-tip: Harvey
Obviously, I should have checked my options more carefully first.
Hat-tip to Michael Darling.
Stephen provides an excellent summary of 2008 technology news roundups, to which I would like to add one item:
Here at the end of the year it seems like every publication is listing off the best developments of the year. Here's the best of technology lists:
Other fun lists with geek appeal:
Happy New Year!
I saw Benjamin Button last night. My three word review is: "a beautiful disappointment."
Spoilers from here forward.
...
Seriously, major spoilers.
...
Continue reading "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - a review" »
Let's set the mood with a little harp music, shall we?
Hope you all enjoy this special Christmas and Babymoon edition of Better All The Time. The Specu-Wife and I are off to Hawaii for Christmas, our last getaway as a more or less independent couple (with my daughter grown and in college) before the arrival of our new baby daughter in April.
I'll be on hiatus for a week or so. Here's wishing you all a wonderful and joyous holiday season.
Aloha, and Meli Kelikimaka!
Phil Bowermaster and Stephen Gordon welcomed futurist Brian Wang back to FastForward Radio.
Topics included interesting developments related to energy, DNA electronics (and other possibilities for DNA engineering) and weather machines.
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Brian L. Wang, M.B.A. is the Director of Research for the Lifeboat Foundation. Brian is a long time futurist who has been involved with nanotechnology associations since 1994. He is now a member of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN) Task Force where he moderates the technology sub-task force. He is also on the Nanoethics Group Advisory Board. He is also the mastermind behind Next Big Future.
Here's me giving thoughts on how the Obama administration can get off to a good start from a Speculist standpoint:
And here's my recap of how we can resolve the meme wars:
More on that here.
30+ years of Apple evolution --it's amazing to watch it unfold like this.
Nice song, too.
Did you ever hear one of those little electric timers they use at Starbucks? I'm not sure what they're for -- some drinks require precise timing, I suppose. I was meeting some friends at a Starbucks earlier this evening and I had an experience that I've had a few times before -- a very odd experinece.
I should note that I used to have an alarm clock that made the exact same chiming sound as one of these Starbucks timers. Not a similar sound -- the exact same sound. When I hear that sound, something way down in my brain tells me that it's time to change my state of consciousness. Specifically, it tells me that I need to wake up. It's a classic pavlovian response. There must have been many times that I have heard that sound while dreaming and, upon receiving the signal, had the world around me dissolve away to be replaced with the real world.
So when I hear the timer go off at Starbucks, my brain gets the signal to wake up, and there is this moment of expectation that the dreamworld around me is going to disappear. It only lasts for an instant, but it is a profound and disorienting sensation. The world becomes a very unreal place for a moment, and I become frustrated that there is not a real world to wake up to.
Just for a moment, I get a glimpse of another level of reality -- a more real level of reality -- but of course, this is no "glimpse," just a sense that that other level is there and that I'm missing out on it. All I know about this other level of reality is that it's more real than the one I'm in...and that I can't get there.
And it is a complete illusion, of course.
But maybe it's more than that, too. I don't believe that the real world is an illusion and that I need to awaken to some enlightened state of existence. (Well, I don't entirely believe that.) But I do believe that trying to perceive and understand our world in a new way -- to get to the "next level," if only metaphorically --is a huge part of the journey we're all on. And it's good to be reminded of that, even by a cheap electronic timer.
I missed this last week: Michael Anissimov provides a thorough run-down of what went on at the Terasem Movement 4th Colloquium on the Law of Futuristic Persons in Melbourne, Florida. Topics ranged from the legal rights of people in biostasis to how to teach robots right from wrong. The focus is on putting together the appropriate legal framework to deal with these major changes in how define little insignificant cocnepts such as what is human or what it means to be alive.
I was a few miles away at a completely different (day-job-related) conference while Michael was attending the Colloquim. I think he got the better deal!
Is it the source of life here? Popular Mechanics details five experiments aimed at showing that terrestrial life could have come from space:
Drill on Mars
Send Samples to Space
Expose Life to Re-entry
Shoot Bacteria From a Gun
Study Extreme Life on Earth
We reported on one of the re-entry experiments a while back. In that instance, the bacteria riding a re-entering "meteor" got fried pretty badly. Maybe this time out they will embed the samples deeper in the rock.
There are profound implications if life can be shown to survive a journey through space, and even more profound if life can be shown definitively to have come from elsewhere. Of course, we then face the mystery of how did life come to exist there? That's assuming we can ever even figure out where "there" is.
Via Instapundit.
And he may be right:
Hawking Predicts Discovery of Alien Life: But Asks, Will It be Carbon Based?
On the 50th anniversary of NASA, Stephen Hawking, Newton's heir as the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, answered the question, “Are we alone?”
His answer was short and simple; probably not!
Hawking presented three options. One, being that there is no life out there, and two – somewhat pessimistically, but subsequently, a little too realistic – being that when intelligent life gets smart enough to send signals in to space, it is also busying itself with making nuclear bombs.
Hawking, known not only for his sharp mind, but his sharp sense of humor, prefers option number three. "Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare," he quickly added: "Some would say it has yet to occur on earth."
If I were a betting man, I think I would have to go with option one. If aliens were out there, there's an argument to be made that we should already know about them. Or maybe they're just avoiding us.
But, hey, I'm ready for the aliens to show up and prove me wrong.
Any time they care to.
Phil and Stephen talked with nanotechnology visionary J. Storrs Hall about the future of nanotechnology and artificial intelligence, and how the concept of autogeny applies to both. And, yes, utility fog was discussed.
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It's a great question, just exactly the kind we like to ask:
Did our cosmos exist before the big bang?
According to the big bounce picture formulated by theoretical physicist Abhay Ashtekar and others, the cosmos grew from the collapse of a pre-existing universe. Will the same fate await us?It depends. We used to think that the universe was dominated by the gravity of its stars and other matter: either the universe is dense enough for gravity to halt the expansion from the big bang and pull everything back, or else it isn't, in which case the expansion would carry on forever. However, observations of distant supernovae in the past 10 years have challenged that view. They show not just that the universe is expanding, but also that the expansion is speeding up due to a mysterious repulsive force that cosmologists call "dark energy". So if the universe fails to contract, has it already bounced its last bounce?Perhaps not. Cosmologists are still very much in the dark about dark energy. Some theoretical models speculate that the nature of dark energy could change over time, switching from a repulsive to an attractive force that behaves much like gravity. If that happens, the universe will stop expanding and the galaxies will begin to rush together. A question mark also hangs over the universe's matter and energy density, which we have not measured with sufficient accuracy to be sure that the universe will not eventually stop expanding. If it turns out to be a smidgen greater than current observations, then it is a recipe for cosmic collapse.According to the big bounce, in both scenarios the universe will eventually collapse until it reaches the highest density allowed by the theory. At this point, the universe will rebound and begin expanding again - the ultimate in cosmic recycling.
It expands, it contracts. The universe is an accordion!
Or maybe accordion is the wrong analogy -- here's a picture of the cosmos in action:
The slinky is our universe. The stairs would then be...the context in which the universe exists. How big is the staircase, I wonder? Infinite?
More thoughts here.
A couple of entries from our buddy Harvey this week. First here's Cher (with a little Sonny) to get us ready for the holidays...
I remember seeing this cartoon when it first aired a zillion years ago. It was pretty neat then and it's still pretty neat.
Still, whenever I see Cher singing a Christmas song, I think of Paul Shaffer imitating her singing "What Child is This?" on Letterman. That used to be a holiday tradition on Letterman; don't know if they still do it.
On a somewhat more Speculist note, here's Fine Young Cannibals singing Don't Look Back:
Okay, well I said somewhat...
This is just about as astounding as it gets:
Scientists extract images directly from brain
Researchers from Japan's ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have developed new brain analysis technology that can reconstruct the images inside a person's mind and display them on a computer monitor, it was announced on December 11. According to the researchers, further development of the technology may soon make it possible to view other people's dreams while they sleep.
The scientists were able to reconstruct various images viewed by a person by analyzing changes in their cerebral blood flow. Using a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine, the researchers first mapped the blood flow changes that occurred in the cerebral visual cortex as subjects viewed various images held in front of their eyes. Subjects were shown 400 random 10 x 10 pixel black-and-white images for a period of 12 seconds each. While the fMRI machine monitored the changes in brain activity, a computer crunched the data and learned to associate the various changes in brain activity with the different image designs.
Then, when the test subjects were shown a completely new set of images, such as the letters N-E-U-R-O-N, the system was able to reconstruct and display what the test subjects were viewing based solely on their brain activity.
Putting together entries for this blog means that I read an amazing story every other day -- sometimes more frequently than that. We see so many huge developments that it's hard to realize how impressive, how potentially world-changing some of them are.
If this is real, it is a world-changing development. Technology such as this could lead to a revolution in art and entertainment unlike anything that has come before. Such a development has the potential to unite the machine world and the human world in a completely new and powerful way.
But there's a downside. As surveillance technology has continued to dig its way deeper and deeper into every level of our existence over the past few years, we could always take comfort that the human imagination is the one final refuge for someone seeking privacy.
Now that reassurance is gone. And that is pretty damn scary.
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