Apart from the daily dishings on Tom DeLay, there’s not much encouragement in the news these days. The economy is faltering and the stock market tanked the last three days of last week – bonddad’s diary.
Iraq and Afghanistan are not exactly shining examples of stable democracies. President Karzai is begging for stronger security links with the US, while the US force commander warns of ‘desperate’ Taleban. Meanwhile, Iraq has it’s own problems.
Bill Frist is lining up with the theocrats, while Tom DeLay seems ready for his own little nuclear option.
And now this! I was reading this article in the Guardian about Sir Martin John Rees – the next President of the Royal Society.
Rees’s top-down approach to intellectual life is intriguing enough but takes on an immediacy given his new role in British public life – as the next president of the Royal Society, the world’s oldest scientific academy and arguably its single most influential academic organisation. For the first time in 100 years, an astronomer is now at its helm.
The article lead me to another with this heading: What a way to go
Super-volcano, robotic rebellion or terrorism? Kate Ravilious asks 10 scientists to name the biggest danger to Earth and assesses the chances of it happening
And I’m sorry to report that the news are not entirely positive. This is what the same Sir Martin Rees states:
According to Sir Martin Rees, author of Our Final Century, astronomer royal and professor of cosmology and astrophysics at the University of Cambridge, humans only have a 50-50 chance of making it through the 21st century without serious setback. “Some natural threats, such as earthquakes and meteorite impacts, remain the same throughout time, while others are aggravated by our modern-interconnected world. But now we also need to consider threats that are human induced.”
Here are the threats that the scientists assessed. Read the article.
- Climate Change
- Telomere erosion
- Viral Pandemic
- Terrorism
- Nuclear war
- Meteorite impact
- Robots taking over
- Cosmic ray blast from exploding star
- Super-volcanoes
- Earth swallowed by a black hole
Sorry folks, I was feeling bad for not participating in the “Happy Story” this weekend, and this is what I came up with. Bummer!
are currently beyond human influence (6, 8-10), assuming we adopt proper health policies to counter threats 2 and 3.
this sinus infection has reached pandemic proportions and I cannot move my head w/o excruciating pain. I may not survive the century.
Sorry to hear of your condition, those can be meanies.
Get better soon!
I’m down because I have to go to the office and spend a few hours on something which will be meaningless ultimately – and it’s such a great day outside.
Umm… so the whole Matrix/ Terminator world is a possibility in this century according to the world’s scientists? Wow.
And Earth swallowed by a black hole? Now I’m just terrified.
Ah yeah, so I was taking this whole thing seriously until I read that. Unless they know something we don’t. Maybe these scientists are really robots and putting that on the list is the first step of their propaganda to get people used to the idea of robots…
Check this out Chocolate:
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:2OmbQunRW-kJ:www.siam.org/siamnews/bookrevs/chesside.htm+big+blue
+computer&hl=en
The 1997 version of Deep Blue, a standard IBM RS/6000 supercomputer with 32 processors, is capable of considering some 200 million moves per second, which makes it about twice as fast as the 1996 version. A team of five computer scientists, along with Joel Benjamin, a former U.S. champion, had worked full time on DB since the end of last year’s match. The means were at hand to increase the machine’s computing speed by at least an order of magnitude, via the addition of another 480 processors, but this option was not exercised due to budget considerations. Instead, the team elected to teach Deep Blue more about the game of chess by incorporating additional heuristics and rules of thumb intended to make the machine mimic human play more closely. These rules were designed to enhance Deep Blue’s ability to identify the promising avenues of approach at the earliest possible moment and to avoid expending undue search effort on unpromising ones. “Deep Blue has shown human tenacity,” said Ashely after game 4, “while Garry is almost playing computer chess.” Kasparov agreed: “The computer is very human.”
“”Kasparov is of the opinion that, in their inscrutable way, machines like DB can actually think. When playing against them, he claims to detect genuine thought. DB tries to fool him, as a human would, by disguising its own immediate objectives. Moreover, DB sometimes succeeds on a grand scale. “I’m only a human being,” he conceded, “I get scared when I see something beyond my comprehension.” Be that as it may, it is far from clear that IBM’s involvement in chess will continue. Tan’s group was formed largely to test the powers of the RS/6000; that accomplished, management now seems intent on exploiting the machine’s commercial possibilities. The application areas identified include medical research, retailing, the insurance industry, and weather prediction.—JC“
thanks diane, interesting link. Which reminds of the movie “I Robot” with Will Smith…good premise for movie but rather limited character development of the human characters I thought.(although that was from a book or short story)
Let’s organise!
I propose to create the PFABH (People’s Front Against the Black Hole)
Overpopulation and draining the earth of resources are other concerns. They were running experiments a while back that some scientists said could create a black hole on earth – that would be a quick end but at least the Armageddon crowd couldn’t savor the moment.
With the politics, I’m not too worried as I think the pendulum will swing back our way. I may be miserable until it does, but right now I’m more concerned for others. Meaning those that the U.S. has decided to not feed, shelter or educate. Meaning those the U.S. has decided to bomb. Meaning those that the U.S. has decided to imprison because they fit a stereotype.
However, Mother Nature is a completely different story when I talk about whether I am worried or not. One thinks one is in control of one’s life and then She comes along.
I was in SF for the Loma Prieta quake. I worked in a small building on Spear (close to Red’s Java Hut) that was under the Bay Bridge. With all that shaking and roaring and watching the bridge swaying, I just knew we were going to get shuffled right down into the water. Obviously we weren’t, but I went around for a few days with the prickly feeling of my hair standing on end.
And one of the most terrifying books I have ever read was a short sci-fi book (sorry – bad with titles and authors) where the sun had a huge flare during daytime in Europe and wiped out everyone on the continents facing the sun. At midnight in the U.S., it was like dawn breaking; birds chirping, brightening skies. I read this book years ago, but yet, if I wake up in the middle of the night and it’s brighter than I expected – I still get all freaked out.
So whether it’s by meteorite or viral flu or sun flare or earthquakes caused by those super-volcanoes, I would give us even worse odds than Sir Martin Rees in experiencing a serious setback in the next century.
BTW, I love BSG but I seriously doubt the Cylons will take over in this century.