[extropy-chat] fermi's paradox: m/d approach

[David Lubkin]

At 01:17 PM 1/1/2004 -0800, Spike wrote:

>Even if we nuke ourselves into the stone age, recall that the stone age
>lasted until only a few thousand years ago.  Humans are tremendously
>adaptable, and many already live in places that would not be worth a
>nuke, should all the nuke capable powers let loose with all they have.
>Africans would survive, Aborigines would survive, there would be pockets
>of humanity everywhere that would carry on.

The worst-case scenario with current or near-term technology is not 
nuclear, it is biological.

A few months ago, I watched Dr. Ann Reid of the Armed Forces Institute of 
Pathology being interviewed on C-SPAN. (Disclosure:  I *think* it was her; 
it could have been another woman researcher, with the CDC.  Irrelevant to 
the discussion.)

She was discussing the so-called Spanish Flu of 1918, which she has devoted 
her career to studying.  You may recall that it was one of the worst 
pandemics in history, killing about 40 milllion people in a few months.

Which is bad enough.

I had always assumed that the epidemic had been self-limiting, as they 
generally are.  The jaw-dropping part for me was when she reported the 
conclusion from their studies that, within ten years or so, everyone on the 
planet had been exposed to the virus.  There was no place so remote that 
they did not detect indications the virus had reached there.

So imagine something a little more virulent, perhaps engineered.

We've been lucky so far, that bad stuff is self-limiting or some people 
have the right mix to be naturally immune.  I'm not convinced it has to be 
that way, particularly if the agent has been designed to be nasty.

This leads me to two thoughts pertinent to this discussion.

(1)  Your S/M brain could certainly result from AI.  But the upload route 
to an S+M brain, anyway, seems to require a comparable understanding of 
biology as would be needed to create an extinction-class biological weapon.

(2)  I will sleep better at night when our DirtWorld life has spread to 
self-sufficient, biologically isolated backups.


-- David Lubkin.