[ExI] Accelerando, The Spike, war and energy

Keith Henson hkeithhenson at gmail.com
Tue Mar 2 19:18:35 UTC 2010


On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 12:24 AM,   Damien Broderick
<thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
>
> I've been reluctant to mention this, but in that context (a good
> recommendation from Keith!) I might as well: if anyone wants to get
> something of the flavor of the ideas and approaches buzzing on the list
> in the mid-'90s, read my book THE SPIKE. The trouble is that these once
> hair-raising ideas are now commonplace, some decade and a half later
> (although I had to omit some of the more difficult material because I
> was aiming at a general Wired-ish audience).

I was reading The Spike again recently.  I can't think of anything
Charles Stross missed that was not covered there.  It really isn't
dated because most of the content was so far downstream.

snip

> Still, I'm sure there are new ideas waiting to be explored, or old ideas
> waiting to be examined in depth--but it's not obvious what they are.
> (I'm waiting eagerly for Keith to tell us what his current idea for
> cheap energy is.)

It's not my idea.  Spike is under an NDA on this as well but he can
express an opinion as to its technical merits.  It will be out in the
open late summer/early fall.  I can ask to include people in NDA
discussions at this stage if they have skills and knowledge that might
be useful.

> From: "spike" <spike66 at att.net>
>
>>...On Behalf Of Christopher Luebcke
>        Subject: Re: [ExI] Phil Jones acknowledging that climate science
> isn'tsettled
>
>        >...The problem has never been that people cannot adapt. It's that
> ecosystems can adapt in ways that are extremely unfriendly to people. No
> matter how well-deserved your estimation of your own genes is, your kids are
> not going to grow gills or derive nutrition from sand. Catastrophic global
> warming won't kill by heat stroke. It'll kill by war, disease and famine...

Much worse would be a sharp drop in temperature, something that we
know has happened and don't know exactly why.

> So I hear.  Consider the kinds of oversimplification that leads to
> misunderstanding.  One I pointed out, where the proletariat somehow turns a
> degree per century into a degree per year.  Then there is the annoying habit
> of lumping all varieties of skeptics into one large bin of enviro-heretics,
> even though there are many subtle varieties.  I for instance recognize that
> the surface temperature may rise a bit on average, but I seriously doubt
> that warming by itself will cause war, disease, famine etc.  We have
> *plenty* of factors that can cause all that stuff without a couple degrees
> of warming.  For instance, we have war, disease and famine as a result of
> human disagreement on the name of their imaginary deities.  Humans just have
> a bad habit of killing each other.

Humans (along with every other animal I know about) have a habit of
reproducing till they overrun the ability of the environment to feed
them.

Unique to humans, they invent gods or haul old ones out of memetic
storage as a "reason" to kill neighbors.  The process is mechanistic,
switched on by gene built mental mechanisms that humans are not even
aware of.  One of the more insightful commentaries on this point is
dated over 900 years ago:

. . . the chronicler Robert the Monk has put into the mouth of Urban II:

    [...] this land which you inhabit, shut in on all sides by the
seas and surrounded by the mountain peaks, is too narrow for your
large population; nor does it abound in wealth; and it furnishes
scarcely food enough for its cultivators. Hence it is that you murder
one another, that you wage war, and that frequently you perish by
mutual wounds. Let therefore hatred depart from among you, let your
quarrels end, let wars cease, and let all dissensions and
controversies slumber. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre;
wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves.
[...] God has conferred upon you above all nations great glory in
arms. Accordingly undertake this journey for the remission of your
sins, with the assurance of the imperishable glory of the Kingdom of
Heaven.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Urban_II

> Considering modern war technology, agricultural technology, pest control,
> water handling, construction skills, I honestly think we would scarcely
> notice a degree or two of warming over a human lifetime.  We can handle it,
> farm animals can handle it, crops can be genetically engineered for a bit
> warmer and longer growing season.  Some beasts will go extinct as beasts do,
> but some would anyway even without the warming.  Chris we have bigger
> problems to worry about, such as maintaining the supply of cheap energy.

Exactly.  When a family is spending half its income on food, a
doubling of food prices due to higher energy cost means the family
starves.

Keith



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