[extropy-chat] Transhumanist Survivalism

[alexboko]

All of us are deeply vested in a complex,
high-tech society. We are staking almost
everything on the assumption that this
society will not collapse the way every
great civilization before us did. I humbly
propose that we dedicate some fraction of
our intelligence to putting together a
contingency plan in case we're wrong.

The stereotypical "survivalist" strategy is
forming a small, isolated community in an
easily farmed area with naturally occurring
fresh water, and reliance on technology that
does not require a large infrastructure to
produce.

If you are satisfied with such a lifestyle,
now is the time for you to actively start
seeking out or forming such a community. I
sincerely wish you the best-- if you succeed
perhaps someday we will be allies and trading
partners. The more survival strategies are in
play, the better it will be for the human
species.

However, there are those individuals for whom
a low-tech lifestyle is not acceptable. For
instance, people with chronic illnesses that
require advanced medical intervention; people
whose sense of purpose is intimately tied to
technology; people who wish to preserve our
cultural and scientific acchievements for
future generations. These individuals can
still find hope in re-examining the assumption
that a low-tech lifestyle is the only
sustainable lifestyle. I invite these
individuals to join me in planning for a
community that will be resilient to most
collapse scenarios.

I. Plan
	A. Brainstorming
	
	i. This document will be opened for
	comments and revision and then finalized
	as a draft. A procedure for reopening
	the document for updates will be decided.
	A system for decisionmaking will be
	implemented to insure each question is
	deliberated with as much objectivity and
	insight as possible.

	ii. A venue will be decided for this and
	future document-related activities--
	mailing list, wiki, Sourceforge, etc.

	iii. As necessary, temporary working groups
	will be formed for the purpose of in-depth
	development of various parts of the plan.

	iv. Individuals posessing strategic skills,
	knowledge, and resources will be recruited
	to the project and directed toward the
	appropriate working group.

	B. Draft plan
	
	C. Venture capital acquisition

	D. Physical implementation

II. Possible causes of collapse.
Remember, ideology has no place here. We are
not interested either in alarmism or denial.
What we are interested in figuring out what to
expect from each scenario and its likelihood
of happening.
	A. Climate change

	B. Depletion of feasibly extractable
	resources (including energy)

	C. War

	D. Tyranny

	E. Long-term economic depression

	F. Nuclear/biological/chemical attack

	G. Plague

III. Underlying Assumptions

	A. By definition, once a collapse
	occurs, there can be no broad-ranging
	governmental solution (although public
	policy measures might be used to buy
	more time before the collapse).

	B. Economics, politics, and culture
	are real, if not always well-understood,
	factors that must be anticipated for
	any plan to succeed. A plan that only
	factors in technical feasibility is
	doomed from the start.

	C. Only people the plan can rely on are
	the participants, and the only resouces
	the plan can rely on are the resources
	controlled by the participants. Every
	step of the plan must be feasibly
	acchievable with what we have at hand.
	
	D. The plan cannot rely on any technologies
	that are not already mature (cheap space
	travel, fusion, nanotechnology, AI), but it
	must be flexible enough to take advantage
	of them if and when they are developed.

	E. The plan must make a good faith effort
	to comply with the laws of the relevant
	jurisdictions. The plan must respect
	individual freedom.

	F. The plan must assume a 50 year time
	window to implementation at maximum. It
	should strive for at least partial
	implementation within 10 years.

	G. Politics, ideology, religion, all
	take a back seat to pragmatism. The
	primary criterion
	must always be "DOES it work?" not "SHOULD
	it work?"

	H. The plan must be fully transparent to its
	participants, and constantly seek ways to
	improve.

IV. Basic strategies.

	A. Global population control
         Looking for alternatives to governmental
	coercion for rapidly reducing population
	pressure; educating the public and
	decision-makers about these alternatives.
	This is unlikely to eliminate the risk of
	collapse, but may delay its onset and
	severity.

         B. Recruitment
	Identifying individuals with strategic
	skills/knowledge/resources and persuading
	them to join the project.

         C. 'Leibowitz' project
         Ever read Canticle for Leibowitz? If you
	have, you'll know what I mean by this. The
	centerpiece of the plan-- a sustainable
	community that manages not only to preserve
	but extend the boundaries of scientific
	knowledge no matter what chaos engulfs the
	world beyond its borders.

V. The most crucial questions

         A. How can we buy more time?

	B. How much time do we need to buy?

         C. What are the crucial lines of R&D
	that must continue to be pursued no
	matter what?

         D. What is the minimal shopping list
	of manufactured goods needed to allow
	these lines of R&D to continue?

         E. What is the minimal shopping list
	of raw materials needed to continue
	the crucial lines of R&D as well as
	supply them with the manufactured goods
	they require?

         F. Which manufactured goods and raw
	materials are feasible to stockpile
	for the projected time window?

         G. What are the minimal and maximal
	numbers of people needed to make
	adequate progress in the crucial lines
	of R&D as well as to keep the community
	self-sufficient?

         H. What real estate meeting the needs
	of this community can be feasibly
	purchased and developed by the
	members?

         I. How much cash will this require?

         J. How can market mechanisms be used
	to raise this cash?

         K. How can individual freedom and
	innovation within the community be
	optimized without compromising
	its long term survival?

         L. How can the community sustainable
	and scalably expand to recolonize
	abandoned/depopulated areas?

	M. What is the most reliable and durable
	medium for preserving current knowledge,
	including knowledge that does not directly
	pertain to the crucial R&D topics?

         N. How do we prioritize the
	preservation of knowledge in this medium?

I'm interested in what this group has to say
about the above draft plan. However, to
actually participate in the project, I ask
that you email me directly--
alexboko at umich.edu. Please include a phone
number (with area code) you can be reached at,
the city you live nearest to, any
skills/attributes/attributes you feel are
relevant to this project, and any thoughts you
might like to share.