FQXi (Foundational Questions Institute) encourages and supports research that explore the foundational questions in Physics and cosmology.

FQXi catalyzes, supports, and disseminates research on questions at the foundations of physics and cosmology, particularly new frontiers and innovative ideas integral to a deep understanding of reality, but unlikely to be supported by conventional funding sources.

This is not about any of the questions about the foundation of physics. It’s about the other thing FQXi does — The Essay Contests.

You can look into their archive for some of the best thought-pieces on open-ended questions. 2014's essay topic was “How should Humanity Steer the Future?” The results for the essay have already been declared. It’s a tasteful collection of essays. One that stuck with me, and is the title of this story, is “How to Save the World”, by Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder. I might be biased, because I am a frequent visitor to her blog, Backreaction.

Even at the first read, her essay looks like a transcript of a TED talk. “Saving the World”, is often left to the Avengers, and there’s a good reason for it — Planning it is superbly complex! In this essay, Dr. Hossenfelder, first explores why it’s difficult and then proposes, in the internet’s idiosyncratic way, five simple ways to accomplish this.

The central point of her essay is

We fail to act in the face of global problems because we do not have an intuitive grasp on the consequences of collective human behavior, are prone to cognitive biases, and easily overwhelmed by data.

The inability to grasp long-term effects of our short-term decisions, has the potential to end the human race. Humans are very weak animals. We are shorter, weaker and slower than even the mediocre predators. We’ve survived as a species, by not being on top of the food chain; but by getting out of it. To do so, we evolved to make the surroundings adapt to us.

Natural selection is a powerful mechanism, but it operates at a scale which is beyond human cognitive claws. We wanted to be mobile, to explore the world. We could’ve waited a couple hundred thousand years, and maybe we would’ve developed quicker feet and better stamina to run from Kolkata to New Delhi. Instead, we invented the wheel. We would have never discovered the Americas, if there were no ship. Just because we can’t swim, doesn’t mean we won’t.

Our civilization is what it is, because we changed the world to be like us, rather than give Nature the time to change us for the world. This had adverse effects, because we didn’t have the time to adapt to how good we are. We are the young Peter Parker, and the Earth is our Uncle Ben. We had too much power, and too little responsibility. Unlike, the Spider-man, we can’t let our Uncle Ben die. So, how do we save the Earth? In the essay, Hossenfelder proposes a five step plan. But before that she enunciates the problem that we face.

Indications of social and environmental decadence are ubiquitous. The daily news is a buffet of misery, and so are the reports on more complicated issues. Experts come in and talk about the various steps that need to be taken to save the world. But, who cares? Nobody!

The Problem

But, that’s not the central problem. The problem is to think that people don’t care because they don’t want to. The opposite is the reality. People in general are kind and considerate. They want to minimize impacts on the environment. They want to stop the ozone layer from degrading. Everyone would agree that these issues are top priorities for the human species. However, the decisions they take, do not take them closer to these personal priorities.

Making priority-based decisions is tough, because it needs enormous amount of information and analysis. Things are made worse by our inability to evaluate long-term consequences. Global warming is obvious, but only to trained scientists. The word ‘global’ is the problem. Our brain’s wiring is to deal with the ‘local’. Our thoughts are always about the immediate tomorrow, not about 10 years from now.

People don’t quit their jobs, and start their dream startup because they fear what they’d be doing tomorrow (after quitting their job). It’s always about tomorrow, even if it shouldn’t be that way. We’ve managed to build such a complicated world, that it’s impossible to comprehend the impacts of our decisions.

The Myth of New Technology Saving Us

Whenever there’s talk of environment, there’s talk of alternative sources of energy. Solar Energy? Manufacturing solar voltaic cells produce more pollution than they help prevent. Quantum Computation is a buzzword that would get you funding, but it won’t solve the problem — to help people make decisions based on their priorities.

The Solution

In the essay, Hossenfelder suggests there has to be a decision map of sort, which makes the user understand how their decisions are aligned with their priorities. These maps would be programs, where you first feed your priorities, then ask it if a particular decision adversely affects your commitment to the priorities. These programs would ‘maps’ to our priorities, because we often get lost because of the complexity of the deciding the correct turn (the correct ‘decision’).

She further compares this to the gamification by social apps. There are apps, that calculate how many steps you should walk in a day, if you want to reach a certain weight target. These are local goals (watching the number of steps), which try to fulfill an abstract idea (of being slimmer).

Building the priority maps that take into account all the problems in the world, will be a lot more complicated than a weightloss app. But, we’ve been working on handling big data, to analyze and visualize them. We’ve to gamify, ‘saving the world’ project, and develop systems which help people grasp the impacts of their decisions on personal priorities in a simple, intuitive and visual (immediate) way. Hossenfelder’s five step plan depends crucially on these priority maps.

As an aside, take a look at these apps that are making the world a better place.

The 5-Step Plan

Step 1: Priority Maps for Scientists

Scientists and researchers are the easiest people to make a priority map for. Their research and priorities are objective. These priorities will be easier to code.

Step 2: Close the feedback loop in the academic system

The decisions in an academic system are to choose the right kind of projects that are aligned with the priorities of the institution and those of the scientist. This feedback loop (that Hossenfelder enunciates at length), which is made up of the priority map will help scientists make quicker, and more accurate decisions. The feedback loop is a stand-in for an evolved reward system which is necessary to understand the dynamics of a highly connected world.

Step 3: Individual priority maps for everybody

After applying the ‘priority map’ method on scientists, we could expand the project to map the decisions of the general public. Social, political and personal priorities are much more subjective than the scientific ones. This step will be slower, and is perhaps the only place where the whole of 5-step program can crumble. I’m skeptical about developing an advanced AI [within a reasonable time-frame], which can learn from such subjective parameters and suggest appropriate decisions.

Step 4: Close the feedback loop for social systems

Contingent on the success of Step 3, and similar to step 2, we make the priority maps available to the scientists. Closing the loop on the social systems, will be the beginning of steering the humanity towards saving the world.

Step 5: Upgrade priority maps to brain extensions

The final step is to have an artificial evolution i.e. integrate the priority maps to the brain. Instead of thumbing on your phone, you’d have to ‘think’ and you’ll know whether to take a decision or not, based on your priorities.