How to not die (as a species)
A.k.a The existential threats humanity is facing as of this moment and how to overcome (some of) them.
If you had only one planet that you can live on, would you try to be a united species and protect each other or divide yourselves up by physical and mental boundaries and destroy each other?
The answer seems pretty obvious, right?
Apparently not. It’s 100 seconds to midnight in the Doomsday Clock. And we’re messing about killing each other for land, hoarding Nuclear weapons, and downright denying the existence of climate change.
Looks like we’re not doing that great as a species. Dinosaurs were on Earth for between 165 and 177 million years. Average mammalian species survive for about a million years. We’ve only been around for around 200,000 years and we’re already about to ‘get wrecked’. ‘Save Earth?’ Bullshit. Earth will survive. No matter what we do. What we need to do is ‘Save Humanity’. Let’s find out how to do that, shall we?
Contents
- The Threats
- The (possible) Solutions
- The problems with the Solutions
- How to ‘Save Humanity’
The Threats
Before we figure out how to save ourselves, let’s talk about what we should save ourselves from. Time to dive in.
First, some natural occurrences with the ability to wipe out civilization.
Asteroid Impact
What would happen if an asteroid hit the Earth?
- Let’s say an asteroid the size of a house hits the Earth. It would have a power of roughly 20 kilotons, around the power of the bomb dropped at Hiroshima. It would flatten reinforced concrete buildings up to half a mile and flatten wooden structures for about a mile and a half from ground zero (the point it crashes).
- An asteroid the size of a 20-story building (200 ft on a side)? It has an energy of about 25–50 kilotons. The power of the largest nuclear bombs made today. An asteroid like this would flatten reinforced concrete buildings five miles from ground zero.
- How about a mile-wide asteroid? 1 million megatons of energy. That is 10 million more times the energy than the Hiroshima bomb. It’s able to flatten everything for 100 to 200 miles out from ground zero and cause extensive damage for about 1000 miles around. The wind, the shock waves, and the amount of dust and debris thrown up into the atmosphere would cause an impact winter that could potentially wipe out life on the planet.
In 2028, the asteroid 1997XF11 will come extremely close to Earth but will miss the planet. What if something changes its trajectory and collide with the earth? Will we survive? It’s very likely we wouldn’t, but some studies say we just might be able to.
However, major asteroid impacts threaten the planet every million or so years, and we’re not in the calendar yet. So, at the moment, we could say we’re safe from that threat.
Supervolcanoes
This is not a supervolcano.
The name itself is terrifying enough.
Around 200 million years ago, one single supervolcano erupted and caused the extinction of almost 75% of life on earth, pulled apart what is now North America and Africa, and created the Atlantic Ocean in between. Yeah.
The extinction happened not because lava covered the earth, it was because of the spiking of CO2 and Carbon on earth. It was after this event dinosaurs evolved and dominated the earth.
Is there a possibility of a supervolcanic eruption now? Scientists discovered a supervolcano under Yellowstone Park that is 89 by 32 kilometers and 5 to 14 kilometers below the surface. Will it erupt in the near future? Not likely. It is predicted to erupt almost a 10,000 years from now. So, we can go on happily warmongering. For now.
Gamma-ray Bursts
Space Death Ray, yay.
Another unlikely but terrifying scenario. When a big star collapses, it creates a whole lot of radiation in concentrated streams. If one of these rays hits the earth, it could destroy the entire ozone layer. We all know what happens next.
But, a lot of unlikely scenarios will have to happen at once for a gamma-ray burst to be dangerous to us. First, the star has to be near enough to us to cause damage, and it would have to line up precisely so that it will strike the earth. Also, a gamma-ray burst is likely to occur near earth only every billion years or so. Guess we’re safe from that too.
However, Scientists claim that gamma-ray bursts might have had a hand in the late Ordovician extinction which happened about 440 million years ago and wiped out around 70% of marine life (most of all life was marine back then).
Alien Invasion
Take a look at what the Fermi Paradox is if you don’t know already.
It is possible that other intelligent life might be populating the Universe after all. We are made of the same elements that can be found anywhere in the Universe. So it would be incredibly arrogant of us to assume that we’re the only intelligent life forms of the universe. However, if an alien species does visit us, they would surely be much more advanced than humans.
There are some issues with this scenario.
- Why would they invade us? For resources? They will have access to thousands of planets that contains the same resources. Waging war against us makes no sense.
- Why would they be hostile? They are clearly more advanced than us, so why consider us a threat? There’s no reason for them to annihilate us. However, when a less advanced civilization meets a more advanced civilization, it almost always results in bloodshed. And, the less advanced civilization clearly suffers more (as proven by the history of humans on earth). If their thought processes, morals, and values are different from us, we might stand a chance. Or would we?
- Why haven’t they announced themselves? Maybe they haven’t found us yet. Maybe they are so advanced that they think of us as primitive beings not worthy of their attention. Maybe their tech is so different from ours and we don’t have the means to communicate. Lots of reasons.
- Will we stand a chance? If for some reason, aliens do decide to invade earth, that’s it for us. Forget movies. If they have the ability for efficient, interstellar travel, our tech is no match for them. Say Bye. Go Boom. That’s it.
Let’s hope that if they come, they’ll be friendly.
The Great Filter
This is the disturbing theory put forth by Robin Hanson in 1998 as a solution to Enrico Fermi‘s famous Fermi Paradox. It suggests that there is some kind of an ultimate evolutionary step that precludes life from becoming interstellar.
The basic idea is that a species will destroy themselves before becoming a spacefaring civilization. SpaceX’s Big Fucking Rocket won’t matter if we’re in the middle of a Nuclear Winter. We don’t have the necessary equipment to become effectively spacefaring yet, but we certainly do have the equipment for self-annihilation. If a great filter exists, the actions we take in the near future might be the most vital for the continuation of Humanity.
So, those are some of the natural threats we face that have the ability to wipe out Humanity. Now, let’s talk about the really dangerous ones. Humans.
Nuclear War
The atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki at the end of World War Two killed more than 70,000 people. And now, a significant number of countries are equipped with Nuclear weaponry even more powerful than those bombs.
The major countries are Russia, the United States, China, France, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea. The day one of those countries launches a nuke will be the beginning of the end. Depending on how many countries participated in the war, how many nukes were deployed, and what parts of the world were attacked, the aftermath of nuclear war will be different. But is sure as hell won’t be good and it will be a massive threat to the survival of Humanity.
Situations in Afghanistan, Yemen, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Libya, and Israel are just some of the most threatening conflicts in the world right now. Let’s hope none of them escalate to the point of a worldwide war.
Climate Change
Although climate change alone cannot cause an extinction event, it will be harmful to all life on earth and can complement other occurrences that might cause extinction.
- Global warming results in a warmer climate that can collect, retain, and drop more water, which will cause wet areas to become wetter and dry areas to become drier.
- As temperature spikes so do the incidence of illness. Heat exhaustion, heatstroke, cardiovascular and kidney diseases are some such. CDC reports that extreme heat kills more Americans each year, on average, than hurricanes, floods or lightning, COMBINED.
- Atmospheric pollution. An increase in ground-level ozone and airborne pollen is not good news.
- Higher wildlife extinction rates. A study in 2015 showed that vertebrate species are disappearing 114 times faster than they should be, which has been linked to climate change. Sir David Attenborough’s documentary, “A Life in Our Planet” on Netflix sheds light on this topic impeccably.
- More acidic oceans and higher sea levels. Absorption of excess emissions causes oceans to become more acidic thereby threatening underwater life. Average temperatures are rising twice as fast in the Arctic as they are elsewhere. Polar ice caps are melting resulting in higher sea levels, threatening low lying areas like New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Sydney, Rio de Janeiro, and Mumbai.
But of course, there is always a group of science-denying halfwits claiming climate change is ‘not a thing’.
A video on YouTube (taken down as of this moment) has one such claiming that in the cost-benefit analysis of taking precautions for climate change, the costs outweigh the benefits. You would expect “not dying” to be a significant enough benefit.
Climate change is real. The sooner we do something about it, the better.
Artificial Superintelligence
Many business leaders and scholars like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, and Nick Bostrom are worried about the existential threat Artificial Superintelligence poses. How can this happen? After all, we are the makers, why would it kill us?
Unlike science fiction and movies, it won’t be a rogue and evil ASI that poses the threat. It wouldn’t kill us because it wants to, it would just be a problem of misaligned goals. Before we see how an ASI may pose a threat, let’s eliminate the ways it wouldn’t.
Misconceptions about ASI
- Anthropomorphism
Attributing human traits to an AI is a common misconception in this subject. One of the most commonly emphasized points in AI safety literature is that one must never anthropomorphize. Humans were developed by natural selection. AI won’t be. The ‘cognitive architecture’ of AI might be completely different from humans. Which means that the AI might behave in unpredictable ways.
- The myth of evil AI
AI with consciousness and emotions. Ever the subject of science fiction and movies. The AI that will overthrow its master. This is also a form of anthropomorphism. Even if consciousness can be programmed into a machine (don’t forget that we have no idea what consciousness even is, yet), we can’t assume that it will go from ‘making paperclips’ to killing humans.
The real threat of ASI
ASI poses a threat to humanity mainly due to two reasons.
- Misaligned goals
A group of people cuts down some trees to get wood for construction. When they cut these trees down, the bird nests in these trees are damaged and the eggs are destroyed. The act of cutting down the tree threatened the lives of birds that lived there. But, the humans didn’t cut those trees because they hated the birds and wanted them to die. They had a different goal. But their goal was not in alignment with the birds’ goal to survive. That’s the threat of AI, when we assign a particular task to an AI without considering all possible outcomes, the AI might engage in activities that will threaten humans. Not because it’s evil or it wants to ‘murder the maker’, but because doing so makes it easier to achieve the goal we assigned it.
- Complex human values
Philosophers have been arguing about a moral, legal, cultural system of values for about 2500 years, but we haven’t still figured out everything. If we’re to incorporate human values into the AI (assuming we can), then we need to figure out what our values are in its entirety. Because figuring out every possible outcome of every single piece of code must be impossible. By the time AI reaches human-level general intelligence, our values better be ready!
Couple these with the incredibly fast speed of processing a computer has (which is unimaginably fast for us to even grasp), and you’ve got a very real and very dangerous entity in your hands. To paraphrase Stephen Hawking, if superintelligence isn’t the worst thing to ever happen to humanity, it will very likely be the best. We better figure it out before diving headfirst into global annihilation.
So what are we doing to ‘rewind the doomsday clock?’
The Solutions
SpaceX, spearheaded by Elon Musk will put people on Mars, in the near future. If the plan to terraform and establish a colony on Mars succeeds, we will effectively have a ‘backup population’. Even if global annihilation happens on Earth due to a variety of the aforementioned reasons, humanity will survive and thrive on Mars. Provided we don’t destroy it too.
What about the more immediate threats of war? The global power struggle is continuous we can never know precisely when this would explode into a full-scale global war. We just have to rely on the global leaders to not fuck up, which is not a reassuring feeling at all.
Climate change? Electric cars, solar power, minimizing deforestation, consuming less, using energy efficiently, and infrastructure upgrades. The usual package. We know exactly what to do but not all of them seem to be going right. Tesla was a great step in the right direction. Now, most of the leading automobile companies produce at least one electric/ hybrid vehicle. The usage of solar power is rising too.
However, these concepts aren’t nearly as popular as they should be. One reason for this is the influence of probably the most moronic group of humanity, climate change skeptics. We are digging our own graves, yet they would bury the entire human race rather than accept the bitter truth. They wouldn’t believe it if you slapped the evidence across their faces.
Solutions for the threats Artificial Superintelligence might cause? OpenAI is a non-profit Elon Musk co-founded with Sam Altman that aims to promote and develop friendly AI in such a way as to benefit humanity as a whole. Furthermore, an ethical discussion on the co-evolution of machine and man need to be conducted before developing this technology. And of course, a fail-safe if it all comes crashing down.
Let’s talk about the age-old problem of evolutionary tribalism.
The problem behind the Solutions
In times like this, evolution is a real bitch. We have changed and shaped the world so much in the small time we have been here that natural evolution has problems catching up with our progress. But, as tribalism is not compatible with contemporary society, it tends to cause problems. A group of people with different opinions and beliefs challenging the authority of another group is the root cause of all conflict. People fight because they are loyal to their tribe. Because they want to see it at the ‘top of the world’.
But there’s one thing they haven’t realized yet. This is not the Old World. This is not the world where you need to slaughter another tribe to capture their lands and feed your people. This is the New World. The world of co-operation and unity. We aren’t different tribes living far away from each other without any idea about others’ actions. We are in a digitally connected world. Through science and technology, we have achieved things no other known species has ever achieved. And we achieved these not through fragmentation but through unity. We are one tribe. We just haven’t realized it yet. And sadly, by the time we realize it, it may be too late.
Why is it so hard to realize?
Over the years, tribalism has taken a firm hold in everyone’s thinking process. This is because tribalism has been augmented further by other like-minded concepts. Such as;
- Religion, obviously. Religion was a boost for people to form tight-knit communities. After all, it is easier to co-operate with a person who thinks like you more often than it’s not. It was all well and good in the past when we didn’t know better. But now, we do know better and religion does nothing but hold us back.
- Nationalism. I’m not talking about patriotism. No. I’m talking about the extreme form of patriotism that involves a deluded feeling of superiority over other countries. This is another obvious factor that has caused a countless number of wars. Particularly in the middle east in recent years. Irrational acts of nationalism breeds conflict. I’m not saying that the solution to this is some kind of global government.
There’s only one solution to all these problems.
So how DO we ‘Save Humanity’?
Education.
That’s it. Education that will shape minds for the future. A future where the collective humanity works together to overcome these threats. And this can only be done by educating the young, properly.
The threats are very real and almost here. Either we will have to colonize Mars ultra-fast so that we’ll have a ‘backup population’, or we will have to talk through the major issues humanity is facing around the world and work to resolve at least some of them. Peacefully.
Personally, I can see us populating the whole fucking galaxy before the latter even starts to happen.
But that’s just me. Hope I’m wrong.
Cheers!
