Slashdot had a link today to an article entitled “What’s your most dangerous idea?” posed to 100 scientists. Here’s a few I found interesting. How about you?
Hopefully I’ll summerize these okay. Here it goes.
Terrence Sejnowski says the Internet will eventually become Skynet (as in self aware). He’s go some stats which suggest it’s probable.
Jaron Lanier has an interesting one that humans, inside a virtual reality simulation have no problem learning to adapt to using a non-human body. Like a body with 5 arms instead of 2 or 6 legs. So, the question is, when science actually allows us to do these things either in VR or even in the real world through genetic engineering or robotics what will the world be like?
Irene Pepperberg’s Idea is that basically it will be proven there is no real difference between humans and other animals. Currently most people believe there are some specific differences between humans and other animals. Like the idea that we can think or we can comtemplate our own existance or we can use tools. Whatever it is we use this idea to separate ourselves from animals. But, what if it can be proven there is no specific difference except one of ammount. In other words instead of an animal not having whatever specific traits make us special, instead they have those traits just at a lesser level.
Douglas Rushkoff has one which I might sum up as because of tech, more and more people bartering instead of using money. I’ll fix your computer if you take a look at my tonciles. The dangerous part I guess is how the government and banks become less relevent if everyone is going around them.
Juan Enriquez wonders if Tech will destroy the USA. His argument seems to be that basically all countries die eventually and so is the USA still a kid, in middle age or in old age and is tech extending its life or shortening it. He’s got some interesting stats to argue it’s not inconceivable.
Geoffery Miller has an interesting one. I don’t think I knew (or I forgot) about Fermi’s Paradox. It basically says, if the universe is as old as we think it is, and if life happens on other planets in the same kind of time frame has it happen on Earth then there should argablely be lots of aliens. If so, where the hell are they? Either the odds of life are a lot smaller then we believe OR they all some how didn’t make it (blew themselves up or whatever). Read his article for what he thinks might be up.
Judith Rich Harris has a scary one which is that there is mounting evidence that parents have zero influence over their kids and how they will turn out.
Freeman Dyson has one I mentioned before which is that advancing tech will make manipulating genes as simple as manipulating computer code is today. The danger being that tomorrows gene hackers will make real viruses just like today’s computer hackers make computer viruses and end up killing off the world.
Jeremy Bernstein has one which I’d like more info on. Basically he says we don’t understand Plutonium and that all the bombs that use it could explode at anytime without warning.
Clay Shirky and several other people suggested we will prove we have no free will and that will change what we can hold people accountable for as well as other ramifications.
James O’Donnell talks about how goverment will disappear as people get less and less dependent of the things government has traditionally provided. It’s not clear how this is a dangerous idea.
Matt Ridley has a related one which is that it’s proven government is the problem, not the solution. I tend to agree. It’s also not clear how this is a dangerous idea.
J. Craig Venter and several others say will are on the road to proving genes determine your behavior, something most people would rather not know and there are quite a few dangers in knowing but that we will know relatively soon and so we’d better get ready to deal with this new knowledge.
I hope I didn’t do a too poor a job in summerizing some of those. They certainly are thought provoking.
Many of the ideas expressed in this year list are about the complete illusion of freewill, the inexistence of a soul, or the very improbability of god (let alone many of them).
So here is my dangerous idea. What if most of these scientists are wrong? What if they are commiting the worst mistake by discarding what they have simply failed to find any proof for ?
Sure, we may have no free will, we may be no better than any other living things on earth, our personnality may own more to our genetic baggage than we’d like it to, and maybe there is no one listening to our prayers (and who can blame them for that?).
But as far as I know, having no proof for something does not mean that this thing does not exist, it just mean that there is no proof. Denying these things because of that is another step. A leap of faith in a human and error prone science.
And every leap of faith is dangerous ;-)
This one is interesting, but there is a problem. If there is intelligent life on a planet 1 million light years away, it will take at lest 1 million years to know about it. The first signal strong enough to be sent into space was during the second world war. Assuming an alien civilization also sent one at that particular time, it would take years to get to us (the closest star is about 4 light years away if I remember correctly). SETI is a waste of time if it takes a thousand years for the signal to get to us (assuming it takes the same amount of time for civilization to start). Most people are generally checking if there WAS life in a particular area, usually a VERY LONG time ago. So a possible answer is, they are there but we can’t communicate with them. I personally believe that life is abundant, but intelligent life is rare. Of course we should be more worried about events on earth than alien civilizations that may or may not exist. Just my 2 cents.
I think the answer to your issue is that the idea assumes that millions of civilizations exist, some percent of those started well before ours meaning they’ve been sending out signals (tv, radio, whatever) for tens of thousands of years. So, some percentage of the civilizations within say 100,000 light years should have been sending signals long enough ago for us to pick them up.
“Matt Ridley has a related one which is that it’s proven government is the problem, not the solution. I tend to agree. It’s also not clear how this is a dangerous idea.”
I suspect it becomes a highly dangerous idea for constituents, the moment that the governing body finds itself to be obsolete, and begins to take steps to “defend itself.”
I agree with WizMaster’s comment. I think that, because the universe is _so huge_ and there are _so many_ planets out there, it’s rediculous to assume that Earth is the only planet to provide everything organisms need to live. To say that only one planet of the literally _trillions_ of planets out there can harbor life is not only very self-centered, it’s simply stupid.
Why haven’t we recieved any radio wave transmissions from other planets? Simple. Because the universe is huge, it would take (as was pointed out earlier) hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years to travel from one planet to another, and that’s assuming the waves are even pointed in the right direction. Then you have to take into account the many obstacles that the radio waves would encounter on the way here: black holes, other planets, dark matter (?), all of which could completely stop or introduce so much interference that the radio waves wouldn’t reach earth looking any different than the normal background waves we recieve. Then, let’s say that some waves DID reach Earth unobstructed. What are the odds that, in our relatively short lifespan, we happen to capture that one single recording that passed all the obstacles? And even if, by some freak coincidence, we did record the waves, how do we know what they would look like? How do we know that these waves, that look slightly different from the background waves, are from alien civilizations or simply a distant star imploding?
“Where the hell [are the aliens]?”
Billions of lightyears away. Until they come to our solar system or we master intergalactic travel, we will never have any contact with them.
Well, it’s Coldpie and WizMaster vs one of the smartest guys of the last 150 years. I agree with both of you, that’s what I thought as well. Your arguements certainly make sense.
There’s a lot more about it all here. There are both pro and con arguements there. One very interesting arguement is that humans by nature, colonize (spead out to new places). In a very short amount of time (relative to the age of the universe) we have colonized basically the entire planet. There have to be other civilizations out there that also colonize by nature and because colonization happens as a geometric progression and older alien race should have colonized the entire galaxy by now.
>> It cannot be denied that intelligent life is possible within our universe — at least at this stage of its development — since we exist. < <
Of course, this assumes that "we" exist. Do we? There's always the solipsistic counter argument.
In a little while we’ll be talking about religion
DDD
Jokes aside, this is the most thought inspiring read I had in years, Thanks Greg!!!!!!