Why we're doomed http://www.alansondheim.org/badnews.jpg Some utterly redundant, trite, incorrect, repetitious, haughty, idiotic, nonsensical, unoriginal, insane reasons for why we're where we are, including bad sociology, worse cosmology and physics, ignorant anthropology, and just poor writing, as day turns to night - did you know that day _passes through evening_ to get there? 1 Fragility of good things - more things can go wrong than can go right. The more complex the system, the more things there are, the more things can go wrong. Think catastrophe theory. 2 World-wide electronic networks that in spite of redundancy (or because of it) are incredibly vulnerable - the fact that networks are "universal" creates an enormous volume of accessible code. The greater the volume, the greater the risk. Given direct transmission throughout the electromagnetic spectrum, access conceivably might be anywhere. Even with quantum encryption, there are vulnerabilities that quantum computers might be able to access. It's always a race; who's looking through your doorbell? 3 There will always be bad leaders at the top - power generates power; power generates violence generates power. The more a leader is not held responsible, the more their power hardens. There are always workarounds for elections, which have their own vulnerabilities - not only machines and accountancies, but threats on local levels. A pattern emerges of bypassing term limits. The bad leaders appear to owe nothing to anyone; encased in power, their ability to manipulate the public is enormous. Control the media, control the public, the country, potentially the world. Money follows power follows money. (And let's not forget that elections might not really be necessary, and for leaders to be held "responsible" somebody must be outside that sphere, yet holding power within it. If that was me, for example, I might just seize power myself, just a few crumbs from the table.) 4 Of course global warming - and with the fires and droughts and increased energy use, the world is facing ecological catastrophe without limits. Wind power etc. provides miniscule relief as temperature rises; the northern ocean is already under stress with new shipping lanes, new potential for mining and conflict. More hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones, windstorms, bog burnings, peat burning, forest fires, grassland fires, poaching, hunting, gun-running, wildlife trade, rogue fisheries and whaling, more of everything, more more! 5 Ruthlessness characterizes authority - ruthlessness sends a statement - that the only determination of a country may be the employment of military intervention and armament at any cost. Standing in front of a tank may well mean getting shot. Destroy a city or crop-land or dams or ecosystems is either irrelevant or deemed "necessary" by many leaders, and it just takes one to create catastrophic changes in nations and the planet as a whole. New diseases welcome! 6 Overpopulation - overpopulation drives hunger, desecration, catastrophe, local wars, not-so-local wars. Some countries have this in check, as do plagues, but the overall tendency is increased people, dwindling food and water, and ecologies tending towards monocultures, which have their own dangers. 7 Dwindling resources - this is clear enough with regard for example to minerals and forests; it also applies to storehouses for safe passage, food and water. Pollution seeps everywhere, from the visibility of the night sky to the trash on Everest. Global supply chains, mega-ships also carry their own dangers of course. 8 Putin is indicative of always the same old story - there's always a story and it is always the same story. Sycophants, weapons, implicit violence, etc. See above. It's surprising that this occurs repeatedly; the book Strongmen defines it in depth. Think of dictators as almost natural in the sense of instituted violence, and as long as control is hierarchical, the top, in terms of money, weaponry, isolation, and power, runs things without the slightest consideration of the majority of the population. These outbreaks of brutality and fury will continue and increase as the world becomes more desperate. 9 The reach, violation, absolute - hypersonics and nuclear in general. The former implicit in post-industrial civilization, the latter implicit in the universe itself. Sooner or later perhaps, every culture realizes the power of hydrogen, nuclear, neutron bombs; these become increasingly miniaturized, with faster and faster delivery times. Sooner or later, mistakes will happen; sooner or later groups will go rogue; sooner or later nuclear waste will dominate the ecosystem. 10 There's no fundamental defense against any of this - it's built into the world, into any world; it's characteristic of this universe. Think of the earth as a suicide machine, driven by population growth and the resulting coagulation of waste, resources, weaponry, The Dawn of Everything notwithstanding. In a sense it's not us, it's the stardust we're made of, our cosmology. (Think of "Everything you know about the world is wrong" - but in fact "Everything you know about the world is right, is absolutely correct." You've known this all along.) 11 Lack of concrete evidence for "intelligent" civilizations elsewhere in the universe - well this doesn't state that there aren't such, whatever "intelligent" and "civilizations" mean - just that there is no evidence and this seems problematic. Of course there might be some such utterly untoward that remains unknown, deliberately or simply by distance, inherent lack of cosmic reach. The evidence, such as it is, minus ufos, seems weighted towards emptiness, nothing; there are times, though, that I think we may always already be viewing signs of spooky action at a distance from elsewhere in the universe. 12. "There's always AI" - yes there is and it will grow inconceivably, unbelievably, strong. Folks, there are comets, asteroids, other stuff. And one of those AI things is likely to set off the super-hyper something, and that will be it. Hard as it is to believe, and yes, I'm repeating myself, the universe isn't really designed for the continuation of intelligent life (note the irony); earth might have stromatolites around again if Gaia's (what's left of it) lucky - I've seen the tidal pools - they're incredible. 13. The relative size of the universe and the vulnerability of our planet - here we are as an adjunct of lots of the above. In short we're tiny, filthy, violent, consuming, somewhat crazy, absolutist, messy, insistent, destructive and nasty critters that are busy making a mess of their own back yard. (That's ours.) 14. Oh, and let's not forget nearby nova, supernova, planetoids, sola mega-eruptions, and that Tesla flying out there - that should do it. And remember - when you go outside, _always_ carry a steel umbrella. ~~~~~ _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
