Predicting Peak Stupidity

(The following was taken from my e-mail response to Wayne Radinsky's e-mail comments in our Boulderfutures group. Wayne Radinsky's first two paragraphs that I'm responding to are at the bottom of this posting. The first money I make from my book, tour sponsorship, etc, I'd like to spend hiring Wayne as technology consultant and for research. He's awesome:)


I think the quality of this conversation has been impressive, especially Wayne's thoroughness.

Wayne, I thought your comments were well-thought out as always, but I take issue with the first two paragraphs.

I think there are other factors more important than fearful people being fearful about the future and confident people being confident about the future.

Right now I think the deeper anyone thinks about the issues of global warming, peak oil and population growth, the more they'll see that these are absolutely unprecedented problems in scope and seriousness relative to anything else we've faced in the history of civilization.

Having 6.6 billion people is very different from having 1.5 billion a century ago, especially when the per capita rates of consumption and pollution have skyrocketed even more than the population itself.

So I think those that see serious problems in the very near future aren't fearful as much as they're intelligent, thinking, conscientious, concerned, forward-thinking and caring.

When we don't see any of these things as serious problems we're in a walking coma, drugged by Nascar or Britney or whatever our addiction to trivia is. (I know, because as a sports fan for most of my life I've been as addicted to trivia as anyone I know.) Being in the coma of trivia most of us are in makes us (during that time) stupid, unthinking, unconcerned, uncaring and absolutely clueless.

Rather than confidence and opitimism, this is merely living in a fool's paradise. Chances are those unconcerned about the future live lifestyles that are more addicted to cheap oil than those that are more concerned, and like anyone addicted to anything they're in denial and will attack anyone who tries to intervene and help them out of their addiction.

The chances are also good that the system has worked for them, that they've been able to get money and thus status and validation from society, so to them everything has worked well for their own egos and thus should be perpetuated endlessly. Thus their primary agenda is conserving the status quo, even if that might ultimately kill off the vast majority of our species (as James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia hypothesis that says the eco-system acts like one large living organism, feels will happen within this century). This is simply self-centered, self-interested selfishness. It is peak stupidity to care more about one's own comfort, ease, status and lifestyle than all life on earth.

And if you've thought about this more than James Lovelock has, I'd like to see the evidence of that thinking. Lovelock has plenty of evidence, including that in his new book, "The Revenge of Gaia."

And what would we gain from Artificial Intelligence when we carry around in our heads the ability to think infinitely more profoundly than we do, because most of us are using one to two per cent of our mental capability, while people like Einstein, Newton and Spears use 10 per cent, at most.

That's 90 per cent more brainpower (or more likely 98 or 99 per cent) that we simply choose not to use. Why wouldn't using that (and I think you and other Boulder futurists are among the higher end users of people I've met, far above average) be a bigger priority than trying to reinvent the wheel and develop AI?

Unless I can be convinced of the value of developing AI compared to developing our mental capacities, I would tend to lump it in with other silver bullet ideas that we want to swoop down from heaven to help us rather than helping ourselves through doing the necessary work.

That list to me would include Jesus' Second Coming (while ignoring the teachings and example of his first visit), wanting aliens to teach us and show us the way when we have access to all the answers we need, wanting a relationship with intelligent extraterrestials while ignoring the intelligent extraterrestials in our oceans, wanting to get something for nothing by gambling and from ethanol, hydrogen and fusion, when the first is close to a net loser (especially corn ethanol), the second is a means only to store and transmit energy, and the third is a technology that has been three decades away for the last three decades, including now.

There are no silver bullets, only many silver bbs that we have to create ourselves.

I'm off to Portland and Seattle to discuss these things in my talks and town meetings that cities are sponsoring. We have impressive physicists, atmospheric scientists, glaciologists, energy experts and former Oregon governor John Kitzhaber on the panels that respond to my initial talk and kick off the town meetings.

Because this is what I do for living, I'm posting this on my blog at TruthEverything.blogspot.com also, and since it's okay with Wayne I'd love to discuss any of this with you there.


WAYNE RADINSKY'S FIRST TWO PARAGRAPHS THAT I WAS RESPONDING TO:

>Before I reply to specific stuff, just a general comment
>
>I think a lot of people's expectations for the future stem from their
>state of mind. If you're in a fearful state of mind, for example,
>you'll be especially prone to pay attention to information that you
>run across that suggests that something bad might happen. The same
>thing can happen in the other direction; if you're feeling very much
>in control of your life and very optimistic about the future, you're
>going to have a tendency to pay attention to information that you run
>across that says the future is going to be great.
>
>So this creates what I call the "emotional bias", you can call it
>"pessimism" or "optimism", but it's not just a rhetorical device it's
>a real phenomena. And the issue I have with it, is, these sorts of
>predictions about the future don't tell you *anything* about the
>future -- they only provide information about the state of mind of
>the person doing the predicting.