Because Strong AI will make environmental issues a moot point.
As in a Friendly Strong AI could simply fix all problems with the environment as opposed to an unfriendly AI devouring the earth with self replicating nanobots or hurling the planet into the sun.
Besides... Earth only has a few million years left in it before the atmosphere is ripped off by solar winds or the earth core dies by slow entrophy. Environmentalists are always concerned about leaving a better earth for their kids, but I think I'm more concerned for the beings that maybe around in 10^99 billion years.
Heck... Chances are we are going to be hit by an asteroid/meteor/meteroid in the next hundred or thousand years or maybe a gamma ray burst killing all life on the Earth for a bit. So I think we should focus on more far reaching issues such as space programs and robotics.
That and if we don't solve the problem of Heat Death there won't be any sentient beings left in the Universe...
Ok so I'm expanding the problem a bit, but I like to think long term... But seriously, existential risks are often more than just picking up trash and deflecting neutron stars explosions.
But otherwise... I swept my stoop in front of my house and got rid of the trash of trash the other day in front of my house. I hope that helps.
I'm not too concerned about the megafuture issues. People (or robots) much smarter and vastly wealthier than us will find good ways to handle them.
I'm also not too worried about most of the potential near-future issues, like global warming and toxic waste and air pollution and deforestation. People moderately smarter and significantly wealther than us will solve them, in ways we can now only just barely realistically speculate about.
I'm mostly worried about the things that will make our near-term descendants dumber or poorer, depriving them of the resources to solve the problems they'll face. Things like trade barriers, obstacles to education/information/research/discovery, and malaria. The better we do at solving those problems now, the better our grandkids will do at solving environmental and ecological problems later.
Why? They'll be able to solve it much better than we will. And if we try to solve it now, we'll be diverting resources away from what they'll need in order to solve it (and many other things as well).
Which would you rather leave for your kids: a small pile of manure and a shovel, or a slightly larger but still rather small pile of manure and a backhoe? We might disagree about the sizes of the various legacies (you perhaps think the choice is between a small pile and a shovel versus a huge pile and a slightly larger shovel), but surely you'd agree that, if my view of the relative sizes is correct, "dumping it" on our descendents is doing them a favor whereas trying to "fix" it now would do them harm.
The point was that some things are irreversible, it is ~already~ unacceptable, and each step in that direction is a worse condition for that time. I don't consider it a small pile with a shovel vs. large pile with a backhoe, it is a large pile already, and may become an insurmountable obstacle, or do more significant damage which cannot be fixed. Whether there are shovels, backhoes or an electromagnetic massdriver - I do not have confidence it will be used appropriately or in a timely fashion without continuing to support the causes which educate, research and lobby for changes now, even if it is a marginal change. Even disregarding that, any sort of tool of the future has to be built assuming progress today for such technologies and techniques. There are already ecosystems of enormous size and significance that are destroyed, which impact their own areas, the global ecosystem, not to mention the existence value of such systems, the species that can (or once could be) found in them and the impact upon humans by way of the food chain (outright supply of food, quality of life, contamination by chemicals) and appreciation for nature itself. This is already happening, and it is already unacceptably bad. This isn't theory, this is the yellow bubble you see when you look down on Atlanta, the mercury in fish supplies and that you can pretty much walk across some major river systems without divine assistance, and I honestly don't give a damn if it could theoretically be fixed in some future, it is causing harm now, and I feel nearly compelled to do ~something.~
Suffice it to say, this post has provided minimal surprises.
No doubt. Hence your original post, I imagine. Have you figured out yet what it is you'll do? What thoughts do you have about how you'll decide what to do, i.e. what criteria you'll use?
Suffice it to say, this post has provided minimal surprises.
The point was that some things are irreversible, it is ~already~ unacceptable, and each step in that direction is a worse condition for that time.
I tend to be an optimist on things like this... I'd say we there is never a point of no return and that we can turn the tides if our technology advances to such a level. From the information I have gathered, solar power will take off in 2007 or 2008. I was suprised the other day driving down the highway and saw a single house in Philly with electric (not the heating water type) solar panels on its roof in the middle of South Philly. Hopefully the technology will get cheap enough to be able to do what we need to do.
Ray Kurzweil speculates we only need to be able to capture 2% of the Sun's energy that hits the earth to meet today's power requirments with soloar cells. It just needs to get cheap enough. Like Moore's law this technology will get that cheap. Anyways... Thats why I think the Singularity Institute is that important. Mostly if we can create intelligence more powerful than ourselves or at least integrate it in our tools (you know like Google on steriods) we'll be able to overcome or reverse any problem.
See, the point where I see eye-to-eye with you on this is that concept: I believe in the capacity to either prolong existence indefinitely ~or~ prove to my satisfaction that consciousness or some portion of it can and does continue beyond physical death. I have beliefs about it, but those "4am can't sleep" moments really haunt me. So I take it you recommend Kurzweil's most recent book?
Also, about heat death: the jury's still out, but there's reason to think we can beat this one. Freeman Dyson speculates (with a lot of math) that our collective future living entity can 1) slow its metabolism and 2) hibernate such that no matter how slow and cold the universe gets we can become (essentially) slower and colder, so that our subjective experience of time remains both constant and infinite.
Details (with a lot of math) are here (http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Global/Omega/dyson.txt). A very short summary is on Wikipedia, of course (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson%27s_eternal_intelligence).
Dyson's ideas are old and may not fit with the latest evidence and theories. But there's still hope. See here (http://www.imminst.org/forum/index.php?s=&act=ST&f=89&t=725&#entry14836) for much much more on the topic from many many other smart people.
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Depends on your definition of environmental
http://www.singinst.org/donate.html
Because Strong AI will make environmental issues a moot point.
As in a Friendly Strong AI could simply fix all problems with the environment as opposed to an unfriendly AI devouring the earth with self replicating nanobots or hurling the planet into the sun.
Besides... Earth only has a few million years left in it before the atmosphere is ripped off by solar winds or the earth core dies by slow entrophy. Environmentalists are always concerned about leaving a better earth for their kids, but I think I'm more concerned for the beings that maybe around in 10^99 billion years.
Heck... Chances are we are going to be hit by an asteroid/meteor/meteroid in the next hundred or thousand years or maybe a gamma ray burst killing all life on the Earth for a bit. So I think we should focus on more far reaching issues such as space programs and robotics.
That and if we don't solve the problem of Heat Death there won't be any sentient beings left in the Universe...
Ok so I'm expanding the problem a bit, but I like to think long term... But seriously, existential risks are often more than just picking up trash and deflecting neutron stars explosions.
But otherwise... I swept my stoop in front of my house and got rid of the trash of trash the other day in front of my house. I hope that helps.
Re: Depends on your definition of environmental
I'm also not too worried about most of the potential near-future issues, like global warming and toxic waste and air pollution and deforestation. People moderately smarter and significantly wealther than us will solve them, in ways we can now only just barely realistically speculate about.
I'm mostly worried about the things that will make our near-term descendants dumber or poorer, depriving them of the resources to solve the problems they'll face. Things like trade barriers, obstacles to education/information/research/discovery, and malaria. The better we do at solving those problems now, the better our grandkids will do at solving environmental and ecological problems later.
Re: Depends on your definition of environmental
...abhorrent.
Re: Depends on your definition of environmental
Which would you rather leave for your kids: a small pile of manure and a shovel, or a slightly larger but still rather small pile of manure and a backhoe? We might disagree about the sizes of the various legacies (you perhaps think the choice is between a small pile and a shovel versus a huge pile and a slightly larger shovel), but surely you'd agree that, if my view of the relative sizes is correct, "dumping it" on our descendents is doing them a favor whereas trying to "fix" it now would do them harm.
Do you see that it is arguably not abhorrent?
Re: Depends on your definition of environmental
I don't consider it a small pile with a shovel vs. large pile with a backhoe, it is a large pile already, and may become an insurmountable obstacle, or do more significant damage which cannot be fixed. Whether there are shovels, backhoes or an electromagnetic massdriver - I do not have confidence it will be used appropriately or in a timely fashion without continuing to support the causes which educate, research and lobby for changes now, even if it is a marginal change. Even disregarding that, any sort of tool of the future has to be built assuming progress today for such technologies and techniques. There are already ecosystems of enormous size and significance that are destroyed, which impact their own areas, the global ecosystem, not to mention the existence value of such systems, the species that can (or once could be) found in them and the impact upon humans by way of the food chain (outright supply of food, quality of life, contamination by chemicals) and appreciation for nature itself.
This is already happening, and it is already unacceptably bad. This isn't theory, this is the yellow bubble you see when you look down on Atlanta, the mercury in fish supplies and that you can pretty much walk across some major river systems without divine assistance, and I honestly don't give a damn if it could theoretically be fixed in some future, it is causing harm now, and I feel nearly compelled to do ~something.~
Suffice it to say, this post has provided minimal surprises.
Re: Depends on your definition of environmental
No doubt. Hence your original post, I imagine. Have you figured out yet what it is you'll do? What thoughts do you have about how you'll decide what to do, i.e. what criteria you'll use?
Suffice it to say, this post has provided minimal surprises.
You know me so well. :)
Re: Depends on your definition of environmental
I tend to be an optimist on things like this... I'd say we there is never a point of no return and that we can turn the tides if our technology advances to such a level. From the information I have gathered, solar power will take off in 2007 or 2008. I was suprised the other day driving down the highway and saw a single house in Philly with electric (not the heating water type) solar panels on its roof in the middle of South Philly. Hopefully the technology will get cheap enough to be able to do what we need to do.
Ray Kurzweil speculates we only need to be able to capture 2% of the Sun's energy that hits the earth to meet today's power requirments with soloar cells. It just needs to get cheap enough. Like Moore's law this technology will get that cheap. Anyways... Thats why I think the Singularity Institute is that important. Mostly if we can create intelligence more powerful than ourselves or at least integrate it in our tools (you know like Google on steriods) we'll be able to overcome or reverse any problem.
Re: Depends on your definition of environmental
I have beliefs about it, but those "4am can't sleep" moments really haunt me.
So I take it you recommend Kurzweil's most recent book?
Re: Depends on your definition of environmental
Re: Depends on your definition of environmental
Details (with a lot of math) are here (http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Global/Omega/dyson.txt). A very short summary is on Wikipedia, of course (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson%27s_eternal_intelligence).
Dyson's ideas are old and may not fit with the latest evidence and theories. But there's still hope. See here (http://www.imminst.org/forum/index.php?s=&act=ST&f=89&t=725&#entry14836) for much much more on the topic from many many other smart people.