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20 Ways The World Could End
kevlar wrote to us with the online version of Discover's 20 Ways the World Could End. Ranging from Asteriod Impacts to Mini Black Holes, it's all sorts of fun potential disasters.
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Twenty-one #654995387: Slashdotters invent an infinite number of doomsday scenarios, all numbered "21". Having an infinite number of scenarios, the probability of "the twenty-one event" occuring becomes infinite. Like Wile E. Coyote's looking down and causing gravity to take effect, the realization of the certainty of a twenty-one event causes one to occur.
Twenty-one #655835601: The infinite density of the #21 causes all ideas to collapse into it, turning the rest of the world into a place just as mindless as slashdot.
Twenty-one #659995379: Just because.
I wonder what people will do once they figure out how to download their brains into a computer?
Well, let's first assume that we do actually exist in a physical world (paradoxes to follow). So now we've got a kickass hugely powerful computer, that say, Linus Torvalds (or any other brilliant mind for that matter), has downloaded himself into.
Let's even say that he has the resources and capability to increase the power of this computer on his own, given enough time. Computer controlled chip fab, plenty of electricity/power, lotsa sand lying around with which to manufacture silicon, etc.
Now, Linus is trapped in this computer with nothing to do, right? Well, almost nothing. Assuming that this machine is infinitely powerful and infinitely expandable, why not start creating one's one little world within the machine? We could create little 'bots' to run around inside the system and interact with each other. We could make some bots weak (worms/flys/bugs in general) and some very strong and crafty (humans/cockroaches).
Now Linus is the only one who has access to his own machine and he's got 30,000 years to tool around with it. So now we've got a simulated earth sitting in some data center somewhere. But of course, Linus isn't the only one doing this.
Bill Joy has built his own little world somewhere in what we would call Alpha Centauri. All these little worlds are connected together via the Internet, but security protocols make it extrememly difficult for one 'bot' to travel between worlds, i.e. rocketship to Alpha Centauri.
But then Linus says something that pisses Bill Joy off in the Diety Daily Herald. Bill then just sends some nanobots two blocks over (we're all really living in Silicon Valley, just don't know it) and turns Linus's data center into primordial goo.
And thus we have the end of existance as we know it.
This argument is obviously crap. The essence of it is that Bayes's is being misapplied. You're dealing with an essentially infinite number of possible "urns", with an unequal chance of selecting each one.
:-), and applied it in a similar manner, he would conclude that he was probably also one of the last humans.
Here are a few examples to demonstrate this:
1) If the first human knew Bayes's theorem (i.e., he was Bayes
2) Using the Doomesday Argument, for a population that doubles every generation (i.e. exponential growth), each generation will always contain more individuals than all previous generations combined. Thus, each generation will conclude that it is probably one of the last.
Rather than use the "urn" analogy, a dice analogy would be more appropriate. Imagine that each generation rolls 5 dice. Certain combinations result in extinction (these combinations do not change, but the number of deadly combinations is unknown). You look at the previous record of dice rolls, and see that humanity has not yet been wiped out, but that 40% of all possible combinations have been rolled. The fact that a deadly combination has not yet been rolled makes it less likely that the next roll will be deadly.
This is what happens when you try to use statistics without thinking... As Mark Twain said, "There are lies, damned lies, and then there are statistics." (He was actually quoting Benjamin Disraeli, but whatever.)
"If we patented these methods of world destruction, could the human race survive forever?"
No, But if we patented "1 click" world distruction then the world would be safe for at least 5 to 7
years while the legal battle ensued.
AdFuel
Yes, we're all just a great big game of SimEarth 3590 and it is vitally important that we keep this place interesting. If the forteen year old kid who is running this thing gets bored and decides to run UltraMegaQuake ]})|({[, we're toast. So for the Earth's sake, everybody go out and do something interesting. The fate of the Planet is in the balance.
The cake is a pie
Starting with discover.com ... ;)
I am quite civilized, and I should be brought a beer immediately. -- Bruce Sterling
If we patented these methods of world destruction, could the human race survive forever?
The odds of being one of the people to witness doomsday are highest when there is the largest number of witnesses around so now is not such an improbable.
Actually, there will be no human witnesses to human extinction. Think about it. Well, never mind, I'll just explain. The highest chance of extinction occurs with the lowest number living, and no human will see the last die.
17 Mass insanity
My bet's on this one! You saw it here first. 1840 was the end of the world, we are all just living a dream (20 has occured?) Someone, pinch me.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
6 Reversal of Earth's magnetic field
Poul Anderson wrote a story on this theme. The name escapes me.
8 Global epidemics
The novel Earth Abides and the BBC TV series Survivors (no cash prizes).
9 Global warming
Everything recent by Bruce Sterling, but especially Heavy Weather
10 Ecosystem collapse
A real popular category: Brunner's The Sheep Look Up, Wylie's The End of the Dream, and Streiber & Kunetka's Nature's End (not reflective of Streiber's recent UFO obsessions). There are many others, of course -- most of them pretty bad.
I'm fond of Spinrad's Riding the Torch, although this is more about the kind of humanity that ecodisaster might produce, not about the disaster itself.
11 Biotech disaster
The Death of Grass falls into this category, even though the technology Christopher warns about (traditional agriculture! it seems that most of our food crops are related to ordinary grass, and thus subject to the same diseases) is pretty primitive.
13 Nanotechnology disaster
A secondary theme in Stephenson's The Crystal Age.
15 Global war
I'm tempted to say that this theme died with the Cold War. But at least one writer (Eric Harry) seems to be making a living off the idea that It Could Still Happen. And of course, all the talentless technothriller authors manage to find minor countries (Argentina will rise again!) capable of setting off the Holocaust.
If there was ever a movie for Slashdotters, it's Doctor Strangelove. ("You can't condemn a system because of one little error!") The interesting thing about this movie is that it started out as an adaptation of a serious technothriller, Red Alert. But Kubrick found that he couldn't write about Armageddon without making jokes!
The movie Fail-Safe is worth mentioning, mainly because it's about a nuclear near-war triggered by technological failure. A good movie, but unfortunately based on a very bad book that happened to be a conspicuous rip-off of Red Alert. So Kubrick's lawyers kept it from getting a proper release.
16 Robots take over
David Brin has done some good stuff on this theme (an author I used to enjoy, before I realized that everything he writes is a sort of novelized flame war). Gregory Benford's Galatic Center series has some good points, but is hampered by an absence of focus -- and Benford's regretable tendency to read like a creative writing assignment.
It's interesting that the doyen of Robot SF never developed this theme. But maybe not suprising -- Asimov never really developed any serious understanding of computing, cypernetics, or robotics. His robot stories are really a combination of old-fashioned handwaving (can "don't kill people" really be made into a mathematical principle?) and social comentary (notice the stories where robots are addressed as "boy"!).
18 Alien invasion
Certainly more crap in this category than any other. V and Independence Day tell us that aliens will invade us to steal resources like minerals and water -- things they can obtain from solar and planetary rings and halos with much less trouble. Fortunately, Mars is uninhabited -- imagine the lawsuits if it weren't!
__________
I didn't see any mention of a giant marshmallow man destroying the earth. don't these people watch TV. Not to mention Godzilla or Gamera. These people obviously have not done their research. Not one mention of the sky falling. These people call themsevles scientists. Bah. Bunch of crackpots is what they are.
Unless one (or more) of the other things happens first, I believe #16 ("Robots take over") will definitely occur. And I'm firmly on the side of "next stage in evolution" rather than "end of humanity."
Ray Kurzweil has written a book called The Age of Spiritual Machines. In it, he basically predicts that human kind will be supplanted by its own creations. This will not be a takeover of the kind depicted in Terminator or The Matrix, but a slow merging of the two "species" and an eventual complete transformation of the very definition of "human" and "life."
This is happening already. Consider the term "brain-dead." When it was still novel, people distinguished "brain-dead" from "dead," but I'm pretty sure there are many people now who basically equate the two (maybe not doctors, for whom it's probably a clinical term). At one time, a beating heart indicated life, and a lack thereof, death. Now, the death of the brain is the "real" death. This is a subtle modern shift in what it means to be "alive." I suspect that as the function of parts of the brain get figured out by scientists, a new term-- "mind-death"-- will appear.
I don't know if I agree with all of Kurzweil's reasoning, but I fully believe in the conclusion. In fact, I cannot see how it could possibly end otherwise. However, I don't see it as a hostile takeover, but an enhancement of everything that makes us who we are: an expanding of our abilities. It won't limit us, or de-humanize us, or destroy any part of us--it will allow us to be what we want to be, more than ever before.
Okay, I sound like I'm evangelizing now, and I'm drifting off-topic. I recommend the book. It's got some very interesting ideas.
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
See, Super Mario Brothers 2 didn't suck, it was really a end-of-world prophecy.
-
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
The problem's all inside your head, she said to me
If you want to turn your planet into piles of debris
Then you should buy yourself a copy of "Discovery"
There must be...twenty ways the world could end.
She said I really do not want to panic you,
as I know that these scenarios probably won't come true
and I really doubt, that you'd sleep better if you knew,
There must be twenty ways the world could end.
Twenty ways the world could end.
Just hit a black hole, Joel. Watch the world go insane, Lane.
Make a bunch of gray goo, Lou. Just listen to me.
Have a nuclear war, Moore. See the vaccuum fall flat, Matt.
Dioxins from PVC, Lee, will set yourself free.
She said I normally don't tell my good friends this,
but if the ozone layer goes you will be burned into a crisp.
I said, that's great to hear, and would you please explain again about the twenty ways...
She said, since Brandon Carter says we're gonna fry,
Why should I waste my time explaining all the ways that you could die?
But I kept bugging her, until she told me with a sigh
There must be twenty ways the world could end.
Twenty ways the world could end.
Have a comet impact, Jack. Get a burst of gamma ray, Jay.
Catch a bad pathogen, Len. And listen to me.
Flood-basalt vulcanism, Chisolm. Wake up from existence, Vincent.
Get killed by for E.T., Lee, and set yourself free.
-foobar jones
(Sorry, I couldn't think of a name to rhyme with "Divine Intervention.")