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Bill Joy On His Own Future, And The World's
geeber writes "There is an interesting interview with Bill Joy in the current edition of the Magazine in the New York Times. He is still obssesed with what he calls a 'civilization-changing event' brought on by the fast pace of research into dangerous technologies such as genetic engineering and nanotechnology. Another interesting tidbit: he has flirted with the idea of going to work for Google."
No boogedy-boogedy NYT registatrion required
here.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
"Another interesting tidbit : he has flirted with the idea of going to work for Google."
Really now, who these days hasn't thought about that? :D
Sorry! The wiki is experiencing some technical difficulties, and cannot contact the database server
Oh well never mind instead click here for a google cache of Bill's page on wikipedia
In James Watson's recent book "DNA, The Secret of Life" he touches on this problem. He mentions that the likelyhood of a nano-disaster is unlikely. His discussion is too lengthy to mention here (and I don't have the book in my hands right now) but it is a convincing counterpoint against this possibility.
Also, one forgets that cells have been evolving against this possiblity for billions of years. If a "Gray Ooze" were possible it would very likely have appeared on its own. As it is, cells, and multi-cellular organisms have extremely sophisiticated (sp) means of defense. While will be possible to create a disease that kills millions or billions of humans, I worry far more about nuclear war.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Unfortunately Google did not share my same fantasy.
i had to refresh almost 20 times to get that ad, but it was worth it.
It could be argued that all inventions can be put to good uses and a bad uses. e.g. Nuclear power, cars etc. A frying pan was a useful invention and yet they can be very dangerous during a domestic... ouch... erm gotta... ouch!...go... OOOOUCH!
We've managed to survive the splitting of the atom in the last century, but have bred some very, very, very dangerous weapons while at the same itme developing some very, very important technologies. It's a wonder we've managed that so well (so far).
i understand his concern over these new branches of study and it is of *dire* importance that we tread lightly and remember our lessons in the areas of genetic modification and nanotechnology, yet all the while moving forward. i'm no luddite, but i am always wary and respectful of the power of the human mind.
It's amazing to read an article about someone like Bill Joy, a truly creative thinker and someone who accomplished a lot, and then come to Slashdot and read the most simplistic rebuttal that you'll likely read anywhere, and then see that it has been modded up.
Now I understand why people just blog these days. You get away from this type of mediocrity.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
In fact, if time travel is ever to be achieved, it becomes a relevant question to ask why we don't see time travelers now.
One answer is, of course, that time travel isn't possible, which neatly explains why we see no travelers.
Another answer lands you in the middle of a subgroup of UFO enthusiasts. We do see the travelers; we just don't realize what they are.
Other answers allow you to generate your own SF story.
Agree or disagree with the man, he may be right, he may be wrong..time will tell, but he is anything but stupid.
the civilization changing event will be smarter than human artificial intelligence, otherwise known as the singularity
After all, it may be that self-destruction is not only our destiny as human beings, but our purpose.
All facetiousness aside, his mention of Bertrand Russell's opposition to nuclear weapons raises a good point. Sure, we risked barbecuing ourselves during the Cold War. But, arguably, the same weapons also prevented World War III, and are continuing to do so. You could say that we traded an unimaginable amount of economic power -- strategic nuclear-weapons programs are, after all, the most expensive investment the human race has ever made -- for the very security that Joy says we're recklessly neglecting.
At the end of the day, he'll just have to finish his manifesto and submit it for review by civilization at large. Even Ted Kaczynski managed to get that far.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
He didn't praise the Unabomber, he said that as much as he hated to admit, the Unabomber raised some valid concerns. I seem to recall that he also called him criminally insane.
Worth noting that a friend of Bill Joy was maimed by one of the Unabombers bombs.
Just because a person is a nutcase doesn't mean that all their ideas are to be instantly dismissed.
Remember, it takes 42 muscles to frown and only 4 to pull the trigger of a sniper rifle.
Yes, knife can be useful but also dangerous.
Explosives can be useful but very dangerous too. In the wrong hands they're definitely more dangerous than knives.
Nuclear power can be useful but in general it's more dangerous (in the bomb form) than knives or explosives. It is, in fact, the first technology with which the human race could have committed a suicide.
To me it seems like that to Joy genetic engineering and nanotechnology are one more order of magnitude more dangerous than atomic power or any other existing human technology. Why? Because of the potential for self-replication. Atomic bombs certainly kill lots of people, but they cannot self-replicate and run out of our control.
In the end it boils down to the risk = probability * consequences. Even if the probability of us becoming victims to all-conquering grey nanogoo is vanishingly small, are the consequences so disasterous that the risk is eventually too high for us even experiment with the idea?
Incidentally, developers of the hydrogen bomb had to wrestle with the same equation. What if we lit up a hydrogen bomb in our atmosphere and, against all our calculations and predictions, nitrogen-nitrogen fusion would begin and our entire atmosphere would be consumed in one huge fusion burn.
The owls are not what they seem
For me, the key difference is this: new technologies are giving individuals increasing destructive powers over more and more people, and it may be the equation we are all used to, about how tech can be used for good and bad, is changing.
The knife enables you to kill a person at a time.
A gun several.
Bombs - hundreds
Nukes are controlled by states, not individuals - but one fear behind the current war on terror is this will change.
Nano weapons...?
Weapons with gigantic destructive power might be very easy to synthesize in only 20 or 30 years - so imagine this: how do you run a world where every individual has the power to wipe out everyone else? There is no way around it - this is not like the right to bear arms - you simply have to ban the technology and pretty much wipe out everyone who seeks to acquire it, like an immune system killing viruses, while finding some way to lace the environment with 'antigens' of some kind that can automatically 'contain' any 'outbreaks'.
There has to be a point at which a hugely destructive technology becomes so cheap and widely available that it cannot be allowed to proliferate, no matter that it might have beneficial uses.
Oh how fun it'd be if he worked for google. Type in "Recipe for pasta salad" and you'd get 5 thousand pop ups going "THE WORLD IS GOING TO END! WE'RE ALL DOOMED!"
--- [Insert intresting Sig here]
Time is simply one way of viewing entropy. It is thermodynamic and innately unidirectional. Time travel to the future is simple, it just takes a while to accomplish. It is generally claimed reversing time would violate cause and effect. This isn't really true, it would simply exchange causes for effects. What it would violate is the second law of thermodynamics. The result of this would be the setting up of a feedback cycle that increased energy in "the past" infinately. Not only do we not observe this, it would be a Bad Thing.
In terms of controling "dimensions" the fact of the matter is that we are, for all of our technological advances, still restrained to "control" things within the bounds of natural law. We can manipulate those laws in certain ways to achieve certain effects we desire, but we are, and always will be, constrained by them.
Thus pure research is not so much expanding our limits as it is determining what the absolute limits beyond which we cannot go actually are. The more we learn, the more we learn we are constrained. In fact, that was the whole point of the Theory of Relativity which is really the Theory of an Absolute Limit.
It would seem that travel in time is one of those absolute contraints, which, no matter how much you and I might like to go look at some dinosaurs, is probably a Good Thing.
The future, however, is simply awaiting our arrival.
KFG
Many people mention that we have survived possible nuclear destruction and created hundreds of destructive weapons yet manage to live. You miss the point of those things beeing weapons, people weilding them were aware of extreme consequences their actions would bring. They had responsibility and while driven by their own agenda understood what they had on their hands. Great deal of effort was spent to keep it responsible, and less prone to get out due to single person/company/country mistakes/evil intent. What Bill argues is that there is a great possibility that now such responsiblities may fall on a limited group of people driven by money grabbing/get there fast/cheap mentality, or even a single person. No control as we have with nuclear technology, with consequences just as dire. He argues for responsible science. Just as there is a difference in responsible and secure code ( Linux/xBSD vs Microsoft). Its not a technology issie it is a people menatality issue, and is so much greatly illustrated by the quote given in the article from a book by Bertrand Russel: "I thought that people would not like the prospect of being fried with their families and their neighbors and every living person that they had heard of. I thought it would only be necessary to make the danger known and that, when this had been done, men of all parties would unite to restore previous safety. I found that this was a mistake. There is a motive which is stronger than self-preservation: it is the desire to get the better of the other fellow." This above is so true, and drives the market and human forces to get there fast, loosing a responsible approach in progress.
If it is going to be something like vi I would have no problems at all
Thanks Mr.Joy for the joy called vi
The man is suggesting an end to the free flow of information that science is built upon. He talked about scientific "guilds" that would hold the sacred flame and hide it from everyone else in an effort to preserve the human race.
I'm sorry, but that would sound like the end of at least interdisciplinary science if not science itself. I think the rubuttal that you labeled "simplistic" is pretty accurate. Just because the results of science can be used for destructive aims is not a reason to return to the ages of hidden knowledge.
"I'm a loner Dottie, a rebel."
- Pee Wee Herman
One of my professors this semester assigned a project comparing and contrasting the views of Joy, Dertouzos, and Kurzweil. The following articles shed some light about each one's perspective, respectively.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html
http://www.lcs.mit.edu/about/reason.html
http://www.lcs.mit.edu/about/kurzweil.html
Gotta get me one of these!
This is Insightful? Does anyone other than one bitter crank who's pissed off about how his site gets indexed believe any of this is remotely true? Google searches "pure garbage," full of nothing but porn sites? Their support told him to "fuck off"? Oh, wait, that's what they "basically" told him. So, in other words, this guy just has an axe to grind and he's willing to make up whatever he wants so long as it fits his rant, and then other people will mod him up, "basically" because they're jealous of Google or something. Tell you what, pal -- why don't you start your own search engine? Then, when your engine gets really popular, you can throw huge parties and not invite anybody from Google, just to show 'em!
Breakfast served all day!
I think that there are real risks of technology. But I'm not convinced that a "go slow" prescription is a solution. This presupposes that we actually can forecast the risks and benefits of technology if we just slow down the pace a bit. But so often, modern technologies synergize in ways that are nearly impossible to predict. And hypothetical risks often loom much larger than benefits. It was easy to foresee, for example, the risks to privacy of widespread computer connectivity. But who foresaw the many benefits of computer networks for commerce, communication, grass-roots political organization, etc., etc? Over the years, I've seen many nightmare scenarios. In early '70's, many young people were convinced that nuclear or ecological catastrophe would overtake us in just a few years. Yet somehow, the forecasted disasters always managed to stay just a few years ahead. It is worth thinking about risks--occasionally, the dangers are sufficiently obvious that they actually can be avoided. But that is the exception rather than the rule. I think the greater danger is that we will be paralyzed by fear and uncertainty.
Let's have some thoughts folks!
I thought "You seem very optimistic! This is slashdot, for crying out loud." Then I realised how negative I was being.
I'm no psychologist, but a futurist is anyone with an opinion about tomorrow, so here goes.
In a world where everyone has the power to destroy everyone else, we're already dead. There is no time to solve and understand mental illness. It only takes a handful of real loonies with access to total destruction weapons before we're all totally destroyed.
So in my opinion, if a cheap, discrete, total destruction weapon becomes generally available, then we're finished, no question.
As a species, our technical intelligence far exceeds our common sense and mental stability. Evolutionary dead-end.
How to mitigate this? We need to get off this Earth as fast as we can so our eggs are not all in one basket. We need to start this understanding and solving mental illness, of which you speak, right now instead of waiting till it's too late.
But when the most powerful nation on earth is so comfortable in its habits that Kyoto goes by it's wayside, what chance in hell is there of your leaders taking this scenario seriously? Or maybe it's just far out enough that they would pay attention. Hmmm...
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
It's amazing to read an article about someone like Bill Joy, a truly creative thinker and someone who accomplished a lot
He accomplished a lot in *programming*, nothing else. See, that's the problem. Once someone gets famous for doing X, they think they can speak authoritatively on all subjects. But they can't -- they can just babble, just as Einstein did about socialism and pacifism, and Bill Joy is doing about science. While we can all hold opinions on everything, and even babble about them on Usenet and Slashdot (or indeed on blogs, the most self-indulgent waste of time possible), it would be considerably more productive if people limited their interactions with journalists to the subjects they have actually been educated in.
I'm not. You think the tourists are annoying now? Just wait...
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Once someone gets famous for doing X, they think they can speak authoritatively on all subjects.
This problem exists, but is not valid in this case.
See, I'd agree if the interview was with Britney or Tiger - their opinion on the future counts for nothing. But you're talking about Bill Joy. When a deservedly prominent computer scientist - or, for that matter, biologist, economist, etc. - talks about the future, I'll listen.
Some people are seriously thinking of making 'backups' of civilization: "secure sanctuaries (think of the monasteries of the Middle Ages) that preserve and update copies of the vital records and articles needed for the conduct of our society". They would be placed all over Earth and eventually at locations in space. "In the event of a global catastrophe, the ARC facilities will be prepared to reintroduce lost technology, art, history, crops, livestock and, if necessary, even human beings to the Earth."
See Robert Shapiro and William E. Burrows
... they can just babble, just as Einstein did about [...] pacifism
... they can just babble, just as Einstein did about socialism [...]
... it would be considerably more productive if people limited their interactions with journalists to the subjects they have actually been educated in.
How did he babble? Remember that Einstein grew up between the world wars. An American WWI veteran said: "The Germans didn't win that war but neither did we. Only the war won that war." It was a house of cards that fell over, countries declared war because of their treaties and rarely because their own direct interests were at stake. And even the interests that were at stake, were more those of the elite than of the people. In the end, the war was not even succesful to put down Germany. The treaty of Versailles paved the way for WWII (with unbearable reparations). It's not surprising that many people became pacifists after WWI. Furthermore, in Germany at that time, militarists were the Nazi's and the believers in Great Germany. There is a big difference in being a pacifist opposing war against the Nazi's or being a pacifist opposing their war drive. Furthermore, when Einstein moved to the US, he did come to believe that the Nazi's had to be stopped and he became a strong supporter of the development of the atomic bomb. After WWII, he did become a pacifist again, because he didn't want war with the USSR. His goal of mutual disarmament became reality when Reagan sign INF and START I. IMHO, the improvement of the US-USSR relationship which resulted from these treaties was an important aspect in ending the cold war (without a big boom).
So how was Einstein wrong?
I just read his essay Why Socialism? and it struck me how well-written it is. His criticism of 'pure' capitalism is valid and while he calls for a planned economy, he correctly identifies two major problems that would have to be solved first (he forgets the problem of how demand should guide production, but two out of three ain't bad). Those are exactly the problems that the USSR and China were not able to solve in their planned economies.
All in all, a very well written essay worthy of reading. While we now know that no one has succeeded in creating a succesful economy, that wasn't at all clear in 1949, when the Soviet economy was still booming and this must have been one of the more reasonable voices among the communists and the communist-haters. And because the essay is so reasoned, it's still worthy of reading after over 50 years, which is often a sign of quality.
Unfortunately, many of the 'experts' are extremely biased and worse, they can't even offer good arguments to support their position. Then I'd rather listen to an intelligent person who knows the scientific method and the limits of what he can claim. Those people can often talk very interestingly about subjects and even if they are wrong, there is still plenty to learn from their arguments.