I am presenting disruption events for humans and also for biospheres and planets and correlating them with historical frequency and scale.
There has been previous work on categorizing and classifying extinction events. There is Bostroms paper and there is also the work by Jamais Cascio and Michael Anissimov on classification and identifying risks (presented below).
A recent article discusses the inevtiable "end of societies" (it refers to civilizations but it seems to be referring more to things like the end of the roman empire, which still ends up later with Italy, Austria Hungary etc... emerging)
The theories around complexity seem me that to be that core developments along connected S curves of technology and societal processes cap out (around key areas of energy, transportation, governing efficiency, agriculture, production) and then a society falls back (soft or hard dark age, reconstitutes and starts back up again).
Here is a wider range of disruption. Which can also be correlated to frequency that they have occurred historically.
High growth drop to Low growth (short business cycles)
Recession (soft or deep) Every five to fifteen years.
Depression
List of recessions for the USA (includes depressions)
Differences recession/depression
Good rule of thumb for determining the difference between a recession and a depression is to look at the changes in GNP. A depression is any economic downturn where real GDP declines by more than 10 percent. A recession is an economic downturn that is less severe. By this yardstick, the last depression in the United States was from May 1937 to June 1938, where real GDP declined by 18.2 percent. Great Depression of the 1930s can be seen as two separate events: an incredibly severe depression lasting from August 1929 to March 1933 where real GDP declined by almost 33 percent, a period of recovery, then another less severe depression of 1937-38. (Depressions every 50-100 years. Were more frequent in the past).
Dark age (period of societal collapse, soft/light or regular)
I would say the difference between a long recession and a dark age has to do with breakdown of societal order and some level of population decline / dieback, loss of knowledge/education breakdown. (Once per thousand years.)
I would say that a soft dark age is also something like what China had from the 1400's to 1970.
Basically a series of really bad societal choices. Maybe something between depressions and dark age or something that does not categorize as neatly but an underperformance by twenty times versus competing groups. Perhaps there should be some kind of societal disorder, levels and categories of major society wide screw ups - historic level mistakes. The Chinese experience I think was triggered by the renunciation of the ocean going fleet, outside ideas and tech, and a lot of other follow on screw ups.
Plagues played a part in weakening the Roman and Han empires.
Societal collapse talk which includes the previously mentioned Toynbee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_collapse
Toynbee argues that the breakdown of civilizations is not caused by loss of control over the environment, over the human environment, or attacks from outside. Rather, it comes from the deterioration of the "Creative Minority," which eventually ceases to be creative and degenerates into merely a "Dominant Minority" (who forces the majority to obey without meriting obedience). He argues that creative minorities deteriorate due to a worship of their "former self," by which they become prideful, and fail to adequately address the next challenge they face.
==Thus the Enlightenment would be requiring a creative majority. where everyone has a stake and capability to creatively advance society.
Many now argue about how dark the dark ages were not as completely bad as commonly believed.
The dark ages is also called the Middle Ages
Population during the middle ages
Between dark age/social collapse and extinction. There are levels of decimation/devastation. (use orders of magnitude 90+%, 99%, 99.9%, 99.99%)
Level 1 decimation = 90% population loss
Level 2 decimation = 99% population loss
Level 3 decimation = 99.9% population loss
Level 9 population loss (would pretty much be extinction for current human civilization). Only 6-7 people left or less which would not be a viable population.
Can be regional or global, some number of species (for decimation)
Categorizations of Extinctions, end of world categories
Can be regional or global, some number of species (for extinctions)
== The Mass extinction events have occurred in the past (to other species. For each species there can only be one extinction event). Dinosaurs, and many others.
Unfortunately Michael's accelerating future blog is having some issues so here is a cached link.
Michael was identifying manmade risks
The Easier-to-Explain Existential Risks (remember an existential risk
is something that can set humanity way back, not necessarily killing
everyone):
1. neoviruses
2. neobacteria
3. cybernetic biota
4. Drexlerian nanoweapons
The hardest to explain is probably #4. My proposal here is that, if
someone has never heard of the concept of existential risk, it's
easier to focus on these first four before even daring to mention the
latter ones. But here they are anyway:
5. runaway self-replicating machines ("grey goo" not recommended
because this is too narrow of a term)
6. destructive takeoff initiated by intelligence-amplified human
7. destructive takeoff initiated by mind upload
8. destructive takeoff initiated by artificial intelligence
Another classification scheme: the eschatological taxonomy by Jamais
Cascio on Open the Future. His classification scheme has seven
categories, one with two sub-categories. These are:
0:Regional Catastrophe (examples: moderate-case global warming,
minor asteroid impact, local thermonuclear war)
1: Human Die-Back (examples: extreme-case global warming,
moderate asteroid impact, global thermonuclear war)
2: Civilization Extinction (examples: worst-case global warming,
significant asteroid impact, early-era molecular nanotech warfare)
3a: Human Extinction-Engineered (examples: targeted nano-plague,
engineered sterility absent radical life extension)
3b: Human Extinction-Natural (examples: major asteroid impact,
methane clathrates melt)
4: Biosphere Extinction (examples: massive asteroid impact,
"iceball Earth" reemergence, late-era molecular nanotech warfare)
5: Planetary Extinction (examples: dwarf-planet-scale asteroid
impact, nearby gamma-ray burst)
X: Planetary Elimination (example: post-Singularity beings
disassemble planet to make computronium)
A couple of interesting posts about historical threats to civilization and life by Howard Bloom.
Natural climate shifts and from space (not asteroids but interstellar gases).
Humans are not the most successful life, bacteria is the most successful. Bacteria has survived for 3.85 billion years. Humans for 100,000 years. All other kinds of life lasted no more than 160 million years. [Other species have only managed to hang in there for anywhere from 1.6 million years to 160 million. We humans are one of the shortest-lived natural experiments around. We’ve been here in one form or another for a paltry two and a half million years.] If your numbers are not big enough and you are not diverse enough then something in nature eventually wipes you out.
Following the bacteria survival model could mean using transhumanism as a survival strategy. Creating more diversity to allow for better survival. Humans adapted to living under the sea, deep in the earth, in various niches in space, more radiation resistance,non-biological forms etc... It would also mean spreading into space (panspermia). Individually using technology we could become very successful at life extension, but it will take more than that for a good plan for human (civilization, society, species) long term survival planning.
Other periodic challenges:
142 mass extinctions, 80 glaciations in the last two million years, a planet that may have once been a frozen iceball, and a klatch of global warmings in which the temperature has soared by 18 degrees in ten years or less.
In the last 120,000 years there were 20 interludes in which the temperature of the planet shot up 10 to 18 degrees within a decade. Until just 10,000 years ago, the Gulf Stream shifted its route every 1,500 years or so. This would melt mega-islands of ice, put out our coastal cities beneath the surface of the sea, and strip our farmlands of the conditions they need to produce the food that feeds us.
The solar system has a 240-million-year-long-orbit around the center of our galaxy, an orbit that takes us through interstellar gas clusters called local fluff, interstellar clusters that strip our planet of its protective heliosphere, interstellar clusters that bombard the earth with cosmic radiation and interstellar clusters that trigger giant climate change.
April 06, 2008
Disruptions from small recessions to extinction events
April 02, 2008
Constant threats and challenges to life, Bacteria needs to be emulated
A couple of interesting posts about historical threats to civilization and life by Howard Bloom.
Natural climate shifts and from space (not asteroids but interstellar gases).
Humans are not the most successful life, bacteria is the most successful. Bacteria has survived for 3.85 billion years. Humans for 100,000 years. All other kinds of life lasted no more than 160 million years. If your numbers are not big enough and you are not diverse enough then something in nature eventually wipes you out.
I think the point is that the Enlightment and life is not just about holding past gains. Fear and lack of confidence could allow a retreat in society or make human life more fragile. Emergencies can be used as excuses for theft or rollback of gains or enable choices that increase the fragility of humanity as a whole.
We need to push forward with more confidence.
More confident projects of high risk [but with the best planning to maximize the odds of success] and high reward.
Using the nations of the world to allow the competent citizen to be as free and empowered as possible.
example. there is no approved gene therapy procedure in the USA yet. China has had a gene therapy procedure approved since 2003.
Medical tourism is something that perhaps a million people are doing.
Insurance companies are shifting to making deals with overseas hospitals to send people (expenses paid) over to the foreign country for a treatment to save money for the insurance company and the patient (no deductibles etc...)
Medical tourism is also being used to circumvent excessive restrictions.
Use jurisdictions and find ways to make them more open to create competition for more freedom and access and power for individuals.
Enable more open source, creative commons, collective research and projects.
Better and more collaboration.
FURTHER READING
Disruptions from small recessions to extinction (frequency, history and classification).
November 30, 2007
Update on the nuclear "battery"
I exchanged email with Hyperion Power Generation (the maker of the new power generator. They indicate that the Sante Fe reporter made a mistake. The output is about 25-17 MW ELECTRIC [This statement was also consistent with the patent which talked about tens of MW in electricity. They also said that the containment vessel will be dense enough that no radiation will escape even if it is not buried in the ground.
Hyperion does not have a detailed diagram of the heat piping but there does not seem like there should be anything special about the heat piping system. In this presentation on slide 34 and 35 they have the density of heat pipes which seems appropriate About 1/9th of the volume taken up with heat pipes
The electric power generation is based on standard turbines which are about 40% efficient. There is new thermoelectronics which could double that efficiency.
For space vehicles, one could replace the heavy radiation shielding with lighter alternatives like electrostatic shielding.
I talked about using the simplified solid core nuclear reactor for enhanced recovery of shale oil to help resolve peak oil.
I examined using the nuclear power in combination with the Vasimr plasma rocket engine for 39 day trips to Mars
I also discuss using this technology as one of several technologies that would make civilization more resistant to disasters.
November 26, 2007
Near term lifeboat technology: integrated and seamless robustness
AlFin's excellent blog points out that "nuclear batteries" could be used for a near term civilization lifeboat. The initial goal would not be creating fully resistant civilization lifeboats that could handle destruction of the biosphere but hardened points of key civilization services like databases, medical facilities, food services, water services and electricity. The goal would be life shield bunkers which help keep the grid and civilization going when everything is going good but also keep operating at various levels of disaster.
UPDATE: My latest posting has all of the technical details on the nuclear "battery". It is a simplified solid core reactor variant.With reliable power, a population could thrive underground, undersea, on/beneath polar ice, or in the starkest desert (even in nuclear winter conditions). Using aeroponic food-growing technology, artificial lighting, drilled or melted water supply, sophisticated filters etc. etc. small to medium communities of many types could find a way to develop in relative isolation.
Better, safer, more reliable ways to use nuclear decay to power civilisation (or civilisation's "restart") are coming.
The old bomb shelter were sunk costs and the shelters were unused when there was no crisis.
Technology would be selected and developed which could provide more robustness with less of a price premium and which would not just be stored material.
Instead of warehouses with cans of food, have aeroponic systems that provide food to city dwellers during normal times but which could still function in a crisis.
Water filtration and desalinization systems instead of tanks of stored water.
Instead of oil stockpiles a combination of nuclear batteries, solar and wind power generation systems.
Instead of only underground facilities, monolithic domes and geodesic domes that are integrated into cities Integrate certain homeland security budgets and planning in with the planning of academic, public transit, public facilities (like hospitals) and sports facilities.
Disaster planning should have a revamped and updated view.
Some aspect of enhanced disaster support would be to look prepositioning disaster support with nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. If costs could be contained then nuclear battery facilities and vessels could be examined as part of enhanced coast guard and national guard vehicles.
The russians have been examining floating nuclear power plants
Other people are also considering floating and submersible nuclear power plants
Thorium reactors would be well suited for submersible and floating designs
The compact and safe nature of a liquid-fluoride thorium reactor opens the possibility of building mobile reactors on floating vessels or submersibles. These systems could be built at centralized locations, taking advantages of economies of scale, and then deployed along the Tennessee River to replace coal-fired power plants, plugging directly into existing electrical infrastructure.
Widespread adoption of plug in hybrids would help stabilize the energy grid
Robert Zubrin has pointed at that flexible fuel vehicles would provide adaptability to high oil prices. The combination of plug in hybrids that could run on flexible fuel would help enable sections of an electrical grid to function and would allow vehicles to run on alcohol or methanol in the event of disaster that disrupted oil distribution.
SUMMARIZING
- integrating nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers into disaster planning
- getting nuclear batteries and disaster hardened technology cost
justified for wider adoption
- revamping disaster planning and getting hardened architecture in the
thinking of architects as much as earthquake resistance is.
- Bring down the cost premium of disaster hardened technology.
- Encourage existing and near term technology choices that would enhance robustness
- flexible fuel plug in hybrids
FURTHER READING
Autonomous building is a building designed to be operated independently from infrastructural support services such as the electric power grid, municipal water systems, sewage treatment systems, storm drains, communication services, and in some cases public roads.
Distributed power generation
Flexible fuel vehicles
Atomic battery
More efficient and longer laster nuclear batteries
November 19, 2007
Help hookup.com, an army of volunteers
The inspiration of Help Hookup is actually a comic book called Global Frequency by Warren Ellis. My brother, Alvin Wang, took the idea to startup weekend and they launched the idea this past weekend for hooking up volunteers. It is similar to the concepts of David Brin's "empowered citizens" and Glenn Reynolds "an army of Davids".
Hooking up skilled volunteers with great causes and events.
Global Frequency was a network of 1,001 people that handled the jobs that the governments did not have the will to handle. I thought that it was a great idea and it would be more powerful with 1,000,001 people or 100,000,001 people. We would have to leave out the killing that was in the comic.
Typhoons, earthquakes, and improperly funded education could all be handled. If there is a disaster, doctors could volunteer. Airlines could provide tickets. Corporations could provide supples. Trucking companies could provide transportation. Etc. State a need, meet the need. No overhead. No waste.
The main site is here it is a way for volunteers to hookup
The helphookup blog is tracking the progress.
The project has been covered on techcrunch.com
There is a facebook group
Track the online reaction via technorati
