The title above is the title of a lecture given at Caltech last month by noted sci-fi author Michael Crichton. His main thesis: any model that claims to predict the future is going to be wrong. Excerpt:
“Let’s think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they worried about people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably: Where would people get enough horses? And what would they do about all the horseshit? Horse pollution was bad in 1900, think how much worse it would be a century later, with so many more people riding horses?
But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for sport. And in 2000, France was getting 80% its power from an energy source that was unknown in 1900. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Japan were getting more than 30% from this source, unknown in 1900. Remember, people in 1900 didn’t know what an atom was. They didn’t know its structure. They also didn’t know what a radio was, or an airport, or a movie, or a television, or a computer, or a cell phone, or a jet, an antibiotic, a rocket, a satellite, an MRI, ICU, IUD, IBM, IRA, ERA, EEG, EPA, IRS, DOD, PCP, HTML, internet. interferon, instant replay, remote sensing, remote control, speed dialing, gene therapy, gene splicing, genes, spot welding, heat-seeking, bipolar, prozac, leotards, lap dancing, email, tape recorder, CDs, airbags, plastic explosive, plastic, robots, cars, liposuction, transduction, superconduction, dish antennas, step aerobics, smoothies, twelve-step, ultrasound, nylon, rayon, teflon, fiber optics, carpal tunnel, laser surgery, laparoscopy, corneal transplant, kidney transplant, AIDS… None of this would have meant anything to a person in the year 1900. They wouldn’t know what you are talking about.
Now. You tell me you can predict the world of 2100. Tell me it’s even worth thinking about. Our models just carry the present into the future. They’re bound to be wrong. Everybody who gives a moment’s thought knows it.”
and the world of today is not all that different from the world of 1954 – aside from computers and information technology. Nuclear power? Was there in 1954. Hydro-electric power? A good chunk of current US capacity was built by then. Oil? Was the basis of the 1954 economy too. Coal-fired electric? Many of the plants from that era are still operating today.
Unlike computers, energy generating capacity is long-term capital investment – 40,50,60 year life expectancies. For something to have a significant impact by 2054, it had better get some heavy R&D investment now, or it’s not going to help with our problems.
Also, it can be argued that the 20th century was rather unusual, and developments on that scale are unlikely to recur. Population grew from 1.6 billion to 6 billion – I don’t think anybody expects 275% growth between now and 2100. Constant dollar world consumption growth was, by some accounts, a factor of 16 from 1900 to 2000; that growth also is very unlikely to recur. Reduced growth means we can’t simply “grow out” of our problems through creation of new wealth.
On the science front, the early 20th century saw revolutions in our understanding of the fundamental nature of matter and the universe; a century’s worth of innovation in chemistry and materials followed. The only analogous state of revolution right now is in biology and the deliberate manipulation of genetic materials – but we’ve been doing that for a decade or two now without any really spectacular consequences (ok a few drugs – anything else?)
As far as applied science and technology goes, I have pretty strong hopes for space technology as a solution to a number of earth problems, but it’s only going to happen if we focus money on it, and the recent outcry over space spending is a very very bad sign. What’s Crichton’s take on that?
In any case, weren’t many of the great technologies of the 20th century developed because people looked ahead and foresaw needs – for example, the Manhattan project was an obvious response to the threat of similar technology being developed by our enemies. When the threat is something like global climate change, shouldn’t we respond with similarly focused effort? You’re not likely to survive long if you insist on closing your eyes while driving down the highway…
This reminds me of an old joke: “What’s there to see in Switzerland? Take out its lakes and mountains and there is nothing there”.
Well, if 1954 had nuclear power, then in 2004 we have nanotech, genomics, and quantum computing.
Alternatively, it can be argued with a lot more substance that the technological progress is acceletaring. The next 50 years will likely see more technological change than the previous 100 or even 200 years. Just one advance – computational AI would radicaly change humanity.
Focus should be on proving beyond reasonable doubt :-) that the change is technogenic and not a natural cycle. And then, if there is such a proof, the focus should be on balancing the investment with possible future returns.
Well Chrichton started with The Sphere, his first demonstration to me that he was an idiot.
And, he keeps doing it again and again, showing me that he is an even bigger idiot than I had thought before.
Pretty cool. I can actually think of several Golden Age sci-fi writers who managed to make some reasonably accurate prediction of what the future might bring us. I guess you could quible and say that they got some stuff wrong, or that thier predictions were not out a full hundred years.
But Crichton’s whole point, to me, seems to be along the lines ‘don’t worry about any of those pesky things like pollution — it’ll work itself out.’
Yup. Don’t bother trying to see into the future, like say, what is that thing coming at you on the highway? Don’t worry! It’ll work itself out.
Dope.
Arco, Idaho, was powered by a nuclear reactor in 1947. Almost all reactors currently in operation are based on designs from the 1950s. Show me where there’s anybody computing anything on a quantum computer right now, or any product sold based on “nanotech” or “genomics” (other than the recombinant DNA we’ve had for a couple of decades)?
How do you envision computational AI helping us solve our problems? Kurzweil and the other boosters have all sorts of rosy scenarios, but seem to seldom actually get into the details of how the new “smarter-than-us” computers (always 25-30 years away) would actually do anything useful.
We already have computing capability that far exceeds human abilities for numerical simulation of the world, but people like yourself refuse to believe the conclusions the computers come up with. The Kurzweil’s always talk about hardware, not the fundamental complexity of software development (I happen to be a software developer myself…) which is what has really stymied AI research the last 20 years or so.
But suppose we do manage to create machines that are really smarter than humans. Would humanity simply bow down to its new robot overlords? Would it have no choice in the matter? More likely the new technologies will allow disturbed individuals greater opportunities for destruction and mayhem – note for example the discussion here. Also the interesting appended comment that, given that oil may be running out, all the rosy scenarios could well be irrelevant.
I also think that the world is poised to change drastically over the next couple decades. I agree that the world today looks similiar to the world in the 1950’s, but I also see subtle changes under the surface of normal day life that could explode into our lives and change everything.
I don’t have time to go into specific examples right now, but it could just take someone discovering a secret about photovoltaic cells or quantum computing or AI programming or genetic manipulation to radically change our world.
To me I think the best analog of the current science/technology situation is the time of the Greeks and Romans. The Greeks discovered fundamental principles of the world in mathematics and mechanics, much as the Europeans of the 17th through 20th centuries discovered fundamental new truths about all aspects of the world through their scientific accomplishments.
The Romans built upon the Greek foundation to revolutionize engineering and architecture, warfare and empire-building, much as the United States has done with European science since about 1900.
There is still much more that can be done with the science we have, but fundamentally the science of today is still the science of Lavoisier, Maxwell, Newton, and Bohr, just as Roman science was the science of Aristotle, Archimedes, Euclid, and Pythagoras. Can you think of any American scientist, or scientific group, of the twentieth century, even Feynman, likely to be remembered a thousand years from now?
Proof of concept operation.
Irrelevant. You don’t know what’s going to be based on today’s designs 50 years from now.
OK, we don’t have any quantum computers on sale yet. But quantum entanglement is used extensively in optical equipment.
How is this exception justified? 50 years ago DNA was just discovered.
It’s pointless to deny advances in biosciences. You can look no further than NYSE listing, starting with an A :-). I am not even talking about GM food. For nanotech companies beside IBM and the likes look here.
And I totally forgot your favorite subject – space. How many man-made objects did we have in orbit in 1954? :-)
Here is a reasonable essay on the subject. Not that I agree with everything it sais, but it’s not a bad start.
Do you believe statements like “APSmith and other nay-sayers have all sorts of gloomy scenarios, but seem to seldom actually get into the details of how…” add anything positive to the discussion?
True, software part is not here yet. But if you follow research of, say Henry Markram, Robert Hecht-Nielsen, and Wolfgang Maass, you would know that things are changing rapidly. If history is any guidance, we should not repeat past mistakes.
Although this might be one of the posssible scenarios, I don’t think it’s a likely one. Detailed discussion is just, well, got to be detailed and I don’t have time right now becuase I am already late for work :-). Just one thing – what’s the boundary of an individual? Where does one person end and the next one start? Right now it’s the physical body. It’s not so clear for 2054.
You keep forgetting that science is not limited to physics. Where are Watson & Crick, von Neumann, Zuse? The whole fields of science were created since the time of Bohr. Are you saying the bioscience is still the science of Mendel, chemistry of Mendeleev?
Any such claim would be 100% pure unverifiable speculation. You also keep forgetting that the world is a bit larger than the USA.
If you want to make a claim that no contemporary scientist (musician, medical doctor, engineer etc) is nowhere near as prominent as some past figure, then you should keep in mind the social issues of the past:
It’s easier to be prominent in a world with population under 50 million, over 90% being serfs or slaves. Today the number of college-educated people is higher than the whole world population then.
I had already briefly scanned through the “accelerating returns” article you mention – just like all the others from Kurzweil, it’s very high level. Growth growth growth. Things will continue to grow. Well maybe, maybe not.
Sometimes growth ends. Even your hero Bjorn Lomborg, discussing human life expectency, has a figure that quite contradicts Kurzweil’s concluding graphic.
Why does Kurzweil have that curious gap in his longevity graphic (filled in with a straight line) from 1920 to 2000? Makes for a nice upward image when in fact the curve has been flattening out (worldwide) since about 1970, and since much earlier than that in industrialized countries.
These guys are always high-level – and certainly that’s a valid perspective, but it looks to me like they’re fudging their data to promote a heavily over-optimistic viewpoint.
and chemistry is just physics :-)
Watson and Crick’s contribution is certainly important, by uniting genetics and bio-chemistry. But biology is still the biology of Darwin, who I should have added to my list (well it was supposed to be representative, not comprehensive!)
And the advances in medicine this century have been spectacular – no doubt there is much more that can be done. But it’s not pure science – it’s applied science. The pure sciences of biology, understanding how life works, are certainly making steady progress. But are they fundamentally changing our worldview, enabling startlingly new behaviors of our creations?
Engineering applied to biology is still engineering, is my point, just like engineering applied to spaceflight is still engineering. Yes, it’s exciting, yes it can lead to great new capabilities. But really it’s much closer to the “Roman” mode of innovation than the “Greek”. Not to knock the “Roman” mode – after all they were successful for centuries.
But in the end the Romans failed by focusing on the wrong things – too much effort in conquering distant lands, too much reliance on slave labor, too much lead, whatever the cause, their time came to an end.
And so will ours, if we can’t focus ourselves on the issues that are really critical for our future.
I don’t understand your comparison to Rome when you say our time will come to an end too. Who is the “our” referring too? America? The whole world? Scientific discovery and innovation is not limited to the USA. We may be leading in some areas, but if we decide to focus on unimportant ventures, it will not stop other countries from continuing down more fruitfull veins.
And it would seem will your line of thinking there can never be any real scientific advances, because science by its very nature builds upon previous work. You could say the Einsteins Physics was just expanding Newton’s. So is physics still the physics of Newton?
And I sure hope we don’t enter another dark age.
I guess this is the old paradigm-shift vs normal science issue, which Thomas Kuhn later regretted bringing up. Yes, of course all knowledge builds upon previous work, and that’s fine. But sometimes new knowledge completely changes what we thought we knew before; that’s happened with quantum mechanics, and happened in a way (but not so as to have much everyday impact) with relativity, but nothing recently has had nearly the same effect on our understanding and capabilities as the mathematically mechanistic universe Newton and contemporaries came up with.
Yes, in a sense, physics is still the physics of Newton, and likely always will be.
Will other countries come along and pursue fruitful paths the US is neglecting? Maybe. Though science is very international now and interdependent. Maybe it will just take time, as with the long dark ages gap you mention, with a necessary Arab interlude to discover algebra and work on astrology and alchemy.
jdoe here has been citing Kurzweil and friends’ dreams about the immense computer power that will soon be upon us. Well, we already have immense intellectual power at work in the world’s scientific community, orders of magnitude more than in any century before the 20th. Have we figured out how to use that power well? When will we? Maybe that’s what we need?
I don’t know exactly, maybe this is just an intuition here that we’re missing something, something big. And that going out into the universe is the most important thing we could be doing to catch that thing we’re missing, before it’s too late.
History tends to repeat itself.
So, it happened once then. For 10000 years before Newton it was not. Then it was. How is it different from now? Do you believe we already know everything of importance? 100 years ago physisists already made this mistake. They seriously believed that everything there was to discover was already discovered. Then came quantum mechanics and GTR.
This is just a statement with no meaning. Please define what makes today’s physics the physics of [insert your favorite figure here].
You probably mean the social impact of a particular discovery? Then I would say we are a society of Maxwell. And slowly becoming a society of Plank.
I can imagine you saying around 1850: “We already have immensely powerful steam engines and telegraph. What’s 20th century going to offer us that we don’t have already?”. Suuuuure.
If it were not high level, it would have been a 500 page book.
Why not? Please substantiate.
My hero? Why is he my hero?
There is no real contradiction. As with any prediction one takes a current set of trends and extends them into the future. Lomborg takes the current trend only and extends it for 50 years. He implicitly assumes that genetics and other future advances will not contribute significantly to the longevity. Kurzweil assumes that genetics and future discoveries will contribute. I believe Kurzweil is closer to truth.
I did not say I agree with everything in his article, did I? As for this particular chart read up on S curves, which is a pretty rational explanation of technological progress.
First the new technolgy does not contribute significantly (low growth), then it’s spreading (fast growth), then it’s fully mature (slow growth again). Old technologies – better nutrition, hygiene, antibiotics, chemical diagnostics matured since 1970s, new technology – genetics is just entering the rapid growth stage. Thus the temporary slow down.
Well, then we just have to live for the next few decades to see who is right :-)
Crichton’s analogy between manure and fossil fuels is invalid. Dumping horse manure on our city streets does not permanently change our environment, but burning fossil fuels tips the balance of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere for hundreds (or maybe even thousands) of years.
Yes, technology may look a lot different in the year 2104, but most of our contribution to the atmosphere’s carbon load in the year 2004 is going to remain in the atmosphere in the year 2104.
Whether its malaria, second hand smoke, or global warming, Michael Crichton does not know anything about science.
Analogy serves to highlight a certain aspect in a discussion. It can never be identical to the subject. You seem to miss Crichton’s point.
My point was that his point was invalid. Conservation of mass means our carbon emissions will not disappear, and it won’t be until the year 3000 that 85% of 20th century man’s contribution to the carbon load will be absorbed by the oceans. (Sorry for the long sentence.)
It appears that Crichton is “skeptical” of the need to slow the growth in greenhouse gases. I think if he was around 100 years ago, he would be “skeptical” of the health dangers of horse manure.
My point was that his point was invalid.
It’s valid, you just miss it. His point – “in 1904 we had concerns which were valid at that time. 100 years later they seem trivial.” Your interpretation of his point: “In 2004 we have concerns which still seem valid in 2004.” Duh!
he would be “skeptical” of the health dangers of horse manure
And you know what? He would have been right :-). Horse sh*t is not a dangerous chemical. Just keep it out of food and drinking water (or keep it to a minimum :-) and you should be safe.
CFCs are a better than manure as an analogy to greenhouse gas emissions. When they were invented 70 years ago, no one thought they would pose a problem. Today, as a result of CFCs and similar chemicals, the concentration of chlorine in the atmosphere is 500 times greater than it was before, and people are at greater risk for skin cancer because of the resulting ozone depletion. Although these chemicals are banned, their concentration in the atmosphere is still high because of their long atmospheric lifetime and because it will take time for the poorest countries to completely phase out CFCs.
If manure took hundreds of years to decompose, and if it had a long-lasting or irreversible impact on the environment, then Crichton’s analogy would fit, and today we would have to deal with all the crap left behind 100 years ago.
I think the manure analogy could be applied to smog and other short term environmental problems, but no one is predicting long-term increases in smog.
By the way, George Will and other conservative columnists have used the manure analogy. There is not one original thought in any of the Crichton speeches I read.
Timothy,
I have to disagree with your statement that Crichton says that we should do nothing about the potential global warming. In fact, I think he states (not as clearly as this though), that we SHOULD carry on with whatever programs we have going to aviod or correct a global warming trend of the Earth. I think his main point is that this important subject should be treated as a science, and not as a religion, as he calls it. That the current environmental movement is a religion is always up for debate, but I think I understand what he is trying to say. And, I believe that it helps one to understand what he is saying if one is a scientist or has a background in the hard sciences.
The way I understand his talk is that the environmental issues we face today are very emotional issues and people tend to believe one way or the other because of how they feel, or what they fear, rather than on what real facts we can uncover, which can lead to real, hard conclusions. When this is achieved, emotion plays a much less role in forming beliefs. For example, we have the ELF (Earth Liberation Front), burning down homes and resorts under construction simply because they are not being build in a location that the ELF can endorse. This is emotion. Pure, raw emotion and there are no facts involved in their decision what so ever. My house was on a street in the new Pima Canyon development in Tucson Arizona and under construction when 5 homes down my street were torched in the early morning of a hot summer day. Why were they torched? Because some guy decided he did not thing someone should build on that spot. So he promoted himself to judge, jury and executioner and burned them down. Of course, he waited until they were completely finished before he torched them. That way, you inflict the maximum pain. Catching these guys is difficult. But suffice it to say, if I ever find out who did it, they will know they have been discovered. But this is an extreme example of environmentalism and ELF does not even come close to repersenting main stream environmentalists.
But even so, if you read the paper or watch TV, you are bound to get a fairly broad spectrum of mainstream environmentalism. They use the word ‘Natural’ without really understanding what that word means. The word natural to me, means ‘that which occurs within the confines of a closed eco-system’. So, given that definition, how can anything on Earth be Un-Natural? What environs do is leave man out of the equation, as though there is ‘nature’ and then there is ‘man’. Not true. Man is an animal just like a squirel is an animal. When a bird builds a nest or a beaver builds a dam, it’s considered ‘natural’. But when a human builds a house, it’s NOT natural. Now! Figure that one out for me will you?
They also tend to believe that nature should be frozen in time and perserved for ever. But that is not how nature works. If you argue that chamelions (sp?) are not indigenous to Hawaii and should be removed, I’ll ask you ‘what IS indigenous to Hawaii except lava’? Everything on the islands were brought in by wind, birds, people, or ocean curents. If someone argues that such and such a thing is not indigenous to a place, I’ll ask ‘when’? When was it not indigenous? I love saguaro cactus believe me, and people in Tucson have made it a heavy crime if you move or damage one, and they argue that humans are causing the ultimate demise of the saguaro cactus and soon there will be none left. But the saguaro was not there 3000 years ago. They have been in the Sonoran desert for about 2000 years. And I’m sure that given time and if left alone, they will disappear from some other cause if not man. Why is it ok if an animal 10,000 years ago goes extinct because a change of climate caused the grass lands to disappear, which caused certain heard animals to disappear, which caused the saber tooth cat to disappear, but it’s not ok if man does something that causes another animal to disappear from the face of the Earth. I guess my point is this. Our window here on Earth is very very small from a geological time perspective. Over the past billion years or so, species have come and gone adnausium, but we get all freaked out if it happens in our time period here on Earth. As if WE have the power to stop such a thing from happening, or as if WE SHOULD try to stop such a thing. Who figured that we need to interfere in this matter? Why should we interfere?
These are just hypothetical questions Tim. Not meant to reflect my personal beliefs necessarily, but they are questions I ask. Personally, I believe in walking lightly and leaving no tracks. As do many others. And they should act on their beliefs. But all we really have control of is ourselves. We do not have control of other people. We simply cannot control the poor and hungry people in Brazil who burn part of the rain forest to make room for their small herd of cattle from which they make a meger living. We can pass laws, but laws only slow down a particular action. Laws do not stop that action. No law, and no emotion is going to stop the impact that mankind has on this Earth as its mass marches through time. We as a species will do our thing and we really do not have much control over what happens and it is arrogant to believe that we DO have control over the outcome. You cannot control mother nature. BUT, we CAN spread the word, act as we believe and hope that others follow. That might buy us time to evolve as a species, or develop stelar travel where we can break free from the Earth and have less of an impact on the environment. This is what ELF and other radical environs do not understand. They do not understand nature. They are really reacting to their own anger, which is envoked from the ‘have and have not’ syndrom. They do not have the money to build a home on a beautiful piece of property, so they do not want others to build there and they cover their jealosy by claiming to do it ‘for the environment’. What a joke really. If they only knew how transparent they were, and how silly and stupid and ignorant they looked to the rest of the world. I think if they understood this, their little balls would shrink to the size of a peanut (in other words, shrink by a factor of 2), and they would not be able to face humanity ever again. It’s just desention between the have and the have-nots, and THEY have-NOT, so they lash out in anger and hide behind some altruistic cause.
But the environmental issues need to be addressed scientifically, not emotionally. Otherwise, there is no hope at all of hanging on to even one piece of land or one piece of ‘nature’ that we consider pristine. Crichtons essay on environmentalism jives nicely with his essay on ‘concensus science’ (type crichton alien in Googgle and you will come across this essay. It’s another good read). Crichton is the first sane person I’ve run across to actually see the environmental movement for what it is. Just a wave of emotion, and Crichton brings up Carl Sagans book ‘Demon Haunted World; science as a candle in the dark’, which is an excellent excellent book about psuedoscience and the human kind. If you really want to understand what Crichton is talking about, read Demon Haunted World.
Cheers,
Paul
I was reading Mr. crichton’s article about Aliens causing global warming, I was supposed to write a 500 word essay on it, I could barely write a paragraph on it! I am just trying to say, that it has nothing to do with aliens causing global warming! If I was interested in where science is going, I would read this article! Thank you for your time!
I was reading Mr. crichton’s article about Aliens causing global warming, I was supposed to write a 500 word essay on it, I could barely write a paragraph on it! I am just trying to say, that it has nothing to do with aliens causing global warming! If I was interested in where science is going, I would read this article! Thank you for your time!