#1 - Leap Into the Void
#1 - Leap Into the Void
Welcome to the first issue of “Camp of the Children”, a personal newsletter meandering around issues of technology, ethics, theology, science fiction, and, frankly, whatever interests me. I intended the first issue to go out in January 2020, but I thought I might well start now, on the cusp of a new decade (or is it?). From hereon out, I plan to send these newsletters out on Tuesday nights (GMT +8).
As always, please reach out by emailing me if you’d like to chat, or if you have any feedback.
On starting something new
In 1960, the French artist, Yves Klein, published a photo montage entitled, Saut dans le vide (Leap into the void), as a critique of NASA’s lunar expeditions. The doctored photograph was allegedly proof that the artist could travel to the moon unaided.
Starting a newsletter, or any online publication, often feels like a leap into the void. The effort expended into making everything look professional, to try to assure readers that their time will not be wasted, to bolster one’s credentials or claims to authority -- all, ultimately, efforts to make yourself seem like somebody -- can quickly devolve into an exercise in hubris. At the start of something, especially the start of a newsletter, when the only subscriber is myself, it is appropriate to reflect on whether there is any value at all in what one is doing.
Or, perhaps, the better way is to avoid this kind of navel-gazing. That is often where internet publishing is born and, inevitably, dies, peters out prematurely, because too much time was spent discussing the act of publishing itself, without giving anything to its readers. Reflection itself becomes narcissistic.
I’d like to make this newsletter useful to other people. Whether I achieve that goal week by week will vary. More likely than not, I won’t even be able to measure how useful the newsletter is, largely because I’m not even sure what the standard of “usefulness” would be! But it’s certainly the case that discussing the process of making a newsletter too much would be entirely unhelpful (except to a small handful of people). So there it is. On with the show!
Fermi’s paradox
I’ve been struck this past week by Fermi’s Paradox (or, as others call it, the Hart (or Hart-Tipler) Paradox). The paradox emerges against a background of the probability that there is other intelligent life in the universe, simply as a product of the number of stars and the number of planets orbiting those stars. Given that intelligent life is probable, why, then, have human beings not made contact with intelligent life?
Many attempts at resolving the paradox have emerged over time. I was introduced to the paradox through the Dark Forest hypothesis (advanced by Liu Cixin in his masterful trilogy, Remembrance of Earth’s Past, most directly in Dark Forest, the second book in the trilogy). The hypothesis posits that it is not in the interest of intelligent life to make themselves known, given that other civilisations are likely to exterminate any intelligent life in pre-emptive strikes, to mitigate any risk that the other would pose a threat to that civilisation.
Consider also this hypothesis that I stumbled upon while exploring the Future of Humanity Institute, from Sandberg, Armstrong & Ćirković:
If a civilization wants to maximise computation it appears rational to aestivate until the far future in order to exploit the low temperature environment: this can produce a 10^30 multiplier of achievable computation. We hence suggest the 'aestivation hypothesis': the reason we are not observing manifestations of alien civilisations is that they are currently (mostly) inactive, patiently waiting for future cosmic eras. This paper analyzes the assumptions going into the hypothesis and how physical law and observational evidence constrain the motivations of aliens compatible with the hypothesis.
Taking a step back, I’m amazed that there are people who do spend significant time and effort in theorising possible responses to Fermi’s Paradox. That fact in itself is astounding to me. Perhaps my world has been too small before, but isn’t it wonderful that there are people out there who are thinking seriously through the possibility of intelligent life out there and the problems that such a possibility poses to us? The International Journal of Astrobiology is a beautiful artefact of humanity’s curiosity and ingenuity.
Status board
As part of regular programming here, I’d like to maintain a status board that provides a low-friction means of sharing high-value things.
Reading: I’ve been reading lots of science fiction, most recently, Hyperion, Fall of Hyperion, and Endymion, all by Dan Simmons (and all within about a week). Some reflections to come, I hope. I’d like to get started on the fourth book in the series, but my wife has taken the Kindle with her on a trip, so I haven’t been able to buy a copy of the last book yet. In the absence of the Kindle, I’ve been trying to read Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, but am struggling -- something about its moralising (although I recognise it isn’t unambiguous) doesn’t sit well with me.
Listening: Kevin Scott’s Behind the Tech podcast is a great series. The interview with danah boyd was a revelation for me. I’m currently listening to an interview with Fei-Fei Li on “human-centred artificial intelligence”.