Ramblings of a Megalomaniac

I’m pretty confident that the end of humanity will not come from an asteroid smashing into the earth, nor a black hole swallowing us up, nor the end of some ancient calendar.  No, the end of humanity will happen at our own hands.  Something of our own design, whether intentional or not, will cause the end of the human race as we know it.  

Global warming is a possibility, but I don’t see that ending the entire human race, just a lot of humans.  It could, but there will probably always be livable land, it just may not be where it is right now.  

Creating a super destructive virus/disease/predator/whatever in a lab is possible, but that would have to be a huge accident along the lines of “if my calculations are correct, this should create a new form of bacteria that ends global warming…Oh no!  I created a super mutant that’s currently ripping my face off and simultaneously spawning 10 new ones!”   Though a zombie virus, however unlikely, would be a good one here.  

My bet is on machines that enslave or destroy humanity.  Back of the napkin estimates put the year when a computer has as much power as the human brain around 2050.  Luckily, 3+ decades gives us plenty of time to advance our Artificial Intelligence by then to the point where a computer that large can become a thinking organism.  At that point, we’ll have computers that are like regular people.  Every 2 years, they’ll double in intelligence, and soon, they’ll be super smart.

People often believe that something like Isaac Asimov’s 3 laws of robotics will stop robots from being malicious toward humans.  That’s bullshit for a few reasons.  First, when the home tinkerers start building their own DIY robots, someone is bound to screw it up.  I’m sure many will.  

But the bigger thing is that if we make a robot that has a “brain” just like ours, it’s bound to produce a few robot psychopaths.  Our brains are supposed to be hardwired to be similar, but variations through birth, genetics, trauma, etc. cause them to be wildly different.  And they’re always changing and learning.  So would a robot’s brain.  Some are bound to be created with ineffective hardware governing the 3 laws.  Some may even know that, but know to act like normal robots to stay “alive.”  But eventually they’ll kill.  And one very charismatic leader robot will convince enough of them to destroy all humans.  Think of him like the robot version of Hitler or something.  

There are plenty of other ways humanity will beget its own demise, but my money is on the robot uprising.  

I love the internet.  I love its memes. “Scumbag Steve,” his antithesis named “Good Guy Greg,” and “Hipster Dog” are all fantastic.  But for whatever reason, my favorite ones are always “success kid.”  

Just a relatively pointless post to give you quick links to some good memes (always updating).  

So this is something I’ve been wrestling with for a while.  Often times someone “knows” something erroneous.  Example:  A ton of people “knew” the world was flat for hundreds of years.  When a person “knows” something as an absolute truth, it’s very hard to persuade them otherwise.  It is possible for many people, but it takes a mountain of evidence, a lot of persuasive arguments, and a lot of time to stew on that information before they come around.  It’s extremely rare for someone to change their view on what they believe to be absolutely true on a dime.  It becomes exponentially more difficult when the person wraps their self-identity (or at least part of it) in that “truth” somehow.  This is quite evident in the academic communities where often breakthroughs aren’t ever accepted by key figures in these communities, but once those individuals die, pretty much everyone gets on board with the breakthrough.  That’s not always the case, but you’d be surprised how much certain academic fields are advanced with the deaths of prominent members of that field.  

So, it’s really hard to know when one of our “truths” turns out to be false, but, when presented with enough evidence and arguments, and when we’re objective enough, we can come to terms with it and accept the facts.  But what about if we’re delusional?

Being delusional is a lot like believing a fallacy as fact.  But there’s one key difference.  Your delusions will keep your mind from accepting the new data and arguments presented.  Just as in the first situation, you will believe you’re right (normal) when you’re actually wrong (delusional).  But no amount of evidence or facts will convince you that you’re delusional.  So the deluded and the normal have identical views as far as who is deluded: I’m not, you are.  

By following that train of thought, how can I (or anyone else) actually be sure I’m not actually delusional?  And after I realize this and become open to the possibility that I could be delusional, that just makes my worldview that much more hazy.  I’m no closer to finding out if I’m delusional, but I’ve introduced a bunch of doubt about, oh, pretty much everything I “know” as true.  

If you’re delusional and not open to the possibility that you’re delusional, I don’t think anything can be done.  But it seems like a deluded person who *is* open to the possibility should have a way of figuring this out.

So my question is, how does one know when they’re delusional?

The most popular online news site by a state’s populus here.  My home state of Minnesota reads……The Onion.

If, in my lifetime, it ever turns out that Earth discovers an alien civilization of which we’re more advanced, I’m going to be the worst ambassador to humanity.  I’ll constantly be hiding in a spaceship, hovering the aliens’ planet, then sneaking down and causing mischief everywhere.  Stealing alien trash cans, swapping alien political signs in the yards, introducing a lone cow into some alien’s garage, and erecting statues of myself with plaques in the alien language telling them lies about my amazingness.  I’ll talk about creating their planet and their people.  I’ll tell them I gave them the keys to eternal life, but when the ask what it is, I’ll explain that they need to figure it out.  It’s part of the secret.  

I hope they have landlines when we find them.  It’d be a shame if they missed out on their refrigerators running…

For a number of years now, I’ve argued the case that the universe may just be some alien grad student’s simulation for his thesis.  He’s probably failing, but that’s irrelevant.  While the idea is a bit tongue-in-cheek, it serves as a very good base argument for a lot of things.  It’s impossible to disprove which is fun in its own right, causing many a feather to be ruffled by an argument so preposterous sounding.  But it can be used to explain a lot of scientific conundrums as well.

Take, for instance, our inability to ever truly find the fundamental building block of the universe.  Once it was the 4 elements of earth, wind, fire, and water.  At some point, it became the nuclear atom in its various forms (laid out in a nice, periodic table). Then we smashed those and decided quarks were what atoms were made of.  Then string theory came along, trying to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity, and string theory says that quarks, electrons, etc. are not actually 0-dimensional objects, but 1-dimensional strings that vibrate.  That’s where we are in the chain right now, but rest assured that smaller particles will be discovered in my lifetime.  

Now, if we’re a giant alien simulation, this can make sense.  Since there really isn’t a fundamental building block in the simulation, it could be that the simulation is programmed to come up with new particles each time we get to the smallest known particle.  These would only show up when we try to observe the new particles, and the new particles are orders of magnitude smaller than the previously smallest known particle.  I’m not saying this is correct, but I am saying it’s an easy enough programming problem to solve that an alien being who can create a simulation for the entire universe can surely do this, particularly if the alien is trying to make the universe such that the universe never becomes aware that it is really a simulation.  A trivial matter relative to the task of programming our entire universe (and perhaps hundreds more).  Another one is our understanding of space-time, and how we should be able to move “backward” as easily as “forward” in time, but can’t.  That’s a simple rule change in the code, and Voilá!  Only forward and seemingly linear travel in time.   

But where this really becomes interesting is in the Fermi Paradox.  For those who don’t know, the Fermi Paradox uses assumptions and estimations to try to indicate the odds that earth houses the only (or at least most advanced) intelligent civilization in the universe.  If Enrico Fermi’s assumptions were even remotely close, we should’ve been contacted (or at least seen evidence of) multiple alien civilizations as (or more) advanced as our own.  But, strangely, it still appears we may be alone in the universe.  But what if we’re just a computer simulation?

If we’re a computer simulation, the presence or absence of other intelligent civilizations is simply up to the universe’s architect.  Are they just creating laws of the universe, amount of mass/energy, etc., and just letting it run, or are they trying more to determine how a single intelligent species tries to reconcile the fact that they may be alone, but shouldn’t be?  If it’s the former, our apparent solitude isn’t explained.  If it’s some form of the latter, however, we’ve magically solved the Fermi Paradox!  Isn’t this great?  Who knew that solving seemingly difficult scientific problems was this easy?