Survival of our species

Intro

We've come a long way and gained irreplaceable culture and knowledge in the last hundred thousand years or so, and it would be the most foolish thing in history to lose it at a time when we have the technology to do something about it. Far more likely than total annihilation of our species is the possibility of being knocked back to the Dark Ages. It is not just about surviving but having good prospects, opportunities and a rich environment to live in, and not messing things up for our descendants. It's quite tricky to have an advanced civilisation with no civilisation at all...

Sections

Long-term thinking

Long-term thinking is hugely important because the short term easy choice often has a negative impact in a longer time-frame. Long-term thinking helps to get some perspective on the bigger picture and sometimes to avoid much larger problems further in the future it is necessary to change behaviour and make decisions in the present that might feel tough.

There seems to be many reasons that society tends to have a short-termist attitude:

• We are naturally impatient and our immediate wants seem most significant. Longer-term issues can seem irrelevant and too far off.
• We all lead more individualistic lives than in the past which causes a certain amount of self-centredness, so often one's decisions are made to satisfy oneself.
• We do not all feel totally sure that pessimistic scenarios far in the future will ever happen, or at least will even happen in our lifetime. Life feels too short to consider things too far ahead.
• The business world tends to be very short-termist, often only thinking about profits in the next two to five years and how it can be achieved. Because in business that is what matters - if you fail in the short term, the business will not survive, and this mentality rubs off on the people too.
• Politics suffers similarly. If decisions are made by politicians for the long term but are felt to adversely affect people in the present then it may affect re-election prospects, and to most politicians staying in power is more important to them than implementing policies for the long term.

It is very hard to change the behaviour of large groups of people there is huge inertia to overcome.

So what is the big picture, what are we aiming for?

We need effective ways to help us all consider the longer time frame. It needs to be something that is explained to children in ways they can understand. We need illustrations of disastrous short-term thinking and the consequences.

What are the important long-term issues that we need to think about:

• Preventing the extinction of species, including our own
• The wider environment as a whole, such as altering the composition of the atmosphere
• Protecting ourselves from other potential global disasters
• Help steer modern society towards a more optimal future that gives everyone the opportunity to live more fulfilling lives
• Building trust and understanding between cultures

Preserving knowledge

If for example there was a large asteroid strike with 95% of the human population wiped out and the environment degraded for decades, the last thing the remaining people need is to be plunged back into another stone age. A large asteroid or comet strike happens rarely, but the consequences are so dire that we must prepare for it.

Education

How can we promote better education? The answer seems simple: make learning truly interesting, more relevant to the individual and make proper use of modern media. An inflexible curriculum only benefits the schools and assessment bodies.

Interactive educational media could be engaging and effective, but there is remarkably little high quality material available. It usually focuses too much on entertainment without sufficient educational content, or it is badly produced and not particularly compelling. Luckily it is becoming ever easier to create interactive 3D computer generated environments such as those found in advanced computer games, and with the right scripting engine for the interaction and behaviour, making a captivating experience where the child (or adult) hardly realises they are learning.

Risks to humanity

Some potential threats to humanity:

• Emergent virulent disease – naturally occuring / engineered biological weapon / lab-experiment let loose (accidentally or maliciously). Possible at any time.
• Out of control self-replicating molecular nanotechnology  (accidental or malicious). Underlying technology is perhaps 15 years away*.
• Out of control artificial intelligence. Underlying technology is perhaps 20 years away*.
• Strike by asteroid or comet . Possible at any time. Accepted in scientific community as not an 'if' but a 'when'. (NASA link: [1])
• Global war with nuclear or other advanced weaponry. Possible at any time.
• Super-volcanic geological activity . Not sure that the risks are known.

*It is impossible to accurately know when technology might actually reach this level

A note about climate change that some people may consider a threat to humanity: this is certainly something that would (and does) affect other species that do not have the means to adapt, but it would not be a significant risk to our own survival. We would always be able to engineer environments where plants and animals that we rely on, could live. It is obviously a terrible thing to knowingly continue to alter the balance of the environment and we must do everything with in our power to prevent it as soon as possible, which the main concepts in this website would be capable of addressing.

Being careful with powerful technology

More complex technologies need more complex management. The great spectres of the 20th century were nuclear, biological and chemical weapons - all potential weapons of mass destruction. In the 21st century we will likely add genetics, nanotechnology and robotics - all technologies that could give us even finer controlled weaponry or unforeseen accidents.

Reducing our impact on the environment

We are part of our environment and have the capability to change it drastically. We are probably not at risk of extinction due to damaging the biosphere but there are plenty of other species that are. The world becomes a poorer place due to our negligence.

Acid rain, ozone depletion, air pollution, unsustainable destruction of rain forests, global warming from carbon dioxide emmisions, increasing environmental destruction due to both urbanisation and agriculture are all examples of large-scale changes we have made directly to the environment that hugely affect wildlife and reduce our own quality of life. Currently we only have one home and on behalf of all life we must look after it.

Colonising Space

The most significant answer is survival. At the moment we have all our eggs in one basket here on Earth and if nothing else it will be an insurance policy for our species, and other life. It is also the next great step for life inhabiting a new environment and spreading itself ever wider - something it has been doing for the past 3.7 billion years.

Organisations thinking about these issues

The Long Now Foundation

Established in 01996* to encourage long term thinking in a world that lives in a frantic present without much regard for the future. Two major projects are Clock of the Long Now which is clock designed to run for 10,000 years and the Rosetta Project which trying to create a near permanent archive of 1,000 languages.

Svalbard Global Seed Vault

The mission of this seed vault is store as many seeds known to us as is possible. This is to prevent important agricultural and wild plants from becoming rare or extinct in the event of a global disaster. It is being built on the remote arctic island of Svarlbard. BBC article 7th Feb 02007*

Doomsday clock

A symbolic clock maintained since 01947* by the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago. The clock is altered periodically to represent the perceived number of minutes to midnight, which represents Armageddon by nuclear war. The clock was wound back significantly at the end of the cold war in the 1990s, but has since moved nearer to midnight due to the increasing instability in the Middle East.

The Spaceguard Foundation

A network of national organisations involved in studying and tracking significant Near-Earth Objects  (NEO)

See also B612 Foundation, named after the asteroid in the 'Little Prince' story

Alliance to Rescue Civilization

An organisation that aims to create an off-Earth backup of human civilisation that is able to repopulate the Earth in event of a global disaster or reintroduce knowledge of science and the arts.

Lifeboat Foundation 

A non-profit organization dedicated to helping humanity survive existential risks and possible misuse of increasingly powerful technologies