The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by David Deutsch Page B
Authors: David Deutsch
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nature can be measured here, and every fundamental law can be tested here. Everything needed for the open-ended creation of knowledge is here in abundance, in the Earth’s biosphere.
And the same is true of the moon. It has essentially the same resources of mass, energy and evidence as the Earth has. Parochial details differ, but the fact that humans living on the moon will have to make their own air is no more significant than the fact that laboratories on Earth have to make their own vacuum. Both tasks can be automated so as to require arbitrarily little human effort or attention. Likewise, because humans are universal constructors,
every
problem of finding or transforming resources can be no more than a transient factor limiting the creation of knowledge in a given environment. And therefore matter, energy and evidence are the only requirements that an environment needs to have in order to be a venue for open-ended knowledge creation.
Though any particular problem is a transient factor, the condition of having to solve problems in order to survive and continue to create knowledge is permanent. I have mentioned that there has never been an unproblematic time for humans; that applies as much to the future as to the past. Today on Earth, in the short run, there are still countless problems to be solved to eliminate even starvation and other forms of extreme human suffering that date back to prehistory. On a timescale of decades, we shall be faced with choices to make substantial modifications to the biosphere, or to keep it the same, or anything in between. Whichever option we choose, it will be a project of planet-wide control, requiring the creation of a great deal of scientific and technological knowledge as well as knowledge about how to make such decisions rationally (see Chapter 13 ). In the even longer run, it is not only our comfort and aesthetic sensibilities, and the suffering of individuals, that are problematic, but, as always, the survival of our species. For instance, at present during any given century there is about one chance in a thousand that the Earth will be struck by a comet or asteroid large enough to kill at least a substantial proportion of all human beings. That means that a typical child born in the United States today is morelikely to die as a result of an astronomical event than a car accident. Both are very low-probability events, but, unless we create a great deal more scientific and technological knowledge than we have now, we shall have no defence against those and other forms of natural disaster that must, eventually, strike. Arguably there are more immediate existential threats too – see Chapter 9 .
Setting up self-sufficient colonies on the moon and elsewhere in the solar system – and eventually in other solar systems – will be a good hedge against the extinction of our species or the destruction of civilization, and is a highly desirable goal for that reason among others. As Hawking has said:
I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I’m an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.
Daily Telegraph
, 16 October 2001
But even that will be far from an unproblematic state. And most people are not satisfied merely to be confident in the survival of the
species
: they want to survive personally. Also, like our earliest human ancestors, they want to be free from physical danger and suffering. In future, as various causes of suffering and death such as disease and ageing are successively addressed and eliminated, and human life spans increase, people will care about ever longer-term risks.
In fact people will always want still more than that: they will want to make progress. For, in addition to threats, there will always be problems in the benign sense of the word: errors, gaps, inconsistencies and inadequacies in our knowledge that we wish to solve –
And the same is true of the moon. It has essentially the same resources of mass, energy and evidence as the Earth has. Parochial details differ, but the fact that humans living on the moon will have to make their own air is no more significant than the fact that laboratories on Earth have to make their own vacuum. Both tasks can be automated so as to require arbitrarily little human effort or attention. Likewise, because humans are universal constructors,
every
problem of finding or transforming resources can be no more than a transient factor limiting the creation of knowledge in a given environment. And therefore matter, energy and evidence are the only requirements that an environment needs to have in order to be a venue for open-ended knowledge creation.
Though any particular problem is a transient factor, the condition of having to solve problems in order to survive and continue to create knowledge is permanent. I have mentioned that there has never been an unproblematic time for humans; that applies as much to the future as to the past. Today on Earth, in the short run, there are still countless problems to be solved to eliminate even starvation and other forms of extreme human suffering that date back to prehistory. On a timescale of decades, we shall be faced with choices to make substantial modifications to the biosphere, or to keep it the same, or anything in between. Whichever option we choose, it will be a project of planet-wide control, requiring the creation of a great deal of scientific and technological knowledge as well as knowledge about how to make such decisions rationally (see Chapter 13 ). In the even longer run, it is not only our comfort and aesthetic sensibilities, and the suffering of individuals, that are problematic, but, as always, the survival of our species. For instance, at present during any given century there is about one chance in a thousand that the Earth will be struck by a comet or asteroid large enough to kill at least a substantial proportion of all human beings. That means that a typical child born in the United States today is morelikely to die as a result of an astronomical event than a car accident. Both are very low-probability events, but, unless we create a great deal more scientific and technological knowledge than we have now, we shall have no defence against those and other forms of natural disaster that must, eventually, strike. Arguably there are more immediate existential threats too – see Chapter 9 .
Setting up self-sufficient colonies on the moon and elsewhere in the solar system – and eventually in other solar systems – will be a good hedge against the extinction of our species or the destruction of civilization, and is a highly desirable goal for that reason among others. As Hawking has said:
I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I’m an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.
Daily Telegraph
, 16 October 2001
But even that will be far from an unproblematic state. And most people are not satisfied merely to be confident in the survival of the
species
: they want to survive personally. Also, like our earliest human ancestors, they want to be free from physical danger and suffering. In future, as various causes of suffering and death such as disease and ageing are successively addressed and eliminated, and human life spans increase, people will care about ever longer-term risks.
In fact people will always want still more than that: they will want to make progress. For, in addition to threats, there will always be problems in the benign sense of the word: errors, gaps, inconsistencies and inadequacies in our knowledge that we wish to solve –
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