Limits of Knowledge

 

Maura returned home last night with a guest who will be helping us on our current project. Meanwhile, WICO reacted to widespread skepticism over the value of using subregions, similar what I shared in yesterday’s post about yesterday with Al.

In a written statement, Ambassador Lazlo emphasized that all of WICO’s education efforts include guidance for a variety of ecosystem types (biomes), specifically in the general introduction to guidance for each region. She added, “People moving to a new subregion will be furnished with the specific guidance they need from local extinction response units, which also have training available. Real-time observation of conditions is being used to update all guidance where appropriate, and can be shared with anyone in the world.”

Maura had her own reaction. “For now. That will be a luxury half-way through the transition, maybe sooner.” I asked her if she thought Al had a point. “Al always has a point,” she said approvingly. “He also has the benefit of lots more training and experience than most people, which is a big source of bias.”

“Do you think it’s sufficient?” She’d seen most of the training, and directly tested a lot more than me.

“They did a thorough job,” she said, not quite answering the question. “Though Al’s right to worry that changes can happen too fast for useful updates, even now. It will be even more problematic as technology quality and access degrades, even with significant improvement to conditions.”

“People will be learning in the process, though,” I suggested, “especially those who move a lot. They can share what they learn more effectively anyway, right?”

She thought about it. “That will work locally, more so over time, and any necessary global coordination will suffer. I’m sure Sally’s already factored that into her models. I’ve seen hints of it in the strategy.”

“What about Sally?” I asked. “She’ll be degrading too.” I wondered if she had taken any action on her plan to inhabit a mobile shell, which I imagined would look and act human.

“You’ll have to ask her,” Maura replied, “not that it’s anyone’s business but hers.” I had to agree. 

“So, one lesson is to make print books wherever we can.”

“Without killing too many trees,” she added.

Reality Check

The issues discussed are basic ones that would affect any strategy like that adopted here. “Will” knows that they were built into the strategy, but is revisiting them anyway just in case he missed something - or someone else did.

For background on Maura’s project, see today’s entry in Will Jackson’s Personal Log.

Updates

It took less than a day for WICO to release a new version of the global strategy. Knowing Sally, a nearly-complete draft was probably ready before Secretary General Decatur started his announcement yesterday. By early this afternoon I had a good idea of that the scope of changes were; and, an hour after that, I finished briefing Louis Delambre and the rest of the PFR leadership about the implications for the program.

A huge change to the strategy is that the global defense industry is being fully (rather than partially) co-opted to develop and deploy technologies for pollution cleanup; natural habitat restoration and creation; climate geoengineering; and safe decommissioning of the industries and technologies with ecological impacts that are unsustainable under the global conditions targeted for 2040. Another major change is a much faster decrease in raw material mining and processing to both eliminate new ecological impacts and choke off the material supplies for ongoing personal consumption. Finally, the strategy considers what could extend our species’ longevity based on new projections of self-sustained impacts that can’t be stopped, dominated by potentially forced population control for people struggling for basic subsistence and naturally motivated to have more children.

Since the PFR program deals mostly with personal behavior, those last two changes are the most consequential. The former test community members in the program’s core group were already trained for static population and near-subsistence consumption at the end-state, having drawn more inspiration from experiences of a few remaining isolated indigenous groups than advice from self-proclaimed experts in the dominant high-impact cultures. During my weekend visit to Hikeyay, the commune that was WICO’s inspiration for TC-013 and the source of Maura’s greatest personal growth, several residents echoed the PFR core group’s opinion that the transition to the end-state is likely to be more difficult than living there. Predictably, that view led to the unanimous conclusion that the focus of everyone should be on creating the end-state as soon as possible, and that trying to ease the transition would be an unnecessary - and perhaps harmful - distraction.

Despite WICO’s gag order being in effect, I asked Maura how PFR’s response compared with any proposed changes to the strategy deployment plan. She followed orders and didn’t shared any details; but I could tell from her exuberant support of the end-state focus that it was too unpopular a position to be taken seriously by management. 

Reality Check

Until now, I’ve ignored discussion of the rapid uptick in population with low personal consumption that follows the “transition” from 2019 to 2040 associated with the low population/nature ratio that results from the combination of the transition and the self-sustained impacts that are reducing total resources. When and if the self-sustained impacts are halted will largely determine how much the simulated world’s extinction is delayed (the functional relationship between cumulative consumption and resource decrease is the other determinant). Management of population size would mostly affect the amount of personal consumption used for what I call “wants” with more population having historically provided labor for basic resource acquisition and processing to help ensure group survival and create built infrastructure for use in further growth.

Resignation

The following are personal opinions of Will Jackson, and do not reflect the official or unofficial positions of the World Information and Coordination Organization, its personnel, or any of its affiliates.

I resigned from WICO last Saturday after refusing to give up writing my blog. “The Execution group runs a tight ship,” Victor Lansing told me, “and it must speak with one voice. That is especially true for our education component, since it has direct contact with the public. As a well-known member of my team, what you say to others has the weight of being part of that program, and must be subject to the same controls as the rest of the deployment.” He offered me the option of using the blog as an official announcement platform for the team, but I chose not to. “You are either a journalist or a team player, but you cannot be both. Since it is against WICO policy to fire someone for exercising free speech, Ambassador Lazlo might be amenable to assigning you to a position in a different group, just not this one.”

The ultimatum came at the end of his briefing, which had proved Samantha correct in her expectation that there could be no creative modification of the program by me or anyone else. The “field testing” he wanted would be mostly a means of tweaking efficiency based on assumptions already locked into the program. I asked if the assumptions had been tested by members of the test communities who were in the brainstorming sessions, but he refused to answer (in my personal and professional opinion, that meant “no”).

Samantha was disappointed but not surprised by my resignation. She thanked me for my service, and added that no one within WICO will be allowed to share any non-public information with me. I was, however, encouraged to take any steps on my own to further the goals of the strategy and encourage others to do the same. This post is the first such step.

Reality Check

My experience with real projects and vision of what drives Will overrode my inclination to keep him in WICO. Also, he can now return to reporting events outside of his job focus.

Education

TIME TO STRATEGY EXECUTION: 45 DAYS

The global strategy is now officially in “deployment,” the initial step in its execution, which is being managed by the Strategy Tracking, Response, Integration, Development, and Execution (STRIDE) office’s Execution group. Our General Assistance and Processing (GAP) team expected that this wouldn’t have an impact on us since we report to STRIDE’s director, Samantha Lazlo, but we were wrong.

“Having taken the initiative to educate the public,” Samantha began in a remote meeting with us this morning, “you will be exclusively helping the Education group roll out its public training program.” I glanced at Maura and Al, who looked as surprised as I was. “Their brainstorming with the test communities has yielded some promising results,” she continued, “and Victor Lansing is anxious to get you involved in field testing them.”

“Is Victor’s group now part of the Execution group?” Maura asked her.

“I’m sorry. I misspoke. Since the Education group also has other responsibilities, within WICO and on other projects, their Extinction Strategy Support team will be a functional report to our Execution group, and you will be reporting to that team. Victor is now exclusively managing its efforts.”

I couldn’t resist shaking my head in disbelief that such bureaucratic nit-picking still mattered. “Will we have any say in the content?” I asked hopefully.

“That will be up to Victor, but I expect not. However, Sally has expressed interest in pursuing any suggestions your team may have, since she is now managing WICO’s response to direct public inquiries. The CORE training you did yesterday was particularly helpful to her.”

“I’ve been wonderin’ what the cybercritter’s new role was gonna be,” Al said.

“That’s just one of her roles. To her, I think it’s more of a hobby.”

“Sure it is,” Al muttered.

Maura called Victor after the meeting. He will give us an in-person briefing this weekend. In the mean-time, he wants us to document what we already shared with the public, going back to our first PEAK tests.

“It’s like submittin’ a sample for a freakin’ job application,” Al said, reflecting my own reaction. 

Maura looked pensive. “I’d like to know what else he plans to do with it.”

Reality Check

My personal experience with organizations informs this scene, along with interest in exploring an intersection of two of my careers: as a test engineer, and as an educational developer/consultant.

Outreach

TIME TO STRATEGY EXECUTION: 46 DAYS

Any other organization likely would have fired me for what happened yesterday and insisted that I take down this blog, but WICO has decided to keep me on with no restrictions on my speech. Samantha Lazlo provided an explanation in a video statement posted this morning on the Global Strategy Public Update site:

“The World Information and Coordination Organization encourages all efforts at public outreach by our staff and affiliates who are familiar with the global strategy and support its goals. In the interest of performing its core function of disseminating information and coordinating action to maximize success, WICO requests that strategy-specific observation and interactive direction protocols be used wherever possible. An overview of the protocols is available on this site, and WICO staff will be available to answer any questions and provide additional guidance.”

Maura, Al, and I had just finished being remotely debriefed on our trip by the Quality Assurance team’s test community support managers when we learned about the statement. Rachael Zeitman, the manager of TC-014, reflected the general opinion of the other staff there and at the Rocky Mountain Operations Center by thanking me - in colorful language - for “effectively shutting down our operations.” I reminded her of the facts (discussed in yesterday’s blog post), but she and the others considered them irrelevant in light of the new directive. “The communities are going to be in the front lines of PR and training now,” she said. “Our test conditions will be corrupted, and the remaining goals aren’t going to be met. Congratulations, blogger! The rest of your tasks just evaporated!”

The RMOC was inundated with calls, e-mail messages, and online requests for help, most of them directed at me and Maura. A crowd of visitors larger than the one on Blue Planet Day swarmed the office. “This is great, isn’t it?” I observed. “It’s exactly what we were hoping for!”

Maura was waiting on her phone, and smiled. “Yes, it is,” she said. “I’m trying to get the Extinction Response Unit to take some of the load. I wish Samantha had mentioned that first.”

I wondered if the suggestion was already in the online guidance. Al was way ahead of me. He showed me the site on his phone. “It’s step number one, includin’ links to the ERUs in every country.” To Maura, he said, “That’s probly why you aren’t gettin’ through.”

“So much for a managed roll-out,” Maura muttered, still smiling.

“Where’s Colorado’s test community?” someone shouted over the crowd, and Maura’s smile turned into a frown. “Yeah, where’s TC thirteen?” someone else asked.

“It’s in a protected area,” I responded, hoping that as Coloradoans they would respect the implications of that statement. “We’ll need permission to change that status, but we might be able to get some of their members to brief you on what they’ve learned.”

Maura nodded thankfully as my answer was accepted, and began speaking on the phone. That gave me an idea about how to fill an obvious gap.

“How would everyone like to get a lesson on those protocols Ambassador Lazlo mentioned?”

Fifteen minutes later, Al and I were facing the crowd at one edge of the parking lot bordering a hiking trail, holding backpacks of gear we used at the test communities. Two hours after that, we completed the first of what will become regular hands-on classes in what is now known as CORE: Coordination, Observation, Recording, and Exploration.

ABOVE: Screen-grab from Ambassador Samantha Lazlo’s statement.

Reality Check

Lazlo’s statement is consistent with her encouragement - and selective discouragement - of Will from the beginning of their interactions. The image of her at the end of the post shows the WICO logo in the background, which represents land, water, and microbial life.

Maura’s reaction to the question about TC-013 masks a large part of her backstory, which ties directly to the origins of the community through a connection to her family.

The CORE gear has yet to be revealed. A version available to the public would include the Personal Environmental Assessment Kit (PEAK).

Simplified Discovery

TIME TO STRATEGY EXECUTION: 56 DAYS

Three copies of the new Personal Environmental Assessment Kit arrived Saturday morning; and I spent most of the weekend trying one of them out while WICO’s Boulder field office and residents of TC-013 did a set of formal tests with the other two. Al accompanied me part of the time as an informal observer, recording my reactions and his while Sally monitored my progress (along with everyone else’s) via cell phone.

The number of assemblies in the PEAK was reduced to six, the largest being a compact device for measuring air pollution that relies on optical comparison and a reusable set of fine filters. Instructions were fewer too, with the design modified to be as intuitively obvious as possible without sacrificing functionality. As I wrote my observations in the kit’s logbook, I noted the simplicity of its new checklist format which together with an abridged guidebook removed context for the ecosystems being measured, and I wondered if useful understanding was being lost as a result.

“Consider the audience, Will,” Al said when I shared my concern during a lunch break yesterday. “You’re gonna have pros with cleanup tech out there with these folks who what they’re talkin’ ‘bout. No-one’ll be confused.” He picked up the can of biosafing solution. “Meantime, they’ll be usin’ this magic potion that’s general ‘nuff that it won’t matter what else they got.”

“I don’t trust that stuff, Al,” I said. “How do we know it won’t cause some other problem? The user should be able to tell if it does.”

“Someone close’ll know. That’s why they knocked the number of kits down to one per community instead of givin’ one to everyone.” That wasn’t the only reason, or even the main reason, but I wasn’t going to quibble.

“Sally,” I said, knowing the phone would automatically connect us. “What’s the reason for changing the formats of the guide and log?”

“Al was partly right, Will,” she answered over the speaker. “Although user feedback was very much appreciated, the major driver in the redesign was the ecological impact of kit production, maintenance, and recycling, and disposal. A reevaluation of education in the strategy was the second largest driver. It is now oriented toward discovery and relationship identification rather than information dissemination, with a focus on developing knowledge and understanding for the purpose of constructing a survival-constrained reality.”

“That’s quite a mouthful, cybercritter,” Al told her. “If I get what she-it means,” he said to me, “they bought your creation deal and ran with it.”

“Is that true, Sally?” I asked, suspecting it was more likely a logical outgrowth of the rules already in the strategy.

“Your edits and summaries of the rules are part of the substrate that led in that direction,” she said. “It made more sense to some of us when that context was identified.” By some of us, she clearly was referring to herself.

“How is the Education group managing that?”

“They’re holding what they call open brainstorming sessions with test communities, although the sessions don’t tend to match the technical definition of brainstorming. Their success is, however, undeniable.”

I relayed that discussion and the general progress of the tests to Maura when she called me this afternoon. She had already been briefed by the team, and expects to be back at work here on Wednesday. “I won’t be your boss anymore,” she added. “Samantha’s putting us together as a special ops team operating out of Boulder, where I’ll continue to be a liaison with the Extinction Response Unit. Meanwhile, you might want to read the latest copy of the strategy, which just dropped today.”

Reality Check

One of the elements common to most of my fiction is a selection of characters as observers who essentially report on what they see and experience in situations of interest. 

In this case, Will progresses through several roles that expose him - and the reader - to various aspects of his world’s preparation for dealing with its extinction crisis. The people he interacts with represent forces that could logically influence the trajectory of events or provide some insights into why things are happening the way they are.

Sanda/Sally is in the unique position of critically influencing events and understanding the underlying variables as parts of a simulation (which we’ve learned she experiences everything as). She also enables a fictional exploration of the human/technology interaction whose rapid evolution people in our world are being forced to experience. 

Education on Hold

TIME TO STRATEGY EXECUTION: 95 DAYS

I met with Education group leader Victor Lansing to discuss how the group’s efforts match with the set of rules in the strategy’s agreements section. My hope was that we could collaborate and save time in both of our activities, as well as ensuring that we were consistent. “We saw some value in what Sanda wrote in that section,” he told me, “but there is too much there, and it is too complex for average users to understand and use. Also, the rules tend to be far too general for our purposes.” Rather than borrow from it, they decided to start from scratch with guidance from Sanda like the hand analogy she/it shared with me last month. 

“Our group’s focus has been on teaching about the main drivers of extinction, and how to reverse them. The simplest, but not the easiest, are population and over-harvesting, which take extensive cultural conditioning to limit. Habitat loss can be reversed by tearing down buildings and avoiding or breaking up roads so animals can move easily between contiguous areas of land. Pollution is the hardest, because it typically requires technological aid to identify, remove, and detoxify, and we are deferring to the WDP group for guidance on that subject. Invasive species can be very difficult to eliminate, especially if they are established in an ecosystem or easily spread by animals or plants whose movement we cannot - and often do not want to - control; we are mainly providing guidance about how not to move them in the first place.”

What he described seemed far too complex for the approach I expected they were using. “In my experience, analogies tend to fall apart fairly quickly,” I shared. “How much detail can you teach without putting everyone through the equivalent of a college-level course? Also, how do you deal with the fact that technology typically used for such teaching, including books, is going to be phased out as the strategy is implemented?”

I was prepared for him to be annoyed, but I was totally surprised by his response. “Sanda was helping us with those issues. We have been on hold since the crash to find out how the strategy will be affected, so we do not waste time and resources based on the wrong idea of what is needed.”

“Isn’t what you just talked about fairly straightforward?” Even someone with my limited knowledge could put together a decent package, with placeholders for what wasn’t known.

“The stories we might tell would have a lot of potential pitfalls, as you anticipated. We need an expert like the AI to ensure we do not go down a proverbial rabbit hole by picking the wrong representatives for the concepts and facts.”

I offered to help, but he insisted that the best approach is to wait for Sanda to come online, which we are expecting tomorrow. Of course, they are counting on the questionable assumption that there won’t be serious problems uncovered during testing.

Reality Check

The discussion of extinction drivers is based on my understanding. Views of my alter-ego are also my own.

Strategy Integration

TIME TO STRATEGY DEADLINE: 10 DAYS

When I began my visit to the Strategy Integration group, I expected to see something like a space mission control room. What I found instead was two floors of offices almost indistinguishable from those used by industry for management and engineering, except that the cubicles had full-size walls that blocked sound from within. A third floor was filled with conference rooms surrounding an open bay used for large group meetings.

“The data and logic behind the operation is mostly in computers,” explained Samantha Lazlo, the Austrian ambassador to WICO, head of the group’s Overview team, and my guide for three days. “Our advanced artificial intelligence system, which we call Sanda, has access to the entire WICO database, including the observations and models from the biosphere assessment, and is about to be connected to all unrestricted global online networks. 

“There are over 700 people in Strategy Integration. Most of them interact directly with Sanda from satellite offices around the world, asking questions and helping answer others that contribute to the integration and testing of the overall strategy. They also coordinate input from the national strategy groups in their regions. Our Administration team on the first floor manages who works where, handles contracts and issues, and coordinates with the other groups. And we have a technical team in the basement, which handles facilities and IT.” 

Lazlo and a member of the technical team set me up in a guest cubicle with the Overview team on the second floor with basic computer access that allowed me to communicate with Sanda, whose voice was eerily similar to Lazlo’s but without her cosmopolitan accent. One of the three large monitors occupying my desk was dedicated to visual feedback from Sanda that included text and images, while the other two functioned as a typical computer desktop with the usual applications. “Ask Sanda whatever you want,” Lazlo told me. “I’ll try to answer anything that it can’t or won’t.”

I had brought a list of questions of my own and submitted by colleagues, which I spent most of the first afternoon trying to get Sanda to answer. Virtually every one led down a proverbial rabbit hole of clarifications, details, and intersecting concepts that added exponentially more confusion to what I was trying to learn. 

Lazlo looked at me with sympathy when I shared my exasperation. “Sanda was designed to emulate in each answer the maximum complexity implicit in each question.” For some reason, my expression made her laugh. “It can’t yet assess what you already know, or what you think you know, so it assumes you know the least amount possible that would generate the question you asked. That way, you have the best chance of getting the answer you seek.” She suggested that I join her in a meeting on the third floor, where she would make formal introductions and I could get some insight from the 23 members who were currently in the building. 

The subject of the meeting was an update on the amount and quality of strategy inputs so far received by STRIDE. After Lazlo introduced me, data expert Zhou Li Xiu took a deep dive into what was being learned from the information gathered by the online tool deployed to assist development by the teams appointed by their governments. She concluded with a 45% assessment of quality based on the 56% of inputs received so far, which everyone agreed was dangerously low.

I knew enough about programming to gather that Sanda was the “back end” of the software, and guessed that it was experiencing the reverse of the problem I experienced with it: essentially, it couldn’t derive from the tool’s simple inputs the detail it needed to construct a meaningful strategy. Lazlo explained that the inputs were expected to be mostly corrections to a strategy being developed through a collaboration between Sanda and the larger group that was well-trained to work with it.

On my second day, I investigated the basis of the famous Hope Chart by datamining a computer server devoted to its creation and maintenance and discussing it with Lazlo’s team members. Hundreds of potential strategies had been simulated and each result translated into a chart that served as a touchstone for evaluation. Zhou explained that the simulations focused on interactions between “subunits” of populations and environments that were each represented by a chart and both evaluated and reality-tested by at least one pair of STRIDE group members doing field research as required.

“Our biggest concern is how natural systems are responding to what we do,” Zhou told me. “Sanda uses the latest data and physical models to assess the range of possibilities, which so far track with some simple approximations of overall ecological impact when averaged over decade-long time scales. We are seeing signs that those approximations could break down soon, which is in part why the world must act now so we can exercise what control is still possible.” 

I was reminded of the Secretary General’s analogy of heading through a minefield toward a cliff. Zhou found the analogy apt, but with a modification. “Some of those mines are actually time bombs. Familiar examples are the melting of ice and frozen methane, and of course the acidification and heating of the oceans. Some of the bombs are already exploding, as we see in the cascading effects of species die-offs, especially at the bottom of the food chain in the oceans and on land. The healing effects we hope for when we draw down our impact may be a chimera if the species we save are unable to save themselves or us.”

The third and last day was spent reviewing documents summarizing the draft strategy, and following up with Lazlo on what I had learned. My discussion with Zhou helped immensely in making sense of the strategy, even with all its placeholders. I tested my understanding by sharing it with Lazlo: “You’re basically stopping the damage being done; repairing the damage that already exists; neutralizing known and potential threats where possible; and enlisting allies to create new and safer environments wherever it can be done.”

“That’s right,” she agreed. “I would add that there’s a lot of ongoing intelligence gathering and sharing so time and resources can be used efficiently. While we presently have the luxury of artificial intelligence to help plan and drive our actions, it shouldn’t be taken as a given. People need to learn to take its place, and that will require a whole new kind of education that to me is the most critical placeholder to be filled.”

Reality Check

Organizations and technologies represented here are pure fabrication based on what I guess might be the minimum requirements for such an effort given its time constraints. 

The number of people in Strategy Integration is based on the sample size of my simulations, with overhead for other functions. It is an estimate of that it would take to gather sufficient information for realistic guidance in developing a detailed strategy. My simulations do NOT represent the culmination of such an effort; they are rather the source of approximations like those mentioned by Zhou.

Characterizations of the strategy and the issues it addresses are based on my own understanding.