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.

Plans

During this last week until the formal execution of the global strategy, all nations are preparing “startup status reports” that detail how close they are to the targets for 2040. The reports will be filed with WICO and posted online for everyone to see. Plans for implementing the strategy are already available at the resolution of communities of five-thousand or more people, that include bench marks expected to be reached over the next year.

Like many people, I spent the last three days finalizing my personal plan and today will be submitting it to the Extinction Response Unit for evaluation and feedback that ensures it is consistent with the relevant community plans. Maura and I have decided to file jointly as a family unit now that we both live and work together, and so our plans are very similar. Much of the time spent preparing the plan involved discussing what we see as our joint future, shaped by our joint values and commitment to “creating as much good as possible, locked into the past everywhere that’s touched,” as she likes to say.

As expected, the main goal of the plans is to reduce ecological impact to minimize the extinction rate by maximizing longevity, quantity, diversity, and quality of life, in that order, with emphasis on our species. The checklists included with the plans vary by global region, with specifics of culture, environment, and current impacts accounted for. Here in the Rocky Mountain region, industrial pollution, extractive industries, transportation, other land and water use, and population growth are major concerns, along with increasing climate variability that affects the ability of local ecosystems to provide basic needs. Rapid reduction of all of the above is a top priority for the majority of plans here, as they should be elsewhere.

Part of the research Maura and I are performing involves learning how parts of existing regions might inform understanding of the history and potential future of others, at all scales. Flying to other regions in this and other nations could provide valuable information that would be hard to collect remotely. However, flying has one of the largest ecological impacts of any activity, and should therefore be avoided where possible. We’re exploring other possibilities, such as expanding the partnership between the university and WICO, datamining of online news sources, and leveraging work being done by other groups on other projects.

Reality Check

The “family unit” formed by Will and Maura is, of course, fictional - just as they are. In some respects, however, their relationship is based on how I imagine my wife and I might have formed one if we met around the age of 30 under the conditions of the simulated world.

Work on community plans would have been in progress since the declaration of the global emergency in January. Completion of the strategy and completion of education activities during deployment would trigger finalizing detailed plans at the individual level.

Limiting high-impact activities such as mining is an obvious early step in any effort to reduce the extinction rate, since it affects two of the main drivers (habitat loss and pollution). Unlike our real world, the simulated world is not trying to maintain socio-economic norms through technological innovation; so traditional renewable energy sources won’t be developed on anything other than a temporary “bridge” basis, if at all, and any new infrastructure will likely be more focused on synergy with ecosystems using a radical version of today’s permaculture.

Integration Process

TIME TO GLOBAL STRATEGY DEADLINE: 18 DAYS

“The process is in principle quite simple,” Sally said after displaying a complex graph on my computer screen. She was referring to the steps taken to stitch together a global strategy from the national inputs and the stream of public feedback that has dominated every social media platform. “The people to nature ratio is calculated for each region. Statistics for each of the global variables are collected, where available, and estimated if not. Our biosphere survey data is used similarly for other species, along with time series to identify how they might adapt and cause changes to the conditions and populations of relevant ecosystems. Human behavior models from several fields of study are used to estimate adaptation and changes people might make, similar to the other species and informed by how the national strategies and likely reactions to the strategy might alter that behavior.  All of that includes movements between regions, and is integrated with projections of physical processes and how they are expected to affect regional environmental conditions.”

“That doesn’t sound simple,” I told her. “No wonder WICO needs an AI to do the majority of the work. How much of it is done?”

“Roughly three-fourths of the development effort is complete. Testing will begin by the weekend; and if there are no major issues found then the strategy will be ready for publication on February 25.”

“What kinds of issues would be major?” I asked.

“Significant deviation from the top-level strategy is one, since it would signal a fundamental problem with one or more of the guiding assumptions. Discovery of significant new feedbacks between multiple variables is another. That’s just what we can anticipate.”

“That last comment suggests you have a buffer built into the schedule.”

 “Any good plan does,” Sally acknowledged. “The only hard deadline is the implementation date, barring any new information to the contrary, of course.”

Reality Check

The process outlined here is my best recommendation, given the capabilities I’ve given the imaginary world. Since I don’t have those capabilities myself, I can’t offer even high confidence in guessing what the results would be.

Conundrum

TIME TO STRATEGY DEADLINE: 7 DAYS

Great Britain’s Charles Lockhart has established a reputation as one of the world’s greatest thinkers, having made groundbreaking discoveries in mathematics, physics, biology, and human ecology. Because of his reputation, he has been consulted by more than a half-dozen nations to assist with their extinction crisis strategies. I discussed that experience with him and asked for a candid opinion of the entire effort.

“There is a general atmosphere of deep frustration bordering on hopelessness in the planning groups,” he told me. “No one has a real clue how to do something like this, so they are relying a little too heavily, in my opinion, on the judgment of STRIDE and its untested testing.” He explained, “There are hundreds of people all over the world making observations and suggestions. How do we know the quality of their work? Are there controlled experiments that have objectively verified it? You might want to ask your anonymous source about that the next time you speak.

“And then there’s this artificial intelligence, Sanda, which I strongly suspect is your source masquerading as a person. Talk about being untested! It’s a one-of-a-kind, highly complex machine that is operating in a complex, one-of-a-kind environment, on a problem unlike anything anyone has ever solved. It doesn’t inspire confidence, to say the least.

“As for the effort, I see it as quite a bit different from dealing with a threat. Ignoring the motivation for the moment, we will be essentially replacing our entire civilization with a fundamentally different one in just two decades. Given that view, the organizations charged with maintaining this civilization are facing the conundrum of responsible service while planning its destruction and rebirth with fewer people in a world radically outside of their experience if it is lucky enough to exist. In my estimation, our odds of survival are depressingly low regardless of what we do.”

Reality Check

I am nowhere as smart or as accomplished as Lockhart is expected to be. His concerns are based on my experience as a test engineer and a lot of thought.