The Existence Box

By Will Jackson (World: Hikeyay)

The key concept in our strategy to avoid extinction is the Existence Box. This has been used effectively in teaching people around our world how to think about what to do in their daily lives and how to steer group policies from the family to the community levels. It is also a guide to gaging progress at all scales. Some of you have already been briefed on this with help from our AI Sally and the Interlink (also called the Mountain Sisterhood), but our team now feels that it’s worth spelling it out for all of you.

Existence of a group is the collective experience by its members of its population, quality, and longevity. Population is the number of people in the group. Quality is the ability of members to meet their needs and wants within their environment. Longevity is how long that the group can last. Each of these is a dimension of a box whose volume is the group’s existence. Extinction is the absence of existence, where longevity and the population have dropped to zero.

The dimensions of the Existence Box are measured and limited by resources. The primary type of resource is natural habitat. Because we are animals, those resources are what we’re made of. Where they come from is the environment that we evolved to be most adapted to for meeting our basic needs and therefore to be most sensitive to, in exchange for being part of that habitat. As humans have spread to inhabit many different environments, they have developed the ability to adapt to them as well, in part through evolution and in part through creation of tools and artificial environments that enable them to reliably meet their needs and provide security and comfort, which we have come to think of as “quality of life.” Quality has come at a cost: much of what is created, including the byproducts of production, either displaces or degrades natural habitat, resulting in a net loss of it. As population grows and tools for adaptation become more efficient at acquiring and processing resources, the quantity of waste for the small fraction that produces most of it also grows. 

How fast the amount of natural habitat decreases directly affects longevity. The other life that is part of and maintains that habitat depends on it for its survival. When the total amount falls below what that life needs to survive then soon, like them, our population reaches a maximum and can no longer grow. Like a company that starves those who supply what it needs to produce its own products, and whose production slows with the decreasing supply until it stops and can only sell what it’s already produced, the production of people must stop, leaving those who are already alive to eventually die without replacement. Historically, groups have moved to, or taken by force, regions that have more resources; but there are now no other places to move to in time to offset the destruction that could befall our world and yours.

Our application of the Existence Box concept has been focused on increasing longevity by managing population growth and defining a target environment that can be created and adapted to by reducing instead of increasing waste. That target environment includes more natural habitat and less total consumption of resources. We are grappling with an unacceptable increase of global temperatures that could reduce longevity despite our efforts, which is one of the reasons we’re reaching out to other worlds, but we believe our general approach is sound enough for others to benefit from it.

Reality Check

The Existence Box is a minor variation of a theoretical construct I’ve used for thinking about, analyzing, and discussing the contributors and potential solutions to the threat of imminent extinction. My latest research has refined projections of global and population-level variables, including a derivation of how much resources are valued throughout a group in a closed environment. 

In my simulations, historically only about 1% of people prefer replacing natural habitat with artificial habitat, while 75% prefer people more than natural habitat. The rest prefer natural habitat more than artificial habitat and people, who I expect would be the main supporters of a push for increasing longevity.  In Hikeyay, the supporters have gained enough power to convince everyone else to radically change their lives. While I consider this unrealistic (thus the use of beneficent artificial intelligence and supernatural communication between parallel universes), it remains a valuable thought experiment, along with the fictional bringing to life of an alternate reality that would be preferable to ours. 

Progress and Concern

Today WICO released report on the world’s progress in implementing the global strategy. It includes updates of fundamental statistics and expectations for the future based on experience and lessons learned.

There were several surprises. The biggest surprise was a much larger drop in population projected for the transition, in part due to a much lower birthrate than projected for this year. Another surprise, related to the first, was higher per-capita consumption after the transition. 

Following WICO’s companion announcement that catastrophic climate change remains an imminent existential threat, even with 60% more habitat freed up by the transition, WICO’s Widely Dispersed Pollutants team revealed that it is ready for full scale use of genetically engineered microbes (GEMs) to remove excess greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and the oceans. A declassified summary it released discussing capability, design, and test results had another surprise: GEM populations are doomed to crash if concentrations of gases in each medium fall to unsafe levels.

Based on our test experience, my team was tasked with helping to monitor local effects of the initial GEM deployment while continuing our search for safer alternatives to that and other approaches included in the global strategy. We share an especially strong concern about this technology, mainly because its deployment is necessarily pervasive and potentially adaptable (by evolution or otherwise) to causing population crashes in other species such as ours.

Reality Check

Upgrades to the Timelines model have enabled more insight into its potential real-life manifestation. Incorporation of climate change variables and simulations to reduce its magnitude and effects have converged on an alternate future that does not include reduction of population as was chosen for the simulated world Hikeyay. That, and practical considerations related to personal survival, have limited efforts that could be made to update fiction like this blog and its related book series BIOME. 

This update remains true to the history of Hikeyay, with alterations to its trajectory that serve as a valuable contrast to other possibilities. The following graph shows projected values of global variables referred to in the blog text. Note that “catastrophic climate change” is assumed to be associated with a global temperature anomaly of 2 degrees Celsius above the preindustrial level.

 

Annual changes in some of those variables are shown below.

 

Changes by phase are among the new insights. They are presented below for the years 2019-2021.

 

A summary of the state of the world at the end of the transition is shown below.

 

The GEMs are based on my own ideas. Any similarities to existing technologies are purely coincidental - and scary.

 

Population Crisis

A recent spike in births similar to the baby boom of the early 1950s now threatens to derail the world’s efforts to reduce the risk of imminent extinction. “Clearly the mechanisms put in place by the global strategy have failed,” WICO admitted in a recent statement. “A task force has been convened to study the problem and provide both an explanation and a solution as soon as possible.”

Maura is a member of the task force, and has made its mission the top priority of our team at Colorado Holistic University. Sociologists and biologists at other research organizations around the world are also collaborating, with Ambassador Lazlo leading the task force from London and personally directing WICO’s resources in the effort.

Our investigation focused on clues from history and observations from simulated “worlds” that Sally developed in parallel with her work on the global strategy. The AI herself was surprisingly reticent about suggesting an explanation, which in a human might have been interpreted as a sign of embarrassment. She has, however, devoted considerable bandwidth to helping us come up with one on our own.

The most promising hypothesis so far came from one of the simulated worlds, whose history diverged significantly from ours just after World War Two. Its population was wary of unknown threats to civilization, including consequences of ravaging the natural world. Instead of pursuing unlimited growth, they sought to create a healthy world that would maximize how long people could live and thrive. They set a sustainable limit to their standard of living and achieved it by deliberate, careful development of technology while maintaining a slow increase in population marked by both a low birth rate and a low death rate.

“It was their caution that saved them,” Maura concluded after intense study of the simulation using her ability to experience the simulation as if it was a real world. “They knew what they wanted and what they could have, and stopped when they had it. Change was a transition only, which they would be completing right about now.” She paused, considering the implications for our current situation. “We, on the other hand, have been anything but deliberate. We’re in a panic, and we’re going too fast. I suspect that our overly-aggressive reduction of consumption this early in the transition has triggered a natural human response to having more resources available: people are procreating to fill up the space, no matter what anyone says.”

I noted that Sally would have known all that, and should have planned for it. “Maybe she did,” Maura suggested excitedly. “The most obvious consequence of this baby bubble is a sudden increase in the number of young people in the population. What would that do for us?” She did a quick calculation. “That’s what I thought. I’ll bet Sally either made an oversight or she didn’t think we’d go along with this part of the plan.” I was confused. “We need enough people capable of having children after the transition to maintain our starting population, which they’ll be old enough to do.”

Reality Check

The trajectories of global variables have been adjusted to replace natural losses of older people with youth who can sustain the population. This is done by exponential decreases in total consumption (4.25%) and the ratio of needs to remaining resources (3.51%) until total consumption can be sustainably supplied by naturally replenishable resources (total consumption less than 0.8 Earth per year). Final per-capita consumption is 1.4 times basic needs per person.

The condition of the world in mid-2020 looks like this:

An interesting coincidence emerged from my study of the impact of our coronavirus pandemic on population: the projected change in age this year is equivalent to the same number of people as in Hikeyay Prime (126 million). Old people dying in our world cause the same age change as additional births in Will Jackson’s world.

Simulation Maria has the following trajectories.

In mid-2020, that world has the following characteristics:

Phased Leadership

Since my last entry, Maura and I have finished moving into a new home and been busy analyzing all of the information collected by WICO relating to the preparation and implementation of the global strategy to delay extinction. Sally, who has since adopted the surname Sanda (her name until she came out as a sentient artificial lifeform), spared enough bandwidth to help us with much of the data collection and analysis.

We’ve made several discoveries, among them the relationship between social leadership characteristics and the changing distribution of population between activity phases. This naturally required an historical perspective that Maura was happy to provide: 

“To be effective, leaders must address the range of life experiences in their community or else the community loses cohesiveness. Our biology has prepared us to live as colonizers, the first phase, but cultural and technological innovations have enabled us to inhabit the other six phases. 

“One if the most significant of the cultural innovations was a response to most people having become developers, in the second phase. The creation of a government where every person has equal value, and is responsible only for what they do instead of who they are, provided a way for developers to peaceably coexist with the remaining colonizers and coordinate their actions to potentially benefit everyone. 

“As the world entered the adaptation phase in the 1800s, roles and experiences diversified with the use of technology to convert natural environments into artificial environments, and a growing number of governments extended their main tools for regulating behavior, laws, along with new ways to enforce them, to deal with the changing range of interactions people could have with those environments and each other. 

“The number of people increases exponentially with increasing phase, so there is typically a net loss of people in the lower phases even as the total population gets larger, with the greatest rates of loss when new phases start being populated. Such transitions are therefore the most fraught with danger, which the world found out a century later when the fourth phase was breached with twice the population at stake. It took two world wars to set the stage for a truly global community whose scale would be necessary to manage the consequences.

“It’s lucky for us that the WICO framework was chosen for the design of that community. The magnitude of the changes underway and the threat of misjudging them that the last war exposed was enough to convince the world’s leaders to be cautious and provide a means of sharing knowledge and coordinating activities that could have potentially global impact. While national autonomy was still prized, having too much presented an unacceptable risk to everyone; and so, monitoring and control mechanisms were adopted following a vigorous debate about basic values to be adopted on a core level by every organization on the planet.

“Unluckily for us, the risks of developing fossil fuels and their derivatives were not considered as thoroughly as they should have been. Leaders were too fixated on its promise of quickly achieving the ultimate goal of maximum happiness, population, and life expectancy. They also failed to also consider that the goal itself might be a trigger for catastrophic consequences involving variables they didn’t even know existed. 

“The combination of those two oversights led to a series of what we now know as transitions to higher phases over the following 70 years. Despite not understanding their cause, WICO was able to reduce the most disruptive aspects of each, such as radical flipping of ideological dominance within component governments, by tracking and anticipating effects while initiating coping protocols through local agents such as the Extinction Response Units. Understanding their causes and switching governance to ecologically-defined regions and sub-regions will make those efforts more effective and efficient as we intentionally move through transitions into lower phases.”

Along with the majority of other nations, the United States is holding its last major election this year. The winners, most of whom have already been identified, will be responsible for decommissioning of government infrastructure and functions along with any remaining handoffs to the Extinction Response Unit and relevant sub-regions.

Reality Check

History matches ours up to the end of the second world war and only approximates it after that.

The annual change in the number of people within each phase over the period 1950-2050 is shown below for the simulated world of Hikeyay Prime, as a fraction of people in each previous year.

For reference, the following is the annual change for simulation Green (matching historical data) for the period 1950-2040:

Note each pair of peaks, where a large peak is closely followed by a smaller one (such as the pair for Exploiters consisting of a peak in 1973 and the smaller one in 1976).

The large peak marks the transition of people into its phase which appears to be correlated to the dominance of politically right-leaning leadership. The smaller peak appears to be correlated to dominance of politically left-leaning leadership.

This is in stark contrast to the peaks in Hikeyay Prime, a difference that is explained away by Maura as a consequence of WICO’s organization but is actually due to the more well-behaved function used for the underlying ratio of remaining resources to human needs. If the political correlation does hold up for Hikeyay Prime, it is likely with the decay portion of the larger peak.

New Year

 

Last Friday’s anniversary of the Global Emergency declaration also marked six months since the execution of the global strategy that resulted from the declaration. 

In a report to WICO yesterday, Maura summarized the world’s progress in terms of our work on developing historical context and guidance. Following is an excerpt. 

“The most useful measure of the state of a population continues to be the ratio of ecological resources consumed by people for basic needs to the resources consumed by, and comprising, other species. Expressed in terms of activity phases, it is predictive of, or strongly correlated to, the range of global variables we care most about at regional and global scales, since the phases define relationships of people to their natural environments and, by extension, each other.

“Applying the phase model to history, we have observed what would be expected from the merging of groups of populations and environments with larger ones that consume more per person: growth of a global population that is expanding through each of seven phases with regard to the world’s total environment. 

“The merging is done in the first phase, colonization, and continues until there are no more new groups to merge with. Converting merged groups into integrated larger groups is done in the development phase, which includes a workforce dedicated to managing and converting resources so they can more efficiently meet people’s needs and wants while continuing to grow the population. In the third phase, adaptation, a growing sense of identity with the combined group orients its population toward common goals such as the customization of people’s environments in order to maximize happiness. A maximum in happiness and consumption of renewable ecological resources is achieved in the climax phase, which would be the final phase if the means and will didn’t exist to consume more than ecosystems produce. 

“Using more requires consuming the sources of what is already being consumed. In this exploitation phase, people gain both a new maximum in happiness and a maximum in life expectancy which is short-lived because they are depleting resources that cannot be replenished. Continued efforts by colonizers to search for more resources, and any success drives the depletion that forces those in the climax phase into a new phase, decline, where they experience a precipitous drop in happiness and life expectancy. When life expectancy reaches zero, there are no more children and the people in the resulting phase, decline, will soon face the final phase: death. When total resources are low enough that the entire population as one group is statistically in the termination phase, then it is facing near-term extinction.

“The Global Emergency declaration was issued as the global population was less than six years from entering the termination phase. In terms of phase, it is where it was a half-year before the declaration, still in the exploitation phase. The preferred outcome of the global strategy adopted in response is expected at the end of a 20-year transition that was started in July. The closest historical analogue to that outcome is in 1999 when the world was in the climax phase and people were about to enter the exploitation phase; but with key differences that per-capita consumption will be held constant at the level it was in 1909 and there will be no population growth.

“What happens after 2040 depends on our success in stopping the external impacts from reducing the total amount of resources. Failure could result in a spike in deaths equivalent to the whole population being suddenly treated for the bubonic plague, with the effect of reducing overall consumption to a level that might be sustained for no more than another 20 years. Projected spikes in phase and zero birth rates lead us to believe that it is most realistic to expect extinction by that time.”

Reality Check

Global variables in the simulated world as a function of phase are shown below:

The range of phases experienced over time is shown below:

This is unique to the simulated world of Hikeyay (simulation Hikeyay'). Following is what the phases for our world would look like if we attempted a similar strategy starting in a year later.

Pause and Review

Maura didn’t wake up this morning. My first thought was that she was just extremely tired, but it now appears that she’s in a coma like she was back in July. Waiting for Maura’s condition to change has presented the chance to catch up on this blog, neglected because we’ve been so busy, and because WICO has done an excellent job of coordination that makes it redundant.

I took the unorthodox step of requesting an opinion about what’s happening to her from our artificially intelligent friend Sally who has been working nonstop along with all of us to implement the global strategy for fighting the extinction threat. The virtual equivalent of an out-of-office greeting was her only reply, which I was informed by a WICO network administrator has popped up only a handful of times in the past, the last one being the day before yesterday.

My personal experience, shared with Maura, has been dominated by three activities: helping compile the history of the extinction response; investigating options under consideration and development for accelerating biosphere restoration; and performing the core duty of reducing ecological impact of infrastructure and activities in my home subregion. 

We made a lot of progress with the first two activities during what ended up being a month-long visit to Hawaii that provided convincing evidence of the ability to prevent about quarter of the currently projected drop in total resources due to external impacts following the transition. The rest may be achievable by increases in scale, but we couldn’t find anyone willing to guarantee its success. 

As for our progress at home, we brought about half the transportable belongings we had in July to our local bioconversion and decommissioning center (what many call a “safing center”), one of a dozen that are now operational between Denver and Boulder. We have also found a small house closer to work that we plan to move into just before demolition of our present house that is scheduled for the end of the year.

Based on interviews with people who should know, there is no consensus yet about alternative population-consumption trajectories, including whether an alternative is needed. A major criterion for supporting change appears to be whether population loss should be traded for extra time to stop the external impacts; and that criterion depends on when the impacts are likely to be stopped. WICO’s leadership continues to assert that the impacts can be stopped by 2040, though half the technical experts I’ve consulted argue that it could take until 2060 if at all. That later estimate favors buying more time with the so-called “Leveloff” option that forces per-capita consumption to stay roughly fixed after the transition instead of dropping in response to falling resources.

Maura has just started moving, like she’s having a very distressful dream. I think I heard her say, very softly, “You bastards!”

Reality Check

I have been refining the Timelines model, including research into how change over time can be simulated as the continuous merging of two groups into a mixed group. One of them (“Group 1”) represents the past; and the other (“Group 2”) represents future change.

For each of several scenarios, the following animation shows phase diagrams for representative years (where Group 1 is the world in each year) along with graphs of how global variables change over time. The “Green” scenario is the expected past and future for our world, whose phase diagram is given for mid-2019 as indicated by the listed date. “Hikeyay” is the simulated world’s past and future based on the global strategy in its current form, and its phase diagram is for the end of the transition in 2040. The futures presented in the “Projected” and “Projected Sratio” scenarios are the options under consideration by the simulated world, with phase diagrams for 2040 and graphs of the past in common with the Green scenario as a reminder that they could also be adopted by us.

Maura’s condition is in response to the event in the final scene of the online book BIOME: ATTACK and its follow-up described in the e-book series BIOME. Additional backstory is available to patrons in Will Jackson’s Personal Log.

Review

Sally visited Maura and me at Colorado Holistic University yesterday, “wearing” one of three specially-fabricated robots so she can have a physical presence. Her essence is still distributed among a classified number of servers throughout the world, awaiting the development of a single multi-purpose body that she can fully inhabit when global computer technology is no longer available to support her. 

The purpose of her visit was to brief us and get feedback about a significant update to the global strategy being considered for roll-out before the end of the year. The update would use fixed annual rates for population change and per-capita consumption instead of the linear decrease in total consumption that drives the present strategy, resulting in about half the death rate which was found to be unacceptably high.

“There is a higher probability of success doing it this way,” she told us, “because the targets are simpler. Progress is easier to verify and therefore control. We have also eliminated the most controversial aspect of the current strategy, maintaining zero births, although the birth rate will be very low.”

Maura and I stood facing the history department’s conference table where Sally sat and the screen behind her that showed a set of charts for the projected year 2040. Total consumption was higher than the present target, which was particularly problematic for Maura. “The whole point of driving down consumption to give ecosystems a better chance of recovery and offsetting the impacts,” she said rhetorically. “Are you sure enough of the death rate savings to justify taking the extra risk?”

“Yes,” Sally said bluntly.

 One of the charts suggested another motivation. “The new end-state is pushing up against the peak phase at the high end,” I said to Maura. “Is that even sustainable?”

“It depends on the cause,” Maura replied.

“The cause is the trajectory,” Sally answered the implied question. “Continuing the population and per-capita consumption rates past 2040 will maintain the distribution of people across the phases, but…”

“But?” Maura and I asked simultaneously.

Sally frowned realistically, no doubt for our benefit. “After 2050 there will not be enough resources to avoid collapse. Increasingly unable to meet its needs, humanity will cease to exist after 2080.”

I did a quick mental calculation based on the last hope chart. “That’s 14 years more than we have now. I’d say that’s a reasonable tradeoff.”

“What’s the overall impact on the strategy?” Maura asked Sally. Her expression revealed that she already knew the answer.

“It is considerably simplified and more aggressive in reducing direct consumption. Because implementation has already been more aggressive than planned due to the creativity provisions that Will inspired, there will be little change to existing preparations.” Sally unnecessarily gestured to the screen, where the charts were replaced with an image of a bound book about half the thickness of the global strategy. “A draft is ready if you would like to read it.”

We spent most of the day reviewing the draft with Sally. She collected our comments and changes into a new draft that could be merged with feedback from others who I assumed she was meeting with simultaneously using her other forms. 

The existence of the draft update was announced by WICO while we were on our way home. In the news clip played on all radio stations, Ambassador Lazlo described it as “the result of lessons learned over a very productive two months that will radically improve our chance of survival.” Maura lurched the car slightly as she drove, a clear sign that she disagreed with the assessment, and at that moment I thought I saw a small aircraft fly over us. “Over the next few days, details about the update will leak out,” Lazlo continued. “I urge everyone to ignore any such details and wait for the release of the final version.”

“They’re getting ahead of themselves,” Maura said, focusing on the road, “and you,” referring to this blog post.

I glimpsed the reflection of the aircraft, which was probably a drone, just as it disappeared behind a hill. “Somebody wants those details to get out anyway,” I speculated. “Given the time constraints, they’d be irresponsible not to, creativity provisions notwithstanding.”

“You’re not easily complimented, are you?” she asked, turned to me, and smiled. “That’s a good thing.”

“I don’t like being played,” I said, as an old concern began to nag at me again. 

ABOVE: Maura, Sally, and Will.

Reality Check

The new scenario is described in the Idea Explorer blog post C-low. The related summary of global variables in the year 2040 is shown below.

For reference, projections for the current scenario are as follows for 2040:

Note in particular the difference in Total Consumption between the two scenarios that Maura highlighted, about 0.1 Earth.

The business-as-usual scenario for the Green simulation representing our world is shown below, with detail for mid-year 2019 that applies to all simulations:

For fiction backstory, see Will Jackson's Personal Log (patrons only).

Dreamworld

After a week of planting native trees with me and Al as part of the new region-wide Restoration program, Maura awoke from a dream of a day in a world where such a program and the strategy that inspired it were never considered more than a dream themselves.

As “Mari,” she worked as a low-level financial analyst at a defense company that had no interest in developing truly life-saving technologies. The day began with a casual breakfast in front of her television, swearing at news reports of a self-destructing federal government led by isolationists who were focused on accumulating as much personal power as possible for themselves and their supporters. Her live-in fiancé John, an electronics store technician she met in a previous job, reminded her that the current focus on weapons development and profit-boosting deregulation meant they had a better chance of paying off her recent medical bills and moving from their tiny apartment into a real house just in time for their wedding at the end of the year.

Mari’s commute was excruciatingly long and perilous, spent mostly in start-and-stop traffic undeterred by automated signs requesting that people not drive due to elevated ozone levels exacerbated by vehicle exhaust. Bored by the music choices on the radio, she gambled on listening to more news, and almost caused a crash when a reporter announced that a deep recession might be imminent if not already in progress. She had a flash of a global trend analysis that Maura had done months ago, which anticipated just such a possibility in this timeframe as a precursor of a world population peak five years in the future. The implication of the report sent a shock through her mind; if it turned out to be true, then the peak might be too, along with the rapid fall toward extinction that followed. 

She took a deep breath as she listened to the much more benign explanations being offered by economists: that the government’s corruption had critically reduced market confidence in it exercising rational economic policy; that recent GDP fluctuations indicated a reset was due following the last twelve years of growth; and that automation and other technologies were reshaping the workplace faster than expected. All of them would have been enough for the original Mari, but as Mari/Maura she knew there were much larger forces in play that demanded an understanding that encompassed more than strictly political and economic considerations.

By the time she arrived at work, the company’s Chief Financial Officer had already directed analysts in her office and elsewhere to run reality checks on the recession fears, develop likely scenarios, and recommend strategies for minimizing exposure to losses that might result. Technically, Mari’s role was to error-check the scenarios and strategies that the experts produced, but she felt compelled to share her concerns with them directly at the earliest stage. The dream ended following a particularly uncomfortable meeting with them.

“They acted like she was crazy,” Maura told me near the end of her narrative, “dismissing it as a dystopian fantasy that no rational person would subscribe to. It reminds me of the debate when WICO proposed the biosphere assessment. At least we finally agreed to replace opinion with facts, and accept all their implications. These people were limiting the scope of the ‘reality’ they considered, based on their own opinions, and blaming her for questioning it.”

I decided to play the devil’s advocate. “To be fair, she couldn’t divulge the source of her concern, what you learned, mainly because they reasonably wouldn’t believe it coming from her.”

“They had more than enough information already. Their scientists and a lot of activists were already sounding the alarm over several aspects of the extinction threat. The United Nations, their version of WICO, was even getting nations to enter treaties to deal with it. Private industry was pushing what they called renewable technology, an ill-conceived attempt to continue the status quo without a very limited set of environmental costs. Unfortunately, they failed to consider a lot of the critical costs.”

“You learned all that in a dream?” I asked.

“You can learn a lot when you share someone’s mind.”

“Which outside of a dream would sound crazy, right?”

“Right,” she admitted. “Some of the simulations I did when I was at WICO were turned into a story by my subconscious. I’m sure that with some research I could identify which ones they were, which makes the story worth telling.”

Reality Check

Mari’s world is based on the simulation Hella, whose history and future starting in 2015 matches simulation Green - what I judge to be the best match to our real world. In the fictional backstory (explored in Will Jackson’s Personal Log), Maura has a limited ability to observe and interact with versions of herself in the “worlds” of other simulations (as they can with her) - providing a means of comparing relevant parts of the simulations in any given story.

In Hella, global variables change annually as follows:

In all three simulations, self-sustaining impacts reduce total resources after 2014, but of course Hikeyay (Maura’s world) is intentionally decreasing consumption as part of the global strategy.

Phases of Time

 

Maura recently had a new insight about the historical context framework she first lectured about on June 21. Today she shared it with other members of the history department, many of whom were onsite to prepare for the beginning of classes.

“WICO’s decision to add subregions got me thinking about how to make sense of all the new information.” Behind her at the head of one of the lecture halls, a world map displayed the thousand subregions color-coded according to which of the original regions they were part of. 

“Instead of thinking in terms of ecosystem types, or biomes, we can look at them in simpler terms.” She pressed a hidden button on the lectern and only seven colors remained. “Here, they’re categorized according to their dominant phases. WICO came up with the concept of phases while trying to predict behaviors based on observed correlations with the ratio of basic consumption by people to basic consumption by members of other species.” She showed a graph of the behaviors as a function of phase. “Those behaviors include living longer, seeking happiness, and having children and dying which affects population. Each phase is a range of the ratio that corresponds to aspects of the behaviors. Until the addition of subregions, there was a lot more uncertainty in the predictions than some of us who worked on the global strategy were comfortable with. With refined data collection and testing, it is now possible to have better resolution on what phase a person or group occupies at a given time.”

She scanned the nearly-full hall and smiled coyly. “So… what does this have to do with history? Just as people and groups move through phases, all of humanity has moved through what I call ‘phase epochs’ that each correspond to a range of time where the characteristics of a particular phase are dominant. In my first lecture, I used a crude version of that concept to define ‘milestones’ marking off certain trends in history. Now, I propose being more explicit about the nature of the phases in all its manifestations as the characterization of life’s interactions over time and space.”

A review of the past two centuries followed, where she referenced the milestones in their new context and suggested some new directions of research using both historical records and the growing dataset of observations taken by professionals and the global network of trained citizens living out the transition.

Reality Check

A phase diagram for today is shown below, where L is life expectancy, h is happiness, Fert is fertility, P is population, R is consumption by a group, Cap is capacity (total resources), C is per-capita consumption, and Wealth/p is per-capita wealth (fixed 2010 dollars). Years listed at the 90% value are the original milestones.

Phase epochs are based on which phases are dominant over a period of time. Every epoch except the first epoch is represented in the following graph, which shows the fraction of global population in each phase from 1800 through the transition for the simulated world as indicated by the difference in population ratio between any pair of colored lines. The black line is the projected phase for the population. 

Epoch 1 (dominated by phase 1, the purple line) ended in the year 152. Epoch 2 ended between 1810 and 1850 (likely 1837), when the dark blue line representing phase 2 reached 100%. Epoch 3 ended between 1940 and 1950 (likely 1947). Epoch 4 ended in 1973, and Epoch 5 ended in 1999. The present Epoch 6 (yellow) first ended in 2014, which began the present Epoch 7.

The global strategy intends to reverse the progress this year, and reenter Epoch 6 by 2022. Epoch 5 will be reentered in 2031, where the world will hopefully stay past 2040.

Following is the equivalent graph for our world (“Green”):