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.

Lying Certainty

“We will NOT fail!” Secretary General Decatur shouted at a press briefing held at WICO headquarters in London, responding to public furor over the lack of a plan if self-sustained impacts cannot be stopped by 2040, which I reported yesterday on this blog. “Believing otherwise is the REAL death sentence, and it is extremely irresponsible to encourage it!” I could feel him talking directly to me, even though it was a lie.

Someone in the press pool asked if he would share a number for the probability of success, and he told an obvious lie: “It’s one hundred percent, of course.”

“You’ve already stopped the impacts?” the reporter asked as a follow-up.

“No,” Decatur said, “but we know exactly what they are and how to stop them. The technology is available, and will be deployed soon.”

I heard Maura gasp beside me as we watched the briefing on television. “It’s a good thing this was my last day,” she said as another question was asked.

“You’ll see!” Decatur barked from the podium. “You do your job, getting through the transition, and let us do ours.” He stepped back and scanned the small crowd. “The details are secret for now, but you can judge us by the results. That is all for today.”

My phone rang. It was Al. “Didya hear that, Will?” he asked when I put the phone on speaker. “Arvin practically threw you and Maura under the bus!” I wasn’t surprised to hear him use Decatur’s first name; they worked together many years ago on multiple projects. “Yaboth didn’t encourage anythin’ like givin’ up, just doin’ what any smart person would: plannin’ for the worst case.”

“You heard him Al,” Maura said, now angry, “there is no worst case.”

“Is it possible he’s right?” I asked them both, stunned over the uncharacteristic performance by someone I deeply respected.

Maura held my hand. “Oh, Will, always the devil’s advocate. I wish it was, but I have it on pretty good authority that he lied. You can write that in your blog, by the way.”

“You can tell ‘em this, too,” Al said from the phone, “it doesn’t matter. Downgradin’ is the best shot we got, regardless of what comes after. We’ll all do what we can, and deal with the result. Who knows: maybe we’ll get lucky with some help from friends we don’t know yet. Right, Maura?”

“Never rule out luck, Al,” she said.

Reality Check

No strategy is a sure thing. It won’t work at all if everyone isn’t behind it, and part of a leader’s job is to make sure they are.

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.

Creative Feedback

 

Today five of the world’s top experts in social-environmental forecasting published an op-ed claiming to have derived a model of self-sustained ecological impact that is more accurate than the one used by WICO to create the global strategy for dealing with the imminent extinction threat. The model’s predictions show that the current target for total consumption is twice what it needs to be, and it must be achieved by 2040 to meet the strategy’s goals. A cache of data and detail about their derivation was delivered online to WICO headquarters just before publication. In a short public statement, Samantha Lazlo promised that a thorough review of the claim and supporting materials will be complete by next Tuesday, and any required changes to the strategy will be identified and announced by the end of the week. 

I asked my favorite experts what they thought of the claim. Al Menzies was surprised that such a challenge hadn’t been made sooner: “The trashin’ of the biosphere assessment opened the door for it. I know three of those researchers, and they’ve been salivatin’ for a chance to show your cybercritter what good ole’ fashioned scientists can do with their own data. Their reputations and the implications for the timeline are too serious to ignore.” Maura Riddick suggested that we wait for Sally’s verdict before getting behind the new projections, especially since there is no time left to delay the strategy’s execution.

For me, it validated the need for inspiring creativity in observation, understanding, and action based on a core respect for all life. A strategy is just a guide; and a guide must be based on reality to enable success. More people gaining more experience, and sharing lessons learned about the reality it embodies, provides feedback necessary to improve the guide and its usefulness to more people. Even incorrect understanding can yield more insight into reality when it is tested, because it often results in more experience and questions that drive more robust understanding. 

Pondering this, I have realized that, fundamentally, the lack of such creative feedback in the education aspect of the strategy’s deployment is what drove me to leave WICO. I knew that soon it would drive me crazy, replacing the feeling of doing something meaningful with doubt and longing for finding my own way and sharing what I learn with others. Whatever happens with the implementation of the global strategy, I know I can’t escape the drive to tweak my contribution to it now as a citizen, and encourage others to do the same.

Reality Check

The “model” is based on a new simulation, illustrated in the following graphs:

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.

Phase Transition

TIME TO STRATEGY EXECUTION: 54 DAYS

“I’ve found that the best way to think about it is in terms of the seven phases.” Maura was sprawled on the couch in our new office, a converted conference room at the Boulder field office. She was still tired from a day of driving and hours of unpacking that lasted past midnight, not to mention a traffic-filled drive from Colorado Springs this morning. “The strategy is going to be used as a tool for moving from unhealthy phases to healthy phases, and helping others do the same.”

As if on cue, a chart appeared on the blank wall above the table that served as a desk for both of us. I stared at it from my office chair next to the couch, trying to imagine what she saw in the squiggly lines that crawled across the embedded graph representing the world’s population when the strategy is due to go live. “Most people are moving from phases six and seven to phases one through four,” I cited what I already knew, “but what does that mean to them?”

“For one thing, it means competition with the group that’s already there, a group that without WICO and the emergency declaration would be aggressively and effectively resisting them.”

I studied the graph. “That group is less than ten percent of the population, with less than twice that in total wealth. How could they effectively fight off more than two-thirds of the population?”

“By co-opting the quarter of the population in the phase between them who are in the final stage of approaching maximum happiness and life expectancy. Without understanding and believing the big picture, the people in that peak phase could easily and reasonably be convinced that the majority is trying to steal the prize they’re working hard to achieve. Self-defense is maybe the strongest motive for fighting.”

“Ignorance would be their friend,” I observed. “For some of them it still is, judging from recent events.” 

“Yes,” she agreed, and closed her eyes. Then she got weird. “In most worlds like ours, their success is everyone’s failure.” She opened her eyes and turned to me. “That can still happen in this one, Will.”

Her gaze, normally comforting, triggered a spike of adrenaline. I tried to focus on the solution. “Doesn’t the majority still have an edge in that case?” In addition to superior numbers, they had a few percent more of total wealth.

“It’s close to a tie at this point,” she admitted, sitting up and looking at the graph, “but because power traditionally derives from consumption of natural resources, they can’t generate more power. To get what they need, they have to effectively decrease consumption by increasing resources in the environment, which will take away an equivalent amount of power and give the others the advantage.”

 “So why are we better off again?” I asked, my voice betraying the panic I felt.

“We accept the fact that we’re all in mortal danger if we don’t make this happen.” I saw her point: self-defense means nothing if you kill yourself in the process.

Reality Check

The phase diagram for 2019 discussed by Will and Maura is shown below.

Behind the Lines

TIME TO STRATEGY EXECUTION: 55 DAYS

The global strategy for dealing with the imminent extinction threat is more than a decision tree and a set of conditions, rules, and definitions. If you read behind the lines as well as between them, it tells a story of possible futures that branch from a common past and each create an entire new world.

I know as much as anything that it’s true. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to read behind the lines. That’s embarrassing to admit after countless hours of study and editing previous versions, especially with my background as someone who’s supposed to be an expert at such things. Each section makes sense in its own way, but I cannot comprehend it well enough to identify the full range of outcomes from following it. 

There are many graphs, such as the famous “Hope Chart,” which provide abstract sketches of how a range of variables could play out over time as the result of sets of actions. Teams of experts, testers, along with the world’s first living machine (and most sophisticated artificial intelligence) vouch that the projections are as good as the data that went into them, some of which I’ve collected myself and enabled collecting by others. Even taking that as a given, I can’t see the story it contains, and it’s driving me crazy.

I have been asked more than once why I care. That’s a story I can tell. Imagine standing anywhere, and wondering what kind of future a particular action will contribute to: one that promotes life, or one that promotes death. How will you find the answer, and do it soon enough to avoid finding yourself on a path to more death? What could be more critical to success than enabling the vast majority of people to choose a future with more life?

Sally the living AI can answer specific questions about probable outcomes, as she did when I asked her to describe the end-state of the most likely scenario. We recently spent some time talking through several scenarios, testing my ability to guess what might happen under certain conditions at certain times. For example: What if birth rates increased above a certain amount in a given year under the condition of greatly accelerating self-sustained warming in the Arctic. Taken as an average, I guessed right a dismal one-in-twenty times. Sally’s answers were always prefaced with an estimate of uncertainty, which disconcertingly was sometimes as high as twenty percent.

Getting close to giving up for the day, I thought of Maura and her father accompanying a moving truck on the way to Colorado Springs, where she plans to live with her parents until she can find an apartment to rent that’s in the Denver-Boulder area. I would bet that she never expected to be back there at this point in her career. From the time I first met her, I’ve envied her ability to make forecasts on the fly, and translate them into recommended changes to the strategy; which is effectively what I’m trying to do. I ascribed that ability to basic talent and her training in history, a combination that limits the odds of transferring the skill to many others (including me), but as Sally often says, the most basic assumptions should routinely be tested.

I plan to ask Maura tomorrow if she has any suggestions for making her skill transferable. If she doesn’t, then I’ll ask her to share the story that she sees in the strategy.

Reality Check

Will highlights something I consider a huge issue with creating a survivable future: making it relatable to the majority of people so they can make decisions on their own. Simulations and writing are part of my approach to teaching myself and sharing the results with others as part of a grand - if not always explicit - collaboration where I learn from them too. 

PEAK Assessment

TIME TO STRATEGY EXECUTION: 63 DAYS

Saturday, Ambassador Lazlo ordered Maura (and through her, me) to “stop questioning decisions that have already been made” and to “continue dedicating all resources to preparation for strategy execution” with the immediate focus on enabling the public to make useful environmental impact assessments. I felt a little less anxious knowing that Sally was almost certainly under the same orders.

“You know what we want you to do, right?” Maura asked me after the call ended in the Boulder field office’s main conference room. 

On the table was a box that had just arrived from the Q.A. base facility. “Try out the Personal Environmental Assessment Kit as if I’m a member of the public.”

She nodded. “You’re the closest thing to a real user that we’ve got on the team, except you know what we’re already getting from the test communities,” which she was kindly reminding me had been the motivation for Friday’s assignment.

“How will you know if I’m getting it right?” I asked.

“I’ll be there with you, recording everything.”

“Where should we go?” I expected some kind of detailed plan for a test, especially one as critical as this one.

Her answer was a total surprise: “Anywhere. It’s up to you.” She laughed at my reaction. “Don’t worry! The communities are testing the PEAK under more controlled conditions.”

I opened the box and set its contents on the table: a folded backpack, a hardbound book, and a set of smaller boxes marked Air, Land, Water, Built, and General. Beside me, Maura was now wearing a pair of thick glasses which I assumed had an embedded camera and microphone. “They turned this around pretty quick,” I said, suspecting the materials in the kit were made using the state-of-the-art 3D printer that occupies one room of our facility.

It took more than an hour to familiarize myself with the book and everything in the boxes, commenting on each so my reactions could be analyzed either later or in real time by Sally. The whole thing reminded me of a child’s toy science lab, with lenses for magnifying close-up or at a distance, rulers and a makeshift sextant, optical filters to check air quality, and porous filters to check water and soil quality. Masks, gloves, and cleaning gear were also included along with a special “biosafing” solution that was advertised as a means of neutralizing potentially dangerous compounds for safe storage in biologically sensitive areas (for the record, I openly doubted that it was anything more than high-tech snake oil).

I filled the backpack and we took a hike along a trail adjacent to the field office site. The book’s ecosystem guide seemed correct to me as I took a set of measurements described as a “basic assessment” and wrote the results on a foldout page formatted as a calendar. Several aspects of the process were problematic in my view, not least being the logging procedure. I duly marked our position on a makeshift map created using instructions in the book while Maura recorded the accurate position using the GPS in her phone. Later, we attracted a crowd of onlookers as I took a much more limited set of measurements on a bench in the middle of downtown.

We visited TC-013 yesterday and compared notes with Lei Kaleo, who noted several additional issues that were specific to her local environment, and then stopped at other random places to take more measurements. A trip around Denver today finished my tryout of the kit, focusing entirely on urban environments around the city.

“It’s going to require a major redesign,” Maura reported to Lazlo this afternoon. “Sally and the team have enough information from us and the test communities to have a new design ready for review by Wednesday, with trials starting Friday at the latest. Also, Will has a suggestion I think we should consider.”

“Not a change in anything else we’re doing, I hope,” Lazlo said.

Ignoring her acid tone, I said, “It looks to me like we’re ignoring the most important variable of all, and maybe the easiest to measure: the people-to-nature ratio.”

There was a pause. “That’s because it doesn’t fall in the category of environmental assessment. Besides, it can probably be derived from some of the other measurements.”

“Maybe, but you have a great opportunity to check it directly, and get direct feedback from people about how it affects them. Maybe the data can be used to calibrate the people to be test instruments themselves and help them get ideas of their own about what to do.”

“We can’t afford any change in scope at this point in the project,” Lazlo said after a longer pause.

“But…” I began.

“It’s not an option,” she said, and ended the call. I suspected my stint with WICO might be close to ending too.

Reality Check

As I helped my father develop new ways to teach math while in my teens and twenties, we reveled in searching for simple, low-tech solutions to complex problems. Our main goal was to enable anyone to find their own solutions; and applying the approach to math, one of humanity’s greatest tools, was an obvious means to that end. He invented quite a few tools in the process, often out of easily obtainable materials like cardboard, which are inspirations for my vision of the Personal Environmental Assessment Kit.

The biosafing solution does not exist (which Will suspects). If it did, a lot of our problems could be solved. Here, it is a placeholder for something – or multiple somethings – else.

Friendly Interrogation

TIME TO STRATEGY EXECUTION: 67 DAYS

“You’re way too focused on downscalin’us, Miss Riddick,” Al Menzies said over dinner as part of a far-ranging discussion last night at his house in Boulder. Maura had just been informed that she wouldn’t have anything to review for another day, so we weren’t in a rush to leave. Al added defiantly, “There’re a lotta people who need to upscale!”

She tightly squeezed my hand under the table, surprising me as much as the calmness in her voice when she answered. “The crap, as you call it, is mostly ours. We created it and we live in it. We have the tools, and the responsibility, to clean it up.”

 “Good point.” He grinned, having just given her his greatest compliment. Beside him as he faced us was a hardcopy of the latest global strategy, sticky notes protruding from more than half its pages. I suspected that he could summarize every one of them from memory. “What do your test subjects in, oh, Indonesia have to say ‘bout all this?”

Maura closed her eyes, and I felt a warm peacefulness envelop me as her grip relaxed. “They know that in many ways they are in a microcosm of the world,” she said, “facing pollution and land degradation as a result of industrial growth and natural hazards that have already pushed two-thirds of them into a state of collapse.” She opened her eyes and released my hand. “Now that the strategy has been improved and better explained, they see it as generally helpful and are providing valuable feedback about how it can be specifically implemented.”

“I’m sorry, but that sounds like pure boilerplate talkin’ points. Are they usin’ the same measurement and reportin’ protocols as everyone else?” Before she could answer, he added, “And does ‘collapse’ mean the same thing there as it does here?”

“Yes, and yes,” she answered bluntly. “We built and calibrated most of the basic capabilities during the biosphere assessment, and then expanded them to cover the remaining variables with multiple checks for reliable acquisition and interpretation of data. Of course, we can supplement the suite as conditions and interest warrant. Our main project now is to create a subset that everyone can use to get useful information, share it, and quickly know what it means.”

Al sat back, a mix of confusion and admiration on his face. “Are you sure you’re a historian and not an engineer?”

“She’s more than both those things,” I said, recalling the training as an enforcement officer that goes into becoming a special agent for the Extinction Response Unit which I learned about yesterday. “You didn’t tell her that you’ve got colleagues doing environmental research all around there, Al.”

“What do they think about what we’re doing?” Maura asked him.

“Like me, they figger humans survivin’ past mid-century will be like hittin’ a blade of grass with a dart from the moon, even with your cybercritter Sally callin’ the shots.”

“It’s going to be a pretty big dart,” she said.

“We’ll see, we’ll see.”

Caleb Tosner called Maura early this morning with two candidates for what he insisted on calling a “personal environmental assessment kit” or PEAK. I offered to pick her up at her parents’ house, but she insisted on joining me at the WICO field office after she had reviewed the designs on her own and met with Felicity Jonas at USERU. In the meantime, I was to get fully acquainted with WICO’s reporting protocols as practiced in the Rocky Mountain area.

We both ended up taking most of the day to accomplish our objectives. When we finally met, Maura briefed me and the personnel in Boulder about her choice for the PEAK, and I described what I think is a critical flaw in the reporting protocols that I’m sure we’ll be discussing into the night.

Reality Check

Maura’s description of Indonesia is based on a simulation I did using publicly available statistics (below), along with some basic research about the nation.

The “flaw” that Will discovered is based on an insight I had while analyzing the results of the simulation.

Feedback

TIME TO STRATEGY EXECUTION: 74 DAYS

Yesterday, results from a year-long test at thirty sites around the world were received and are being integrated into the global strategy. The sites are essentially very large greenhouses that simulate the effects of reducing ecological impact on self-sustained warming and polluting mechanisms like those currently threatening our planet. Details of the observations are also being used to identify methods that can decelerate and potentially “disconnect” the underlying feedback loops.

Sally generated several new versions of the Hope Chart. None of them showed full success, as defined by the leveling off of total resources and corresponding constant population that was a fixture of the previous versions. At best, our demise was delayed by several decades when following the original approach of reducing our ecological impact over the next twenty years.

“The lowering of direct impact was always about buying time to fill in those TBDs,” Maura said at a mid-morning team briefing. “Now we have a better idea how big the gap is. While Sally and the development team work on updating the strategy, our focus will be on designing tests and observation protocols that can be performed by virtually anybody to both supplement global awareness and inform local supporting activity. Feel free to use all the test sites, and provide any and all feedback to Sally for assessment and distribution to the other teams as she deems appropriate.”

Later, as we sat in her office developing an action plan for me to follow, she gave me some positive feedback. “Your creativity ideas are going to be particularly relevant now. Everyone has to be engaged, a lot of them as naturalists identifying what’s important to concentrate on and how actions will impact their local environments, both artificial and natural. That takes a level of dedication that comes from having a personal stake in the process as well as the outcome. I’ve seen you do that every day, and I’d like you to think more about how to share it.”

Reality Check

I created a new simulation of interactions between a global population and three contributors to a decrease in total resources available for consumption. The contributors are represented in the Hope Chart as low, medium, and high warming based on extrapolation of the non-linear component of historical data. Curve fits to graphs of cumulative total consumption vs. projected warming were used to approximate the effect of lowering total consumption.

Following is one of the Hope Charts I created with the new simulation:

Maura’s pep talk reflects what I’ve been telling myself lately, and its content mirrors a similar approach I practiced when I was active in the community of amateur astronomers.

Tradeoffs

TIME TO STRATEGY EXECUTION: 76 DAYS

My suggestion to reframe the strategy as the creation of a new world fell flat with my team and the top leadership of STRIDE, much as it did with Sally. Maura has been privately supportive, but her position as head of the new Quality Assurance team doesn’t give her any latitude to oppose official policy.

Since the presentation about the end-state, I have been developing a list of issues and questions that I think should be addressed either in the strategy or with the public during its rollout. At the top of the list is the need for a straightforward explanation of why the population and consumption projections have changed radically since the reference strategy was released in January.

Sally offered to help me with that explanation after reassuring me that it wouldn’t slow her other work, and then began with what sounded like one of her rules. “The main thing to remember is that wants and needs are always in competition for resources. That applies to systems where resources are limited, and to systems where they appear unlimited; because speed of access will always be limited, and what is valued most can always change.”

“By ‘needs’ do you mean population?” I asked.

“In terms of resources, they are the same,” she confirmed. “If needs can’t be met then death will result; therefore, the amount of resources used for needs is proportional to the population.”

“So, there’s basically a tradeoff between people and what they consume beyond their basic needs, what protects them, makes them happy, and helps them have more kids who can survive long enough to take care of themselves.”

“Correct,” she said, “subject to individual preferences and capabilities, as well as constraints imposed by the environment such as availability of resources and competition by others.”

I thought I saw where she was leading. “You’re implying that one or all of those things has significantly changed over the past three months.”

“What can be inferred about them, yes.”

“Could you have been misled by the loss of data when the servers crashed?” If so, then the initial projections were more trustworthy than what came later.

“The loss of data is a problem, but the difference has been confirmed in analysis of observations and test results acquired after the crash.”

I suddenly thought of Maura and the work she did to predict initial conditions when the strategy is executed. She must have seen this coming, which explained her lack of surprise.

There was one other possibility I felt compelled to explore. “Did the new analysis uncover a flaw in the original analysis?”

Sally’s reply was delayed by several seconds, a sign of embarrassment that must have felt like an eternity to her. “There is a significant probability that the original analysis underestimated the effect of declining resources on both population and the distribution of quality of life.”

I imagined the Hope Chart with the supply of resources being maintained by the effects of our reduction in population and consumption over the next twenty years. When we stop and level off, then the supply will drop to some level that other species can maintain above what we’re using. During that drop there should be no effect on us; but if I understood Sally correctly, there will be an effect that depends both on the remaining resources and how much people value needs and wants. The new data must have indicated that wants will be valued more than needs, resulting in fewer people at the end.

Sally agreed with this assessment when I shared it with her. “The alternative would be for a majority of people to live in perpetual collapse and high wealth inequality, similar to the present situation but with the average person barely meeting the basic needs of survival. They would much rather risk dying so they can be part of a smaller population living much better than that.”

Reality Check

Sally’s explanation for the population difference is fictional cover for an actual flaw I found in January’s simulation prior to writing this post. The description of the relationships and behaviors of the underlying variables is consistent with the current simulation and my interpretation of what it means.

Simulation with low population, high consumption:

High population, low consumption:

Dream Job

TIME TO STRATEGY EXECUTION: 87 DAYS

Lazlo set aside today for a briefing by Sally to all of STRIDE on the status and content of the current version of the global strategy. Following are some highlights.

“There are three types of problems we must solve simultaneously within the next twenty years: cultural, ecological, and physical. The cultural problems involve just humans, and relate to values, population, and consumption. Ecological problems center on the ability of other species to survive and thrive in healthy ecosystems that maintain conditions of global habitability subject to physical constraints, whose variability represents the third type of problem. The order of presentation for these problem types is the same as the order of difficulty in solving them, with the amount of difficulty increasing by about an order of magnitude for each.

“Every problem type has its own section in the strategy, with another section devoted to the relationships between each of them. Another section provides an integrated timeline of actions, events, and expected status for each system and capability of interest, which can be updated dynamically based on observations during execution. The final section is a combination summary and operator manual that enables all users to determine appropriate action at least eighty percent of the time based on their local conditions. Separately provided is educational material that includes baseline knowledge and concepts for all users.

“The amount of completion for each section ranges from eleven to eighty-six percent. Cumulatively, the strategy is sixty-three percent complete with eighty-two percent confidence in quality. Reconstruction of lost databases using cached data that was not on the sabotaged servers is now at fifty-six percent, which has forced creation of an annex to the strategy that provides for collection and analysis of needed data on a real-time basis from now through the end of the execution timeline. Projections of success that include estimated uncertainty currently range from twenty-one to fifty-eight percent.”

Sally displayed several graphs during the presentation, along with status summaries from each group within STRIDE. From what I understood, they all supported her story, mostly adding detail to each identified problem and what could or might be done about it.

“What did you think?” Riddick asked me as we sat in her office after the presentation. She looked the same way I felt: tired, overwhelmed, and somewhat depressed.

“If there wasn’t so much at stake, I’d start looking for another planet to live on. This place is too far gone.”

“Starting fresh,” she said, staring at the ceiling. “That’s not a new thought. It’s also a very reasonable one. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people here who wouldn’t get to go.” She closed her eyes and yet they kept moving.

“Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?” I asked tentatively.

“Sure,” she said without moving.

“What’s the deal with what you’re doing now? Forgive me if this sounds crude, but it looks like you’re watching a movie inside your head.”

She smiled and opened her eyes. “No apology necessary. I love honest questions.”

“So?”

She leaned over and stared at me. “What does this feel like?”

All I could see was her eyes, and a swirl of peaceful thoughts began replacing the ones that threatened to destroy my sanity. I struggled to summarize what was emerging, and couldn’t help but smile back. “It’s almost as if I’m in a different world.”

“When you see me like that, I am in a different world.”

She sounded crazy, but in a good way. “It must be nice,” was all I could say.

“Would you like to talk about your future now?” she asked, sitting back and breaking the mood.

“Sure.” I assumed she was talking about the fact that my mission here was done.

She pressed a button on her computer and familiar face appeared on the screen. “What do you think, Sally?”

For a second it looked like they were the same person, and then the differences returned. “Will is a great friend.” She turned to me. “You are a great friend. We wouldn’t be here without you.” I sensed a “but” coming. “I think… we need someone looking over our shoulders, asking the odd questions, questioning assumptions we didn’t know we were making.”

“You’re pretty good at that, yourself,” I told her, recalling her personal survival strategy.

“I agree,” Riddick said, and grasped my hand. “Call me Maura from now on, after you write about this.” She paused and said to Sally, “I’ll recommend to Samantha that we keep the current arrangement after his testimony.”

“In case I screw up,” I said reflexively, but Maura took no offense.

Reality Check

Numbers listed are all fictional, including the estimates of required effort for the problem types which are ballpark at best.

Sally’s version of Will’s job description matches what I would write for my dream job, for which I am available. 

To be continued on Tuesday…