Matus1976 - Philosophy, Science, Politics,Art

James Lovelock, a father of the modern environmentalist / green movement, is now a strong and outspoken advocate of Nuclear power.  In a recent SONE (Supporters of Nuclear Energy) podcast, Lovelock expands on the benefits of Nuclear power and chides the modern green movement for being based so strongly on scaring people about cancer even though today people live longer than ever before and cancer rates (when adjusted for age) continue to decrease.

The Earth itself, Lovelock says, is actually the left over debris of a giant nuclear explosion.  Planets form from the debris of supernovae explosions, where stars, exhausting too much of their nuclear fuel, explode in sudden bursts of energy that outshine galaxies.  The uranium and heavy elements the earth is made of was formed from these explosions.  The implication being that, to be afraid of ‘nuclear’ power in general, but for ‘the earth, is to ignore the very evolution of the Earth and its natural ties to Nuclear reactions.

Lovelock warns that as global warming gets worse, no rational person ought to oppose nuclear power in the face of these global environmental changes.  I would argue, in fact, that the modern green movement is largely responsible, to whatever degree it is actually occuring, for global warming, because they elevated a completely irrational fear of nuclear power and thus drove the United States to be almost wholly dependant on oil and coal.  It has, in fact, been *illegal* to build a nuclear reactor in this country since the Carter administration.  Thus dependance on foreign oil has also funded the murderous dictatorships of the middle east and bred the terrorist that now threaten the western world.

“I think we need nuclear power, urgently, and soon” warns Lovelock.  What of Nuclear waste?  Lovelock laughs in this interview, and says “I have offered to store nuclear waste in my backyard, because I know that in a proper storage container in a concrete pit there is no danger, and in fact I could run a pipe into the ground to pick up the exceess heat”  Lock notes that these the waste from nuclear power is one of it’s greatest benefits because there is so little of it!  Think of the invisible mountains, hundreds of cubic miles, of CO2 that is produced from the combustion of fossil fuels, compared to 10’s of cubic meters from a nuclear plant.  

Natural gas, he notes, though it produces less than half the amount of CO2 through combustion, is often in practice much work because, as a gas, it is piped through lines and industry standards are around 4% for leakage rates, but methane, a primary component of natural gas, is over 25 times worse as a green house gas than CO2 is.  The gas that leaks out is worse than burning the original fuel.

As I expand on in me Nuclear vs Coal essay, new nuclear technologies are even safer and impossible to melt down, and fast breeder reactors can create over 100 times the power existing reactors can, and can be used to consume their own waste.  A handful of these kinds of reactors could power the entire United States.

If you care about the health and well being about yourself and the people on the Earth, nuclear power is the way to go.  If you think Global Warming is a big issue than Nuclear power is also the best possible choice.  If you want cheap, safe, reliable electricity, Nuclear power is also still the way to go.
 

Nuclear Power vs Coal Power
http://matus1976.blogsome.com/2006/06/09/nuclear-power-vs-coal-power/

"Liberty and Freedom, you can make a distinction between them.  Liberty perhaps being political rights, freedom; not being enslaved.  The ancient Athenian had only one word "Eleuthera"  …and to him it was the noblest and defining character of his nation.  To be free." – J. Rufus Fears – “The History of Freedom” Lecture series.

Pop culture is often a reflection of predominant philosophical themes.  By the widespread use of an idea or phrasing we can often discern some of the philosophical attitudes of people that partake in these particular cultural expressions.  They are of course never 100% accurate, and sometimes poor philosophical ideas are obfuscated and intentionally hidden to be presented to the mainstream culture.  But in this general regard, there is a popular song by 3 Doors Down which contains the line “So you call this your free country, Tell me why it costs so much to live” and it reflects, I believe, a popular cultural sentiment.  This line and sentiment infuriates me for a variety of reasons, the most important being that it wantonly confuses contradictory definitions of the word “Freedom”. 

Freedom obviously has many different uses, for the purposes of this essay I will discuss the four predominant ones in English.  To start with, one definition is being free from oppression (that is, no threat of having people force you to do something against your will) and another is Free as in ‘without cost’.  Different languages use entirely different words to say these different concepts, it is only the fact that the English language uses this same word to mean a couple different things that this line is possible, and consequently that is even has a chance of trying to make the point it tries to make (that it should cost nothing to live) and that perhaps this language quirk is a major reason why this cultural sentiment exists at all, since it is superficially ‘clever’. 

To illustrate why this is a fallacious way of thinking, let me use that exact same reversal of definitions of the word “Freedom” in a different context to illustrate how completely egregious it is to mix those two definitions conceptually.  Consider the following statement.

“Of course I think black men should be free, everyone ought to have one”

Such is the betrayal of freedom (from oppression) that is permitted by mixing those definitions. 

Being free from oppression is absolutely not the same thing as being free from cost, and ironically insisting that something be free from cost actually destroys freedom from oppression.  Life, and existing, does have a cost, and it always will.  That cost is food and water primarily, shelter secondarily, and health and medical care lastly.  When we are hungry, we can not make food fall from the sky and into our mouths just by wishing it to.  That food must be grown or killed, collected, processed, transported to us, and prepared for consumption.  Every step of this process is complex and consumes a great deal of effort and time which other people have to put in.  Whenever someone demands free (from cost) food, they are demanding that all of people, the farmers, packagers, truckers, train operators and tractor builders, fuel processors, grocery stores, etc, work for them without pay in order to provide that food free from cost. 

We can not wish a heated home with running water into existence; such a thing requires the material and intellectual effort of literally thousands of people.  Should everyone be provided with a heated home with running water for free (without cost)?  To insist such a thing means that the thousands of laborers, builders, designers, carpenters, plumbers, contractors, etc do this work without pay. 

Similarly, when we insist on free medical care, we are advocating every single medical practitioner, researcher, innovator, nurse and health aide to work for us to provide us these things for free without paying them anything. 

Now let me be clear, I think as many people as possible ought to have the best health care, education, shelter and food possible.  But under absolutely no circumstances is it right to advocate forced enslavement of people to provide these things.  Each and every one of us has a right, fundamentally, to our own life, is it ours to live freely as we choose.  No one else has any right to dictate to us or enslave us, and similarly we have no right to do that to anyone else.  No one has a right to tell a farmer forcibly what he should charge for his food when it was his own mind, effort, and labor which produced it.  No one has a right to tell a doctor what to charge for his services, his abilities are the product of his own effort and mind and they are not owned by anyone but himself.  To force him, implicitly at the end of a gun, to charge no more than a certain amount for his services, is to tell him everyone but himself is the actual owner of his abilities; and as such his life.  He is enslaved to everyone.  He is a slave who is the property of “the people”

In fact, demanding a *right* to anything that is the result of someone else’s labor or mind means that the people who make those things have no rights.  There can be NO RIGHTS in a society which demands the enslavement of all the producers and providers.  No one EVER has a right to enslave.  A right can not be just when it comes from the enslavement of everyone else, or even one single person.  If you have a right to free from cost medical care, enforced by your government, it means you have a right to enslave the providers of medical care.  If you have a right to education, it means you have a right to enslave the providers and producers of education.  If you have a right to food, it means you have a right to enslave the producers and distributors of that food.  This right to enslave is a founding element of socialism and communism, and no free from oppression society can be founded with the right to enslave embedded into its framework.

When we talk then about being free from cost, we are talking about a particular kind of freedom, which I will call material freedom. Material freedom is the acquisition of material goods with no cost to the person who has acquired them. Contrast this then to what I will call Political Freedom.  Political Freedom is freedom from being forced to do something against your will by another person.  These are the two types of freedom that are confused in the lyrics mentioned previously and in the popular cultural sentiment as well.

That life has a cost; the actions and efforts to sustain it, and thus could never be free (unless technology like nanotechnology literally renders food and shelter as cheap as dirt) conjures up the implicit idea from mixing these definitions of freedom; that the cost of living is similar to political oppression.  That needing to work to live to provide yourself food and shelter in order to survive is no different than being forced by a captor as a slave laborer under the threat of torture and death.  There is a tremendous distinction between these.  Needing to partake in physical labor in order to acquire the material needs for survival is a consequence of physical reality and the laws of physics.  We can not continue to exist merely by wishing to.  We must act.  All life requires a particular series of actions to be sustained, and every single person on this planet lives by only one of two means; providing that material existence for themselves, or looting or stealing the material means of survival from someone else.  Needing to get permission from a dictator to live is a far different thing than working to grow food or build housing, or working to freely trade with someone to acquire those things.  Blurring the distinction between the two in any way serves to perpetuate dictatorial rule, as it then can be hidden behind the guise of the ‘natural’ difficulties inherent in life.  If the cost of living is similar to political oppression, than the fact that life requires action and effort means that political oppression must also be a part of life and dodging a dictators noose is as natural a component of survival as toiling in a field is.  Who is it then that benefits most from convincing you that the lack of material freedom is the same as the lack of political freedom? Well those who seek to politically enslave you of course, or that seek to ally with you to enslave someone else under the banner of ‘rights’

The idea that needing to provide yourself the material necessities of life is a violation of freedom brings up a third common definition for freedom.  I call this freedom Metaphysical Freedom.  Metaphysical freedom is literal freedom of volition, it is the ability to do anything you want instantly with no effort just by wishing it, whether that is transporting yourself instantly to another continent or planet, or insisting that you do not need food to live.

Metaphysical freedom has limitations placed on it as well, and just like Material Freedom being confused with Political freedom, Metaphysical freedom is also often confused with Political Freedom.  In fact the lack of Material Freedom is a consequence of the limitations forced onto us in regards to our Metaphysical Freedoms.  Those limitations are, of course, the laws of physics.  Life requires energy to sustain it, it requires action and effort to acquire the fuel for the energy and a perpetual and directed course of action intended to further that life.  The laws of physics do not allow us to survive without eating, to work forever without rest or food, or to get a better life merely by wishing it.  No one has Metaphysical Freedom, and probably no one ever will, though advances in technology will get us closer and closer to a pure metaphysical like freedom, we will likely always still require energy and effort to survive.  Insisting though, that life should have no cost to it, that cost being food, shelter, and medicine, is an affront to the restrictions placed by the universe on our metaphysical freedoms.  It is screaming to nature in frustration that you must follow her rules.  It is screaming because your car wont start, or your investment failed, or you lover no longer loves you back.  It is throwing a childish tantrum at reality, it is unproductive, useless, and nothing less than ignorant savagery.  When you fail at a task or something happens to make your life more difficult, you have not been frustrated by a malevolent universe out to perpetuate human suffering and misery, you have instead corrected a misconception you held about the nature of the universe.  Nature and reality exist and function in particular ways, to prosper as physical beings in a material world requires us to understand and follow the rules of material existence, not whine and wail when things do not go the way of our whims and conjur up flawed philosophical notions of metaphysical freedom.   

The restrictions placed on our metaphysical freedoms by the laws of nature lead us to our final definition of freedom which I will discuss in this essay, Physical Freedom.  Physical Freedom is the literal freedom of action, to move about, to speak, to do things, to work, to act on the physical world.  Yet again this additional definition of freedom is frequently confused with the political freedom from oppression and the freedom from cost of materials.  You might hear in conversations with anarchists that Physical Freedom ought to be identical to Political Freedom.  That is, everything you are physically able to do you should be allowed to do, this includes physically brutalizing and oppressing another person.  After all, if the police prevent you from oppressing someone they are in fact restricting your freedoms, but in this case they are restricting your Physical Freedoms, they are not restricting your Political Freedoms.  Is it any wonder than whose interest is served by blurring the distinction between Political Freedom and Physical Freedom?  Again if infringing on your ‘right’ to assault someone is an assault on freedom, than it is only those who advocate dictatorial or tyrannical rule who seek to call a system where anyone can do anything to anyone else as long as he is physically able to do it, Free.  This is not Freedom in any meaningful political sense of the term.

The lack of distinction of Physical Freedom from Political Freedom often leads hardcore egalitarians and socialists to proclaim that the laws of physics themselves are a form of oppression, which of course is the only logical implication of any statement that derides the fact that it costs effort to live by providing food, and to have to deal with the physical realities of nature is a form of cruel oppression, and the people able to understand and overcome nature owe it to the people who are not able or willing, and owe it to them specifically because they are not able or willing, to shield them from the difficulties of physical existence.  To make the world soft, coddling, padded, welcoming and free from anything remotely damaging to the fragile egos of these solipsists. 

To summarize then, the four types of Freedom are:

Material Freedom – free from cost, cost as labor or effort or money
Physical Freedom – a literal freedom of action and movement, constrained only by the laws of physics
Metaphysical Freedom – literal volitional freedom unrestrained by the laws of physics, being able to do absolutely anything you wish instantly without effort.  Includes being free from being forced to do something against your will by the laws of nature.  Metaphysical freedom is a philosophical impossibility.
Political Freedom – Freedom from being forced to do something against your will by someone else. 

Because of the nature of Material Freedom (that of being free from any cost or effort at acquiring the material necessities for life) any advancement in Material Freedom, when provided by government decree, necessarily bears a zero sum relationship with Political Freedom, You can not have a right to your own life if everyone else does.  Any material good that is provided, that the government says everyone has a *right* to must come from the material products and effort of other people, and as such those others must be forced to work, i.e. enslaved, to provide those goods and services.  If you say “I have a right to education” you are saying you have a right to force others to provide you with education, a right to enslave them.  Thus, political figures like Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Robert Mugabe, etc, operating under the guise of freedom are in fact seeking to forcibly enslave the majority of the population. 

Is it no wonder then that every single communist nation in existence has always forbidden leaving the country?  Is this not the ultimate expression of not having a right to your own life?  People are not politically free in these nations, they are merely a physical tool whose only purpose is to attempt to provide equal material freedom to everyone else.  Nations which do not allow people to freely leave them do not even deserve the respect of being called nations, and instead should be referred to as they truly are, prisons.  Dictators and rulers of these nations, the worst of which are North Korea, Cuba, Laos, Vietnam; are in fact literal hostage takers.  These nations operate under the flawed idealistic premise of material freedom as the end goal, and as a consequence have absolutely no political freedoms and are brutally oppressive, poor, and painful to live in.

Conversely, any advances in Political Freedom (including both economic and civil, which really should not be distinguished) lead directly to advances in Material Freedom, that is allowing people to rule their own lives and to discover and invent of their own accord, leads to the greatest advancements possible to man and thus the greatest reduction in the effort required to survive, implicitly speeding toward Material Freedom, though never quite completely reaching it.

I am a strong proponent of Political Freedom, that is, A life without oppression from other people.  I am a strong advocate of Physical Freedom but only when it does not lead to restrictions on Political Freedom; anyone can do anything they want as long as they do not assault person or property of others.  I am adamantly against Material freedom when it comes from the enslavement of the material production of those able to produce useful things, but completely for it when the free and voluntary exchange of these useful things results in people making the world an easier and more pleasant place for them to exist. 

Thus, a just government would defend at all costs Political freedom both civil and economic, allow Physical Freedoms where they do not conflict with Political Freedoms, and necessarily progress more toward Material Freedom than any controlled or centralized government because of the advances made from innovators and producers which reduce the material cost of everything man needs to survive.  Such a government should include a constitutional separation of church and state *as well as* a constitutional separation of business and state.  While an initial incarnation of it might require taxation to sustain itself in order to provide basic infrastructure, national self defense, protect civil liberties, enforce rule of law, and final arbitration in matters of dispute, eventually a streamlined system could work on voluntary fee based system alone.  Laws would allow individuals to do virtually anything they wanted as long as it did not infringe on someone else’s rights, or assault them physically or economically.  Prisons would contain only violent criminals.  The society would be wealthy, politically free, physically free, continually approach material freedom providing for wonderful, long, healthy lives for its inhabitants. 

But when we confuse the meanings of Freedoms we open ourselves up to promulgating dictatorial rule in the name of an abstract and harmful ideal of ‘freedom’ which is in fact a literal enslavement of the vast majority of the population.  Words are the only means by which we can convey ideas and as such are extremely powerful tools, we must always choose our words wisely and there is no more important area to be aware of the meanings of words than when it is in regards to the freedom (political and physical) of sentient beings.      

They pretend an object is not what it really is.
In the hopes it will not be that which it always is.
Imagination, it seems to them, is meant to be absurd.
They use a gun instead of reason to make their voices heard.
 
They won’t come to ever see how their morals shape reality, the only end they care to see is violent: forced equality.
 
They pretend your mind is something that belongs to them.
It’s only meant to serve all those whose needs are still not met.
Self-destruction is, to them, a means that serves an end.
Self sacrifice and immolation make the best of men.
 
They won’t come to ever see starvation comes from equity, if equal men are made by force, they turn the best into the worst.
They pretend that you’ll provide under the yoke of force.
Their need the right to claim all you have made and force out more.
They pretend that they won’t starve without a working mind.
And they wont see where they end up is where they wished to find.
 
They won’t come to ever see their morals shape reality, the only end they care to see is violent: forced equality

 – Thosquanta lyrics

 ———————

In the late 50’s as Chairman Mao Ze Dong solidified power in "Revolutionary China" he sought to increase the standing of China on the international scene.  To do this, China had to sell it’s primary domestic product; food.  Of course in China most people producing food consumed the food they were producing.  The communist party of China issued new orders and directives, every bit of food produced by the population would be ‘given’ to the government, who would then re-distribute it according to who needed it, or rather, according to what would benefit the oppressive rulers the most.  Mao’s ruling part of China began a campaign to become one of the world’s largest agricultural exporters.  Farmers were forced to hand over at gun point the food they were growing while they were starving.  Where they were producing more than enough food for themselves and others, now there was not even enough food to feed the population of China.  People were literally working themselves to death growing and collecting their own food, and being forced to give it away.  Millions and millions of people starved to death.  In all, historians estimate, about 35 million Chinese peasants starved to death during this period in the absolute worst human famine to have ever occurred, yet few today know about it.

This famine was not cause by droughts or freezes, but instead by a controlled economy in the hands of a murderous dictator, in fact all of the famines experienced in the 20th century were at the hands of controlled economies

Additionally Communist party members were fans of an "alternative" science, brought about by philosophical Dialectical materialism, which asserts all growth comes from conflict, among other bad ideas, and also abandons the mechanism of heredity, genetics, in favor of a deadly Marxist pseudoscience, Lysenkoism.  Lysenko and his poor science caused the famines in the Soviet Union which killed tens of millions of people, and many of these policies, despite these spectacular failures, were adopted in China promulgating Mao’s famine.  Later, when adopted in Cambodia, Ethiopio, and North Korea, all produced still more man-made famines.  The lysenko ideas including ‘conditioning’ seeds to grow in cold weather by dunking them in cold water, forcing peasants to bury seedlings much deeper, and forcing peasants to cover fields with 5 times as many seeds as a field could support, on the theory that similar plants do not compete with each other for resources.

You can read more on these dreadful policies here
http://www.overpopulation.com/faq/health/hunger/famine/chinese_famine.html

Beyond that, Communist party members sought to make China a world player on the industrial scene in the world and desired to capitalize on their greatest resource; manpower from physical labor.  Tens of millions of farmers and peasants were ordered to leave their productive farms and build small communal "steel refractories" these refractories resembled termite mounds more than steel production furnaces and produced steel that looked more like animal droppings earning it a nickname in kind.

The single major change which ended this dreadful famine was when farmers were again allowed to produce food as they saw fit, and while they still had to provide a large quota to the government, they were allowed to keep any excess they grew and sell it.  Within 5 years agricultural output in China, from 1960 – 1965, almost tripled.  Production continued to climb until Chairman Mao regained much of the power he lost and instituted a "cultural revolution" where anyone eductated in the ways of the west was executed, again agriculture production plummeted as the people responsible for the radical increase were sent to prison camps or outright executed as "counter revolutionaries"  Millions of educated Chinese fled the country, and chances are if you are in a western country and have some Chinese friends, their parents most likely fled the cultural revolution.

Read more here is as well
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/319/7225/1619

Many people in western nations have a hard time believing such statistics, assuming by de-facto that governments tend to operate well and for the benefit of the people.  But government encroachment into markets does not bring about equality, increased standards of living, or a general betterment of society, it always plummets toward ineptitude, corruption, and inefficiencies.  .  No bureaucrat can ever respond quickly enough to rapidly changing climate and markets to get the food where it is needed, only the independent and rapid decisions of the millions of producers and distributors are capable of adjusting with lighting rapidity to great strains on products.  Any politician who controls immense swaths of the economy is immediately open to corruption, where the currency de jour is not product superiority but instead influence and bribery.  To the extent at which governments interfere in markets is the extent to which people in those nations suffer harder, shorter, more painful lives, and to the extent to which nations let free people make free decisions and produce the goods they desire of their own accord, and trade with each other of their own free will, is the extent to which a nation and it’s people prosper and live longer, healthier, happier lives as a whole.

Check out my updated essay "Humanity Needs an Insurance Policy" on AssociatedContent.com

Humanity Needs an Insurance Policy
Is Self Destruction from the Rapid Growth of Technology the Answer to the Fermi Paradox?
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/137048/humanity_needs_an_insurance_policy.html

Today, December 8th, is the anniversary of John Lennon’s death. He was shot and killed on December 8th, 1980.  It’s too bad for 4.5 million Vietnamese people that he wasn’t killed about 10 years earlier.  Shocking and offensive?  Yes.  True?  Yes.   No I don’t hate John Lennon because he ‘broke up the beetles’ (couldn’t care less) some of his music I enjoy and some I very much dislike (Imagine is hardly more than a catchy communist manifesto) but what I really dislike about John Lennon was that he helped to end the US Involvement in Vietnam, not only helped but played a significant role in that, and subsequently changed the political tide in the US to one of abandonment.  The 80 million people of Vietnam were left to rot and to be enslaved by the Soviet backed communists of Vietnam, who ended up killing 2 million people and then moved on to Cambodia to commit the single worst genocide as a percentage of population the world has ever seen, taking millions of more lives.  Neighboring Laos fell to communism and remains communist to this day.  Vietnam is still an oppressive communist hell hole today, and is ranked by Freedom House as one of the ten most oppressive nations on the planet.  

The Vietnam war helped to contain the global spread of communism. At the height of the Vietnam war more than half of the Soviet Unions global foreign aide was funneled into Vietnam. The Vietnam war delayed the spread of communism into many other nations around China, and drove a major wedge between Chinese communism and Soviet Communism, which remained until the collapse of the Soviet union.  The Vietnam war was not a war of expansionism or for tin or rubber, it was a war of the US and the Soviet Union fought in Vietnam. The people of Vietnam were the greatest victims in all of it, and the efforts of the United States, though often flawed and even sometimes flagrantly immoral, were to secure the people of South Vietnam from invasion by the soviet backed north. It was a war in defense of self determination and freedom.  

Was Lennon rallying for their cause? Did he, like sadly few other prominent Vietnam war protestors, latter change his mind and try to rally humanitarian support for Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia? Did he care to follow, as the years dragged on, what actually happened to Vietnam?  Did he care at all? Or did he, like most people, just bury his head in the sand, convince himself nothing bad would happen, and give himself a big ol pat on his back for his moral fortitude?

While the opposition to the draft was absolutely justified, it dominated only the early protests.  In the larger geopolitical context of the era, that of containing the spread of soviet communism, the Vietnam war was a justified war and was in our self interest. It is interesting to note that Nixon DID declare peace and end the war, and Kissinger and one of the generals of the North Vietnamese army received the Nobel Peace prize. The war was OVER and WON in early 1973. Nixon did not resign until more than a year after the war was over and won.

But of course the communist north disregarded the Paris peace accords and continually attacked South Vietnam. By May of 1973 there were no combat troops left in Vietnam and South Vietnam was more than capable of defending itself against the perpetual invasions launched by the north, it only required military material aide, just as we have provided with South Korea over the past 50 years. However the democratically controlled congress soon made it illegal to provide any aide, even only military aide, in Indochina, thus condemning the South Vietnamese to slaughter and communist imprisonment. In two years the Soviet backed north defeated the globally isolated defenses of the south, and Saigon fell in April of 1975. In the 6 months following the fall of Saigon more people were killed in Vietnam than were killed in the whole of the Vietnam war. In one particular incident more than 70,000 ‘boat people’ (refugees who had fled to the south china sea) were forced to drown at sea because neighboring nations did not want to deal with refugees. Note this was more than the number of Americans killed in the entire war. The North Vietnamese communists eventually spread communism to Laos and Cambodia, the latter of which committed one of the worst genocides in the history of mankind. Laos and North Vietnam are still incredibly brutal states today.  

The very vocal protests of people like Jane Fonda and John Lennon did a lot to raise public awareness of incredibly disingenuous over simplifications of a complex geo political situation, and probably directly influenced public opinion which eventually led to the callous disregard and abandonment of Vietnam. This abandonment led to the murders of nearly 4.5 million people throughout Indochina *after the war ended*. Defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory.  Where was Lennon, who allegedly cared about these people?

The opponents of the Vietnam war, after the draft was indeed, were almost entirely funded by global communist parties. At every step of the war the media perpetually reported inaccurately or with gross distortions. One infamous case was that of a South Vietnamese general executing a North Vietnamese prisoner, caught on camera. The South Vietnamese general was a close friend of the then prime minister of South Vietnam Nguyen Cao Ky, who has gone record stating that the general in question was the most honest general in the army. At one point he investigated some of Ky’s own family members for suspected corruption, and given the corruption in the previous administration this was a noble undertaken. Ky admired him and historically Ky is now considered one of the best prime ministers of South Vietnam. The man executed had just killed many members of the family of a friend of the generals and this was witnessed by the general himself. Yet the newspapers still labeled him as a ‘suspect’ The journalist who took the photo, and was later awarded a Pulitzer prize for it, later stated that it was the worse photo he took in his life and he wished he never had.  He knew how that incident was spun and was a major salient point in the changing of public opinion about the war in Vietnam, a public opinion strongly influenced by prominent figures of the protest community.  Consider also the Hue massacre, where the North Vietnamese communists killed over 4,000 civilians on the eve of one of Vietnam’s most important holidays, burying many in a mass grave still in the celebratory clothing. This massacre ran on page 5 of the New York Times. The Mai Lai Massacre, where US Soldiers killed over 100 civilians, was splashed on the front page of every newspaper. The bias was persistent and perpetual through the course of the war and did a lot to change public opinion enough to simply abandon Vietnam..

Did Lennon have a major influence on public opinion? I don’t know, how do we quantify such a thing? I think he did have a significant influence. Even so, I hold him responsible for his own direct actions and the ideas he promulgated, without even trying to assess how successful he was at promulgating them. Whether or not an advocate of oppression and slavery gets another person to believe his non sense does not change the fact that he is spewing very harmful nonsense and as such I can morally condemn him all I want, no matter how good I might thing is songs are.

Maybe Lennon didn’t have much of an influence, but one must still hold him morally accountable for the despicable things he preached. And we need to remember that we are all to willing to believe the things we want to believe in order to think the things we want to think. Do you convince yourself that Lennon had little influence so that you still get to like him because of his music?  Well that is very convenient.  What I often see when expressing this sentiment is people trying to convince themselves that even though he advocated, essentially, brutal enslavement and mass murder, that well he didn’t really have any major effect so they get to still like him because he made good music. Sorry, politics trumps good music especially when the musician uses the popularity he gained from being a good musician to make himself a political figure and then preaches horrendous politics.

I admit it is extremely difficult to determine the influence that a public figure like Lennon had on the populace, but given, as example, the adulation and respect still given to him this day, even when he openly supported one of the most brutal regimes to walk on the face of this planet, it’s clear his influence was strong and long lasting. If he had been singing about Nazism in world war II, would people think so highly of him still? Why the evasion, Communism has killed 10 times as many people as Nazism did. It is no laughing matter. To look at a idealistic communist and think ‘well, he just meant well he didn’t harm anyone’ when he was a major public figure in the forefront of the protest movement which eventually turned the tide of public opinion of the Vietnam war and sentenced millions of people to slavery and death is completely intellectually dishonest.

What Lennon did was use the popularity he acquired through making good music to oppose the defense of people who desired to be free and determine the course of their own lives and to ultimately contribute, to an extent which is of course debatable, to their enslavement and murder.  As a Lennon fan, you can either come to terms with the fact that a musician you like helped a murderous tyranny come into power or you can continually evade the question or simply convince yourself that he had absolutely NO political influence, which hardly seems reasonable at all.  How do you KNOW what his political influence was? How do you KNOW it was next to zero, do you just FEEL IT? Do you think that all of those millions of people who loved the Beatles and liked John Lennon, every one of them, completely and utterly ignored his political commentaries and actions?  If your admiration for Lennon relies on the fact that he had next to zero influence on the eventually abandonment of Indochina to communist aggression, does that mean that if it was shown beyond a reasonable doubt he did have influence, perhaps even a significant one (he certainly put a hell of a lot of effort into trying to be a significant influence) that you would reconsider your assessment of him as a person? Or perhaps reconsider his net contribution to the world? .  

From Wikipedia on John Lennon [emphasis added]

"Give Peace a Chance,” recorded in 1969 at the height of the Vietnam War, marked Lennon’s transformation from loveable mop-top to anti-war activist, and began a process that culminated in 1972 when the Nixon Administration sought to silence him by ordering him deported from the US.  The Vietnam War mobilized a generation of young people to take a stand opposing US government policy, but few pop stars joined them – antiwar protest was something for folkies like Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. Lennon however was determined to use his power as a superstar to help end the war, especially after he left the Beatles and teamed up with Yoko Ono. They declared their honeymoon at the Amsterdam Hilton in March 1969 a "bed-in for peace," winning world-wide media coverage. At a second bed-in in Montreal in June, 1969, they recorded “Give Peace a Chance” in their hotel room; the song quickly became the anthem of the anti-war movement, and was sung by half a million demonstrators in Washington DC at Vietnam Moratorium Day in November 1969"
…
"When John and Yoko moved to New York City in August 1971, they became friends with antiwar leaders Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman, and others, and planned a national concert tour to coincide with the 1972 presidential election."

Remember, too, what "peace" is in this context, it is a wanton surrender of a people that yearn to be free to a murderous Stalinistic soviet communism.  Peace must not be removed from the context that surrounds it. Should we value peace over all else when a murderer comes to our home? When our wife is getting raped? The ‘Peace’ movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s was not a movement of peace, but one of absolute pacifism, and absolute pacifism does nothing but reward militant aggression. If a warlike society was bent on taking over the world, the peace movement of that era would have paved the way with their bodies. Lennon’s cries for peace during the Vietnam war were essentially cries to abandon the Vietnamese people to mass murder and enslavement, as all the politicians supporting the war warned countless times and as came to pass, just like every other time communism has come to power in a nation. Lennon’s cries for peace in this era were appeals for the people of South Vietnam to stop fighting the people and system that sought to enslave them. They did not value his ‘peace’ more than their freedom.

Well, you might say “he wrote some beautiful songs. That’s what matters to me.”

Well I am sure Hitler wrote some nice poetry and Stalin had some decent sketches he made for his grand children. I am not so willing to forgive someone for their flagrant support of brutally murderous regimes. Every single ideal of freedom, libertarianism, objectivism, would have gotten you immediately purged, smashed, hung, executed, imprisoned, and or disappeared in every single communist nation. Lennon publicly opposed fighting one of the most brutal regimes of this kind to have ever existed at the very least, and worse case scenario actually helped bring one to power. But hey, who cares, he made good music! I am sure that is wonderful consolation to the 4.5 million people murdered!  Now, I am not comparing him directly to Hitler or to Stalin. I am making the point that one should not disconnect someone’s artistic or musical contributions from their political or intellectual contributions. Both are fundamental reflections of the nature of their character. I see a lot of people saying "I dont care what he did, I care that I like his music" What I am saying is, "I don’t care that his music was good, I care what he did"

It doesn’t matter how good or nice someone is in other aspects if his actions result in a terrible amount of pain and suffering. People glaze right on past Lennon’s complacency in bringing a murderous regime into power, and look only at his music. Did his music do more good for the world than his opposition of stopping a murderous regime from rising to power do harm? I don’t know, I’d ask the 4.5 million people in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, but they are all dead now. Had Lennon made any of his music in the nations he opposed defending, he would have been imprisoned and executed.

To my comments in the post, one might say “What insensitive comments regarding Lennon’s death. Whatever his politics, he certainly wasn’t guilty of a capital offense. Show some compassion.”

I ask then, where was Lennon’s compassion for the millions of Vietnamese murdered? More than 50,000 Vietnamese peasants had been murdered *in the north* by the North Vietnamese communists *before* the Vietnam war (that is, the involvement of the US) even started. Where was his compassion for them? For their plight? For their desire for freedom? For the desire of the freedom of the people of South Vietnam? For the 500,000 boat people that died at sea, seeking their freedom. For the 3.5 million people smashed and starved to death by Pol Pot in Cambodia, who was brought to power by the North Vietnamese communists.  Ironically, John Lennon’s “Imagine” was used as the trailer theme song to 1984’s “The Killing Fields” which poorly told the story of the Cambodian Genocide, a genocide which came about by a government literally attempting to abolish property.

Did John Lennon deserve his fate?  Did the 4.5 million people who died in Indochina as a result of the US abandonment deserve their fates? Well, peace now reigns, even though North Vietnam is still one of the most oppressive regimes on the planet, at least they have peace! John Lennon’s callous disregard for the lives of the people of Vietnam is what is disgusting and insensitive. No one deserves a horrible death, but John Lennon, at the very least, opposed fighting a regime which wrought more horrible deaths on the world than had been seen in 50 years, and at worst helped them come to power. That you disregard all of this, that you couldn’t care less that all of these millions of people died, each of whom I am sure loved their lives as much as Lennon did his, is the essence of a callous disregard.

This is not a commentary about music, I actually really like the Beatles and many of Lennon’s songs. There are many different levels one can enjoy music on, but I also weigh the philosophical message of a song in that assessment very strongly.  I feel very strongly about the tragedy that the people of Vietnam have suffered, and as such I dislike people who helped to bring that tragedy about. Lennon’s very public opposition to the Vietnam war was cruel and inappropriate, and it was based on horrible philosophical premises additionally, and I hold him accountable for his actions, no matter how good the music he made ways it can not outweigh a complacency to mass murder.

Lennon was an ideological communist or, worse, an anarcho-socialist, as such he was anti-life, anti-mind, and anti-human. No ideology in the world has been more harmful to human life than communism has been. He is not worthy of any praise, even if America’s system at the time had faults (it certainly did and still does), he was not working to correct them, but to enact an even worse system of statist slavery.  He was a communist who sought to turn the world into a communist utopia. Do you value your life? He sought to own it, or at least confiscate it and grant it as property to the state. Do you own property and value the means to interact with a material world to sustain your life? He sought to take that away, and have the state give you permission to live. His music, his most famous song now, still works to spread that message.

What of the 4.5 million people who died in Indochina *AFTER* the end of the Vietnam War. What of the plight of the 2.5 million refugees and boat people, many of whom were apprehended and forcibly returned to Vietnam (one need not wonder too deeply what became of them)

We like to laugh a snicker at someone who disdains communism as much as I do, but those people laughing and snickering are never cognizant of the fact that communism has killed more than 10 times the number of people that Nazism has.  Do we laugh and snicker at our vile disdain for Nazism?  No, yet communism has killed over 100 million people.  John Lennon was a communist, and helped the communists come to power and enslave 80 million people by undermining their last best hope for freedom and self determination.  

If Lennon did have a significant influence on the ending of the US involvement in Vietnam (as 500,000 people singing “Give Peace a Chance” on the Washington Mall surely suggests)  then if he had been killed 10 years earlier, before he was able to develop such a large influence, it might very well have saved over millions of lives.  It is difficult to ascertain the extent of his influence, at the very least he publicly opposed defending a free people against a communist tyranny, and worse case he actually helped them come to power and brutally enslave over 100 million people in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.  The fact that John Lennon never uttered a single word about Vietnam after the fall of Saigon is telling.  He could not have actually cared for the well being of the people of Vietnam, but instead sought only to promulgate a political ideology.  Since he was a communist (In one Lennon Biography, he was quoted as saying “I really thought that love would save us. But now I’m wearing a Chairman Mao badge, that’s where it’s at. I’m just beginning to think he’s doing a good job” (Lennon Remembers, p. 86)  when Mao Ze Dong’s policies had killed over 40 million people in China, something well known by the time)  He could have been advocating nothing less than the abolition of freedom, speech, and property (the last being the only material means in which we can sustain our existence and something a right to life is directly dependant upon)  John Lennon might have very well played a key role in the abandonment of Indochina to the Soviet backed communists which subsequently led to the murder and enslavement of millions and millions of people and no matter how good or enjoyable you might think his music is, for this and this alone he deserves condemnation.
Rest in turmoil John Lennon.

Further information
Mark Humphreys excellent compilation of Vietnam war related links.
<a href="http://markhumphrys.com/communism.asia.html">http://markhumphrys.com/communism.asia.html</a>

R.J. Rummels Freedom Democide and War home page
<a href="http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/welcome.html">http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/welcome.html</a>

Lennon Wikipedia entry
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_lennon">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_lennon</a>

This past week I traveled to Phoenix and stayed there for about a week. I’ll write on the rest of my trip later, but the first few days of the trip and the primary purpose of it was to attend the 2006 Alcor Conference. Alcor, you might remember, was in the news recently as the company that allegedly houses the now cryogenically suspended body of baseball legend Ted Williams. This conference was not only about cryogenic suspension, and only two presentations dealt primarily with that topic, but it was much more so “An Inside look at the science and medicine of tomorrow” as the conference was called. Presenters and speakers included representations from other cryonics organizations, local and state government officials; who spoke on legal policies surrounding Alcor and the state of Arizona, and many prominent scientists in the fields of economics, mathematics, physics, and cryobiology.

The conference was held at the Scottsdale Marriott just outside of Phoenix, AZ. The Scottsdale Marriott was a gorgeous hotel, with an outdoor fireplace topped by lions and incredible view. At 280 a night it better be nice, but as conference attendees we were able to get a discount. Even so, I switched to a different hotel after the conference.

Given that, the conference was very professional and in an ornate hall. The first night was a reception on the water patio, near the pool and the fireplace and adorned with a fountain. We mingled at met a great number of incredibly interesting people and saw many people that we had read much from and about. The welcoming speaker was originally scheduled as the Arizona Secretary of State, who unfortunately could not make it. I believe the replacement speaker was from the local chamber of commerce who assured us of how friendly Scottsdale was to Alcor, he was intelligent and it seemed clear that he was well informed about Alcor and cryogenic suspension in general. After the welcoming speech we disbanded and mingled. Bonnie and I met Stephane and Magali from the Montreal area who were the two friendliest and most welcoming people I have met in my life. Both were Alcor members.

I also met Brenda, who was a film maker from Toronto, intent on doing a documentary on cryogenic preservation, she stated that her original intent was just to do a documentary, but after researching it herself she was now interested in signing up. I am eager to see the results of her work. The night was full of interesting and fascinating people, lawyers, bankers, retired people, engineers, people from all walks of life. These were not crazy people or socially mal adjusted people, but mostly normal people. I say mostly because they, and we, shared one major trait that the majority of the population does not. We truly love our lives, love being alive, and love all the splendor and joy the world can bring us. And in that, we are comfortable acting in accordance with our deepest values.

The next morning marked the real beginning of the conference. It started with a continental breakfast in the beautiful Arizona sun by the pool and a fountain. We all chatted and said hello to our friends we made the night before, and then moved on into the ballroom.

It looked as though about 200 – 300 people were in attendance, the ball room was fantastic. We found our seats and waited for the conference to start, the feeling was excited and electric. It was incredible to be in a room of such strongly like minded individuals.

We were welcomed by the publicist of Alcor, who relayed an overview of the conference and gave a brief history of the field of cryobiology then moved onto the first speaker.
The first speaker was Dr. Theodore Kraver, a PhD in mechanical engineering from Arizona State University and a degree in Aeronautical and Astronautically engineering from MIT. He was major player in the field of cryogenic fuel storage technology for NASA in the 60’s (rocket fuel is cryogenically cooled so the powerful gaseous full is condensed into a more manageable liquid) Dr Kraver and some associates formed the first cryogenic suspension company and he designed the suspension storage chambers which is extensive background in cryogenic fuel storage was vital to the NASA Apollo program. Dr Kraver gave a history of Cryonics in America, from the first patients and suspension technologies to the modern facilities available at Alcor and the Cryonics Institute.

Dr. James H Bedford, the first and oldest cryogenics patient surrounding by wasteful melodramatic venting of liquid nitrogen.

The following segment was a panel discussion involving Arizona State Representatives Michele Reagan (R) and Linda Lopez (D). The discussion was moderated by Alcor’s public policy consultant, Barry M. Aarons. The conversation centered around the political climate surrounding Alcor and cryogenic preservation in general. About two years ago a bill was proposed in Arizona that would have essentially placed Alcor’s cryogenic facility under the regulations of funeral parlors, which would have required either embalming or cremation of patients. Michele Reagan and Linda Lopez, of opposing political parties, centered on common ground and fought the bill; preventing it from passing. Today Linda Lopez is sponsoring an end of life options bill with specific provisions legally guarding cryogenic preservation. This discussion raised a lot of questions by the audience concerning the influence of the predominant political climate and the effects it would have on cryogenic preservation. Most were worried, justifiably in many ways, about the rise of the religious right in America. However America currently has the only political climate supportive of cryogenic suspension at all. Australia follows closely behind. As a later speaker, Brian Wowk, pointed out, it is the extreme left of Europe that has created a political structure which completely represses alternative end of life options like cryogenic suspension. In most European countries cryogenic suspension is outright illegal. One can only wonder why this allegedly intellectually superior and much more secular culture has only one Alcor member (whom we befriended) in the whole of the European Union and has made any attempts at starting a cryogenic suspension organization illegal and has made it nearly impossible for a patient, when they die, to be brought to the US for suspension. As Alcor put it, if you are a member, do NOT die in France. Desiring cryogenic suspension is absolutely not a manifestation of religion, if European culture is as strongly one of secular enlightenment as it prides itself on, the only thing that would make the concept of cryogenic suspension as alien as it is would be a deeply embedded nihilism.

The next presentation on Nanomedicine and Medical Nanorobotics was given by Robert A Freitas Jr.

This was probably the most amazing of the presentations. Dr Freitas is the Sr. Research Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing and is the author of the “Nanomedicine” series. He is a major player in the emerging field of Nanotechnology, designing many of the currently projected molecular assembling technologies and is also a member of the Lifeboat Foundation, which I an early member of and work closely with. His presentation was the first time I have seen a clear conceptual representation of the scale of nanotechnology. His animations and lectures detailed exactly how one could make an assembly system which starts from individual carbon atoms, grabs them in diamond tips and assembles them in perfect geometric patterns in more tips and more assemblers. The assemblies are added to other assemblies, and those to others. The animation follows the journey of an individual atom through these conceptual manufacturing systems all the way to the end, where it becomes a nanotechnological computer, whose computing power probably equals that of all the computers in the world combined (nanotechnology could potentially fit computers with modern computing power into devices too small to be seen with a naked eye)

This phenomenal animation can be viewed here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqyZ9bFl_qg

Another excellent animation of a practical nanotechnology application is the Dermal Display http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt-lv6IJPxc This founding concept of this animation was developed by Robert Frietas and his presentation narrated it. The animation was created by a fellow extropian member and animator, Gina Miller.

Robert also spoke of some of the promising examples of nanomedicine, including artificial red blood cells which hold hundreds of times as much oxygen as standard red blood cells do and might allow a human to hold their breath for hours, artificial platelets which would clot blood in microseconds, even major injuries, and artificial white blood cells which could be programmed to attack specific pathogens, rendering humans immune to all unwanted bacterial and viral infections.

Respirocyte inside a blood vessel with neighboring red blood cells

A small nanorobot is show here repairing a neuron and tracing it’s neural connections.

Ultimately, the point of Robert’s presentation was to give some concrete examples of Nanotechnological applications that will be able to repair damage to the human body at the molecular and eventually atomic level. Perhaps advanced cryogenic preservation techniques will avoid molecular damage problems all together, but they are a consequence of current cryogenic preservation techniques. Robert’s presentation gave real cause for optimism in the area and for the hopes of future medical capabilities.

The next speaker to take the stage was Ralph Merkle, PhD. Ralph gave a more lighthearted conceptual overview of modern nanotechnology and societal conceptions of cryogenic suspension. He emphasized that while cryogenic suspension was indeed experimental and no one could guarantee it’s success, would one really want to be part of the control group or part of the experimental group?

An animated simulation of a molecular differential gear designed by Eric Drexler and Ralph Merkle

Following that was a Cryonics Organizations Today Panel discussion featuring Tanya Jones from Alcor, Melody Maxim from Suspended Animation, and Ben Best from Cryonics Inc. There is a lot of sordid history behind cyronics organizations, and given the very limited number and predominate cultural distaste for them, one is left with a feeling of disappointment at the lack of cohesiveness. It appears that there is a lot of ‘bad blood’ between Alcor and the Cryonics Institute, but the new heads of both organizations are extending considerable effort to bring the organizations together and to share and licensed technology. I have no idea what the bad history was between these organizations and frankly couldn’t be bothered to find out. The Cryonics Institute offers less expensive cryogenic options and would not disclose any information on their vitrification process, which wouldn’t be divulged until a patent was protecting it. Alcor seems more professional in it’s presentation and function, but is more expensive. Suspended Animation is a company dedicated to the actual vitrification and preservation process, which involves replacing blood with a cryoprotectant (a liquid that prevents water from freezing) and stabilizing and cooling the body. If you are interested in getting a cryogenic suspension then choosing which storage facility to go with and whether you would like suspended animation to do the actual suspension or the respective storage facility requires considerable reasoned investigation.

The next speaker was J. Storrs Hall, PhD, who was lecturing on the type of society that awaits those revived. This was probably the least favorite of the lectures I heard and I cringed at quite a few parts. I dislike these kind of futurist expositions, in reality it is very difficult to have any idea about what the functionality of society would be like 100 or 500 years from now. Some key relevant points he made, however, were that if you were revived, it would obviously be in a society which values life intrinsically, since they wouldn’t have gone through the effort to revive you otherwise. Often people cite dystopian futures for reasons not wanting to be revived, and even though all historical trends argue against these dystopian futures (the world is getting better and better, cleaner, and people are living better and longer lives than ever before, and there are fewer wars and fewer percentages of the population starving now than ever in the history of humanity) if those futures were so dystopian, they would not revive you anyway.

Dr. Hall then went on to the ideas I don’t like, talking about uploading and copying and “transferring your consciousness” to another body, robotic or otherwise. Such a transfer, if non-invasive, would merely be a copy of you (since you obviously continue to exist, that transfer could in no possible way be a continuation of you) and if the copying mechanism was destructive, destroying the original does not make the question moot as you are still dead. I find this mentality frequently among transhumanists and extropians who are more than happy to equate copying and uploading with “you” and I am absolutely surprised at it’s presence because it is such a naïve position, especially in minds like Dr Hall’s. Later Ralph Merkle shared the same surprising sentiment, equating copies with continuations of the original and equating it to sleeping and waking up. Well, when one goes to sleep there is no logical reason to assume they were destroyed, disassembled and re-assembled. Just because something could have happened does not make it rational to act as though it did. Basic scientificl and logical principles of parsimony and Occam’s razor require interpreting the real world only on data that is required as part of the explanation. Imaging things where there is no evidence to support is irrational and extremely unscientific. Thankfully, the next lecturer challenged both on this point. Being an econonomist, and the son of one of the most famous economists (yes there are famous economists, no Paul Krugman doesn’t count) and a physicist I feel no doubt helped solidify his rational mindset.

I will end part one on that note, look for the second part of this in the near future.

Additional Information
Alcor’s home page – http://www.alcor.org
Eric Drexlers Foresight Institute – http://www.Foresight.org
Ralph Merkle’s home page - http://www.merkle.com/

The War in Iraq Is Going Either Very Well or Very Poorly… Or So-So… I Think
http://www.imao.us/archives/006418.html”>http://www.imao.us/archives/006418.html">http://www.imao.us/archives/006418.html

“After listening to the numerous opinions on the Iraq War, it has become quite obvious that something is happening in that country. The current state of affairs will most certainly be detrimental to the Middle East’s future unless it is beneficial or of no effect whatsoever. This goes doubly for Iraqis themselves. And I can say that with great certainty as it the opinion of the numerous pundits who have been to Iraq or read a book on Iraq or saw numerous news stories on Iraq as well as the numerous pundits who have listened to those pundits. While some (or many) may argue that some (or many) of those opinions are based more on biases than facts, it is important to remember that that doesn’t mean those opinions are wrong. Unless they are wrong… but they may not be. So keep that in mind….”

An excellent editorial emphasizing the fallacy of those ‘Who have it all figured out’  and their direct extrapolation of their infinite knowledge to a crystal ball like assessment of the current state of world affairs.  It is amazing how every cab driver, school teacher, coffee shop hippie bum, IT desk jockey (I am not exempt)  “knows” exactly what will happen in Iraq, why it happened, what should have been done, what shouldn’t have been done, and what the world will be like because of it in 50 or 100 years.  As this amusing and entertaining editorial emphasizes, no matter what you feel you will get plenty of information, books, news articles, media, and pundits to back you up.  The war in Iraq may cause civilization to come to an end, inspiring a global jihad, or it may prevent it’s collapse through precipitating a Berlin wall like collapse of fundamentalist terror breeding states in the middle east.  How do you _know_ what the outcome will be? 

Lets take a step back and try to make a healthy assessment of the current state of the world and what is going on it.  No one has it all figured out, the Iraq war would not have turned out perfect no matter how much planning went into it (but it could have been better?) nor do you or I know that invading Iran instead would have been better, or that invading no where would have not merely adjusted the current ‘cause celebre’ to simply something else, there always has been one, after all.  US intervention during the cold war certainly seeded a lot of the animosity present in the Middle East today, but western culture in general breeds plenty of animosity on it’s own, without military presence in the holy land or historical meddling.  The world, the current geo political climate, is very complex, and very large, and no single human mind can completely understand it.  To come to an ‘opinion’ of the war in Iraq after reading a couple news paper articles and then proclaiming divine wisdom, is really the height of arrogance. 

The are many compelling and intelligent arguments to be made for and against the war in Iraq and there are many stupid arguments on both sides.  It can be quite common that people with identical values (the desire to see a safe, free world for ourselves and our children for example) can come to entirely different conclusions yet both remain completely logical.  The key difference will likely be in their information sets.  Some people keep their information sets confined and censored, others open and constantly adjusting.  One must learn as much as possible and form as rational an opinion as possible, but one also must pick a go-no go date and finally act on their judgment.  You cant perpetually deliberate on a complex decision, especially if it is one that is a matter of life and death.  Yet the matter of life and death decisions are the ones that ought to be deliberated most carefully. 

What line do you tread?  How sure are you of your opinion?  Would you stake your life on it?  Your wealth?  You car?  You could be completely and utterly wrong, even if you perpetually aspire to always be accurate, rational, and un biased.  You can stand by your own judgements if they are rational and well informed, but be carefull in condemning others for judgements different than yours, they probably know many things you do not, and vice versa, but you both probably have many common values.

As three years and a few months have passed since the start of the Iraq war, I want to take a moment to reflect on it. 

The Iraq war has seen about 2,500 combat deaths of American Soldiers, and probably some 40,000 deaths of Iraqi Civilians, foreigners and combatants.   The number of US Soldiers killed per year averages at around 780, and the number of Iraqi citizens and foreigners is around 12,000 / year.  Compare these numbers to World War II, where around 100,000 America soldiers were killed per year, or Korea where 20,000 were killed per year, or Vietnam, where 5,000 were killed per year.  Additionally, during his reign, Saddam Hussein is estimated to have killed 2 million people over the course of 30 years, which is an astonishing 67,000 people per year, or 3,000 per month.  Two million is 1/3^rd the number of Jews killed in the holocaust.  Saddam Hussein was perpetuating his own patient holocaust, and indeed his Anfal Campaign was a blatant systemic effort to kill all Kurds.  Compared with the 10,000 people per year killed by the violence from the war, and the violence from insurgents and local terrorists, the US led Iraq war could be considered to be saving 50,000 lives per year. 

If one says they care about the people in Iraq, then how can they wantonly condemn them to tens of thousands more murders per year?  As a human being, why should I care so much about people in Louisiana getting murdered, raped, and robbed, but not care about people in Iraq having the same things done to them?  Are they any less human?

Every death is terrible and tragic, but unfortunately we do not live in a world of infinite resources.  But the choice is clear, if we do nothing, many millions more people die, if we do something, thousands die.  There is no choice between death and no death, it is only between a little bit of death and a whole lot of death, between a complex time of turmoil and a hope for a better future for the people of Iraq, the middle east, and subsequently the world, or decades more of murderous oppression and brutality, and possibly of globally disastrous terrorist events.  Abdicating choosing does not free us from the moral responsibility.  You can’t bury your head and the sand and proclaim you had nothing to do with it.  Ignoring something is functionally no different than sanctioning it.  It is depraved indifference. 

There is no doubt we live in a complicated world, and no one can accurately predict the future, the only thing we can do is make the best possible judgment on the information we have, and deal the worst possible blow within reason that we can, against the enemy, which in this case is fundamentalist Islamic terrorism.  But refusing to judge is no moral blank check, it does not free you from the moral consequences of your inaction.

Consider one third of the people in the world today live in brutally oppressive theocratic or dictatorial nations, held hostage by the unsanctioned leaders, the armies they control, and the brainwashing which perpetuates their rule.  These nations, as Political Scientists R.J. Rummel has coined them, are nothing short of mortacracies (that is, governments of death), their leaders are explicitly murderous hostage takers, and their people no more than literal slaves, where their thoughts and actions are forcibly controlled by the governments which imprison them.  Everyone has heard of the terrible conditions of North Korea, but few people know of the similar conditions people face in Burma, Laos, Vietnam, Berundi, Zimbabwe, Bolivia, etc, and of the wretched oppression forced upon the people living within those borders. 

In the Middle East, the situation is the worst of the entire world.  Instead of raising standards of living, the massive oil fields under the nations of the Middle East have done nothing but prop up murderously oppressive regimes, which through their indoctrination, brutality, oppression, and religious fanaticism promulgate the worst, though not all, of terrorism the world faces today.  The nations of the Middle East, while embracing the technology of industrial age, are culturally still in the dark ages; where violence and intimidation are the accumulation of wealth, where beheading and honor killings are the currency, and where centuries old conflicts between long dead ancestors define their goals.

People living in these nations hate their governments, and so hate whoever they perceive as helping their governments and love who ever their governments hate.  Consider in Iran, where the brutal Shia controlled government insists that the United States is Satan and the greatest evil of the earth, the people however, who hate their government because of its oppressive policies, love the US.  Iran has one of the strongest pro-US movements in the Middle East.  Conversely, Saudi Arabia, which is considered a ‘friend’ of the US, bred most of the terrorists which attacked America on 9/11.  In Saudi Arabia, one of the strictest and most controlling nations of the world, the people perceive the US as a friend of their government (with a lot of just cause to consider as much) and since they hate their government, they also hate the US. 

Concurrently, three other important factors need to be considered.  The Law of Accelerating Returns, the Doomsday Curve, and the Fermi Paradox.  The Law of Accelerating Returns, as Identified by author and inventor Ray Kurzweil, is the description of the fact that technology advances in not only an exponential curve, but an exponentially increasing exponential curve.  The familiar Moore’s law, which describes and predicts the performance increase of computer processors, extends backwards accurately following this curve all the way to Charles Babbage’s counting machines.  In fact all technology follows these very similar curves, from memory storage to genome sequencing to transportation costs per mile traveled.  Kurzweil argues convincingly that this growth in technological progress will only become more and more rapid.  Consider the technological innovations from 1800-1900 and then compare that with 1900-2000.  One can only wonder at the marvels that will come about from 2000-2100. 

But along with those marvels come threats, which is why author and political commentator Robert Wrights suggests we ‘take our bitter medicine early’ in his article “A Real War on Terrorism” that is, we stem the growing tide of fundamentalist terrorism earlier rather than later, because if we wait, individual intelligent motivated people will be able to kill hundreds or thousands of other people.  This tendency is accurately described in “The Doomsday Curve” and perhaps disturbingly evidenced in the Fermi Paradox.  That is, as technology increases, fewer and fewer individuals are able to kill more and more people with less and less effort, and subsequently, at some point in time, a single individual may be able to, either intentionally or even accidentally, wipe out the entire human race.  This very idea may be the answer to the Fermi Paradox; the question of why, in a 14 billion year old galaxy of 400 billion stars where if even one single technologically advanced civilization had arisen in the last 5 billion years it would have spread to every single star system in the galaxy, we find none anywhere we look.  It could be that life is extra ordinarily rare, or it could be undetectable, or it could be that it almost always tends to destroy itself.  The Doomsday curve and Law of Accelerating Returns makes this last scenario disturbingly plausible, but more importantly it is the only scenario which requires action.  It is why I am an adamant supporter of the Lifeboat Foundation and also why I support the Iraq War.

At first, the two may seem disconnected, but the effort undertaken in Iraq is not explicitly one directed at punishing Saddam Hussein or securing oil supplies (though both are relevant)  The longer term overarching goal of the Iraq war is to create a starting point of liberal democracies in the Middle East.  Every single majority Arab or Islam nation is a brutal and murderous totalitarian regime, with the notable exceptions now of Iraq and Afghanistan.  Refer to the CIA World Fact Book or the non partisan Freedom House to learn about the nature of the governments which rule these people. Neighboring regimes know that if a stable democracy is formed in Iraq then their own people will want the same, and thus it is in the best interest of every totalitarian two bit thug in the Middle East to do whatever they can to make sure Iraq fails.  This is why thousands and thousands of “Insurgents” are pouring in from every surrounding nation and bombing and killing Iraqis, why a recently kidnapped Taxi Cab driver thought he had been transferred to Syria, and why the terrorist attacks are focused on creating a destabilizing civil war, intentionally targeting ethnic divisions to instigate even more “sectarian” violence.  An Iraq in chaos is not something people who have lived their whole life in Iraq want, but it is something that every other Middle Eastern tyrant does want.

All of this should raise a great deal of concern in the minds of rational men.  To assert that sitting back and doing nothing in the middle east would bring about peace, is completely egregious and flies in the face of all the historical trends of the nations which hold a majority Arab \ Islam culture and would almost certainly lead to a major, probably nuclear level, terrorist event. 

These dictators have *no right* to rule these people, they have *no right* to be called a nation, when they don’t grant their own people the basics of individual rights.  They have *no right* to *self defense* when they don’t grant it to their own people.  Only a government formed from the informed consent of its people has any legitimacy and only when it respects the most fundamental rights of humans, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, does it earn any respect.  To the extent at which governments protect the rights of its citizens it is legitimate, to the extent at which it takes them away, it is illegitimate.  A clear dividing line, I feel, is that of free speech, because once a governments does not allow it’s citizens to speak, it leaves them *no possible peaceful way to change it*  The abdication of free speech is the first and most basic identifier to illegitimate governments.  The only nation in the Middle East which allows free speech is Israel.

Something must be done about these ‘nations’ (which I put in brackets because they do not deserve even cursory official recognition) for their people, but most importantly for us, because these nations are the hotbed of everything that might destroy humanity.  Something must be done not just because human lives have value and I want them to be able to live in a world where no one is imprisoned for ideas or executed because they want to live, but also because it is in our best interest to see a safe, stable, free world.  Democracies (liberal constitutional democracies with market based economies) do not go to war with one another, they commit the least internal violence, see the longest median and mean life spans, the lowest infant mortality rates, and create through their free exchange of information all the great technology the people of the world enjoy today.  Brutal oppression, the dictatorships and theocracies of the world, do nothing but breed murderous hatred and complete and utter intolerance, where merely being offended is justification enough to murder. 

See, for example, some photos from the “March For Peace” organized in response to the Danish publication of ‘offensive’ cartoons.  http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/muslimprotest.asp  You would be hard pressed to find similarly violent sentiments expressed even at a Neo-Nazi rally, and it takes little stretching of the imagination to consider sentiments such as these in the minds of motivated intelligent dedicated individuals leading to hundreds, thousands, or millions of deaths.

So one must naturally ask, if it was necessary to take a first major step in the Middle East, was Iraq the best choice?  A lot of evidence would suggest that either Iran or Saudi Arabia would be a better choice because of the brutally oppressive nature and the religious extremism of the regimes.  However, one could just as easily argue that had coalition forces attacked a religious Islam nation, then it would have been much easier for inhabitants of that nation to interpret this as a war of Christainity vs Islam, and not one of Civilization vs Barbarous terrorism.  But none of have a crystal ball and we can never be sure exactly how things will turn out.  We had a military history with Iraq, and Iraq was up for retribution for violating the UN Resolutions applied to it to end the first Gulf War.  Saddam Hussein was a murderous tyrant, even if he was a secular one, and certainly did have and use chemical weapons, as residents of Halabja would attest to.  For these reasons Iraq constituted one of the best cases that could be built to start the change in the Middle East.  While it is certainly debatable which Middle Eastern hostage taker was the best to start with, there is no doubt that the change needed to start with one of them, and sooner rather than later.   

From a humanitarian perspective, the Iraq war was the right thing to do.  From a current geo-political perspective, the Iraq war was also the right thing to do.  And from a long term self interested view, the Iraq war was, again, the right thing to do.  People who care about the rights and lives of individuals in the world should support it.  People who selfishly want to live in a safe stable world should also want it. 

Yet people who profess both object to it because some mystical precognitive psychic power only they posses makes them ‘feel’ like it is a bad idea.  The same people who take 6 years to buy a car and 30 years to buy a house expect a successful stable democracy to pop into existence in a few months.  The same people that call for us to jump into the middle of a civil war in the Sudan worry about us getting embroiled in one in Iraq.  And the the same people that point to lessons we should have learned from Vietnam are completely oblivious to the fact that we WON the Vietnam War two years before Saigon fell, that the Nobel peace prize was given to Kissinger and a North Vietnamese general for negotiating a peace, that after the democratically controlled congress made it illegal to support, either militarily or materially, any nation in Indochina, they regurgitated defeat from the jaws of victory, and that, worst of all, more people died in the 6 months following the fall of Saigon than had died in the entire Vietnam War and the North Vietnamese government was eventually responsible for 4.5 million more murders in the subsequent years. 

The western world, which is the richest, freest, and most militarily powerful part of the world, sits idly by while half the world is brutally oppressed by murderous tyrants and dictators.  Am I advocating invasion after invasion on humanitarian grounds?  No, I am advocating a system of long term rational self interest.  These types of “nations” are the root of all the instability in the world political sphere, they are the primary causes of wars, famines, the spreading of infectious diseases, and the murderously oppression which breeds terrorism.  In a world where rapid technological growth will eventual enable one person to kill millions, billions, or even wipe out the whole human race, we need to ‘take our bitter medicine early’ and immediately turn the tide of these trends before they culminate in the extinction of our race.  Only when the whole of humanity joins a modern civilization based on individual rights and property will it become reasonable to look forward to the day when we see a progressively smaller and smaller state, when there is no need of armies, and finally when we will see an and to war and to all internal violence.

See R.J Rummels web site “Power Kills” at http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/welcome.html
The Law of Accelerating Returns - http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1
The Doomsday Curve - http://www.doomsdaycurve.com/
The Fermi Paradox - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox
Robert Wrights article “A Real War on Terrorism” - http://www.slate.com/id/2070210/entry/2070211/
The Lifeboat Foundation - www.lifeboat.com
CIA World Fact Book - https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/
Freedom House - http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=15&year=2005

One of my biggest fears about the future and the well being of mankind are Laws.  Yup, that’s right.  Laws.  I am more worried that these laws, passed in their haste, will cause even more harm.  Consider that if the US signs up with the kyoto protocols all of our energy costs will climb.  Consider also that since the US is one of the world’s major food suppliers, and the cost of food is the most directly important thing in getting it to the hands of starving people, every single cent in the increase in the cost of food amounts to a certain number of deaths.  Whats that number?  How many people will a 10% increase in the cost of energy and subsequently food kill?  10,000?  10 million?   What number is acceptable? 

We really have to remember that every one of these laws passed has negative consequences, usually in the form of human lives. 

Consider passing a law which demands an increase in the efficiency of cars.  There are only two ways to increase the efficiency of a car, give it new technology, or make it lighter.  Usually, making it lighter, makes it less safe.  Which means people will be killed.  Think about how the Honda Insight bodes in a crash compared the Cadillac Escalade.  Conversely, new technology will make a car more expensive, putting new safety features out of the reach of poorer individuals.  When one acknowledges that if we are going to die a premature death it will most likely be in a car accident concern over the cost and safety of cars is very important.  I have a new Diesel Jetta TDI, which gets 43 miles per gallon and exceeds all other cars in side impact crash tests.  It gets mileage comparable to a hybrid, but is one of the safest cars on the market.  Yet it is illegal to buy diesel cars in Massachusetts, a law passed over environmental hysteria.

Consider the ban on nuclear power plants, the WHO estimates that 1.25 million people die every year premature deaths from the inhalation of the combustion products of fossil fuels.  Many people in Africa COOK THEIR FOOD by burning COW DUNG.  Every year since 1975, at 1.25 million people per year, more than 30 million people have now died who probably otherwise wouldn’t have.  How many people have died from Nuclear power plant accidents?  ~26.  How many die from natural gas explosions?  Some 4,000 yearly in the world.  How many die from Carbon Monoxide poisoning?  A completely irrational fear of nuclear power spearheaded all of the laws that now cause millions of deaths.  In reality, a few well guarded underground breeder reactor plants, which can be hundreds of miles from population centers, could provide all of the power needed by the US. 

Consider also that it is now illegal to drill for oil in the continental United States, even though we have large oil reserves.  Instead we prop up murderous dictatorships in the middle east which breed terrorists that have no killed some 50,000 people total.  Moronic environmentalist fears pushed these laws through.  We prop up brutal dictatorships in South America as well, which foment anti-American sentiment of their own.

Consider of course DDT, which I have mentioned many times.  An irrational fear of DDT led to the banning of it by the EPA, and subsequently the UN, which denied foreign aide to any country that continued to use it.  At the height of it’s spraying 10 - 20 people died GLOBALLY from malaria.  We were on the verge of eradicating it from the human condition.  The inventor of DDT received a Nobel prize and was credited with saving 500 million lives.  Instead, today, we are ravaged by mosquitoes again.  1.5 - 3 million people die every year from Malaria, mostly children in Africa.  Over 30 years that is up to 90 MILLION PEOPLE that have been killed because we IRRATIONALLY BANNED DDT.  This is a HUGE black cloud hanging over absolutely everything the environmentalist movement says and does.  And until this egregious mistake is acknowledged and corrected, I don’t trust *anything* they say.  Mosquitoes are the primary vector for 10 of the 12 worst diseases that have struck mankind, including denguine fever, encephalitis, yellow fever, etc.  It has been suggested that Mosquitoes, and the pathogens they carry, have killed HALF OF ALL THE HUMANS THAT HAVE *EVER* LIVED. 

It is only by a sheer stroke of luck that mosquitoes currently absorb HIV, should it mutate into a form transmittable by mosquitoes WE ARE TOTALLY FUCKED.  All ready there are many cases of HIV that people can’t figure out how they contracted it.  Could it be that some these are from mosquitoes? 

So more than anything right now I fear the LAWS that governments enact trying to make people safer, because they are NEVER rational, they always cater to the lowest common FEAR.  And millions and millions of people die as a result of it.

Michael

I have completed the next phase of the Animation I have been doing for the Lifeboat Foundation.

Movie - http://lifeboat.com/movies/Lifeboat_02_WM9_800x600.wmv (requires Windows Media Player 9 or greater)

The animation features a space shuttle like vehicle, called the Waverider (because it is based on a next generation design which “surfs” it’s own supersonic shockwaves) approaching the Lifeboat Foundation’s ARK I, a large self sustaining space station.

All the 3D objects, including the Earth, Waverider, and ARK I were designed and modeled by me.  Many of the scenes of the docking were inspired by the opening sequence to 2001: A Space Odyssey.  These scenes, each usually 10 – 20 seconds long and at 30 frames per second are comprised of hundreds of frames.  Each individual frame can take up to 30 hours to render, so this animation is a long time in the making.  It is now just over 3 minutes, and I am on to working on the next part, which will feature the docking of the waver rider into the ARK I hanger bay, and the disembarking of the passengers through retractable sealed walkways.  I am still refining my directorial skills, so constructive criticism is welcome.  Later a launch sequence of the Waverider will be included, with a subsequent rendezvous on a self sustaining Lunar Colony. 

 The ARK I is intended to be a self sustaining space colony, free of dependencies on imported goods.  It was designed by me to be within real world constraints.  I have been very interested in space stations, self sustaining technologies, mobile biospheres, and of course physics and astrodynamics in general for a very long time.  Being adept at 3D modeling of large complex objects requiring inordinate patience (see my Star Destroyer model - http://www.matus1976.com/3d/sd/sd_index.htm) and having such a strong interest in physics, science, and more specifically space stations, I was a good fit for this project for the Lifeboat Foundation.  The ARK I features four habitat rings, which rotate to simulate gravity on the occupants inside, separated into two pairs of rings.  The rings are connected by hubs which feature the hangers and the hubs themselves are connected to each other by a large bridge which would be mostly constructed of transparent chevron shielding.  Each ring would be home to 250 occupants, and the bridge would have room for 500 more visitors.  Sprouting from the middle of the bridge are tremendous solar panels, at right angles to those panels are similarly tremendous heat radiating infra-red problems.  Contrary to popular conceptions space stations usually must be cooled, not heated.  Even though the vacuum of space is very cold, it is also the best insulator in the universe, being a vacuum, so very little heat gets conducted away from things.  Thus space stations typically have Infra Red radiating panels that are usually nearly as large as their solar panels which heated water is pumped through to cool off.  You can read more about the design and construction of these self contained space stations, and see more detailed renderings, at http://lifeboat.com/ex/ArkI  Most of this text description here was written by me as well.

     ———

The Lifeboat Foundation, which was recently featured in a Tech Central Station article (a popular technology, science, and politics web site)   http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=062706D seeks to raise awareness about the potential threats humanity as a whole faces, weather from external threats such as X-Ray bursts, nearby supernovas, or cataclysmic meteor impacts, or from internal threats such as global nuclear war, a terrorist or malicious organization or individual intentionally releasing a biological engineered virus, or even accidentally releasing a grey goo which could devour all life on earth.  The simple fact is that for intelligent sentient life to survive, humanity must spread out among the stars.  This is something recognized by many prominent members of the scientific community, including most recently Stephen Hawking, who said, warning of earth destroying disasters, that humans must spread out into space. (http://english.ohmynews.com/ArticleView/article_view.asp?no=298623&rel_no=1)  In the long term, however, the Lifeboat Foundation would like to actually see these self-sustaining space stations be created and built, with humanity spreading among the solar system and eventually to neighboring solar systems. 

I am an adamant supporter of the Lifeboat Foundations goals for three major reasons, The Drake Equation, the Fermi Paradox, and The Law of Accelerating Returns.  The combination of these three principles illustrates something terribly jarring; that life throughout the universe almost always destroys itself through technology.

Now, I am not a luddite and I love technology and all the great things it has brought, and I hope to see the day when technology has conquered aging, all disease, and death in general.  But I do not embrace the idea that many strong proponents of technology do; an absolute blind faith in everything turning out perfectly well.  I hope it does, and I think that it will, but I also think I will get to work safely everyday yet still wear my seat belt.  I don’t expect to come down with a life threatening illness but I have insurance anyway.  In our daily lives we takes steps to mitigate risk to whatever degree is comfortable with us all the time.  Humanity as a whole needs to do the same thing, we need an insurance policy.  That is what the Lifeboat Foundation seeks to create.

The Drake Equation is a popular one in Astrophysicists communities.  It is essentially a simple, but long equation, intended to determine how common life is in the universe.  It goes like this, you start with the number of stars in our galaxy, which is estimated to be about 400 million.  Multiple that by percentage of stars which form stable planets, and that by the time stable planets are conducive to life forming on them, times the actual likelihood of life forming, times the average time life survives on a planet, times the chance it becomes technologically advanced, etc. etc. etc.  Now it’s obvious from this question that besides the very first number; the number of stars, none of these numbers are actually known.  But even if you put very small numbers into this equation, say one in 10 thousand for each one, since you start out with 400 million stars, you still end up with thousands of space fairing civilizations of intelligent life, and even if they spread slowly so much time would have elapsed (billions of years) that they should be virtually everywhere we look.  And this leads to the second principle, The Fermi Paradox.

Enrico Fermi, a Nobel prize winning physicist, looked at this equation and said “so where are they?”  No one had a good answer.  Essentially the Fermi Paradox is stating that even assuming very conservative numbers for all of those variables, the universe should still be teaming with life, yet we seem to be all alone.  Why is that?  Well, there are only 3 logical possibilities.  The first is that we are the first, or of part of the first generation, of life to arise in the universe.  This could be caused by conditions we are not yet familiar with which require certain cycles to past (just as heavy planets couldn’t form until the first few generations of stars were born and died)  to make solar systems, galaxies, or the universe conducive to life.  The second is that they are all around us, just in forms we can not detect.  The third possibility is that life is common and does grow, but something always happens that prevents them from spreading out.  Of these three scenarios, only one logically requires any action on our part, the third.  That is, if there is something that tends to wipe a technological species out just before it starts to spread among the stars, we better damn well identify it, and if we cant do that, at least have secondary and tertiary plans to compensate for it.

Thus we are brought to author and inventor Ray Kurzweil’s “Law of Accelerating Returns” in which he argues that growth of information, ideas, and technology increase exponentially as well, leading eventually to such a profoundly rapid change of technological progress as to create a hitherto un imaginable altering of human life as we know it.  Imagine, by comparison, that the atom was discovered, X-Rays, Nuclear power, Radio, Lasers, the Internal Combustion Engine was perfected, and the computer revolution all were discovered within the course of a few months.  And then imagine the same thing happening in the next few weeks.  And then in the next few hours, then days, then minutes. You get the idea.  You can read Kurzweils essay here - http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1 and a good overview from Wikipedia, along with some criticisms, here -  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Accelerating_Returns

Kurzweils recognition of the rapid growth of technology, something his essay goes through leaps and bounds to empirically demonstrate, leads into a corollary principle, that of the Doomsday Curve  This curve, demonstrated graphically in a link from the Tech Central Station article above, essentially draws the logical conclusion of such a rapid technological growth.  That is, the more technology that is available to a person, the easier it is for them to kill larger and larger numbers of people.  In the middle ages it would take half of humanity all of their effort to wipe out the other half, being limited to hand to hand combat.  With the advent of chemical explosives and machine guns, perhaps a 3^rd to a quarter of the world could get away with killing all the rest of the people.  With nuclear explosives, perhaps one tenth or one twentieth would be all that is needed.  With the advent of the internet and its subsequent rapid information dissemination, and the mass production of complex technology, small groups of people may be able to biological engineer viruses directed to take out entire races of people, and a few hundred people could kill hundreds of millions.  We could argue about the numbers, but the pattern remains.  In the future, with things like nanotechnology on the horizon, this could become more and more of a threat, a future where eventually one person could, even accidentally, wipe out the entire human race, or even potentially all life on earth. 

With that, we indeed have the jarring answer to the Fermi Paradox.  Despite all the hundreds of millions of stars and likely thousands of technologically advanced civilizations, none of them survive, or so few survive that it is a rare event to come across them.

Now, I don’t want to be a dystopian alarmist, this is just one answer to the Fermi Paradox, personally I suspect we might very well be the first, or part of the first generation, of technologically advanced civilizations to arise.  A very fascinating and exciting prospect!  But it’s easy to fool ourselves into thinking the most promising explanation is the right one, and truth be told, I have no clue, nor does anyone for that matter.  But we do know that technological growth, even if eventually limited, is rapid and very powerful.  We do know there are no other intelligent species yet discovered.  We do know all ready the dangers that can come from technological growth.  We do know that we are talking about the continuation of the human race, indeed the only intelligent race yet known to exist in the universe, and as such we *must* act to rationally secure our place in the future, and sign up for an insurance policy for humanity.  Support the Lifeboat Foundation at www.lifeboat.com