Values and Responsibilities

Next month will mark three years since I quit my job to work full time on completing decades of research into how actions serve values and translate into global consequences. Beginning with the primary value of survival (because without survival there can be no other values) I had focused on how many people can exist, for how long, and under what conditions. The scope broadened to include life satisfaction, or happiness, which correlates strongly with the number of resources people consume that are provided by other species. Statistical analysis of historical data for population, life expectancy, economic activity, and other variables revealed other correlations that tracked consistently throughout the data and suggested a theoretical framework that linked them together.

Translation of the resulting mathematical model into experiences of individuals and groups enabled testing by comparison with events and stories from the past and present, along with projections of potential futures. The potential futures were extremely disturbing, since they indicated a high probability of an extinction-level population crash in the near future. Because of this, I worked mostly on deriving alternatives and actions that would enable them, much as I had used models of equipment and conditions to troubleshoot problems that I found during my career as a test engineer. I concluded that effort last year after simulations incorporating global warming variables and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic converged on a narrow range of actions that might significantly delay catastrophe.

With my savings starting to run out and hardly any income from the writing business I hoped could support my efforts, I spent more time searching for another paying job. This experience has been both a necessity and a test case for how to live based on what I learned. Reading hundreds of job descriptions has reinforced a lesson learned during past job hunts and embedded in my model: money flows toward those taking risks to find, exploit, and trade resources that can be used for future growth. Servicing those people or becoming one of them is increasingly a key to individual survival; it is also a surefire way to help decrease the longevity of civilization by eliminating other species that we depend upon for our collective survival because there are no new ecosystems that can sustain us. The fastest and most direct way to extend our lifetimes is to clean up and leave habitat we have taken from use by other life, which is the opposite of what our economy rewards.

Hunting for income triggered an evaluation of successes and failures in past jobs so I could find better matches in the future. Defining success as the meeting of my expectations and my employer’s expectations with minimal difficulty for both of us, I realized that success for me depends on matching my responsibilities with my values. Ability is another factor, but I’ve been able to learn and adapt quickly enough in most situations to keep it from being a major one. Failure, when I experienced it, was typically associated with a conflict between an employer’s expectations and one or more of my values which couldn’t be remedied to the satisfaction of both of us. 

This insight about employment suggested a new way to characterize the results of my research, which I was coincidentally starting to formalize as a scientific paper that could be reviewed by academics and others for strengths, flaws, and potential use in further research. A person in any of three relationships with their environment (growth, overshoot, loss) focuses on attaining one or more states of being (survival, happiness, longevity) for one or more groups (self, other people, all people and other species). Values and responsibilities can both be categorized by focus, which usually includes self-survival, self-happiness, and self-longevity. 

 

Relationships to environments tend to predispose the people in them to get what they don’t have enough of, so the relationships can be used as proxies for common sets of values and responsibilities. In general, everyone prefers to be in the overshoot relationship - every person that is, since overshoot involves our consuming more than other species can replenish and therefore depends on them dying off. The inevitable decline in resource availability reduces how long the population can survive (its longevity), which is felt by individuals who are forced into the loss relationship and therefore value reversing what caused it. Meanwhile, people in the growth relationship value survival of themselves and people in their closest groups; this drives population growth along with individual consumption that increases happiness by enabling creation of personalized artificial environments.

Although most of my life has been spent in overshoot, I was strongly influenced by a culture of growth. I also experienced loss and have accepted its all-inclusive values. I’ve been questioning the wisdom of unlimited consumption and its impact on longevity since I was 16 years old; and for various reasons I avoided situations where I might have children until it was practically too late. As an older adult facing loss again while trying to maintain a hold on overshoot, I know from my research that the world as a system is about at the same point and is on the verge of moving every person and other species into the loss relationship either by choice or by force.

The scenarios that I derived for delaying catastrophe are simply summarized by one rule: Avoid loss. Keeping everyone from being in the loss relationship with the environment starts with freeing up habitat for those already there, which my most-likely scenario estimates could be 5/6 of the world’s population by mid-year. Completing that move by the end of this decade could also keep global warming from making parts of the world uninhabitable while we develop ways to reclaim even more habitat and learn to live with the result. Notably the (simulated) last time no one was in the loss relationship was in 2001, and the last time no one was in overshoot was in 1949, which provides some historical context for what we might expect.

As improbable as that scenario is, I suspect another one may be emerging that could be considered just another version of catastrophe by those valuing all life. Humanity’s ability to consume more than what other species can provide without harm (thus “overshoot”) is a consequence of large-scale replacement of natural habitat with artificial environments that contribute to happiness and together can be considered artificial habitat. In the new admittedly speculative scenario, attempts to escape the deathtrap caused by reducing the amount of remaining natural habitat are enlisting molecular engineering and machine intelligence to create a new biology that totally redefines what and who we value, including ourselves and our needs. Time is running out for this scenario to play out: my model projects that, on the current trajectory of consumption, people will start dying from lack of habitat by 2026 and humanity will be extinct by 2057. For the new scenario to match the expected one (and what I consider a reasonable timeline for new technology rollout), this may be a manifestation of how the rest of the population transitions from growth through overshoot over the period 2028-2044 while so many others are dying.

The next two decades will either validate or invalidate the concepts I developed over the past two decades. Since exploration is a process and not an endpoint, I expect that if I’m alive then I will have asked many more questions than I answered while helping to more effectively find other answers; and I will be happy to have done so. To the extent that my efforts, whatever they are, contribute to creating a longer and better past for those whose lives I affect directly and indirectly, my life will have served my values. By that standard, I intend to increase my overall positive impact until I can’t, choosing appropriate responsibilities along the way.

"Are Scientists Stupid?"

The last place I expected to hear that question was in the clean room of a semiconductor manufacturer, spoken by a technician whose livelihood depended on scientists being a lot smarter than he was. I soon found out that he really meant biologists were stupid for accepting evolution instead of creationism as the best explanation for the complexity of life, especially when it came to humans. That was my first exposure to the possibility that functioning members of modern society could reject, on the basis of faith, hundreds of years of painstaking observation, testing, and thought. As a trained physicist, I easily determined that for their explanation to work, various laws of physics also had to be wrong. Essentially, God was testing people's faith and their intelligence by whether they would find the ways the Universe worked that were consistent with the literal translation of his words as related in the Bible. That scientists had reached the different conclusions after hundreds of years of painstaking research, thought, and testing just proved that they lacked both faith and intelligence.

There is a parallel and oddly similar argument, which I've recently encountered as part of a belief system shared by some people in the sustainability movement. Basically, it says that the complexity of the Universe is so great that it transcends explanation in the terms used by science. Instead, we, like other creatures, already have everything we need to appreciate and be a meaningful part of the Universe, or at least that part of it that supports life. There are a small number of basic patterns in Nature, that we are already intuitively aware of, that allow us, if we want, to use minimal, non-destructive technologies to be an integral, healthy part of our planet's ecosystems. We don't need anything else, and it's pointless – and harmful to the Earth – for us to seek it. The bottom line: scientists are stupid and dangerous.

Science is fundamentally a means of describing and explaining experience in abstract form, an extension of how we humans use language to communicate information about our experiences. The invention of mathematics, writing, and computational tools has enabled science to become both explanatory and predictive, to an extent far beyond what any one mind or group of minds can comprehend. I believe it is this transcendence beyond personal, visceral experience that is at the heart of both the arguments I cited, despite the fact that science and technologies using it have resulted in a progressively more benign environment for at least some of us.

Two basic needs are not being met by the increased power over our personal environments that science, technology, and the leveraging of group effort through economies have enabled. One of those needs is for meaning in life; the other is for the ability of people to meet their basic needs through direct influence. It is no more meaningful to be a consumer and a producer in an economy than it is to be a manifestation of mathematical probabilities in a multiverse of matter and energy. Most of the time we must rely on governments and corporations to provide our safety and sustenance, often from places and using technologies we can never hope to understand or manage.

A deity such as a personal god provides an easy way to, at least in concept, meet both needs: You are special to the creator to the Universe, and because of that, you can convince him to take care of you. Alternatively, you might see yourself as an integral part of that Universe, without whom it wouldn't be the Universe; you have what it takes to survive in Nature because Nature is you – all that's needed is to create a local, more ecologically healthy environment where you can use it. Ironically, pure science does not pretend to be able to define such a subjective thing as life's meaning, nor does it rule out a more personal relationship with one's environment or any other.

When empowered with adequate technology (such as supercomputers), science can do a pretty good job of simulating large systems; and with proper translation into experiential terms, it can give us insights into the impacts of our actions that our minds and bodies are simply not capable of doing anywhere near as accurately. To be responsible, and have any hope of being true to the values that we define for ourselves, we need to match the power of our actions with our knowledge of their consequences, and science currently provides the most reliable way to do that. If we are uncomfortable with this dependence, we must find a way to scale back our influence on the world to a point we no longer need to depend on it. If we want to rely on a deity of dubious existence, we must be willing to reduce our impact on others so we won't hurt them if or when our faith is found to be misplaced (if the deity's existence wasn't dubious, we wouldn't have to depend on faith).

Ironically, science is showing that we must collectively limit our influence over other species or risk driving most of them, and us, extinct. A world closer to the one we evolved in will be a healthier world, but at the expense of much of the power we've spent centuries accruing. As the tools needed to maintain and monitor our artificial environments falter, become unusable, and are replaced with more natural ones, I expect that science will continue to occupy an important niche in human understanding, but in a form much more usable by the majority of people. Perhaps at that point we will all be scientists (most of us something closer to what we now call naturalists), and the question that opened this discussion will never be asked again.

Lessons from the Brink

Words and pictures are never enough to accurately capture experiences, especially those that are totally out of the ordinary such as the combination of natural and human-enabled disasters that are unfolding in Japan. Yet, for those of us with even a shred of empathy, there is a need to share those experiences, to help in whatever way we can, and to relate them to our own lives so we can learn from them and make the future better for all of us.

The most obvious way to improve the future as a result of a disaster is to determine how to prepare for something similar so we can minimize, if not totally prevent, a loss of life and lifestyle. We can also use the disaster as a starting point for imagining related events that may be even more devastating, and prepare for them as well. Using the experience to better understand how the world works can be of immense help, expanding the range of possibilities. Given our physical and social constraints (competing priorities for resources), we can only do what's possible, and work toward reducing those constraints in the future. These approaches are best used for natural disasters, which almost by definition we have no control over.

For the disasters we do have some control over, many of us will want to do whatever we can to prevent them altogether. The combination of increasingly powerful technologies and growing numbers of people who can use them has enabled us to influence global processes, precipitating what used to be purely “natural” phenomena such as hurricanes, sea levels, droughts, and – potentially – earthquakes and asteroid impacts. Our destruction of ecosystems in the process of settlement has exacerbated the effects of events we have no control over, such as amplifying the impact of hurricanes by destroying wetlands. On the large scale, the extinction of species is totally altering the planet in both foreseeable and unforeseeable ways, none of which can be good for most of us.

Japan was hammered by earthquakes and a tsunami that were geological in origin. As horrific as the loss of life was, it could have been a lot worse. Having previously dealt with both types of events, the country was largely prepared for each; though, it turns out, not totally for both, and at the magnitude at which they occurred. This information will be useful in the future, but should not be a distraction from dealing with the present or a tool for judging either the present or the past.

What may have a far worse impact on not just Japan, but the rest of the world, is the human-enabled disaster in progress at seven of the country's nuclear plants. As I write, several reactors are in partial meltdown and hundreds of tons of spent nuclear fuel are in danger of being dispersed into the atmosphere, despite the more-than-heroic efforts of workers at the plants. Anticipated effects run the gamut from somewhere between the Three Mile Island event and Chernobyl, to cancer on a global scale. In the worst case, there may be no way to adapt in time to avoid mass death.

The simplest way to keep this kind of nightmare from happening in the future is to stop using nuclear energy altogether. This proposal has been made and attacked by the usual defenders of the status quo, who argue instead for improving the safety of existing plants; and incorporating those improvements in future plants which, incredibly, are advertised as “green” alternatives to fossil fuels while even in the best case there are no safe ways to dispose of their nuclear waste.

It's hard not to see this as a variation of the classic battle between those who want to play it safe so the world can survive, and those who want to take risks so individuals can maximize their power over the world. In the case of the former, there is a sense of responsibility for one's actions on everyone (and everything else); in the case of the latter, there is a faith that a higher power won't let anything really bad happen to them. More crudely, there's a dichotomy between needs versus wants, and adults versus spoiled children who think their (absentee) parent, such as a deity, will keep them safe. The spoiled children will enthusiastically take risks to get whatever they want, which is why, in families (whose children live to reproduce), parents limit the power of their children to what they can use without causing harm to themselves or others.

Culture is perhaps our greatest technology, and one obvious way to harness it so we can avoid potential human-caused disasters is to do a better job of enabling us all to “grow up” as fast as possible. Barring this, the “adults” will need to manage an overall decrease in the amount of power we can each exercise, to a level where as few people as possible will be harmed by playing. Risks will always be necessary to find and deal with the unknown and the uncertain, but they should be managed so they don't jeopardize our ability to meet our needs. The alternative, the current status quo, is that eventually (if not soon) the consequences of taking excess risk and putting the wants of the few ahead of needs of all will limit our numbers in a drastic way.

"Green" Economy?

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, “The green economy encompasses the economic activity related to reducing the use of fossil fuels, decreasing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, increasing the efficiency of energy usage, recycling materials, and developing and adopting renewable sources of energy.” This presumably reflects the thinking about “green” jobs in the real economy of the United States, which prioritizes the continued energy and material flow through our civilization and the availability of those parts of “the environment” that people directly use.

The use of the term “green” triggers imagery consistent with a natural setting dominated by plants, and by extension, more biodiversity. Rightly, many of us tend to associate this with a better life. Unfortunately, because the green economy as presently defined only peripherally addresses a few of the causes of our biosphere's degradation, and is likely to exacerbate others, the result is not likely to match our expectations from the imagery.

Biodiversity loss is perhaps the largest single manifestation of biosphere degradation. Habitat loss, population growth, and invasive species (three of the five largest causes) may actually increase as a result of green activities, and the continued reliance of green technologies on electronic technology may not alleviate the pollution problem (the fourth cause) outside of a very narrow range of harmful substances. Habitat loss is a consequence of our appropriation of land and other resources from use by wildlife, which is likely to increase as we mine more materials for new technologies, build more buildings, erect large-scale wind and solar installations (along with their distribution and transportation infrastructure), and devote land to the growth of biofuels. More efficient resource use tends to drive up consumption because people feel free to use more (viewing the savings as the equivalent of new resources); and as per-capita consumption increases, so does population (enabling full use of the available resources). Wherever people go, other species go with them, among them our favorite monoculture crops, often displacing the natives and sabotaging ecosystems. Now, with biotechnology and species bred for biofuel use, we can introduce a range of new species that may wreak even more havoc.

If we were to more broadly define the goals of a green economy to include a healthy biosphere where people use only what can be replenished without harm to each other and other species, we might truly have a healthier world as a result. It is almost certain to be very different from what we currently have, so different perhaps that a job classification system like the one used by our government wouldn't even be meaningful.