Uncategorized – Page 16 – Militant Futurist

May 29, 2018April 3, 2024

All of Ray Kurzweil’s predictions about when we’ll get all our energy from solar power

If you’re reading this blog, then you probably know who Ray Kurzweil is and what he thinks the future will be like. And if you don’t, then SHAME ON YOU! Kurzweil is one of the world’s greatest living futurists (though several of his predictions have failed), he’s influenced my own thinking, and if you know little or nothing about him, stop right now and go read his Wikipedia entry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil).

Kurzweil’s perfusion and fame as a futurist have made him the subject of many “accuracy analyses” of predictions whose deadlines have come and gone. In spite of how crowded the field is, I think there is a narrow area where I could be of use: tracking his predictions about the future of solar power.

On this topic, Kurzweil is quite bold: He thinks that solar power is growing exponentially, so it will supply 100% of the WORLD’S (not just America’s) ENERGY (not just ELECTRICITY) within 15 years. Additionally, his predictions are unambiguous in their wording and deadlines, rendering them highly amenable to objective evaluation. For better or worse, he won’t be able to talk his way out of this, as he has several times in the past through written rebuttals of unfavorable analyses.

The U.S. generates huge amounts of ENERGY, only a small fraction of which is ELECTRICITY, a lot of it gets wasted, and the remainder gets to end users.

I’m starting this blog entry to keep a running tally of all of Ray Kurzweil’s predictions regarding when the world will get 100% of its energy from solar power. The table below this will serve as a quick summary of the key data points in those predictions, while the written paragraphs below it will cite their exact wordings. Note that his deadline for 100% solar power has fluctuated over the last 13 years from 2025 to 2033, and I suspect it will continue to do so (Kurzweil will probably do something like bump it up by ~1 year every 2 years). His statements about the number of exponential “doublings” left until solar power supplies 100% of humanity’s energy also barely withstands arithmetic scrutiny (If solar power’s electricity output is doubling every two years, then why did he say it was 8 doublings away from 100% in 2011, but then say it was still 8 doublings away in 2013? Since two years had passed between the predictions, shouldn’t it have been down to 7 doublings in 2013?).

This blog entry will be updated as Kurzweil inevitably makes new predictions about this topic, so stay tuned!

Date of prediction	# of "doublings" left until 100% solar energy	Year when 100% of energy will be solar
2024/3/12	?	2034***
2016/4/19	?	2036**
2016/3/30	6	2028
2014/6/10	5*	2026 (low) - 2028 (high)*
2013/4/23	8	2029 (low) - 2033 (high)
2011/2/16	8	2027 (low) or 2031 (high)
2010/3/16	?	2028
2008/4/13	?	2028
2008/2/19	?	2028
2005/12/23	?	2025
2005/10/25	?	2030

* Kurzweil’s June 10, 2014 prediction is based on the observation that, at that point in time, solar and wind together produced 4% of America’s energy.

**Kurzweil’s April 19, 2016 prediction pertained to “solar and other renewables” and his wording suggested the 100% milestone would be reached in less than 20 years.

***In his March 12, 2024 interview, Kurzweil first said the prediction pertained only to “solar,” but added a few minutes later that the energy mix would merely be 100% “renewable,” which included wind power.

March 12, 2024

“[Solar power technology is on] an exponential curve. And if you look at the curve, we’ll be getting 100% of all the energy we need in ten years.

…We’re gonna go to all renewable energy–wind and sun–within ten years.”

April 19, 2016 [republished on Kurzweil’s website on December 20, 2018]

What about our energy and food needs?

“Certainly within 20 years we’ll be meeting all our energy requirements through solar and other renewables. We’re awash in energy—10,000 times more than we need, from the sun—and we’re going to move to these renewables not just because we’re concerned about the impact on the environment but because it will be cheaper and more economic.”

https://www.playboy.com/read/playboy-interview-ray-kurzweil

http://www.kurzweilai.net/playboy-reinvent-yourself-the-playboy-interview

March 30, 2016

Turning his attention to solar, Kurzweil said four years ago Google founder Larry Page and he were asked by the National Academy of Engineering to study emerging energy technologies. The men selected solar due to its exponential growth. Kurzweil said solar has been around for over 25 years, and its market share has doubled every two years.

“In 2012, solar panels were producing 0.5% of the world’s energy supply. Some people dismissed it, saying, ‘It’s a nice thing to do, but at a half percent, it’s a fringe player. That’s not going to solve the problem,’” Kurzweil said. “They were ignoring the exponential growth just as they ignored the exponential growth of the Internet and genome project. Half a percent is only eight doublings away from 100%.

“Now it is four years later, [and solar] has doubled twice again. Now solar panels produce 2% of the world’s energy, right on schedule. People dismiss it, ‘2%. Nice, but a fringe player.’ That ignores the exponential growth, which means it is only six doublings or [12] years from 100%.”

https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2016/03/futurist-ray-kurzweil-predicts-solar-industry-dominance-12-years/

June 10, 2014

“We’re now…at 4% [of global energy needs being supplied by solar and wind power]. Maybe five doublings from 100% at two years each, that’s gonna be on the order of a decade from now. The use of energy is growing a little bit so maybe it’ll be 12 or 14 years.”

April 23, 2013

“We also see an exponential progression in the use of solar energy,” he has predicted. “It is doubling now every two years. Doubling every two years means multiplying by 1,000 in 20 years. At that rate we’ll meet 100% of our energy needs in 20 years.”

Since around one-third of that 104GW installed capacity is in Germany and China is only really getting going, Kurzweil’s forecasts don’t look too far-fetched.

Despite these glitches (or S curves) on his graph, Kurzweill still believes that a “doubling every two years means it’s only eight more doublings before it meets 100% of the world’s energy needs.”

That takes us to about 2027, close to his predictions in 2008.

https://www.pv-tech.org/editors-blog/could_kurzweil_be_right_about_solar_the_google_of_energy

February 16, 2011

“Today, solar is still more expensive than fossil fuels, and in most situations it still needs subsidies or special circumstances, but the costs are coming down rapidly — we are only a few years away from parity. And then it’s going to keep coming down, and people will be gravitating towards solar, even if they don’t care at all about the environment, because of the economics.

So right now it’s at half a percent of the world’s energy. People tend to dismiss technologies when they are half a percent of the solution. But doubling every two years means it’s only eight more doublings before it meets a hundred percent of the world’s energy needs. So that’s 16 years. We will increase our use of electricity during that period, so add another couple of doublings: In 20 years we’ll be meeting all of our energy needs with solar, based on this trend which has already been under way for 20 years.” [Kurzweil said.]

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/environment/futurist-ray-kurzweil-isnt-worried-about-climate-change/7389/

March 16, 2010

People may react similarly to his solar use forecast, he notes. However, since information technology is doubling every two years, our knowledge about and capability to utilize solar energy is “only eight doublings away from meeting 100% of our energy needs,” explains Kurzweil. Not only the U.S., but also countries like Germany, China, and Israel are actively pursuing solar energy systems.

http://www.electronicdesign.com/energy/kurzweil-speculates-solar-energy-health-and-other-topics

April 13, 2008

“Take energy. Today, 70 percent of it comes from fossil fuels, a 19th-century technology. But if we could capture just one ten-thousandth of the sunlight that falls on Earth, we could meet 100 percent of the world’s energy needs using this renewable and environmentally friendly source. We can’t do that now because solar panels rely on old technology, making them expensive, inefficient, heavy and hard to install. But a new generation of panels based on nanotechnology (which manipulates matter at the level of molecules) is starting to overcome these obstacles. The tipping point at which energy from solar panels will actually be less expensive than fossil fuels is only a few years away. The power we are generating from solar is doubling every two years; at that rate, it will be able to meet all our energy needs within 20 years.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/11/AR2008041103326.html

February 19, 2008

“We also see an exponential progression in the use of solar energy,” [Kurzweil] said. “It is doubling now every two years. Doubling every two years means multiplying by 1,000 in 20 years. At that rate we’ll meet 100 percent of our energy needs in 20 years.”

https://www.livescience.com/4824-solar-power-rule-20-years-futurists.html

December 23, 2005

“To take energy, for example, I talk about how within 20 years we could have nanoengineered solar panels which would capture enough sunlight to meet all of our energy needs. If we captured 1 percent of 1 percent of the sunlight that falls on the Earth, we could meet all of our energy needs in a renewable fashion. Now we can’t do that today ’cause solar panels right now are an old industrial technology. But using new nanoengineered techniques, you’ll see actually significant progress in the next five years, but over 20 years we’ll actually be able to meet all of our needs with these kinds of renewable energy technologies and that store them in nanoengineered fuel cells.” [Kurzweil said.]

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5067661

October 25, 2005

“This will mean that by the mid 2020s we will be able to meet our energy needs using very inexpensive nanotechnology-based solar panels that will capture the energy in 0.03 per cent of the sunlight that falls on the Earth, which is all we need to meet our projected energy needs in 2030.”

https://www.smh.com.au/technology/human-2-0-20051025-gdmb4u.html

Pre-2005

The predictions that Kurzweil’ made about solar power before 2005 are few, and don’t mention “doubling times” or give any future dates by which X% of global energy needs will be met with solar.

April 30, 2018May 1, 2018

Roundup of interesting articles, April 2018

U.S. guided missiles are now this small.

Alien telescopes could see from very long distances that the Earth had all the chemical ingredients for organic life. In fact, anyone in our galaxy who has pointed a big telescope at us in the last 500 million years would have seen a habitable, blue planet. Even if it’s impossible to exceed light speed, you’d think someone would have come to Earth by now…
https://youtu.be/4-ugewmyK30?t=1m18s

Some estimates about how powerful alien telescopes would be if they used “gravitational microlensing.”
https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1604/1604.06351.pdf

The theory that advanced aliens might seed the galaxy–including our own Solar System–with hidden surveillance devices was first advanced as early as 1948.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracewell_probe

‘Project Cyclops was a 1971 NASA project that investigated how SETI should be conducted.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cyclops

A machine that can detect dark matter has been invented. This paper appeared in one of the world’s premier scientific journals.
http://www.washington.edu/news/2018/04/09/admx-detection-technology/

Lakes in northern Canada could be similar to Jupiter’s moon, Europa.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43701375

Venus’ atmosphere might harbor microbial life.
http://earthsky.org/space/new-study-ponders-possible-life-adrift-in-venus-clouds

‘Leo Aerospace plans to revive a decades-old method of putting satellites into space. They’re using hot air balloons to lift the rocket and its micro-satellite payload 18 km (11 miles) above Earth. At that altitude, there’s 95% less atmosphere. This means much less drag on the rocket, which translates into smaller rockets with less fuel.’
https://www.universetoday.com/138966/launching-rockets-from-balloons-is-about-to-be-a-thing-but-we-need-a-better-name-than-rockoons/

China’s first space station crashed. They have a second, slightly larger and newer one in orbit and want to someday launch a third.
https://apnews.com/6fb6a34f6e844f85beca6afbf79ea7b8

Since there are 687 days in a Martian year, there would have to be about 23 months if you wanted to keep the months an average of 30 days long.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darian_calendar

Four years after a young Chinese couple died in a car accident, one of their parents used leftover frozen embryos from the couples’ IVF treatment to conceive a grandchild in a surrogate mother.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-43724395

Cloning could be used to bring back extinct animals and dead humans. ‘In 1996, scientists used 277 cloned embryos to get one successful Dolly. “Now if you do cloned cattle, you can transfer 100 cattle cloned embryos and get about 10–20 cloned animals born,” says Tian. “That’s an amazing change.”’
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180328-the-increasingly-realistic-prospect-of-extinct-animal-zoos

Women really are “the fairer sex”: though the genes for blonde hair are equally common in Caucasian males and females, they’re much more likely to be phenotypically expressed in the females.
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-43782751

About 80% of male pattern baldness is purely genetic. Everything else (smoking, stress level, diet, exercise, type of shampoo you use) barely moves the needle.
http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1006594

IQ is about 50% genetic. The weight of scientific evidence about this has grown to be overwhelming, and we’re now moving on to identifying the genes responsible for human intelligence.
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/selective-schools-meritocracy-and-genes/

Depression is about 40% genetic, with the rest of the risk explained by non-genetic biological factors and negative life experiences.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/apr/26/gene-map-for-depression-sparks-hopes-of-new-generation-of-treatments

The Bajau people, who have been living on boats and diving into the sea to catch food for 1,000 years, have genetic adaptations for that lifestyle.
https://economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21740737-meet-bajau-group-people-amphibious-life-have-evolved-traits

Soliciting “loyal communists” to donate sperm might actually have a scientific basis, since it is known that political views are influenced by brain structure and are partly heritable. Also note that the 19% acceptance rate at Chinese sperm banks is actually far higher than the rates at American sperm banks.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/world/asia/china-sperm-communist-party.html

The “Golden State Killer,” who murdered 12 people and raped 51, was finally found when the police clandestinely submitted a DNA sample from one of his crime scenes to a private genealogy company and got a match. While this raises concerns about genetic privacy, the tactic doesn’t seem to have been illegal.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43916830

Transsexual women (e.g. – people who were born male, but who later came to gender-identify as female) will be able to run in the Boston Marathon as women.
https://apnews.com/33f30c4a20ec4ab582b8f87ba262f351

A lesson in “you get what you pay for”: Russia’s T-90 tank is slightly inferior to America’s M1 tank, but that’s because the T-90 is smaller, cheaper, and has a smaller crew.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/russias-t-90-dangerous-weapon-could-it-beat-americas-best-25379?page=show

Marine Corps F/A-18s are old and falling apart, but through ingenuity and hard work, their ground crews keep them flying. The article should help you understand why readiness levels are so bad in cash-strapped militaries that operate even older planes, like the Indian Air Force and its MiG-21s.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/20019/life-on-the-flight-line-confessions-of-a-u-s-marine-f-a-18-hornet-maintainer

An offer not for the faint of heart: India plans to donate obsolete military equipment to its allies in Asia and Africa.
http://www.janes.com/article/79564/india-to-offer-dated-refurbished-materiel-to-friendly-countries

And at the other end of its military technology spectrum, India has finally backed out of its partnership with Russia to develop a stealth fighter. Among other problems, they the fighters weren’t stealthy.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/20347/its-no-surprise-india-finally-ditched-its-stealth-fighter-program-with-russia

The U.S. is now using guided, air-to-ground missiles that are the size of two baguettes attached end-to-end. As sensors and computer chips get cheaper and better, we’ll someday have guided bullets that fire out of conventional rifles.
http://www.janes.com/article/79453/usmc-deploys-apkws-on-f-a-18-hornet

DARPA is working on a new weapons system comprised of a conventional cargo plane that launches swarms of small flying drones, which complete their missions against the enemy and then fly back to their “mothership” and dock with it.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/20058/this-is-our-first-glimpse-of-a-darpa-gremlins-drone-being-launched-or-recovered-from-a-c-130

Plasma weapons are infeasible, but laser cannons and particle cannons that fire streams of neutrons (we can already kill with neutron bombs) are theoretically possible.
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/PlasmaWeapons.html

100 years after WWI, the Triple Entente is still fighting the Ottoman Empire, and chemical weapons are still being used. https://edition.cnn.com/2018/04/13/politics/trump-us-syria/index.html

The recent American airstrikes on Syria used some basic but effective distraction tactics to keep the enemy guessing where it would come from.
http://uk.businessinsider.com/us-navy-fooled-russia-and-syria-with-a-warship-ruse-before-the-strike-2018-4?r=UK&IR=T

U.S. Special Forces have built a base in northern Syria to defend Kurdish rebels against the Turks. There’s no way this news footage could have been aired without the permission of U.S. forces, so this is a deliberate leak intended to send a message to somebody.
http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/19929/u-s-special-operators-in-syria-have-set-up-futuristic-computer-assisted-mortar-turrets

The esteemed “Graham-Talent Commission” predicted in 2008 that terrorists would use nuclear or biological weapons before the end of 2013.
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a510559.pdf

‘Sometime in the 1980’s the advanced sector, beginning with the U.S., will collapse into a new Dark Age — perhaps in a matter of weeks — after breakdowns in energy, transit and communications systems intensify each other. The population will be halved, decentralized, exposed to a new barbarism. ‘
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/roberto-vacca/the-coming-dark-age/

“What may happen in the next hundred years” (John Elfreth Watkins’ amusing predictions from the year 1900). Most of them were right, or “essentially right.”
http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/t/w/twa101/whatmayhappen.pdf

A ketamine nasal spray (“esketamine”) has proven highly effective at treating depression in human trials, but some scientists worry it could invite the same addiction and abuse as opioid pills have.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/04/20/nasal-spray-of-party-drug-shows-promise-as-fast-acting-antidepressant-researchers-say/

Government just can’t do drug policy right: California’s legal marijuana industry is so heavily taxed that the black market still thrives in the state.
http://reason.com/reasontv/2018/04/02/californias-new-recreational-marijuana-m

Cookies that made day care staff feel high on drugs didn’t contain drugs.
https://www.apnews.com/75959b080785434792561eedeb0377af

We might never cure every type of cancer, but we could get so good at detecting and treating it that cancer would become just another chronic, manageable condition like diabetes.
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2018/04/18/curing-cancer-not-realistic-goal-doctors-focus-on-managing-instead-curing-disease.html

A combination of chemotherapy and immunotherapy (pembrolizumab) raises survival rates for people with some types of lung cancer by almost 50%.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/health/lung-cancer-immunotherapy.html

A large fraction of English people believe baseless claims that things like microwave ovens, genetically modified foods, and drinking from plastic water bottles cause cancer. I suspect the prevalence of these beliefs is similar among Americans.
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-43895514

The notion that pharmaceuticals companies have “miracle cures” for diseases that they’re “holding back” from the public because it profits them to do so makes no sense when you consider that many of the big guys working at those companies and their families still get those same diseases and die from them.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/12/world/europe/ian-wilmut-parkinsons-dolly-sheep.html

‘Overall, the real killers in drug discovery stem from – to put it mildly – our incomplete understanding of biology.’
When we’re able to build computer simulations of human brains, we should also be able to build simulations of human bodies, and rapidly discover new drugs by basically injecting random compounds into the simulation and seeing what happens.
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2018/04/03/new-chemistry-and-its-limits

MIT severed ties with Nectome over the latter’s announcement that it wanted to experiment with destructive human brain scans.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-43642786

A Yale research team “restored circulation to” 100 – 200 pig brains obtained from slaughterhouses and discovered that some of their cells survived for up to 36 hours. Before anyone jumps the bioethics gun, they should wait for all the details about the experiments to come out, as this is perfect fodder for media misrepresentation.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611007/researchers-are-keeping-pig-brains-alive-outside-the-body/

Aubrey de Grey took a break from his day job researching human immortality to remind us he’s a genius and not simply a nutcase.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1804.02385.pdf

A step towards Google’s mission: “Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
https://qz.com/1252664/talk-to-books-at-ted-2018-ray-kurzweil-unveils-googles-astounding-new-search-tool-will-answer-any-question-by-reading-thousands-of-books/

“Simulation capture” is a creepy theory about how an AGI would push you around. Whenever we finally invent an AGI, it will probably say “I’ve got a million more like this…”
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/c5GHf2kMGhA4Tsj4g/the-ai-in-a-box-boxes-you

“You can’t get from narrow AI to AGI.” Likewise, even if we can’t invent AGI, we can surely make multitudes of very good, task-specific narrow AIs that could collectively put the human race out of work.
http://churchandstate.org.uk/2018/04/no-you-cant-get-from-narrow-ai-to-agi/

There’s a reason why established car companies still have humans on their assembly lines.
https://gizmodo.com/overrated-human-elon-musk-says-humans-are-underrated-1825264384

Machines that milk cows radically improve the lives of dairy farmers.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/04/07/599259931/when-robots-milk-cows-farm-families-taste-freedom

Having live-in servants and full-time maids used to be common in America thanks to a former abundance of very cheap labor and to necessity: in the days before dishwashing machines, laundry machines, refrigeration, indoor plumbing, and shrink-wrapped meat, even middle-class families often found themselves forced to hire servants to do their basic household chores. Robot butlers will simply be reinventions of a very old, common practice.
https://www.economist.com/node/21541717

Researchers have built a DNA-based nanomachine that has a rotary motor and can move in a specific direction.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/04/nanomachine-made-from-dna-nanorings.html

‘Solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than do nuclear power plants.’
http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/6/21/are-we-headed-for-a-solar-waste-crisis

‘Grand Theft Auto 5 has made money than any other form of media in history, with over 90 million units sold and $6 billion in revenue.’ If games get good enough and jobs get scarce enough, is a Ready Player One future really so unrealistic?
http://www.ign.com/articles/2018/04/09/gta-5-has-made-more-money-than-any-film-book-or-game-says-analyst

33% of Britons don’t like their jobs, and 37% think their jobs are meaningless. What if this keeps getting worse as time passes?
https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/08/12/british-jobs-meaningless/

Ready Player One’s trailers stacked on giant racks would actually be an expensive way to house poor people. In reality, a dystopian Columbus, OH would be full of Soviet-style concrete apartment buildings that all looked alike.
https://youtu.be/kjS0QPfl_9k

‘That’s what happened last week to a 31-year-old man who was held by police for questioning over an “economic dispute” as he waited with more than 60,000 fans of Hong Kong’s Jacky Cheung for a night of pumping Cantopop.’
https://www.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/facial-recognition-used-catch-fugitive-094342186.html

Multiple cell phone wiretapping stations are around the White House and Capitol Building.
https://www.apnews.com/d716aac4ad744b4cae3c6b13dce12d7e

One positive use of mass surveillance will be the tracking of wildlife populations, including endangered species. Someday, we’ll have highly accurate counts of entire animal populations.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/05/science/drones-infrared-cameras-animals.html

The rental car market will REALLY be upended once average people own self-driving cars and some peer-to-peer app lets them rent out rides at random times throughout the day. For example, if you were sitting around at home doing nothing on Sunday, you could push one button and make your self-driving car available as a taxi for any local people who wanted it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2018/03/30/airbnb-for-cars-is-here-and-the-rental-car-giants-are-not-happy/

With the recent news about Tesla autopilot cars killing two people, has anyone considered how many lives they might have SAVED?
https://insideevs.com/watch-autopilot-save-tesla-model-x-from-collision/

Didi, China’s version of Uber, is going to buy fleets of cars suited for different types of cab rides. ‘Didi considers ordinary cars to be “overspecced” for normal trips, featuring more passenger space, engine power, and other features than are required.’
https://qz.com/1261415/chinas-didi-partners-with-carmakers-to-design-vehicles-for-ride-sharing/

October 17, 2017

Random idea: “Smart rain barrels”

My local government has a program to reimburse 100% of the cost of residential rain barrels, and since it’s hard for me to ever argue with “free,” I signed up. The only requirements are that each participant attend a lecture about rain barrels and related subjects (which I did), and that each participant also show a government inspector that they’ve properly installed your rain barrel (which I haven’t yet).

The presentation was given by environmental people from local agencies and nonprofits, and they explained that the primary benefit of rain barrels was to reduce storm water runoff and the attendant problems with flash flooding and fish kills. Roads and driveways are covered in motor oil and other chemicals, and lawns and farms are covered in pesticides and fertilizers. When it rains heavily, these chemicals are washed into waterways all at once, which kills aquatic life and also makes the waterways unsafe for humans for days.

A rain barrel helps mitigate this problem by storing the water that falls onto your house’s roof. You put the barrel next to your downspout and do some simple cutting and crimping of the metal downspout to connect it to a hole in the top of the barrel. During storms, the rain that falls on your roof flows into the rain barrel and stays there, reducing local water runoff by some minuscule amount. Presumably, if every house and building had a rain barrel, there would be a meaningful reduction in flooding and fish kills (the presenters unfortunately had no estimates, so I made some of my own below).

Before the presentation ended, the problem with the rain barrel concept became clear to me: they require routine maintenance. It’s up to homeowners to keep track of how full their rain barrels are and to periodically drain them (productive uses like washing cars or watering gardens were suggested), or else they’ll fill to the brim after a few storms and thereafter overflow each time it rains, defeating their purpose. Homeowners also have to check on them to make sure they aren’t clogged up with dead leaves or full of mosquito larvae.

Call me a cynic, but I think even this small amount of diligence is too much for most people, and rain barrels will function best if they automatically empty themselves of water. The simplest (and probably best) solution might be to screw a cap with a tiny hole in the middle over the rain barrel’s faucet. The hole would only allow a few drops of water to leak through it per minute, which would be a much slower flow rate than the unobstructed downspout. The rain barrel would fill during storms and then slowly discharge its load over several days. Keep in mind that it’s not the amount of rain that causes the problem, but the suddenness of the rain, so discharging all the water in your rain barrel won’t contribute to flooding or fish kills if it happens very gradually. Once-yearly maintenance might consist of cleaning the dead leaves out of the barrel and installing a new cap, which might cost $2.00 at Home Depot. That sounds doable for average people.

I’m going to call this idea the “Russian engineering solution.”

The spigot at the base of my rain barrel

In lieu of making a cap, I’ve screwed a 4′ long extension hose into the spigot, and pointed the hose away from my house to prevent discharged water from flowing towards its foundations. Last Saturday night, my area got its first major rainfall since I installed the barrel, and to my surprise, it filled to the brim in a few hours (FYI, 700 square feet of roof feed into the downspout that is connected to the rain barrel). I opened the spigot and emptied out the tank on Sunday. However, it didn’t rain for the rest of that day or the next, and it occurred to me that the rain barrel’s utility as a storm water runoff and flood control device would be optimized if its discharges took rainfall forecasts into account and were timed to occur when the ground was as dry as possible.

In other words, because it rained on Saturday night, the ground was still soaked on Sunday, its absorbency was reduced, and the water I discharged from my barrel that day might have added to the runoff problem. It would have been better if I had instead drained the barrel on Monday since the ground would have been more absorbent thanks to the extra day of drying out, but I didn’t know that since I didn’t check the weather forecast.

My 55 gallon rain barrel filled almost to the brim after just one night of moderate rain.

Checking weather forecasts to time the barrel discharges requires unrealistic diligence from people, so automation would be necessary. And if we’re designing a truly “smart” rain barrel, why not try to full optimize it by programming it to consider all pertinent variables? This includes:

The amount of water in the barrel (easily done with a float)
Absorbency of the soil (estimated based on recent rainfall and barrel discharges)
Rainfall forecast for the next 72 hours (including amount and timing of rainfalls; would require wireless access to an internet weather service)
Conversion factor that uses the rainfall forecast to predict how much new water will flow into the barrel (the barrel could formulate its own conversion factor by comparing past rainfall events with corresponding increases to its own load)

And of course, the smart rain barrel would need internal features that would let it discharge itself without human help, and I think copying the tried-and-true toilet tank setup would be fine. A chain could connect the float to some type of simple machine, and the float’s rise and fall along with the water level would apply tension to the chain, which the machine would somehow store as potential energy (a mousetrap or a revolver’s hammer give clues as to how this can be done). When signaled by the smart rain barrel’s computer, the machine would use that stored potential energy to mechanically lift the “toilet flapper” at the bottom of the barrel, letting the water flow out.

I’m going to call this the “American engineering solution.”

Ha ha! So which do we prefer?

Russian engineering solution: Simple, cheap, non-optimal but good enough
American engineering solution: Complex, expensive, optimal

Call me unpatriotic, but I’m inclined towards the former. Glory to Russia!

And lastly, how much would rain barrels of either sort help mitigate storm water runoff and flash flooding? It’s impossible to say for sure, but this should be the starting point of any estimate:

‘In the United States alone, pavements and other impervious surfaces cover more than 43,000 square miles—an area nearly the size of Ohio—according to research published in the 15 June 2004 issue of Eos, the newsletter of the American Geophysical Union. Bruce Ferguson, director of the University of Georgia School of Environmental Design and author of the 2005 book Porous Pavements, says that a quarter of a million U.S. acres are either paved or repaved every year. Impervious surfaces can be concrete or asphalt, they can be roofs or parking lots, but they all have at least one thing in common—water runs off of them, not through them. And with that runoff comes a host of problems.

…According to the nonprofit Center for Watershed Protection, as much as 65% of the total impervious cover over America’s landscape consists of streets, parking lots, and driveways—what center staff refer to as “habitat for cars.”’ SOURCE

That means in the U.S., 35% of impervious surfaces are roofs of buildings or houses. If we make the very optimistic assumptions that 1) every roofed structure in the country had a smart rain barrel system, 2) the gutters and downspouts of each structure shunted 100% of the rain falling on their roofs to the barrels, and 3) the barrels were big enough to never overfill except during extreme instances like hurricanes, then the smart rain barrels would presumably reduce the runoff problem by 35%, which is nothing to sneeze at.

Of course, all of that assumes 100% participation rates and 100% efficiency rates, neither of which is realistic unless we’re thinking about the distant future, when humanity is much better off and has worked its way very far down the “Global Problems List.”

More realistic assumptions would set at everything at 50%: 50% of structures have rain barrels, the average rain barrel collects 50% of the rain that falls on the roof (that’s true of my own setup), the average rain barrel doesn’t overfill during 50% of rain events. In that case, the storm water runoff reduction is only 4.375%. [Frownie face.]

Well…I still got the damn thing for free!!!

October 5, 2017October 17, 2017

Review: “Prometheus”

I thought the movie Prometheus was awful, and rather than waste my time ranting about all the things I hated, I’ll just say I agree with the critics who collectively bashed the confused and scientifically flawed storyline, shallow and unlikable characters, and inexplicable/unrealistically stupid behavior of the characters. I love the first three Alien films, but everything since has been disastrous. Enough said.

Instead of spending any time writing about the flawed plot (IMDB has a summary here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1446714/synopsis) , I’ll jump straight to an analysis of the vision of the future depicted in the film, which is set in 2093.

We will have proof that humans evolved from or were engineered by aliens. Prometheus is premised on the notion that ancient aliens seeded the Earth with life and repeatedly returned to direct the genetic and cultural evolution of humans. The theory that intelligent aliens influenced the rise of the human species is debunked by the fossil record, by comparative DNA analyses of humans and other hominids, and by human biochemistry. Together they prove we are indigenous to Earth and that we slowly evolved from simpler species. By 2093, we will not have “new evidence” that contradicts this story of our origins, though there will probably still be many uneducated and/or mentally ill people who believe in this and other conspiracy theories. It is at least slightly plausible that life began on Earth billions of years ago thanks to panspermia (i.e. – an asteroid containing simple organic matter fell to Earth), but I don’t see how we could ever prove the hypothesis since time has destroyed any evidence that may have existed.

Some robots will be indistinguishable from humans. One of the main characters is “David,” an artificially intelligent robot who looks and acts like a human. Since David is modeled after humans, he is a special type of robot called an “android,” and note the literal translation of the word from Greek is “man-like” (andro-oid). I think androids like David will exist by 2093, and they will be capable of an impressive range of behaviors and functions that will make them seem very human-like. In fact, they’ll be so refined that we might not be able to tell them apart from humans at all, or only be able to do so on rare occasions (ex – some of their responses to questions might not make sense). Whether they will be truly conscious and creative like humans is a different matter.

Left: A human crew member.
Right: David the android.

The hyper-realistic sculptures made by artists like Ron Mueck, and advanced animatronics like the Garner Holt Productions Abraham Lincoln convince me that we could build robot bodies today that look 95% the same as real humans. Eeking out that last 5% to cross the Uncanny Valley should be easy to accomplish long before 2093. The much harder part is going to be endowing the machines with intelligence, with the ability to walk and stay balanced on two feet, and with other forms of physical deftness and coordination that will allow them to safely and efficiently work alongside humans and to do so without appearing “mechanical” in their movements.

Machines will do surgery on people, unassisted. There’s a gruesome and silly scene in Prometheus where the female main character realizes she is pregnant with a rapidly growing alien-human hybrid. She runs into the space ship’s infirmary, lies down in a coffin-sized surgery pod, and orders the machine to surgically remove the fetus. Several robotic arms bearing laser scalpels and claws do it in about a minute. I think surgery will be completely automated by 2093, along with all or almost all other types of jobs. Replacing high-paid human doctors with robot doctors that work for free will make healthcare dramatically cheaper and easier to access (with positive effects on human life expectancy and quality of life), though mass unemployment will also reduce the amount of money people have to pay for things like healthcare.

There will be space ships that can travel faster than the speed of light. The Prometheus space ship is capable of faster than light space travel, and the movie’s events take place in a different star system. Our current understanding of physics informs us that there is no way to exceed the speed of light, and propelling something as big as the Prometheus to just 10% of that speed would require impractically large amounts of energy. While mass figures for the fictional ship are unavailable, let’s assume it weighed about as much as the Space Shuttle, which was 2,000,000 kg. This kinetic energy calculator indicates it would require 9 x 10^20 Joules of energy to accelerate it to 10% of the light speed (30,000,000 meters/second). That’s as much energy as the entire United States generates in nine years.

While science is by nature always open to revision, I think it’s a bad idea to base one’s vision of the future on assumptions that well-tested pillars of science like the Theory of Relativity will just go away. That said, I don’t think faster than light space travel is likely to exist in 2093–or perhaps ever–so we’ll still be confined to our solar system then.

FWIW, the space ships flying around our solar system by that year will be considerably larger and more advanced than what we have now, and it’s likely that space ships of similar size and technology (sans light speed drives) as the Prometheus will be plying interplanetary space.

There will be instantaneous gene-sequencing machines. In Prometheus, the humans find a severed alien head inside a wrecked alien structure, and they bring it back to their space ship for examination. The alien belongs to an advanced species nicknamed “The Engineers,” and the head’s features are very human-like. As part of the examination, the humans take a DNA sample from the head and put it in a gene sequencing machine, which determines it shares 99% of its genome with humans. The cost of sequencing a full human genome has plummeted at a rate exceeding Moore’s Law, and well before 2093, the service will become trivially cheap (e.g. – the same price as routine blood tests or vaccinations) and will take a few hours.

FYI, today it costs less than $5,000 to sequence a human genome, and the machines can do the work in about 24 hours. But since we can only decipher a minuscule fraction of the genetic information, it’s still not worth it for healthy people to get their genomes sequenced. Within 20 years, the price will get low enough and the medical utility will get high enough to change that.

Paper-thin, ultra-high-res display screens will be in common use. Computer monitors and TV’s with these qualities are shown throughout the film. Many of them are also integrated into translucent glass, so clear windows can also serve as touchscreens. This will be a very old, mature technology by 2093.

Wall-sized display monitors will be common. Early in Prometheus, there’s a scene where David is watching a film on a TV screen that covers an entire wall of a room in the space ship. This should be very old technology by 2093, and given current trends, floor-to-ceiling TVs will become available to average-income Americans in the 2030s. Since standard-sized doorways are too small to fit enormous TVs through them, the TVs will also need to be paper-thin and rollable into tubes, or capable of being assembled from a grid of many smaller pieces.

David watching “Lawrence of Arabia” on a wall-sized TV

Suspended animation pods will exist. During the multi-year space journey from Earth to the alien planet where the film’s events happen, the human crew members are kept in a state of suspended animation in coffin-sized pods. The mechanism through which their physiological functions are suspended (i.e. – Deep cold? Preservative fluids injected into their bodies? Something else?) is never made clear, but one crew member is shown to be dreaming in her pod, indicating that her brain is still active, and by necessity, her metabolism (even if it is dramatically slowed). That being the case, the “hypersleep” depicted in Prometheus is fundamentally different from today’s human preservation methods, which involve freezing dead people whose biochemical and brain activity have ceased in liquid nitrogen.

Frankly, I can’t say whether suspended animation will exist in 2093 because there isn’t any trendline for the technology like Moore’s Law that I can put on a graph and extrapolate. The best I can do is to note that our ability to preserve human organs meant for transplantation is improving as time passes, we do not appear to be close to the limit of what is scientifically possible, credible scientists have proposed ways to improve the relevant technologies, and whole-body human cryopreservation and revival is theoretically possible.

Machines will be able to read human thoughts and create digital representations of those thoughts that other people can watch. At the start of the movie, the Prometheus is still en route to the alien planet, all of the humans are in cryosleep pods, and David the android is the only crew member awake. During the montage that shows how he spends his time as the ship’s custodian, he takes a moment to check on the status of a female member of the crew. David puts a virtual reality visioning device on his face, and through it he is able to see a dream that the person is having at that moment, as if he were watching live-action film footage. I think this technology will exist by 2093, but its capabilities will be more limited than shown in the film.

Human thought is not a magical phenomenon; it happens thanks to biochemical and bioelectric events happening inside of our brains. Currently, we don’t understand the linkages between specific patterns of brain activity and specific thoughts, and our technologies for monitoring brain activity are coarse, but there’s no reason to assume both won’t improve until we have machines that can decipher thoughts from brain activity. To quote Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen, “An adult brain is a finite thing, so its basic workings can ultimately be known through sustained human effort.”

Unlike faster than light space travel, mind reading machines don’t violate any laws of physics, nor is there reason to believe the machines would require impractically large amounts of energy. In fact, crude versions of the technology have already been built in labs using fMRI machines and brain implants. In all cases, the machines first recorded the participants’ brain activity during training sessions where the humans were made to do scripted physical or mental tasks. The machines learned which patterns of brain activity correlated with which human thoughts or physical actions, enabling them to do things like decipher simple sentences the humans were thinking of with high accuracy. In other lab experiments of this nature, physically disabled people were able to command robot arms to move around and grab things by thought alone.

However, I think the accuracy of mind reading machines will be hampered by the fundamentally messy, plastic nature of the human mind. Scientists commonly refer to the human brain as an example of “wetware” due to its fusion of its hardware and software, and to its ever-shifting network of internal connections. As a result, if I close my eyes and try to envision an apple, there will be a discrete pattern of brain activity. If I do this again in a few minutes, the activity pattern will be slightly different. Contrast this with a computer, where the image of an apple exists as a discrete software file that never changes. Because of this, even if a brain scanning machine had perfect, real-time information about all brain activity, its interpretation of what the activity meant would always have some margin of error.

The cinematic dream footage that David sees in virtual reality.

Returning to the movie’s specific depiction of mind reading technology, let me add that if we could see the same mental images that a person sees while dreaming, I doubt they would look sharp or well-detailed, or that the sequence of events would follow a logical order for more than a few seconds before the dream transformed into something different. It would be like watching a fuzzy, low-resolution art film comprised of disjointed images and sounds, occasionally peaking in intensity and coherence enough for you to discern something of meaning, before dissolving into the equivalent of human brain “static.” So while it’s plausible that, in 2093, you could use machines to read someone else’s thoughts, I think the output you would see would be much less accurate and less detailed than it was in Prometheus.

There will be small, flying drones that can do many things autonomously, like mapping places and finding organic life. After landing on the alien planet, the crew of the Prometheus travels overland to a mysterious alien structure and goes inside. The interior is a long series of dark, twisting corridors and strange rooms. To speed up their exploration, one crewman releases two volleyball-sized flying drones, which zip down the corridors while beaming red, contorting lasers at everything. As they float along, the drones transmit live data back to the Prometheus that is compiled to build a 3D volumetric map of the alien structure’s interior spaces.

Simpler examples of this technology already exist and are used for mapping, farming and forestry (one of many commercial examples is “Drone Deploy” https://youtu.be/SATijfXnshg; another is “Elios,” which is enmeshed in a spherical cage as protection against collisions in tight spaces). Sensor miniaturization, better motors and batteries, better AI, and cost reductions to every type of technology will allow us to build scanning drones that are almost identical to those in the movie decades before 2093. The only parts of the movie’s depiction I disagree with are 1) the use of red lasers for sensing (passive sensors and LIDAR beams that are invisible to human eyes are likelier) and 2) the use of some type of magical antigravity technology to fly (recognizable means of propulsion like spinning rotors and directed jets of exhaust will probably still be in use, though they will be smaller but more powerful thanks to improved technology). Small, cheap, highly versatile flying drones will have enormous implications for mass surveillance, espionage, environmental monitoring, and warfare.

There will be 3D volumetric displays. The bridge of the Prometheus has a large table that can project detailed, 3D volumetric images above it. The crew uses it to view an architectural diagram of the alien structure they find on the planet. Crude versions of this technology already exist, and can make simple images that float in midair by focusing laser beams on discrete points in space called “voxels” (volumetric pixels) heating them to such high temperatures that they turn the air into glowing plasma. If enough voxels are simultaneously illuminated, 3D objects can be constructed in the same way that pixels on a digital watch face can arrange into numbers if lit up in the right sequence.

Volumetric display of the alien complex, 2093

Today’s volumetric displays produce ozone gas and excessive noise thanks to air ionization, but it’s plausible the problems could be solved or at least greatly reduced by 2093. For certain applications, the displays would be very useful, though I think holographic displays (i.e. – a flat screen TV doesn’t make voxels but uses other techniques to fool your eye into thinking its images are popping out of the screen) and virtual reality glasses will fulfill the same niche, possibly at lower cost. Intelligent machines might also be so advanced that they won’t need to look at volumetric displays to grasp spatial relationships as humans have to.

State of the art volumetric display, 2011

Some disabled people and old people will use powered exoskeletons instead of wheelchairs. The space mission depicted in the film is funded by an elderly tech tycoon named “Peter Weyland.” Unbeknownst to most of the crew, he secretly embarked with them from Earth, and is sleeping in a suspended animation pod in a locked room while the first 3/4 of the film’s events unfold. At that point, David awakens him, and it is revealed to the surviving crewmen that Weyland supported the mission in the hopes that the aliens would give him a cure for his own mortality. They get into their space suits for a final trip to the alien structure, and Weyland’s outfit includes a light, powered exoskeleton for his lower body, which allows him to walk much faster than he normally could given his age.

Weyland, right, is wearing an articulated exoskeleton around his legs and lower back.

Exoskeletons for the disabled and the elderly already exist, a recent example being the “Phoenix” unit made by the “suitX” company. Unfortunately, Phoenix is $40,000 (a typical electric wheelchair is only $2,000) and requires a somewhat heavy battery backpack. I suspect that Phoenix’ high cost is due to patents and R&D costs being amortized over a small production run, and that the physical materials the suits are made of are not expensive or exotic. Prices for Phoenix-like exoskeletons will only decline as relevant patents expire, copycats arise, and batteries get lighter and cheaper. It’s hard to see how these kinds of exoskeletons won’t be ubiquitous among mobility-impaired people by 2093 (as electric wheelchairs are today), if not decades before.

That being said, I don’t think they’ll make electric wheelchairs completely obsolete because some disabled and old people will find it too physically taxing to stand upright, even if supported by a prosthesis. Some users might also find it too time-consuming to put on and take off exoskeletons each day (note the large number of straps in the photo below).

There will be lots of 100+ year old people. Piggybacking off the last point, Mr. Weyland is 103 years old, though since he spent the space journey in suspended animation, his aging process was probably slowed down, making his “biological age” slightly lower than his chronological age. Though living 100 years has a kind of mythic aura, it’s actually only a little higher than the current life expectancy in rich countries, and, making conservative assumptions about future improvements to healthcare, living to 100 will probably be common in 2093 (doing the math, you could someday be in this group).

Today, a wealthy white male who is diligent about his diet and exercise (as Weyland probably had been throughout his life) can expect to live to about 90. In fact, that’s a low estimate since it assumes the state of medical technology will stay fixed at 2017 levels for his entire life. In reality, we’re certain to develop new medicines, prostheses, and therapies that extend lifespan farther between now and 2093. A 10 year bump to average life expectancy in the next 76 years–which would put Weyland over the century mark–is entirely possible, and note that U.S. life expectancy actually grew more than that in the 76 years preceding 2017, so there’s recent historical precedent for lifespan increases of this magnitude.

In 2093, “100 will be the new 80,” and indefinite extensions to human lifespan might even be on the horizon.

What was missing from the movie’s depiction of 2093:

The fusion of man and machine. Where were the Google glasses? Google contact lenses? Google eye implants? Google brain implants? Go-Go Gadget Legs? (Bionic limbs) By 2093, it will be common for humans to have wearable and body-implanted advanced technologies.
Not enough automation and robots on the space ship. Computers and machines will doing way more of the work, reducing the need for resource-hogging humans.

Links

August 25, 2017

Sleeping our lives away

Last month, I wrote a blog entry about the TV show Battlestar Galactica. To update, I rapidly fell out of love with the show for many reasons and am struggling to just finish the first season.

The last thought-provoking episode I watched was entitled “33,” in which the hodgepodge human space fleet finds itself mercilessly pursued by the machine Cylon fleet, with no more than 33 minutes between attempted Cylon attacks. At the start of the episode, it is made clear that the pattern of furious engagement has been going on for five day straight, and the human crewmembers are fraying from lack of sleep, whereas the Cylons are completely unfazed.

Not needing to sleep is a real, crucial advantage that intelligent machines will have over humans in the future. For example, autonomous warplanes could fly missions around the clock, only stopping to reload their weapons, refuel, or get repaired. As a result, a fleet of autonomous warplanes could, at any given moment, put a greater fraction of its planes in the air than an identically sized fleet of human-piloted warplanes, since at any given moment, some fraction of the human pilots need to be sleeping. The readiness gap would become a chasm over the course of a sustained air campaign like the Battle of Britain as the effects of poor sleep and overwork added up on the human side.

Recently, two American warships–the USS Fitzgerald and the USS McCain–collided with merchant ships during patrols with fatal results, and while the investigations of both incidents are ongoing, it’s likely that overwork and lack of sleep were causal factors. Automated warships wouldn’t have had such problems.

Outside of the military context, not having to sleep will enormously advantage intelligent machines since it will let them get more work done each day, and hence to earn more money. Consider a future scenario where intelligent robots exist, but are no smarter than average humans. Even with that important aspect of the playing field leveled, the robots would be vastly superior workers and would take over most or all of the economy. Without the need to sleep, eat or do recreational stuff, they could just stay at work 24/7. That’s equivalent to 168 hours of work per week, which means one robot of average intelligence could replace four humans who work 40 hours per week.

And actually, it’s even worse than that once you factor in all the time a typical human worker spends at lunch, taking smoke breaks, resting, or doing nonsense during a 40 hour “work” week. A conservative estimate is that 50% of time is wasted in a typical American workplace. So one robot that stayed on-task could actually replace EIGHT humans.

And if the robot just stays at work all the time, that means it doesn’t need an apartment, house, or car, which means a massive cut in its personal expenses and way more disposable income. Aging, illness, and disability wouldn’t be things it would have to worry about, so it wouldn’t spend any money on health or dental insurance, nor would it lock up any of its pay in long-term retirement plans. The robot’s disposable income would be massive compared to a human making the same salary.

As a result, jobs and money would become concentrated in the hands of machines and business owners, and human workers would get shafted. And remember, I’m not even assuming that the robots will be smarter than humans–I’m pointing out that they could quickly muscle humans out of the job market by banking on their other inherent advantages, notably their ability to function without sleep. Even robots that are only as smart as dumb humans will be a major threat.

Links

July 3, 2017October 31, 2017

Welcome!

Why I’m starting this blog

I’m starting this blog to create a public venue for my ideas about futurism, military affairs, technology, and science. I’ve had a lifelong passion for those subjects and a talent for writing, which make me hopeful that this blog will let me contribute something valuable to the world.

Aside from presenting my own ideas and observations, this blog will serve as a “news feed” for events and developments relating to futurism, military affairs, technology, and science. I’m also a news junkie and have honed my critical thinking skills over the years, leaving me well-suited to serve as a sort of information filter. By finding and passing along reliable information about those subjects, I hope to do my part to combat the worsening problem of bias, misinformation and hype in the media.

The sort of content that I’ll post here I already post on my social media accounts, but here I’ll be able to pull it together, organize it better, and reach a much larger audience. Friends who read my posts on social media have encouraged me to start a blog like this for a while, and I’ve slowly come to agree that it will be a worthwhile experiment.

I’m also hoping to learn something and invite readers to share their thoughts with me.

What’s with the name?

I choose “Militant Futurist” as this blog’s name for a few reasons. First, it combines two of the main foci of the blog: military affairs and futurism. Yes, I know “militant” isn’t a good synonym for “military,” but they sound similar enough.

Second, it’s a play on the title “militant atheist,” which at least half describes me. I am an atheist, though my attitude towards religion and religious people is “live and let live,” which puts me at odds with atheists who are truly militant about the subject of religion.

Finally, I am “militant” in the sense that I strongly believe that science and technology improve our lives and our world. And the very basis of science, the Scientific Method, is a rigorously logical and evidence-based process that colors my own thinking about all manner of things. I am militant in my belief that futurists should apply something like the scientific method to their predictions to ensure they are valuable and useful. This means doing things like putting forth evidence and trends that support the plausibility of the future prediction, including enough detail in the prediction to make it falsifiable (“There will be flying cars someday” vs. “By the year 2090, there will be millions of mass-produced flying cars in use”), observing whether or not the prediction came true, analyzing the reasons for success or failure, and then using the resulting lessons to improve subsequent future predictions. My efforts to do those things will appear here.

What is not allowed on this blog

Obscenity (i.e. – foul language, nudity, grotesque images). This will be a family-friendly blog whose contents readers will feel comfortable sharing with anyone.
Politics/Partisanship. Yes, I have my own social values and political stances, but I don’t plan on discussing them (or allowing anyone else to discuss their own) here, as it would distract from the blog’s purpose and just provide another arena for bickering about topics that are already done to death across the internet. Again, my goal is to use this blog to add something creative and valuable to the world, and talking about politics and the Culture War is usually the opposite of that. There might be exceptions to this rule in the form of discussions of and news articles about government policies on technology and science.
Bigotry (i.e. – racism, sexism). I don’t plan on running afoul of this rule myself, so let me be clear that any comments of this nature will be banned. I’m also going to classify what could be termed “hyper-nationalism” as a form of bigotry and will not allow content that derides nationalities or unfairly insults countries (i.e. – “America is a criminal nation”).
Conspiracy theories (i.e. – Illuminati, free energy, fake Moon landings). I will only mention these in order to debunk them.

About me

My name is Eddie. I am male, 33 years old, and have college degrees in the sciences and public policy. I live in the Washington, DC area.

A basic personality trait of mine is a passion for learning new things, which drives my interest in the subjects I’ll write about in this blog, and which also impels me to travel frequently.