Tag Archives: human extinction

August 2024

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Obviously, there were plenty of goings-on in the U.S. presidential election campaign in August. I’ve talked about that elsewhere, and everybody else is talking about it, so I’ll give it a rest here.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Human extinction, and our dysfunctional political system’s seeming lack of concern and even active ramping up the risk. We have forgotten how horrible it was last time (and the only time) nuclear weapons were used on cities. Is there any story that could be more frightening and/or depressing to a human?

Most hopeful story: Drugs targeting “GLP-1 receptors” (one brand name is Ozempic) were developed to treat diabetes and obesity, but they may be effective against stroke, heart disease, kidney disease, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, alcoholism, and drug addiction. They may even be miracle anti-aging drugs. But really, it seems like the simple story is that most of us in the modern world are just eating too much and moving our bodies too little, and these drugs might let us get some of the benefits of healthier lifestyles without actually making the effort. Making the effort, or making the effort while turbo-charging the benefits with drugs, might be the better option. Nonetheless, saving lives is saving lives.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I did some musing about electric vehicles in August. The hype bubble seems to have burst a bit, as they did not explode onto the international commercial scene as some were hoping/predicting. This is partly because public infrastructure has not kept pace with the private sector due to sheer inertia, but I always detect a whiff of the evil oil/car industry propaganda and political capture behind the scenes. Nonetheless, just as I see happening with computer-driven vehicles, the technology and market will continue to develop after the hype bubble bursts. In a way, this almost starts the clock (5-10-20 years?) for when we can expect the actual commercial transition to occur. It will happen gradually, and one day we will just shrug, accept it, assume we knew it was coming all along, and eventually forget it was any other way. And since I seem to have transportation on the brain, here is a bonus link to my article on high speed trains.

existential threats and Trump

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Some experts say (Toby Ord is one) that the odds of human extinction or at least the end of civilization as we know it is about 1 in 6 over the next hundred years. No recent administration has really done anything to address these risks, although Obama made some rhetorical flourishes in that direction. Trump actively increased the risk of human extinction by withdrawing from the Paris climate treaty, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty, and the Iran nuclear treaty. This is another realm of immorality beyond being a mere serial rapist and tax cheat, and plenty of reason that electing him again is morally unfathomable.

The rhetoric we hear often paints a contrast between international cooperation and “pursuing national interests”. But what could be more in an individual nation’s interest than trying to ensure that the civilization it is a part of will continue to exist?

Pfizer and “gain of function” research

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This Pfizer press release just confirms that the technology to make genetically engineered viruses is widespread:

we have conducted research where the original SARS-CoV-2 virus has been used to express the spike protein from new variants of concern. This work is undertaken once a new variant of concern has been identified by public health authorities. This research provides a way for us to rapidly assess the ability of an existing vaccine to induce antibodies that neutralize a newly identified variant of concern…

In a limited number of cases when a full virus does not contain any known gain of function mutations, such virus may be engineered to enable the assessment of antiviral activity in cells. In addition, in vitro resistance selection experiments are undertaken in cells incubated with SARS-CoV-2 and nirmatrelvir in our secure Biosafety level 3 (BSL3) laboratory to assess whether the main protease can mutate to yield resistant strains of the virus.  It is important to note that these studies are required by U.S. and global regulators for all antiviral products and are carried out by many companies and academic institutions in the U.S. and around the world.

Pfizer

So they aren’t creating genetically engineered bioweapons of mass destruction, but they could if they wanted to. Somebody somewhere probably is. Not the U.S. government, which has no track record of lying or trying to dominate the world, and doesn’t collude with big business entities with the technology to do so.

September 2022 in Review

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Most frightening and/or depressing story: If humans are subject to the same natural laws as all other species on Earth, we are doomed to certain extinction by our limited genetic variety, declining fertility, and overexploitation of our habitat. So, how different are we? I can spin up a hopeful story where are evolving and overcoming our limitations through intelligence and technology, but time will tell if this is right or wrong.

Most hopeful story: Metformin, a diabetes drug, might be able to preemptively treat a variety of diseases colloquially referred to as “old age”.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Biotechnology might be on the cusp of producing plants that can make more efficient use of the sun’s energy. This could be good for the food supply, and bad if the damn things escape into the woods. And in tangentially related news, yields of salad vegetables can actually be higher in urban areas than on conventional farms. Those coastal elites and their fancy salads, why can’t they just live on simple basic grains like Doritos the way the rest of us do?

extinction debt

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Paleontologist Henry Gee says humans have an extinction debt because we have very low genetic variety caused by past bottlenecks, our fertility is declining, and we have overexploited our habitat.

This combination of factors might indeed doom other species. I would like to believe our species’ intelligence and technology gives us the ability to adapt our way out of the mess we have created orders of magnitude faster than other species would. Of course, the possibility that we can does not guarantee we will.

Bill McKibben

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Bill McKibben has a new book called Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? In an interview with the Intercept, he expresses a lot of concern about climate change. Another interesting thing he talks about is the idea that genetic technology could mean that an individual human could become obsolete for the first time.

As things stand, these technologies will take the economic inequality presently in existence and encode it in our genes. This is so obviously going to happen if we continue down this path that no one bothers to argue otherwise. Lee Silver, a professor at Princeton University who is one of the leading proponents of genetic modification, has already said that in the future we will have two unequal classes of human beings: “GenRich” and “naturals.” He and many others have already begun taking such a future as granted.