Reasons for Optimism I

Although there are many reasons for worry about the near term, when one takes a longer view of the human condition, the reasons for optimismfar outweigh reasons for pessimism.  Barack Obama may, as feared by many, introduce policies that will doom the American experiment, provoke and prolong a depression, and lead to increased death and destruction on a massive scale; however, he has not yet done so and may well surprise even his most hardened opponents.  I expect to disagree with many of his policies but would prefer to wait until he introduces them before I delineate my opposition.  As always, I reserve the right to be wrong and the willingness to admit that he could be right about all sorts of things of which I disapprove.  Time will tell, as it always has.  Withthat as preamble, I would like to suggest some of the reasons I remain optimistic about the future, as most Singularians(Singularitarians?) must be.

To start, the future will depend, in very large measure, on the investmentswe make today in science and technology.  To that end, there is reason to hope that BarackObama will be friendlier to science and technology than the Bush administration.  While I think the idea that Bush was anti-science was a canard (there are far more Luddites on the left than the right these days) I do think, depending, as all thingsdo, on the economy, the Obama administration is likely to put a greater emphasis on support for basic research, if only because he is surrounded by Silicon valley entrepreneurs who understand the importance of basic research.  Whether that support is merely verbal or includes a financial commitment will be uncertain for quite some time and if political and religious considerations interfere with his policy, even his best intentions will be undone.  (eg, The question of Anthropomorphic Global Warming continues to lack the rigorous data necessary to consider the question closed; those who insist they understand man's contribution to climate change are expressing religious beliefs more than scientific knowledge.)

In terms of the good news, on a daily basis we see progress being made in understanding  our biology. 

We are approaching a time where we will routinely cure Cancer or transform it into a chronic illness rather than a life shortening death sentence.  We are daily making progress in regenerating cells and organs, including the most difficult regeneration task we will face, and this progress will build upon itself.

A less overt reason for optimism is the ground work being laid for remarkable changes to come.  As our computers keep getting more powerful, problems that were once thought intractable and impossible will become available for understanding.  The physical limits that were thought to doom Moore's Law by 2020 have already eroded in the face of technological progress. This means that our computing power remains on course to surpass the power of the human brain sometime in the next 15-20 years.  Computers more powerful than our brains (and the likelihood of networked computers surpassingour brain power well before the late 2020s must be considered at least a possibility) will revolutionize knowledge.  As just one example, understanding the interactions of the 30,000 proteins that are involved in the functioning of our cells, an understanding that is in the very early stages, will explode as the data base of the humanproteome enlarges. 

 Even in the international realm, there is reason for optimism.  It is true that the Russians, Islamists, Chinese, et al, have already begun the testing of Barack Obama, the fact is that the world is a far safer place today than it was during most of human history.  There are fewer wars going on than ever before, the human race has stepped back from the brink of nuclear annihilation.  (Do not mistake my optimism for foolhardiness.  A single nuclear attack anywhere in the world is likely to precipitate a global depression at the least, but a terrorist bomb is not an existential threat for the human race in the same way an American-Soviet nuclearexchange would have been.)  There is reason to believe that terrorist WMD will continue to be limited in its effectiveness and our efforts to limit the ability of our enemies to directly attack us will continue to be successful.  (Again, a single successful  attack would have an impact far in excess of its actual damage and cannot be ruled out but at the moment it is almost certainly true that we are safer today than we were on 9/10 or that we thought we were on 9/12.)

I am fairly certainthat there will be innumerable opportunities for pessimism in the weeks and months ahead, but until there are concrete reasons for concern, an optimistic outlook is easier to tolerate and remains just slightly more justifiable than the alternative.  I hope to have further posts that delineate Reasons for Optimism as time goes on; hence my optimistic title of this post as "Reasons for Optimism I."