Call for Big Think ideas

[archerships]

Marginal Revolution is one of my favorite blogs. Alex Tabarrok, one of the contributors, asks:

President Bush reputedly asked his big-think guys to come up with a new vision to unify and motivate the nation and they came up with ... a moon base? It's so been there, done that. Going to the moon was one of the greatest accomplishments of mankind but I am not inspired by imitation. Are you?

Hence, I issue this challenge to the blogosphere. What's your big-think idea to unify, motivate and inspire the nation? A moon-base will cost on the order of 200 billion so let's economize and say that the idea should cost 100 billion or less - a better idea and 100 billion to spare! Ideally, the idea should be mostly free of politics and have a strong possibility of success given that the money is spent. Email me and I will post the best ideas with full credit.

(P.S. If you ever get to hear a lecture from Alex or take one of his classes, I highly recommend you take the opportunity. He's quite entertaining and informative. )



Hi Alex,

First, I don't think that the federal government should be involved at all in "...big-think ideas to unify, motivate and inspire the nation." Attempts to do so generally result in bureaucracies that parasitize, paralyze, and purloin cash that the individuals of the nation would prefer to spend on other things, given the choice.

That said, I have no shortage of ideas that I would fund were I king. However, the most important is finding a way of breaking free of the most fundamental limitation on individual human achievement: time. Most of us can expect between 60 - 80 healthy years. A few have more, a few have less, but that's about it. We spend years of painstaking labor and pain accumulating knowledge, skills, and wisdom, only to be turned into worm food. It is a terrible waste, one that I suspect our descendants will pity us for, much as we pity Neanderthals for their short lifespans.

However, science marches on, and the diseases or injuries that people die from now will eventually be cured. Ultimately, humanity may even evolve into, and/or merge with, advanced robots (1), at which point our lifespans will effectively be unbounded.

Unfortunately, such advances will come too late for many of us, given today's limited technology. Therefore, what can we do?

There are people alive today who once spent part of their existence, months or even years, frozen to -196'C, the temperature of liquid nitrogen. And they could've remained unchanging in that state for centuries.

To be sure, they were embryos at the time, consisting of a blob of a few cells. However, if it can be done to embryonic cells (as it has also been done with skin, sperm, ova, corneas, kidney cells, and many other tissues), why couldn't it be done with whole organs?

Indeed, why not the brain? (3)

For far less than $100 billion, I believe that reversible cryopreservation of the human brain could be developed. Remarkable advances have already been made on a shoestring budget. (2) Such a technology would allow people dying today to halt the dying process until technology can advance to the point that we can cure their disease or repair their injuries. I would wager that, for a mere billion dollars or so, we could have effectively unbounded lifespans. We could then use those extra years to pursue all of the other goals that other submitters may send to you.

(1) http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/book97/index.html
(2) http://www.21cm.com/articles/cryobiology.html
(3) http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryonics

P.S. Failing that, they should give me the money to fund my other pet project:

http://www.openknowledge.org/writing/open-source/scb/

Comments

Re: hmmm

[candid.livejournal.com]

I think that's a more up-to-date version of Wall Street Performer than I've seen before.

Critique forthcoming. :)

Re: hmmm

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Nah, it's the same out-dated paper. I'm eager to see your critique.

[harryh.livejournal.com]

the idea should be mostly free of politics

I think a lot of Fundamentalist Christians might have a problem with your proposal. Tampering with God's Plan and all...

Just an observation.

Personally, I'd definitely love to have the option of freezing my brain if, let's say, I woke up tomorrow and was diagnosed with cancer or something.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

True, my proposal is likely to arouse some Christians ire. However, I would note that most Christians try to do as much as any atheist to avoid dying, despite the theoretical rewards that await them in heaven. Plus, it depends on how you framed it--if you framed it as "giving dying children the opportunity to enjoy the life god intended for them" vs. "making cranky atheists immortal", then it might be more acceptable.

[chutzpahgirl.livejournal.com]

What about a colony on the bottom of the ocean? There's so much we haven't explored on the ocean floor. Plus, wouldn't it be cool to see an anglerfish eat a smaller fish up close?

[crasch.livejournal.com]

Ocean colonies would be cool. But I've probably got 50 years left. It would probably take at least that long before viable colonies could be built. If we find a way to dramatically increase our lifespan, on the other hand, then not only could I enjoy ocean colonies, but I could do all of the myriad other things I would like to do.

[knavish.livejournal.com]

Personally I am all for the Moon base. They are wanting to use it as a launching pad to other places such as the asteroid belt and that hasn't been done before. The asteroid belt holds riches beyond our wildest dreams; 3 mile long chunks of stainless steel, gold, iron, organics and other precious resources that we will run out of here on Earth within another 100 years or so. The population of the Earth is growing exponentially while our available natural resources are limited. We can't just sit around and hope for the best. We must start doing something.

[crasch.livejournal.com]

I'm all for a moon base too. However, do you think you'll live long enough to see it built? And if you do, do you think you could afford to go there? I don't think I'll live long enough to see affordable trips to the moon. That's why I want

As for your assertion that the population of the Earth is "growing exponentially", the current estimates I've seen predict that the Earth's population will stabilize at around 9 billion by 2300. As lifespan increases the birthrate drops.

Moreover, if we lived a lot longer, we might be more concerned about long term problems such as resource depletion, overpopulation, pollution, etc. As it is, I find it hard to get all worked up about problems that will appear after I'm long dead and gone.

[knavish.livejournal.com]

My assertion that the population of the Earth is growing exponentially are based on a United Nation's World Population estimates and projections report from 1998. You can find a copy of it here (http://www.terravista.pt/enseada/1881/popul1.html).
According to that report:

"From 1804, when the world passed the 1 billion mark, it took 123 years to reach 2 billion people in 1927, 33 years to attain 3 billion in 1960, 14 years to reach 4 billion in 1974, 13 years to attain 5 billion in 1987 and 12 years to reach 6 billion in 1999. World population in the mid-twenty-first century is expected to be in the range of 7.3 to 10.7 billion, with a figure of 8.9 billion by the year 2050 considered to be most likely."

Thus my assertion that the population is growing exponentially. But statistics and predictions vary from organization to organization depending upon their agenda. The only real way to for tell the future is to look at the past, and in the past the world population has grown by leaps and bounds. That same U.N. report does mention the declining birth rate. Those rates were down form 5.1-6.1 per woman to 6.1 per woman. Still, 9 billion in 50 years is alot of people sucking up alot of resources and odds are you and I will both be alive and well in 2050. What with the advancements in the fight against aging. Hell, given the advancements that are on the horizon right now we should expect to live well past 100 years.

Even if you don't make the century mark your children, or your siblings children, are sure to be alive then. I'm no green or whining, hypocritical environmentalist democrat by any means. Hell, I'm a solid libertarian just like yourself. But we are certainly going to have to come up with some alternate source of resources to fuel this rabid consumerism. Space is the place for sure, and not just to find those resources but to manufacture the finished goods as well. Completely non-polluting, orbital factories and power generation stations in high Earth orbit all fed by resources from the Moon and the Asteroid belts. All within our lifetimes. Yes, NASA would be the only folks that will get to go up for the first decade or two, that's a given, but soon enough private enterprise will follow. If you ask me NASA should get out of the way completely and give free enterprise a shoot at space exploration for a change. They have ground two rock solid efforts by private companies to test reusable orbiters in the last decade. But that is not going to happen, what with the lobbying power that NASA has to protect it's monopoly on space. So, in the mean time, lets get the ball rolling sooner rather than later on this because the sooner we get NASA building a moon base the faster the rest of us will get our shots at space.