Fear of Fission

So, here is sub-chapter #3, of Chapter 1, Science, of my ongoing rewrite and open editing process of my book, Random Rationality: A Rational Guide to an Irrational World. Sub-chapters #1 and #2, can be found here and here. I made the mistake of not throwing up the Introductory chapter online, so I’ll take a brief paragraph to describe the overall narrative of the book. The book takes twenty seemingly random subjects, attempting however poorly, to thread them together. In the process, attempting to make sense of the world we live in today. It is a very macroscopic worldview, as the whole book fits into two-hundred pages, but it aims to tickle the intellects of people just enough so they may go on to study more in-depth the subjects of their liking. The narrative really tries to inspire the abolition of thinking in isolation, i.e., we so often talk, discuss, and debate topics in isolation and assume that the same points prevail in the real world where nothing exists in isolation: such as the relationship between science and religion/society, fission with politics and economics, technology against government, and how they subtly, sometimes drastically, affect each other.

Would greatly appreciate any feedback, criticisms, and comments. If you want the MOBI, ePub, or PDF, then please let me know in the comments—if you provide constructive criticisms in return and live in the US, UK, or EU, then I’ll ship you a paperback copy of the book free of charge when it’s published.

Note: the book is fully sourced, but because of the writing program I use, the links don’t transfer over to WordPress. At the conclusion of the twenty chapters, I may throw up a post with all hundred-fifty+ sources, but the final book will have all the relevant sources in the proper locations.

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 There was a dream once, of atomic energy. It is as yet, unrealized. Our current energy portfolio, primarily consists of about eighty-eight percent coal, oil and natural gas, with nuclear power just shy of five-percent, and renewable energy making up the rest.

We will probably be using coal, oil, and natural gas for a while to come, especially natural gas as it is being found everywhere in huge quantities, but they should have started phasing out decades ago. Though because of our short-term irrational fear and hatred of things we do not understand, the safest, cost-competitive energy source, nuclear fission, was never given legs to stand upon.

We all know that coal, oil and gas are pollutants: the first two much more so than the third, so it is an environmentally favorable trend that so much gas is being found, as it will result in a downward trend of pollutants from the prior two. Though even natural gas pales in comparison to the safety and efficiency of nuclear power, which we shall see now.

“Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts.”  ~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan (Sociologist)

 

First off, let’s look at some overlooked statistics of our current energy sources at 2011 usage levels:

• Coal, which comprises 30.3% of world energy: causes 161 deaths per TWh (Terra-watt hour)
• Oil, which makes up 33.1% of world energy: thirty-six deaths per TWh
• Natural gas, 24.8% of world energy: four deaths per TWh
• Nuclear power, 4.9% of world energy: 0.04 deaths per TWh

 

For every twenty-five TWh of power generation, one human death will occur because of nuclear energy, compared to 3,220 for the equivalent amount of energy from coal, 720 from oil, and eighty from natural gas. Yet, every time there is a nuclear accident, there is a global outcry to shut them all down. Even though they are, by far, the safest means of generating power and the cleanest, in relation to immediate environmental degradation and climate change, which are somehow always overlooked.

Since the first nuclear reactor in 1952, there have been only six accidents that resulted in a loss of human life; seventy-one people died as a direct result of these accidents. Compare that to the triumvirate of coal, oil and gas, which are linked to the deaths of 4,020 people for every seventy-five TWh. Coal, all by itself, kills around 24,000 people in the USA per year. And yes, eventually four-thousand people may die as a result of Chernobyl in the next twenty-years, which is an increase of one-percent compared to other spontaneous forms of cancer. But the biggest nuclear catastrophe in sixty-years, killed fewer people than one single year of coal in one of the most developed nations in the world—keeping in mind the distinction between ‘four-thousand people may die’ and ‘twenty-four thousand people die every year’. The data, when expanded worldwide indicate that coal-related deaths are at least one-million people per year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). 

Of course, the nuclear accidents that do happen grab so much attention that we are irrationally coerced into a state of fear. But let’s critically examine the three biggest nuclear accidents of recent history without the scepter of hysteria influencing our collective amygdala: Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima. The reasons for the disasters were: human stupidity, human error, and human arrogance respectively. Notice that none of them are technological in nature.

In dressing down Chernobyl, I prefer instead to quote an article from Cracked Magazine, titled ‘The 7 Most Mind-Blowing Places Science Has Discovered Life.’

 “The lesson of Chernobyl is that the most dangerous substance in the world is human stupidity. If everyone who whined about nuclear technology actually understood it, the world’s average IQ would increase by 50 points. When idiots drink and drive and kill thousands, we don’t ban cars. But when idiots run emergency shutdown tests with an untrained night crew without telling the designer of the reactor or nuclear authority scientists, then deliberately drive the reactor into the nuclear equivalent of balanced on tiptoes on a stool perched on a stepladder on a table…made of plutonium, suddenly all nuclear power is evil…“

 

 The events of Three Mile Island were somewhat less extravagant in comparison. What transpired was an obscure mechanical gauge failure that became compounded by a lack of training. The operators’ manually overrode the automatic cooling system—Why this is even an option befuddles the non-nuclear engineer in me—because they mistakenly believed there was too much coolant—nor can I see what’s wrong with this—which turned an otherwise fixable event, into the ‘disaster’ that hurt no one and killed nobody. The problem was correctly diagnosed and subsequently fixed upon the arrival of the next shift, whom spotted the odd readings the dashboard was giving, and having the proper-training, began reversing the situation. Overall, people living within five-miles of the reactor, were exposed to no more radiation than one would receive on a commercial flight. 

 

 The Fukushima plant in Japan, which underwent a reactor meltdown in 2011 is over forty-years old, and was built with fifty-year old technology. The owners knew what the plant’s shortcomings were and were even told by the courts and the government to fix them. To make matters worse, TEPCO, had a record of changing the layouts of the cooling systems without bothering to document them. So when the tsunami hit, the previous plans had the utility of soggy toilet paper in finding out what was happening. Only through sheer incompetence did the Fukushima reactor fail, using decades-old technology that has since been surpassed, and only alongside the naive human thought, ‘it’ll never happen here,’ compounded by ignoring the law, and the docile Japanese culture.

 

 A report released by the mouthful of a commission, the aptly named Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission, confirms that thought.I will highlight the opening salvo, “The nuclear accident at Fukushima was a preventable disaster rooted in government-industry collusion and the worst conformist conventions of Japanese culture.” And then there’s this little nugget a little later on, “Although triggered by these cataclysmic events, the subsequent accident at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant cannot be regarded as a natural disaster. It was a profoundly manmade disaster – that could and should have been foreseen and prevented…” End of discussion you’d think, but alas. A few months later, Germany announced they were shutting down all of their nuclear reactors by 2022.

 The reasons for our three meltdowns are, as mentioned, primarily human error. Not an inherent danger in nuclear fission technology. Nuclear reactors are among the safest, most secure facilities in the world because engineers know to build them that way. It’s the managers, governments, and the presidents that end up breaking things, and the people are induced by a frenzied-media into blaming the reactor as a scapegoat to sleep better at night, which politico’s then go on to exploit for votes, and ever the cycle continues. And as a result of all this, nuclear power was never given the stage it deserved. So the market did what it does best. It routed around this obnoxious intervention, in the process increasing oil, coal, and gas power generation to feed our increasingly energy-hungry ways, because renewable energies were not yet cost-competitive. All of which come with the added bonus of pollution, disease, millions of deaths (per year!), resources wars, and the destruction of our environment which will results in tens of millions of more deaths…all because of seventy-one deaths and a few weeks of media coverage.

 Even the second point that a lot people, and environmentalists are especially guilty here, make against nuclear power—the storing of dangerous hazardous material that stays radioactive for thousands of years—is a moot point. Radioactive waste is stored in highly secure vaults underground, in mountains, or other equally secure areas with no immediate effect on the environment or to us. With the eventual mastery of nanotechnology sometime this century, it will cease to be a point at all. We will be able to sub-atomically rearrange the atoms that make the waste radioactive and render it inert and harmless, but more on that later. And even were that not the case, wouldn’t having the waste stored and put away for 10,000 years, out of sight and harms way, be better than pumping far more waste directly into the atmosphere—and into the lungs of every person, animal, and plant—as we do now with coal, oil, and gas? And causing irreversible climate change to top it off…Yeah though.

 

The folly of fearing fission, over coal, which powers thirty-percent of modern civilization:

• A 1,000 MWh (mega-watt-hour) of nuclear fission generates twenty-seven tonnes of radioactive waste per year, stored out of sight and harms way—in some cases, ninety-seven percent can be reprocessed so only, leaving three-percent (1,500 lbs) needing storage. The same amount of power from a coal plant generates eighteen tonnes of radioactive waste spewed directly into the atmosphere, while also vomiting forth 3.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, 400,000 tonnes of ash, 10,000 tonnes of sulfur dioxide (acid rain), 10,200 tonnes of nitrogen oxide (smog), 720 tonnes of carbon monoxide(toxic), 170 lbs. of mercury (extremely toxic), 220 lbs. of arsenic (poison), and 114 lbs. of lead (toxic)
• Between 1970 and 2008, there were 1,686 accidents that killed more than five people at coal power stations. On the nuclear side, only one
• One TWh of nuclear energy releases 30 grams of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. An equivalent amount of power from coal releases 1,290 grams (forty-three times more)
• Uranium provides sixty-thousand-times as much energy per kilogram compared to coal. One kilogram of uranium will power a 60-watt light bulb for 685 years. An equivalent amount of coal will power that same light bulb for four days

 

 Nuclear power is, in the popular vernacular of the green movement today, exceedingly efficient, needing sixty-thousand times less units—or eleven-thousand less if measured against crude oil—for an equivalent amount of energy. It can, should be, and always should have been part of our energy portfolio. It is much safer and cleaner than the other forms of energy we use today, all the while, having no short-term ramifications to the environment, and manageable, trivial almost, long-term ramifications, along with a proven economic record. 

 Another disconcerting fact is continued government interference, initially stemming from the Manhattan Project, but really exacerbating the situation throughout the Cold War, has greatly and destructively cemented uranium as the fissile material of choice in nuclear fission reactors, as opposed to thorium, which shares many of uranium’s beneficial characteristics and none of its ugly ones:

Thorium’s Advantages:

• It is four times more abundant in nature
• Produces 10 to 10,000 times less long-lived radioactive waste
• Cannot sustain a continuing nuclear chain reaction, so fission stops by default in any emergency that shuts down the power, I.e., Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima would not have happened
• Generates more energy per ton and its enriched material cannot be used for a nuclear bomb
• Does not require enrichment, therefore usability is 100% of the isotope as it is found in the ground, compared to 0.7% for uranium, which must be enriched to U-235 (which can then be enriched to P-239, i.e., main ingredient of an atomic bomb)
• The supply will not be exhausted for a thousand years at today’s energy levels

 

 Thorium reactors are finally beginning to catch on, with India leading the way, but the technology is still in its infancy. Norway has recently started a four-year trial of a Thorium reactor to work out the economics and make the theoretical efficiencies into practical realities. Were it not for the destructive nature of our species, the Manhattan Project, and the subsequent Cold War, we would probably already have clean, abundant, cheap, and safe energy, with no climate change. Imagine that. 

 This chapter has barely begun to scratch the surface on nuclear energy, without even mentioning ongoing nuclear fusion research, which aims to replicate the energy source of a star, the ‘perfect’ energy source. There is also the traveling wave reactor that aims to use the ninety-nine percent of waste left over from a normal uranium fission reactor, which Toshiba is aiming to have in production by 2014, financed by Bill Gates. It is just a taste, a mind-opener, and a realization that a future is possible; it can be bright and it doesn’t need to revolve around hydrocarbons or the destruction of our environment.

 

“We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.” ~Unknown

The Communist Ideal

I recently completed reading The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Max. At only thirty-two pages long, it was a long and grudgingly boring read. I thought I was reading a book ten times the length, but I do believe I have imparted the general idea of what he espoused. While communism in its many forms that were tried in the 20th century, have failed, often disastrously, with the exception of China (which by opening up ever more aspects of its economy to free-market principles, essentially forestalled the political ramifications a central-command government eventually faces). I don’t believe that communism, as attempted so far, is the communism that Karl Marx proposed. In this post, I am not defending those 20th century communist regimes. In fact, after reading the Communist Manifesto, I do not think they were very communist, and if they were, they may have started out with the best of intentions, but the results, at least in the short-term, were anything but.

The end-result, or logical progression, of Karl Marx’s communism, in essence, was the abolition of government, and by extension, money, and equal status to all people in terms of opportunity (not possessions). What he saw, and wrote, must be understood in context of his time, and realized that the future he envisioned, would not come within his lifetime (though maybe he didn’t know this, I can’t tell). He lived at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and saw the rapid industrialization that occurred, and was right to say that capital would flow upwards in the antagonistic struggle between capital and labour, as those lower on the totem pole would eventually be replaced and relegated to a smaller subsection of the populace in an anarchic free-market system, and correctly extrapolated that this trend cannot continue indefinitely. But, he was unable to extrapolate that new jobs would be created to replace old jobs, but the jobs engines that has been continually creating new jobs is finally showing signs of its mortality, and it probably won’t last forever.

In those nations that tried on communism, the age-old dilemma of mistranslation and misappropriation of ideas, coupled with the rarely changing mindsets of people, led to poverty, and sometimes tragedy, where ever communism was exported, as well as in the free-market also (working workers to death, slavery, and unequal pay between the sexes etc.).

But I think that Karl was ahead of his time (perhaps a little too far). Consider where we are now with our current trends racing relentlessly into the future. We are moving towards an increasingly automated future where jobs will become more and more scarce as the law of diminishing returns rears its ugly head (new technologies now are creating fewer jobs than they replace), which will grind away at social stability. Soon, machines and artificial intelligence (AI) will do human jobs better than humans; without lunch breaks, smoke breaks (or any breaks for that matter), insurance, distractions, sick leave, and so many other factors that retard human output as well as increase the cost of labour, and thus goods and services.

We are moving into a future where potentially everyone will have a 3D (additive) printer in their homes, replacing the need for factories and factory workers. You need a new mug, you’ll print it. If you need a new phone, you’ll print it, and if you’ll need a new printer, you’ll print it, and so on. Materials will be assembled into the feed for these printers most likely; inside the countries themselves by automated processes, reducing international shipping and all the jobs it provides. Indoor farms combining aeroponics, aquaponics, and hydroponics will be capable of growing any food from any climate anywhere and everywhere, further reducing trans-city-country-continental transportation. Portable medical devices are on the horizon that will replace your general practitioner (GP) in identifying what type of illness you have, as well as articulate in detail the remedies for the proper healing taken in consideration of your genetic makeup, all analysed in the blink of an eye with 99.99% accuracy (predicted), and the drugs will be printed on an additive printer no less! Nanotechnology is on the up and up, and in the coming decades, may release the awesome potential of building everything, anywhere, anytime using any input, at the atomic level with zero-waste. You will literally be able to turn anything into anything else!

How could something as medieval as money survive in a future like this? Money is a physical manifestation of scarcity. Replacing the ancient tradition of trading goods directly and acting as a medium of exchange between all goods, and evolving along with society. In the beginning, predominantly taking the form of gold and silver, as well as dozens of other forms (cheese in some parts of ancient Italy, and tea in Siberia way back when). Then constantly oscillating back and forth between gold standards, silver standards, paper standards, and combinations thereof. Now we find ourselves in the midst of a global paper standard. But because money evolves lineally, and our technology has in the last hundred years, begun evolving exponentially, money will, by necessity, eventually shed the characteristics that necessitated its original conditions because everything else in its environment will evolve beyond a need of it. This is a core concept of evolution, and since technological evolution is an extension of biological evolution: we can think of money in a resource-scarce environment as random mutation in a naturally selecting environment (society). But technological evolution continues, and now, exponentially increases in capacity and capability. Thus the conditions that selected the monetary-mutation are beginning to move beyond scarcity, i.e. money is losing its value (and hopefully will die), and into abundance, soon afterwards, perhaps infinite abundance (nanotechnology, anything becomes everything and trade essentially ceases).

To side-track to biological evolution to try to further the point. We humans evolved with enzymes that could process and digest raw meat, yet we no longer have them because we invented fire and the frying pan; an external stomach that replaced raw-food enzymes (and which by the way, allowed the necessary conditions to grow our brains far in excess to other primates and become the dominant ape by out-eating them). Within just a few tens-of-thousands of years (an evolutionary second), we could no longer eat raw meat (if you ate only raw meat for 90 days, you’d die). Money evolved, i.e., was bought into being as an improvement to the previous paradigm of direct trading, facilitating a division of labour, which amplified co-operation, increased specialization, resulting in technological progression, and societal advancement. Yet in evolution, it is very rare for a trait to outlast for long the conditions that necessitated its creation and subsequent survival, and such will (hopefully) be the case for money soon. Money is subject to the same laws of diminishing returns as everything else. Much as the faltering, or sputtering of the jobs engine of our current economies as they are replaced by technologies that far out-do people in terms of cost, speed, and reliability, in the process, creating fewer jobs than they replace. Yet due to the stigma of 20th century communism, I fear the necessary discourse will never occur, or perhaps occur too late in updating capitalism to keep pace with the continually evolving and accelerating change of this technological century.

Only a simple understanding of ‘Supply and Demand‘ is required to understand this point. If the demand and supply of a product stay constant, then the price remains stable. If demand increases without a comparable increase in supply: that is, demand outstrips supply, then the price rises and vice-versa. If a product has a large unrefined supply, but requires expensive tools of production to bring it to market: then the price is high and vice-versa. So in this future we find ourselves barrelling towards, where both supply is bountiful, or its use so exceedingly efficient as to nullify it, or where any resource can be used to create any other resource as is done with additive manufacturing and nanotechnology, then what possible use will money have? This is not to say it will disappear overnight, more than likely, it will deflate and continue deflating as our technological progress accelerates until we come upon a day where we find it is no longer necessary. Whether that takes 20, 40, or 100 years remains to be seen. That process will create economic pain, even if exponential in nature, because if people still need money to buy food, water, and shelter, and if the majority of the population is out of work; how does taxation, government, redistribution, and public benefits work so as not to antagonize class differences? (The end result of this exponential technological progress is that there are no more class differences or haves / have-nots, but the ramp-up is where the concern lies as the system which will eventually benefit everyone might be dismantled by shortsighted doom-and-gloom thinking)

Providing we can circumnavigate such problems, and arrive to the other side in one piece. In such an economy, where supply and demand become irrelevant, and individual needs and wants take precedence, where government is no longer required as an ‘impartial‘ arbiter, and where people are simply given everything they need to survive and thrive since it costs nothing to produce in terms of human labour, does not the ideal of communism ring true? I don’t mean the central bank that it demands (we still use them anyway), or the agricultural army it stipulated, or any other requirements that served more as a transitory approach, but the overall meaning. That everyone is equal, and we all deserve opportunities, all men and women are given the ability to shine, if they so choose.

I do believe that the essence of the message rings true, despite what other subjects he waxed on about, or didn’t, which seem obvious to us now in hindsight, but which wouldn’t have in his time. A lot of meaning is lost in the translation between German to English, and I imagine even more so, between the 18th century and the 21st. He did live two-hundred-years ago, so the allure of projecting todays moral and ethical framework on to his thinking is tempting, but which, at the end of the day, is only a shortcut to ignorant thinking. To truly understand it, we must flip the polarity of time and study it in that sense, which is what I have attempted to do in this post and distil what he may have meant (of course, I may still wrong).

Looking to history and projecting into the future, we find that most of our descendants views on several issues as immoral. Slavery, segregation, extreme classism, rules of war, as well as acts of war among many others. I see no such difference in today’s morality looking forward and fully expect those in the future to look back upon our own morality as incrementally better than the generations before us. Perhaps they will be as quick to judge us, as we to those that came before us. From our Keynesian fantasies which prolong, expand, and exacerbate the misery of billions (via a central bank and extraction of wealth), along with its isolation, consolidation and subsequent corruption of a few elite bankers who hold monetary power over billions, to those down the lower end of the monetary totem-pole being unable to afford certain necessities; healthy food, healthcare, and shelter, which would otherwise increase quality of life by removing the negative influences that affect mental and physical wellbeing (often diet-related), and which, when removed result in increased cooperation, knowledge-creation, which in our modern society makes it healthier for all involved, rich and poor alike and those who fit snugly in-between.

To use a real example of the potential problems down the road. Studies have shown that it cost society far less money to house chronic homeless people; that is, give them a free home, income benefits, and health insurance, than it is to leave them on the street, or even put them in a shelter. A Boston Health Care study tracked one-hundred-nineteen chronic homeless folk, and found that over five-years, they were admitted to emergency care 18,834 times, and that’s with thirty-three of them dying, and seven placed in a nursing home. A study in San Diego found that putting homeless people in an actual home resulted in a 61% reduction in emergency room benefits, and a 62% reduction in inpatient days over two years, with each visit costing at least $1,000. Putting chronic homeless people in a shelter costs $24,000 per year per person. And during the day, they are roaming the streets and increasingly likely to end up in jail, so that $24,000 does not include the cost of jailing, guarding, and feeding them when they are put in jail, which often occurs as a result of depression, and substance abuse that often accompanies their wandering street-life. What will we do in the future when joblessness is increasingly common, and the tools to create high-quality automated homes, automated medical care, and food are a tiny fraction of todays cost? Will we turn our back on them, because of out-dated free-market-principles? Besides, you can’t have a society that neglects a majority of its citizens without decay and eventually revolution (or in the case of an advanced force against those with nothing, mass-jailing or genocide).

People are created equal, not genetically, nor in their physical or mental ability, but morally in the context of our societies. If we allow any (unfair) inequality to creep in (which for now is inevitable), it slowly but surely grinds away at the fabric of society, only for the potential of violence to rear its ugly head.  In this regard, one of the great moral achievements of humanity is the slowly increasing minimally acceptable status one can have by providing help to those unfortunate enough to be at the lowest of the low (both by free-market economics driving the prices down and public assistance in the form of welfare, which was inspired by communistic thinking). Of course, as many will rightly point out, the latter is easily abused, mostly by political pandering and selfish voting, and we’ve seen the indulgences and problems inherent in an overburdened welfare state, but that in no way undermines its validity in the correct doses.

Nothing is perfect, much as we live today in a bastardized version of the free market, the communism of the USSR in the 20th century turned into a bastardized version of communism (though I’m glad I live in the former). With that being said, what many people overlook, or completely neglect to take into account is both socioeconomic systems are context-specific. In environments of scarcity, the free-market reigns supreme (though without a moral framework, it goes horribly wrong, i.e. slavery). In environments of limitless abundance, money, government, and classes have no place. And in the transition period between the two, ideological and emotionally based, shortsighted thinking tends to outweigh reasoned and objective analysis, potentially turning otherwise fixable periods into disaster due to the nature of democracy and political pandering. In the future when we have the technological marvels that will arise out of today’s inventions, bought into being by the capitalist workings of scarcity, will not the ideal of communism ring true in an age of abundance? (Not its 20th century misappropriations).

The rigidity of our political and economic institutions is what is at issue here; it must evolve and adapt in response to the self-changing environment we created, instead of boxing us into the past. In human history, we have example after example of people and societies holding onto tradition and frameworks for far too long after their usefulness has evaporated, and being unable to let go of the past, they often paid the price, some the ultimate price. Capitalism will be in a similar position soon.

Saving the Planet, One Scientific Steak at a Time

In-vitro meat (IVM) is one of those subjects that could quickly get out of hand in the minds of an uninformed public, and this post is my small part in countering the entropy of reason. Hmm, is it still entropy if the reasoning was never there to begin with?

In my discussions with those unfamiliar with it, the first reaction seems to be one of disgust. Maybe due to the increasing familiarity with Genetically Modified Foods (GMO), especially with the increasing notoriety of Monsanto (as if they were the first and last step in GMO). But, as in any foray into the unknown, as Bertrand Russell puts it: first you must begin with the facts, and move on from there. So let’s get to the facts of meat today, and then with those of IVM. One thing we must get out-of-the-way before we begin: human-beings will not just stop eating meat, so any philosophical or personal objection to the practice of meat-eating is bunk. One person’s (or even a billion persons) objection to the practice of eating meat is irrelevant, it’s simply a part of life and must be dealt with.

Immortality and Life’s Purpose

I’ve been recently reading and watching the works of futurists Ray Kurzweil and Jason Silva, and I am ecstatic about their optimistic predictions for the human race in the coming decades. I’ve also been coming across the claims of their detractors, and I want to highlight the most consistent statement made in response to the prediction that life will become indefinite as a result of advancements in biotechnology, nanotechnology, and information technology in the coming decades; that people’s finite lives give meaning to their existence, and thus, immortality would rob us of the urgency of purposeful living. An existential crisis, in reverse if you will…

A Future of Medicine and Health

Medicine is a beautiful thing and being healthy is among the most liberating of foundations that one can possibly have. The science, or understanding, of the human body in the last century has resulted in the saved life’s of literally, hundreds of millions of people, if not more. From a reduction in maternal mortality and infant deaths, to correction of malnutrition, new vaccines, and hundreds of initiatives that have all resulted in a vast increase in the length and quality of life for billions around the world.

In researching a chapter in my just released book, I came across many medicines and technologies that will be essential to our health someday. Everyday we discover new things about the human body that will aid in the search of greater health and I’m putting this post together in my head as an experiment to what the future of medicine and health could look like in the future.

Religion, Milk, and Education

The title of this post may surprise you as rather odd. After all, what could religion and milk possibly have in common?? Well, surprisingly, one key factor, but I’ll get to that later. Most of us have been raised to drink milk to make us big, healthy and strong by way of the calcium, vitamin D and other nutrients present in cow-milk.

Late last year, I read online that an Ice Cream shop in London had begun using human breast milk in a select few of their ice creams. I was intrigued by the concept, and now and then, I would ask friends if they would ever try it. The usual response is a scrunched up face, following by something like, “How disgusting!”. I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.

Tracking the Trackers

A Letter to my Future Self

Dear Idiot,

I am writing this, in the off-chance I will need to read it 50-100 years from now on my death-bed (if death even still occurs) and I have somehow become religious, as many a person has claimed I will eventually be in my old age. As I’m sure you remember, your 27-year-old self is an atheist, and I write this in the hope that you are too.

People have a habit of finding ‘God’ later on in their lives, in a recently released survey of my time, here in 2012; the older one was, the more likely they were to believe in a religious interpretation of God. In a separate study, the belief in that silly theory ‘Intelligent Design’ was linked to one’s own mortality. Even those who did not initially believe in intelligent design, were more likely to accept it when reminded of their mortality, clear proof not in the validity of ‘Intelligent design’ of which it has none, nor in God but in the self-serving delusions our brains create for us. Then there is again a study that showed that those with religious views had more of a need for closure.

We are easily fooled Impressionists, with an illusion of separation between us and all else. It is this false dichotomy, this illness as referred too by many great minds, mine not included, that is the foundation of that religious meaning that feeds on our self-contrived feelings, convincing us we are special, have meaning and that we entered this world with a purpose, and will leave with the fulfilment of that purpose, but these are clearly distorted belief systems, abused, twisted and designed to exploit our evolutionary purpose of groupthink that a few exploit at the expense of the rest.

Morale of the story, once an atheist, always an atheist. Anything else you’re telling yourself is a self-derived delusion, maybe it’s helpful delusion as I’m sure it is for many people, but a delusion none the less, and we are all born atheists. For me at this age, I prefer to live by the creed of Carl Sagan, and I hope that has not changed.

“For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.“

Carl Sagan

-A Younger Prettier You

TED Talk: The Other Inconvenient Truth

The Fantasy of Infinite Growth

Keynesian economists, whom are the majority of economists, and of whom most government economic policy is based upon, have an illusion of continuous economic growth year upon year, and that without growth, we will have major problems; the latter part of that statement being true, but only within this system we build ourselves into.

We’ll get into the ridiculousness of this perpetual growth fantasy in a bit, but first I want to go over why growth is so vitally important in this Keynesian epoch.

Money, as I’m sure everyone knows, doesn’t just pop out of nowhere. Before we had the printing press, we used gold, silver, and various other tangible goods; such as tea in Siberia or cheese in parts of Italy.

So, once the printing press arrived and we moved to the modern incarnation of the fiat standard at the beginning of last century, we had to have a limit on our ability to create this money. Thus was born the era of debt.