exponential optimism

Maverick futurist Ray Kurzweil gave an upbeat presentation at the World Science Festival in New York recently. I wasn't there and my story comes through John Tierney of the NY Times, but I have no reason to believe John would misrepresent the claims, so here we go. Among some of the bullish assertions made, we learn that within 10 years we will have a diet pill that will let us eat whatever we want without gaining weight. Not convinced?

That is just the beginning, here are some more happy tidings. Solar power will be cost competitive with fossil fuels in five years, and in twenty years all our energy will come from clean sources. In 15 years our life-expectancy will keep growing faster than we age, and then by mid-century we will experience the "singularity" that will let us transcend biology and create intelligent machines. Then we and/or the machines will live forever. Now, there is something to look forward to! Because, by some other calculations there will be nine billion of us then, and if we all live forever and keep reproducing we won't need any diet pills to keep us from gaining weight. Maybe the machines will figure this out and help us along!

Dr. Kurzweil, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, makes his predictions using the law of Accelerating Returns, and he apparently brought a widget to the show to prove his point. Both the honors and the widget are mentioned to assure us the Dr. Kruzweil is no lightweight. The widget, a text reader, may appear impressive to those of us who have been around long enough to know what computers were like, but the honors do little to convince me. There is a whole slew of Nobel Laureates who made fools of themselves post-Nobel by voicing opinions or starting projects in areas they knew nothing about. Nothing more dangerous than a man who receives the highest awards at a relatively young age.

Kurzweil, we read has many graphs showing exponential growth for everything from the spread of telephones, to patents issued, to money spent. His latest graphs show exponential growth in nanotechnology, gene splicing, sequencing, and the resolution of brain scans. Therefore, we will see tremendous breakthroughs in all these areas. All these breakthroughs will come through the spread of information, and now that information technology has sunk its teeth into biology, the equivalent of the text reading gadget will be an intelligent machine that transcends biology. And it will come sooner than you think.

Jokes aside, there are a few things in this story that are worth discussing. One is the following quote:" Scientists imagine they'll keep working at the present pace. They make linear extrapolations from the past." It is a very important statement and one that does not just apply to scientists. It applies to all people. People are linear thinkers. They always think things will move along smoothly as they did in the past. They think if one item is good for you, then 100 items must be 100 times as good.

Many natural processes however, are not linear. They accelerate and some grow exponentially. And when they do, they cross thresholds or become essentially irreversible. Processes that were easy to understand and control may suddenly enter a runaway phase where neither understanding nor control is possible.

Exponential growth is pretty amazing to people. According to Kurzweil, "If you reach 1% and keep doubling growth every year, you'll hit 100% in just seven years." Here is another well known example. You probably heard the riddle of the waterlillies that double every day. On day 10 they cover half the lake. Then the narrator asks, When will they cover the whole lake? Most people, thinking linearly, will say on day 20. Or maybe you heard the story about the inventor of the chess board who wanted the following reward for his ingenuity: one grain of rice on the first square, and then double the amount on every subsequent square on the board. It turns out there isn't enough grain on the planet to fill square 64.

These interesting properties don't just apply to inventions and engineering. They also apply to "nasties" such as greenhouse gas accumulation, pollution, and food shortages. And here is where linear thinking gets us into trouble. We never envision a runaway heating process. As with any exponential growth, the initial steps are so minuscule that they are easy to ignore. But when the curve raises its ugly head, it will be too late to do something about it.

Unfortunately, these undesirable effects are likely to get to us well before we reach the wondrous utopia that Dr. Kurzweil envisions. Not that anyone has really thought through the issues raised by immortality. Always be careful for what you ask for!