More on Fermi Paradox: Implications of Space Arks

Paul Davies, in his book from a few years ago, Eerie Silence, touches on a wrinkle in the famous Fermi Paradox (see this), the implications of which I hadn’t really fully thought of  before.

Let’s take as a given that in the 12, —or more conservatively let’s say 6—  billion years or so that the Galaxy has been more or less like it is now (since stars have to have gone through a generation or two to produce the metal materials necessary for life)… there could have arisen some reasonable number of advanced technological civilizations. By reasonable, I mean, let’s say 50 or more, in that time, which most enthusiasts for the whole concept of extraterrestrial life would consider quite conservative, in 6 billion years of time. In a Galaxy now said to have as many as 400 billion stars, that in any case isn’t too big a stretch, assuming you accept the argument that it’s at least plausible that life arises relatively readily in suitable environments spontaneously (an unproven assumption, but one that can reasonably be made at least for the sake of argument). (It’s also implicit that there is some reasonable probability that a scientific/technological/intelligent species has at least some chance to arise; another purely speculative assumption, but again, for the sake of argument).

Now, set aside the Von Neumann machine argument, as speculative (which it is; see the link above; it’s not really a given that any civilization would try this, or that it would actually prove feasible). And set aside the possibility of faster than light travel (for pretty definitive reasons, see this). But add this posit: at least some percentage of these technological civilizations will during their history overcome natural selection pressure and collective stupidity well enough to survive for several million years. OK, that’s a lot of “let’s assumes,” but actually, that’s my point. If you make all these assumptions and infer a likely outcome, which in fact does not conform to what we see, it’s at least an indication that some of these assumptions need to be questioned.

So, what would likely happen if all these assumptions were correct? Obviously we don’t really know. It’s possible that there could be some number of quiescent, own-business minding technological civilizations co-existing with our threshold version right now, in various places in the Galaxy, and we just haven’t seen evidence of their existence so far. (Or evidence of the existence of any particularly wild and crazy versions that might even be detectable across intergalactic distances— in other galaxies). Possible.

But consider this. What if, as seems not totally unlikely, some fraction of these technological societies were naturally expansive? Prone to colonization of unoccupied real estate? This is  clearly a feature of Homo sapiens, and there’s at least some reason to believe it’s hard-wired into a lot of the genetic code of terrestrial life: the tendency to expand to occupy available space.

Now let’s engage in a little reasonable extrapolation of technology. Several engineering minded folks, such as Gerard O’Neill, Freeman Dyson, and sci-fi writers from Larry Niven to Iain Banks, have discussed the feasibility of constructing artificial habitats in space. It seems pretty clear that there is nothing preventing this technology from being realized other than inertia. It will likely come to pass right here in our Solar System, unless we, as a civilization, expire from terminal stupidity (an outcome perhaps more probable than we like to think, but one that’s already accounted for in our assumptions above with respect to the hypothetical other civilizations under consideration).

So, here’s the thing. I submit that it is no great stretch to go from huge artificial habitats in space, to something like Arthur C. Clarke’s idea for a traveling space colony, which he called Rama in his sci-fi novel. A sufficiently advanced civilization could quite plausibly build some such slow-moving space arks, and using space telescopes (also feasible, including possibly the natural gravitational lens telescopes discussed here), could identify all the relatively nearby habitable planets. Over long periods of time, these hypothetical advanced civilizations could indeed colonize other worlds. This would not be space travel. No to and fro required. It would be one-way colonization, but over time, it would mean that a civilization originating in one star system would come to occupy a region of space. (This could well be our very long term future).

Following from that, you arrive at the inference that there would be an expansion rate, of some value, and that the volume of space encompassed by a civilization would increase. There would also be implications for the survival of the living beings involved. Assuming that they continue to co-exist as living things in conjunction with whatever machines they’ve built, their survival would presumably be enhanced by occupying a lot of different abodes. Think of a plant or animal species that occupies all the forests of a continent as opposed to one little neck of woods on an isolated island or peninsula. Its survival potential is enhanced, clearly.

And following from that, you arrive at the assumption that in some fraction of the entire period under consideration, if unchecked, one or more of these civilizations would come to occupy planetary systems throughout the entire Galaxy. The Galaxy is huge, but finite. And even if you conservatively estimate that the time for a civilization to expand by one new system, which might average a distance of say 10 light years, is 100,000 years, or some similar number, you still find that in time shorter than the available billions of years, the expansion fills all the available space in the Galaxy. Even if you assume civilizations are finite in lifetime, and eventually fade away, to be replaced by others, there’s still a definite tendency, if these assumptions are all correct, for space to be not a vast wasteland of unexplored territory, but a finite resource, any particular locale within which is likely to have been exploited at some point in this long history.

What we find on Earth, I submit, is inconsistent with this. We don’t find any plausible evidence that the Earth has been colonized, or that alien spacecraft and space structures have ever existed in our star’s system. So, pretty clearly, something is wrong with some of these assumptions. Somewhere in there, the logical chain of connections breaks: either life is actually not too likely to arise in the first place, intelligent/technological/expansive societies are not likely to arise or not likely to survive long enough to actually occupy an expanding section of the Galaxy.

Or perhaps, civilizations quickly realize that natural planets aren’t really worth the effort. There’s plenty of matter and energy in the universe, why bother with the trouble, vast time, and expense, of interstellar colonization, when you can just build artificial environments (Ringworlds, Dyson Spheres, Banks Orbitals), and stay put? Yet that begs the question, all of them? Even if some high percentage of technological civilizations avoids expanding colonization schemes, wouldn't some of them do this? Yet the negative evidence, at minimum, sets constraints on this, to the effect that there has never been really widespread and long lasting space colonization going on. And if that's true for our Galaxy, it's likely universally true as well, which definitely has some implications for the assumptions we make about the prevalence of tehcnological civilizations such as what we envision for our own future. Perhaps, as I've mused elsewhere, we are in fact early pioneers, and it will be we, not some past technology creating beings, who will be first to spread intelligent life far and wide in the universe. Or at least this neck of the woods.

In any case, this is one more aspect of the Fermi Paradox: Where Are They? Because if any appreciable number of advanced civilizations had ever existed long enough to undertake major efforts at interstellar colonization, the universe and our Galaxy are old enough that it’s quite likely that process would have already reached where we are, and we would know about it.

Gravitational Lens Telescopes

In reading Lee Billings's Five Billion Years of Solitude (which as a book has its strengths and weaknesses), I came across a really intriguing idea which apparently isn't at all new, but had escaped my attention to now. I knew that in 1919 E. R. Eddington had demonstrated the truth of Einstein's 1916 General Relativity Theory by measuring the displacement of star positions near the limb of the Sun due to gravitational refraction of the light.

There's that word: refraction. In the late 70s, several independent theorists conceived the idea that if the sun, or for that matter any star, is bending light, systematically and achromatically (without regard to the wavelength), then the light from any given direction should come to a focus at a point in the opposite direction from whatever is being observed. In other words, the sun's gravity could act in effect as a telescope with an enormous tube length (focal distance) and an aperture effectively equal to the Sun's 1.4 million kilometer diameter.

Turns out the focal length is about 550 AU (more, actually, due to electromagnetic effects; effectively it's about 150 billion kilometers). That's a long, long way... further than Voyager has yet reached. So we're talking about at least one order of magnitude leap in space technology before this could be attempted. But in principle, if you wanted to look at Alpha Centauri, for example, you could send a Hubble Space Telescope to the point opposite that star in the celestial sphere and 150 billion km. from the Sun. Then block out the disk of the sun and look at just the ring of space just beyond the sun's disk (filtering out coronal effects and flares; but that's easy enough). What would you get? A telescope that could image coastlines, mountains, rivers... cities. Really. This isn't science fiction. Out to a distance of at least tens of light years it would be just absolutely amazing; although of course you have to go to the right place to see any particular thing. But think of it. The focal-sphere around any star is automatically a fantastic telescope that can view the entire universe at magnifications we can only dream of using artificial instruments.

It's breathtaking. And we will do it, I believe. And even more strongly I believe that others, in the past, at other places, and in the future as well, have done it and will do it. Who knows? One of your ancient astronauts might have espied the Earth in just this way (although there's unfortunately no evidence for that as yet).

Opposing TRULY AWFUL Iran sanctions resolution

I just sent the following message to every one of the Democrats who have indicated support for the horrible Kirk Menendez resolution to hamstring the president's efforts to reach a diplomatic solution to the Iran nuclear issue.

«I am terribly disappointed that any Democrat would seek to undermine the president’s foreign policy, which is designed to achieve a diplomatic solution to the Iran nuclear problem. I urge you withdraw support for this terrible bill, which would potentially draw America into yet another Mideast war that the American people overwhelmingly oppose. »

Here's the list. Go to http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm to get contact. Note: Blumenthal won't take messages from out of state, so enter a Connecticut address or mail a letter to his office.

Begich (Alaska), Michael Bennet (CO), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Cory Booker (N.J), Ben Cardin (Md.), Bob Casey Jr. (Pa.), Chris Coons (Del.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.) Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Kay Hagan (N.C.), Mary Landrieu (La.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Bob Menendez (N.J.), Mark Pryor (Ark.),Charles Schumer (N.Y.), or Mark Warner (Va.)

Senate Dems undercutting president's diplomatic efforts on Iran

I worry seriously about the AIPAC (Foreign government lobby) sponsored effort, with 16 Democratic senatorial co-sponsors, to undermine the president's diplomatic efforts to resolve the nuclear issue with Iran. The actual Menendez resolution is just horrible: committing the US to war all but automatically based on the paranoia of a foreign state (Israel)!!? I am appalled and will actively oppose the re-election of any Democrat who votes for this travesty. Even if Obama vetoes it, there's actually a pretty good chance of override, all because politicians are afraid to oppose the Israel lobby. Sheesh.

Mind and Cosmos/ Thomas Nagel

Still slowly working my way through Mind and Cosmos by Thomas Nagel. It's a bit of a slog; he uses words like phenomenology, teleology, epistemology, and reductionism the way most writers use 'door,' 'stone,' and 'ground.' But his main thesis, I must acknowledge, is intriguing, although I remain skeptical.

He is non-reductionist. He rejects the notion that pure material (chemical/physical) explanations can solve the mind/body problem or account for consciousness and mental life, and especially for rationality. He makes a fairly convincing argument that higher order consciousness and rationality is very unlikely to arise from purely material natural selection. He is not arguing for God, but for an element of nature that is inherently subjective and mindlike (to paraphrase; he doesn't use that word).

In fact, he rejects the notion that life itself is likely to have originated from purely physical processes; SOME form of teleology or inherent mind nature is necessarily implied. He doesn't have a coherent theory of what was involved, but he does make a strong argument that the sort of purely Dawkinsian/sociobiological explanation for intelligent living beings is just not plausible. Sometimes it's the role of philosophy to identify what we do not know, not to inform us of the way things are.

One thing he says that I like (which can be true even in a materialist reductionist interpretation) is that we, as conscious and (sometimes) rational beings, ARE, each of us individually and all of us collectively, a manifestation of the waking to awareness of the universe. (Because you can think of the conscious beings as the aspect of the universe that is aware, if you choose to look at it purely materially).

Romney wishes he could turn back the clock

So Romney says if he could turn back the clock and expose Obama's "lie" that people could keep their health plans under the A.C.A., he wouldn't have lost the election.  Remember this is a health plan modeled pretty closely on the very same models used in Romney's health care plan for Massachusetts, which had the same issue: some health insurers withdrew noncompliant plans (plus health insurers sent cancel letters like this every year to a large number of people anyway; it's what they do). 

Just shows how lucky we were to have avoided having this guy at the helm.

Thoughts on SETI... what if we succeed?

What would actually happen if SETI were successful, and some kind of signal from an extraterrestrial civilization were actually discovered?

Although the SETI effort is in deep financial trouble right now, it seems likely that in some way or other the Hat Creek Array will be reinstated and continue searching before long. Seth Shostak has plotted a timeline based on expected searches, and the estimated probability of a detectable civilization based on the Drake Equation (Google it if not familiar). Conservatively, these folks believe that it’s fairly likely detection of a civilization capable of communicating with us will occur sometime between now and 2050. I am personally skeptical for a variety of reasons which I’ve discussed on this blog (Search), but let’s just stipulate it’s certainly a possibility.

What would happen? Here are my speculations:

First, there would be a great deal of public interest. It would travel the breadth and depth of popular culture worldwide as the Greatest Meme Ever. But there is something important to bear in mind. We will not be having a chat with aliens. At best, we will glean some kind of meaning from a one-way signal, because if the conservative estimates are correct, and there are 10,000 communicating civilizations among the 300 billion stars of the Milky Way (I would guess more like 10 to 100, but let’s stick with 10,000), that means the nearest one is probably 500 to 1000 light years distant… so two way conversations would be very tedious indeed. 

It’s not at all clear that we would even be able to decipher a “message,” if we did receive one, but even unequivocal proof that living beings capable of technology exist at all would be one of the most momentous discoveries in human history.

Shostak has given his reasons for thinking that any civilization we contact will likely be a “machine civilization,” because the potential of technology to surpass the ability of living beings to “think” is already at a threshold in our, presumably quite young, civilization. I doubt this, too, for other reasons I’ve also discussed on this blog, but I’m not sure this is critical. The key point is that, just statistically, it’s a near certainty that any beings we contact will be far more technologically advanced than we are.

And this is the great unknown of SETI. What exactly would that mean? Would we be the recipients of a technology transfer that would transform our lives?

We really cannot know, but it seems likely that if it proves possible to discern meaning from a signal, and if the signal is rich enough in content, it probably would contain information that would catapult scientific knowledge, at least in some fields, far beyond anything anyone can meaningfully speculate about; and the same may apply to technologies as well.

As I’ve intimated, I’m somewhat of a SETI skeptic. But, the upside of value to be potentially gained from success, and the natural curiosity of people to just want to know what’s out there, more than justifies the relatively minor expenditure. (Currently, the US government is not spending anything on this effort; it’s entirely privately funded).

As for those who fear alien invasion, or our culture being overwhelmed like the Tahitians by the Europeans… well, we’re in a pretty fair pickle anyway, so I’ll take my chances. But, seriously, these arguments are ignorant. The distances to the stars are so great that it’s just not worth it to try to exploit other star systems. If “they” are out there, it’s a fair certainty that their only interest in us will be purely out of the same interest we have: to find out what’s out there. The universe is literally full of matter and energy, and there is nothing to be gained from hostility to remote neighbors; now, or ever.

Results from the Late Lamented Kepler Mission

I was watching a youtube from early in the Kepler mission (Jon Jenkins ; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNGviQ0LPDQ if you wanna look at it), and it set out the "critical questions" the mission (now unfortunately over) was intended to answer. I will essay to say what they found out, based on listening to a number of NASA and other science website lectures on the subject.

• • Are terrestrial planets common or rare?
  
  
  • What are their sizes and orbital distances?
    
  • How often are they in the habitable zone?

First, it's worth pointing out what Kepler was for and what it did in the broadest terms. It's a space telescope, in solar orbit, that looked at only one small patch of sky in the Constellation Cygnus, along the disk of the Milky Way. It critically examined the "sunlike" stars in that field of view out to an effective distance of about 3000 light years. That's 150,000 stars, more or less similar to the Sun. The point was to try to detect planets, and create some meaningful statistics about what it found.

Turns out what I'll call terrestroid (i.e., small, rocky) planets (e.g., Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars) are very common. Kepler's methodology, which is detection of transiting planets (crossing the disk of their star as seen from Earth) involves a selection effect: only quite flat ecliptic-plane systems are detected, and only something like 2 or 3% at most of stars viewed in the Kepler field of view will be oriented correctly for detection. Single stars are also heavily favored, because binary star planetary disks, even though the stars (it turns out) may often have planets, are unlikely to be flat enough to have transiting planets.

Still, it's thought that the systems Kepler has and will have detected (once all the data is processed), are relatively well representative of sunlike star systems in general. They found that small rocky planets are actually much more common than gas giants (in the Solar System we have four of each; a typical system might have four or five dense rocky worlds and only 1 or 2 gas planets, and there is not a preference for the rocky worlds to be close in, as formerly thought). So, from this point of view, very roughly earthlike worlds should be common. The question is implicit, what percentage of sunlike stars have planets at all? ... and the answer seems to be most of them, although the exact percentage is not really clear from Kepler data. Unfortunately, the one type of planet that would be most interesting, which is small planets, in the habitable zone of sunlike stars, and with an orbital period approximately similar to Earth's, is a type that the mission did not detect well, because it didn't have a long enough time to form a good baseline. Based on what was seen, there's good reason to believe that such planets (between let's say .9 and 1.5 Earth diameters, and in the zone where water can be liquid on the surface) are not particularly rare. A rough (but informed) guess would be maybe 2 to 5% of sunlike stars have such a planet.

Of note, in the Solar System Earth is the largest of the terrestroid planets, but in most of these systems, rocky planets larger than Earth, up to 2½ Earth diameters (still small enough NOT to have retained their hydrogen envelopes, like Neptune or Uranus), are common. Such planets have been widely labeled "super-Earths" in the popular scientific literature. Various models have been proposed for what the implications of the greater mass and size of these planets would be, but there's a good deal of uncertainty still.

• What is their dependence on stellar properties?

This question is less clearly answered. Kepler did not look at stars dimmer than about K5, nor brighter than F0, so it is intrinsically limited to a category of stars that are actually quite a bit brighter than most stars, which are red dwarfs, on average. Turns out (from other detection methods) that red dwarfs almost always have planets, and the sunlike stars mostly do, too. The "habitable zones" of dimmer stars are very narrow, so it remains likely that sunlike stars are a good deal more likely to have liquid water surface rocky planets than are much dimmer stars. But since dimmer stars (not only the M dwarfs but the dimmer-range sunlike dwarfs, say from G5 to K5) are more common, it's a safe bet that the median, or typical, earthlike world with seas, clouds, mountains, plate tectonics, etc., (let's call them "First Order Earthlike;" the presence of life being another matter), will orbit a star dimmer than the Sun. Just exactly how those numbers will work out is still somewhat uncertain.


Binary stars do, it seems, often have planets (most of this information comes from other planet detection regimes), so it would appear that at least some earthlike worlds could be "Tattooines" (planets orbiting two closely separated stars), or could orbit one of two or more very widely separated stars in a single system (e.g., Alpha Centauri, where planets have been detected). But these, it seems safe to say, will be the exceptions: habitable planets are more likely to be found orbiting single stars, probably by a significant margin.  

• Bottom line question: Are we alone?

Unfortunately, unless there's a big surprise in the final reports, it doesn't appear that Kepler is going to answer this question. There are a number of suggested methods of teasing from the data information about whether life could exist on a planet that's been detected. The atmosphere of a planet transiting a star can affect the spectrum of the star, and from that comparison such things as the presence of ozone in the atmosphere could theoretically be inferred. A planet, for example, that had both methane and ozone detectable in its atmosphere would be so seriously in chemical disequilibrium that, albeit controversially, such a detection would be widely accepted as definitive proof of the existence of life there.* But it hasn't been demonstrated, so far. So while Kepler does not provide any reason to infer that life is not likely, or not present on one or more of the detected worlds, it doesn't confirm that, either. As for the detection of intelligent life; well, not. Again, nothing to rule it out, but nothing to confirm it either.
♦♦

*The point is that if chemicals that will react with each other strongly both exist in the atmosphere of a planet, one or both of them must be continuously replenished, and in the case of oxygen (which yields ozone in the stratosphere), that can pretty much only be life, at least over time... if there were only one such detection, it could be explained away by transitory geological phenomena, but if the signature were detected in several different instances, the conclusion would be that it could pretty much only be a biosignature.

Time for Constitutional Convention

There's a pretty good article in the current New Yorker about just how dysfunctional the Constitutional system has become, and how political theorists on both the left and right (in totally incompatible and opposing ways) want to reform it.

I used to think a Constitutional Convention would be too dangerous, etc. etc., but I now think our Constitution has devolved so badly that it is a serious impediment to the basic functioning of our society, and that it pretty much obliterates any pretense of democracy at the national level. I will cite but one of many, many examples.

Statistics were just published today that show that my state, California, has 38.3 million people, very nearly one-eighth of the nation. In 1789, the largest state, Virginia, was, if memory serves, about 15 times the size of Delaware. Today, California has 1/8 of the nation's people but only 1/50 of the senators. And it is more than 250 times larger in population than Wyoming, which also has 2 senators (and 3 electors in the Electoral College), even though it doesn't have enough population to fully justify even one member of the House on population alone.

The Connecticut Compromise (opposed by Hamilton), which gave us our undemocratic Senate, may have had its justifications at one time. But no more. We cannot pretend that our government is even approximately democratic in the face of this gross distortion.

And, again, it's undeniable: this is only one of many, many serious Constitutional issues that are hobbling our country's public policy.

The time has come to agitate for a complete overhaul.

Failure to include extension of long term unemployment beneifts in budget deal: Cruel, Indifferent, and Stupid

It seems to me if you concur with the vast majority of reality-based economists (a necessary qualification since the dismal science is not a science at all and many of its practitioners are about as irrational as the average witch doctor), that public spending that puts money in the hands of poor and marginally middle class people has a great multiplier effect, whereas cutting such public spending has a multiplying depressive effect on the economy, then it is impossible to conclude otherwise than that the recent budget deal represents the triumph of public policy characterized by that unholy trinity of the Right Wing: Cruelty, Indifference and Stupidity.

How Republicans are Evil (Health Care Edition)

There's a good article in Slate today about the 5 million or so under-poverty line Americans in non-Medicaid expansion states, who are basically left out in the cold under the actual rollout of the Affordable Care Act.

Just to be clear, this was not the way the law was written. In the original law as passed, these people would have been automatically eligible for an expanded Medicaid. But thanks to the actual and palpable cruelty and indifference of (100% Republican dominated) state governments in 25 states, this option is not available (even though it would have been paid for entirely by Federal funds for the first three years, then at a 90% level, and even at that level would have saved the states money that would have to be spent on Federally mandated emergency medical care anyway).*

And thanks to the obstruction of (100% of the Republican majority in) the House of Representatives, it has been impossible to modify the law in any way to take care of these people. Of course, the reason this problem exists in the first place (as many have already forgotten), is because of the short sighted, cruel indifference of the ideologically motivated (Republican) majority on the Supreme Court, which overturned this part of the law in open defiance of any reasonable legal logic. (OK, it's a bit more complicated than that: four of them actually voted to destroy the health law altogether, which was even more cruel, indifferent, and irrational; but the Chief Justice wouldn't vote to save the law without this cruel, indifferent, and irrational provision).

So 5 million of the poorest Americans who would have been eligible for health insurance for the first time in their lives won't, thanks to Republicans.

This is why I maintain that Republicans (not individually, necessarily, but institutionally), are evil.  I just find it amazing that so many of them who hold these views claim to be Christians.

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*Not all Republican dominated states, either. Notably, Kentucky and Ohio have embraced Medicaid expansion and are making "Obamacare" work.

A crucial scientific question: finding another biosphere

Paul Davies (noted astronomer and popular science writer) published an article today in the NYT, of which I will essay an executive summary.

We really do not know anything about the probability of the origin of life, given accommodating environments, because we have a sample of only one, Earth, which tells us nothing about probability.

♦♦

So, recent analyses that suggest that watery worlds somewhat like Earth may be relatively common in the Galaxy (and all other similarly situated galaxies, which may well number in the trillions in the wider universe), actually don't give us any information about whether life in the universe is common, rare, or even unique to Earth.

Of course, most scientists have a "hunch" that life is common, but the truth is we just don't know. The origin of life is an intractable problem; it has not yielded to experimental investigation and there is no well-worked out a priori theory that predicts from first principles that life must evolve from non-life. Again, we just do not know, however "sure" we may feel about it.

So, what then? 

To me, this is a very strong argument for the extreme importance of searching for signs of life. There are very promising research projects being worked on and proposed to investigate the chemical signatures of life in the atmospheres of planets orbiting other stars. I would like to suggest that, after research into ameliorating and correcting the effects of climate change, including the development of renewable energy sources and sustainable methods of food production, etc., this is the most significant scientific question of our time.

Because, and this is a critical point, as soon as we have strong evidence of a biosphere anywhere other than Earth, it can then be accepted as a near certainty that life has originated in multiple locations in the universe; and if we find more than one; we can even come by some kind of estimate as to just how common it is.

Why is this important? Well, it just is. If you don't have enough of a sense of wonder to see that, I can't convince you.

Further Free Trade Deals are Bad Deals for America

One hears much recently about the near desperation of the Administration to conclude a framework for the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement before the end of the year. I'm a Democrat, but I oppose this agreement completely. I hope they fail spectacularly. 

The Obama administration, like every administration since at least Carter, just doesn't get it that global trade agreements do not enhance America's geopolitical interests, and have, in toto, harmed the economy, especially the jobs of ordinary working Americans. The Europeans are righteously ticked off about the NSA wiretaps of their negotiations on the TransAtlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) in the works, and I say, although that's a whole lotta crocodile tears coming from them, good. We don't need a trade agreement that further drains jobs from America. 

The "tilt towards asia" seems to be taking the form of an agreement that would undermine US internet openness, further erode US trade deficit, and undermine US economic interests in a whole host of ways, all the while accomplishing very little, since almost all the countries who are being courted to join in are also parties to a similar agreement with the Economic Hegemon of the region, China. So on balance, those who really have looked into it (like Clyde Prestowitz; check out ianmasters.com for 11/17), have concluded that the TPP is a bad deal for America, and so is TAFTA.

Afghanistan: a very different realpolitik

There's a lot of buzz (Huff.Post) about Karzai supposedly rejecting a key provision of the proposed long term US Security arrangement in Afghanistan.
Look, I realize that this is important to the Administration, for whatever reasons they have. But I believe Christine Fair, the expert on Afghanistan and Pakistan at Georgetown University, has it right. There simply are no significant US interests, and the fact is that we have been played for years and years by the governments of both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Our only major foreign policy objective vis a vis Pakistan should be dicincentivizing nuclear proliferation and brinksmanship on their part (they, not Iran, are the nuclear threat in the region that we should be worried about, and their attitude towards the US is arguably worse than Iran's). As for Afghanistan, there is no good outcome. We should cut our losses and get the hell out of there.

We should just tell Karzai, if you don't like it, we're taking our toys and going home. And mean it. And if we can't (as we probably can't) remove our military equipment, it should just be destroyed in place.

The American people are sick and tired of failed wars in Central Asia. Time to pull the plug, and to make clear to would be little Machiavellis like Hamid Karzai that we don't really care what he thinks or what his country decides to do in the aftermath; if they don't play nice, we're just going to leave, full stop.

In the meantime, the countries that are really benefiting from our presence in Afghanistan, which are China and Russia, should be told, hey, game's over. You want to ensure your interests in that country, the clock is ticking on whatever pax Americana there may be, and you better ramp up your own investments and presence in that country if you want the status quo.

Ironies and Dangers of the Fiasco of Health Care Rollout

The fiasco of the rollout of the Affordable Care Act is fraught with ironies. The Republicans, of course, are gleeful: they blame the president and Democrats for problems which are, admittedly, largely the result of inexcusable kludginess, mainly on the part of government contractors. And any administration must take the blame for that. But that's the first irony: the kludgy awfulness of the implementation (website, etc.) is largely because of the Right Wing-forced contractor market system enforced on our system of government, which practically guarantees outrageous overrun of costs and woeful inefficiency.

But the even greater irony, which is so galling to Progressive Democrats like myself, is that the failures of the health care reform system itself-- its complexity, its lack of fundamental fairness, its inefficiency, its excessive profits to insurers (still there from the old system)-- these things are the result of the fact that in order to achieve any sort of reform of a badly broken system, Democrats, and in particular the Obama administration, chose to adopt the Republicans' proposed solution: namely market based reform, even though for 35 years before that Democrats had by and large been saying that the way to reform health care was a government insurance program, something like Medicare for All, because ... exactly what we see happening... the Republican idea of a market reform system would be very complicated, very expensive, and not very effective at achieving the goal of universal health care at reduced cost. But we went along, only to have them meet success in achieving their stated goal with betrayal and enmity: they turned against their own idea, and wedded Democrats to its failures.

So here we are. The party that has done absolutely nothing, literally nothing, to address America's problems in the last six years now points the finger at Democrats for the failure of their idea, and, here's the worst part. It's working for them. Already the debacle of the shutdown they caused is all but forgotten, and the "generic" lead that made Democrats just a few weeks ago think it might just be possible to retake the House next year has all but evaporated.

These problems are not unfixable, and the Republicans are likely to do themselves plenty more damage early next year when the fiscal can-kick expires, but Democrats need to remain as united as possible, and the administration has to perform whatever Herculean tasks are needed to get this damn thing working, because we do know from history (Massachusetts) and from what is happening on the state level (California, New Hampshire, Vermont, for example), that once people can buy regulated health insurance, which, however bad, is always better than what the insurance industry offers on its own, especially in the individual market, they like it. And from success comes success, politically. So I sure as hell hope they're doing whatever it's gonna take to make this thing work as soon as humanly possible, because the fate of Democratic governance hangs in the balance. That's for sure.

Quasi-teleogy

I was having a conversation with a rather forward thinking person in my office, and, without veering too far into teleology, I agreed with his premise. Which is more or less what crazy old Timothy Leary used to say.

Which is as follows: 

If intelligent beings (like ourselves) evolve on natural life-bearing worlds anywhere in the universe for any purpose, (or, if you prefer, if they serve any particular function), it is: 

TO EXPLORE AND EVENTUALLY COLONIZE SPACE.

In the big picture and long run, what else matters?

Christie to drop appeal of Pro Gay Marriage Court Ruling in NJ

I think it's just possible that this event will be marked in history as the point at which national acceptance of same-sex marriage in the US was a fait accompli; no going back.  Here, in NYT.

Damage to Republican Interests pretty obvious. . .

John McCain made pretty clear that the sane branch of the Republican party (a minority, but perhaps one in the ascendant right now) ... recognizes that the Shutdown and Debt Ceiling Fiasco were quite harmful to Republican interests overall. He said he "guarantees" it won't happen again. Obviously, that guarantee isn't worth the paper it isn't written on, but I suspect he's right nonetheless, at least until after the 2014 elections. They were burned; they will probably stay well away from the stove for a time, anyway. Many moderate and even not-so-moderate Repubs saw just how damaging the intransigence and unwillingness to work within the legislative framework on the part of the Tea Party Nutcases actually was; they will be less likely to go along with the Fringers next time.

Tea Party's unpatriotic ransom failure will have consequences

Here's my new "meme." 

Hey, Tea Party. Exactly what did you get for your ransom demand that cost the US economy $24 billion?  And that did lasting damage to the credit and prestige of our nation? Was it worth it? 

Of course, people in general have an amazing ability to rationalize failure. But failure is the only truly rational description of what they did, and the damage they did to our (and their) country is entirely on them. The president and Congressional democrats were absolutely right to refuse to negotiate with hostage takers. Especially hostage takers who had just come off of months and months of refusing repeated entreaties to engage in legitimate budget negotiations. 

And I really believe that the fact that they did this damage to our country for nothing will not be entirely forgotten in 2014.

Why do they hate America?

I think the Democrats in Congress, and Obama, are missing an opportunity to really stick it to Boehner, McConnell, and especially Cruz and Paul and their ilk. Toying with the Full Faith and Credit of the US as a strategy of political blackmail is unquestionably directly harmful to the interests of the nation as a whole. Furthermore, it is a direct and unequivocal subversion of the way the Constitution provides that policy be made. Therefore, QED, it is grotesquely unpatriotic.

This needs to be said. Over and over and over again.

Laws of nature and a postulate regarding artificial consciousness

​♦ W​

hen you have an idle moment, look at this short précis of Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos. I bought this little book for my kindle. I think I agree with this pretty much entirely. My working assumptions remain the following:

1.  Mind (subjectivity) is integral with nature. Nature cannot exist without mind, and vice versa. And no mere physical subsystem within nature can replicate mind. Hence, artificial consciousness is not a very, very difficult technological problem. Rather, it is impossible, and will always remain so. (I am open to, but have little fear of, being proven wrong on this point).

2.  FTL (travel faster than light) is a pipe dream. Never existed anywhere in this unbelievably vast universe and never will, for reasons explained previously. I am open to being proven wrong here too, and would love it if I were. (This is a separate issue, but I thought I'd throw it in).

If I ever do manage to write a science fiction story/novel(s), it will accept those two premises as laws of nature. For the second I have a workaround in mind; for the first, it actually makes writing about a grand scale of things easier. Because, if artificial mind is actually possible, we natural minds are doomed, and not too far in the future; which, if you think about it translates to the following:   Natural minds sometimes evolve in odd crannies of space and time, but don't last; because the universe of Mind is essentially entirely cybernetic. 

I happen to think that this last descriptor doesn't fit the available evidence, but that it actually does follow pretty much inexorably from the postulate Artificial Consciousness is feasible and its operational principles will likely be discovered by any sufficiently advanced biological-origin civilization.  Many scientific technologically oriented folks nowadays blithely assume something pretty close to this postulate is true, but I submit to you that it almost certainly is not, because if it were, at 13.8 billion years of age, our universe would already almost certainly look vastly different from how it does, in fact, look.*

. . . .

*If it's not clear why that's the case, I'd be delighted to explain my thought process.

Pushback on Larry Summers

I am pleased to see this report from TPM that there's BIG pushback from Senate Dems against the internal lobbying in the WH coming from supporters of Wall Street favorite Larry Summers as a candidate for Fed Chairman. I've wondered if it isn't Summers himself who's tried to gin up the expectation that he will be appointed, because it would be totally out of synch with Obama's recent pro-working people stance for him to appoint Summers over Janet Yellen.

I gotta say, if Obama does that, he will be casting aside the last shred of his credibility with Progressives, and very likely indirectly causing another financial crisis, because Summers has repeatedly shown himself to be wrong and clueless about what matters in the regulation of finance, and to be totally out of touch with the needs of Main Street.

 

La Chapelle Rhénane ♪

I feel... impelled ... to give a shout out to La Chapelle Rhénane, directed by Bénoît Haller, based in Strasbourg. Early music ensembles flourish in Europe as they don't here, and there are many fine ones, as well as even more that are merely professional but not extraordinary. This one, however, is truly extraordinary. Haller specializes in Schütz (not exclusively), so of course he has my attention right there, but the singing and playing is really something special. If you care for this kind of music at all (and I get it that most people, even people who like "classical" music, don't)... check them out. They are as good as it gets.

Ici. “Herr, der du bist vormals genädig gewest" SWV 461 (Schütz)

Saudi Princess Fails Mandatory Hearing on Slavery Charge

I have no sympathy whatsoever for this "princess." (here, LAT). You don't get to bring your medieval Saudi laws to the U.S. with you. Had I been the judge, I would have ordered her into custody forthwith, issued a bench warrant for her immediate arrest, and denied all bail until trial. In part to send a message: human trafficking is not OK in the USA; it is a very, very serious crime, and if you are accused of it and don't treat the matter with due gravity, you can sit in jail until trial. And if the Saudis whisked her off to Saudi Arabia in a private jet, at least she would be gone from here. And, hopefully, the State Dept. would declare her persona non grata, although as toadying as they are toward the Saudi regime, I wouldn't bet on it.

Some Comments on Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672)

Seems to me music is very much like language, you have to learn its idioms in order to really “get" it, and most people, even those who have a little familiarity with “classical" music, simply do not really hear 400 year old music (much less music that’s even older or more remote culturally). But if you open your ears and heart to this motet (Ist nicht Ephraim mein teurer Sohn; SWV 40, from Psalmen Davids, 1619), you will note that it is about as poignant as anything you’re likely to hear anywhere.

The 17th century produced 2, and exactly 2, real geniuses of Western Music. And I would rank them Schütz #1, Monteverdi #2, although of course most music history buffs would chose the reverse order and might even insist on the superiority of lesser composers like Dowland, Corelli, Alessandro Scarlatti, or Purcell.

But I’ve made a real study of this, and I am confident in my judgment.

Schütz gets downplayed because virtually all of his surviving music is sacred music, which, let’s face it, just isn’t as popular. This is partly because that actually was his chief focus (he was a VERY serious guy), but also partly a selection effect. For the most part only his published music survives. The manuscripts were almost all destroyed in a fire. If that had happened to Bach’s music we would hardly know the bulk of his output. Schütz wrote an opera, Daphne (1623), at least some organ music, and hundreds of songs and occasional pieces (although very little other instrumental music, apart from the introductions to some of his vocal compositions)… almost all of which (including the opera) are lost. And he disdained the new recitative & aria format for oratorios, preferring to set texts as motets and concertos, or using a sort of chanted narration for his Christmas Oratorio* and passions. So it’s little wonder he isn’t that popular. His music is grave and majestic, but not frolicsome.

--
* Die Geburt unsres Herrn Jesu Christi, SWV 435, 1660. 

The Last Thing I got to say about Anthony Weiner

Boy. Anthony Weiner makes it very difficult to justify a laissez-faire attitude towards the private lives of public figures. (Which is my general preference). The question becomes, unfortunately, with this much baggage and this many questions about basic integrity, isn't he doing a disservice to the people of New York by shifting the focus from issues to him and his gigantic ego (and not the proportion of other parts, if you please).

So, while I have long said Clinton should've just refused all questions, and so should have Eliot Spitzer (and even Weiner, the first time out, as well as any number of other pols, both Republican and Democratic).... with all this nonsense and lying, he should just drop out and find some other profession.

Having said that, I also agree with Chris Hayes that actually far more disturbing than all his sexting nonsense is his statement in an interview (not that it has much to do with being mayor of New York), that the West Bank is not "occupied territory." Come on, Anthony. That's carrying Israel-sycophancy a bit too far. Which calls your judgment and basic honesty into question yet again.