7 Arguments for Doomsday

7 Arguments for Doomsday - the beginning:
Introduction/ Precis: Multiple religious figures have long made a living by proclaiming the imminent end of the world to their flock. The premillenialist dispensationalists using the South Asian tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and the rumored avian flu pandemic are just among the latest. (NYTimes, Oct 2005)

But one doesn’t have to be religious to believe that humanity has but a relatively short future. That is, Doomsday – the end of human existence – may be mere hundreds or even tens of years away. Here I discuss 7 of the most plausible arguments for a relatively close Doomsday (as discussed by philosophers); my conclusion – it’s bad news for humankind.

1. Nanotechnology – gray goo scenario (e.g., M. Crichton, Prey). If nanomachines/ robots are developed, likely will consume and reproduce using carbon (buckyballs, etc.) Hence will eat any carbon-based organism – like cancer cells run amuck, will consume all current life and wipe us out. Programmers could place controls on nanomachines, but mutations or evil programmers could alter them… Very plausible, then, that civilizations end soon after nanotechnology develops, as Earth carbon-based life itself is simply one kind of nanotechnology (cells, using DNA, RNA, proteins) that could easily be outcompeted and replaced by a more efficient competitor.
2. Asteroid impact or other cataclysmic explosion (e.g., Deep Impact, ELE; KT impactor was 10-15 km in Yucatan; at least 1-10 km needed for plausible ELE, occurs on periods of millions of years.) So an ELE asteroid/ comet strike is very unlikely within next 100 years, but entirely possible; and for other collisions, nuclear weapons – limited use unlikely to cause extinction event, but Doomsday Weapon (cf Dr Strangelove) with enhanced fallout/ explosive power possible, particularly with space-based platforms… possible extension of MAD policy to multipolar defense with proliferation – but as # of actors with weapons increase, so too threat of irrational/ suicidal person using Doomsday device while unpersuaded by any carrot to refuse use – “any technology developed will eventually be used.”
3. Pandemic disease – again, a bird flu isn’t going to wipe out humanity, but exotic bioweapons increasingly appear possible via advances in genetic engineering – and (e.g., Stephen King’s The Stand) accidental leakage from secret weapons facility, or suicidal use, may eventually take place. Rees’ bet - >1 million dead from bioweapon by 2020. Aussie scientists a few years back accidentally developed a 100% lethal mousepox strain when working on vaccines; no reason to think same could not be done to smallpox…. Or weaponize another common infection – what if HIV was as transmissible as common cold, or MRSA or superstaph infection, immune to all antibiotics as resistance grows? Either by malevolent luck of Nature or by deliberate bioweapon engineering, extinction level pathogens are possible.
4. Global warming – short and long term – short term, one estimate has 184 million dead in Africa by 2100 from drought and rampant disease exacerbated by global warming – horrible, but no extinction threat, unless we are near a ‘threshold phenomenon’ in which global warming will suddenly accelerate into a runaway greenhouse effect with positive feedback. Current models do not show that, but all current climate models have significant uncertainties and things could be worse than believed – we are still unsure why Venus developed its runaway greenhouse, and so we may be closer to Venusian hell than believed; long-term, within 1 billion years all oceans will boil away from solar warming, so unless move planets or leave it, global warming will certainly eventually kill off humanity…
5. The rise of the machines – AI (e.g., Terminator, The Matrix; Asimov’s 3 Laws, no reason to think all programmers will be so altruistic towards humans, or robots themselves when self-program; Kurzweil / Moravec, suprahuman AI by 2050, we will become superfluous and likely go way of all technologically outmoded cultures – extinction by obliteration.
6. Berserkers – ET comes to visit (cf. Independence Day, but without an Apple computer virus fix). Fermi paradox and Great Silence – one explanation in terms of self-defense strategy by first or later winner of intragalactic war – destroy nascent civilizations before they become fearsome enemies – so wait for nascent civilization to announce their existence (TV/ radio), then hone in and destroy quickly … so 80-100 years of radio broadcasting our presence to the stars, so Berserkers en route now.
7. The original Doomsday Argument from observational selection and the Strong Indifference Principle – why I should regard myself as a random sample from all the observers in human history. Only 60 billion humans have ever lived, so taking myself to have a random place in that birth order, there would be a significant chance there will be only a few tens of billions more. My emendation - The revised Technological Doomsday Argument from observational selection and the Strong Indifference Principle – why I should regard myself as a random sample from all the observers in the galaxy/ universe. And so SETI’s failure – Berserkers, unfettered evolution, and why Zoo fences don’t make good neighbors – and no neighbors at all make bad news for our future.

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