Tag: future

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Image of restored specimen of a squat quadruped with knobby back
An ankylosaurus: by Emily Willoughby (e.deinonychus@gmail.com, http://emilywilloughby.com) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30925563

Like many kids, I was into dinosaurs. I had fun reading about the different types of dinosaurs, and trying to figure out which was the biggest, strongest, or most powerful. Over the years, I got interested in other things so dinosaurs have not been in the front of my mind. Recently my son has helped me to reconnect with the amazing world of dinosaurs. My son (two and half years old) loves dinosaurs and has been starting to learn some of their names (like ankylosaurus) so I have naturally been learning with him. To my surprise I’ve found that dinosaur research, and paleontology as a whole, has made tremendous progress since I was a kid.

Here are some specific examples:

  • Spinosaurus is the largest carnivorous dinosaur ever and had a crazy looking spine on its back. The finding of new Spinosaurus fossils as spurred a lot of research trying to understand whether it was aquatic, what the spine was for, and what it ate. The evidence is suggesting that it may have been one of the only swimming dinosaurs!
  • Tyranosaurus Rex was huge, but how fast was it? There has been a lot of back and forth but according to this 2017 paper, they probably weren’t that fast and mostly walked. Very disappointing! I still am hopeful that they could run as fast as a Jeep, but it did get me interested in the general relationship between animal size and speed (see this interesting blog post going into the details about animal speed)
  • Dinosaurs had efficient respiration with air sacs like birds (living dinosaurs!). In addition their bones were often pneumatic meaning that the air passages went through the bone. This made the bones light and strong which may have been one of the traits that allowed dinosaurs to get so big.
  • There is a wealth of evidence and theories about how different dinosaurs and other animals evolved. I really enjoyed this Eons show exploring how pterosaurs evolved the ability to fly.

Dinosaurs remind me that the world has not always been like it is now; it has changed and most likely will continue to change. The dinosaurs showed that huge land animals are possible. Could they evolve again? Could genetic engineering help? Jurassic park made it seem like a bad idea, but I would be for it. On a darker note, the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs (except the birds!) in particular is a reminder that millions of years worth of effort can be erased in a day. But perhaps the survival of our ancestors and the ancestors of other current species is an inspiration that life could survive the next big catastrophe. I like to remember we are part of the same story that includes the dinosaurs, and it is not over yet!

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I recently finished reading A Tale of Doings by Phil Quense. I really enjoyed it. As I read it, I felt immersed in the world of the story and the lives of the characters. It is a dystopian future, with the world owned by a few large corporations, that felt relatable really a natural progression from the way things are now. I enjoyed how the complexities of the world unfold through unexpected revelations throughout the story.

But the characters really make the story. There are several who play major roles in the story, and I felt like I got to know them. Sometimes I would get frustrated at a character for making a terrible decision, but they all have good hearts (except perhaps a few of the villains). I would root for them and get excited as they got swept up in the adventure.

Sometimes life can be numbing. We go to school, so we can get a good job, so that we can retire, so that we can . . . die. The default life in our society seems to be selfish and narrow. This story raises the hope that life can be rich and meaningful although perhaps more dangerous and exciting than we could imagine.

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The first weekend of December, I took part in the 2019 Omega Center conference titled Love at the Heart of the Cosmos. The Omega Center is an organization dedicated to building a new understanding of religion and science. The conference explored the idea that God’s love permeates the physical world and that the physical world matters to God. I attend online, but despite the distance, was still able to feel the excitement of the speakers and the attendees. I felt a sense of finding my “home”, other people like me who care deeply about religion, but are searching to find an understanding of religion they can wholeheartedly believe in.

To give a sense of the conference, here are a few examples:

  • Matthew Fox talked about the importance of holding on to a sense of wonder. He argued that God is not static, so we should be open to updating our beliefs and doctrines. I found it particularly encouraging how he has worked on new forms of liturgy.
  • Kathleen Duffy , a Catholic sister and physicist, described the struggle of Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin as he navigated writing about evolution and how it impacts his Catholic faith while facing censure from the Church. It is helpful to learn from Teilhard’s struggle, because we still face obstacles today. There is real resistance towards fully embracing evolution which necessarily causes dramatic changes to our understanding of God.
  • Ilia Delio, Catholic sister and theologian leading the Omega Center, spoke about the need for inner work, including contemplation, to contribute toward the future that God is calling us to. She described how technology is changing our very definition of what it means to be human, and the role of religion in this time of change.

Throughout the talks, the questions, and other events, there was a sense that we are on the edge of a big change in religion and society. In some way the current world religions will need to change to make sense of our changing world. There is a hope that a new religion or religions could emerge and help humanity face existential challenges.

I am just one person, and can not do much on my own, but I am part of something bigger. Maybe I can and we can, in some small way, contribute toward this epic story.

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I have been wondering about the long term prospects for the economy as I am trying to get things like retirement accounts and a 529 savings account set up. All the investment advice talks about the wisdom of holding stock for the long term. This advice makes sense because for the past few hundred years, there has been continual exponential economic growth (see great exploration of the economic growth at Max Rosen’s Our World In Data site).

But I am skeptical of anything growing exponentially forever. Exponential growth is relentless; it keeps getting faster and faster. There are lots of things that grow exponentially for short amounts of time, most commonly populations whether they are bacteria, rabbits, or people. At some point something will limit the growth. Are economies different? Can they grow exponentially forever?

I have read articles arguing both ways. The optimists feel that we will keep on innovating our way to growth (see for example a Freakonomics post). The pessimists (or realists) argue that economic growth is tied in some way to energy use (for example see this blog post). Consequently if we kept economic growth going then at some point the earth would would burn up from the waste heat emitted from all of the energy use. The optimists counter that we can have immaterial economic goods so production does not have to be tied to energy.

I would argue that gaining and maintaining knowledge requires a significant amount of energy. While computers make it look effortless to spreading knowledge, in fact every web page that is visited costs a little bit of energy. It is hard to see how we could create an ever more impressive virtual world without increasing energy costs in the real world. So for now I side with the realists!

Of course even if the growth does stop someday it is hard to know when it will stop. I have given up predicting when that will happen exactly. If I had to guess we might have some economic struggles in the short term, but over all keep with the exponential growth for a couple more decades.

If there are limits on growth, how do they work? Economic value depends on perception of value, but it is not clear to me how perception is related to physical quantities. How is energy related to economic transactions? How is knowledge, economic value, and information related?