X-Message-Number: 18602 Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2002 02:29:27 -0800 From: "John Grigg" <> Subject: http://lifeboat.com/ There is a new organization out which wants to build a space colony to avoid what they see as the significant possibility of humanity destroying itself. Tell me what you think! : ) I really enjoyed the response Anders Sandberg made! His idea of which business to get into is very prescient. best wishes, John Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 12:48:30 -0500 From: "Dickey, Michael F" <> [add to address book] [add to spam block list] Subject: http://lifeboat.com/ To: "''" <> Reply To: Just curious what other extropians think of this - Mike http://lifeboat.com/ Welcome to The Lifeboat Foundation! Our goal is to save the human race from extinction. Why do we think the human race will become extinct later this century? Because advanced technologies available by about 2020 will enable one evil or simply clumsy person to destroy all life on earth. _Why do we think the human race will become extinct later this century? _ Because advanced technologies available by around 2020 will enable one evil or simply clumsy person to destroy all life on earth. One such advancement is nanotechnology. A nanotechnology based weapon known as gray goo could easily exterminate every living thing, including viruses, in about two days. Engineered viruses and other biological weapons could also lead to our extinction. Then there's antimatter bombs, uncontrollable AI, and finally high energy particle accelerator mishaps which could destroy our local space-time continuum. As you can see, there are various means by which all life could be extinguished in the near future. And we've probably left out a few. We predict a 25% possibility of destruction due to a lab accident and a 25% possibility of destruction due to anti-terrorism systems malfunctioning such as a software glitch in the active nanotechnological shield proposed by Eric Drexler in his book Engines of Creation. And last, but not least, there is a 50% possibility of annihilation by terrorism. And we're not the only ones making that prediction. Arthur C. Clarke, the visionary author who, in 1945, predicted a world linked by geostationary satellites, was recently quoted as saying, "This terrorism is a frightful danger and it is hard to see how we can get complete protection from it". The sad fact is that it will take very little resources to launch a nanotechnology attack, basically resources equivalent to the cost of the 2001 anthrax attack in the U.S. And the FBI believes that particular attack was the work of a lone crazy. With this in mind, it's not hard to imagine the disastrous result of nanotechnological weapons falling into the wrong hands. Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 16:17:10 +0100 From: Anders Sandberg <> [add to address book] [add to spam block list] Subject: Re: http://lifeboat.com/ To: Reply To: On Mon, Feb 18, 2002 at 11:08:24PM -0800, Samantha Atkins wrote: > Your proposal is not a "solution" as all the possibilities of > disaster go with you. Solve the problem here or elsewhere, it > is still the same problem. Running off to build space colonies > will simply distract from actually facing the problem. Actually, it is a good complement. Not having all the eggs in the same basket is always a good strategy against threats. And the effort to build a space colony does not compete strongly with developing better nano, biotech or AI - in fact, it would likely be a great deal of synergy between the areas. If I run away to build space colonies and you build nanodefenses, in the end we have two qualitatively different ways of avoiding total wipeout - far more likely to protect than a single, slightly more elaborate solution. The problem is of course how to get such a project (literally) off the ground. Space industry has so far not proven particularly competitive, space tourism *might* be slightly profitable and a possible bootstrap method. But right now you cannot readily sell places on a disaster refuge, the demand simply isn't there. From my own scenario planning / roleplaying experiments it seems that once you get enough people worried about imminent disaster (even a highly predictable one), it is nearly too late to set up a decent space habitat. I think I will be in the nanodefense business myself. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y Check out Cupid School where you will learn from Matchmaker's best and brightest. Good Luck! http://ecard.matchmaker.com/cupid0202/cupid0202.html Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=18602