# data[].attributes.body
People in Scythe are lead by AI, but would it be a good thing?

# data[].attributes.body
People in the book view our time as one full of misery and pain

# data[].attributes.headline
It's common in the Scythe society for jobs to be useless

# data[].attributes.subject
It's common in the Scythe society for jobs to be useless

# data[].attributes.body
If we're stuck on Earth, what happens when the population grows too much?

# data[].attributes.headline
w/o religion, how do opinions on death change

# data[].attributes.subject
w/o religion, how do opinions on death change

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Human overpopulation is among the most pressing environmental issues, silently aggravating the forces behind global warming, environmental pollution, habitat loss, the sixth mass extinction, intensive farming practices and the consumption of finite natura

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Everything we value is possible only because of death. The ancients couldn't have known this truth revealed by science. We can no longer afford to remain ignorant of it; the cost is too high. Death is no less sacred than life.

Most people, whether religious or not, are tragically unaware of what has been revealed about death in the past few hundred years, through evidence. This ignorance now fosters untold suffering -- for families and for society, as well as for individuals.

I am regularly asked (especially since I was diagnosed with cancer three years ago), "Do you believe in an afterlife? What do you think happens to us when we die?" My typical response is to make one or more of the following points...

1. As I discuss in "The Gifts of Death" section in my 2009 book, it is vital when thinking about death in the abstract, when contemplating the inevitability of our own demise or when grieving the loss of a loved one to call to mind the positive role of death in the Universe. Widespread ignorance of the now-indisputable fact that death is natural and generative at all levels of reality, coupled with our culture's failure to interpret the science in ways that help us to feel the sacred quality of death, result in not only distorted but outright disabling views.

Honoring the creative role of death in the cosmos does not, of course, take away the anguish and grief we feel when someone or something we love dies. Such intense feelings are normal and healthy. They should be honored and allowed time to dissipate naturally, which can often take a year or two (and sometimes much longer). But what a gift to go through the grieving process while resting safely in a reality-based (even beautiful) big picture "container" that puts our personal loss in perspective! Death is assuredly not a cosmic mistake; it is not "the enemy." Indeed, contrary to the writings of the Christian Apostle Paul, humans bear no responsibility for the existence of death in the Universe. And we don't need to believe this; we know it. God ( reality mythically personified) revealed it through science.
(Here you can sample testimonials from my wife and my last decade on the road that demonstrate the emotional gifts of a science-based perspective, meaningfully interpreted, even in such unspeakably painful cases as the tragic loss of a child. It is also important to bear in mind that Moses, Jesus, the Apostle Paul and Muhammad could not possibly have known what we know about death. This evidence-based understanding couldn't have been revealed in a way that we could have received it, prior to telescopes, microscopes and computers.)
2. By taking the long view of " big history," and thereby nurturing an extended sense of who I am, I begin to experience a "self" that does not stop with my skin. Earth is my larger Self. The Universe is my even larger Self: my Great Self. So, yes, "I" (in this expanded sense) will continue to exist even after "I" (this particular body-mind) comes to a natural end. Recognizing that my small self will soon experience death everlasting, I find deep comfort in knowing that my larger Self will live on. More, I am powerfully motivated to be in action today precisely because I do not ignore or deny my mortality. My human self has but a brief window of opportunity to delight in, and contribute to, the ongoing evolution of the body of life and human culture. Truly, this is it; now or never.

I am immensely grateful for both the comfort and the compulsion born of this sacred evolutionary perspective.

3. From a religious naturalist standpoint, it seems clear that we go to the same place we came from before we were conceived -- the same "place" that trillions of other animals and plants have gone throughout Earth's history whenever they perished. Some speak about this transition as "coming from God and returning to God." Others prefer the imagery of "coming from mystery and returning to mystery." Still others, as "coming from nothing and returning to nothing." All are legitimate (as well as emotionally satisfying) ways of thinking and talking about what happens at death.

As to my own beliefs, I usually respond (with humor), "If it turns out that where I go isn't the same place that all other animals, plants and bacteria have gone throughout Earth's history, I'm gonna be pissed!"

4. A universal experience (whether or not we choose to admit it) is this: death is no less partnered with birth than a magnetic north arises only when there is also a south. From the moment we take our first breath, the outcome is ultimately death.

Any so-called "faith" that doesn't include trusting that whatever happens on the other side of death is just fine is, in my view, really no faith at all. Fear of a terrifying, hellish after-death scenario, or hope of a blissful, heavenly after-death scenario are just that: fear or hope; not faith, not trust. As legendary Griefwalker and "Angel of Death" Stephen Jenkinson warns: "Not success. Not growth. Not happiness. The cradle of your love of life ... is death." (I highly recommend watching the documentary, "Griefwalker," which is freely available online, here.)

5. The idea of being "rewarded" ( condemned?!) with experiencing even one day of unnatural after-death existence would occur to me as hell, not heaven, were I to think of (or worse yet, witness from on high) a divinely decreed eternal torture of others who had in some way missed the mark. Adding to the repugnance would be knowing that those relegated to never-ending suffering included not only perpetrators of outright evil but also those condemned for nothing more than holding wrong beliefs -- that is, beliefs different from mine.

6. Here is the way I discuss the subject of "the afterlife/what happens when we die" on pages 116-117 of my book, "Thank God for Evolution":

My formal training for becoming a United Church of Christ minister culminated in an ordination paper that I wrote and then presented to a gathering of ministers and lay leaders. Titled " A Great Story Perspective on the UCC Statement of Faith," my talk stimulated a host of comments and queries. A widely respected minister posed a question I shall never forget. "Michael," he began, "I'm impressed with your presentation and with the evolutionary theology that you've shared with us. However, there's a little boy who lives in me, and that little boy wants to know: Where is Emory?"

Emory Wallace, a well-known and beloved retired minister, had for nearly three years guided me through my ministerial training. He died suddenly, at the age of 85, just a few weeks before my ordination hearing.

"Where is Emory?" My mind went blank. I knew I needed to say something -- after all, this was my ordination hearing -- so I just opened my mouth and started speaking, trusting the words to come. My response went something like this:

Where is Emory? In order to answer that question I have to use both day language (the language of rational, everyday discourse) and night language (the language of dreams, myth and poetry). Both languages are vital and necessary, just as both waking and dreaming states of consciousness are vital and necessary. Like all mammals, we cannot survive without dreaming. It is a necessary function of our brain. Sleep is not enough; we must be allowed to dream.

We, of course, know that day experience and night experience are different. For example, if you were to ask me what I did for lunch today, and I told you that I turned myself into a crow and flew over to the neighborhood farm and goofed around with the cows for awhile, then flew to Dairy Queen and ordered a milkshake -- and if I told you all that with a straight face -- you might counsel me to visit a psychiatrist. However, had you asked me to share a recent dream, and I told the same story, you might be curious as to the meaning of that dream -- but you wouldn't think me delusional.

So in order to respond to your question, "Where is Emory?" I have to answer in two ways. First, in the day language of common discourse I will say, Emory's physical body is being consumed by bacteria. Eventually only his skeleton and teeth will remain. His genes, contributions and memory will live on through his family and through the countless people that he touched in person and through his writings -- and that includes all of us.

But, you see, if I stop there -- if that's all I say -- then I've told only half the story. In order to address the nonmaterial, meaningful dimensions of reality I must continue and say something like: "Emory is at the right hand of God the Father, worshipping and giving glory with all the saints." Or I could say, "Emory is being held and nurtured by God the Mother." Or I could use a Tibetan symbol system and say, "Emory has entered the bardo realm." Any or all of these can be considered practically real, rather than factually real -- that is, true within the accepted logic and understanding of mythic night language.

My response was well received in that meeting 22 years ago, and it has shaped my thinking ever since. Recently, I blended the core of that distinction into my Great Story talks and workshops. I am sure that my understanding of day and night language -- language of reason and language of reverence -- will continue to evolve and thus inform my preaching, my teaching and my personal relationship Reality.
"The Gifts of Death" -- A Responsive Reading In Celebration Of Death
1. Without the death of stars, there would be no planets and no life.
2. Without the death of creatures, there would be no evolution.

1. Without the death of elders, there would be no room for children.
2. Without the death of fetal cells, we would all be spheres.

1. Without the death of neurons, wisdom and creativity would not blossom.
2. Without the death of cells in woody plants, there would be no trees.

1. Without the death of forests by Ice Age advance, there would be no northern lakes.
2. Without the death of mountains, there would be no sand or soil.

1. Without the death of plants and animals, there would be no food.
2. Without the death of old ways of thinking, there would be no room for the new.

1. Without death, there would be no ancestors.
2. Without death, time would not be precious.
ALL: What, then, are the gifts of death?
1. The gifts of death are Mars and Mercury, Saturn and Earth.
2. The gifts of death are the atoms of stardust within our bodies.

1. The gifts of death are the splendors of shape and form and color.
2. The gifts of death are diversity, the immense journey of life.

1. The gifts of death are woodlands and soils, ponds and lakes.
2. The gifts of death are food: the sustenance of life.

1. The gifts of death are seeing, hearing, feeling -- deeply feeling.
2. The gifts of death are wisdom, creativity, and the flow of cultural change.

1. The gifts of death are the urgency to act, the desire to fully be and become.
2. The gifts of death are joy and sorrow, laughter and tears.
ALL: The gifts of death are lives that are fully and exuberantly lived, then graciously and gratefully given up, for now and forevermore. Amen!
ALSO SEE:

Can Death Become Your Ally? (HuffPost blogpost by Duane Elgin)

The Science of What We Now Know About Death (That the Ancients Couldn't Have Possibly Known)

When Death Gets Personal (podcast recorded just after I learned I had potentially deadly cancer)

Yes to the Universe (litany / responsive reading)

Evolution and the Revival of the Human Spirit (secular sermon by Michael Dowd)

Tree Talks About Death (children's story written by Connie Barlow)

Startull: The Story of an Average Yellow Star (evolutionary parable by Connie Barlow)

Immortality Projects in the Internet Era: The Rise of Volunteerism, the Demise of Consumerism, and the Democratization of Cultural Progress (blogpost by Connie Barlow)

Death, Budgets, and Generational Justice (blogpost by Connie Barlow; also the following YouTube clip...)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Everything we value is possible only because of death. The ancients couldn't have known this truth revealed by science. We can no longer afford to remain ignorant of it; the cost is too high. Death is no less sacred than life.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Farmland outside a Midwestern city turns into a bedroom enclave of commuting urban professionals. A handful of non-white people move to Dubuque, Iowa. Already diverse cities become increasingly mixed with immigrants from Asia, Africa and Latin America.

These are just some of the ways diversity is increasing in U.S. communities.
[ Donald Trump lost most of the American economy in this election]
To quantify how America is changing, we used the diversity index, which measures the chance that two people chosen at random will not be the same race and ethnicity. A high score means a county has people of many races and ethnicities, while a low score means the community is made up of a single dominant group.

To make these maps, we calculated the racial and ethnic diversity in every county in the contiguous United States for 2000, and again with the latest data from 2014.

Not diverse, but changing fast

The bright yellow areas had very little diversity in 2000 but are experiencing the greatest rate of change. This pattern is evident from northern New England through vast swaths of the Midwest. It covers 56 million people. That's one-sixth of the country that remained almost completely white all the way to 2000, but is now beginning the gradual change to a multicultural mix.

"When I was growing up in 1960s Dubuque, you didn't see any other race, practically everybody was white," said Janelle Lutgen, a Republican activist in Iowa. "I don't think I worked with anybody of color, or went to school with anybody of color."

But now Dubuque and the neighboring tri-State area of Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin along the Mississippi River is bright yellow with change, enough to generate some friction.
[ If you've ever described people as 'white working class,' read this]
Dubuque had a Black Lives Matter march and rally earlier this month. The participants mirrored the Iowa community - they were virtually all white - but said that addressing division was a goal. Lutgen, the Republican activist, agreed that change doesn't have to mean conflict.

"I think it's more the unknown than the actual problem," she said of neighbors uncomfortable with increased diversity. "It's more a perceived problem than an actual problem."

A different type of bright yellow spot is Hamilton County, Ind., a commuter haven just north of Indianapolis, where diversity is arriving in the form of rapid growth. This county's population increased by 59 percent since 2000, and the community offers affordable housing, a thriving business community and excellent schools.

The arrivals are often professional and diverse. In 2000, the county was 93 percent white, while in 2014, it was 85 percent white, with the second-largest group being Asians, followed by Hispanics and African Americans.

Cities in this county made it on lists of " best places to live" and " happiest suburb." Hamilton had the nation's greatest increase in racial and ethnic diversity of any county with at least 50,000 people.

Already very diverse

The blue swath of the country is made of counties that are already diverse. More than 190 million people, 60 percent of the country, lives in this blue area. It includes big cities, which are magnets for diverse populations. The curved region in the Southeast includes areas with white and African American communities, as well as Georgia and the Carolinas, where the Hispanic population is increasing.
[ How rural resentment helps explain the surprising victory of Donald Trump]
The Southwest is a mix of Hispanic, white and Native American. The Pacific Northwest is similar, but has an additional Asian population which increases diversity.

Some places in these blue areas, however, can be very different at the neighborhood level. A county can contain smaller segregated communities in addition to more diverse neighborhoods.

Diverse and getting more so

The diversity index measurement has a natural cap, so once a place is very diverse, the measurement will not keep increasing. There is no place that registered the highest level of diversity and also in the highest rate of change. These scattered light blue and light green areas, however, have become more diverse since 2000. Notable clusters of increasing diversity surround Boston, Seattle and Orlando. The area covers almost 60 million people, just under one-fifth of the country.

Not diverse and staying that way

Even when most of the country is becoming more diverse, there is an exception to every rule. The isolated zones of dark green are neither diverse nor experiencing change. They include just over 8 million people, 3 percent of the nation. Some of them are areas that are almost all Hispanic, such as along the Texas-Mexico border, or are entirely Native American. Some of those places are likely to remain homogeneous into the foreseeable future.
[ To improve diversity, don't make people go to diversity training. Really.]
In addition, clusters of counties in West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana and Idaho have remained virtually all white since 2000.

How people react to changing diversity

Before and since the election, diversity has been at the heart of issues such as the Black Lives Matter movement, resistance to political correctness, the "Hamilton" cast's message to Vice President-elect Mike Pence and attitudes about immigration.

Perceptions of "other" people lead not only to misunderstandings, experts said, but also to hostility. Some of it is simple psychology. People know their own lives are complex and have many explanations for what they do, said Patrick R. Grzanka, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Tennessee who studies social inequality. But people then reduce "outside groups" to a cardboard caricature - and a negative one at that.
[ Urban and rural America are becoming increasingly polarized]
For instance, residents in a multiethnic urban society can think that they live in a cooperative community of people coming together but disparage rural areas as backward. Meanwhile, people in rural communities prize their tight relationships but describe cities as crime-ridden and harsh. Both sides are shocked at the generalizations used by the other side.

In the wake of the election, Grzanka said, the depth of misunderstanding creates "a profoundly important moment. It is really dangerous." To cross the barrier, he said, people must say "I need to learn why their version of America is so terrifying to me. ... If you hate NAFTA and I love NAFTA, we've got to be able to talk about this stuff and not just characterize each other as ridiculous human beings."

Diversity also makes the country more dynamic and bolsters the workforce, benefits highlighted by demographer William Frey, a research professor at the University of Michigan and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Frey recently published " Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics are Remaking America. " If you only look at the country's white population, Frey said, it would look like Japan, with an aging population and too few young workers to grow the economy.
[ Residents in most diverse areas say their neighborhoods are better than others]
He said it's important to see the diversity question in terms of age. Forty-seven states and 90 percent of the counties have an absolute decline in white population under age 20. All net growth of children in this country is coming from racial and ethnic minorities.

"If we're going to have a productive economy in the future, new young people with new ideas energizing the labor force - taxpayers supporting the Social Security Trust Fund and Medicare for retirees - it's in our best interest if this younger generation is treated well and welcomed with open arms into the labor force," Frey said.

Source: Post analysis of Census Bureau data. Bonnie Berkowitz contributed to this report.

More stories

More coverage

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Where the country is becoming more diverse

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Farmland outside a Midwestern city turns into a bedroom enclave of commuting urban professionals. A handful of non-white people move to Dubuque, Iowa. Already diverse cities become increasingly mixed with immigrants from Asia, Africa and Latin America. These are just some of the ways diversity is increasing in U.S. communities.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Top 5 Highly-Paid But Useless Corporate Jobs

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
These big-money corporate jobs waste big-time money, but nobody in the corner office ever seems to notice.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In yesterday's Daily Explainer we told you all about pain - why it exists, how it works, and how scientists are trying to quantify its effects. Though pain has clearly served an important evolutionary purpose, not everyone is convinced that we still need it. A growing number of forward-looking thinkers are suggesting that we need to get rid of it - and that we'll soon have the technological know-how to do this. But should we choose to embark on such a radical experiment, we'll need to pay close attention to the risks and those aspects of humanity we might risk losing.

There's no doubt about it: Pain sucks. We all hate it - and some people go to immense lengths...
Read more Read
Top image: "Ascension" by Hank Akins.
To help us better understand the perspective of the so-called "pain abolitionists," we spoke to philosopher and ethicist David Pearce. Back in 1995 he authored The Hedonistic Imperative, an influential online manifesto that urged the use of biotechnology to abolish suffering throughout the living world.

After speaking with Pearce, it became clear that the technologies required to pull off such a feat will soon be within our grasp - and that there's a strong moral argument to back his case. But as Pearce admitted to us, a pain-free world doesn't necessarily imply a perfect world - just one that would be considerably more comfortable to live in.

David, before we get into the ethics of creating a pain-free humanity, it's important to consider the technological viability of such a project. Will it really be possible to remove physical pain from the human experience?

In a nutshell, yes.

Technically, physical pain could be banished in humans and nonhumans alike. Today, the lives of hundreds of millions of people are blighted by chronic pain. Mercifully, most of us are normally pain-free. But at some point in our lives, pain of nightmarish intensity can strike - and then we're shocked at how dreadful the experience can be.

From an engineering perspective, however, pain is unnecessary. Nonbiological robots don't suffer its nasty "raw feels" at all. Our silicon robots can be programmed to respond adaptively to noxious stimuli without the slightest discomfort. So we know that the function of nociception and the experience of phenomenal pain are distinct.

Indeed, rare humans born with congenital analgesia never experience phenomenal pain in the course of their entire lives. The problem with congenital analgesia is that phenomenal pain normally plays a signalling role in human and nonhuman animals. So people born with congenital analgesia are at risk from all sorts of health problems. They must lead sheltered, cosseted lives. They wouldn't survive on the African savannah. Therefore the challenge we face is to find ways of replicating the functional, information-signalling role of physical pain minus its nasty raw feels.

How soon before we'll be able to start doing this?

Well, we could start right now. Pain and pain-thresholds are modulated by a number of different genes. Let's focus on just one of them here: SCN9A.

The SCN9A gene codes for the Nav1.7 sodium ion channels present at endings of pain-sensing nociceptors. The SCN9A gene has numerous variant alleles. Nonsense mutations of the SCN9A gene abolish the capacity to feel pain. Other alleles confer an unusually high pain-sensitivity or an unusually low pain-sensitivity.

So prospective parents have a choice. We can continue playing genetic roulette as now, putting our faith in God or Mother Nature. Alternatively, if we're ethically serious about reducing the burden of suffering in the world, we could use preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to choose benign "low pain" variants of the SCN9A gene for our future children. Prudence dictates that we shouldn't (yet) abolish the capacity for phenomenal pain altogether. But we can still ensure that pain has a negligible impact on our children's quality of life by selecting "low pain" alleles for their genomes.
Time out: This sounds a little bit like eugenics. Isn't all of this just genetic experimentation on our kids?
All children are genetic experiments. If we're going to create life, we should at least ensure we don't create suffering.

And you're right - critics of the reproductive revolution in process will raise the spectre of eugenics. Pessimists warn of "designer babies" and discrimination against the poor. Some of their worries may be well-founded. Potential pitfalls abound. But it's worth stressing that PGD doesn't entail creating designer babies. PGD just screens for what Nature has thrown up "naturally". True designer zygotes will certainly be an option to explore; but they aren't essential to pain-reduction.

Moreover, the biggest users of PGD aren't prospective parents in the developed western nations. Its biggest users are Indians and Chinese eager to prevent the misfortune of having a girl. Arguably our ethical priorities are skewed.

For now, adults seeking to banish pain from their lives are stuck with "analgesics" and narcotics. So-called analgesics are weak. Strong opioid painkillers have well-known problems of tolerance and dependence. Pain clinics exist "to help you manage your pain". Yet developments in gene-editing technologies will shortly allow mature humans to edit our own genetic source code. We'll be able to modulate our own pain thresholds, not just the pain-thresholds of our prospective children.

The advent of user-friendly genome-authoring and editing tools will potentially be hugely empowering. We won't all need to become molecular biologists to take control of our own genetic destiny. Realistically, autosomal gene-editing tools for the home user are decades away. But just as we need a Hundred Year Plan to tackle global warming, I think we need a Hundred Year Plan to tackle the scourge of physical pain.
Studies have shown that people without the capacity for pain have shorter life expectancies compared to normally functioning people. Clearly, pain has a life preserving purpose. So, without it, how will we know if we're hurt or harming ourselves?
Just to be clear, a post-genomic world of minimal pain is not the same as a pain-free world. But if we want to phase out physical pain altogether, then its abolition needn't force us to embrace the cotton-wool existence of congenital analgesics. Instead, a regime of robust, healthy, pain-free life is technically feasible for us all.

Two long-term options for total pain-replacement deserve to be considered. One option is to replace the signalling role of pain as it exists today with information-signalling gradients of bodily well-being - with dips in bodily well-being signalling potentially noxious stimuli. Intuitively, mere dips in well-being wouldn't adequately motivate us to action. But empirically, this doesn't seem to be the case. Compare two people making love. Some aspects of lovemaking are more rewarding than others. Yet sensitive lovers can still respond and adapt to hedonic dips and peaks without ever finding their experience less than enjoyable. In principle, this lesson could be transposed to everyday life.

A more radical option for dealing with the problem of pain would be to replace the signalling role of the pleasure-pain axis in its entirety - for noxious stimuli, at any rate. This is because we could offload its current role in nociception onto smart prostheses. If equipped with smart sensors and smart prostheses, then you could painlessly and automatically withdraw your hand in the vicinity of a hot stove, say, before you inadvertently injure yourself. Or rather, your hand would withdraw automatically. Presumably, such technology would standardly be fitted with manual overrides to avoid any perceived loss of bodily autonomy.

Such enhancement technologies promise to make us "cyborgs". Not everyone finds the prospect of cyborgization appealing. Would your body software be licensed or owned? What if your body were hacked? Despite the potential snags in store, bioconservative critics might wish to reconsider their opposition to a world without pain next time they are writhing in agony. Either way, the point is that later this century the experience of phenomenal pain of any kind will become optional. Ethically speaking, we should be free to choose.

There's got to be some other trade-offs for losing the capacity for pain. Doesn't physical pain serve any other sort of purpose, such as building character or making us tougher, better - even more empathetic human beings?

Bioconservatives often quote a line from Nietzsche: "That which does not crush me makes me stronger." But alas pain often does crush people: physically, emotionally, morally. Chronic, uncontrolled pain tends to make the victim tired, depressed and weaker. True, some people are relatively resistant to physical distress. For example, high testosterone function may make someone "tougher", more "manly", more resilient, and more able to deal with physically painful stimuli. But such strength doesn't necessarily make the subject more empathetic or a better person. Indeed, if I may quote W. Somerset Maugham, "It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive."

Of course, suffering doesn't always enfeeble and embitter. By analogy, someone who is emotionally depressed may feel that despair is the only appropriate response to the horrors of the world. But the solution to the horrors of the world is not for us all to become depressed. Rather it's to tackle the biology of depression. Likewise, the solution to the horrors of physical pain is not to flagellate ourselves in sympathy with the afflicted. Instead it's to tackle the biological roots of suffering.
There is another possibility in terms of unanticipated side-effects: Won't we be more inclined to physically hurt or coerce people if they don't experience pain?
The infliction of physical pain is used by abusive regimes - and also by abusive parents - the world over to coerce the vulnerable. So conferring immunity to pain is more likely to promote resistance to coercion, not increased vulnerability. But phasing out the biology of physical pain is not some utopian blueprint for a perfect world, any more than the development of pain-free surgery was a panacea for the ills of the body.

Rather, the creation of a world without involuntary pain is a precondition for a civilized society.
Inset images via 1: David Pearce | 2:nobeastsofierce/shutterstock | 3:Vladimir/shutterstock.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Should we eliminate the human ability to feel pain?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In yesterday's Daily Explainer we told you all about pain - why it exists, how it works, and how scientists are trying to quantify its effects. Though pain has clearly served an important evolutionary purpose, not everyone is convinced that we still need it.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The difference between where human civilization started and where it is today is mind-boggling. Despite our experiences and great achievements, there are still a lot of problems that plague contemporary society. In order to tackle these problems, innovation is going to be needed. The ideas in this list go against the norm or what is expected, but are they too radical? Or could they help save the world?

10 Youth Unemployment

Youth unemployment is a major problem in many countries. In the United States, youth employment has gone down in the past five years, but it is still at 11.1 percent, while the overall unemployment rate is just 5.5 percent. In Canada, the youth unemployment rate is 15.5 percent, while the national average is about half that. It's even worse in Europe, with almost a quarter of people between the ages of 18 and 24 unemployed. One way to stem this problem is for employers to offer young people a shortened workweek. Instead of a full-time job, they would start off at 80 percent of the workload and paycheck. This would create 10-20 percent more jobs in the market.

The reason to direct this initiative at young people instead of implementing it for everyone is a phenomenon called the endowment effect. It is the theory that people get attached to possession, money, and privilege, and once someone has those things, it's hard to take them away. But young people won't have that problem, because there is nothing to take away from them; they gain 80 percent of the job.

A shortened workweek for a large segment of the workforce has also been suggested as a solution to aid the economy. A shorter workweek would theoretically lower a person's carbon footprint, improve employee morale, reduce unemployment, reduce the cost of childcare, and improve the economy.

9 Climate Change

According to researchers, the damage from climate change is irreversible, but it is stoppable. In order to even slow it down, some innovative ideas are going to be needed. One of the more interesting ideas is from a geoengineering team called the SPICE project (Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering) from the United Kingdom. They are looking to help slow down climate change by making an " artificial volcano."

The inspiration for the project came from the aftermath of the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. During the eruption, 20 million tons of sulfate particles were spewed into the atmosphere, which cooled the Earth by half a degree for the next 18 months. SPICE's plan is to use a hose on a tethered balloon. Through the hose, they would pump some type of particle into the air that would reflect sunlight and cool down the planet.

Environmental groups have been critical of geoengineering and SPICE in particular. They are worried that geoengineering may affect the ecosystem and weather patterns. Undeterred, Project SPICE is currently looking for the most suitable particle and the best delivery system to hopefully cool down the planet and slow down the effects of climate change.

8 Gun Control

One of Chris Rock's most famous jokes, which was featured in Bowling for Columbine, is his bullet control bit. He said that the way to control gun violence is to make bullets outrageously expensive. While it is an incredibly insightful joke, bullet control was actually put forth by New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1993. His idea to stem gun violence was to put an exorbitant tax on certain types of bullets. He wasn't going to tax bullets that were generally used in target practice or hunting, but he definitely would put them on other types of ammunition, like hollow points. Moynihan wanted to make a box of 20 bullets cost $1,500. The argument against overpriced ammo was that the government would be interfering with the free market.

Another possible solution for stopping some gun violence is to use smart gun technology. These smart guns would ensure that only an individual, or a few people, could fire the gun. This type of technology, which was utilized by James Bond in Skyfall, has been around for a few years, and a number of companies have developed different techniques to ensure that only registered people can fire it. One technology utilizes fingerprints. Another company uses a wristwatch that sends off a frequency to the gun and activates it. Yet another uses hand biometrics, and those are just a few. These guns could significantly cut down the 11,000 deaths caused by stolen guns. That number doesn't even include police officers who are killed in the line of duty with their own gun.

Smart guns are not sold in the United States, despite studies that have shown that most gun owners support the idea. The reason they aren't sold is essentially because safety is not a selling point when it comes to guns. Gun owners would rather have immediate access to a reliable gun. Also, strong supporters of the Second Amendment think that this could lead to stronger control over the sale and use of firearms.

The Syrian refugee crisis is currently putting strain on a lot of countries, but the world has had a massive displacement problem for quite some time. Currently, there are 60 million displaced people, and 20 million of them are refugees. No matter where the millions of refugees end up, it will be a complicated ordeal for the hosting country and for the refugees themselves.

One solution to the problem may be to simply give refugees their own new country. The " Refugee Nation," suggested by Israeli real estate millionaire Jason Buzi, would involve buying underpopulated and underdeveloped land somewhere in the world and then making it a place where refugees can flee to and get their lives started again.

Critics have said that the plan is flawed because it's based on exclusivity and trying to keep people out. While there is definitely some truth to that, a permanent refugee nation has a lot of humanitarian benefits as well. Notably, a working nation with an economy, permanent housing, and social services is much better than the inhumane refugee camps in which people find themselves living for years without a job and relying on aid. Conversely, refugees would be able to work and live in the Refugee Nation, meaning that less aid will be needed in the long run. The ultimate goal would be for the Refugee Nation to develop its own organic government.

Of course, creating a new nation from scratch with millions of refugees from different countries would be an incredibly complex task. Besides logistics, it would also require a lot of compromise between nations with conflicting views on how to govern.

6 Homelessness

Homelessness is one of the oldest problems in the world, but it really took off during the Industrial Revolution. In the US, which has the highest GDP in the world, there were over 610,000 people who were in homeless shelters on any given night in January 2013. Almost a quarter of them were children under age 18.

There are a few suggestions on how homelessness can be tackled. One of the more innovative ways is simply to build permanent housing where people can live for free. That happened in Medicine Hat, Alberta, and as a result, it will be the first city in North America to eliminate homelessness. Medicine Hat will provide free housing to anyone who has to stay in an emergency center for more than 10 days if they have do not have a safe place to go afterward.

The logic behind permanent housing makes fiscal sense as well, because it is much more cost-effective than traditional homeless shelters. In Medicine Hat, if someone were to live on the street, it could cost the government up to $100,000 in related services. While free, permanent homes would only cost the city about $20,000 per person. Utah has a similar program, and they found that the cost of housing someone in permanent homes was $10,000-$12,000, while it was about $20,000 if they were living on the street and in shelters.

Feasibility is another problem, but what's interesting is that the United States has 14.2 million abandoned houses scattered within its borders. Even a fraction of these abandoned buildings could be converted into housing for the homeless. This is exactly how a nonprofit organization called Breaking Ground tackles homelessness. They fix dilapidated buildings in New York City and make them high-quality transitional apartments, complete with social services for its residences. Their first project was converting the Times Square Hotel in 1994, and it is still open today.

Of course, some people will argue that this is just the government giving free houses to lazy people, but this is an unfortunate stigma connected to homelessness. Many people are homeless due to mental illness, not because they are lazy.

5 The Prison System

In most places in the United States, when someone is charged with a crime, the judge may choose to impose bail, which requires the accused to put up a certain amount of money as collateral to guarantee that they appear for their trial. Alternatively, they can await trial either in a county jail or a maximum security prison.

The bail system has become a major problem among people with low income because they may not be able to afford bail. The problem is so rampant that in January 2015, 730,000 people, most of whom were nonviolent offenders, were imprisoned for the simple fact that they couldn't afford bail. In places like New Jersey, 40 percent of all incarcerated people are there because they couldn't afford bail. In Riker's Island, a maximum security prison, about 85 percent of detainees are simply awaiting trial. This problem is a huge contributing factor to the overcrowding of the US prison system, and it also cost $22 billion per year to house all of the people who are in jail because they couldn't afford to post bail.

Besides the pressure on the prison system, locking someone up because they can't afford bail can be disastrous to the arrestee's life. While sitting in prison, even without being convicted, they will also probably lose their job. With the loss of a family member, some inmates' families may have to rely more on social benefits, putting even more strain on the system. Finally, people will often plead guilty even if they are innocent because if they plead not guilty and wait to go to trial, they'll have to sit in prison for months.

One possible solution is simply to eliminate the bail system for people who can't afford it. This will decrease the amount of people in prison, and it keeps innocent and nonviolent offenders out of prison altogether. (There's even a precedent for not charging bail in the US, as Washington, DC, has pretty much eliminated bail for those who can't afford it.) In lieu of bail, pretrial service specialists would decide if someone is a flight risk, could be a danger to the public, or both. If they're not, they'd be sent home, possibly being given an ankle monitor or having to do drug tests. When the court date is coming up, pretrial services would call the person to remind them to show up at their court date. These systems are cheaper, easier, and much more humane than imprisoning people who haven't been convicted of crimes solely because they're poor.

4 Declining Postal Services

The postal service was once a vital part of civilized life. But since the Internet has become more popular, mail has decreased in volume, and private mail services have become more popular. As a result, the United States Postal Service (USPS) announced that they lost $5.1 billion in the 2015 fiscal year. Other countries like Canada and Australia have a similar problem. Yet, the mail service is still a necessity, especially to people who don't use computers.

In order to make the post office relevant in contemporary times, some post offices in Europe and Asia offer banking services to generate revenue. Looking to this model, US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has suggested converting post offices into banks. It would be relatively inexpensive because the USPS already has a large network with outlets in almost every city and town in the United States.

Converting post offices to banks would have a twofold effect: It would hopefully make the USPS profitable, and it would help Americans with low incomes. Many low-income Americans can't get traditional banking services because banks don't want them as customers. Instead, they are forced to go to check-cashing outlets that blatantly exploit them with outrageous fees and service charges. And this isn't just a small-scale problem: 20-40 percent of Americans have used these check-cashing places.

3 Food Production

One of the biggest fears among people is overpopulation. While most cities won't look like Blade Runner, there is one major problem that will come with the projected growth of people: feeding everyone. According to projections by the United Nations, the population of Earth will be 9.6 billion by 2050, and if we stay on our current trajectory for food production, we won't have enough food to feed everyone. (Obviously, our food production has kept pace with our population in the past, despite recurring doomsday predictions.) Over the next 35 years, production will rise 38-67 percent, but it needs to rise 60-110 percent.

Researchers at MIT are looking to solve this problem through a project called CityFARM. The project is seeking to make urban farms more efficient through data science and monitoring every individual plant with sensors that "listen" to the crops. In the experimental lab at MIT, plants are monitored by 30 sensors, which send information back to a computer every eight seconds regarding how much carbon and nutrients the crops need. Using the sensors, the crops will get everything they need in low quantities, making the process of growing food much more efficient. In fact, it will use 98 percent less water than conventional farms. It will also quadruple the growth speed of vegetables while eliminating the need for chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Finally, the nutrient density of the crops will be doubled, and the flavor can be strengthened or changed. Then, once the ideal "recipe" is ready, the data is loaded onto an open source database, where anyone can download it to grow their own crops by plugging the data into their own farm.

Besides making the process of growing crops more efficient, CityFARM will also eliminate another big problem, which is the shipment of food. Sometimes, food is shipped long distances, a wasteful use of resources that leaves a large carbon footprint. Using the CityFARM technology, every city could have one block dedicated to these farms, and it would feed the entire population. The leader of the project, Caleb Harper, says that the plan is to build one billion of these tiny urban farms in cities around the world.

2 Water Scarcity

It may be shocking to people in first-world countries, who defecate and urinate in clean water and flush it down the toilet, that 783 million people do not have access to clean water. In addition to that, 2.5 billion people do not have access to adequate sanitation. Looking to solve both problems is Peter Janicki's Omniprocessor, which extracts water from human waste.

Sewer sludge is put into the Omniprocessor, where it is boiled in a large tube. The water vapor escapes from the waste and goes into a cleaning system inside the machine. Within minutes, it is filtered, and clean water is available. One machine can continually provide clean water to 100,000 people. But what really makes the Omniprocessor so innovative is that the leftover waste is turned into steam, which powers the machine. If there is leftover power, it goes to powering the community.

The Omniprocessor is personally supported by Bill Gates, who drank its water and said he would drink it every day. The project to build and install them throughout the world is also supported by the Gates Foundation.

1 Third-World Poverty

Would you notice if a tiny tax, cheaper than a cup of coffee, was tacked on each time you made a large luxury purchase? For example, would you notice $1.50 being taken off a vacation you spent $1,500 on? Most people probably wouldn't notice or care, and while it may not be noticeable to the consumer, all of that money combined could mean billions of dollars for people living in poverty. Philippe Douste-Blazy, a French cardiologist and a special adviser to the secretary general of the UN in charge of innovative financing for development, tested this theory using a service charge on tickets for flights out of France. The service charge was €1 (about US$1.50), and between 2006 and 2014, they made $2 billion and received no complaints about the levy.

Of course, these " invisible donations " can be used to fund a whole host of projects. Currently, Douste-Blazy has been using the funds from the airline tickets on initiatives to fight HIV and AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria in third-world countries. He says that public health is a cornerstone of a good economic system. If people are healthy, they can go to school, get a job, and contribute to an economy, which in turn grows the country's GDP. Douste-Blazy hopes that this type of financing could lead to greater global stabilization.

Robert Grimminck is a Canadian freelance writer. You can friend him on Facebook, follow him on Twitter or on Pinterest, or visit his website.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
10 Major Social Problems That Could Be Fixed With Innovative Solutions - Listverse

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The difference between where human civilization started and where it is today is mind-boggling. Despite our experiences and great achievements, there are still a lot of problems that plague contemporary society. In order to tackle these problems, innovation is going to be needed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Recently, a friend was telling me how a certain musical artist had entranced him with her talent --until he found out she was very religious and thanks God for her success.

My friend considers himself liberal and advocates for the rights of women, racial minorities, and the LGBT community -- yet, for him, religion elicits a "bad taste in his mouth." Unfortunately, this negative visceral reaction towards religion is something that sometimes seems pervasive among people in our age group, and the Princeton University community is no exception. I have encountered a handful of people who identify as liberal and espouse the necessity of equal rights and tolerance, but turn up their noses at the mere mention of religion. It is problematic that some people nearly cringe upon finding out that someone goes to church every weekend.

I have had quite a few conversations with people who "hate religion," or "don't understand its purpose." The gist of their arguments lies in the idea that religion is used to justify things that are affronts to human rights, or simply as another factor on which we divide ourselves. I spoke with a peer who is deeply involved with Princeton's Society of Secular Humanists. The club recently put up provocative advertisements all over campus, which read, "I think, therefore I am atheist." I asked him if he thinks that religion is generally a positive force for humanity, and he responded that he generally feels that it isn't, that "religions teach...[negative] things directly. You know that famous Bible verse where it says that homosexuality is an abomination. Some Christians take that literally and use that to discriminate against gay people." He went on to assert, "If you look across history, there are way more bad things than good things that come of religion."

I'm generally not a religious person, but from what I've gathered, by talking to friends and family who are, holding faith is a transcendent, personal experience, that should not compel anyone to oppress others. When large religious institutions promote oppressive ideals, it is the fault of power-hungry, hateful individuals -- not the fundamentals that are most central to the religion.

When certain religious figures herald ideas that many of us consider small-minded, if we shape our opinions on knee-jerk reactions, it is easy to turn around and label anyone who identifies as part of that same denomination as narrow. If a major religious figure -- say, the Pope -- condemns contraception or gay marriage with a faith-based argument, if we turn around and assume that all Catholics believe the same, we are operating on harmful stereotypes. It's important to remember that even though someone might identify as part of a certain religion, it does not mean that he or she has to accept everything that the religion's figurehead espouses.

I believe that this applies to essentially all of the world's major religions: even if a religion doesn't have a single figurehead -- such as Sunni Islam -- the individual tenets of a minority group shouldn't lead us to believe that all members of the faith believe the same. The flawed thinking that has wrongly painted Muslims as terrorists is the same that leads some to believe that all Catholics believe members of the LGBT community should remain second-class citizens.

Religion is an extremely personal facet of identity, which everyone understands in his or her own way. To be flippant about someone's religion -- based on the assumption that he or she subscribes to a political belief system that violates your conception of equality -- is presumptuous. Even the student from the Princeton Society of Secular Humanists ended our interview by saying how he "recognize[s] that most religious people are average, good people." Presumptuous thinking reinforces the popular image of all religious people as stupid and bigoted, painting them as extremely radical, like those who stand on crowded street corners, flaunting signs that promise all sinners a comfy place in hell.

One person, or a small group's, inflammatory rhetoric should never be the basis for painting an entire faith as stupid or narrow. People who spread messages of hate are not adhering to principles of compassion -- and compassion is one of the central things that make religion valuable. In contrary to the rhetoric of some individuals, you can be a devout Catholic who supports reproductive or gay rights, just like you can be a practicing Muslim who champions women's rights.

I spoke with a Princeton student who identifies both as a gay man and a devout Catholic, an identity that some might call an oxymoron. I asked him whether he feels like a lesser Catholic because some members of the church's political body condemn his queer identity. He says that it is occasionally disheartening, but most of the time, it is something that he successfully reconciles. "I would consider myself a very good Catholic, because I'm very critical of its theology, because that's what they ask for. The Catholic church doesn't want blind followers." He underlined how "primacy of conscience" is the most important thing in his faith. If some verse in the Bible or Koran says that women should be perpetually subordinate or that gays should be stoned, and your conscience tells you that these ideas are standards by which we should never abide, you're not being heretical. You're being moral.

Our conversation reminded me of a lecture I heard from the Dalai Lama last September. He spoke of the underlying commonalities between different religions, espousing the idea that all religions are fundamentally the same. He believes that most tenets that people distort as justification for oppression are nonessential parts of religion. He talked about his friendship with Pope John Paul II: John Paul would tell the Dalai Lama that he was indeed a good Christian, and the Dalai Lama would respond that he considered John Paul to be a good Buddhist.

The Dalai Lama asserted that morality can exist completely independently of religion, and that there are many secular people who are virtuous human beings, but that religion is an effective medium for promoting universally-positive, humanistic beliefs for those who are particularly receptive to faith.

Being irreligious and antireligious are two completely different things, and I believe that being antireligious -- actively disrespecting and trying to invalidate the tenets that many hold dearly -- is not at all a feature of liberalism. It is a feature of bigotry. Questioning someone's religious beliefs is completely valid; only by having our principles challenged do we figure out what we really believe. But questioning someone's religious tenets is different from being dismissive or flippant about them.

I believe that the liberal mindset, which asserts that we need to strive for equal treatment of marginalized groups, like women, the LGBT community, and certain racial groups, is the key to our society's social success. Within the liberal mindset, there should always be a level of respect and deference to people's religious beliefs. If we recognize that people are largely products of the way in which they are raised, and if someone is raised in a faith-based environment, what right do we have to rebuke their religious faith? Social liberalism -- which I think tries to strike the ideal balance between individual liberty and social justice -- strives to be open-minded and accepting. Simply dismissing someone for his or her faith is in direct conflict with the valuable path to social equality that the socially liberal mindset is trying to forge.
Nick Sexton is a freshman at Princeton University, where he writes for the Nassau Weekly, Princeton's weekly culture, news, and arts publication.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
"The World Would Be a Better Place Without Religion" -- A Sentiment Common on College Campuses

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Recently, a friend was telling me how a certain musical artist had entranced him with her talent --until he found out she was very religious and thanks God for her success. My friend considers himself liberal and advocates for the rights of women, racial minorities, and the LGBT community -- yet, for him, religion elicits a "bad taste in his mouth."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In November, Stephen Hawking warned that humans needed to colonize another planet within 1,000 years. Now, six months later, he's saying we have to do it within 100 years in order to avoid extinction. There's a problem with this plan: under almost no circumstances is colonizing another planet the best way to adapt to a problem on earth.

Let's start with Mars, which is a favorite planet for colonization scenarios, including for Elon Musk who thinks we should colonize Mars because earth will eventually face a "doomsday scenario". The problem with this is that there is almost nothing that could happen to earth that would make it less hospitable than Mars. Whether it's nuclear war or massive global warming, post disaster earth would be way more habitable than Mars.

For example, we worry that the oceans on earth will get too polluted, or too acidified, or rise up too high. It's true that could make life on earth very hard. But on Mars the only surface water is frozen in the polar ice caps. We would be hard pressed to ruin the water on earth so badly that it's worse than what's available on Mars.

We also worry about the level of carbon dioxide we humans are creating. But there's nothing we could do to earth's atmosphere to make it as bad as Mars, which is both extremely thin and also 96% carbon dioxide. Not to mention a significantly lower level of gravity. Whatever we'd have to do on Mars to make the atmosphere habitable would be more easily done on a very very ruined earth.

Even if an asteroid were to strike earth it would very likely remain more habitable than mars. For example, consider the asteroid that struck the earth 66 million years ago creating the Chicxulub crater and wiping out 75% of plant and animal species on earth, including the dinosaurs. Well that disaster still left 25% of species that survived, all of whom would die instantly on the surface of Mars.

If an asteroid like this was heading for the earth here's what we would do instead of abandoning the planet. First, we'd try to deflect it. If we didn't know how to do that, everyone who lived on the part of the planet where it was going to land would move to safer parts of the planet. If need be we'd create biodomes and move into them, maybe even at the bottom of the ocean. "Impossible!" you say? "Technology and human behavior would never allow this!" you insist? It's true it would be extremely hard and today's technology wouldn't allow it. And yet it would still be way, way easier than colonizing another planet. If you think getting humans to abandon a continent peacefully is hard, try getting them to abandon the planet.

Perhaps we could focus on colonizing another planet then. One with an atmosphere closer to ours than Mars. This may be possible, but the technology required to do this is a far bigger lift than the technology required to build habitable ecosystems on the bottom of the ocean, deflect asteroids, reverse global warming, or cure pandemics. The closest star system to us is Alpha Centauri, which is 4.3 light years away. At a max speed of around 17,000 mph would take existing space shuttles 165,000 years to reach this. Even the faster New Horizon probe, the first to visit Pluto, would take 78,000 years.

The technology required to travel fast enough to get to other planets makes geoengineering to reverse climate change seem quaint.

It is hard to come up with a scenario where evacuating the earth makes the most sense. So why do so many smart people obsess about it? I think the issue is that nerds find space travel and colonizing other planets extremely appealing because they love science fiction and find space exploration exciting. That's fine, and if some nerd billionaires want to colonize Mars for fun I say go for it. But unfortunately, their nerd desires are biasing their assessment of how humanity should prepare for doomsday threats. Sorry nerds, we won't be evacuating earth. If we are underestimating the risks of doomsday threats, lets instead invest in the technologies that will help protect earth from them or recover from them. Even though I am not an expert on space, physical sciences, or basically any relevant field, I can tell that this is obviously true. Maybe just it takes an economist to see through the nerd fantasies.

ADDENDUM: The goal of colonizing to preserve the human species rather than evacuate all humans doesn't make sense either. If there are habitable planets within reach, then there must be many, many habitable planets that aren't within reach. In this case the Drake Equation implies humans are not alone in the universe, and therefore our existence is far less special, lowering the benefit of preserving humanity. In a world of other habitable planets, saving the actual life on earth grows in importance compared to preserving the species somewhere in the universe.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sorry Nerds, But Colonizing Other Planets Is Not A Good Plan

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In November, Stephen Hawking warned that humans needed to colonize another planet within 1,000 years. Now, six months later, he's saying we have to do it within 100 years in order to avoid extinction. There's a problem with this plan: under almost no circumstances is colonizing another planet the best way to adapt to a problem on earth.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
For the past 24 hours, scientists have been lining up to sign this open letter. Put simply, the proposal urges that humanity dedicate a portion of its AI research to " aligning with human interests." In other words, let's try to avoid creating our own, mechanized Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

While some scientists might roll their eyes at any mention of a Singularity, plenty of experts and technologists-like, say, Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk -have warned of the dangers AI could pose to our future. But while they might urge us to pursue our AI-related studies with caution, they're a bit less clear on what exactly it is we're being cautious against. Thankfully, others have happily filled in those gaps. Here are five of the more menacing destruction-by-singularity prophecies our brightest minds have warned against.

According to Stuart Armstrong, a philosopher and Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford:

The first impact of [Artificial Intelligence] technology is near total unemployment. You could take an AI if it was of human-level intelligence, copy it a hundred times, train it in a hundred different professions, copy those a hundred times and you have ten thousand high-level employees in a hundred professions, trained out maybe in the course of a week. Or you could copy it more and have millions of employees... And if they were truly superhuman you'd get performance beyond what I've just described.

Daniel Dewey, a research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute, builds on Armstrong's train of thought in Aeon Magazine. After all, when and if humans do become obsolete, we'll become little more than pebbles in a robot's metaphorical shoes.

"The difference in intelligence between humans and chimpanzees is tiny," [Armstrong] said. "But in that difference lies the contrast between 7 billion inhabitants and a permanent place on the endangered species list. That tells us it's possible for a relatively small intelligence advantage to quickly compound and become decisive."

.... "The basic problem is that the strong realization of most motivations is incompatible with human existence," Dewey told me. "An AI might want to do certain things with matter in order to achieve a goal, things like building giant computers, or other large-scale engineering projects. Those things might involve intermediary steps, like tearing apart the Earth to make huge solar panels. A superintelligence might not take our interests into consideration in those situations, just like we don't take root systems or ant colonies into account when we go to construct a building."

You could give it a benevolent goal - something cuddly and utilitarian, like maximizing human happiness. But an AI might think that human happiness is a biochemical phenomenon. It might think that flooding your bloodstream with non-lethal doses of heroin is the best way to maximize your happiness.

AI doesn't need the explicit intent of exterminating us to be scary. As Mark Bishop, professor of cognitive computing at Goldsmiths, University of London, told The Independent:

I am particularly concerned by the potential military deployment of robotic weapons systems - systems that can take a decision to militarily engage without human intervention - precisely because current AI is not very good and can all too easily force situations to escalate with potentially terrifying consequences," Professor Bishop said.

"So it is easy to concur that AI may pose a very real 'existential threat' to humanity without having to imagine that it will ever reach the level of superhuman intelligence," he said.We should be worried about AI, but for the opposite reasons given by Professor Hawking, he explained.

Or maybe we'll see the end coming long before it makes its way over. Except that by then, we'll be too incompetent to survive even attempting to shut it down. Bill Joy, cofounder and Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems, writes in:

What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions. As society and the problems that face it become more and more complex and machines become more and more intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them, simply because machine-made decisions will bring better results than man-made ones. Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won't be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide.

There's something called the "grey goo" scenario, which essentially postulates that if robots start perpetually reproducing, we'll essentially just get squeezed out amidst the massive mecha expansion. And if they need humans to power their out-of-control masses- as Discovery points out, we're screwed.

If nanotechnology machines - which can be a hundred thousand times smaller than the diameter of a human hair - figure out how to spontaneously replicate themselves, it would naturally have dire consequences for humanity [source: Levin]. Especially if the research funded by the U.S. Defense Department gets out of control: Researchers there are attempting to create an Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR) that would fuel itself by consuming battlefield debris, which could include human corpses [source: Lewinski].

If nanotechnology did develop an appetite for human flesh - or some of the other things we rely on for survival, like forests or machinery - it could decimate everything on the planet in a matter of days. These hungry mini-robots would relegate our blue and green home to "grey goo," a term that describes the unidentifiable particles left behind after the nanocritters eat buildings, landscapes and, well, everything else.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How AI Could Ruin Humanity, According to Smart Humans

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For the past 24 hours, scientists have been lining up to sign this open letter. Put simply, the proposal urges that humanity dedicate a portion of its AI research to "aligning with human interests." In other words, let's try to avoid creating our own, mechanized Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Elon Musk famously equated Artifical Intelligence with "summoning the demon" and sounds the alarm that AI is advancing faster than anyone realizes, posing an existential threat to humanity. Stephen Hawking has warned that AI could take off and leave the human race, limited by evolution's slow pace, in the dust. Bill Gates counts himself in the camp concerned about super intelligence. And, although Mark Zuckerburg is dismissive about AI's potential threat, Facebook recently shut down an AI engine after reportedly discovering that it had created a new language humans can't understand.

Concerns about AI are entirely logical if all that exists is physical matter. If so, it'd be inevitable that AI -- designed by our intelligence but built on a better platform than biochemistry -- would exceed human capabilities that arise by chance.

In fact, in a purely physical world, fully-realized AI should be recognized as the appropriate outcome of natural selection; we humans should benefit from it while we can. After all, sooner or later, humanity will cease to exist, whether from the sun running out or something more mundane including AI-driven extinction. Until then, wouldn't it be better to maximize human flourishing with the help of AI rather than forgoing its benefits in hopes of extending humanity's end date?

As possible as all this might seem, in actuality, what we know about the human mind strongly suggests that full AI will not happen. Physical matter alone is not capable of producing whole, subjective experiences, such as watching a sunset while listening to sea gulls, and the mechanisms proposed to address the known shortfalls of matter vs. mind, such as emergent properties, are inadequate and falsifiable. Therefore, it is highly probable that we have immaterial minds.

Deep down, we all know we're more than biological robots. That's why almost everyone rebels against materialism's implications. We don't act as though we believe everything is ultimately meaningless.

Granted, forms of AI are already achieving impressive results. These use brute force, huge and fast memory, rules-based automation, and layers of pattern matching to perform their extraordinary feats. But this processing is not aware, perceiving, feeling, cognition. The processing doesn't go beyond its intended activities even if the outcomes are unpredictable. Technology based on this level of AI will often be quite remarkable and definitely must be managed well to avoid dangerous repercussions. However, in and of itself, this AI cannot lead to a true replication of the human mind.

Full AI - that is, artificial intelligence capable of matching and perhaps exceeding the human mind -- cannot be achieved unless we discover, via material means, the basis for the existence of immaterial minds, and then learn how to confer that on machines. In philosophy the underlying issue is known as the "qualia" problem. Our awareness of external objects and colors; our self-consciousness; our conceptual understanding of time; our experiences of transcendence whether simple awe in front of beauty or mathematical truth; or our mystical states, all clearly point to something that is qualitatively different from the material world. Anyone with a decent understanding of physics, computer science and the human mind ought to be able to know this, especially those most concerned about AI's possibilities.

That those who fear AI don't see its limitations indicates that even the best minds fall victim to their biases. We should be cautious about believing that exceptional achievements in some areas translate to exceptional understanding in others. For too many - including some in the media -- the mantra, "question everything," applies only within certain boundaries. They never question methodological naturalism -- the belief that there is nothing that exists outside the material world -- which blinds them to other possibilities. Even with what seems like more open-minded thinking, some people seem to suffer from a lack of imagination or will. For example, Peter Thiel believes that the human mind and computers are deeply different yet doesn't acknowledge that implies that the mind comprises more than physical matter. Thomas Nagle believes that consciousness could not have arisen via materialistic evolution yet explicitly limits the implications of that because he doesn't want God to exist.

Realizing that we have immaterial minds, i.e. genuine souls, is far more important than just speculating on AI's future. Without immaterial minds, there is no sustainable basis for believing in human exceptionalism. When human life is viewed only through a materialistic lens, it gets valued based on utility. No wonder the young "nones" - young Americans who don't identify with a religion - think their lives are meaningless and some begin to despair. It is time to understand that evolution is not a strictly material process but one in which the immaterial mind plays a major role in human, and probably all sentient creatures', adaption and selection.

Deep down, we all know we're more than biological robots. That's why almost everyone rebels against materialism's implications. We don't act as though we believe everything is ultimately meaningless.

We're spiritual creatures, here by intent, living in a world where the supernatural is the norm; each and every moment of our lives is our souls in action. Immaterial ideas shape the material world and give it true meaning, not the other way around.

In the end, the greatest threat that humans' face is a failure to recognize what we really are.

If we're lucky, what people learn in the pursuit of full AI will lead us to the re-discovery of the human soul, where it comes from, and the important understanding that goes along with that.
Bruce Buff is a management consultant and the author of the scientific-spiritual thriller "The Soul of the Matter" (Howard Books, September 13, 2016).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Artificial Intelligence will lead to the human soul, not destroy it

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Elon Musk famously equated Artifical Intelligence with "summoning the demon" and sounds the alarm that AI is advancing faster than anyone realizes, posing an existential threat to humanity. Stephen Hawking has warned that AI could take off and leave the human race, limited by evolution's slow pace, in the dust.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Dr Aubrey de Grey believes people who have already been born could live for ten centuries because of ongoing research being done into "repairing the effects of ageing."

He hopes to ultimately create preventative treatments that mean humans would be able to consistently re-repair and live as long as 1,000 years or possible even forever.

British-born Mr de Grey, who graduated from Cambridge University in 1985 insists he is one of very few scientists looking at preventing, rather than slowing down ageing, and is perplexed why there is not huge focus on it.

He told the actuary.com: "To me, ageing was the world's most important problem. It was so obvious that I never tested the assumption. I always presumed that everyone else thought the same."

But his theory for repairing ageing has not been widely accepted by peers.

He said: "People have this crazy concept that ageing is natural and inevitable, and I have to keep explaining that it is not.

"The human body is a machine with moving parts and like a car or an aeroplane, it accumulates damage throughout life as a consequence of normal operation."

Mr de Grey is the co-founder and chief science officer of Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) Research Foundation in California, USA,.

Their website claims there are just seven reasons why we age and they can all be targeted.

It said: "Decades of research in aging people and experimental animals has established that there are no more than seven major classes of such cellular and molecular damage.

"We can be confident that this list is complete, first and foremost because of the fact that scientists have not discovered any new kinds of aging damage in nearly a generation of research, despite the increasing number of centres and scientists dedicated to studying the matter, and the use of increasingly powerful tools to examine the aging body.

"In its own way, each of these kinds of damage make our bodies frail, and contribute to the rising frailty and ill-health that appears in our sixth decade of life and accelerates thereafter.

"SENS Research Foundation's strategy to prevent and reverse age-related ill-health is to apply the principles of regenerative medicine to repair the damage of aging at the level where it occurs.

"We are developing a new kind of medicine: regenerative therapies that remove, repair, replace, or render harmless the cellular and molecular damage that has accumulated in our tissues with time.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
KEY TO ETERNAL LIFE? Someone already born will 'live to 1,000 and immortality IS possible'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Dr Aubrey de Grey believes people who have already been born could live for ten centuries because of ongoing research being done into "repairing the effects of ageing." He hopes to ultimately create preventative treatments that mean humans would be able to consistently re-repair and live as long as 1,000 years or possible even forever.