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VICE LECTURES FOR KIDSA Series About Stuff!
Professor John Leslie: The title of my book is The End of The World. Do you know what I mean when I say the end of the world? Diana: When the planets go out? No. I mean when every last human being in the world dies. In my book, I have proven that it is statistically likely that the human race is approaching extinction. Then, I have investigated some very realistic, scientific “disaster scenarios.” Those are possible ways that every human being in the world might die. One of the disaster scenarios involves germ warfare. Do either of you know what germ warfare is? Rachel: That’s when they put it in envelopes and mail it. That’s one example. That happened with the germ anthrax five years ago. But due to advances in genetic engineering, the threat of germ warfare is growing. Do you know what I mean by genetic engineering? Either of you? Genetic engineering is when scientists interfere with dangerous germs in order to make them even more dangerous. Diana: What, like so you don’t get healed up when you take medicine? Sure, that’s one possibility. Also, dangerous germs can be made so that they are able to spread easily. They can be made so that they can kill more people when they do spread. For example, the AIDS virus is very, very difficult to catch. But what if you made it so it could spread just from people coughing? Diana: That would be really, really bad. Well somebody in some laboratory might be working on that right as we speak. He—or she—could be developing a germ that would lead to a desperately dangerous virus. Rachel: Like, something where you can’t move anymore. It could be anything, any kind of dangerous and highly contagious virus. People also talk about genetic engineering leading to what’s called a Green Scum Disaster. That is where genetic engineering leads to a new form of plant—a plant that might take all competitors out of existence. It might take over the entire world. Diana: Like a swarm. People have also suggested that genetic engineering could be used to produce contraceptive bacteria. Do you know what a contraceptive is? Rachel and Diana: [giggling] Well, some people have suggested that a contraceptive bacteria could be given to a woman who didn’t want to become pregnant. The bacteria could stop them from becoming pregnant for several months. Unfortunately, these bacteria could spread to other women. And the bacteria could even spread to every woman and make it impossible for absolutely anyone to have children. There would be the human race gone. Gone. Another disaster scenario which is quite interesting is the Grey Goo Disaster. Diana: It sounds like a comic book. Well, that’s true. It does a little. Anyway, there are recent advances in what is known as nanotechnology. Do you know what nanotechnology is? Rachel: Yeah, it’s like something about space. Close. It is where you miniaturize things like computers. It could be possible in the quite near future to get a computer which is so small that you would be unable to see it. You could have a computer the size of a speck of dust. And this computer would have such power that it would be able to manufacture more copies of itself. Do you see what might happen? Diana: They’d take over your body and control you. Like in I, Robot. That’s not a bad thought. But what I had in mind is something else. Computers of this sort would be very useful in areas like manufacturing. They might also be very useful in areas like warfare. And if a Grey Goo Disaster happened, then they could spread throughout the parts of the earth which are inhabitable by living things. And if that happened, you could get within perhaps a month of the complete extermination of not only the human race but also of all other animals. Diana: Right. Like in I, Robot. Something else I should touch on is the possibility that computers might replace us. One of the interesting possibilities there is that computers would be replacing us with our blessings. Diana: Huh?! You see, human intelligence has a lot of limitations. It is kept back by all sorts of difficulties. It has an end put to it by old age. It is inhibited by such things as disease and neuroses. Machine intelligence, on the other hand, could be well balanced and enormously brilliant, and never suffer from any sort of mental disease of any sort. It would be happy all the time, you might say. Some people think the human race should be replaced by computers of that sort. Diana: What would happen to us? Well, computers would replace humans. Humans would be dead. But one of the most interesting scenarios which I’ve looked at is one that can be a little hard to understand. But let’s try... Imagine the fabric of the universe. Imagine, then, if you could produce something which is equivalent to a pinprick on a balloon. Imagine a pinprick in the fabric of the universe. You know what happens when you prick a hole in a balloon? Rachel: It flies all around until it’s out of hot air. Well, you could produce in a laboratory experiment a tiny bubble, which proceeded to expand at the speed of light almost. It would destroy the galaxy. And then it would destroy all the neighboring galaxies. And then it would go on expanding forever, throughout the universe, destroying everything when it reached it. Diane: Come on. Actually, this has been a scenario which has been looked at quite seriously in the physics journals. Diane: It’s scary. Let me just talk about this last one quickly. We don’t notice all the energy in the space surrounding us, right? We think of it as just empty space. Just nothingness. But that’s wrong. It’s like fish in the deep sea. They’re under hundreds of tons of water pressure, but they don’t know it. In fact, the space in which we live is swarming with energy but we don’t notice it. Do you understand? It’s just like with the fish. Now, how could we upset the space in which we live? Rachel: Explosions. Right. Possibly by an experiment of very high energies. And, I don’t know if you know this, but today’s scientists spend a lot of time in their laboratories producing collisions between particles. And it could be a very dangerous thing. A lot of physicists say, “Oh well, we don’t believe there is any danger. Let’s just go ahead and produce bigger and bigger disasters.” Diane: But they won’t do that. Well, if anybody were really keen on annihilating the human race, they’d find it quite easy in the near future. This is the sort of thing that makes me fairly pessimistic. The head of the Royal Society in Britain believes the chances are at least 50-50 that we will be extinct by the end of the century… Diane: So the world is going to end? Well, it’s obvious the world is going to end! I just can’t say when. TO BE CONTINUED VICE LECTURES FOR KIDS | 1 | 2 | 3 | Next>
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