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AR 24:45 - Are human beings "utterly alone in the universe?"
In this issue:
APOCALYPTICISM - using fear to gain media market share?
FREEDOM OF SPEECH - new documentary by Dennis Prager and Adam Carolla with Jordan Peterson
FINE TUNING - intelligent habitable world probability "just 1 in 100 trillion"
GENDER - just how "want-to-be woke" desperate are we becoming?
Apologia Report 24:45 (1,453)
November 12, 2019
APOCALYPTICISM
"Are Manmade Viruses the Next Big Terrorist Threat?" by Jordan Harbinger (an ironic surname) -- try this on for size: imagine "synthetically modified diseases designed to infect human beings on a global scale." Sensationalist speculation for increased circulation?
Harbinger <jordanharbinger.com> lays it on thick, starting with "a game-changing power tool for DNA editing called CRISPR [that] makes it possible to carry out this kind of gene modification more easily, and far more cheaply.... Radically powerful editing that the entire field of biology would have found impossible 10 years ago can now be done by a couple smart grad students in a tiny room...."
Now imagine: "In the next few years, an ambitious virologist uses widely-available gene-editing technology to create a supervirus - a pathogen 10 times as contagious as chicken pox and 10 times as deadly as the Ebola virus, but with an incubation period of, say, 10 months. Based on that programming, the entire world could be infected with the designer virus before the first person even shows symptoms. ...
"Eventually, it could wind up in the hands of a rogue state, malicious actor or biological terrorist, who might use that code to manufacture a pathogen that could infect millions of people - in effect, turning our own bodies into tools for mass terror. ...
"The threats ... will only magnify as the [USA] continues to rely on 'potentially vulnerable automated systems' - technology that 'increases the likely physical, economic, and psychological consequences of cyber attack and exploitation events.'"
What to do? Brief discussion follows, but few would call it optimistic. Newsweek, Nov 1 '19, <www.bit.ly/34JiP0a>
We've been apprehensive about "mad scientists" since science fiction first began - and for good reason.
Visit <www.bit.ly/36Pkd3j> for more on CRISPR (and related topics) in our past issues.
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FREEDOM OF SPEECH
Keep your eyes open for the theatrical film No Safe Spaces <www.nosafespaces.com> now in limited release. It "reveals how identity politics and the suppression of free speech are spreading into every part of society" and threatening to divide us all - even more than the nearly unbearable present state of affairs.
Director: Justin Folk
Writer: John Sullivan
Stars: Adam Carolla, Dennis Prager, Jordan Peterson
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FINE TUNING
"Humans May Be the Only Intelligent Life in the Universe, If Evolution Has Anything to Say" by Nick Longrich (Senior Lecturer, Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Bath) -- "Are we alone in the universe? It comes down to whether intelligence is a probable outcome of natural selection, or an improbable fluke. ...
"If evolution frequently repeats itself, then our evolution might be probable, even inevitable.
"And striking examples of convergent evolution do exist." Examples follow.
"Here's the catch. All this convergence happened within one lineage, the Eumetazoa. [Its] complex body plan that made it all possible is unique. Complex animals evolved once in life's history, suggesting they're improbable.
"Surprisingly, many critical events in our evolutionary history are unique and, probably, improbable. ...
"All organisms come from a single ancestor; as far as we can tell, life only happened once.
"Curiously, all this takes a surprisingly long time. ... [H]uman intelligence [evolved] 4.5 billion years after the Earth formed. That these innovations are so useful but took so long to evolve implies that they're exceedingly improbable.
"These one-off innovations, critical flukes, may create a chain of evolutionary bottlenecks or filters. If so, our evolution wasn't like winning the lottery. It was like winning the lottery again, and again, and again. On other worlds, these critical adaptations might have evolved too late for intelligence to emerge before their suns went nova, or not at all. ...
"The odds of evolving intelligence become one in 10 million.
"But complex adaptations might be even less likely. Photosynthesis required a series of adaptations in proteins, pigments and membranes. Eumetazoan animals required multiple anatomical innovations (nerves, muscles, mouths and so on). So maybe each of these seven key innovations evolve just 1% of the time. If so, intelligence will evolve on just 1 in 100 trillion habitable worlds."
It's telling that Longrich begins this piece: "We may be utterly alone in the universe." livescience.com, Oct 22 '19, <www.bit.ly/2rmPASm>
For emphasis, a sidebar titled "Blue World" (no byline) in The Economist (Sep 14 '19, p77) discusses "a so-called Goldilocks zone - not close enough [for an exoplanet] to its host star to be too hot and not far enough away to be too cold - that it could allow liquid water to flow across its surface. That is a crucial condition for life as we know it." Ongoing "speculation" about exoplanet potential is discussed briefly.
In particular, Angelos Tsiaras, an astronomer at University College London, "describes <www.go.nature.com/2rrUptH> how his team wrote software that could analyse the data collected by Hubble [on potential exoplanet hosts for life]. They were not able to pinpoint the exact form and amounts of the water they found." Alas, their "best candidate for a life-supporting exoplanet out there [featured such intense] ultraviolet radiation [as to be] off the scale" for biological survival.
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GENDER
Seeing Gender: An Illustrated Guide to Identity and Expression, by Iris Gottlieb <irisgottlieb.com> [1] -- Chronicle Books uses this intro: "Seeing Gender is an of-the-moment investigation into how we express and understand the complexities of gender today. Deeply researched and fully illustrated, this book demystifies an intensely personal - yet universal - facet of humanity. Illustrating a different concept on each spread, queer author and artist Iris Gottlieb touches on history, science, sociology, and her own experience. This book is an essential tool for understanding and contributing to a necessary cultural conversation, bringing clarity and reassurance to the sometimes confusing process of navigating ones' identity. Whether LGBTQ+, cisgender, or nonbinary, Seeing Gender is a must-read for intelligent, curious, want-to-be woke people who care about how we see and talk about gender and sexuality in the 21st century."
Have things already developed to the point where in some corners "woke" has replaced the slang expression "cool"?
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - Seeing Gender: An Illustrated Guide to Identity and Expression, by Iris Gottlieb (Chronicle, 2019, hardcover, 208 pages) <www.amzn.to/2Q3Y0IA>
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