Lately, I came to realize that the present is worse than our recent past. This realization is corroborated by a number of facts and is not a nostalgic aberration. Humanity is entering a treacherous era with unprecedented existential risks in science and technology. Let me explain.
My immediate academic environment is crumbling. For one, students and postdocs are trading critical thinking for advice from artificial intelligence (AI) and this makes them dumber than the machine.
In the public domain, science is incorrectly perceived as an occupation of the elite rather than as a curiosity-driven discovery machine that is destined to improve our quality of life. This misperception is compounded by the malpractice of physicists who over the past half a century divorced themselves from societal impact by exploring speculative notions involving extra dimensions or the multiverse, with mathematical gymnastics that only served the purpose of impressing their peers. On top of that, the affluent class of tech billionaires, which profited financially from fundamental science, are investing nearly a trillion dollars in AI data centers and quantum technologies, while sidelining investments in fundamental research. They do not realize that watering the technological branches of the tree of knowledge while cutting funding for its scientific roots will deprive us from the fruits of the future. Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden as a consequence of their disobedience in eating the forbidden fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In the present-day interpretation of this story, Adam and Eve are the tech billionaires and the forbidden fruit is the money made out of the tree of science.
Scientific breakthroughs are also in decline. Recent studies indicate that disruptive ideas in science are rarer than in decades past (as reported here). As a scientist with a steady stream of creative new ideas, I encounter frequently conservative gatekeepers and social media mobs who attempt to silence these ideas. Academic jealousy of unimaginative scientists was always in existence, but today it gets amplified by social media which drives regression to the mean. Priorities are mostly set by consensus documents which sideline innovators who take the path not taken, in the words of Henry Thoreau.
On top of that, political agenda tends to dominate over merit and excellence in selection of students, postdocs and faculty. I know of brilliant young scientists who in past decades would have easily secured a tenured appointment but today struggle to find a long-term position after multiple postdoctoral fellowship. Much of the political turmoil at my home institution, Harvard University, was triggered by colleagues from the humanities who damaged science funding through their political activities.
Biotechnology brings another existential risk. CRISPR and its successors are making the design of pathogens increasingly accessible. The combination of AI-assisted protein design and gene synthesis would allow the creation of novel pandemic agents.
If humanity gets through the next century without a civilizational catastrophe, we will have the opportunity to become an interstellar species. A single-planet civilization is one pandemic away from extinction. An interstellar civilization is much more difficult to extinguish. Venturing to space provide the insurance policy that transforms humanity from a fragile transient into a potentially enduring entity. Settling on a nearby rock, like the Moon or Mars, is not optimal because of the harsh living conditions there. It is much better to construct a kilometer-scale, habitable space platform artificially.
I am not naïve enough to imagine a political reality in which the 2.4 trillion dollars allocated each year to military budgets worldwide will be repurposed to space exploration out of an epiphany of our leaders. Instead, I am hoping that through my leadership of the Galileo Project or the UAP Science Advisory Council to the U.S. Government, we will discover technological artifacts from interstellar civilizations. Such a finding might change our priority and inspire us to imitate our cosmic neighbors. Witnessing a more accomplished sibling in our family of intelligent civilizations will encourage us to do better.
To reach interstellar space at a low cost, we could potentially hitchhike kilometer-size interstellar objects like 3I/ATLAS, which was moving at 58 kilometers per second — several times faster than our fastest interstellar probes so far. Such an object would bring us to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, in 22,000 years. To cross the Milky Way galaxy will take a billion years. Synthetic biology might allow us to design astronauts that survive long interstellar journeys and adapt to the harsh conditions of space.
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