What happens here on Earth, in this century, could conceivably make the difference between a near eternity filled with ever more complex and subtle forms of life and one filled with nothing but base matter.
– Martin Rees
(Other quotes.)
lifeboat 2:14 am
lifeboat 1:55 am
From the Lifeboat Foundation’s website:
We would like your support for our important U.S. Naval Operations Strategic Studies Group (SSG) meeting on November 6 in San Francisco.
In addition to our local San Francisco people, we would like to fly in personnel from Nevada and from Tenerife, one of the seven Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa. This will enable us to bring our best people to this important meeting. Due to the Tenerife personnel being quite far from the meeting, it will cost $2,500 to fly in all these personnel.
Please note that not only will your donation help strengthen our cause, currently backed by 84 donors, it will enable us to see how important you think it is for us to interact and advise government agencies on the possible dangers in our future. If there is little interest, we will listen to you and divert our resources elsewhere.
We received a letter that said:
Dear Mr. Klien,
I am Science Advisor for the Chief of Naval Operations Strategic Studies Group (SSG) and would like to see if a small Group of SSG members could meet you and other members of the Lifeboat Foundation in San Francisco early in November.
Each year, the CNO selects nine senior level officers to participate in a fellowship at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. These officers are selected as the future leaders of the military and include 7 Navy Captains, 1 Marine Colonel and 1 Coast Guard Captain. In addition, 12 junior level officers are also selected to participate. The SSG also has 12 scientists and technologists and one science advisor. The Group is lead by ADM James Hogg (US Navy retired). The SSG is directed by and reports solely to the CNO ADM Mullen and is responsible for generating revolutionary naval warfare concepts. Please see the attached copies of some of our materials for your review. FYI- We do not yet have our theme for this year.
Part of the development of the SSG team is to have discussions with prominent leaders in technology, industry, academia and government. The goal is to apply this knowledge to improve the ability to think innovatively and develop concepts for an improved Navy and Maritime Forces.
We would appreciate the opportunity to gain insights into the activities of the Lifeboat Foundation and have discussion about different programs you have to help “safeguard humanity.” We are especially interested in how you identify and mitigate risks associated with future technological developments. Please advise a time when I can call to speak with you in this regard. Thank you for your consideration.
v/r Robb
Dr. Robb Wilcox
Science Advisor
Chief of Naval Operations
Strategic Studies Group
Naval War College
You can see the attached files Dr. Wilcox referred to at http://lifeboat.com/sf.pdf and http://lifeboat.com/sf.ppt.
~~~
If you think this meeting will be valuable, then help us finance it. Best-selling author David Brin is among our supporters for this effort.
At Lifeboat, our mission is to find ways to turn money into actions that reduce the risk of technological mega-scale disasters in the next few decades and beyond. By contributing to us, people whose careers would otherwise make it impossible for them to have a substantial impact on this crucial area can indeed do so, by using the Lifeboat Foundation as a tool. For more information on the Lifeboat Foundation’s work, get in touch with me via email. I have chosen to work part-time for the Lifeboat Foundation because I see technological risk as humanity’s greatest challenge in the 21st century. To support my desired transition to full time, I would also suggest you donate to my fund.
Recently, my regular contributions to the Lifeboat Foundation surpassed $1,000. I am the 11th highest contributor to the organization as of September 2007, tied together with fellow members Philippe Van Nevervelde and Michael Dickey. I’m a member of the LF500, committing $1,000 each year to the Lifeboat Foundation.
Consider the amount of delicious food and electronic gadgets one might buy with $1,000. Since a shrimp, my favorite food, goes for about 25 cents, I could’ve bought approximately 4,000 shrimp with that money, and cooked them in a variety of ways.
But yet, I contributed to the Lifeboat Foundation instead. This is because I see a significant probability that humanity will wipe itself out in the next few decades, through abuse or misuse of advanced technologies such as genetic engineering, molecular manufacturing, and AI, and actually want to do something about it. I doubt that world governments or NGOs are going to put serious work towards alleviating the risks before it’s too late, so therefore we must found our own organization, and put our own resources, knowledge, and contacts into it. And there is a convenient organization already established for this purpose — the Lifeboat Foundation.
Last year, at Boston.com, in “An urgent cause for philanthropy”, Ralph Kaplan and Harvey Silverglate wrote:
“American philanthropy, in the news lately due to huge donations to wealthy foundations devoted to worthy causes, is nonetheless missing a critical opportunity to turn the private sector’s attention to the most urgent threat to human life. As the pace of scientific and technological developments continues to accelerate, the potential for enormous benefits is coupled with the potential for far more severe — indeed, lethal — costs.
While eradicating disease, creating humanlike robots, and harnessing the uses of nanotechnology could all lessen human suffering, their development could also lead to our demise, something that the leaders of American philanthropy seem not to fully appreciate.
The focus of American philanthropy should shift to reflect the severity of this threat.”
I am not wealthy enough to be what they call a “philanthropist”, but I believe that organizations can get off the ground through donations by middle-class people, which is presumably what most of you are. If we all give a little bit, substantial progress can be made. 100 people giving $1000 a year, approximately 1-3% of the salary of a typical full-time worker in the developed world, results in $100,000 a year for an organization, which is enough to do a tremendous amount of good — funding studies and grants, distributing thousands of pamphlets and papers on x-risks, organizing conferences and dinners, attracting hundreds of thousands of website visitors, contributing to multimedia productions… it might not be at the level of Amnesty International (which only has a $55 million budget, by the way), but it’s the seed for further growth and attention. Humanity needs an organization devoted to fighting existential risk, and now that we have one, our responsibility is to grow it.
A couple days ago, Tom McCabe wrote, “I propose that every transhumanist organization which relies upon donations should put some percentage of the money, say 10%, towards something which is near-term, simple, and obviously beneficial. Some sort of easily understood benefit is necessary to get non-transhumanists to donate, and even experienced transhumanists would probably donate more if the money went to something concrete. After all, even if transhumanism is the best thing since sliced bread, there’s no guarantee any particular organization is actually helping the Cause ™.”
Although the Lifeboat Foundation is not really a transhumanist organization, its main base of donors and contributors does seem to be primarily transhumanists, who take the risks of advanced technology more seriously than the mainstream. I’m proud to say that the LF is doing something that is near-term, simple, and pretty obviously beneficial — we’re sponsoring an electromagnetic launch competition at the upcoming Wirefly X-Prize Cup, at the Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, being held October 26-28. This is to encourage massively cheaper launch technology, for the purpose of getting serious orbital colonies up as soon as possible. A self-sustaining space colony would be able to dodge many of the planetary disasters which could befall our fledgling Earthbound civilization.
The Lifeboat Foundation’s goal for the future is not to be primarily an insular organization, using in-house talent, but a grant-issuing agency that can delegate funds to those researchers doing work most valuable to lowering a particular form of human extinction risk. For example, a goal is to issue grants to Robert Freitas, who is doing studies of the possibility of using “thermal censorship” to combat future risks involving self-replicating robotics. Anyone can submit a grant proposal here.
Several high-profile people have either joined the LF500 or donated $10,000 and over: Ray Kurzweil, who needs no introduction, Jaan Tallinn, a co-founder of Skype, Jack Halpern, CEO of the CJK Dictionary Institute, one of world’s prime sources for CJK (Chinese, Japanese and Korean) dictionaries, and Jason Matheny, a founder of New Harvest, an organization devoted to creating meat substitutes.
The Lifeboat Foundation is humanity’s personal shield against human extinction risk. If we make it through this century alive, the LF will be able to claim some of the credit. In the last year, our reports have been linked to or posted by outlets such as Instapundit, KurzweilAI.net, and the front page of Digg. People actually care about what the LF has to say. As the organization evolves, it’ll be publishing more reports, of the highest quality possible, and using them as conversation pieces in our engagement with scientists, policymakers, and the media.
Here is an overview of some of the Foundation’s recent accomplishments/plans:
The Lifeboat Foundation has been doing great in the past few months. Help it maintain momentum! Become a member today, and join the fight against existential risk! As a membership-based organization, everyone’s input and suggestions are valued. By donating any amount at all, you are sending a statement to the community that you care about this effort and want to see it succeed. All donors are listed on the donor pages.
lifeboat 8:00 am
Recently, the Lifeboat Foundation’s International Spokesperson, Philippe Van Nedervelde, spoke to the Deputy Editor of Betterhumans, Parish Mozdzierz, on the Lifeboat Foundation, its goals and activities. Here is the first question:
Betterhumans: How did the formation of the Lifeboat Foundation come about?
Philippe Van Nedervelde: Lifeboat Foundation’s founder, Eric Klien, was shaken wide awake by 9/11. The new reality of what we call (exponentially accelerating) “Asymmetric Destructive Capability” (ADC) fully hit him: ever smaller groups of people can create ever more enormous amounts of damage. And all of this thanks to advances in technology. As a bracelet-wearing cryonicist, he knew of the potentials of nanotechnology (having attended MIT Nanotechnology Group meetings in the late 1980s), and that 9/11 was just a taste of things to come. Accordingly, the Lifeboat Foundation was incorporated within months of 9/11.
Read the whole thing here.
If you find the Lifeboat Foundation’s work valuable, please take the plunge and join us!
lifeboat 10:54 am
Over at the Lifeboat Foundation, we are pondering a website redesign. Are there any professional web designers in the audience who might be able to devote some evening/weekend time to brainstorming possible improvements and implementing them? If so, please get in contact with me via email.
Here is a small banner to put on your site if you want to link to us:
And one more:
Also, we are looking for any graphic artists to help with ads and the like.
And as always, keep an eye on the Lifeboat Foundation blog for existential risk news.
Thanks!
lifeboat 11:27 am
Lifeboat Foundation, one of the most important organizations of the early 21st century, was recently mentioned briefly in the Wall Street Journal article “Colonize the Moon” (subscription required) by our Scientific Advisory Board member William E. Burroughs. Burroughs proposes using the Moon as a backup drive for civilization. His organization, known as ARC, was absorbed into Lifeboat not too long ago. By working together, we’ll have a better chance of achieving our goal - ensuring that the human species survives these crucial next decades. Here is the relevant excerpt from the article:
It was for that reason that a few individuals, myself included, started a group called the Alliance to Rescue Civilization (ARC) several years ago. Its purpose was to start an archive on the moon that would be a continuously updated international record of our civilization. That way, if a major catastrophe happens, the record would survive. Keeping a record on the moon (and perhaps at one of the poles on this planet) would be like backing up a computer’s hard drive. We would emerge from the chaos knowing who we are in the fullest sense of the term.
ARC has been absorbed by the Lifeboat Foundation, a group of likeminded people who are trying to make certain that we can survive a truly awful world-wide occurrence. They are emphatically not doomsday types. But they understand that while no skipper goes to sea thinking the boat will sink, they nonetheless carry life preservers and dinghies. That, after all, is only prudent. So is starting a self-sufficient colony on the moon.
I repeat: we are emphatically not doomsday types! 
I would love nothing more than to partake of all the ambrosia the Spike will offer, giving orders to my AI genie and hanging out in my expansive VR paradise-world. However, this favorable scenario is contingent on whether or not we can dodge the numerous bullets filling the magazine of the gun called existential risk. That gun has to be fired by someone willing to pull the trigger - although they most likely would not anticipate the consequences of their actions. A scholar once wrote:
All else being equal, not many people would prefer to destroy the world. Even faceless corporations, meddling governments, reckless scientists, and other agents of doom, require a world in which to achieve their goals of profit, order, tenure, or other villanies. If our extinctions proceeds slowly enough to allow a moment of horrified realization, the doers of the deed will likely by taken aback on realizing that they have actually destroyed the world. Therefore I suggest that if the Earth is destroyed, it will probably be by mistake.
That mistake will happen when some reckless engineer builds a mind they can no longer control. Not that “control” is the critical factor - it’s not. Not the way it is with humans interacting with other humans, anyway. The challenge is one of creation, not control. We have to create something that can acquire wisdom and displays unconditional benevolence to all mankind. The original idea was to tweak some human to produce that outcome, but the prospects for that avenue look bad. The true power is in the convenient nonbiological medium. Learning and intelligence are not just abstract philosophical ideas. They correspond to real math. Different varieties of learning and intelligence use different weightings in their equations. We have to make an equation that is weighted to care about us, and rewrites itself in ways that improve the quality of that care, without getting in our way.
Keep in mind that freezing progress in computing would be one way to buy time. Accelerating the researchers may be less invasive on society, but is, in general, dubious.
