Biological Singularity

Obsessives love the Technological Singularity. They see artificial intelligence leading to a self aware computer smarter than us, able to upgrade itself and design technologies and software to fundamentally change our civilization. End work, end poverty, end war over resources. Its their fantasy.

Turns out that just because you can make a machine to think doesn't fix the inherent issues with resources. I still think we should keep working at it because it may lead to some advances, and probably do a great job ending call centers in Bangalore, so that has to be a good thing, right?

That's not the only singularity, however. There's one for high energy physics, one so important because it will allow us to fold space or step into the universe next door so we can keep walking away from the sun exploding and the heat death of the universe. I'd say that's even more important, long term. It will also get us free energy, probably, assuming that Dark Energy can be used since its proven to exist like the 95% of matter we can't see. That does offer one possible oddity, however. If we can't see 95% of the matter in the universe, that means there's 19 universes of matter than can influence this one with their gravity at the very large scale, on galaxies, but are imperceptible at the small scale down here. That's pretty odd, much like the ongoing weirdness of photons also being waves and relativity means we can actually see, despite it being really really odd if you stop and think about it a while.

But that's not the only Singularity either. There's another. And is particularly important because its got huge potential for abuse, particularly since we're a species of two year olds fond of tantrums and murder when we don't get our way. I'm talking about genetic engineering. We are an evolved species. We used to be homids a million years ago. About 133,000 years ago we became more self aware than animals and stepped up our tool using. We became modern humans. But we still evolved. Our reproductive plumbing is a ridiculously ornate and fragile bit of plumbing, yet it works. We share the same base pairs in our DNA with every living thing on earth, even in the black smokers at the bottom of 12,000 feet of water. The nerve that controls our voices runs down to our chests then back up. Our kidneys lose half their cells in the first year of life and are believed to not regenerate, yet we grow hair and skin cells all the time. Our spleens are fragile and braking them without medical care kills us. Our bowels can trap infections and kill us. There are parasites that crawl around through our organs but are too big for our immune systems to deal with. Our brains can't function safely without sleep cycles and we can literally die from it. Our blood only works right in the correct temperature range, despite our planet having frozen water over large portions of it. Terrible design. If God was an intelligent designer he needs to be kicked in the nuts for gross incompetence. Fortunately, we are smart. And we can correct these problems. We can go further and fix our DNA so we stop getting cancer and have perfect vision and women's bosoms don't fall after having a baby, and our skins don't wrinkle and our health is perfect, for ever and ever short of drowning or falling off a cliff or getting incinerated. Short of bad accidents or suicide, we could make ourselves immortal.

Pause and think about what that means. I know you're going to point to the babies problem actually insuring infinite war if everyone is immortal and starts breeding soldiers from age 12 on, and there are cultures doing that right now. They are despised and pitied, but they're doing that. The resource war that results can be delayed a little by using that same biotech knowledge to make crops grow in the desert without increasing water supply. There's a trick to it. The selenium present can be added to the plant fluids, just like in cacti, and drastically reduces evapotranspiration. This means the plant keeps its water in exchange for its fluids being a poisonous brine. If you throw an membrane on the fruit to only let pure water and sugars across into the fruit, the plant survives and the fruit is edible. Suddenly you've got a very hot garden growing across the Sahara and other deserts. Apply similar tricks to deciduous fruit trees so they can survive the cold without exploding like normal, and they can be planted right up to the tundra, opening up Siberia and Canada to massive population instead of huddling near resupply. That's a big deal. Its room for another billion people. Maybe two billion. There are mechanical methods for cheap desalination which would also allow for fish farming in the deep sea, like a floating reef. Cheap protein enabled by inexpensive inputs, deep water pumping of nutrients from below the thermocline layer to the surface, and suddenly you can grow tons of edible fish without needing the land very much. This frees up a lot of territory and also offers a large area for people to live. The tricky part is how much technology, how much biotech to make it work? I think fish farming barges/rafts are inevitable. Probably soon, too. The money is too good to ignore. Especially off the California coast. And Japan coast, assuming they can deal with the radiation from Fukushima better than ignoring it like they have been. Still, sea water into fresh water pumped in a pipe would keep alive Los Angeles, open up coastal Africa south of Morocco and north of South Africa, the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula, plus everywhere inland via pipes and pumps. Those who invest in the infrastructure can make enormous changes. The brown parts of the planet would turn green.

So now we've got green deserts, winter forests full of fruit, artificial floating reefs full of fish to eat, coastal oases with free fresh water converted from sea water to grow crops and irrigate, and humans who won't die of old age. Probably all within the next 70 years. Even with the general incompetence and laziness of biotech scientists, and I wish that weren't true, that still requires some advances be made instead of catering lunch meetings for useless documentation on the correct way to write the letter I and the number 1. I suspect the real advances will be in hungry nations with something to gain. The Persian Gulf needs to feed its people when the world stops paying them for oil or the lunatics will set off their nukes screaming Allah Akbar and chanting Death To America. They've threatened that so much I figure its a foregone conclusion and we should treat the escapees from Iran with pitying looks because everyone in Iran is going to die in the retaliation strikes once they do it. A biological method for cleaning up radiation would be a needed thing too. Something to pull it out of the environment so its not poisoning fish or people. Do the same for industrial poisons. I bet China is working hard on that,  or will be, because they're spilled the most. I learned last week that barnacles are snagging the microscopic plastic particles in the Pacific Gyre, the floating plastic trash island in the north Pacific twice the size of Texas, and since few things eat barnacles, and they sink once they get heavy enough, the barnacles are cleaning up the water again. So that's a good thing. Given time the trash pile will vanish. I still hold that nature always wins. Abandoned cities often turn green if there's water for plants to grow. The vines tear apart buildings. Eventually its nothing but mounds of foundation concrete, shards of rusting rebar, tiny fragments of glass, and leaves covering every surface. Nature likes the special elements we build with. Roads vanish in 3 years, even paved highway. The plants we put beside them to reduce erosion can grow without soil and make it from air. That's enough for bushes to take root, and bushes help trees get in and wedge the pavement apart, even concrete slabs. Its surprisingly quick how it all disappears.

And that's if we do nothing but let nature take its course. With biotech, with us actively fiddling to make stuff grow, to clean our environment so we need less inputs, so there's more to eat everywhere, so we're tougher and more resilient to the natural weather? Really, we'll want to figure out what's an acceptable birth rate and stick to it. If we don't there will be biowar and the Chimera Problem will dominate us. With what we already know about gene splicing, it is possible to make a person that looks like us on the outside but is unable to breed due to many differences with other variations. This would be a sapient human in all the ways that matter, but can't have kids unless another similar being is created. We could easily end up with hundreds or thousands of humanlike species that can't interbreed anymore. A great way to control population, but a vicious one that could backfire because forcing a 1% birthrate would crash the population and make many potential mothers suicide. It also puts human reproduction in the hands of mad scientists who have never been very responsible in the first place and already show Sociopathic tendencies as a group. That's a hell of a nasty control system. Your ethnic group had better be the most obedient slaves or you get no children and the natural accidents will whittle you down, all controlled by your overlord who sends you to die or suffer endlessly in slavery. And don't say humans wouldn't do that. History is full of that sort of thing. We don't even need free populations to benefit from the slavery. It could be all of us as slaves and a few psychos in charge. We know they are the dominant rulers of our species NOW. They're the ones in Limousines launching drone strikes on weddings, just to hurt people. To scare them. To make them obey.

You can't ban or prevent the Biological Singularity. Its coming. Everything another animal can do, DNA can do for us. It can be synthesized. I have done that job for 4 years. Its really not that hard. Eventually we're going to tweak ourselves and the evil bastards in charge on the gear, running the scientists, LOVE feudalism and want to be Lords over all. They want more people under their power, more people to control like puppets. That will be our grandkids getting played with. Its already happening.