That’s a neclear weapon lauch code up there. Well, not literally. But it could be. It was, in the movie from the early 80s entitled War Games. As with all other “what if?” movies or sci-fi, nuclear holocaust novels, the narrative plotline induces the viewer or reader to wonder, is this really what could happen? The movie invovled a young computer nerd deciding to play a video game on his then boxy looking desktop device and unwittingly setting off a simulated Soviet sneak nuclear attack. While the young man is excited about watching the “game” unfold on his small computer screen, it is also picked up by NORAD, where the military command at its site embedded in a Colorado mountain are seeing the same images on a gigantic screen in their bunker, depicting countless incoming nukes! Egad, quick, is it real? How could NORAD be caught so off-guard?
By the end of the movie, the seemingly very possible, unfolding, thermonuclear nightmare is identified as a simulation, finally neutralized and shut-down by having the NORAD system play a single-player game of tic-tac-toe. As the computer becomes rapidly absorbed in trying to win a single game, it lterally goes into overload mode, its rigorously logical “thinking” concluding it cannot possibly win. To avoid a reality-based game of nuclear war, seeking a winner and a loser, the best strategy is not to play at all! Exactly. Or, as the acronym MAD reminds us: a real nuclear attack means Mutual Assured Destruction. No winner is possible. Earth would become a nuclear wasteland. Those not killed in the intial blasts from missiles landing on continent after continent, would eventually die in the oncoming “nuclear winter”.
We–humanity–created the “ultimate weapon” toward the end of World War Two, with its potential to kill everyone. If that constant endgame scenario isn’t worrysome enough, shortly after the end of that global conflict, mathematician Alan Turing and computer scientist John McCarthy introduced the concept of artificial intelligence. Now, seven decades later, A.I. has become another possible endgame threat. Much heated discussion of the downside of A.I. is currently taking place. What downside is that? It’s possible A.I. can also wipe out humanity, what else? Once the stuff of science fiction, the rapid development of A.I. and the proliferation of data centers lend weight to the concept that the more A.I. “learns” the greater the chances are that it will “logically” determind humanity no longer serves and purpose in its existance.
Good grief! Stop already with this gloomy posting, right? Hey, but these two existential threats do exist, one more long-standing than the other. The two of them are both linked to a third existential threat: the ongoing deterioration of planet Earth. Long before we created nuclear weapons or A.I. systems, we created the internal combustion engine. The automobile and its need for petroleum-based fuels like gasoline and diesel, each of which release billions of tons of carbon dioxide, trapping atmospheric heat. Greenhouse gases. This threat has been documented as far back as 1896, by Svante Arrhenius, who calculated that burning fossil fuels could double carbon dioxide levels and raise global temperatures by several degrees. As already noted, nuclear war would bring on a nuclear winter. As oppossed to the above noted global warming effect of fossil fuels, a nuclear holocaust would trigger prolonged global cooling. A thick global layer of nuclear ash would block direct sunlight, leading to extreme cold, darkness, radiation and global famine.
Okay, then. By either the globe overheating or becoming freezing even in summer months, our penchant for using technologies that could benefit humakind, but also ultimately destroy humankind, comes into an ironic focus. We create very real existential threats to all life on this planet in spite of each new technology idealistically offering safety, security, convenience. What a conundrum!
Having started paragraph one up there invoking a potential case of a computer glitch ending up firing nuclear warheads in one direction, that triggers more warheads being fired back from a different direction because it would be–as programmed–mutual assured distruction, then considering an A.I. or climate collapse endgame, it becomes quite clear that Mother Earth has a target on her back. A trio of possible deadly outcomes are in play: data centers built and being built, providing A.I. to speed up its learning curve, and that concurrently pollute the environment, and that might gain access to the launch codes, intentionally starting nuclear armageddon, quickly destroying the global climate that fossil fuel addiction has been doing at a much slower pace.
Paging Greta Thunberg! Paging humans that are in positions of power to take our existential threats seriously, which virtually none of them are doing, as Greta and others literally are screaming for them to do. Another conundrum. We are one massively flawed species, we homo sapiens, smart and dumb enough to create technolgies that are both wonders and terrors of science. And the current terrors are coming to roost, again a by-product of intended wonders of science. Go figure.
But never any of you mind. As Carl Sagan made perfectly clear, in relation to the staggering enormity of the cosmos, we here on this planet are physically tiny and insignificant. Carl, looking at the really, really, really big picture, he likened us to “Butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever”. In other words, whatever becomes of these threats to our existence, the cosmos, in cold indifference, could not care less about our coming or going. What we are doing or have done is actually completely random in that Big Picture Sagan saw, while also seeing our upsides and downsides.We are what we are and nothing is out there that has any interest in the matter. So, we are stuck in this messy, cosmologically isolated existence, seemingly unable to collectively work to make it make as benevolent as possible. Why this is bespeaks our petty differences turned into dreadful and often deadly actions, all part of that ‘Butterfly” delusion that prevents an urgency for desperately needed right now solutions to our obvious, and quite serious, almost always self-inflicted problems.
Step way, way back from the clearly toxic underbelly of those who create chaos and discord, and focus on the moments which reveal humanity’s capability for instinctual selflessness and sense of life’s preciousness. Think of Ryder Williams, the 16 year-old lifegaurd who risked his life to rescue a 10 year-old who was clearly about to drown. It may have been his job, but the video of the rescue is awe-inspiring, pojecting Ryder’s willingness to risk his life for a stranger. At that moment his “job” was saving that boys life, his next paycheck be damned. Other examples captured on video (in the digital age that makes for an abundance of potential documentarians) also show the power of human empathy. Strangers helping others in their moment of dire need, with the rescuer and the rescued not considering any gender, racial, religious or political differences that might otherwise preclude their shared humanity. We see or read about such dramatic moments among total strangers and typically praise and admire the event as restoring an otherwise hard to find faith in humanity. These random examples of empathetic and compassionate spontaneity beg the question of why we cannot intentionally always be willing to have one another’s back?
As we flutter about in our cosmolical brink of an eye moment, currently under several absurdly self-constructed threats to hasten our collective demise, the evidence of our capacity to instinctually value life at everyday, street level, may be cause for hope. After all, there are 8.3 billion human beings on Earth. The petty and predatory strains in our species that trigger our collective angst and anger are the outliers. Before it is too late, via A.I., climate distruptors, or nuclear terror a push of a button away, there is still time to forcefully change course.
Carl Sagan and others have long been saying there is, indeed, still time to come to our senses. Our species, our planet need its Ryder Williams willingness to risk it all to save us all.
