Tyler Cowen has said that he does not think a large number of humans will ever leave Earth to travel the galaxy. This is because the amount of technology and raw power that would be required is so much that any individual would be able to acquire sufficient power to destroy Earth and everyone on it upon a whim.
Any fool can use energy produced in a nuclear reactor, that doesn’t mean that any fool can build a nuclear reactor in their back yard. Suppose that colliding handwavium in the LHC would destroy the world, and all the scientists knew this, ie a team of experts could modify the LHC into a doomsday weapon in a few weeks. The security budget would need to be a bit bigger. The chance of doom is still pretty small.
Suppose an international collaboration built an interstellar spacecraft containing room for a billion people. The energy requirements are enough to destroy the world many times over. That energy comes from giant fusion engines and the hydrogen of a large lake. All the important people on the project are neuropsycologically screened for not wanting to destroy the world. Lots of security protocols, and failsafes are put in place. We can do interstellar travel without giving everyone the ability to destroy the earth on a whim. We can do it without giving any small group of people the ability to destroy the world with a concerted effort. (An ultrareliable AI could build and run the interstellar spacecraft without allowing humans a chance to destroy the world at all. )
All the important people on the project are neuropsycologically screened
Really? Can we have this for politicians please? Not trying to be funny here. Nobody knows how to do this, and if they did, how could we trust them to get it right?
And the absolute most attractive job for a psychopath is ‘determiner of who is and is not neuropsychologically fit’.
If you’re a shitty human there’s money to be made as a child psychologist leveraging that. Abuses are common and it’s not hard to issue a pitch like the following: “pay me 30k and I won’t tell the court you’re an unfit parent and send your kids to the foster care system”.
Any fool can use energy produced in a nuclear reactor, that doesn’t mean that any fool can build a nuclear reactor in their back yard. Suppose that colliding handwavium in the LHC would destroy the world, and all the scientists knew this, ie a team of experts could modify the LHC into a doomsday weapon in a few weeks. The security budget would need to be a bit bigger. The chance of doom is still pretty small.
Suppose an international collaboration built an interstellar spacecraft containing room for a billion people. The energy requirements are enough to destroy the world many times over. That energy comes from giant fusion engines and the hydrogen of a large lake. All the important people on the project are neuropsycologically screened for not wanting to destroy the world. Lots of security protocols, and failsafes are put in place. We can do interstellar travel without giving everyone the ability to destroy the earth on a whim. We can do it without giving any small group of people the ability to destroy the world with a concerted effort. (An ultrareliable AI could build and run the interstellar spacecraft without allowing humans a chance to destroy the world at all. )
You need a certain level of generally available technology to build a big new project. Having failsafes within the project is not enough.
Really? Can we have this for politicians please? Not trying to be funny here. Nobody knows how to do this, and if they did, how could we trust them to get it right?
And the absolute most attractive job for a psychopath is ‘determiner of who is and is not neuropsychologically fit’.
If you’re a shitty human there’s money to be made as a child psychologist leveraging that. Abuses are common and it’s not hard to issue a pitch like the following: “pay me 30k and I won’t tell the court you’re an unfit parent and send your kids to the foster care system”.