The Demon Haunted World – A Survivalist Counterfactual

 

The Demon Haunted World – A Survivalist Counterfactual

 

I found myself watching survivalist videos last night.  I had just completed a blog post and was working on another (that is becoming a thesis rather than a blog) and decided to take a break.  I have dabbled in that literature on and off over the past 30 years and found that it does not add much. The end games are typically played out in popular movies and fiction. You either find yourself in an impregnable underground shelter or wandering semi-aimlessly over a barren and hostile landscape.  Both scenarios have their problems.

In the impregnable fortress there are the inevitable power struggles, equipment breakdowns, outside attacks, functional and dysfunctional alliances, and lack of planning.  Good recent examples include The Silo and Fallout.  In the wandering scenario there seem to be a plethora of hazards including violent psychopaths, cannibals, various zombies, diseases, natural disasters, and the ever-present lack of food and water.   Examples include The Road, The Walking Dead, and The Last of Us.

Survivalists are more realistically focused. The brief series that I watched emphasized escaping detection by any means.  The implication was that you were in a secure remote location with adequate food and water.  The assumption is that there are many people who were not prepared for when the shit hits the fan or WTSHTF for short.  Four days of starvation is enough to make most people desperate and at that point they cannot be trusted.  A corollary is that once they get skilled at taking what they need from others – you may be the next target.

The first video discussed the importance of smoke. A poorly constructed fire can lead to a smoke signal for people to see for miles.  That signal translates to shelter, warmth, food, and resources to any desperate person who sees it.  The author emphasized methods to minimize smoke production. Elaborate underground survival shelters not only minimize smoke but also heat signatures to avoid infrared detectors and missiles.

 The second avoidable signal to the post-apocalyptic miscreants is gunfire. You might be thinking hunting, but the emphasis was on interpersonal conflict rather than hunting.  There may be better ways to resolve a dispute and secondarily gunfire WTSHTF is not necessarily a red flag. It is a sign out there that somebody has food and resources they want to protect.   The zombie mindset is “even if you do not have a gun – you might be able to hang around in the darkness long enough to get what you want.”  No other ways were discussed about how to avoid gunfire.

The final avoidable signal was light.  Even as little as a candle represents somebody with enough resources that they can and want to see in the dark. It represents the last vestige of civilization.  For that reason, it must be blocked at all costs. Curtains were emphasized as a practical measure but black out screens were preferable.  It reminded me of the subtitle to Carl Sagan’s classic book The Demon Haunted World (TDHW).  That subtitle is: Science as a candle in the dark.  It seemed like a perfect metaphor for what is currently happening in the world. To anyone who has not read the book – the subtitle is from Thomas Ayd’s 1655 treatise on witchcraft A Candle In the Dark where he described witchhunts as a way to delude the people about what was otherwise unexplainable.  Sagan sums up the progress against witchmongering this way:

“Microbiology and meteorology now explain what only a few centuries ago was considered sufficient cause to burn women to death.” (p. 26).

The title is a metaphor for reason and truth in the context of dire superstition and this is captured by Sagan’s summation.

Many reviews of TDHW suggest that Sagan’s views are formulaic – a few rules about how to assess facts and be skeptical along with listing logical fallacies. That minimizes the context he provides about the founding fathers and how they were impacted by The Enlightenment and science. Sagan’s thesis is more complex. He is the first to acknowledge that science is not perfect but that the method of science encourages and produces self-correction. To capture reasoning that is strictly outside of formal science, Sagan suggests that all matter of human endeavor like politics, economics, and even specific policies can be subjected to scientific reasoning and scrutiny and it will result in better results and prevent primitive biases.    

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic there has been an almost continuous attack on science and scientific experts.  The first Trump administration attacked public health officials, physicians, scientists, and anyone affiliated with them.  They promoted ineffective and potentially harmful treatments for COVID, suggested vaccines were problematic, said that COVID-19 was no worse than the flu, and that case and death rates were overstated.  Several conspiracy theories were promoted suggesting that HIV was a planned bioweapon, that NIH officials were corrupt, and that the “planned” HIV epidemic was paralleled by the “planned” COVID epidemic.  If the COVID epidemic was not planned it was supposed to have originated from a lab leak in China despite all the evidence pointing against that.  The problem is not merely a lack of training in science and the scientific method.  The problem is that we have a large segment of the population that really does not care about their ignorance of science and a large segment who seem to happily take advantage of that on social media.

Sagan has a famous quote that is considered prophetic by many:

“…Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking.  I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide almost without noticing, back into darkness and superstition.”   (p. 25).   

Much has been made about manufacturing in the US and there is an active debate.  Specifically – is it a feasible solution for whatever economic problems you claim it will solve?  I have seen business experts interviewed who say it is not and others who have their own specialized supply chains within the country as being a solution. How will it be compounded by tariffs and an attempt to resuscitate the coal industry? The technological power is concentrated at the monopoly level according to several court decisions.  And what about artificial intelligence? There are daily predictions that AI will replace not only truck drivers and assembly line works but also doctors and teachers.  There are grandiose claims that AI will "cure all diseases" in less than the time I have been writing this blog.  Those aspects of Sagan’s prediction seem too uncertain to be useful.

The lack of knowledge in both the general population and at the highest levels of government is also on display.  Scientific knowledge and thinking is lacking and that it is not enough.  Any reasonable analysis of population wide policies needs to include a scientific dimension, a rational thinking dimension, and a moral/ethical dimension.  This is the real current failure.  As an example, the divisive rhetoric used around the COVID-19 issue.  There was a lot of uncertainty about the best way to stop the pandemic. As physicians and public health officials were learning about this and saving lives – the counter response was that no measures were necessary including vaccinations.  In the end public health officials were being blamed for lockdowns and school closings that could only have been done by local elected officials. That rapidly evolved to conspiracy theories that led to threats of physical harm and legal action against some of the top scientists.  The culmination of this rhetoric was recently evident when the Trump administration replaced a government webpage providing scientific information on COVID-19 with one that presents a combination of conspiracy theories and pseudoscience.  None of this sequence of activity included science, rationality, or ethics.

This is what Sagan is referring to in his quote. The current web page on COVID is emblematic of sliding into the modern version of darkness and superstition. Like the old version the new one is as out in the open and accepted by many. There is an army of celebrities, podcasters, media networks, social media bots, and writers supporting it. Some of the wealthiest people in the country claim they were “censored” because they opposed some suggested COVID measures or supported anti-science rhetoric – even though there was no formal censoring. The dark narrative is very present and it continues to take its toll in terms of cabinet appointees who promote it and some who seek vindication against scientists and officials who were making a good faith effort.

As far as science goes, whether that is hard science or the dismal science of economics – we have a choice to stay in darkness and superstition or move toward the light of science and facts.   Not caring about the smoke is the difference between surviving and living.

 

 

George Dawson, MD, DFAPA

 

 

Graphics Credit:

Campfire in the forest by Crusier, CC license BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&gt https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Campfire_in_forest.jpg

References:

1:  Sagan Carl.  The Demon-Haunted World – Science as a Candle In The Dark.  Ballantine Books 1997.

2:  Ayd Thomas.  A Candle in the Dark.  Smithfield, London. 1655.

Will The AI Apocalypse Be Worse Than Customer Service?

I am a survivalist and make no excuses for it.  I have posted my experiences in the cold weather and nearly freezing to death.  I am sure that is part of what makes a survivalist.  That combined with an early recognition that men often don't make rational decisions.   They are capable of making irrational decisions on a grand scale.  I was in grade school during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Being in a small town, we escaped all of the duck and cover exercises that kids in the big city went through.  But paranoia about the Russians, nuclear war, and radioactive fallout was always there.  I worked for the town library in the 1970s and found out it had been the local nuclear fallout shelter.  I spent days clearing out steel 30 gallon drums that were supposed to double as water and waste containers in a fallout emergency.  In those days before atmospheric nuclear tests were banned, I can still recall a radioactive cloud passing over our town.  Experts from the state university were on television talking about Strontium-90 in the fallout and how that could end up in milk products.  My grandfather picked up on that and referred to it as "Strawberry-90".  He was somewhat of a radical, predicting that there was going to be a "revolution" at some point as the ultimate solution to a corrupt government.  Survivalism may have genetic determinants.

I was surprised when Stephen Hawking came out earlier this year and said that artificial intelligence (AI) represented a threat to humans.  I have seen all of the Terminator films and the Sarah Connor Chronicles.  As expected, any tales of a band of zealots surviving against all odds appeals to me.  But then it seemed that this was more than a cultural and artistic effort.  One of the arguments by Bostrom suggests that the survival of all of the animals on the planet depends on the animal with the highest intelligence - homo sapiens.  If a machine intelligence was developed one day that surpassed human intelligence it would follow that the fate of humans would depend on that machine intelligence.  There are competing arguments out there that suggest a model where the AI interests and human interests would compete politically.  Can you imagine how humans would fare in our current political systems?  A lot of the experts suggest that we won't have to imagine battling robots in human form and that makes sense.  It is clear that there are thousands of cyber attacks against our infrastructure every day.  Imagine what a concentrated AI presence unencumbered by sociopathy or patriotism could do?

Imagining the battlefield of the future scenes from any Terminator film or same-themed video game, I decided this morning that you don't need a high tech approach to wreak havoc among the populace and drain their resources.  You only need Customer Service.  The concept needs to be refined to modern customer service.  Even in the early days of the Internet, you could talk to a fellow human and they would hang in there with you until the problem was solved.  I can recall calling Gateway Computers for an out-of-the-box problem back in the 1990s.   The technical assistance rep and I completely disassembled and reassembled my PC over the next 2 hours.  And the end result was that it worked perfectly for the next 5 years.  I doubt that anything remotely that heroic happens today.

Twenty one days ago I downloaded graphics software from Amazon.   I am an Amazon Prime customer and order just about everything from them.  I am not a stockholder and my only interest is in getting things that nobody else stocks as soon as possible.  I had previously downloaded software from them and everything went well.  This time, I got an activation code and no serial number.  I complained to customer service and got an e-mail saying we will give you your money back but for the serial number problem you need to contact the manufacturer.  To back up a minute, I have no idea how I got that e-mail through to Amazon and could not replicate what I did in a hundred tries.  The obstructionist beauty that underlies all telephone queues and Internet sites is that it is very clear that they are not really designed to get you through to anyone.  It is a maze of dead ends and non answers.  At many of the dead ends you are polled: "Was this page helpful?".  So far I have not found a single page that was.

The dead ends at the computer graphics software site were even more formidable.  In order to contact customer service I had to set up an account.  After doing that I needed a serial number.   Of course that was my question in the first place.  How can I ask about getting a serial number when I need a serial number to ask the question?  It seemed like the ultimate dead end.  Amazon did send me a customer service number for the software company.  This number was not available on the company's web site.  In calling the number, their queue provided 4 options none of which applied to me.  It gave options for order numbers that started with different numbers and I had an Amazon number that did not fit any of the choices.  Just like my previous adventure in medical diagnostic queues - I picked one.  A scratchy recording of bad electronic music started playing.  It was interrupted every minute by a worse electronic voice telling me how important my call was and how I would be forwarded to a customer service rep.  That went on for half an hour and then the voice said:  "We are sorry but there is no one here to take your call.  Please leave a message with your number and we will get back to you?"

That was hours ago.  Given the attitude projected by this company, I am not holding my breath on the return call.  I have 1 week left to try to activate software that I paid over $400 for.  There is no solution in sight and it does not appear anyone is even interested in solving the problem, except me.  I can get my money back - but the whole point of this is that I really want to work with that software.

Implications for the AI Apocalypse?  It doesn't take much to defeat Internet dependent humans and deplete their resources.  I have actually taken PTO to try to accomplish this.

I don't think there will be a shot fired in the AI Apocalypse of the future.  No intense battles between humans and cyborgs.  No Doomsday Weapon.

 Just a low tech endless loop of customer service dead ends.


George Dawson, MD, DFAPA

Supplementary 1:   Photo credit here is FEMA.  It is an open access copyright free photo per their web site.

Supplementary 2:  My customer service problem was resolved today (on Tuesday November 25, 2014).  The final solution was given by Amazon and they deserve the credit for resolving this problem.  I don't think that detracts from noting the overall trend of decreasing support and what that implies for IT in healthcare and the culture in general.

Turning the United States Into Radioactive Dust

I don't know if you noticed, but it appears that the post cold war era is over.  The Putin appointed head of a Russian news agency Dmitry Kiselyov went on Russian television this morning and stated that Russia is "the only country in the world capable of turning the USA into radioactive dust."  In case anyone wanted to dismiss that as being short of a threat, he went on to say the President Obama's hair was turning gray because he was worried about Russia's nuclear arsenal.  We have not heard that kind of serious rhetoric since the actual Cold War.  As a survivor of the Cold War, I went back and looked at what time period it ran for and although it is apparently controversial the dates 1947 to 1991 are commonly cited.  I can remember writing a paper in middle school on the doctrine of mutually assured destruction as the driving force behind the Cold War.  In the time I have thought about it since, some of the cool heads that prevented nuclear war were in the military and in many if not most cases Russian.  We probably need to hope that they are still out there rather than an irresponsible broadcaster who may not realize that if the US is dust, irrespective of what happens to Russia as a result of weapons, the planet will be unlivable.

I am by nature a survivalist of sorts.  And when I detect the Cold War heating up again I start to plan for the worst.  The survivalist credo is that we are all 9 meals away from total chaos.  So I start to think about how much food, water, and medicines I will have to stockpile.  What king of power generation system will I need?  What about heating, ventilation and air filtration?  And what about access?  There are currently condominiums being sold in old hardened missile silos, but what are the odds that you will be able to travel hundreds of miles after a nuclear attack?  If you are close to the explosion there will be fallout and the EMP burst will probably knock out the ignition of your vehicle unless you have the foresight and resources to store it inside a Faraday cage every night.  There is also the question of what happens to the psychology of your fellow survivors.  In the post apocalyptic book The Road - a man and his son are surviving in the bleakest of circumstances on the road.  We learn through a series of flashbacks that their wife and mother could not adapt to the survivalist atmosphere and ended her life.  In one scene, they meet an old man on the road and the man gets into the following exchange with him after the old man says he knew the apocalyptic event was coming.  It captures the paradox of being a survivalist (pp 168-169):

Man:  "Did you try to get ready for it?"
Old Man:  "No.  What would you do?"
Man:  "I don't know"
Old Man:  "People always getting ready for tomorrow.  I didn't believe in that.  Tomorrow wasn't getting ready for them.  It didn't even know they were there."
Man:  "I guess not."
Old Man:  "Even if you knew what to do you wouldn't know what to do.  You wouldn't know if you wanted to do it or not.  Suppose your were the last one left?  Suppose you did that to yourself?"

By my own informal polling there are very few people who want to unconditionally survive - either a man-made or natural disaster.  Many have told me that they could not stand to be in their basement for more than a few hours, much less days or months or years.

For the purpose of this post, I want to hone in on the rhetoric or more specifically the threats.  I have had previous posts on this blog that look at how this rhetoric flows from the history of warfare and dates back to a typical situation with primitive man.  In those days, the goal of warfare was the annihilation of your neighbors.  In many cases, the precipitants were trivial like the theft of a small number of livestock or liaisons between men and women of opposing tribes.  In tribes of small numbers of people, even when there were survivors if enough were killed it could mean the extinction of a certain people.  Primitive man seemed to think: "My adversaries are gone and the problem is solved."

Over time, the fighting was given to professional soldiers and it seemed more formalized.  There were still millions of civilian casualties.  I think at least part of the extreme rhetoric of Kielyov is rooted in that dynamic.  Many will say that is is propaganda or statements being made for political advantage and in this case there are the possible factors of nationalism  or just anger at the US for some primitive rhetoric of its own.  But I do not think that a statement like this can be dismissed without merit.  There were for example two incidents where Russian military officers exercised a degree of restraint that in all probability prevented a nuclear war.  In one of those cases the officer was penalized for exercising restraint even though he probably avoided a full scale nuclear war.  In both cases the officers looked into the abyss and realized that they did not want to be responsible for the end of civilization as we know it.

I don't think extreme rhetoric is limited to international politics.  It certainly happens with every form of intolerance at one point or another if that intolerance is rooted in race, religions or sexual preference.  That is especially true if there are physical threats and physical aggression.  Intolerant rhetoric can also occur at a more symbolic level.  We have seen extreme rhetoric on psychiatry blogs recently.  Rather than the annihilation of the United States, the posters would prefer the annihilation of psychiatry.  I would say it is a symbolic annihilation but it is clear that many of them want more than that.  It still flows from the sense of loyalty to tribe, the need to annihilate the opponents, the necessary rigid intolerance and the resulting distortion of rational thought.  Certainly self serving bias exists to some extent in everyone, and it may not be that apparent to the biased person.  It took Ioannidis to open everyone's eyes to that fact in the more rational scientific world.  It can serve a purpose in science where the active process often requires a vigorous dialogue and debate.  Sometimes people mistake science for the truth when science is a process.  In order for that dialogue and debate to occur in an academic field there has to be a basic level of scholarship in the area being debated.  Without it there is a digression to tribal annihilation dynamics and complete intolerance.  That is counterproductive and negates any legitimate points that the proponents might otherwise have.

In science, the risks are lower.  At the minimum it adds nothing to the scientific debate.  An irrational bias with no basis in reality is the most primitive level of analysis.  In the 21st century, nobody needs to be annihilated in reality or at the symbolic level.

George Dawson, MD, DFAPA

Cormac McCarthy.  The Road.  Vintage Books.  New York, 2006.