Steve Silberman

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“If We Ever Did Make Contact, What Social Problems Would That Meeting Force Us To Face As A Species?”

January 25, 2015 in Books, Excerpts, Science/Tech | Permalink

Lee Billings, author of the wonderful and touching 2014 book, Five Billion Years of Solitude, is interviewed on various aspects of exoplanetary exploration by Steve Silberman of h+ Magazine. An exchange about what contact might be like were it to occur:

Steve Silberman:

If we ever make contact with life on other planets, they will be the type of creatures that we could sit down and have a Mos Eisley IPA or Alderaan ale with — even if, by then, we’ve worked out the massive processing and corpus dataset problems inherent in building a Universal Translator that works much better than Google? And if we ever did make contact, what social problems would that meeting force us to face as a species?

Lee Billings:

Outside of the simple notion that complex intelligent life may be so rare as to never allow us a good chance of finding another example of it beyond our own planet, there are three major pessimistic contact scenarios that come to mind, though there are undoubtedly many more that could be postulated and explored. The first pessimistic take is that the differences between independently emerging and evolving biospheres would be so great as to prevent much meaningful communication occurring between them if any intelligent beings they generated somehow came into contact. Indeed, the differences could be so great that neither side would recognize or distinguish the other as being intelligent at all, or even alive in the first place. An optimist might posit that even in situations of extreme cognitive divergence, communication could take place through the universal language of mathematics.

The second pessimistic take is that intelligent aliens, far from being incomprehensible and ineffable, would be in fact very much like us, due to trends of convergent evolution, the tendency of biology to shape species to fit into established environmental niches. Think of the similar streamlined shapes of tuna, sharks, and dolphins, despite their different evolutionary histories. Now consider that in terms of biology and ecology humans are apex predators, red in tooth and claw. We have become very good at exploiting those parts of Earth’s biosphere that can be bent to serve our needs, and equally adept at utterly annihilating those parts that, for whatever reason, we believe run counter to our interests. It stands to reason that any alien species that managed to embark on interstellar voyages to explore and colonize other planetary systems could, like us, be a product of competitive evolution that had effectively conquered its native biosphere. Their intentions would not necessarily be benevolent if they ever chose to visit our solar system.

The third pessimistic scenario is an extension of the second, and postulates that if we did encounter a vastly superior alien civilization, even if they were benevolent they could still do us harm through the simple stifling of human tendencies toward curiosity, ingenuity, and exploration. If suddenly an Encyclopedia Galactica was beamed down from the heavens, containing the accumulated knowledge and history of one or more billion-year-old cosmic civilizations, would people still strive to make new scientific discoveries and develop new technologies? Imagine if solutions were suddenly presented to us for all the greatest problems of philosophy, mathematics, physics, astronomy, chemistry, and biology. Imagine if ready-made technologies were suddenly made available that could cure most illnesses, provide practically limitless clean energy, manufacture nearly any consumer good at the press of a button, or rapidly, precisely alter the human body and mind in any way the user saw fit. Imagine not only our world or our solar system but our entire galaxy made suddenly devoid of unknown frontiers. Whatever would become of us in that strange new existence is something I cannot fathom.

The late Czech astronomer Zdeněk Kopal summarized the pessimist outlook succinctly decades ago, in conversation with his British colleague David Whitehouse. As they were talking about contact with alien civilizations, Kopal grabbed Whitehouse by the arm and coldly said, “Should we ever hear the space-phone ringing, for God’s sake let us not answer. We must avoid attracting attention to ourselves.”•

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“Eventually Kare Earned A Commission From An Arkansas Museum To Sculpt A Razorback Hog Out Of Steel”

November 25, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

From Steve Silberman’s NeuroTribes post about GUI pioneer Susan Kare, who gave computer code a friendly face, creating many of the iconic images for the Apple Macintosh:

“The challenge of designing a personal computer that ‘the rest of us’ would not only buy, but fall crazy in love with, however, required input from the kind of people who might some day be convinced to try using a Mac. Fittingly, one of the team’s most auspicious early hires was a young artist herself: Susan Kare.

After taking painting lessons as a young girl and graduating from New York University with a Ph.D. in fine arts, Kare moved to the Bay Area, where she took a curatorial job at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. But she quickly felt like she was on the wrong side of the creative equation. ‘I’d go talk to artists in their studios for exhibitions,’ she recalls, ‘but I really wanted to be working in my studio.’

Eventually Kare earned a commission from an Arkansas museum to sculpt a razorback hog out of steel. That was the project she was tackling in her garage in Palo Alto when she got a call from a high-school friend named Andy Hertzfeld, who was the lead software architect for the Macintosh operating system, offering her a job.” (Thanks Browser.)

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“Robison Utters His All-Purpose Sound Of Approval — ‘Woof!’ — Which He Utters Often”

May 18, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Excellent post on the NeuroTribes blog by Steve Silberman about John Elder Robison, an author and auto mechanic with Asperger syndrome. An excerpt:

“John Elder Robison would stand out in a crowd even if he didn’t have Asperger syndrome. A gruff, powerfully built, tirelessly curious, blue-eyed bear of a man, he hurtles down a San Diego sidewalk toward a promising Mexican restaurant like an unstoppable force of nature. ‘What’s keepin’ you stragglers?’ he calls back to the shorter-legged ambulators dawdling in his wake.

As they catch up, Robison utters his all-purpose sound of approval — ‘Woof!’ — which he utters often, being a man in his middle years who is finally at peace with himself after a difficult coming-of-age. For the acclaimed author of the 2007 New York Times bestseller Look Me in the Eye, a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder in mid-life was liberating, giving a name to the nagging feeling that he was somehow different from nearly everyone around him.”

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Robison speaking at GoogleTalks:

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“He Took An Ophthalmoscope, Looked In My Eye–And Then I Saw Him Stiffen”

September 2, 2010 in Excerpts | Permalink

Oliver Sacks turned 77 in July. (Image by Erik Charlton.)

Steve Silberman of NeuroTribes has an interview with Dr. Oliver Sacks, in which the neurologist describes in painterly detail his realization that he had cancer. An excerpt:

“Steve Silberman: Oliver, what happened to you just before Christmas in 2005?

Dr. Oliver Sacks: It was a Saturday, eight days before Christmas, the 17th. It seemed just an ordinary day. I got up, went for my usual swim, and decided to go to the cinema, but as soon as the previews started, I became aware of something bizarre happening–a sort of incandescent fluttering to my left, which I took to be a visual migraine. But then I became certain that it was in my eye and not in the brain, as a migraine would be. That really alarmed me. I thought, ‘What’s happening? Am I detaching a retina? Am I going blind?’

I didn’t know what I should do about it–whether I should go to an emergency room or phone up an ophthalmologist, or stay put and see if it all settled. I did the last of these, although I couldn’t concentrate on the film. I kept testing my visual field. Then I noticed that some of the little lights showing the way out of the cinema had disappeared in front of me.

Finally, after about 20 minutes, I burst out of the theater, hoping that in the world outside, everything would look real. But it was evident to me that there was still a triangular chunk of my visual field missing, going from about nine o’clock to eleven o’clock. I phoned up a friend who asked a few questions, suggested a few tests, and then said, ‘Get yourself to an ophthalmologist ASAP.’

I did so and told my story to the ophthalmologist. He took an ophthalmoscope, looked in my eye–and then I saw him stiffen. He put down the ophthalmoscope and looked at me in a different way, a serious and concerned way. He said, ‘I see pigmentation. There’s something behind the retina. It could be a hematoma or a tumor. If it’s a tumor, it could be benign or malignant.’ Then he said, ‘Let’s consider the worst case scenario.’ I don’t know what he said after that, because a voice in my head started shouting, ‘Cancer! Cancer! Cancer!'”

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