The People of Eh

TL;DR sign this: https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-2315 (2020–03–11 update: this petition’s deadline has passed)

Imagine a jolly group of folks. We’ll call them the People of Eh.

Now imagine another smaller group. We’ll call this second group the Legislators. The Legislators are elected by and make decisions for the People of Eh. Also, the Legislators vote among themselves each time they’re making one of these decisions.

Let’s focus on one looming decision that the Legislators have to make for the People of Eh: what to do about the Crazy Experiment. The Crazy Experiment is where people change the composition of Earth’s atmosphere and see what happens.

The People of Eh are divided into three equally sized groups that each have a stance on what to do about the Crazy Experiment: the Naaah people, the Mmmkay people, and the Wtf people. The Naaah people deny the craziness of the Crazy Experiment and think everything will turn out fine. The Mmmkay people are worried about the Crazy Experiment but aren’t in any terrible rush to deal with it. The Wtf people think the Crazy Experiment is exceedingly crazy and spend a great deal of time vocalizing their name to the other two groups.

The Legislators, just like the People of Eh, are divided into three groups that each have a stance on what to do about the Crazy Experiment. However, there’s a problem: a flaw in the voting system made the three groups of Legislators unproportional to the three groups of the People of Eh, so that 14% of the Legislators represent the Wtf people, 35% represent the Naaah people, and 51% represent the Mmmkay people.

The Mmmkay Legislators are the majority (51%) of Legislators, so they make a decision about the Crazy Experiment on their own. Their decision is imposed upon both the Naaah people and the Wtf people, which, together, are 66% of the People of Eh.

Let’s call this a semi-dictatorship.

The story’s not over; what happens next for the People of Eh is crucial.

66% of the People of Eh are upset, so they ask for the voting system to be fixed. But lo and behold, the Mmmkay Legislators say no.

The voting system stays as is. This is a perfectly rational thing for the Mmmkay Legislators to do because they like their majority power, and the only reason they have their majority power is because of the flaw in the voting system.

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This represents the actual political situation in Canada. Mmmkay people are Liberal voters, Naaah people are Conservative voters, and Wtf people are Green Party and NDP voters. The Crazy Experiment is climate change.

In the election that just happened, 33% of Canadians voted Liberal, and Liberals now have a quasi-majority of members of parliament (Legislators). Here are some more fun facts: About 7% of Canadians voted Green and a whopping 1% of our members of parliament are with the Green Party. The Bloc Québécois on the other hand, also got 7% of the vote but got eleven times more members of parliament than the Green Party!

This flawed voting system is called a First-past-the-post voting system, and the fix is called a Proportional Representation voting system. And Canadians want this fix! Waaay more than half of Canadians, according to a recent poll (Angus Reid National Poll, September 2019).

In an alternate universe where the People of Eh would’ve had a Proportional Representation voting system, the Mmmkay and Wtf Legislators would have each been 33% of the Legislators and could have decided together what to do about the Crazy Experiment before it got totally out of hand.

How do we get the fix of Proportional Representation past the semi-dictators? Fortunately, there’s a way! A bunch of Canadians are presently asking our government to let Canadians who don’t have a conflict of interest make the decision about whether the voting system should be fixed. The fancy name for this process is called a citizens’ assembly. It involves the random selection of a few hundred Canadians (so that they represent the rest of us) followed by a period where they learn about the topic — with political science dweebs on hand — and then they deliberate. The end result is a recommendation from the citizens’ assembly to the government, which is to be acted upon by the government. This process has been happening all over the world for all sorts of tricky issues, and the evidence is clear that it works.

Now here’s how you can help fix the semi-dictatorship with a few clicks.

Click number one is the link below, which is a petition that’s aimed directly at the government’s ears, telling them to get the citizens’ assembly going. The next few clicks are for signing the petition. If you’re extra keen, you can make a handful more clicks for sharing the petition with others. I mean, unless you’re a semi-dictator, then go ahead and click on cat memes instead. But be warned that the rest of us will proceed to emphatically click this semi-dictatorship to justice.

The petition: https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-2315 (2020–03–11 update: this petition’s deadline has passed)

A big thanks goes to Jesse Williams for creating the art in this article.

Busting thorium myths

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

– Richard P. Feynman

This post is an old-fashioned myth busting, and the topic is thorium, the fuel that could replace uranium in our nuclear reactors. A movement has grown around it as a solution to the energy problem—in other words, as an affordable, sustainable, and clean source of energy. The myths in question are about the nuclear waste and weapons proliferation resistance characteristics of thorium. Unless you're already internet-informed about thorium, I recommend watching this TEDx video for context.

First, a disclaimer is in order: I believe we should be using closed thorium (and uranium) fuel cycles to replace existing nuclear fuel cycles and fossil fuels. My objective here is to clarify a couple of points, reducing thorium from a be-all end-all solution to a bridge solution until society is powered by some ideal mix of renewables and nuclear¹.

Two ideas popularized by thorium advocates is that closed thorium fuel cycles (1) would eliminate the nuclear waste issue and (2) are highly proliferation resistant. These ideas are an oversimplification to the point where it is morally questionable for individuals who know more to spead them. First, I will explain why it is an oversimplification to portray closed thorium fuel cycles as a conclusive solution to nuclear waste, then I will debunk claims of their proliferation resistance.

Spent nuclear fuel will be stored in deep geological repositories, so the nuclear waste issue revolves around these repositories. In the eyes of the public, the main problem with spent nuclear fuel stored in deep geological repositories is health risks for future generations. Here is where the matter goes beyond general public knowledge². There are two wholly different sources of health risks associated with these repositories:  (1) ground water transport of radioactive material into the biosphere, and (2) direct human contact with nuclear waste in the event of catastrophies. To evaluate closed thorium fuel cycles as a solution to nuclear waste, one must to evaluate how it addresses each of these two sources of risk. A Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) report titled Trends in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle does this for the more general concept of partitioning and transmutation (P&T)³:

It is generally expected that lower actinide inventories would lead to a significant reduction of the consequences of low probability accidents (i.e. increase of actinide mobility in certain geochemical situations; radiological impact of human intrusion) and might diminish the impact of uncertainties about repository performances. As P&T of actinides reduces the hazard (radiotoxicity) of the emplaced materials, it lessens the consequences of strongly disruptive scenarios that can bring man in direct contact with the disposed waste [...]. No significant advantages would, however, derive from the adoption of P&T strategies in relation to doses to the biosphere from the normal evolution scenarios of geological repositories. This is due to the dominating influence of long-lived fission and activation products on total doses.

In other words, P&T (and closed thorium fuel cycles) alleviates the health risk from direct exposure to radiotoxic waste, but not the health risk from leakage to the biosphere. Therefore, the problem of nuclear waste does not disappear for closed thorium fuel cycles, unlike the implicit message that is spread by many advocates.

Then, there is the topic of proliferation resistance. Closed thorium fuel cycles are frequently misrepresented as highly proliferation resistant. The same NEA report mentions the proliferation risks associated with closed thorium fuel cycles:  “The thorium fuel cycle is claimed to be advantageous in generating very low quantities of transuranic materials, in particular plutonium. This enhances proliferation resistance and decreases the long-term radiotoxicity burden after fission products have decayed. However, reduction of transuranics calls for recycling highly uranium-233 enriched uranium which may cause risks of proliferation.” Despite the production and isolation of bomb material (uranium-233), thorium advocates typically claim proliferation resistance based on uranium-232 contamination in the uranium-233. Uranium-232 has decay products which are strong gamma ray emitters, making the handling of the uranium-233 for weapons production difficult. However, the extent to which the presence of uranium-232 self-protects uranium-233 is often exagerrated, and there are fairly simple ways of modifying a thorium-fuelled molten salt reactor for pure uranium-233 production with no uranium-232 contamination (source).

To summarize, thorium is not a silver bullet. The reality is that the nuclear waste and proliferation aspects of P&T and closed thorium fuel cycles are a tradeoff: partly solved nuclear waste issue in exchange for proliferation risks. This is far from what many thorium advocates have been telling the public.

It's important for individuals in the nuclear community to avoid misguiding the public and governments, not only for the sake of moral righteousness but for nuclear energy experts to maintain credibility. If there is something that could improve the public's perception of nuclear power, any associated disadvantages should also be communicated.

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1 Renewables and nuclear have complementary pros and cons, and the cons of nuclear are significantly alleviated if all actinides are burned or if we use fusion instead of fission.^↩
2 I had to take a graduate course on nuclear fuel cycles in order to learn this.^↩
3 In this context, partitioning and transmutation means separation and destruction of actinides from nuclear waste. Ideal closed thorium and uranium fuel cycles involve partitioning and transmutation.^↩

A sword in the forge

 

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

– Arundhati Roy

Humanity has a habit of creating swords for itself. Some of them—like the burning of oil—started out with a single edge proudly facing outwards before revealing their second edge as we learned things. Others—such as the splitting of atoms—have been the reverse, with an inward-facing edge nearly chopping us before we managed to discover a second edge. All technological and scientific developments can be thought of in this way. They can harm us and they can benefit us; the challenge is to minimize harm while maximizing benefit.

There's a sword being created called human genetic enhancements. Now, you may think that human genetic enhancement is a far-off technology, barricaded by regulatory hurdles, and that it's almost irrelevant to our generation. With regard to directly editing human genes by snipping them up and changing them, you would be correct, but there's another way of going about it which has already hopped regulatory hurdles and is being used—it goes by the name of pre-implantation genetic screening. The idea is simple: combine some sperm and an egg, read the genome of the resulting embryo, repeat for a couple dozen embryos, then pick the embryo with the best-looking genome and implant it in the mother. Voilà, you have genetically enhanced a human. Well actually, you have genetically selected a human; you have genetically enhanced them only if you picked the right embryo. So far, we only know enough about genes to discard embryos with obvious gene-related diseases (how pre-implantation genetic screening has been used so far), and we don't yet have enough knowledge to select for things like intelligence. However, with the recently plummeted cost of full genome sequencing and our newfound ability to extract information from massive amounts of genetic data, studies about the relation between our genes and complex traits like intelligence are starting to bear fruit. In other words, we are starting to know what genes to screen for if we want to get smarter—and we already know how to do the screening.

I say we “already know how”, but there are remaining technical challenges with preimplantation genetic screening. The DNA in cells isn't like a book in a bookshelf: it's not possible to pull out the DNA from an embryo's cell, read it, and neatly tuck it back in. In preimplantation genetic screening, the current practice is to invasively remove cells from young embryos to get their genetic information, and we're not entirely sure about the long-term harm of doing this. On top of this, current preimplantation genetic screening methods are expensive, and there are epigenetic (gene expression) risks associated with the in-vitro fertilization process. However, the technology is still fairly new, and given its potential value, it's not farfetched to expect the kinks to be resolved soon. Progress is underway as I write; for example, scientists have recently been developing techniques to sequence the genome of embryos without removing cells, by sampling free-floating DNA from the liquid in and around embryos. Technical breakthroughs of this sort would decrease the cost and risk of preimplantation genetic screening, clearing the path for widespread use.

Now that we have an idea of the sword we're talking about, let's check its outward-facing edge.

The benefits of human genetic enhancements apply to society as a whole and to our individual experience of life. At the societal level, human genetic enhancements have the potential to significantly improve our economic and scientific productivity, and perhaps enable us to avoid catastrophies, such as runaway climate change. At the individual level, there is the direct benefit of improved quality of life for the enhanced. Nick Bostrom, a philosopher and proponent of human physiological and intellectual enhancement, describes the possibilities that exist:

Our own current mode of being spans but a minute subspace of what is possible or permitted by the physical constraints of the universe. It is not farfetched to suppose that there are parts of this larger space that represent extremely valuable ways of living, feeling, and thinking.

Our ego wants us to think that humans can't get much better than us. It helps to acknowledge this before contemplating the possibilities. It also helps to critically examine human traits. Consider the mental traits that served a purpose for hunters and gatherers, but that no longer serve a purpose and are now detrimental—for example, our capability for barbaric violence. You may think that the Germans who massacred Jews or the Rwandans who massacred Tutsis are somehow different than us—that there is no way we would commit such acts—but the sad reality is that we have the same biology, and given exposure to the same environment (life experience, etc.), any of us could very well have committed the same atrocities. This aspect of human nature is one of many that are dissatisfying and for which riddance could be morally justified.

Now, how about the inward-facing edge?

Opponents to human genetic enhancements have warned that we might inadvertently eliminate valuable human traits. For example, if we genetically select to reduce our tendency for violence, we might unintentionally reduce our tendency for innovation (genetics can be bizarre in this way). One could argue that this isn't a flaw in human genetic enhancements, but a flaw in our understanding of how to do the enhancements, and that we may eventually have enough knowledge about genes for there to be practically no inadvertent consequences. This hoped-for level of knowledge is overly idealist, at least in the near future, but it cannot be dismissed as unattainable.

Another concern is loss of beneficial genetic diversity. With the natural approach to procreation, genetic experiments are imposed by the randomness of nature. But will people want to experiment if they have the option not to? It's possible that the use of genetic selection would deny existence to many desirable genetic outliers. If Einstein's parents knew his genome while he was in a petri dish and were less sure of him being a functional human compared to a sibling embryo, perhaps we'd still be clueless about spacetime¹.

Beyond questions of human diversity and of the reliability of our genetic understanding, issues of individual liberties arise. Should parents be allowed to select the genes of their children with the children unable to give consent? In the modern world, governments can only interfere with how children are raised when it avoids significant, predictable harm. For example, one cannot deny their children from going to school or give them an embarrassing name. However, parents have the freedom to inflict harm to their children in numerous ways, but they are trusted not to because parents generally have the best interests of their children in mind. We could take a similarly moderate approach to regulating what genetic selections parents would be allowed to make by banning selections that risk being harmful while allowing selections that are predictably beneficial.

Now here's where the sword gets sharp. If some countries allow genetic enhancements while others don't, the term human species will regain its plural sense; society will branch into genetically stratified tiers. Based on historical trends, this would lead to violence and suffering. The only way to avoid genetic branching is by making sure everyone is on the same page about what is acceptable and what isn't, and by making the genetic enhancements that are allowed universally available throughout the world's population, so that everyone remains as genetically similar as possible. The extent of what is allowed can range from no genetic enhancements (banned) to the technical limits of what we know how to do.

At this point, I should make a distinction: There is genetic selection for enhancement and genetic selection for therapy. Enhancement is improvement beyond the norm, and therapy is restoration to the norm. Up to now, I've focused on genetic enhancements, but much of the above applies to both. Also, it's worth noting that the line between the two is blurry. For example, is reducing the probability of mental health issues therapy or enhancement? And is reducing the probability of old-age diseases—and thereby extending lifetime—therapy or enhancement? Despite the blurriness of the line, the distinction is useful because genetic selection for enhancement and genetic selection for therapy occupy different ethical realms, and as a result, regulations treat them very differently.

Preimplantation genetic screening for therapy is already allowed in many countries and even encouraged in some. If adoption increases and current regulatory attitudes are maintained, we will lose the option of universally banning genetic selection for therapy. The logical next step will be to minimize harm by making the procedures that are allowed as available as possible to everyone. This may require a sort of international, universal health care system that provides preimplantation genetic screening services. However, the pressure for universalization comes predominantly from genetic selection for enhancement because intellectual differences are linked to wealth and power, and physical differences create falsely perceived differences, hence racism². Preimplantation genetic screening for enhancement is generally banned as of this writing, and this is largely due to it being ethically questionable, but generally is not enough. To prevent genetic stratification, regulations must be the same everywhere.

In theory, the solutions of universal banning or adoption sound clever, but in practice, massive international coordination about controversial topics doesn't happen easily. If even just one country bans or allows genetic selection against the consensus, branching is guaranteed. As Hank Greely, director of the Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford, put it, “There are roughly 200 countries in the world. If 199 ban it, that’s a great commercial opportunity for the 200th”. Ideally, action will be either unanimous or imposed with international law.

Nonetheless, we have practical conclusions: humanity should decide the extent of allowable genetic selections (both for therapy and enhancement), make those that are accepted universally available, and enforce the ban on those that aren't. The easiest time to implement global rules on genetic selections is before the technology matures and before an elite genetic class starts taking shape. It follows that there's an urgent need for conversation about what should be banned and what should be allowed, and for collective action to prevent genetic stratification of our society.

Humanity faces few challenges of comparable importance as that of how we will handle our ability to modify ourselves. How we learn to deal with this newfound power will have massive consequences for the likely trillions of future human lives. As we work towards a solution, disagreement is to be expected, as one would expect for the topic of fundamental changes to who we are. What is crucial is that we enliven the back-and-forth because the reality is that a sword is in the forge.

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1 Although genetic selection for intelligence could eventually make Einsteins more likely.^↩
2 Granted, the greater need for universalization doesn't apply to all physical and mental traits (for example, society is unlikely to stratify based on people's sense of smell).^↩

Why?

“Why” is the only question which bothers people enough to have an entire letter of the alphabet named after it.

– Douglas Adams

“Why?”, a question that if asked and answered a sufficient number of times, leads to the fundamentals of nature. It is the question at the heart of science—in fact, science is the process of answering it. Science is the exploration of causality, and for some, it is a view on life and what we ought to do with it.

Perhaps we can understand the limits of science before discovering them. For example, we can ask ourselves about the limits to the question “why?”. There are two conceptual boundaries to this question: absence of cause and infinite causality. Think about both for long enough and you'll be unable to choose the more absurd of the two. Here, I'll look into both, starting with absence of cause.

Most people believe in the existence of a cause that does not have a cause of its own, often called God. There is a distasteful implication to causelessness: if the first link in the chain of causality exists without reason, the whole chain exists without reason. Another sort of absence of cause is where nothing exists, including causes. However, we know that our consciousness (at least one thing) exists, so we can move on to more interesting things like infinite causality.

Infinite causality is the question “why?” endlessly, creating a sort of chain or web of causality. I invite you to ponder the concept. Now perhaps the chain makes a loop, but then what causes the loop to exist? The chain has no end if everything has a cause.

It takes effort to grasp the concept of inifinity. We do not experience infinity in our everyday lives, and therefore, it's intrinsically non-intuitive. Similarly to analogies for concepts in quantum mechanics, analogies for infinity are simplistic. Truly understanding is difficult and potentially impossible, but we can at least make an effort to grasp its implications.

What if causality was infinite? What would that mean for science? Well, if the purpose of science is to discover the unknown, but discovery is unlimited, science becomes an act of satisfying desires rather than the pursuit of a concrete, attainable goal. In other words, science becomes a journey with no destination. This doesn't mean that science isn't worthwhile; rather, it's something to keep in mind when thinking about science. If causality was infinite, the physicists working on grand theories of everything would in fact be working on, and always would be working on, grand theories of not-quite-everything.

So we're left with the two concepts: infinite causality and finite causality. Either we can't know the reason for our existence or we exist for no reason. It sounds depressing, but of course, conclusions like this should never be taken too seriously. As Nicolaus Copernicus put it, “To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.”

Sailing in Yosemite

Life is more skillfully lived when one sails a boat rather than rowing it.

– Alan Watts 

Not only had I set sail, but I had practically chucked my oars into the ocean. After nearly giving up on the idea of a trip to Yosemite, the inspiration to buy train tickets came from a half-joking observation of the day we'd be arriving: Christmas. Surely the Yosemite Valley Chapel would be open and offering shelter on the day of giving. Aamod and I high-fived over the seemingly brilliant idea. I knew that improvised travelling was fun, but this was pushing past that and into the territory of chance—arriving at night in an unknown place, no tent, negative temperatures, and wilderness. Regardless, we were committed.

We departed the following day, wishing everyone merry Christmas while quenching our thirst for adventure. A train took us from Berkeley to Merced where we transferred onto a bus and found ourselves coasting into the Sierras. The comforting lights of civilization were far behind, and the only indication of anything outside the bus was the moon hanging in my window. A couple of hours later, snow appeared and the forest became visible. The bus had slowed, accepting its vulnerability while reminding us of ours.

Before long, the bus had arrived and my unease was swept away by the mountain air. With a flimsy valley map in hand, we set off for the Chapel. As we walked down a snow covered path, the evergreens cleared to reveal immense granite cliffs and a starry sky. The full moon had exposed Yosemite's landscape with unexpected clarity. I couldn't help but mumble “wow” over and over again. It was a humbling experience, as if we were watching a bear sleep in majestic silence—the king of the land performing a tender act.

It took some time for my impulsively overactive mind to calm down. Attempts to photograph the beauty were futile—in the darkness, my camera stood no chance of competing with the human eye. The failed pictures acted as a gentle reminder to let go. At that moment, a Japanese proverb came to mind, “When in the mountains, one forgets to count the days.” Nodding to myself, I slipped into a state of peace and let the concept of time drift away.

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The winds of life guided us better than I could have ever hoped. The Chapel welcomed us with warmth and silence, its yellow light contrasting with the bluish grey of the surrounding cliffs. The simple construction was nestled in snow-covered trees, belonging where it stood as if it were as old as the forest itself.

Aamod led the way as we cautiously entered the Chapel's dimly lit hall. Neither of us spoke a word. The interior was as simple as one would expect from a small Chapel in the mountains, but it inspired respect worthy of a grand cathedral. A grand piano lay in the corner, tempting me to break silence with its sound. I came up with the barely justified reason of verifying that we were alone and began playing. Laughter and music resonated in our newfound home—a home that in all its simplicity, felt decidedly superior to anything else on the planet.

And so the day came to an end; we lowered our sails and settled into our sleeping bags. Perhaps oars shouldn't be thrown into the ocean, but once in awhile, there's nothing better than forgetting they exist and bracing for the wind.