Using Technology to Counter Existential Threats

in science •  8 years ago  (edited)

Breaking News! You need to protect yourself against the world ending solar flare, brought about by the global illuminati from their base in antarctica, who are being mind controlled by the lizard people!
http://www.inquisitr.com/3450981/global-elite-prepare-for-imminent-solar-storm-apocalypse-thousands-flee-to-underground-antarctica-bases-according-to-conspiracy-theorists-video/

Note to conspiracy theorists:
The most dangerous place on earth to be during a solar flare is anywhere near the poles.
Obviously the lizard people are smarter than that!
Clearly their plan is to cook and eat the Illuminati by using solar flares, yum!
Side note, best way to cook a potato is to wrap it in tinfoil.

Ok so let's assume a Carrington Event, or Lizard People tampering with our genome or insert other world ending phenomenon is actually something we wanted to protect against.

In all honesty our greatest immediate existential threat is going to come from someone deciding to edit the flu or the common cold into something much worse because,
We're all heathens and the god of living love and light who loves all of humanity equally, told him that it's time to hit the reset button on creation.
We're not going to be able to reason with people like that.
Fortunately, most of them will win darwin awards trying.

Yet there are enough people who think that way, and unfortunately they appear to be increasing in number at an alarming rate. The USA has a choice between two isolationist xenophobes for president and that's only going to make this situation worse. Odds are we have about 10 years before this becomes a regular threat and frankly that isn't very long.

So how could we "reboot our entire species" or even just repair the damage if needed?

First of all, we would need a "seedbank". A place to store our genetic information, a sort of genetic Noah's Ark.
Fortunately evolution only works because life has these restore from backup tools built in already.
We just need to take advantage of that. However, storing stem cells forever is not a viable solution. There is just too much that could go horribly, horribly wrong (note to all males, that man is now the worlds most prolific father).

So what if you wanted to store your entire genome instead of stem cells or zygotes?
We can work out the restore process later, but I have a feeling the answer will be found with something like CRISPR, which oddly enough is where we're going to be seeing these threats coming from as well.

The fact is, I believe we could restore from a backup, but first we need to perform a backup.


This isn't scifi, it's here right now and it looks like this...

These guys have a "home version", by the way.

This begs the question, Exactly how big is your genome?

It's only 1.5GB, for your entire genome and it could be derived in a weekend for a couple thousand dollars.
This means that you could store yourself, and your favorite data in the free space on your phone right now.

But what if you wanted to backup more than just yourself?
This is where it gets really interesting.
What if I told you, that the differences between you and anyone else on earth would fit on a floppy disk?

Wait, you're old enough to remember those, right?

Of course those are only the deltas from a base human genome, but once you have a base genome it's just not very much space. By comparison, the bible is about 5MB and I know people who have that book memorized!

At 1.4MB this means you could easily carry your entire family around with you on a thumb drive.
Heck that tiny and you could embed a persons' entire unique genetic code each time you take a picture of them using steganography.

However your phone and even your thumb drive would be destroyed in a Carrington Event. So how would you protect against that?
Furthermore, how would you protect against the lizard people, or anyone for that matter tampering with your genome after the fact?

Ever consider the blockchain???

How much space would you take up on the blockchain?
You'd take up the same amount of space you do now, about 1.4MB.
Yet you would be globally distributed and there would be enough redundancy that no amount of damage could really "delete you".

Also there would be a cryptographic "tamper proof seal" on your genome, which would prevent tampering with this data while at rest.

So now you know my plan.
Start by uploading our genome to a blockchain, and then as it becomes possible, we store our connectome there as well.
This isn't science fiction, but it isn't science fact yet. It's just science now.
We can build a seedbank for humanity and we can do it within a generation.

On the other hand...


We may ...

well be ...

doomed...

Either way, I think that this is where I will be directing my energies in the long term.
I'm going to start a project here shortly, with the very serious goal of providing a sort of immune system to humanity against existential threats. I really hope you'll join me and I'll announce it here when I get the details of the project online.

I know some people are going to say that I'm crazy or that this is the sign of a god complex, or at least a messiah complex.

I have no answer for that, I just know that this feels right to me.

A special shout out goes to my wife who keeps stressing to me that we are SO much more than our genetics, which is truth, our brain has a capacity in the zettabyte range.
Happy Anniversary Sweety!

Another shoutout goes to @gonzo who's deeply disturbing series Darkside of The Blockchain provided me with the pieces of the puzzle I've been missing. He may well be speaking the truth there.

Remember...
Jesus saves!

You should too, so make a backup!

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I FUCKING LOVE THOUGHTY2!!! :P :P awesome!

Interesting but what about our memories, surely there is more memory and data in our subconscious brains to just fit into a thumb drive?

You will be able to do a backup of it later on in the future.

@profitgenerator
There is the connectome project to map the mind, but I don't know if that's the right answer.
I think the correct answer will be found in neural prosthetics or nano tech.
But consider someone who writes a virus say the common cold, to say turn off your cell duplication machinery..
With a backup of your genome it becomes possible to repair the damage.
Difficult, but possible.

Furthermore, with a copy of your own genome you can deep dive and find things you didn't know you had. Such as a genetic disposition to diabetes. If you know this stuff is there you can take proactive measures prevent it.

What the future holds, no one knows for sure. But the future will be interesting for sure.
Here is a very very interesting video.

@echoesinthemind
Yes and that video is saying everything I'm saying.
It's incredible but it scares the crap out of me too :D
When modifying a program, the first thing you should do is take a backup.
If you don't mind I'm going to add that to my posting.

No problem go for it. Not mine to begin with lol but its information that everyone should know. (:

I am not sure if this data is correct, but i remember watching a few scientific videos about the brain and they said that a mind could contain exabytes of information, as the subsonscious is way more advanced than the conscious brain.

I am not sure how accurate that number is but, i dont think it's that easy to save a mind.

This means I will exist as long as the internet exists!!! (:
Is that what religion talks about when they say eternal life?? :p

you don't actually believe any of this, do you?

@lifeworship
You mean that some nutter is going to hack the flu in an effort to kill everyone? Yeah i believe that poses an existential threat that is unlikely to be counterable.

Also it's just cool to have your genetic information available on demand. This tech has really wide applicability and frankly keeping good backups of everything is always good practice.

Lizard people? No but it's my term for anyone who's trying to do bad things for motives we can't comprehend.

the microbial threat is a thing of the past. the information to avert it is to be found online if people educate themselves. the flus and zika and ebola etc. are propaganda used to instill fear and diminish our rights as individuals. it is used so they can justify the idea that an individual is a threat to everyone else whether it can be proved or not, whether it is active malice or not, making everyone suspect. the answers are out there if we only take the time to educate ourselves how to find them and then do it. i recommend, start with the trivium method and go from there. gene screening is great, as it gets cheaper, it becomes more useful and powerful. by humanity needing an immune system do you mean intellectually or physically?
also, i usually go with the term, controllers, so i don't drive off anyone who is open.

You are sir, a most fascinating person. Respect.

@onetree
Thanks! Appreciate that!

How would you save your genome or DNA on the blockchain? This is written as though this is a known procedure, but it's never been done. How would it even be written down or recorded?

On the other hand, do you think it is possible to look at a person's DNA and view the DNA of specific ancestors? It's all recorded inside us, could we look at individuals of our ancestry?

@casandrarose
There's nothing really magical about a blockchain. It's just a massively distributed database that provides certain cryptographic guarantees.

You're correct in that this hasn't been done before. That just means someone has to go first. So I guess that's me and anyone else who wants to go along for the ride.

Right now we have the ability to sequence an entire human genome over the course of a weekend and for the cost of a thousand dollars or so.
What you get back from the process is a binary encoded data file which is your unique genome.
This can then be fed to something like CRISPR which would then make the alterations to restore the pattern to normal in living tissue.

As to your other question. It should be possible to view the DNA of ancestors as well as long as that ancestor has enough descendants.
Example the article I linked described a man who worked at a fertility clinic for 20 years.
He replaced his clients semen with his own.

Not just once or twice, but every day for 20 years.

It's estimated he has thousands of children. If life were a game, this man won it. His genetic line will probably NEVER die out. Believe it or not, my solution would actually prevent that sort of thing in the future.

Anyways if you want to find his genetic sequence, you would only need about 10 of his descendants, that should be enough to isolate his genes. The further back you go and the less certain the ancestry gets.
Mormons have a huge advantage here though. They keep excellent genealogical records.

Imagine for some reason a church decided to "backup" all of it's followers. They would probably be able to bring about a literal resurrection of anyone who had ever been a member so long as that member had living descendants. A sort of Jurassic Park for people.
I know it's creepy, scary and weird. I'm not condoning it, just saying that it is possible.

But even that is more like a "twin", than a copy. You would need the mind and that gets so much more complicated.
In the end, I think we're going to find the human mind is able to be stored in far less space than we think is possible right now. Just like you can store your entire family's genetic records in a high resolution portrait of them with simple steganographic techniques. I think the mind, which is actively able to envision it's own transfer, probably has the ability to be compressed in some similar way.

Like the idea of storing people on a blockchain.

@williambanks
This post is not related to the topic at hand.
Just wanted to ask you if you would like to play a game.
I think it could be very interesting and could potentially change how we engage with the community also attract new users.
Forget PkmnGo here is SteemGo
https://steemit.com/steemit/@echoesinthemind/the-game-proof-of-concept#comments

Well, why do you think we're doomed?
And also I don't think we need to have a backup for everybody on this planet - it's overpopulated, and such a data brings not much good for humans as a species.

@zaebars
As a species we're probably not doomed. But someone will take the same technology we're using right now to fix genetic ailments and they will use it to cause new ailments.

Perhaps we are overpopulated, I would disagree with that. I think our density in certain areas is too high to be sustainable, but you could very easily take every human on earth right now and give them over 1,000 acres of land and there would be plenty left over.

But let's assume the malthusians are right.
Who gets to choose who lives and who dies? You? Me?

It's more than life or death though.
Data about your genome is just health information. If someone actively does damage or you accidentally do damage, how would it not be a good thing to restore your genome from a known good copy?

Who dies decide nature, not the individuals and that's okay, because every population of biological life has it's ups and downs - thats what i meant.
To restore from a copy isn't that necessary. Like if you recreate mammoth now (there is such a possibility), would it be any better to ecosystem as a whole?

@zaebars
Last I checked we are nature. Nature has decided so long as we have decided.
If I make an active choice to copy my genetic information in order that one day this genetic information will continue on again. Then it doesn't matter what form I store that in, whether it is by having children, by freezing my zygotic cells, preserving my stem cells, or taking the ultimate selfie.

Either way if it works, it will mean that I decided to make it work and because I am as much a part of nature as anything else in the physical universe, it will mean that nature has decided that this is as well.

On a side note, don't anthropomorphize nature, she hates it when you do that. :D

Probably:)
But still, every year humanity consume so much resources, that we are living in debt - so if the growth of population will continue with this speed, future us (in any form) will be not so happy, even if you "take every human on earth right now and give them over 1,000 acres of land " it doesn't help - resources like food and clean water are already quite limited.

@zaebars
The line about "perhaps we are doomed", was just showing that the current generation has learned to take technology for granted so much that they have lost the ability to question it. We're not doing a great job of educating our kids if they represent any sort of baseline.
Also it's just fun, every generation thinks the next generation is going to muck things up. It's a hobby our species has had since before we first came down out of the trees.

Every next generation is different - because it's evolving.
Yes, their perception has changed - but it opens more routs to go forward, looking back somethimes but not too much.
We're using a front-row technology here, on Steemit, not even fully realizing how it's going to apply to future reality - and it's okay if we're going to forget something on the way - new is coming.

@zaebars
I know but the videos are still fun to watch. Eye opening really.

Why not just make all possible combinations for the human genome, this way you don't have to go around and scoop everyone's genome.

@pompe72
Well a number of reasons. First off, this isn't about scooping anyone's genome up. This is telling people that they have access right now to their own genome. There are enough existential threats in the world it might be wise to take a backup.

Secondly, not all possible combinations are viable. Why bother with something like that? If continuation beyond the mayfly stage is important to people they can now do it. That wasn't possible before, it is now. But it's up to them to take responsibility for themselves. :D

Yeah what's to stop people then to not only supply their own genomes, but also those of defunked loved ones fron the past? We could possibly reincarnate famous people, Napoleon, Julius Caesar and why not even Jesus if we had the data.

@pompe72
I'm not at all certain that's really a problem. The point is their genetic info would be under their own lock and key meaning it would be assigned to them by them. The point being to disallow anyone else from tampering with it.

If they wanted to extract Jesus's genome from the shroud of turin and reprogram their genome to match him using that as a base reference. I don't think we could stop them or even would want to.

We aren't saying "you are your genome", we are saying that "only you have the right to determine which genome runs on your molecular machinery".

These are vastly different concepts. It's possible this could cause issues later on. I have a suspicion though that radically altering your own genome in order to impersonate someone you are not could have dire consequences.

Then again so does having plastic surgery to look like your favorite TV or Movie star.

Then you're separating your soul (so to speak) from your genome, so I can put my soul into the genome of my cat if I want.

@pompe72
I think it may be possible to put the information that is you into the genome that is your cat. However just like you can't run a program written for an XBone on an NES very well or at all, I have my doubts your software will run on your cat's hardware.