Freeman Dyson: How We Know [information theory]

There's a great review article by Freeman Dyson in the New York Review of Books, who provides a summary of James Gleick's new book, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood. It's a somewhat longish article, but worth the read; information theory continues to be a particularly fascinating era of inquiry:

The explosive growth of information in our human society is a part of the slower growth of ordered structures in the evolution of life as a whole. Life has for billions of years been evolving with organisms and ecosystems embodying increasing amounts of information. The evolution of life is a part of the evolution of the universe, which also evolves with increasing amounts of information embodied in ordered structures, galaxies and stars and planetary systems. In the living and in the nonliving world, we see a growth of order, starting from the featureless and uniform gas of the early universe and producing the magnificent diversity of weird objects that we see in the sky and in the rain forest. Everywhere around us, wherever we look, we see evidence of increasing order and increasing information. The technology arising from Shannon’s discoveries is only a local acceleration of the natural growth of information.
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The vision of the future as an infinite playground, with an unending sequence of mysteries to be understood by an unending sequence of players exploring an unending supply of information, is a glorious vision for scientists. Scientists find the vision attractive, since it gives them a purpose for their existence and an unending supply of jobs. The vision is less attractive to artists and writers and ordinary people. Ordinary people are more interested in friends and family than in science. Ordinary people may not welcome a future spent swimming in an unending flood of information. A darker view of the information-dominated universe was described in a famous story, “The Library of Babel,” by Jorge Luis Borges in 1941.3 Borges imagined his library, with an infinite array of books and shelves and mirrors, as a metaphor for the universe.

The Atlantic on Freeman Dyson's global warming skepticism

Kenneth Brower of The Atlantic has penned a piece about the life and work of physicist Freeman Dyson, "The Danger of Cosmic Genius."

In the range of his genius, Freeman Dyson is heir to Einstein—a visionary who has reshaped thinking in fields from math to astrophysics to medicine, and who has conceived nuclear-propelled spaceships designed to transport human colonists to distant planets. And yet on the matter of global warming he is, as an outspoken skeptic, dead wrong: wrong on the facts, wrong on the science. How could someone as smart as Dyson be so dumb about the environment? The answer lies in his almost religious faith in the power of man and science to bring nature to heel.

Brower comes down hard on Dyson, particularly for what he sees as his misplaced faith in science and technology:

“Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion,” Dyson complains in his 2008 New York Review of Books essay on global warming. This is far too gloomy an assessment. The secular sect on the rise at the moment is Dyson’s own. A 2009 Pew poll found that only 57 percent of Americans believe there is solid evidence that the world is getting warmer, down 20 points from three years before. In response to climate change, we have seen a proliferation of proposals for geo-engineering solutions that are Dysonesque in scale and improbability: a plan to sow the oceans with iron to trigger plankton blooms, which would absorb carbon dioxide, die, and settle to the sea floor. A plan to send a trillion mirrors into orbit to deflect incoming sunlight. A plan to launch a fleet of robotic ships to whip up sea spray and whiten the clouds. A plan to mimic the planet-cooling sulfur-dioxide miasmas of explosive volcanoes, either by an artillery barrage of sulfur-dioxide aerosol rounds fired into the stratosphere or by high-altitude blimps hauling up 18-mile hoses.

None of these projects will happen, fortunately. They promise side effects, backfirings, and unintended consequences on a scale unknown in history, and we lack the financial and political wherewithal, and the international comity, to accomplish them anyway. What is disquieting is not their likelihood, but what they reveal about the persistence of belief in the technological fix. The notion that science will save us is the chimera that allows the present generation to consume all the resources it wants, as if no generations will follow. It is the sedative that allows civilization to march so steadfastly toward environmental catastrophe. It forestalls the real solution, which will be in the hard, nontechnical work of changing human behavior.

What the secular faith of Dysonism offers is, first, a hypertrophied version of the technological fix, and second, the fantasy that, should the fix fail, we have someplace else to go.

Read more.

Freeman Dyson at TED: We can look for life in the outer solar system

Renowned theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson suggests that we can look for life on the moons of Jupiter and out past Neptune, in the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud. He talks about what such life would be like (e.g. creatures that look like lenses and mirrors with roots that go deep into the ocean) and how we might find them.


Dyson is one of my favorite people in the whole world -- one of the great minds of our time. I'm overjoyed that he's still going strong well into his 80's.

Matter and Beyond explores transhumanism [video]

Matter and Beyond, an online TV show that explores the intersection of science and spirituality, has produced an episode on transhumanism that features IEET Executive Director James Hughes and renowned physicist Freeman Dyson. The 30-minute video covers such topics as human trait selection, performance enhancement and artificial wombs.

Program description:

From our ancient myths that included stories about Greek gods such as Zeus, to modern day superhuman heroes such as the bionic woman, Superman and Batman, human beings have been fascinated with the idea of being more than a mere mortal.

Transhumanism is a discipline that is concerned with the social and scientific implications of overcoming human limitations. It is now possible, with the use of technological and bio-medical innovations, to live longer, be stronger and transcend the limitations that human beings have faced since the beginning of existence. But what are the moral and ethical implications?

From steroids to designer babies to artificial wombs, our leading thinkers discuss the ethical and moral implications of bio-technology and nanotechnology. Dr. Gayle Woloschak Woloschak questions whether technologies and pharmaceuticals that enhance human abilities be available to people who don’t necessarily need them for therapeutic use – but rather simply to be stronger – as in the case of steroid use. And while we are in the process of developing bio-medical techniques that allow us to order up any kind of baby we desire, Ethicist Dr. Freeman Dyson believes we may be going too far. He points out that some people would be willing to spend any amount of money and use any means necessary to order exactly the kind of baby they desire. While some have viewed that there are obvious natural limits to what human beings should do with their biology or their brains, Ethicist Dr. James Hughes points out that the view of these natural limits has shifted historically – as in the case of invitro fertilization which 30 years ago was known as ‘test tube” babies is now considered a common practice. Join us for a fascinating look at the exciting possibilities and some terrifying concerns arising out of innnovations in biotechnology.

Freeman Dyson on the 'religion of environmentalism'

Physicist Freeman Dyson reviews A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies and Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto in the New York Times Review of Books.

Says Dyson,

"All the books that I have seen about the science and economics of global warming, including the two books under review, miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific. There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.

Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.

Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate. Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true. Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, their arguments on these issues deserve to be heard."