Ten Random Ideas

It's been a while since I posted a new blog entry. Since I don't have any specific subject on my mind today, I thought I would just share ten random facts, theories, or ideas that I find fascinating:

1. Dark matter and dark energy – We have no idea what 96% of the universe is made of. Physicists confirm that only about 4% of the universe is composed of the familiar matter that we're accustomed to. Another 24% is made up of dark matter (which only interacts with regular matter via gravity), and 72% is made up of dark energy (which is a repulsive force that causes space itself to expand). But we have no clue what dark energy or dark matter are.

2. Toba Catastrophe Theory - Approximately 70,000 years ago, a supervolcano erupted on Lake Toba, on the island of Sumatra in present-day Indonesia. This eruption was so unimaginably enormous that it blanketed all of South Asia in 15 centimeters of ash, and put enough ash into the atmosphere to cause a volcanic winter, which abruptly changed the entire planet's climate for several decades. At this time, humanity nearly went extinct - the entire human population may have been reduced to just 1,000 breeding pairs, creating a bottleneck in human evolution. We are all descended from the few survivors of this apocalypse.

3. String theory - Why don't the rules of physics that apply to macroscopic objects (i.e. the theory of relativity) seem to apply to particles (i.e. quantum mechanics) and vice versa? Since macroscopic objects are composed of particles, it would stand to reason that they should. String theory attempts to reconcile these two sets of laws by postulating that at an extremely tiny scale (much smaller than subatomic particles), the universe is made up of tiny vibrating strings. Different vibrations produce different kinds of particles. It also calls for the existence of 6 or 7 extra dimensions, which we don't notice in our every day lives because they are so tiny. So far there is zero evidence that string theory is correct, but it has widespread support among physicists due to its mathematical elegance. This is one of the first serious scientific hypotheses to be considered not because the evidence necessarily suggests it is correct (at least not yet), but because physicists believe that the universe “should” be simple. If it proves to be right, it may call for us to reevaluate how scientific theories should be developed.

4. Happiness Economics - For the last 200 years, economists have mostly measured wellbeing in terms of money, such as measurements like GDP. While this is often a good approximation of human wellbeing, it's a crude tool. Consider that Russia and Mexico have approximately the same GDP per capita, yet Mexicans consistently report being much happier than Russians do. Maybe the next big shift in economics is to determine the policies most likely to improve a population's happiness, rather than assuming that more GDP growth will do the trick.

5. Self-driving cars - The transportation industry is about to see its biggest game-changing revolution since the invention of the automobile itself. Self-driving cars are being tested by Google, Stanford University, Carnegie-Mellon, and every major automobile manufacture. They're already on the road being tested, but aren't commercially available yet. They should be by 2017-2020. This will radically change the way we live our lives. It will eliminate most of the 40,000 annual traffic fatalities in the United States, which are mostly caused by human error. It will free us from the stresses of daily commutes, and allow us to do things other than watch the road. And for many people it will eliminate the need for car ownership entirely, as it will be easy to simply summon a car to pick you up whenever you need one.

6. Biology causing mass extinctions - It turns out that we humans are not the first species in the history of the earth to single-handedly wreck the planet's climate. We share that distinction with at least two others: Cyanobacteria and Azolla Ferns. 2.4 billion years ago when life was very primitive and microbial, there wasn't much oxygen in the atmosphere. Therefore, nearly all species were anaerobic - they had evolved in conditions of very little oxygen. Over time, a species of cyanobacteria began to proliferate which excreted oxygen as a waste product. This changed the composition of the earth's atmosphere and poisoned nearly all of the anaerobic species, resulting in the extinction of most types of life on earth. More recently, a mere 49 million years ago the earth had an extremely warm climate, in which ferns were able to grow as far north as the arctic. They began proliferating around the Arctic Ocean, sucking up lots of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and then sinking to the bottom of the ocean when they died. This sudden reduction in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere caused global cooling, which eventually turned the entire planet from a greenhouse into an icehouse.

7. Simulation Hypothesis - Is our reality a simulation, like The Matrix? Transhumanist philosopher Nick Bostrom thinks so. Consider the following argument: If we assume that it is possible to create simulated worlds, and that at least one species somewhere in the universe would like to do so, then we are almost certainly living in such a simulation. Why? Because such a civilization would be likely to create multiple simulations (some of which might be running simulations of their own), and so probability would dictate that it's far more likely we are living in one such simulation than in the "original" universe. You can be the judge as to how compelling you find this argument...but I can't find any obvious flaws in the logic.

8. Post-scarcity - Assuming that we don't blow ourselves up and that we don't encounter civilization-wrecking climate change in the next few decades, we will soon enter into an age of abundance where virtually everyone has access to the basic necessities of life. This is due to a convergence of several trends. As genomics improves, we will soon be able to grow meat in laboratories and grow crops hydroponically, eliminating the need for most farms/ranches, ensuring a stable food supply, giving the environment a much-needed breather from the damage we've done, and freeing up freshwater to be used for humans. As solar energy improves (the capacity is growing exponentially), it will soon be able to compete dollar-for-dollar with fossil fuels...and soon thereafter leave fossil fuels in the dust. Education will become much cheaper due to effective online tools that are finally becoming available, and the subsequent end of the 19th/20th century model of education. Health care will become much better due to effective personalized medicine, which will proliferate as it finally becomes affordable to have your genome sequenced.

9. VY Canis Majoris - The scale of some of the objects in our universe is so unimaginably vast that it's difficult for us to comprehend. The largest known star is called VY Canis Majoris, and it's located about 4,000 light-years away from us. It's so big that if it were placed in the middle of our solar system, its surface would extend beyond the orbit of Saturn and it could hold over a billion suns (or 11 quadrillion earths). Wow. That's big.

10. The hidden potential of the human brain - Some people (usually with autism) have a rare mental condition called synesthesia, where the senses get mixed up due to neural connections in the brain getting routed to the wrong place. This may take the form of associating numbers with specific shapes or colors, or associating certain sounds with textures or smells. Synesthetes are often capable of amazing feats, such as memorizing pi to tens of thousands of digits or creating beautiful works of art with little training. It is thought that we all have these astounding abilities somewhere within our brain, but we can't access it because we don't yet understand how our brains work enough to unlock those neural pathways.

The Economics of Happiness

The underlying assumption of modern economics has always been the notion that having more things makes people better off. Economists of all ideologies - from Adam Smith to Karl Marx, from John Maynard Keynes to Milton Friedman - have implicitly accepted this assumption, even while arguing with one another over the best way to optimize the production or distribution of things. In the last few years, an emerging field of economic theory, Happiness Economics, is finally challenging that assumption. By asking people in many different nations, economic conditions, and social groups if they are happy with their lives, economists are yielding some very interesting results.

Can money buy happiness? It turns out that it can, but only up to a point. In the United States, the poor are far less happy than everyone else, but there is no significant difference in self-reported happiness between the middle-class and the wealthy. Although the American economy is vastly larger today than it was immediately after World War II, self-reported happiness levels have remained stagnant. This pattern is observed on a global scale as well. The least happy places on earth are typically impoverished, war-torn nations, but the wealthiest nations are not necessarily any happier than middle-income nations. Once a nation is economically developed enough to meet the basic needs of its citizens, the relationship between national income and national happiness ceases to exist. (EDIT: Some researchers disagree, claiming that more income does indeed tend to result in more happiness.)

The happiest nation in the world is Costa Rica, which has a GDP per capita that is less than one-fourth that of the United States, and an average life expectancy that is roughly the same as the United States’. This pattern is widespread in Latin America. Although most Latin American nations are middle-income nations, the region as a whole is extremely happy. The opposite pattern manifests itself in Eastern Europe and Russia. These nations are upper-middle income, but report extremely low levels of subjective happiness.

So if money can’t buy happiness, what causes people to be happy or unhappy? Research indicates that married people are happier than single people, religious people are happier than non-religious people, and those with more leisure time are happier than workaholics. People who donate their time and money to charity are happier than those who don’t.

On the national level, there does not appear to be any relationship between political freedom and happiness, once income is controlled for. Some of the happiest nations – such as Venezuela and Saudi Arabia – are hardly poster children for democracy and human rights. National happiness seems to be driven primarily by the same factors that drive individual happiness: Happy marriages, active religions, workers who have leisure time, a culture of charity, and enough income to avoid poverty.

In 1972, the King of Bhutan coined the term “Gross National Happiness” as his preferred metric for judging his nation’s progress. Although it was ridiculed at the time, tiny Bhutan is now one of the happiest nations on earth: an enclave of happiness nestled between much less happy nations like China, India, and Bangladesh. Many other nations are now investigating “Gross National Happiness” metrics of their own, including Brazil, Italy, and Canada. Maybe the economics of happiness is an idea whose time has finally come. Perhaps future economists can focus less on what maximizes our wealth, and more on what maximizes our well-being.

The Satisfaction with Life Index. Blue countries are the happiest, red countries are the least happy.