Two Failing Projects (2021)

First Trip to Mars: colossal failure

Robotic Soldier: colossal failure

I will wrap up my social/political commentary for 2021 by explaining why two multi-billion dollar human enterprises will result in colossal failures, arising, as usual from human arrogance and fundamental errors in the understanding of who and what we are.

One: First trip to Mars. Even with a practice stop on the Moon, the current plans will fail miserably because they are based on the arrogant and unfounded belief that human beings can adapt to anything. This is not true. The human body, including the body part we know as the brain, evolved on the surface of a planet with characteristic gravity, protection from radiation, and a particular molecular combination or compound atmosphere that supplies us with oxygen and enables us to breathe. Our atmosphere also enables us to convey oxygen from the atmosphere to our red blood cells and then throughout our bodies. Current technological plans for space travel are not based on recreating the conditions of life on Earth, but rather designing electromechanical and chemical means to force humans to "discipline themselves" and adjust to non-Earth conditions. This strategy is going to fail. In order for human bodies to travel in space and on the surfaces of other celestial bodies, the primary conditions of life of Earth must be duplicated. Earth-force gravity must be created by centrifugal force. The Earth's atmosphere of about 70% nitrogen and 21% oxygen must be duplicated and carried constantly as a necessary supply. And, the electromagnetic protection for harmful radiation, provided automatically by the Earth, must also be provided by technology that replicates the electromagnetic bands surrounding our Earth. Providing these three basic necessities would mean expensive technology, but our first (failed) trip to Mars will show us that replicating the Earthian conditions to which our bodies are adapted through the evolutionary process is easier than multiple technologies intended to persuade the human body to "adapt." Humans will function poorly or not at all when subjected for extended time spans deprived of their Earthian origins: Earth gravity, Earth radiation protection, Earth atmosphere.

Space is not the last frontier or the next frontier. There are no deer or antelope frolicking in space or on Mars. The "New World" of the Western Hemisphere was and is in fact 100% the same as the "Old World." The few differences in plant and animal species did not make North and South America "not Earth."

Two: Robotic soldier. The current efforts to create a robotic soldier will result in colossal failure because they are all based on a colossal error in the scientifically accepted model of how and why we kill one another in warfare. The current paradigm is that conflict, violence and killing of "the enemy" arises from a form of selfishness or self-preservation instinct that is the result of "intelligence" or cold logic, or in scientific terms, binary logic being the same as "artificial intelligence." But killing is not the outcome of cold logic or binary intelligence. In fact, the behavior that results in warfare and killing of the "bad guys" by the "good guys" is entirely emotional, and can only be the technological outcome of "artificial emotions" rather than "artificial intelligence." Artificial intelligence, so long as it is comprised of binary logic, will never result in a decision to kill a living organism, because all organisms are useful. Deeper still, logic does not yield unobstructed selfishness. Selfishness is an emotion, not a logical conclusion. Consider the complexity of the decision who to kill and when to kill. For example: good people are always honest and speak the truth. Bad people may say exactly the same things that good people say, but the bad people are lying. How does a binary logic determine who is telling the truth and who is lying? In the context of a human war, bad people do all of the same things that good people do: they grow food, eat, sleep, fall in love, get married, have children. Bad people build things, beautiful things, create art, write songs and sing them. How does binary logic separate the good people from the bad people?

An artificially intelligent "soldier" could be a wonder to behold in terms of the methods it uses to subdue, disable or kill "the enemy." But we cannot assign a robotic soldier the task of deciding who to kill and when to kill, because that simply is not an intellectual process. It is emotional. We do not kill because of a logical or intellectual conclusion; we kill because we are crazy. We kill because our non-logical emotions enable us to behave in a way that is logically blind and self-destructive. We violate our most basic moral principles when we act to save our "family" and kill "the enemy." How will a binary robot know that a group of people in a religious structure saying prayers, and who believe in the Ten Commandments, are evil and must be killed? Show me the computation. In order to create a "robotic soldier" that accurately mimics human behavior, that robot would need to be controlled by "artificial emotions," an artificial but acceptably equivalent endocrine system, including thyroid, gonads, brain, and adrenal glands, as well as all the organic tissues that produce hormones, distribute hormones, and regulate their quantities. Such a robotic soldier, intended to "know" who to kill, or who to disable, would need the full pharmacopeia of human hormones and blood electrolytes. We know far more about binary logic than we do about the complexity and illogic of human emotions. Thus, the robotic soldiers based on this fundamental error – our belief that killing is logical – will result in robots that are nothing more than electromechanical weapons that could not make any meaningful human decisions about how to conduct a war. Because war, my dear Captain, is not logical.