numan
What! Me Worry?
- Mar 23, 2013
- 2,125
- 241
- 130
'
I have been looking through a book, Our Final Hour, by Sir Martin Rees, the noted Cambridge (not the one in Massachusetts -- the real one) physicist and English Astronomer Royal.
He sensibly writes :
I am pleased that Sir Martin has the intelligence to come to the same conclusion :
Sir Martin uses the word "leverage" for what I call "the trigger effect", however, I think my phrase is more felicitous and makes the point more clearly.
.
I have been looking through a book, Our Final Hour, by Sir Martin Rees, the noted Cambridge (not the one in Massachusetts -- the real one) physicist and English Astronomer Royal.
He sensibly writes :
Long ago, decades ago, long before it became fashionable to decry global warming, I was warning those around me about the fundamental weakness, which overshadowed all others, of modern technological society: I coined the phrase "trigger-effect" to apply to this key danger. Simply, it refers to the truth that as technical expertise increases, it takes a smaller, less expensive, more easily obtainable trigger to set off a series of catastrophic repercussions.I think the odds are no better than fifty-fifty that our present civilization on Earth will survive to the end of the present century....
What happens here on Earth, in this century, could conceivably make the difference between a near eternity filled with ever more complex and subtle forms of life and one filled with nothing but base matter.
I am pleased that Sir Martin has the intelligence to come to the same conclusion :
emphases added...risks plainly can never be completely eliminated. But far worse, they seem set to become more intractable and threatening....the "leverage" that each can exert is increasing.
Sir Martin uses the word "leverage" for what I call "the trigger effect", however, I think my phrase is more felicitous and makes the point more clearly.
.