Humanity - Survival - Crossroads: Book Review

What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill review – a thrilling prescription for humanity.

Lately I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end,” Tony Soprano tells his therapist at their first session, and it’s natural to feel the same about your place in human history: that these are the twilight years. Hundreds of millennia of human activity stretch back behind us – the stone age and the bronze age and the iron age, the ancient world, the middle ages and onwards, culminating in today – whereas our mental image of our species’ future tends either to be hazy or, in the event of an extinction-level catastrophe, terrifyingly short.

But there is another way to see things. Even if the world population were to fall by 90%, and if humans survive no longer than the average mammalian species, a million years in total, then 99.5% of all human experience has yet to be lived. If we can dodge the aforementioned catastrophe – a big “if”, obviously – then a staggeringly huge proportion of humanity’s time on Earth is almost certainly yet to come.

“Strange as it may seem, we are the ancients,” writes the Oxford University philosopher William MacAskill. “We live at the very beginning of history, in the most distant past.” When we contemplate our moral responsibility to future generations, if we contemplate it at all, it can seem mainly like a matter of leaving the planet habitable for a few stragglers left to come. In reality, it’s an opportunity to influence the fate of almost all the humans there will probably ever be.

Startling as such reflections are, you might imagine you know exactly what’s coming next from a book called What We Owe the Future: a worthy but depressing reminder that the world is heading to hell in a handcart, informing you it’s your duty to live a life of self-denial, spurning air travel and single-use plastics and fretting over every supermarket banana, all the while trying to suppress the suspicion that your sacrifices won’t make a blind bit of difference. You’d be wrong, though. MacAskill’s case for “longtermism” – “the idea that positively influencing the longterm future is a key moral priority of our time” – is overwhelmingly persuasive. But it’s also unapologetically optimistic and bracingly realistic: this is by some distance the most inspiring book on “ethical living” I’ve ever read. (It motivated me to make immediate changes to the amount and targets of my own charitable donations.) Readers seeking reinforcement of the idea that it’s intrinsically morally virtuous to spend your time wallowing in anguish about the future should look elsewhere; longtermism is much more exciting than that.

The first major surprise is that What We Owe the Future isn’t solely or even mainly about the climate. Partly that’s because MacAskill is cautiously upbeat here, pointing to increasingly ambitious climate pledges, due in large part to youth activism, along with the plummeting cost of renewable energies and other positive trends. But it’s also because of equally urgent yet far more neglected threats. One is that we lose control of innovations in artificial intelligence, whether to tyrants or terrorists or – once AI itself becomes better than humans at developing new forms of AI – to the machines themselves. Without urgent collective action now, there’s little reason to expect such runaway AI to act in the service of humanity; we might “share the fate of, say, chimpanzees or ants vis-a-vis humans: ignored at best and with no say over the future of civilisation.” The other is a bioweapon that could kill billions. “Experts I know,” writes MacAskill, terrifyingly, “typically put the probability of an extinction-level engineered pandemic this century at around 1%.”

Yet the other striking component of MacAskill’s worldview is that it isn’t merely a question of making the best of a bad job – of doing what we can to ensure that life for our successors isn’t entirely awful. We have the chance to bring about untold quantities of greater future happiness, too. Indeed, it’s our responsibility; drawing on the work of the philosopher Derek Parfit, he argues that “preventing the existence of a happy and flourishing life is a moral loss”. It’s better for an extra human to come into being than otherwise, assuming they reach a threshold level of happiness. This is the ultimate moral force of longtermism: we should save the climate, control AI and stop pandemics not only to prevent the suffering of current or imminent generations, but because the end of humanity would mean trillions of potential happy lives going unlived. (And those lives could be really happy. The best quality of life today would have been unthinkable even for kings or queens in centuries past – so what if we’re in a similar position with respect to future flourishing?)

The question, of course, is whether we can really do all that much to help the future billions, besides having kids. MacAskill is certain we’re uniquely placed to do so, because we live in an era of unprecedentedly rapid change that can’t last much longer. (For current economic growth to continue for “just ten millennia more”, we’d need to extract many trillion times the world’s current economic output from every single atom to which we had access.) So we have dizzyingly more power to influence the future than those after us are likely to possess. There are many specific and achievable things governments and corporations must do on AI, pandemic risk and decarbonisation – and that we must pressure them to do, through activism and voting.

It’s also imperative to focus on “moral lock-in”, because the norms we establish now are likely to persist for millennia. In one of the book’s most compelling chapters, MacAskill argues convincingly that there was nothing inevitable about the end of slavery. It wasn’t a given that everyone would eventually realise that ownership of others was wrong. Rather, societal circumstances permitted an eccentric band of Quakers to nurture their abolitionist ideas until they caught on. This is a powerful argument in favour of freedom of speech and viewpoint diversity:

The moral advance arose not from society’s leaders pursuing the values they were confident were correct, but from a climate in which multiple and often marginal worldviews could flourish.

When it comes to individual action, though, MacAskill’s passion is clearly for the targeted financial contributions he champions as a co-founder of the “effective altruism” movement, detailed on the website Giving What We Can. He considers the focus on personal ethical lifestyle changes a “major strategic blunder”: it’s good to be a vegetarian, but giving $3,000 to the right clean energy charity will make vastly more difference to the climate, he argues, than a whole lifetime of not eating meat. Other lifestyle changes make even less difference, while cash donations to causes more neglected than the climate can make even more (because the marginal value of your contribution is bigger). The overall promise of this thrilling book is of a life both less burdened by ethical guilt – by beating yourself up over every choice of groceries or transportation – and much more effective at actually helping humanity. A life you truly enjoy, and in which you take that enjoyment seriously enough to want the same – or better – for billions more humans to come.

- Author: Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian

FATIMAH JINNAH FAMILIAR : HONOURS WEB SERIES

 

Through the ages. Prologue for a web series on Fatima Jinnah lifts the curtains on crucial turning points. A 14-min-long prologue of Danial K Afzal's upcoming web series Fatima Jinnah : Sister | Revolutionist | Stateswoman is out.

The biopic and period drama divides Jinnah's life into three eras, with respect to major turning points, and stars Sundus Farhan, Sajal Aly, and Samiya Mumtaz in each era respectively.

The prologue presents the altercations and dilemmas faced by Jinnah through the ages, as it sheds light on the power figure she was.

1929

It takes off at the clinic of Jinnah. We see Sundas embodying Fatima Jinnah in her 30s, draped in a saree and seemingly taking on and simultaneously letting go of some responsibilities.

The politician who had obtained a dental degree from the University of Calcutta in 1923, was the first female dentist of undivided India.

At her clinic in the Bombay presidency under the British Raj, she picks up the Bombay chronicle and disappointingly looks at the cover page, which announced the sudden and tragic demise of Rattanbai Jinnah, also known as Ruttie Jinnah, the second wife of her brother and politician Mulammad Ali Jinnah.

Speaking to her subordinate, Joseph, who is heard urging her to think twice about some undisclosed matter, she inquires about a caretaker she had requested for Dina, since her mother is no longer alive.

She holds on to a notice of cessation, which informs, ''This letter hereby serves as a discontinuation notice for the practise of dentistry undertaken by Dr. Fatima Jinnah at the address mentioned forthwith.

In the meanwhile, an announcement is vaguely heard on the radio that informs about a pet who has demanded ''complete independence from the British.''

1947

The prologue time-travels us to 1947 at the Northwest Railway Junction in Lahore, where a train is set to take passengers to Pakistan has been attacked.

Uncertainty looms as the promise of an independent state is fulfilled and Fatima Jinnah, now in her 50s [played by Sajal Aly], steps onto the scene of crime. An informant is heard alarming someone on the phone, ''Call for Lord Mountbatten, a train to Lahore was compromised. I repeat, a refugee train to Lahore was attacked.''

Jinnah stood shaken inside the train cabin, surrounded by bodies. Dananeer, who plays an Indian girl Aneeta, also a subordinate to Jinnah, stands alongside her, devastated by the vision.

The train floor presents a scene of war. Jinnah moves towards a body holding a Quran, she picks it up, only to be taken aback by the sound of a crying baby.

As she moves towards the sound and discovers yet train cabin filled with bodies. The baby lies atop its dead mother, devastated and waiting to be rescued. Jinnah takes the child and is one again, interrupted by the sound of something breaking.

Joseph, who's been accompanying her this time whole time, goes to see what has happened. He discovers a girl with her eyes wide open, crumpled under the bodies of her family and fellow cabin members. 

Traumatised, she begins to scream for her life. Jinnah tears by the sound and comes to the scene but the girl does not stop. Her fear and devastation echo through the train.

Joseph joins in her screaming and begins to cry, unable to comprehend what has transpired. Jinnah stands ahead of him, numbed from the pain of having to collect the remains of the price she had to pay for an independent state.

The gore isn't glamorized and the forced migration is shown for what it was and what it led up to, a mass massacre.

The bodies represent no sacrifice. It is evident that all the passengers were caught off-guard and didn't anticipate losing their lives for the state they had yet to see. The very passengers that abandoned their ancestral homes and livelihoods for an overnight move.

Radio Hindustan Delhi announces, ''Aaj Hindustan mein, Angreez sarkaar ke 200 saal ka khaatma hua. Lord Mountbatten ne Viceroy ka khitab chordiya. Aur Mr. Jinnah Pakistan ki taraf rawaana horahay hein.''

The World Students Society thanks News Desk, The Express Tribune.

THE -INQUISITIVE STUDENTS- TAP : MASTER ESSAY

Students need to be avid learners if they wish to turn into successful professionals.

Curiosity leads to cognitive growth. It facilitates one to seek knowledge and to know about themselves. Seeking knowledge is a continuous process and one must have the acumen to ask questions. Students need to be avid learners if they wish to turn into successful professionals.

Often the faculty members are not open to replying to questions and expect the student to comprehend the lecture without difficulty. Curiosity is the key to increasing knowledge. It is embedded into our consciousness as humans are seekers of information.

We need guidance to progress and to learn.

To be curious is a sign of people being open to accepting what they do not know. To think that one knows everything is a fallacy people tend to live to satisfy their ego and to hide their shortcomings.

Curious people do not hide behind pseudo-acts that give them a false sense of belonging or acceptance. It happens so often that adults and the youth alike feel it to be below their integrity to question. This trend and habit must change.

Curiosity remains a part of our consciousness for we need to know the reality. It is developed and satisfied in various ways.

FIRST, reading is a great way to learn. It expands our thought process, and memory and connects us with information that leads to mental growth. Children and the youth must read whatever topics interest them. It is an act that should be pursued every day.

SECOND, observation is a good way to learn how to complete a task. Imagine you are watching a carpenter make a wooden table. Observation will give you insights into how the carpenter cuts wood and to make a table.

THIRD, through conversation, you can develop curiosity. One must have the enthusiasm to ask and converse over a topic and find out more about it. You may have come across interesting facts and information when listening to elders discussing a subject matter.

When you converse you allow your information to increase by listening to what others are saying.

FOURTH, curiosity is satisfied when you accept that you lack information. You will not pursue knowledge-gaining acts unless you actively know that you need information. You must accept your limitations before you can embark on a journey of learning and exploration.

FIFTH, curiosity is satisfied when we remove ourselves from the daily grind we are accustomed to. We must spend an hour a day disconnected from our cell phones, the Internet, and social media.

We must use the time to reflect on our lives and how to manifest a successful future. We will ascertain how to increase our strengths and how to minimise our weaknesses.

Parents and teachers must provide their children and students with an environment that is conducive to learning and seeking knowledge. Such a mindset is developed at an early age when parents allow, appreciate, and acknowledge their child's ability and intention to ask questions.

The World Students Society thanks author Muhammad Omar Iftikhar, a fiction writer, and a columnist.

SCIENCE LAB STRIKES : LIGHTNING

 

A Strike Suppressant

To avoid lightning go heavy on the salt.

One of nature's most intense spectacles can be tamed with humble sea salt, the same stuff that graces some dinner tables.

Researchers recently found that the frequency of lightning decreases by up to 90 percent in the presence of salty sea spray. That makes sense based on how electric fields build up within clouds, the team proposes.

These new results, reported in the journal Nature Communications, help explain why thunderstorms occur much less frequently over the ocean than over land.

Compared with the lightning that recorded over the continents, only about one-tenth as many strikes occur at sea. Why exactly has long remained a mystery.

To dig into this enigma, Zenggxin Pan, an atmospheric scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and his colleagues mined data from over 75,000 lightning storms.

The goal was to trace how convective clouds - the birthplace of lightning - evolved over time in different atmospheric conditions, said Daniel Rosenfeld, co-author of the study who is also at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Dr. Pan and his collaborators showed that the effects of sea spray were substantial : Storms exposed to high levels of sea salt aerosols produce up to 90 percent less lightning than storms with very low levels of sea salt aerosols.

Thunderstorms are therefore less common over the ocean than over land for two reasons.

The fine airborne particles that promote lightning are more prevalent over land, close to more pollution sources. And larger sea salt aerosols - which suppress lightning- are naturally found near or over open water. [ Katherine Kornei ]