Physics and the State of the World

Slides for a presentation to 3rd years bachelor students physics focussed on career orientation.

The talk aimed a wide-angle view of society and the active shaping role of high-skilled participants, like physics students, therein.

Transcript

1. Physics; and the state of the world Mathijs de Bruin — 29 april 2014 @mathijsfietst
2. Very short biography • Started physics 2004, failing horribly…
 … so I went to Brazil. • That summer I finished Calculus I & II. • Next year I started philosophy. • In 2010 I finished both bachelors.
4. Before that… • Programming BASIC, C, PHP and C++ • Messing with electronics, photography, science, poetry, drugs and music • Travelling as much as possible • Learning by doing
5. And now… • Founded cooperative doing (web)app development • Living on IJburg, still hating it • Travelling, doing freelance work as much as possible • Contemplating what future society might look like… • … and how web technology might affect it
6. Future society We have gone beyond Earth’s limits Source: Limits to Growth, The 30-Year update, Meadows et al., 2004
7. Exponential growth vs. finite resources • Finite resources dictate limited carrying capacity • Economic incentives suffer from long delays in negative feedback • Collective human behaviour an invitation to disaster
8. WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!! Well, not really but…
9. …challenges await us! • Climate change, pollution and water shortages • Reduction and degradation of arable land • Price instability for fossil fuel • Structurally reduced economic growth
10. Climate change We should be fine, right? Source: The Wire, http://tinyurl.com/noxsect / IPCC
11. Reduced arable land We should be fine, right? Source: The Wire, http://tinyurl.com/noxsect / IPCC
12. Fossil fuel price instability We should be fine, right?
13. Fossil fuel price instability We should be fine, right?
14. Solutions needed Smart infrastructure to retain society
15. Many uncertainties • Can we grow economically while reducing our resource usage? (Possibly, probably not.) • How many people can our planet sustain, given reduced resource availability? • What is the best way to reduce consumption to within the bounds of Earth’s carrying capacity? One remaining certainty…
16. Change and unpredictability We need systems that gain from disorder Survival of society requires antifragility* *Reference: Antifragile, Taleb, 2004
17. – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness "Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. […] Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better"
18. “The relation between fragility, convexity, and sensitivity to disorder is mathematical, obtained by theorem, not derived from empirical data mining or some historical narrative. It is a priori.” Source: arXiv:1208.1189 [q-fin.RM] Source: http://tinyurl.com/kwj7rur
19. Examples • Genetic and cultural (memetic) evolution • Cities and (healthy) economies • Agile human collectives (non-multinational companies, societies) • Decentralized infrastructures (BitTorrent, Bitcoin)
20. Building smarter structures • Local- and community bound economic infrastructure; currencies, stock equity, pensions • Social restructuring of communities and localities • Open Source-based initiatives for agile collective development of products, knowledge and ideas • Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO’s) and smart (self-enforcing) contracts
21. Back to physics ‘Cause everything is physical
22. Economic infrastructure • How to model a sustainable economy? • (To what extent) is wealth distribution necessary? • How to model a realistic course to a sustainable/ more equitable society? Instead of prostituting yourself for banksters, consider true financial innovation.
23. Social restructuring • With up to ~70%*of service jobs automated, payment for labour needs to be reconsidered. • High-skilled jobs like yours and mine will likely remain. Middle-income jobs are disappearing. You will be rich while others are poor. 
 Unless you act against it. 
 (Together with the ~10% in your position.) *Reference: The End of Work, Rifkin, 1995
24. Open Source collaboration • Intellectual Property (patents) inhibit innovation* • Innovation, science and technology build upon other work and thrive by sharing ideas and information • Intellectual projects are better governed by their stakeholder community and should be forked whenever they’re not *Reference: https://www.eff.org/patent
25. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO’s)* What!? Organizations that exist nowhere and can act autonomously What!? Self-enforcing contracts, self-regulating funds, truly independent vote counting, you name it. *Reference: http://tinyurl.com/mmfax3q
26. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO’s) But…but… how!? Imagine paying a small amount to have thousands of independent computers verify a computation. Like Bitcoin, but more advanced. And why? Due to climate migration, hundreds of millions of people will end up unprotected by law or government authority. DAO’s could be an antifragile alternative, allowing stable economy and preventing killing and looting.
27. Concluding • The survival of our planet and species is severely challenged • Societies will be fundamentally changing • What worked in the past will not 
 work in the future In your lifetime
28. Concluding • Theoretical and particle physics might not be all that relevant • Money you earn as strategic consultant or a quant for a bank might not help society at large • Sensible alternatives are emerging daily, within and outside of academia Therefore