Essay // The Race to Save The Human Race
by Logan Chipkin
Furthermore, humans don’t just stomp out problems as they emerge, like a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. Rather, we make progress as we solve problems, improving our lives in the process. We’ll work toward not just a vaccine for this coronavirus, but a universal theory of virus elimination: In principle, we may be able to scan any virus’s genetic code and create a corresponding vaccination according to an algorithm. With this knowledge, we could be ready for whatever virus comes next, and the one after that, etc. We could then improve upon our theory of viruses by integrating it into an even deeper theory of universal biological threat elimination. In short, to prepare for unknown existential threats, our knowledge of how to solve problems must be as fundamental and universal as possible. Deutsch put it this way: “The only possible defense against...unforeseen [problems] is general-purpose knowledge.”3
But don’t confuse amassing general knowledge with mass coordination. Just because an existential threat such as climate change, or an incoming asteroid, could wipe us all out, that does not mean that we must all try to solve the problem in tandem. For example, it could be that a single company develops the defense system required to fend off incoming asteroids that would otherwise wipe us all out.
In fact, it is good that civilization has an eight-billion-person-wide division of labor, in which different people are focused on different problems—we have a lot of them.
The wealthier and more knowledgeable we become, the more people are able to pursue self-actualization, rather than more immediate problems of survival, as well as humanity-level threats. That in and of itself is a reason to fight poverty: It is no accident that societies tend to start worrying about environmental pollution only after they undergo an industrial revolution and become wealthy enough to afford managing such long-term, large-scale problems.
It’s worth noting, too, that while too many people are still struggling to survive, the number was at an all-time low before the global pandemic. Virtually all metrics of prosperity are trending in positive directions.4
3 Deutsch, D. (2011). “The Unknowable and How To Prepare for It”: youtube.com/watch?v=SVgGYQ_5ID8
4 humanprogress.org
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