Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Annalee Newitz Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a New York: Doubleday, 2013Reviewed by Michael PopejoyYes, we have seen blockbuster films, TV shows, and even Science Channel documentaries on the prospects and possibilities of mass extinction of the late, great Planet Earth; and yet, we are still here-so far. Even the History Channel has done episodes on past extinction events with a fearsome emphasis on the next one in line with the tagline; not if it will happen; but, when it will happen. One characteristic of a Mass Event is that no one will be around to say told you so. Even if a series of pre-set video cameras were to be set up around the planet, no one would survive to watch the events unfold.Only a journalist trained in her craftat M.I.T. would have the temerity to offer some plausible technical explanations on how humans can survive a Mass Extinction event and live to tell about it. If anything, she does offer us some glances back on previous events which we did survive the moment of doom so that it can be a reflection today on how we did survive it. So, should we begin building another Ark and begin to beckon all species of critters; two by two to get on board? Of course, given the current health crises that are currently plaguing cruise ships, it is unlikely that the Ark is the best way to go. As Norman O. Brown writes in Life against Death (1959: 305):Utopian speculations...must come back into fashion. They are a way of affirming faith in the possibility of solving problems that seem at the moment insoluble. Today, even the survival of humanity is a utopian hope.This book seems perfect for The Innovation Journal-how would indeed humans survive mass extinction; by its very title, a mass extinction event means all of us are gone-so, who survives and how? The author, Annalee Newitz, takes the long view-we must scatter, adapt and remember. We scatter to new places in the universe; we adapt to whatever environment we might find there, and then remember, how it was-back here, back then; a strange confluence of events that allows human stock to survive an earthly mass extinction event.Newitz makes it pretty clear that we are way overdue for a cataclysmic event and we should be prepared to survive our just deserts; and she believes Homo sapiens have a pretty good chance at survival in the future because we have survived in the past. She identifies episodes in the past when we dodged the bullet and she believes we are in a better position today than ever to dodge the next bullet possibly already speeding our way. In her highly speculative book, she identifies a few times we all came close to buying the farm, yet here we all are, survivors; and adapted and emerged even stronger than before.We are way overdue for a cataclysmic event and we should be prepared to survive our just deserts.How? Well, she examines the potential for underground cities, space elevators, space colonies, new advanced science to stop pandemic disease attacks, to study how other species are finding long term resilience; and, how can humans modify their morphology to choose life over death by changing how we are structured physiologically. Strange stuffhere; but, then that is the lynchpin of radical innovation.Humanity must equip itself scientifically, intellectually, and emotionally to face what the future holds and what would be demanded and required in order to survive. She never states that it would be easy-only doable. Newitz starts the book with the comment that humanity is at a crossroads. How does she know? She watches the bees. They are devolving into an inexplicable disorganization never seen before. Worker bees just fly offand never come home; adolescent bees wander around the hive aimlessly leaving hive jobs undone. Soon, production stops and eggs die of neglect. Of course, scientists have to call it something; so, why not call it Colony Collapse Disorder. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.006 | 0.013 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.013 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.011 | 0.004 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".