Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?

by Bill McKibben

  12. Ibid., p. 148.

  13. Mayer, Dark Money, p. 464.

  14. Jane Mayer, “The Reclusive Hedge-Fund Tycoon Behind the Trump Presidency,” The New Yorker, March 27, 2017.

  15. Lisa Mascaro, “They Snubbed Trump. But the Koch Network Has Still Exerted a Surprising Influence over the White House,” Los Angeles Times, August 15, 2017.

  16. Annie Linskey, “The Koch Brothers (and Their Friends) Want President Trump’s Tax Cut. Very Badly,” Boston Globe, October 14, 2017.

  17. Hiroko Tabuchi, “How the Koch Brothers Are Killing Public Transit Projects Around the Country,” New York Times, June 19, 2018.

  18. Lee Gang and Nick Surgey, “Koch Document Reveals Laundry List of Policy Victories Extracted from the Trump Administration,” Intercept, February 25, 2018.

  19. Fredreka Schouten, “Secret Money Funds More than 40% of Outside Congressional Ads,” USA Today, July 12, 2018.

  20. Robert Barnes and Steven Mufson, “White House Counts on Kavanaugh in Battle Against ‘Administrative State,’” Washington Post, August 12, 2018.

  CHAPTER 11

  1. Ayn Rand, “Civilization,” aynrandlexicon.com.

  2. Dhruv Khullar, “How Social Isolation Is Killing Us,” New York Times, December 22, 2016.

  3. Ruth Whippman, “Happiness Is Other People,” New York Times, October 27, 2017.

  4. Nicole Karlis, “Why Doing Good Is Good for the Do-Gooder,” New York Times, October 26, 2017.

  5. “Why Hearing Loss May Raise Your Risk of Dementia,” clevelandclinic.org, February 20, 2018.

  6. Adam Grant, “In the Company of Givers and Takers,” Harvard Business Review, April 2013.

  7. “Elinor Ostrom,” The Economist, June 30, 2012.

  8. Shankar Vedantam, “Social Isolation Growing in U.S., Study Says,” Washington Post, June 23, 2006.

  9. Jean M. Twenge, iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood—and What That Means for the Rest of Us (New York: Atria Books, 2017).

  10. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (London: printed for A. Millar, A. Kincaid, and J. Bell, 1759), part III, chapter 2.

  11. Kate Raworth, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2017), p. 89.

  12. Mike Bird and Riva Gold, “How Do You Price a Problem Like Korea?” Wall Street Journal, August 11, 2017.

  13. Michael Tomasky, “The G.O.P.’s Legislative Lemons,” New York Times, December 14, 2017.

  14. Amy Fleming et al., “Heat: The Next Big Inequality Issue,” Guardian, August 13, 2018.

  15. “Rupert Murdoch’s Speech on Carbon Neutrality,” Australian, May 10, 2007.

  16. “Free Market Is a Fair Market: Murdoch,” Australian, April 5, 2013.

  17. ClimateDenierRoundup, “Washington Post Hires Former WSJ Opinion Editor, Will He Bring Deniers Along?” dailykos.com, May 31, 2018.

  18. Farron Cousins, “Media Matters Report Shows Stunning Lack of Climate Coverage on TV Networks in 2016,” desmogblog.com, March 30, 2017.

  19. “Fox News’ Jesse Watters: ‘No One Is Dying from Climate Change,’” Media Matters video, 1:04, mediamatters.org, June 5, 2017.

  20. Steven F. Hayward, “Climate Change Has Run Its Course,” Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2018.

  21. Amanda Terkel, “CEI Expert: ‘The Best Policy Regarding Global Warming Is to Neglect It,’” thinkprogress.org, August 15, 2006.

  22. Robert D. Tollison and Richard E. Wagner, The Economics of Smoking (New York: Springer, 1992), p. 183.

  23. Graham Readfearn, “The Idea That Climate Scientists Are in It for the Cash Has Deep Ideological Roots,” Guardian, September 15, 2017.

  24. Ibid.

  25. Russell and Kennedy, Horsemen of the Apocalypse, p. 116.

  26. Ibid., p. 114.

  27. MacLean, Democracy in Chains, p. 216.

  28. Bill McKibben, “McCain’s Lonely War on Global Warming,” onEarth, March 31, 2004.

  29. Rebecca Shabad, “McCain to Kerry: What Planet Are You On?” TheHill, February 19, 2014.

  30. Hiroko Tabuchi, “Rooftop Solar Dims Under Pressure from Utility Lobbyists,” New York Times, July 8, 2017.

  31. John Cushman Jr., “No Drop in U.S. Carbon Footprint Expected through 2050, Energy Department Says,” InsideClimate News, February 6, 2018.

  32. Daniel Simmons, “Does the Federal Government Think We Are Dim Bulbs?” instituteforenergyresearch.org, December 18, 2013.

  CHAPTER 12

  1. Nellie Bowles, “Silicon Valley Flocks to Foiling, Racing Above the Bay’s Waves,” New York Times, August 20, 2017.

  2. Adam Vaughan, “Google to Be 100% Powered by Renewable Energy from 2017,” Guardian, December 6, 2016.

  3. Nick Bilton, “Silicon Valley’s Most Disturbing Obsession,” Vanity Fair, November 2016.

  4. Maureen Dowd, “Elon Musk’s Billion Dollar Crusade to Stop the AI Apocalypse,” Vanity Fair, April 2017.

  5. Melia Robinson, “Silicon Valley’s Dream of a Floating, Isolated City Might Actually Happen,” Business Insider, October 5, 2016.

  6. Paulina Borsook, Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech (New York: PublicAffairs, 2000), pp. 2–3.

  7. Ibid., p. vi.

  8. Ibid., p. 215.

  9. Ayn Rand, Fountainhead, p. 11.

  PART THREE: THE NAME OF THE GAME

  CHAPTER 13

  1. Personal conversation, November 22, 2017.

  2. James Bridle, “Known Unknowns,” Harper’s, July 2018.

  3. “Rise of the Machines,” The Economist, May 22, 2017.

  4. “On Welsh Corgis, Computer Vision, and the Power of Deep Learning,” microsoft.com, July 14, 2014.

  5. Andrew Roberts, “Elon Musk Says to Forget North Korea Because Artificial Intelligence Is the Real Threat to Humanity,” uproxx.com, August 12, 2017.

  6. Tom Simonite, “What Is Ray Kurzweil Up to at Google? Writing Your Emails,” Wired, August 2, 2017.

  7. Michio Kaku, The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind (New York: Doubleday, 2014), p. 271.

  8. Tim Urban, “What Will Happen When We Succeed in Creating AI That’s Smarter than We Are?” qz.com, October 1, 2015.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Pawel Sysiak, “When Will the First Machine Become Superintelligent?” Medium, April 11, 2016.

  11. Raffi Khatchadourian, “The Doomsday Invention,” The New Yorker, November 23, 2015.

  12. Tim Urban, “The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence,” waitbutwhy.com, January 22, 2015.

  CHAPTER 14

  1. Kaku, Future of the Mind, p. 118.

  2. “On Living Forever,” interview with Michael West, Ubiquity magazine, megafoundation.org, June 2000.

  3. Brad Plumer et al., “A Simple Guide to CRISPR, One of the Biggest Science Stories of the Decade,” vox.com, July 23, 2018.

  4. Ibid.

  5. Jennifer A. Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg, A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), p. 29.

  6. Ibid., p. x.

  7. Carl Zimmer, “A Crispr Conundrum: How Cells Fend Off Gene Editing,” New York Times, June 12, 2018.

  8. Doudna and Sternberg, Crack in Creation, p. 194.

  9. Ibid., p. xv.

  10. Ibid., p. 166.

  11. Denise Grady, “FDA Panel Recommends Approval for Gene-Altering Leukemia Treatment,” New York Times, July 12, 2017.

  12. Doudna and Sternberg, Crack in Creation, p. xvi (emphasis added).

  13. Akshat Rathi, “A Highly Successful Attempt at Genetic Editing of Human Embryos Has Opened the Door to Eradicating Inherited Diseases,” qz.com, August 2, 2017.

  14. Dennis Normille, “CRISPR Bombshell: Chinese Researcher Claims to Have Created Gene-Edited Twins,” Science, November 26, 2018.r />
  15. “Chinese Scientist Pauses Gene-Edited Baby Trial After Outcry,” Al-Jazeera, November 28, 2018.

  16. Hannah Devlin, “Jennifer Doudna: I Have to be True to Who I Am as a Scientist,” Guardian, July 2, 2017.

  17. Paul Knoepfler, GMO Sapiens: The Life-Changing Science of Designer Babies (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2016), p. 11.

  18. Dean Hamer, “Tweaking the Genetics of Behavior,” Scientific American, Fall 1999, p. 62.

  19. Gregory E. Pence, Who’s Afraid of Human Cloning? (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), p. 168.

  20. Abbey Interrante, “A New Genetic Test Could Help Determine Children’s Success,” Newsweek, July 10, 2018.

  21. Pam Belluck, “Gene Editing for ‘Designer Babies’? Highly Unlikely, Scientists Say,” New York Times, August 4, 2017.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Ibid.

  24. Doudna and Sternberg, Crack in Creation, p. 241.

  25. Ibid., p. 185.

  26. Lee M. Silver, Remaking Eden (New York: 1997), pp. 1–3.

  27. Doudna and Sternberg, Crack in Creation, p. xvi.

  CHAPTER 15

  1. Abate, T. “Nobel Winner’s Theories Raise Uproar in Berkeley/Geneticist’s Views Strike Many as Racist, Sexist,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 13, 2000. Retrieved on October 24, 2007.

  2. Doudna and Sternberg, Crack in Creation, p. 199.

  3. Ibid., p. 237.

  4. Silver, Remaking Eden, p. 241.

  5. Julian Savulescu, “As a Species, We Have a Moral Obligation to Enhance Ourselves,” interview by TED guest author, ideas.ted.com, February 19, 2014.

  6. Nathaniel Comfort, “Can We Cure Genetic Diseases without Slipping into Eugenics?” The Nation, July 16, 2015.

  7. Johann Hari, “Is Neoliberalism Making Our Depression and Anxiety Crisis Worse?” In These Times, February 21, 2018.

  8. Vince Beiser, “The Robot Assault on Fukushima,” Wired, April 26, 2018.

  9. Quoctrung Bui, “Bricklayers Fending Off a Robot Takeover,” New York Times, March 9, 2018.

  10. Harari, Homo Deus, p. 330.

  11. Alana Semuels, “Where Automation Poses the Greatest Threat to American Jobs,” citylab.com, May 3, 2017.

  12. Tom Price, “The Last Auto Mechanic,” Medium, July 27, 2017.

  13. Tyler Cower, Average Is Over (New York: Dutton, 2013) p. 23.

  14. Curtis White, We, Robots: Staying Human in the Age of Big Data (Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2015), p. 19.

  15. Kai-Fu Lee, “The Real Threat of Artificial Intelligence,” New York Times, June 24, 2017.

  16. Bill Joy, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” Wired, April 1, 2000.

  17. Sarah Marsh, “Essays Reveal Stephen Hawking Predicted Race of Superhumans,” Guardian, October 4, 2018

  18. Dowd, “Elon Musk’s Billion Dollar Crusade.”

  19. James Vincent, “Elon Musk Says We Need to Regulate AI Before It Becomes a Danger to Humanity,” theverge.com, July 17, 2017.

  20. Stephen Hawking, “Artificial Intelligence Could Be the Greatest Disaster in Human History,” Independent, October 20, 2016.

  21. James Barrat, Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2013), p. 34.

  22. Nick Bostrom, “A Transhumanist Perspective on Genetic Enhancements,” nickbostrom.com, 2003.

  23. Khatchadourian, “Doomsday Invention.”

  24. Stephen M. Omohundro, “The Basic A.I. Drives,” in Artificial General Intelligence 2008, eds. Pei Wang, Ben Goertzel, and Stan Franklin (Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2008), available online at selfawaresystems.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/ai_drives_final.pdf, p. 9.

  25. Anders Sandberg, “Why We Should Fear the Paperclipper,” sentientdevelopments.com, February 14, 2011.

  26. Dowd, “Elon Musk’s Billion Dollar Crusade,” p. 89.

  27. Barrat, Our Final Invention, p. 19.

  28. Ibid., p. 265.

  29. Pinker, Enlightenment Now, p. 300.

  30. Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now (New York: Henry Holt, 2018), p. 135.

  31. Damien Cave, “Artificial Stupidity,” Salon, October 4, 2000.

  32. Dowd, “Elon Musk’s Billion Dollar Crusade,” p. 90.

  33. Sam Thielman, “Is Facebook Even Capable of Stopping an Influence Campaign on Its Platform?” Talking Points Memo, September 15, 2017.

  34. James Walker, “Researchers Shut Down AI that Invented Its Own Language,” digitaljournal.com, July 21, 2017.

  35. Cade Metz, “Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and the Feud over Killer Robots,” New York Times, June 9, 2018.

  36. Dowd, “Elon Musk’s Billion Dollar Crusade,” p. 91.

  37. Khatchadourian, “Doomsday Invention.”

  CHAPTER 16

  1. Knoepfler, GMO Sapiens, p. 177.

  2. Rachel Nuwer, “Babies Start Learning Language in the Womb,” smithsonianmag.com, January 4, 2013.

  3. Michael D. Lemonick, “Designer Babies,” Time, January 11, 1999.

  4. Jim Kozubek, “Can Crispr-Cas9 Boost Intelligence?” Scientific American, September 23, 2016.

  5. Knoepfler, GMO Sapiens, p. 179.

  6. Ibid., p. 187.

  7. Gregory Stock, Redesigning Humans (New York, 2002), p. 120.

  8. Ephrat Livni, “Columbia and Yale Scientists Found the Spiritual Part of Our Brain,” qz.com, May 30, 2018.

  9. Knoepfler, GMO Sapiens, p. 214.

  10. Ray Kurzweil, “Kurzweil’s Law,” longnow.org, September 23, 2005.

  11. Megan Molteni, “Extra CRISPR,” Wired, May 2018

  12. Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, Beyond Boredom and Anxiety, 25th Anniversary Edition (San Francisco, CA: Wiley and Co., 2000), p. 33.

  CHAPTER 17

  1. Gil Press, “Breaking News: Humans Will Forever Triumph over Machines,” Forbes, June 30, 2015.

  2. Timothy J. Demy and Gary P. Stewart, eds., Genetic Engineering: A Christian Response: Crucial Considerations for Shaping Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 1999), p. 131.

  3. Wesley J. Smith, “Darwinist Wants Us to Create ‘Humanzee,’” nationalreview.com, March 8, 2018.

  4. Ed Regis, The Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition (New York: Basic, 1990), p. 167.

  5. Tim Urban, “The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence,” Huffington Post, February 10, 2015.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Decca Aitkenhead, “James Lovelock: Before the End of This Century, Robots Will Have Taken Over,” Guardian, September 30, 2016.

  8. Yuval Harari, “The Meaning of Life in a World without Work,” Guardian, May 8, 2017.

  9. Samuel Gibbs, “Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak Says Humans Will Be Robots’ Pets,” Guardian, June 25, 2015.

  10. Paul Lewis, “‘Our Minds Can Be Hijacked’: The Tech Insiders Who Fear a Smartphone Dystopia,” Guardian, October 6, 2017.

  11. Lanier, Ten Arguments, p. 18.

  12. Sang In Jung et al., “The Effect of Smartphone Usage Time on Posture and Respiratory Function,” Journal of Physical Therapy Science 28, no. 1 (January 2016).

  13. “The Next Human: Taking Evolution into Our Own Hands,” National Geographic, April 2017.

  14. Jean M. Twenge, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?” The Atlantic, September 2017.

  CHAPTER 18

  1. Steven Johnson, How We Got to Now: Six Innovations that Made the Modern World (New York: Riverhead Books, 2014), p. 148.

  2. Jason Pontin, “Silicon Valley’s Immortalists Will Help Us All Stay Healthy,” Wired, December 15, 2017.

  3. Maya Kosoff, “Peter Thiel Wants to Inject Himself with Young People’s Blood,” Vanity Fair, August 1, 2016.

  4. Maya Kosoff, “This Anti-Aging Startup Is Charging Thousands of Dollars for Teen Blood,” Vanity Fair, June 1, 2017.

  5. Peter Thiel, “The Education of a Libertarian,” cato-unbound.org, April 13, 2009.