Freeman Dyson's 1st Tangent

Jeremy posted this link to a TED talk by physicist Freeman Dyson.

Dyson's main point is that there's simple and cheap (in the relative terms of the cost and effort to search for life on other planets, anyway) things we can do to check for life on Jupiter's Moons, the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud. We haven't been doing these simple things, simply because of our own predisposition to not expect to find life in those places. The analogy my wife immediately jumped to was "like not bothering to look for an oasis in a desert because everybody knows deserts don't have water".

But prior to that, Dyson made a tangential point regarding biotechnology. His point was essentially that what made computer science see such a surge in power, efficiency and accessibility was making it into toys. He suggests doing the same thing for biotech - make at home genetic experiments and tools, and our knowledge of genetics and capabilities of genetic engineering will jump up. I'm really not looking forward to john q public splicing genes in his easybake genetronic oven. But, because of something he said before that, it didn't really freak me out as much as I would have expected it to.

Prior to that tangent, Dyson made another tangent (or perhaps it's not even a tangent - perhaps it was completely separate from the body of what he was discussing?), this time about the Battle of Princeton. That battle happened in this horrible winter during the American Revolution. 25% of the population of Princeton died that winter from starvation and inclement weather. But that's rarely remembered. Instead, people focus on the battle that happened there that winter - because it was the first battle that George Washington won against the redcoats. It's celebrated every year in Princeton to commemorate the moment where the tide began to turn, and America became something more than a pipe dream. As he says, people don't really remember the labor pains, it's the child they keep talking about for years to come.

That point really spoke to me.

His comment is without a larger context in the video clip. It's hard to say for certain whether his point is about the current political climate, about global environmental calamity, or just about the emerging bioscience and astrophysics that the rest of his talk is about. The truth is that it's applicable to all those topics, and then some. It comforts me, a bit, to be reminded that this is not the only critical moment in the history of our species and culture. There have been other times in the past where such tension was felt by the people, and we've grown from it. But having not yet lived through such a time, all I'm noticing is the labor pains. The goal is to develop what good we can from this time of crisis, to take this awful time and turn it into something better for the future. Ultimately, this tangential point of Dyson's bolsters my hope for the future.

Thank you, Jeremy, for sharing that link. It was profoundly soothing for me.