486
Such headwinds beg the fundaments of probability, which has become the penultimate modus operandi of twenty-first-century praxis. President Obama characterized the dilemma in far less draconian or uncertain a future than biologists: “We
choose hope over fear. We see the future not as something out of our control but as
something we can shape for the better through concerted and collective effort”.
11
Countless levels of turbulence cloud this optimism, both for humans and all other
species. Cloud the biological debates that swirl around any amount of fine-tuning.
From 29 Nunivak Island reindeer, moved by the US Coast Guard to St. Matthew
Island in the Bering Sea in 1944, abandoned after the war, their herd growing to
6000 individuals, then plummeting in the 1970s to zero.
12
Overpopulation.
Uncertainty number one, despite our being able to take micro-census data and know
down to every household (in some countries) who is pregnant, and within a very
small margin of error the number of births and deaths on any given day, how many
human newborns there will be in the coming year. 7.784,464,337 as of this second.
13
11 President Barack Obama, UN General Assembly 2014.
12 “What wiped out St. Matthew Island’s reindeer?” by Ned Rozell, Anchorage Daily News,
January 16, 2010, https://www.adn.com/features/article/what-wiped-out-st-matthew-islands-reindeer/2010/01/17/. Accessed May 14, 2020.
13 See the most unsettling, “Worldometer,” https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/,
Accessed May 14, 2020, 2:09 PM.
Fig. 52.2 A Parliament of Optimism, Three Young Bhutanese Monks. (Photo © J.G. Morrison)
52 The Extinction Probability Era
Such headwinds beg the fundaments of probability, which has become the penultimate modus operandi of twenty-first-century praxis. President Obama characterized the dilemma in far less draconian or uncertain a future than biologists: “We
choose hope over fear. We see the future not as something out of our control but as
something we can shape for the better through concerted and collective effort”.
11
Countless levels of turbulence cloud this optimism, both for humans and all other
species. Cloud the biological debates that swirl around any amount of fine-tuning.
From 29 Nunivak Island reindeer, moved by the US Coast Guard to St. Matthew
Island in the Bering Sea in 1944, abandoned after the war, their herd growing to
6000 individuals, then plummeting in the 1970s to zero.
12
Overpopulation.
Uncertainty number one, despite our being able to take micro-census data and know
down to every household (in some countries) who is pregnant, and within a very
small margin of error the number of births and deaths on any given day, how many
human newborns there will be in the coming year. 7.784,464,337 as of this second.
13
11 President Barack Obama, UN General Assembly 2014.
12 “What wiped out St. Matthew Island’s reindeer?” by Ned Rozell, Anchorage Daily News,
January 16, 2010, https://www.adn.com/features/article/what-wiped-out-st-matthew-islands-reindeer/2010/01/17/. Accessed May 14, 2020.
13 See the most unsettling, “Worldometer,” https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/,
Accessed May 14, 2020, 2:09 PM.
Fig. 52.2 A Parliament of Optimism, Three Young Bhutanese Monks. (Photo © J.G. Morrison)
52 The Extinction Probability Era