Measures and Yardsticks and the tale of an Elephant and Blind Men

Arun Kumar

pixabay

 

You and I, taking an afternoon walk in the woods. It is an unusually cool day for the month of June, and it feels wonderful to be out on the trail stealing leisurely moments away from life. Inhale a deep breath and everything around seems to hold promises of wonders that are lurking in the shadows to surprise us.

It is a slow afternoon, and nothing is reaching for our attention for the next few hours. A sense of freedom and peace and the moment feels perfect for contemplative bantering. No surprise, we find ourselves engaged in a discussion about how one would measure whether two lives lived differently are equally worthy.

The discussion drifts towards a hypothetical scenario of two individuals. The first one, and we call them X, spends most of their time watching TV or scrolling through various social feeds on the internet.

The curious thing about X is that they are content and at peace with themselves. Moreover, when X calls it a day, they look forward to getting up the next morning and watching the next episodes of the Wheel of Fortune followed by an episode of the Mahabharat.

Then there is Y who is inquisitive, a learner, an individual with a growth mindset. Y spends their time dreaming about the curvature of space and time and how to reduce it to a simple set of equations.

One morning, Y wakes up shouting ‘Eureka, I now know the equation that can explain the curvature of space and time, and in the bargain, can also explain why the apple falls from the tree.’

Y is also content and is at peace and cannot wait to live another day filled with learning and dabbling in the theory that one day will also explain all human emotions – love, hate, smile, tears.

The discussion we are engaged in is whether the lives of X and Y are equally worthy?

At a personal level both X and Y are content and feel at peace. In their own ways, both have reasons to look forward to getting out of the bed the next morning. Both have a spring in the step (even though, affectionately, everyone calls X, who does not use their legs often, a couch potato).

And so, I say to you, a tad bit emphatically, that both X and Y have reached the goals they seek. Both have attained what so many frameworks for having a happy and equanimous life are built from – Stoicism, Buddhism, Taoism. Then there are religions that also promise the same.

And therefore, I argue that the lives of both X and Y are equally worthy. Feeling a bit smug, Quod Erat Demonstrandum (QED), I say.

Not so fast, you reply. Mx. Y is going to leave something behind while Mx. X will be forgotten even before the last eulogy is read. The advances in the knowledge Y made will forever be the building blocks of understanding the universe for eons to come. Clearly, from the perspective of human civilization and our quest to understand the workings of things around us, you argue, the  life of Y is more worthy than that of X.

As we walk along, occasionally stopping to look around and smell the lightness in the air, we start talking about whose perspective is ‘right’. It feels like we are heading towards yet another stalemate that philosophical discussion often becomes.

But then, we get hit on the head by couple of falling apples and realize that…

…we both are right.  

The difference between our positions is the measures and yardsticks each of us is using. As it often happens, within the narrowness of our visions we both are correct. The answers depend on the perspective from which we the world.

It is the old story of an elephant and five blind men again.

Measures and Yardsticks. It is easy to forget that answers depend on them. Sometimes, in our lives, we struggle to find measures and yardsticks to even know which direction we are heading. Without a GPS for the soul, we wander around.

One day we wake up and start to wonder what is the meaning and purpose of our life? Somewhere along the passing hours of a night, our perspectives shift, and the morning sky just does not look the same.

We had also forgotten that Y also taught us that all things are relative. The colors we see depend on our frame of reference.

Measures and Yardsticks. One measure of me is height and the yardstick is a meter. Another measure of me is sharpness of vision and the yardstick is 20/20. Based on each, I could reach two different conclusions about myself.

I am measuring X and Y by the sense of equanimity they have. The yardstick is how much they looks forward to getting out the bed in the morning and the spring in one’s step.

You are measuring X and Y by how productive they are. The yardstick is what they are going to leave behind. The yardstick is the legacy.

It is the inner peace vs. productivity and springiness vs. legacy.

We wonder if we can come up with another measure and a yardstick that will say that life of X was more worthy than that of Y. Think of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Think of the Cold Wars and threats for nuclear winters (and roaches ruling the world), and in some weird way, for a fleeting moment, the life of X may feel like the more worthy.

Our walk is coming to an end. The sun is descending towards the horizon, and it is time to get back home and think about dinner. We take one last glance at the green trees around us and look forward to coming back again and continue our musings on life, its wonders, its pains, and of promises it can hold.

Ciao.

Oh, did I forget to tell you that Y was the child of X? How silly of me not to have mentioned that Y would not have existed without our beloved couch potato, the Mx. X. Does that change the answer in any way?

Utopia, a dystopia in sheep’s clothing

 Arun Kumar

SarahRichterArt

 

On a lazy summer afternoon, I am wondering if utopia is even feasible? Or it is what we think of it that is just a dream.

Is uniformity or equality an impossible trait to find? Is there a fundamental force that makes them a shimmering mirage? A mysterious fifth force that has shaped everything from the beginning of time, through the entirety of evolution on the Earth and throughout the history of human civilization.

Around us, non-uniformity is a rule and not an exception. There is an invisible force field that constantly nudges and makes all things unique.

The telltale signs of the fifth force are all around. On my walks along the wooded trails, some trees reach loftier heights than others.

In the night sky, some stars shine brighter than others. They are not like the streetlights that stretch along a long road and the ones farther are dimmer. Stars have different sizes and the candles burning in their bellies are different.

Galaxies that dot the darkness of vast measures of space are of different shapes and sizes.

At the other extreme, looking through a microscope no two snowflakes are alike. Or I have been told.

Identical twins with the same DNA grow to become unique personalities. Same genes, but the ones that get expressed are different.

Maybe it is only at the level of two hydrogen atoms that are identical, while objects built from them are not.

In everything that surrounds me, non-uniformity rules. At the bottom, right corner of the canvas of every creation, there is a small signature of its creator, the fifth force.

Non-uniformity (and inequality) has plagued human society from its beginning and has been responsible for unfathomable brutalities and suffering. The study of history, perhaps, is a narrative of the consequences of non-uniformity.

Human suffering that has resulted from non-uniformity has led us to dream of utopian worlds, of utopian societies.

On a lazy summer afternoon, I am wondering if utopia is even feasible? Or it is what we think of it that is just a dream.

The fundamental reason that inevitably leads to differences between things all around us is the role randomness plays in shaping everything. Take the example of trees on the trail I often walk along.

I am sure that differences in the height are not as much due to innate differences between the seeds. It is just that during their nascent years, some seedlings had a bit of a clearer view of blue sky and few more rays of sunshine to soak in. Given that slight of an advantage that seedling grew a little bit taller. In its later years, that little advantage amplified, and that lucky seedling reached loftier heights.

The seedlings that grew under the shade tried to keep up, but eventually lost the race. Basically, the same reasoning explains the differences we see all around.

Small random perturbations giving a small initial advantage, through positive feedback, inevitably grow to become much larger differences.

Uniformity being impossible has played such havoc through the history of human civilization that out of tiredness of seeing the brutalities of wars and watching the unnecessary suffering that is all around, has led us to the dreams of utopia.

Utopia. The place where everyone walks around wearing a toga holding a book in their hands while having intellectually invigorating debates about whether Stoicism or Buddhism are merely two branches that are conjoined at the base.

Maybe it is my personal dream of utopia. A world where everyone is a contemplative Socrates. And of course, it is also a world where dark chocolate with sea salt hangs from the trees.

Can the utopian dream become a reality? Can utopia rise out as a self-organizing principle to becomes ours? Can one day, tired of all the conflicts, we would flip the switch and decide to turn the utopian dream into a reality?

If the present is any example, utopia as a self-organizing principle does not seem possible. There may be some examples in the animal world that I am not aware of. There have been some attempts to form small utopian communes but by and large they have not lasted for long.

Maybe the self-organizing creation of utopia needs a higher level of intelligence than what has so far evolved on the Earth. There has not been enough time.

Utopian societies are common in sci-fi movies and fiction. Their origin and sustainability, however, does not have roots in self-organization.

What generally happens is that the equality, or uniformity in the general population is enforced by everyone needing to take a mind-altering morning pill that keeps human urges in check. The pill is complemented by a group of people that enforce the rules and weed out any signs of non-conformity. The utopia is run by an elite group of human beings and their cohorts.

In this version of utopia, there is a perception of equality, but it is not self-organized. An exogenous force is always present to maintain equality.

A dystopian perspective is a civilization in control of (OF the privileged, or BY the privileged?) the privileged that oversees the distribution of resources and needs a force to keep dissent at bay. The mental image (maybe I am biased by watching the movies) of the dystopian world is a place where the sun no longer shines.

In contrast, utopia is a brightly lit world, a world of eternal sunshine. But underneath the peace, the calm, and the sense of tranquility permeating the air are also innumerable rules, regulations, brain altering chemicals that are required to smooth out inequalities and not let any deviation grow and question the conformity. Or to ask the question, who are we?

The sustainability of both a dystopian and a utopian state require exogenous control. The police state monitors for any deviations and eliminates them before they rise and try to wake masses from their stupor.

From this perspective, utopia is just a gentler version of dystopia. A dystopia in sheep’s clothing.

We know how those movies end. In some isolated corner of the police state, a small departure from the conformity manages to slip through the controls. It grows and manages to take down the purveyors of the pill givers.

One morning, when the city awakens, everyone can feel something is different in the air. Without the pill, gradually its effects wear off. Slowly, everyone wakes up and realizes how beautiful the trees are when each has a different height.

Sounds bad but let us keep the dream of utopia alive. It is a gentler dream to have than wishing for a dystopia. Let us be careful because dreams do come true.

Peace.

 

Related Post:

Is Dystopia a natural state, and Utopia, well, just a dream?

Red Pill or Blue Pill

Sweet revenge of the polar bear

 Arun Kumar

My left hand sometimes does not know what the right hand is doing. Maybe this happens more often than I realize. Why else has the phrase become an idiom? To get a feel of its omnipresence, a few more examples are in order.

Jet-setting climate scientists run around the world to communicate their latest findings about global warming and forget that the contrails left behind and the fuel burned just raised the greenhouse gasses by a fraction. In the evening, they dine on a juicy steak forgetting that environmentally it is much better to be a vegetarian.

In a meeting at work someone will casually throw out the notion that we should not be working in silos and feel smug about the penetrating statement. Suddenly a day out of the wild blue yonder, matrix management becomes a tsunami that washes over us. I get matrixed and my one hour does not know what the next hour will be doing.

And my personal favorite - The time it takes to finish public projects in the United States (e.g., finishing a subway line) is so long that sometimes I wonder if one crew puts things together during the day while another crew tears down two thirds of it during the night. In the twilight of the evening, the two pass each other like ghosts.

There are plenty of other examples scattered around. This particular story of my left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing is about Coca-Cola, the Company, and their product, the Coke.

I myself do not drink Coke. The reason is that being health conscious, my left hand finds the nutritional content of Coke alarming. A 355 ml (or gram) can of Coke has 150 Calories, 14% of Daily Value (DV) of required carbs, all of them coming from 40 grams of sugar from high fructose corn syrup (which is a miracle of human ingenuity, in itself).

Sugar is not healthy for our metabolism. The genes we have inherited, and proteins, enzymes, amino acids that make us function, have been optimized through the slow precepts of natural selection. They get jolted by 17 teaspoons of sugar that is in a can of Coke. The 140 years since 1892 when Coke was invented is too short of a time for our metabolism to adjust to the new world reality where the availability of sugar is so much easier than picking berries while on a lookout for snakes.

The easy availability of sugar and our evolutionary conditioning is an explosive combination. The result is obesity and diabetes being epidemic, not to mention the sad history of sugar plantations (with their devastating influence on our history).

The World Health Organization has these cheering numbers to say: “About 422 million people worldwide have diabetes, the majority living in low-and middle-income countries, and 1.5 million deaths are directly attributed to diabetes each year. Both the number of cases and the prevalence of diabetes have been steadily increasing over the past few decades.”

Sugars not only taste fantastic, they have also become a cheap source for required daily intake of calories.

Maybe our addiction to sugars will continue to shape the future trajectory of history and evolution. Can we anticipate 100 generations from now, which faction of humanity will have the upper hand (the hand again!)? The ones who do not have a sweet tooth and have better self-control or the ones stalking the cookie aisles in the grocery stores?

If natural selection has any lessons to offer, then it will favor those with less of a fatal attraction for sugars. But don’t tell Coca-Cola that by promoting their product and hiring the polar bear, they are accelerating their own demise.

What we do not know is that the polar bear has his own agenda.

The sneaky master plan of the polar bear is to ensure that we will drink enough sugar and will not be around for much longer to melt the ice caps and destroy their habitat. The plan is a bit far-fetched, but at least it is a plan for taming runaway global warming. So far, we have none.

Oh well. Back to the story of conflict between my left hand and my right hand.

The right hand! What is it up to?

The right hand wants to have a comfortable retirement, and to have that, it wishes financial stability.

The right hand wants to have a return of 10% on the savings so by compounding, it can double the money every 7 years. To get that kind of average returns, it cannot stuff the money in a pillowcase, and hope for a miracle. Instead, it has to embrace stocks.

Not being a big risk taker or having the wherewithal to spend time on researching individual stocks, the right hand takes the option of investing in the S&P 500 Index fund. Afterall, it has heard that consistently outperforming and timing the markets is highly improbable. The Vanguard S&P 500 Index Fund (VFINX) had an average return of 11.5% since its inception in 1976, so why not?

Investing money in VFINX is a ticket to a comfortable retirement. It may not be enough for buying a yacht and being anchored off the shores of St. Croix, but it will be good enough to live in a house a mile away from the beach and taking walks in the sand every evening.

So, the right hand goes ahead and invests in the VFINX . On crisp fall afternoons, it gazes in the blue sky and daydreams of money growing.  My right hand is just engaged in following its prime directive to ensure a 10% average return on investments.

But guess what, one of the stocks in VFINX, oops, is Coca-Cola.

The left hand, being health conscious, does not touch a can of Coke with a ten-foot pole, the right hand, by investing in  VFINX, wants humanity to consume Coke as much, and as long as possible.

The right hand wants KO to thrive and prosper.

The right hand urges us to listen to the polar bear and enjoy a few bottles of the chilled Coke every day. Please do that, it says, so I can retire comfortably one day with a longer, and a healthier lifespan, while you, oh well, sugars may not be good for your health, they taste so good.

Right hand’s wish for a healthy growth in the KO is at the expense of fellow human beings. Meanwhile the left hand wishes for a longer, healthy lifespan. It is the battle between good and evil, and neither wants to sit down at the table and negotiate.

There may be a way out of my moral conundrum though. Happily, Coke also has many other uses – kill slugs and snails, clean burned pots and pans, remove rust, and so on. They could become its selling point, and even if people stop drinking coke, Coca-Cola could still be a profitable company.  

If that happens, my left and right hands will shake hands together and live in harmony ever after. One of my many inner struggles will end.

Towards my wellbeing, let us raise our glasses, say a toast, and have a refreshing glass of Coke. Oh the irony…

 

Why have we not been visited by aliens?

Arun Kumar

St. Croix, US Virgin Island

 

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic – Arthur C. Clarke

St Croix. We are staying on the west side of the island and away from the reaches of civilization. It is a wonderful place. Sitting on the deck and while drinking my first cup of Earl Grey and taking in its aroma, while at a distance, I can view the turquoise ocean and undulating waves playing on its surface. 

It feels like heaven. It is a place where I have either forgotten my limitations or I have suddenly learned to be content with them. In either case, for a few moments, I sit feeling lightened and enlightened.

The night comes and we are going through the phase of the new moon. The city lights do not encroach on the dark brilliance of the night sky, where a million twinkling stars are shining. Their number seems much more than back home. A faint river of the Milky Way stretches across the sky.

The Big Dipper. The North Star. They are all there, partying quietly.

Among this brilliance and the silence, the stillness is occasionally broken by a sound of a gecko dreaming about its next meal.

Sitting here, looking at all those twinkling stars, I start to wonder why we have not seen alien beings yet. After all, there are all these stars, billions of them just in our own galaxy. And then, there are billions of galaxies. The sky is filled with them in whichever direction we care to look.

However minute the chances for life to emerge may be, in the end, those staggering number of stars, the energy givers with thermonuclear fusion keeping their bellies warm, can easily overcome miniscule probabilities for the chance of developing self-replicating molecules to materialize.

After all, fed by the energy from the Sun, life emerged on the Earth. If it can happen here, under the right circumstances, it can happen elsewhere too. We are not a product of exceptionalism.

So why have we not been visited by aliens yet? Aliens who might have had a much longer time to evolve and had the time to figure out how to travel through vast distances within a manageable time.

Within the last 100 years, human discovery and technological capability has progressed at a stunning pace. With that in mind, imagine what a civilization with a head start of 100,000 years under its belt would be capable of.

In 100 years we have developed advanced technologies, have mapped the human genome, understood the basics of the physical laws and beginnings of the universe, built computers that can look into the future and tell us the weather five days from now (not to mention, Facebook, Instagram, Alexa, and TikTok!), so imagine what wonders 100,000 more years of technological development can bring.

Heck, I do not even remember what I used to do merely 35 years back when laptops and the internet were not around.

Maybe a simple reason for not meeting the aliens is that distances between islands of life scattered around stars and galaxies are just too vast for technologies or physical laws to overcome. The distances ensure that once an island we will always be an island.

Distances aside, there could be another possibility. One possibility, if considered, may be a more elegant and natural explanation to the riddle: a sufficiently advanced civilization, unless it overcomes the innate traits shaped by the nuances of evolution, is destined to self-destruct.

The trigger for self-destruction might be built in the basic constructs of evolution.

Life itself is a chemical process and the universe has plenty of them to offer for randomness to play the game of mix and match. And play it does. Chance happenings of favorable chemical bonds lead to more and more complex molecules.

One day, some of those molecules discover the magic of self-replication. Given a source of energy, and if there is no competition, the same molecules will replicate without bound to the extent that is limited by the energy source. It will be a monochromatic world.

Nature, however, is more colorful. The randomness that made those molecules possible also ensures that they will have adequate competition and the successful will have to constantly watch their backs.

Even if there is no competing family of molecules wanting to grab the same resources, the invisible power of randomness will create variations within, leading to various sub-classes. Some better and some worse.

The better ones will be more adept at replicating and consuming energy and begin to dominate. The less unfortunate will either perish or find a niche and withdraw into their own little part of the universe.

Dictated by randomness, the basic rules governing evolution emerge.

Given a mix of a source of energy ready to be consumed and a class of self-replicating molecules, randomness leading to chance mutations creates less or more efficient molecules, setting the stage for natural selection.

The consequence is the start of epic battles for consuming and garnering resources that have continued to date. Battles that were either played out among different species or among different sub-classes of the same species.

If you don’t believe it, just look around, or listen to 10-minutes of the evening news, or skim the headlines of the Washington Post. The underside of all stories considered newsworthy is a story of struggle between classes.

Starting from humble beginnings and shaped by evolution and underlying laws of natural selection, we have reached the present to be what we are now. Our genes, our biological and psychological thought processes are all shaped by the pressures, and opportunities, in the surrounding environment in which our ancestors lived. In a way, we are an integral of history, and if we survive. that integral is positive.

The innate traits developed along the way, which helped us survive and get progressively better, are still with us. The rush of adrenaline when we hear a creaking noise in the middle of night, the fear of snakes, the sweet tooth, our attraction to vistas so we can spot a cheetah from miles away.

The list of innate biological and psychological traits that we carry and are shaped by the environment is endless. A result of the sweeping arms of natural selection that has touched everything.

Somewhere along the way, however, we broke away from the pack. Within the last ten thousand years or so, (a tiny blip compared to cosmic and geological time scales on which the outcomes of natural selection are shaped) through technological advances that were initially slow, but always advancing at an exponential pace, we have attained an apparent capability to defy evolution.

With climate control offered by heating or cooling, we no longer have to worry about adapting to warm or cold weather. Before flying to Rovaniemi, Finland, a place inside the Arctic Circle, I did not give a second thought to how I am going to survive there in the middle of February. I no longer have to act like the squirrels running in my backyard, who during the Fall go through a frenzied activity of burying something.

Outward appearances of breaking free from the chains of natural selection, however, could be deceiving. The same ten thousand years that have endowed us with tremendous capabilities, both constructive and destructive, yet are not long enough for our innate traits of tribalism to adjust to the different environment, have given us a different paradigm in which we now exist.

We may no longer have to worry about tigers, snakes, famines, extreme cold, but we still carry the basic traits and reactions that were shaped by those environmental pressures. We may no longer have to compete for resources across species, but we now carry the battles within the subclasses of our own species.

Now the battles play out between rich and poor, between nations, between people of different colors, between individuals with different mindsets or religions or races or histories or sexual orientation.

The basic tenets of natural selection continue to thrive but now the ‘competition’ live next door.

Although the pace of technological advances has far outpaced that at which most biological and psychological traits evolve, we continue to be governed by the traits with which we evolved.

Genetics still haunts us. We may no longer be shackled by the subtle laws of natural selection, and may feel proud to have overcome nature, however, nature still rules. All we need to do is to look into our pantries or the maze of shelves of a grocery store and the food choices we make.

It is not an accident that we are hooked on sugar.

Holding on to the traits that gave us an edge during evolution is a dangerous mix when combined with technological capabilities we now have. The same psychological traits could become an impediment to our survival.

Armed with dangerous weapons while holding on to tribalism in an inevitable fight for decreasing natural resources is a dangerous mix.

Looking at the beautiful night sky, I start to wonder: Can a sufficiently advanced civilization evolve the wisdom to free itself from the traits that proved advantageous during evolution and adapt to a world that is no longer governed by the pressures of evolution?

How long will it take for our genes to evolve to the new paradigm of no longer being shaped by the guardrails imposed by needing to not load up on sugar?

But then again, are we actually in a new evolutionary paradigm in which the traditional rules of evolution do not apply? The feeling that we are free from the tenets of evolution is likely just a mirage. The guardrails of evolution are still there; it is just that the players in the fight for resources are different.

Evolution, ultimately, is a fight for limited resources. If the resources were unlimited, then maybe all can live happily ever after in harmony. The world, instead of feeling like it is always on the verge of dystopia, will be a utopian dream.

Previously the fight may have been between different species and that paradigm may no longer exist. It does not mean that the fight for resources is over. The fight for resources, now has now shifted to within Homo Sapiens. (With little regard for the essential role of biodiversity in the natural world, I might add.  But that’s a topic for a future post.)

The fight for resources is now between the nations, it is between rich and poor, it is between freedom and dictatorship, it is between democrats and republicans, it is between haves and have nots.

And within the fight for freedom, the conflict is between liberals and moderates. The fight for resources has a fractal quality to it; every segment looks like its larger version.

The fight is now between us when we rush through the door of the Walmart on Black Friday, and like hyenas, grab on the ends of a box of a 64” flat screen TV. We think that our survival depends on being victorious and bringing that TV home, mistakenly believing that it will nourish our souls.

In a world that is teeming with disparity, the fight for natural resources will always be inevitable. And with randomness governing personal destinies, uniformity as a natural state is a statistical impossibility. No matter how much time we give, uniformity is not going to happen.

These days the game of evolution plays out on the grander scale and is for different resources – oil, precious metals, the Arctic shipping routes in the world of decreasing sea ice, minerals at the bottom of the sea, who is going to claim the rights for the desolate piece of wasteland on the dark side of the moon.

Hanging on to the traits that made us successful, and the process of evolution that shaped the advent of intelligent beings, will ultimately be the demise of a sufficiently advanced civilization that has acquired means to build a Death Star to annihilate millions with the push of a button.

In the end, the slate will be wiped clean, and life will begin again with molecules elbowing each other for -- you guessed it -- resources.

That may be the reason why we have not been visited by aliens yet. A civilization that may be capable of warp travel, or can control wormholes, will not be able to grow out of its increasing need for resources. In the end, some faction will press the button, and the mushroom cloud will lead to destruction.

We can hang on the utopian dream that a council of wise people will rein in our base tendencies, and we can avoid extinction. We may think that Spock will be our savior, but we may not be able to shake the Klingon Bird-of-Prey.

Is dystopia a natural state, and utopia, well, a dream?

Or one day, we all will be inserted with a chip that will wipe out any thoughts of being different, and we will live in the world of the Matrix. But then, the fight may shift to between the Fugaku and Selene to find more human cells to power their hunger.

Whether we will become wise I do not know; we do not know. We can ask the aliens who never visited us. Or that we cannot ask them may be telling in that a sufficiently advanced civilization at some point wipes the slate clean and resets the process of evolution back to its humble beginnings.

I look again at the night sky and wonder if we will manage to really defy the laws that are shaped by our desire to corner a limited availability of resources. My time is limited, and I may never know the answer.

Or maybe, given the 13.8 billion of history and looking back, we already have the answer to why aliens have not visited us.

Time is a great healer. It could also be a great destroyer. Time graciously lends us all the “time” we need to build the Death Star that one day will ensure our destruction.

It is a plausible scenario. But cheer up, it is extremely unlikely to happen today.