Elon Musk, Environmentalism, and The Infinite Gluttony of “Our Cosmic Endowment”

On the evening of Jun the 5th, Elon Musk boldly took to twitter and directed his scorn at a worthy target. An insidious group of ideologues that have accumulated vast power, threaten to destroy civilization & frankly had it too good for too long… environmentalists…

Realized what I have in common with environmentalists, but also why they’re so annoyingly wrong: They are conservationists of what is, whereas they should be conservationists of our potential over time, our cosmic endowment. (From a friend)
– Elon Musk

It’s possible that this tweet was motivated by the fraught environmental review of the planned starbase facility, and the subsequent outbreak of the most serious crime imaginable: people being mean a Billionaire on Twitter. The tweet is almost completely fungible with the other grievances he’s aired in recent weeks as the acquisition of his favored vice has turned into his personal Borodino. But the last phrase stuck with me. Not the insincere “(From a friend)” signature, but rather “our cosmic endowment”.

Ours to Exploit

“Cosmic Endowment” seems an innocuous phrase meant to evoke the same sort of call to adventure as John Magee’s High Flight; enjoining the listener to leave the bosom of the earth, explore the universe, experience the immense beauty of the cosmos, and maybe run into some new friends. A brave new future awaits! Unfortunately, the ideology behind the words is much grimmer.

The concept of Cosmic Endowment appears in Nick Bostrom’s 2014 Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Bostrom defines this term as the portion of the universe that an extraordinarily advanced humanity could plausibly expand into. This concept is extended to include how many human lives could possibly exist by fully exploiting all the energy available within this “endowment”.

For Bostrom, this is more than just an interesting thought experiment. In a preceding work, 2003’s Astronomical Waste: The Opportunity Cost of Delayed Technological Development, he argues that hastening and securing the future of humanity as a star-faring civilization is a moral imperative. He frames any delay or resistance to this destiny as akin to a vast genocide, or at least (as the title suggests) an “astronomical waste”.

As I write these words, suns are illuminating and heating empty rooms, unused energy is being flushed down black holes, and our great common endowment of negentropy is being irreversibly degraded into entropy on a cosmic scale. These are resources that an advanced civilization could have used to create value-structures, such as sentient beings living worthwhile lives.

Whatever is happening out there: planetary formation, stellar evolution, black hole collisions, perhaps even “Life Beyond”; none of that matters to Bostrom. All phenomena are simply sources of potential energy for humanity to devour. It’s possible that I’m reading too much into the fact that Bostrom’s only mention of natural phenomena is negative, but I don’t think I am.

In 2012’s “Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority” Bostrom hints that he doesn’t attribute much value to the natural world here on earth. In section 3.3 while discussing normative uncertainty, Bostrom states plainly (not as a supposition) that “we may be uncertain whether biodiversity has final value (is valuable ‘for its own sake’)”. It is the only section of the entire piece that mentions biodiversity at all. If Bostrom can be so dismissive of the value of the other forms of life with which we share a genetic lineage, what value could possibly be placed on biological or abiotic phenomena out in the cosmos?

Once maximizing human life, or “continuing the complex of projects”, is identified as the only concern, the natural next question is “How make number go up?”. Bostrom’s answer? Make the entire universe a computer and live in the matrix.

Destined to Become Gray Goo

In “Astronomical Waste” Bostrom does not address the merits of converting humanity into a society of simulated consciousness. Rather he references his previous work “‘Are You Living in a Simulation?’, Philosophical Quarterly, liii”. Fair enough. For now it’s simply enough to know that Bostrom sees simulated and unsimulated human consciousness as equivalent. For a utilitarian a simulated consciousness might even be preferable, since it makes calculations easier.

We can, however, get a lower bound more straightforwardly by simply counting the number or stars in our galactic supercluster and multiplying this number with the amount of computing power that the resources of each star could be used to generate … then divide this total with the estimated amount of computing power needed to simulate one human life..

“Astronomical Waste” does not go into details about what maximizing these resources might look like. Simply establishing the scale was sufficient. For a visceral presentation of what this could look like, we can turn to Charles Stross’ 2005 novel Accelerando.

Strauss’ Novel follows three generations of the Macx family in the near future as they experience the technological singularity. It starts in a familiar place with the patriarch, Manfred Macx, tooling around Europe and trying to dodge the IRS while creating a kind of programmable financialization system (i.e. what Ethereum wants to become). To start, the technological terrain is more or less recognizable to the reader, but the story quickly shifts into uncharted territory with self replicating factories, uploaded consciousnesses, and self-directing AI’s. Ominously, there is evidence that much of the visible universe has been converted into programmable matter, or Computronium.

Fifteen years later, an extraterrestrial signal is decoded. It ends up being a “router” orbiting a brown dwarf, a mere 3 light years from the sun. Manfred’s daughter Amber joins the mission to make contact and uploads her consciousness into a “coke-can-sized” craft constructed of computronium. Once contact is made, the voyage becomes a nightmare. The simulated person’s aboard the coke can encounter a series of monstrous AI’s from across the galaxy. These AI’s are variously described as “corporations/economies” and “predatory barbarians”. Whatever they are called, they entrap and exploit the simulated people via ever more complicated financial arrangements: “Economics x.0”. Along with exploiting other intelligence’s, the alien AI’s (as well as posthumans in the inner solar system) reshape the stellar systems they inhabit.

In order to maximize the use of a given star’s energy output, the various super human intelligences begin to construct matrioshka brains. These structures enclose a star with a cloud of computronium, allowing for immense amounts of computing power to leverage from a star’s energy output. In order to create these structures, the planetary systems must be pulverized and repurposed.

These super-intelligent alien civilizations have determined the value of turning Saturn into a featureless cloud far outweighs any intrinsic value its beauty or the secrets lurking in its depths might have held… as long as that featureless cloud can compute. Titan, Callisto, and Europa might be unique trees in the astrological forest of life, but consider what the hash rate would be!

It should be obvious that similar structures would need to be part of a “cosmic endowment”. Their inclusion follows naturally from the logic presented in “Astronomical Waste”. Indeed, – and I hope you forgive me for the prior misdirection – in Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, Bostrom describes exactly this:

“ a star like our Sun, this would generate 1026 watts. How much computational power this would translate into depends on the efficiency of the computational circuitry and the nature of the computations to be performed. If we require irreversible computations, and assume a nanomechanical implementation of the “computronium” (which would allow us to push close to the Landauer limit of energy efficiency), a computer system driven by a Dyson sphere could generate some 10⁴⁷ operations per second”

Imagine encountering such a civilization, spores of self-replicating factories seed the far reaches of your planetary system. This goes unnoticed until entire asteroids and moons begin to dissolve. Soon, the cause of this calamity is discovered in your home world, but they are too numerous and minuscule to be stopped. Your environment, your civilization, your world all consumed and dispersed in a neatly distributed sphere around your star. Eons of geological, ecological, and civilizational history simple … gone. The purpose of all this destruction? Creating one of innumerable nearly identical computers.

The prospect is horrifying. Such a civilization would be worse than a plague; consuming entire galaxies simply to optimize their physical structures for maximum computing capacity. In Bostrom’s construction to become such a civilization – to become an insatiable universal devourer – it is not only logical, but a moral imperative, and humanity’s highest purpose.

The Greens are the Enemy

Now, suppose you are on board with this plan, you might be asking, “So what? All these simulated people (which sounds pretty cool, thank you) will live in the far future. I’ll reap no benefit from remodeling of the Virgo Supercluster”. Bostrom’s response is that the “technological ‘singularity’ might occur in our natural lifetime, or there could be a breakthrough in life-extension” (Astronomical Waste). In other words, you will get to live the life of – or perhaps more accurately, suffer the same fate as – Manfred Maxc.

With pesky details like “Homo Sapiens”, “the final value of natural phenomena”, and “irrelevance to people living today” having been eliminated, Bostrom can use the theoretically immense computing power of matrioshka brains to forge a powerful rhetorical weapon: VERY BIG NUMBERS. He wields these VERY BIG NUMBERS in order to proscribe current day behaviors. After all, how can modern day social hangups possibly matter when weighed against all the people that could be simulated by turning Andromeda into a supercomputer?

The primary prescription is how we end up back with Musk.

“Clearly, avoiding existential calamities is important, not just because it would truncate the natural lifespan of six billion or so people, but also – and given the assumptions this is an even weightier consideration – because it would extinguish the chance that current people have of reaping the enormous benefits of eventual colonization”
– Nick Bostrom Astronomical Waste

Musk’s tweet is not smart. However, it does gesture at a real ideological divide.

Misunderstanding Environmentalism

Elon’s tweet frames the core difference between “annoyingly wrong” environmentalists and people like people like Musk (who are NOT WRONG) as one of imagination. Environmentalists, he suggests, simply do not have a broad enough perspective. They have their heads stuck in the past; think that the only way to preserve our civilization is to maintain the ecological equilibrium that the earth has existed in for roughly the last 10,000 10,000 years. Environmentalists’ goals are admirable, he says, but hamstrung by a lack of ambition. They are not focused on the CORRECT goal: humanity’s destiny out there among the stars.

An important facet Musk omits is that environmentalists are not strictly motivated by concern for human prosperity. While environmentalists do argue, correctly, that our unsustainable global society is hurtling towards catastrophe – given the lackluster responses thus far, an apocalyptic perspective is entirely rational – and that same society has betrayed its posterity for profit & comfort. But environmentalism has more to offer.

The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.
– Rachel Carson

Environmentalism attributes value to the natural world that is independent of humanity. It is not a past for us to return to, but a living system — you might call it an ecosystem — with its own past, its own future, and its own inherent worth. A mountain is majestic: it was thrust out of the earth by geologic activity over an incomprehensibly long time, the storms that form upon it are wondrous to behold & the animals that dwell upon it are dignified & beautiful. Whether the mountain contains gold, cadmium, uranium, or some other “resource” that humanity can exploit is immaterial. Natural phenomena do not exist merely to satisfy our whims and wants. When humanity destroys part of the natural world, they are destroying something special. To do so wantonly is monstrous.

For environmentalists, the climate crisis threatens a profound tragedy: the avoidable destruction of a system with deep lineage and immense beauty. For Bostrom & Musk it represents a lost opportunity to atomize every planet, enclose every star, and turn the observable universe into a computer. For them, the only thing that matters is the continuation of technological civilization, what remains of the natural world is immaterial.

Is there only Consumption?

“… as we enter interstellar space, it is inevitable that we will stumble upon whole new categories of wonders and delights, some with transforming practical applications.”
– Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot

In 1994, Carl Sagan published Pale Blue Dot, a profoundly spiritual book about scientific discovery, and Sagan’s hope for humanity’s future in the stars. Sagan see’s beauty in nature, both on Earth, and further out in the cosmos. He expresses wonder for the creative & destructive power of the cosmos, its subtle secrets, its immense vastness. For Sagan, the purpose of humanity heading out into the universe is the discovery of knowledge. In his words “We’re made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself”.

The contrast between Sagan & Bostrom is stark. Sagan has an environmentalist’s appreciation for the inherent beauty and value of the natural world. Bostrom does not express that same understanding. For Bostrom, the purpose of expansion into the “cosmic endowment” is, in a word, more. Colonization yields the resources to create more people who will in turn expand further. The diverse systems and phenomena of the universe could justifiably be pulverized to make resource exploitation more efficient. And if simulated persons were preferred, humanity could no longer claim to be seeking knowledge. For if we transitioned to living in simulated fantasy worlds – Descartes’ Demon made manifest – we could never proceed “beyond cogito ergo sum”.

If humanity is fortunate enough to survive and head out into Sagan’s “sacred black”, it is worth considering: What is the point?. Is the universe full of beauty and wonder to behold? Are we the cosmos trying to understand itself? Or are we surrounded by a mere “cosmic endowment”; with no inherent value, only there for us to exploit and consume?

Update: 2022-07-08

A friend of mine suggested that I was straw-manning Musk, or at the very least failed to trace his ideas to Bostrom’s. The latter is true, that portion is threadbare, however Elon has done some work to dispel the former.

After publication, it was reported that Musk fathered twins with an executive at one of his companies. To which he replied “Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far…. Mark my words, they are sadly true” (A VERY dumb tweet). And this was far from isolated. His pinned tweet is a chart that shows the US birth rates below replacement levels since 2010 I’ll set aside the absurdity that humanity’s greatest risk is not accelerating into our carrying capacity, and the ethical issues involved with fathering a child with a subordinate, and just note that reproduction has clearly been on his mind. Although, it doesn’t seems like he’s in favor of everyone getting down.

On the 17th of June he dragged out everyones favorite movie about how the world is degenerating because poor people be fucking: Idiocracy. I’m personally skeptical of this lazy take on intelligence and genetics. I’ve not looked into it – life is short – but it seems like half-bake eugenics. Musk, is fully convinced:

It may as be a documentary, since it’s coming true
– Elon Musk

It may as be. It may as be indeed.

So, the through line is not super clear. After all I’m patching together the toilet thoughts of a man that ideally would have better things to do. But I think there is enough there to plausibly assert that Musk has at least heard of “Cosmic Endowment” while microdosing at an exclusive burning man adjacent event, and naturally sees himself as a protagonist in the great journey of human expansion.

Elon Musk, Environmentalism, and The Infinite Gluttony of "Our Cosmic Endowment"

Ours to Exploit

Destined to Become Gray Goo

The Greens are the Enemy

Misunderstanding Environmentalism

Is there only Consumption?

References