Chaos Theory Could Save the World

Recently, climate scientists told us that we have a 50/50 chance of survival if we become “carbon neutral” by 2050. That target is unlikely because we would need a miraculous invention. We would soon need a cheap electric car battery with a range of thousands of miles.

So we, the people of Planet Earth, are doomed. The greed of the few outweighs the good of the many. Our only hope lies in a sudden change of heart by the carbon barons and their politicians, or in some impossible technology that exceeds even their reach.

Human advancements and inventions are based on repeated trial and error. We learn how to solve problems with proven methods. The light bulb, the cure for a disease, rocket power, the internal combustion engine, computers, solar panels, and every other significant invention are the result of painstaking trial and error.

Without experiments, we cannot verify. And so our ability to learn is based on nature and the inherently slow process of testing and testing again. But how do we even know what to test? We have mathematics and science to help, and we have luck.

But what if we could invent a better way to invent? What if we could create something in seconds instead of hundreds of years? What if we could learn how to learn differently? Immanuel Kant once challenged western civilization to dare to find answers to the hardest questions. So let’s dare to find new solutions.

First, we would need parameters. It does no good to invent something if we can’t build it. We need big data software that verifies and sets boundaries. According to chaos theory, the molecules in a waterfall are free to wander at will; what makes them part of a waterfall is determined by the strange attractors that define the boundaries within their waterfall realm. We must create a software system within our own borders that mimic the natural chaos phenomenon. Our field of restrictions is defined by the engineering capabilities of humanity at this point in time.

So our new daring method would need to be a two-step process. Our strange attractors (SA) software is the first step. We can do this! We have this type of software already, and we have the data. Smart programmers can build the SA software in months. The problem is how to send it solutions.

Now for the good part. The purpose of the daring system is to cheat nature into giving up a few of her secrets ahead of schedule. We can’t wait 10,000 years for researchers to stumble onto solutions needed for global warming or interstellar space travel!

The other half of our system would be a theory generator. It would take any given problem and generate billions of theories on how to create a solution. It would then feed those theories into the SA side of the system.

The chaos half of the system ensures that we do not invent something that is impossible for our engineers to build. We must stay within our engineering waterfall. It contains the trial and error AI modules to test billions of random theories or RT nodes.

Remember, Tesla told us we could transmit electric power through the air. No one took him seriously. But we now have microwaves that could beam energy to Earth from orbiting solar panels. So what if we put the Tesla inventors to work on this daring plan?

Like Thomas Edison and his light bulb, trial and error gave him the results that worked. But he was a mere mortal testing different materials. The difference here is that we use computers to generate and test billions of solutions.

Computers are in use today for data mining. The human genome has three billion base pairs, so identifying a single mutation by human inspection is not possible. Computers are programmed to find patterns in massive datasets, saving researcher valuable time. But these implementations are isolated. What if we could generalize?

Let me try to explain. In the universe, there are potentially vast or infinite solutions to any problem. This was the belief of Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. This is an obscure general theory, but it’s a good starting point. Using chaos principles, we can create an artificial set of strange attractors to keep the system focused on practical solutions, while still remaining free to explore vast possibilities. We cheat nature. Instead of waiting several thousand years, we change the rules of the game to our advantage. I thought this daring system would be something for the next generation, but we don’t have time to wait.

I for one believe we can do this.