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George Dvorsky | |
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| Born | (1970-05-11)May 11, 1970 (age 55) |
| Website | www |
George P. Dvorsky (born May 11, 1970) is a Canadianbioethicist,transhumanist andfuturist. He is a contributing editor atio9[1] and producer of theSentient Developments blog and podcast. He was chair of the board for theInstitute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET)[2][3] and is the founder and chair of the IEET's Rights of Non-Human Persons Program,[4] a group that is working to secure human-equivalent rights and protections for highly sapient animals. He also serves on the Advisory Council ofMETI (Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence).
Dvorsky is asecular Buddhist,[5][6] progressive environmentalist,[7]ancestral health advocate,[8] andanimal rights activist.[9][non-primary source needed] Primarily concerned with theethical andsociological impacts ofemerging technologies, specifically, "human enhancement" technologies; he seeks to promote open discussion for the purposes of education andforesight.[citation needed] He writes and speaks on a wide range of topics, includingtechnoscience,ethics,existential risks,artificial intelligence, the search forextraterrestrial intelligence, andfuturology, from ademocratic transhumanist perspective.[2][3]
Dvorsky presented an argument for non-human animalbiological uplift at the IEETHuman Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights conference atStanford University in May 2006;[10][11] and wrote the first published article in defence of theAshley Treatment in November 2006,[12][non-primary source needed] and subsequently the onlybioethicist cited byAshley X's parents in their defense.[13]
Dvorsky also presented an argument warning of the decline ofdemocratic values and institutions in the face of existential and catastrophic risks at theGlobal Catastrophic Risks: Building a Resilient Civilization conference in November 2008.[14][non-primary source needed]
Dvorsky, along with Milan M. Ćirković and Robert Bradbury, published a critique ofSETI in the May 2012Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS) arguing that SETI techniques and practices have become outdated. In its place, Dvorsky, Ćirković, and Bradbury advocated for what they called Dysonian SETI, namely the search for those signatures and artefacts indicative of highly advanced extraterrestrial life.[15][non-primary source needed]
Dvorsky has written extensively in favor of space exploration and has both promoted and criticized variousMegascale engineering concepts.[16][17][18][19][non-primary source needed]
Dvorsky gained some notoriety in 2012 after writing aboutDyson spheres, hypothetical structures intended to collect the entire energetic output of a star with solar power collectors. While Dvorsky presented it as a solution to humanity's resource needs including power and living space,[17]Forbes blogger Alex Knapp and astronomerPhil Plait, among others, have criticized Dvorsky's article.
Dismantling Mercury, just to start, will take 2 x 1030 joules,[note 1] or an amount of energy 100 billion times the US annual energy consumption ... [Dvorsky] kinda glosses over that point. And how long until his solar collectors gather that much energy back, and we’re in the black?
— Phil Plait, in an email cited in[20]
At one AU – which is the distance of the orbit of the Earth, the Sun emits 1.4 x 103 J/sec per square meter.[note 2] That’s 1.4 x 109 J/sec per square kilometer. At one-third efficiency, that’s 4.67 x 108 J/sec for the entire Dyson sphere. That sounds like a lot, right? But here’s the thing – if you work it out, it will take 4.28 x 1028 seconds for the solar collectors to obtain the energy needed to dismantle Mercury. That’s about 120 trillion years.[note 3]
— Alex Knapp[20]
Other publications includingPopular Science,Vice, and skeptical blogWeird Things followed up on this exchange.[21][22][23] None of them note the above numerical inaccuracies, althoughWeird Things does point out Plait's misunderstanding regarding bootstrapping, which Knapp agreed with in an update to his post.[20][23]James Nicoll noted in his blog that Knapp seriously underestimated the area of a sphere.[24]
{{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help){{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help){{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help){{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help){{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help){{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help){{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help){{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help){{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help)[non-primary source needed]{{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help){{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help)Let's build a Dyson sphere! And why wouldn't we want to? By enveloping the sun with a massive array of solar panels, humanity would graduate to a Type 2 Kardashev civilization capable of utilizing nearly 100% of the sun's energy output. A Dyson sphere would provide us with more energy than we would ever know what to do with while dramatically increasing our living space. Given that our resources here on Earth are starting to dwindle, and combined with the problem of increasing demand for more energy and living space, this would seem to a good long-term plan for our species.
Forbes writer Alex Knapp takes his argument apart instead, crunching some numbers with the help of astronomer Phil Plait. Click through to Knapp's argument for the breakdown of joules needed to dismantle Mercury versus joules obtained by solar collectors. But the gist is that it would take 174 years to recover the energy input that it would take to blow up the lovely, geologically interesting innermost planet.
Knapp calculated (brilliantly, I might add) that, at its earliest stage, the Dyson sphere would take 120 trillion years to produce the energy needed to pillage Mercury. Even at full, Sun-encircling power, the sphere itself would take 174 years to dismantle Mercury. Knapp thus flips the kill switch: "If we're capable of generating the amount of energy right now that would take a Dyson Sphere 174 years to recover, why would we need to build a Dyson Sphere in the first place?"
Dvorsky proposed an unworkable plan weren't included in their calculations. Instead, they worked out that it would take so much energy to disassemble Mercury, that a 100% efficient Dyson shell of satellites would take us some 174 years to balance the energy budget. Now this would've been fine if we were talking about warp drives and negative energy/mass constructs, but we're not, and even after having it pointed out that Dvorsky was proposing a very energy amortized bootstrapping scenario, Alex Knapp was still sticking to his energy balancing guns."