The Equation of the Devil
I’ve discovered a new science. I’d like to say I founded it or invented it but there are already brilliant people doing interesting work in the field. They just don’t know they share a common field.
To begin, consider this story from Wired about a bizarre scientific paper on the development of a zombie plague. The paper itself (link) is a little dry, though it’s interesting if you can wade through the math. If not, read the Wired story. The basic idea is this: Some mathematicians (with quite a bit of time on their hands, apparently) developed the math to model the spread of a zombie infection. They concluded that, unless humans respond quickly with extremely large amounts of violence, the zombies win, civilization collapses and the human race is ultimately annihilated.
The paper assumes slow zombies, not fast or smart ones. It seems reasonable that both of those situations would make things harder for humanity, most likely. It also assumes that normal human replacement (birth and death) does not take place, since newborns eventually die and the newly dead are a perpetual source of zombies, which means the zombies win. The paper models multiple scenarios, including medical treatment for zombieism and the effect of quarantine procedures on the spread. Factors considered in developing their solutions include rates of transmission, the outcome of encounters (fights) and the effect on the spread of destroying zombies so that they can no longer spread the infection. In other words, despite the seemingly whimsical nature of the subject, this is real science.
The authors point out that, while a zombie apocalypse may not be likely, the same general principles apply in real world situations, such as a disease that has a period of dormancy. Presumably, this dormancy would mask the infection so that, like with zombies, it would be impossible to know who to worry about much of the time. Their model is more complicated than usual disease models, yet it has some real world applications. That’s interesting.
From another point of view, the important thing about this model is that it shows that the human race is not well prepared to withstand the onslaught of an evil force hell bent (so to speak) on causing its destruction. The model does not show what happens when human casualties become so great that the level of organization of the response is degraded. It’s an interesting question to consider whether steps could be taken to make civilization more resilient against chaotic forces. Maybe we’ll consider that question some other time.
Another piece of seemingly whimsical or at least offbeat research that fits in with the theme of a new science, was described in an October 2008 Scientific American article about modeling an evil human. This article describes a project act Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to develop a computer program that could simulate an evil human being. That is, they have been working on an artificial intelligence that embodies all the traits we generally don’t want an AI to have (See my previous post The 99 Gazillion Laws of Robotics). An AI that intentionally causes harm (albeit, within the confines of a computer generated environment).
The idea of modeling an evil intelligence rather than just reading a book about psychopathy (For example the brilliant work of Robert Hare, such as Without Conscience) is fascinating all by itself. It involves problems of defining evil as well as building human-like responses into software, plus the need to develop some kind of environment for the AI to respond to. If this effort is successful, it will allow experiments in behavior that can not, ethically be performed in the real world. Think about it. If you want to know what stressor’s will cause Able to kill Cain (just for a change), you have the problem that if your experiment succeeds, someone dies.
No such problems exist in a purely computer generated world. True, you then run into the problem of checking your results against reality (would Able really kill Cain in an argument about the best thing to feed goats?) but at least you have data to try to check. Without that, you don’t have much beyond speculation and hindsight.
This is why I consider these two separate efforts to be a part of a single scientific study of evil. Maybe I’ll call it evilology (to distinguish it from evil science, which could mean any science misused). This is a science that has gone beyond merely observing the things that do us harm but uses the tools of mathematics and computer science to actively study those forces. This is a science that is capable of developing real, data based predictions about both behavior and potential responses (kill the zombies or we all die!).
During the height of the Cold War, the CIA had a huge Russia desk, populated by people who spoke Russian and had spent years studying Soviet leaders’ interactions, policies and anything else they could get their hands on. The general idea was Sun Tzu’s dictum that it is better to know the enemy, and yourself, than to know only one or, worse, neither.
The study of evil, in all its forms, helps us know the enemy, even when we are our own enemies. It also gives us a way to look beyond ourselves, at artificial intelligences (which are developing), unusual plagues and maybe even aliens. I’m giving serious thought to how to model an alien invasion (with or without genetically engineered zombies).
The advancement of this study out of the realms of history and psychology into scientific modeling is very much to be encouraged.
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