Reflections on an Evening with Kaku

Hi there,

this is a waffle about the excellent futures waffles that were had as part of the "An Evening With Michio Kaku" event, what a fun time! Do forgive the fanboy gushings here; as critical as I can be of technocrat/Meliorist perspectives... I do respect the awesome hardwork that many have made, as there's much to be thankful for.

Having this once in a lifetime opportunity to meet one of the fathers of String Theory was a chance not to be passed up - a real win win situation, as much of the 'exorbitant' fees and costs involved went to charity and to supporting science. Exorbitant though, is relative, as rock concerts are much more expensive for not nearly as much fun!

The event was sold out to capacity: complete with huge queues that snaked down to the mezzanine. something around 2000 odd people?

The gender ratio was ~ 55:45 in favor of women; loads of smart beautiful women, 

though the age range of the crowd as a cohort seemed to vary widely, with the youngest being 3 or 4 (no babies?! none that I saw and if there were, they were well behaved!) and the older being in their 90s... at conferences, or 'significant events', I like to gather pertinent data, such as the composition of the overall cohort, and any influential persons there, and gender ratios etc... just never know when that stuff might come in handy further down the line, and so few of these conference proceedings either gather that data or share it freely...

I use that initial impression of data to estimate what a statistically significant random sample from that group might be, then I try and sample random conversations (as politely as possible) so as I can learn as much as possible! Others might try to hit specific marks or whathave you; but talking with people is one of those fun things about conferences and events.

I had about 60 conversations over the night, with more women than men, 

and the topics ranged widely. It was great to see so many women interested in and studying sciences and statistics, particularly medicine, computers/cybernetics and law/humanities.

Many males were individuals, very few came in groups. I made a choice to try and talk to the males that were part of larger groups, predominantly so as to cover more people for the limited sample time...

As to the evening itself,

what a fun event! The 1 hour public lecture was much the same as those of the past 5-6years, similar to the ones you can find on Google or TEDx. This was a little saddening, as it felt the material was staged as against authentic or off the cuff. Flipside of the coin; kudos to Kaku being able to so consistently hit the same marks for all these years!

The ~1.2Hr public Q&A and Meet and Greet was much more interesting; there were a lot of technical questions about String Theory and the implications for combinatorial materials science etc... very interesting stuff there.

Yours Truly wanted to ask about Riemann Manifolds, Lorentz Transforms and more specifically about Harold White (warp field interferometer) and the Alcubierre Drive... but instead chose to ask the one question about Kaku's stance on Population Growth.

 For context, I had 15 questions prepared for the "Suppose you meet God and can only ask one question, what would the question be?" scenario... the gatekeeper said "no technical questions." so that ruled out 7 of em... 

The Gatekeeper, she wasn't wanting me to ask the question I did... but I thought why not ask, because Kaku has spoken on the topic many times before but never stated much of how we can realise these things... only that we shouldnt repeat the mistakes of the past and should afford science more respect, primacy and less persecution.

So I ask: What does he [Kaku] think of population futures, in the context of another great physicist Al Bartlett's work, The Essential Exponential! ?

To which Kaku said: A technical question, and the answer is yes! hahaha,

In all seriousness though, there's no reason to give up hope entirely just yet...

He then outlined that population figures were in decline in many places, with decline rates maintaining an S-curve and stabilising around 2030-2045, and that women empowerment (a very cool thing) would pretty much solve the whole population problem for us, along with an innovation rate that exceeded More's Law.

That was great, and I felt I had teased more of an answer out, as its such a taboo topic to discuss in a public place, in part due to the nature of misunderstandings that tragically all too often occur when applying critical thinking: I wanted a great scientist to be able to talk more about population freely (in the state they were talking in especially).

So, the rest of the questions were great,

an American (Canadian?) asked about how Kaku envisaged modelling the innovation rate; the answer was great, and so I must thank them the next time I see them for a great question. It was essentially similar to what Dave Coutts has written so eloquently over on The Exponentialist!  Basically, a variable compounding, polynomial thing, that implies it could be a negative innovation rate for potentially prolonged periods of time...

Some technical questions and a little maths were discussed briefly in the Meet and Greet on a whiteboard; just a little enumeration or some Lorentz stuff, I think college professors or skeptics were testing Kaku to see if he could do some 'simple' math... it was a good few maths jokes though.

Then it wrapped up, and before I could get to waffle with some more people, they'd all dispersed into the night! It was a shame, as I felt many wanted to waffle some more and had the distinct impression they wanted to vent or talk to someone who'd listen (as they'd spent nearly 3 hours listening).

I did manage to squeez in a few more random short conversations, which was awesome! People were talking about cybernetics and energies futures and all sorts of stuff. We exchanged a few emails! It was great!

I happened to wind up talking with two quite learn-ed first year uni guys, and we happened to be talking about their take on futures. I waffled (perhaps too much?) and we used the iPad to have a look and bookmark interesting websites...

When we look up and who should happen to cross the foyer but Mr Kaku himself?!

The poor guy, he looked exhausted from all the travel and so many questions... everyone wanted a piece of this guy...

Luckily, graciously, he happened to be headed the same way we were headed, and the traffic lights were red. Here we all were on the corner, and I happened to say, isn't that the you-know, the guy?

And he pipes up: who me? Why yes I am me, who are you?

and we got to talking, and he said we could walk and talk and we all had 5 minutes or so for sure (no problem) -that he had to hop in a plane to get to the next speaking engagement the next day, but for fans of science he always had time. He wondered what we thought of the presentation, it went well we told him. He had a standing ovation (2minutes of thunderous applause), so it must have gone well!

I waited my turn to ask a few questions, 

thanked him again (both as a Japanese American and as an innovator) and got to ask a few questions, such as about the warp interferometer and about energy futures as followups to my population growth question. 

He gave candid, pragmatic and succinct answers (that I'll not forget, especially the warning and the well wishing for troubling times ahead). He spoke about how "braindrain" was a terrible thing and would hopefully one day not need to happen. He commented I seemed widely read, and wondered what I thought might be the outcome for futures. I said my part. He wagered that progress was slightly more likely than collapse, but remarked he probably wouldn't be around to collect on our wager. He then kindly offered to autograph anything we had on us, and I was able to shake his hand.

We also spoke about SLAC and the extended periodic table, 

Kaku felt that the eka-actinides might be reasonably synthesised in the near future with 'decent' ERoEI ratios... and we both laughed/remarked that science would be the better investment than in the military-industrial complex. 

This was a lot of fun for sure... I could waffle some more on this topic, or about meeting great innovators/thinkers more generally (or on other topics, such as brushes/meeting famous persons, and trying to really "let them be" as much as possible, or at least treat them like people and have a regular old conversation). I try not to follow tabloid things, and try to talk with persons of interest directly.

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So, bizarrely, as interesting as actually meeting the guy behind String Theory was, the conversations had with other people were as fun or even moreso!, 

these unsung heroes, from all over the world and different backgrounds, who had really neat ideas and made great conversations!

Thanks for them, and I wish events like that happened more like once a fortnight or once amonth: lifes to short to have them once a year or once a lifetime!

Thats what I want to aim for and strive for with waffling here and elsewhere on the web, and in waffling in real life:

a fun time, an informative time, and a sharing space where people can waffle.

 

What do you think about academia?

Have you had brushes with influential people, famous people or thinkers? What is a protocol for coincidental happenstance meetings? Do you try to "leave people be", or do you think its good to let them know you care and have a brief encounter/chat?

If you could only ask one question; what would yours have been and why? How do cull the options down for that question?