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\'3;↓Q\CSTANFORD UNIVERSITY
\F3\CSTANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305
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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE LABORATORY\←L\-R\/'7;\+R\→.\→S   Telephone:
COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT\←S\→.415-497-4430
\F0\C18 January 1975




Professor Joshua Lederberg
Genetics Department
Stanford, Calif.

Dear Josh,

	\JThanks for the copy of your letter to Bethe.  I had seen a
report of the statement in the \F1New York Times\F0, and I wrote
him a letter congratulating him on it enclosing a copy of the statement
on energy issued by the Stanford group.  It hasn't been sent so
a copy of this can be included.

	Reading the proposed \F1enlargement\F0 was very discouraging to
me, because I have been hoping for a consensus among scientists on
what has to be done to solve the energy problem, and unfortunately I
have to disagree with every sentence in the \F1enlargement\F0, not only
because I think you have made a mistake, but because it expresses some
of the very views that have paralyzed action on the energy problem.
Furthermore, you may well be right in saying that the statement
will be regarded as reactionary by most liberal scientists unless
it says what you want.

	Here is what I find wrong - sentence by sentence:

	1. "\F1These middle to long range efforts at improving the supply
of energy cannot be expected to restore a situation in which we can again
be thoughtlessly wasteful about its expenditure\F0".
I shall take the  sentence as asserting that the number  of man hours
required  to produce a  kilowatt hour in  the various  forms in which
energy is used will increase above what it is today, at least  if the
production of energy is to  increase substantially.  I don't see that
this is so, except possibly in the area of vehicle fuel - given vigorous
development of the coal and nuclear technologies advocated in Bethe's
statement.  Moreover, the wording of the sentence is tricky in that it
is superficially difficult to disagree without being and advocate of waste.
Admitting the sentence might mollify criticism, but the resulting superficial
agreement would later break down in argument over the operational consequences
of what had been agreed to, e.g. whether the last sentence of the \F1enlargement\F0
follows from it.
As you know, my own opinion is that we can eventually afford several times
our present per capita energy use for several times our present population
and that we will benefit from the increased energy use though not from the
increased population.  In the long run we shall need increased energy in order
to process very low grade mineral resources.

	2. "\F1Besides its economic cost, every kilowatt hour of energy
entails and environmental price that must be balanced against the benefits
from its utilization\F0".  Taken literally this is a truism, but I assume
you imply that even with the technology Bethe recommends and with
the application of reasonably affordable environmental protection technology,
this cost will limit the growth of energy use to a small multiple of
present use.  Unless a highly mobile population is itself regarded
as environmentally objectionable, I don't believe it, and I don't
see why it should be taken as a matter of course.  I think we can
limit the environmental cost of using five times as much energy as we
now use to a small fraction of what we now pay and that this will be found
acceptable.  It is very important to quantify this trade-off
in terms understandable to the voters, so that they can decide where they
want to put it.

	3. "\F1We are just passing from an era of power oriented technology,
typified by the steam and the internal combustion engine to that of the truly
high technology - represented by the computer and modern telecommunications.\F0
Josh, you know me as an exponent of computers and telecommunications,
specifically as a promoter of the home computer terminal that will put
the world's literature at everyone's disposal and permit everyone to
be his own publisher.  However, I don't believe in eras, and I also want
to drive my car and continue to rent airplanes.  Besides that, I don't see
why my friends who like car racing should give up the sport just because
someone claims that a new era has arrived.  More to the probable point of
your statement, it is entirely premature to conclude that a substantial
fraction of the population will have office jobs that they and their
employers will both prefer to have them handle from home by terminals.
It doesn't appeal to me, and I have a home terminal and could do it if
I wanted to, but I fear I would get stir crazy.  Maybe I'll try it some
week and see what happens and tell you about it.

	4. \F1The further development of this high technology is indispensable
to the survival of a large human population, a high standard of living,
and a complex culture in a world whose resource limitations have finally
inescapably reached the attention of all\F0.  This is the statement I
object to most.  A promoter of a solution, and I am a promoter of
communication and computer technology, is always tempted to threaten
the world with death unless it adopts his solution.  I think there
are great social advantages in information technology, specifically
the elimination of information oligopolies, but I believe the world
would survive without it.  Moreover, while it is inescapable that
the resources of the world have limitations, there is no agreement on
what these limitations are, and whether the unquantified resources that
might be saved by computer and communications technology
make the vital difference you assert.  At this level, the sentence
suggests academic logrolling; i.e. I'll say your research project is
vital to save mankind if you will say the same about mine.

	Josh, I think your desire "\F1to avoid the impression that we are
taking a purely reactionary approach\F0 has gotten the better of you.
The propositions of your \F1enlargement\F0 are indeed widely accepted in
intellectual circles, and you are rightly afraid that any statement
that doesn't bow in that direction will be quickly scanned and rejected
by those who regard them as axiomatic today.  However, in my opinion
they aren't true, and they certainly haven't been proved in the sense
that engineering statements are proved.

	Moreover, bowing in this direction, admitting environmental
disadvantages to energy use so obvious that they don't even have to
be described, simply excites further the suspicions and fears of those
who oppose "solving" the energy problem.  If the Bethe group, committed
to energy and even nuclear energy, admits unspecified but insuperable
disadvantages to a further increase in energy use, and relies on an
unspecified computer and communication technology to save us, then
there is no reason to require Ralph Nader and the Union of Concerned
Scientists to actually prove their suspicions and fears.

	Moreover, Josh, the same spirit that opposes energy technology
on the basis of vague and unspecified dangers, also leads to opposition
to the communication and computer technology that you and I are promoting.
Enclosed is a reprint from the latest \F1Communications of the ACM\F0
proposing a moratorium on computer utilities until the year 2000 for
reasons no vaguer than those you give for threatening the human race
with death unless it adopts the selfsame technology.
I also enclose my letter in reply to this article.

	Finally, enclosed is a reprint of an article
by the Administrator of EPA that appeared in
\F1Science\F0 on 7 June that expresses the desire to "\F2seize upon the energy
crisis as a good excuse and a great opportunity for making fundamental
changes that we ought to be making anyway for other reasons.\F0"
Note the vagueness of the changes proposed,
the lack of reference to any more precise proposal, and the apparent
willingness to force these changes on the American people using the
energy crisis as an excuse and opportunity without ever precisely
defining the trade-offs so that the voters can decide the relative
weights to give increments of mobility and clean air.

	Well, I hope you won't be too angry with me for disagreeing with
you and sending a copy of this along to Bethe in order to try to persuade
him not to include your \F1enlargement\F0.  I hope also that the question
of whether our culture need be \F1energy-scarce\F0 in any stronger sense
than it as always been \F1everything-scarce\F0 will at least be debatable
in your proposed conference.  Some other questions for the conference are
quantitative estimation of the energy-environment tradeoffs, how much
energy information technology might save, and how the tradeoffs can be
put honestly before the voters.\.


\←L\→S\←R\-L\/'2;\+L\→L
Best Regards,




John McCarthy
Director, Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Professor of Computer Science
\←S\→L
\F4JMC:pdp-10
file name: lederb.le1[let,jmc]:su-ai
also see: bethe.le1[let,jmc]:su-ai,energy.st1[1,jmc]:su-ai