>>> Also, putting your first number in scientific notation helps put this in perspective: 2.2 x 10^12 . Seven orders of magnitude. Close to 15 000 0000 times as much. <<<
Hm, I made a big mistake in that comment. I should have added that we have access to this much, but the real catch is energy and how we are currently limited to tapping into it and the total resource we can access is X.
Thank you so much for pointing this out.
>>> it mostly just requires more energy <<<
Yeah as I argued in another comment, that really is the unmentioned catch over here. I should have elaborated upon that in the parent. Sorry.
Even if most of humanity doesn't reach that level of consumption, we will need to start unlocking some of this resource sooner or later. What really worries me is the amount of energy we need to unlock all of this water locked away in glaciers, ice caps and so on and then actually manage to process and distribute it for final use.
That's a really interesting but hard engineering problem.
>>> Technology which is clearly within our reach would allow the earth to support trillions of humans -- admittedly at a more crowded level than I would prefer. :) <<<
Hm. I don't think that's going to be a problem, it might take me a while to read his work, but that's okay. That said, I'm used to such books and a world rife with war, famine, disease and horrible death.
I've actually thought about this a bit, and I think that a really interesting design for a launch gun would be to encase the payload in a cover composed of diamagnetic material and then pump liquid nitrogen through channels made inside the material. The material would become perfectly diamagnetic and it will repel all fields, so you can easily levitate it and use it's tendency to go from a stronger to a weaker field to accelerate it.
I don't know for sure, but I think that the main advantage of doing something like this versus just putting a magnet over there, would be the fact that an accelerating magnet in such an assembly would generate huge amounts of back-emf and you would have to a) sink that and b) compensate for that.
However I don't know much about what other people's designs are, but I would like to change that. Do you know any resource where I can learn more from the scratch on how to build something like this?
Also where can I read more in detail about launch loops, laser launching, and space elevators?
>>> Why? We have a whole solar system right on on our front porch <<<
This is an honest question, not a rebuttal. How would you get those resources here, or us over there?
>>> Water doesn't just get used once and then disappear forever. Now, one could certainly make an argument against (say) sucking water out of the Oglalla Aquifer faster than it gets replenished, but that's a localized problem. We aren't going to "run out of water". Really. <<<
Well it would have been labored to add that although it would take a large amount of energy to purify water, or perhaps desalinate our oceans, the loop can be closed. The problem really is that it takes resources to keep that loop closed.
I think that all of our issues today boil down to how we convert energy to extract work, if we do manage to make something like fusion work then all of these concerns could be undermined with technology, but how do we get from here to there?
I might be wrong, but I'm sure I read a detailed discussion somewhere about how they analyzed burial pits and found large amounts of cuts as if the flesh had been flayed and so on. Apparently they did detailed DNA analysis and even found human bone fragments in waste pits.
I can't seem to find that discussion online right now. However I did find a rebuttal by Jared Diamond on the same site to this argument;
On a side note I think that it is uncomfortable for us to think about the demise of everything we cherish in this way, and that's why we tend to shy away from discussing this more openly and rigorously.
It's interesting to see how the blog post I cited ended with the same note;
>>>The islanders did inadvertently destroy the environmental underpinnings of their society. They did so, not because they were especially evil or deprived of foresight, but because they were ordinary people, living in a fragile environment, and subject to the usual human problems of clashes between group interests, clashes between individual and group interests, selfishness, and limited ability to predict the future. Does that remind you of any problems that we ourselves face today? That’s why we find Easter’s story so gripping, and why it may offer us lessons. You’ll find good coverage in Bahn’s and Flenley’s new book.<<<
>>>Any plane on window seat will show you that the Earth is enormous and empty for most it's parts, even in China.
Don't think I advocate more cars and buildings. It's just that the tiny crowded ball argument is wrong, and dangerous, as it can be used to build a nasty antihumanism.<<<
I would argue that treating our resources as essentially endless because of the sheer size as compared to the individual fails to take into account that there are now 7 Billion people on this earth. Each and every one of them deserves a better life, they deserve to be able to have a luxurious bath, flush toilets with water, wash hands with water, eat processed foods which take a lot of water to make, wash their cars with water, drink pure water and at the end of the day consume around 315 litres of it. Of course, today not everyone lives like that except for wealthy countries (the statistic is based upon the US) but I think everyone wants a standard of life like that. If somehow, tomorrow 7 billion people started consuming water like that then we would drink up 2 205 000 000 000 litres of fresh water in a day, but the total possible water supply we can access (and this includes the glaciers) is only 3.5 × 10^19 litres...
That's quite an easy way to run out of water.
Now if you do the same with energy, with waste, with consumption and so on what you have is a ticking time bomb waiting to explode. The way we live today just can't last. I think that you can solve this problem using technology, but its roots lie deep in our societies.
What's frightening over here is that there is no way out for us. Unlike our ancestors we simply can't burn and move on. The earth is where we have to make our stand. I really think that it's important for people to start taking the gravity of the situation seriously. We need solutions, and we need them fast. Our time is running out.
I think that there is no greater form of humanism than realizing that all of these people need to be saved from such an horrible end and devoting your entire life to creating a better future.
Whenever I see an easter island head, I can't help but draw parallels between our global civilization and theirs.
The eastern islanders consisted of around a dozen tribes, each competing for resources with others. It's thought that all of these statues were put up in a race by chieftains, competing with one another to put up the biggest, most refined and the best statue.
I wouldn't be surprised if they competed in their standards of life too. ("I eat X for breakfast, lunch and dinner!") I certainly wouldn't be surprised by the fact that they might have had political factions, special interests and a life rife with complicated political maneuvering. (it was certainly in the short term interests of statue makers to be against conservation and egg chieftains on)
After all we're the same species and they were just like us.
However what they failed to realize was the inescapable fact that they were living on a small piece of land in the middle of a vast ocean. Their seemingly inexhaustible resources were pitiful by any standards.
As time wore on and their population boomed, a point came when all of these factors came together. Their squandering of resources combined with their unsustainable way of life for a large population faced off with their limited resources, and the result was ugly. Their entire civilization collapsed.
Most of the population was lost to famine. Their civilization descended to cannibalism to survive. This degraded civilization became the perfect breeding ground for disease and even more people died. This cycle went on and on until their entire civilization was wiped out and the entire population nearly eradicated.
I shudder to think what it must have been like to live in this world. It must have been a nightmare.
Today like the eastern islanders with their statues, we keep on building taller and taller structures, better and more lethal weapons, and crazier systems. We compete with one another for status symbols at personal, regional and national levels.
Today we are just as isolated on this tiny blue ball, with a finite amount of resources, a booming population, combined with special interests and huge egos.
Like the eastern islanders we have nowhere to go...
The problem lies in how will you define the other parameters over here.
First up is the question of defining that 1 KG itself and the configuration; how will we define the parameters of the copper wire? (edit: to clarify after reemrevnivek's excellent comment the configuration of the solenoid is important because the strength of the magnetic field generated is directly related to the configuration of the coil) We can't use the radius, length of the copper wire accurately because as it gets heated up it will expand not only longitudinally but radially as well.
Second, how will the magnetic field be measured to the precision needed? If you use induction of current in another coil then according to lenz law that will create a downward force on our coil leading to inaccurate measurements (I'm assuming that it will be constantly measured) , this means that the coil needs to be strictly constrained, by how do you constrain it without adding/rubbing material on to the surface of the copper wire?
I think that you could get a lot of mileage by selling unique trinkets. Imagine taking a Escher style moebius ring and creating an actual ring or a necklace out of it (imagine doing it with flat links to form the necklace, and they all have connections to one another at a varying gradient, so that you can create that moebius strip) [ interesting link to set you up http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~gershon/EscherForReal/ ]
If you think about it then there are tons of amazing geometrical shapes out there that would make amazing trinkets, and why limit yourself to pure mathematics? Imagine creating a trinket that represents plasma captured in a magnetic bottle. That would be beautiful if you can get it just right.
This will be challenging, artistically, to pull it off (perhaps you can use a 3D printer), but if you do I want one. (yes, I have weakness for such trinkets)
They keep pounding the same misconceptions again and again in endless repetition, and I can't help but wonder, who hired these guns? (that's not to say that some of their arguments don't hold water, but they are going to incredible lengths to cast Google as a monopoly, why?)
The cynic in me doubts that the cause is a lack of understanding.
I disagree, look at the options given to Skype employees [1], being in the valley doesn't magically mean that your safe from the dark side of the force.
It's not about the attribute itself, but affirmation along that attribute.
It's the same conundrum facing parents of gifted kids, praising innate ability vs. hard work backfires in a spectacular way sooner or later and the child stops taking risks because they are afraid of being dumb.
I think that the hardest lesson to internalize over here is, "every no gets you closer to a yes". Most hackers thrive on finding, solving problems and getting the solution just right. Intractable problems are apparent at the surface and they can get shrugged upon, at least for a while. The trouble wit people is that it isn't obvious when they are intractable, so there isn't a way to know if it's your failure, or if it's a fact about the client. Sometimes the person just doesn't want/need your goods, and no amount of persuasion will budge their mind, but it isn't possible for the seller to know that, so it's easy to chalk it up as a failure.
I think that if one doesn't recognize this subtlety, it's easy to fall spiral into negativity and lose hope. Since we're social animals, this comes across to the customer and it further reduces the chances of closing a deal, thus creating a vicious cycle that's difficult to recover from.
So, if you're a startup founder, do yourself a favor. Get some chart paper and magic markers, and paste a giant sign saying "Fail. Learn. Iterate."
(BTW, to be clear the learn doesn't imply that it's your fault, it simply means extracting lessons from the experience)
I love what you're trying to do, but how will you monetize this? Will you pursue amazon based referrals for songs? (I'm guessing it won't add up unless you have scale) Or will you try to launch a "premium" service?
(note: I don't mean to be rude, but this comment has barely been up for 1 minute and I'm already being down-voted. Surely no one can read something this long this fast and down-vote even faster. I've tried to write a reasoned critique of the phenomena before me. It's not a political comment, but a logical one.)
Any constitution is a fine balance of power, a body like this which concentrates power outside of the constitution without carefully thought out checks and balances can be used to deliver the coup de grace to democracy. After all who guards the guards?
This will be extremely unpopular over here, but the citizens of any nation are responsible for corruption. Their leaders aren't alien beings who have descended from planet Z to rule upon their country. They were and are chosen from amongst them, and in a representative democracy it is they who choose them. You might argue that the vote itself is an ineffective tool, and you will be right, but it does offer us the opportunity to ruthlessly edit people from power. At the end it is the culture of a country that shapes a leader to a great deal. They are simply mirrors of society, but we seem to run away from that fact.
The same goes for bureaucrats and any other malaise that plagues society. They are from amongst us, and although the blame may be greater on some shoulders, it is borne by all of us.
The inherent assumption is that the people in this organization will be somehow pure, sans biases, and without malice. It makes me doubt this because human nature being human nature, sooner or later someone creative is going to come along and will convince people to side with him/her and play this unbalanced system to achieve control. It's not a matter of if, but when.
Of course, I might be wrong and this bill might be a carefully calculated with the calculus of power to be perfectly neutral, but I somehow doubt that given the sheer PR and the herd mentality that seems to surround this. For example the man portrayed as a Gandhian whipped drunks in his home town in the name of "social progress", how is that behavior Gandhian? (I'm not questioning if the behavior is right or wrong, I'm simply asking how can someone who whips people be called the modern Gandhi?)
I think that something rather interesting is going on over here, and that the true nature of this bill and the organization it will create will be apparent as time passes on.
I honestly hope that it's genuine, and it won't lead to a calculated attempt to gain power, but I wouldn't bet on it.
HN members' opinions of themselves are inflated and entertaining. I really enjoy the stream of sometimes-interesting links posted on the front page. I also get a kick out of the navel-gazing, the smug self-congratulations, the herding, the tempests in various teapots, while kettles are black. The content contributors think the site is about them, while it is really about maintaining a halo effect for a startup incubator. <<<
I don't mean to be condescending, but you do know that you just proved his point, right?
Hm, I made a big mistake in that comment. I should have added that we have access to this much, but the real catch is energy and how we are currently limited to tapping into it and the total resource we can access is X.
Thank you so much for pointing this out.
>>> it mostly just requires more energy <<<
Yeah as I argued in another comment, that really is the unmentioned catch over here. I should have elaborated upon that in the parent. Sorry.
Even if most of humanity doesn't reach that level of consumption, we will need to start unlocking some of this resource sooner or later. What really worries me is the amount of energy we need to unlock all of this water locked away in glaciers, ice caps and so on and then actually manage to process and distribute it for final use.
That's a really interesting but hard engineering problem.
>>> Technology which is clearly within our reach would allow the earth to support trillions of humans -- admittedly at a more crowded level than I would prefer. :) <<<
Can you please elaborate more?