I disagree that the Internet "has to be a part" of a university education. Universities have been producing well-educated people for hundreds of years without the Internet being a part of it.
There's always been "additional information that your university doesn't have". In the past, students managed to get an excellent education without easy access to that additional information. How has the Internet changed the ability of students to get an excellent education without easy access to that information?
FWIW, I don't think it has changed the student's ability to get an excellent education, just their expectations regarding their ability to get an excellent education. Unreasonably changed their expectations, IMNSHO.
... that in a facility full of teachers and information, students would still have to make network connections to outside sources, in order to learn.... that in an environment in which huge amounts of learning occurred for over hundreds of years before the Internet was even invented, it only takes one generation for people to become convinced that learning is impossible without the Internet.
Would I be right in assuming that you are not actively and directly involved, on a daily basis, in waste management efforts relating to the concerns you have raised?
I don't mean "do you recycle?"; I mean, "do you commit a majority of your personal time, energy, and wealth resources every day to solving the problem you describe?"
See, my theory is that real problems get solved in short order. Unreal problems, on the other hand, get a lot of lip-service from a lot of people who aren't really serious about solving them, as evidenced by their large amount of talk, and small amount of action.
To the extent that waste management becomes a serious problem, it will get serious solutions. To the extent that it isn't a serious problem, it will get a lot of people on the internet, taking time out from their non-waste-management-problem-solving lifestyles, complaining about how serious a problem it is and how we all need to take it seriously.
So which is it? Have you dedicated your life to the salvation of humanity, or have you dedicated your life to the twin grails of getting while the getting is good and of telling everybody else to take the problem seriously?
Finally, need I point out that the dinosaurs showed amazing adaptability and survivability for about a hundred million years? Runs of luck far longer than ours have ended badly.
The dinosaurs were destroyed by a bona fide out-of-context problem: a bigass meteor to which they couldn't adapt. I don't rule out the possibility that a major unpredictable cataclysm--say, the sun exploding--would totally overwhelm human adaptability.
Not to mention the natural resources located in Siberia, where climate conditions currently prevent us from profitably exploiting them. I predict that global warming combined with technological advances in robotics and materials science will change the playing field dramatically, a lot sooner than our current oil supplies run out.
That's nice in the abstract, but do you want your grandchildren to live in comfort and prosperity, or in the ruins of modern civilization? Either one would count as survival.
In comfort and prosperity, obviously. There's a couple catches, though: One is, there's actually no compelling evidence that modern civilization will collapese between here and my grandchildren. The other is, there's actually no compelling evidence that there's really anything we can do today to prevent a hypothetical collapse from hypothetically occurring. I think my grandchildren will have much greater control over their own fate than I ever will.
While humanity as a whole has survived quite well over the last few thousand years, we've got less than 200 years of industrial society under our belts, and less than 100 years of a global culture connected through communiations and transportation technology.
The way I see it, this means we really have no fucking clue how this will play out.
Actually, we do have a clue: how things played out the last seventeen times the human race was faced with a new and unprecedented set of conditions: humans survived and prospered in the long run.
You don't need to look much further than Afghanistan or Somalia to see what happens when that slips away.
Fair enough, but don't forget that to begin with, no place on earth had the things you say slipped away from Afghanistand and Somalia. Every society on earth started out like Afghanistan and Somalia, and built from there. And the overall trend has been upwards, towards a better tomorrow.
It's obvious that suffering is part of the human conditioning, and that we bring a lot of our suffering on ourselves.
But the trend in human history is one of consistently overcoming hardship, recovering from setbacks, and building a better tomorrow.
I don't think that something as trivial as an oil shortage will be the magic bullet that ruins humanity. There's no precedent for it. Sure, it could happen. But it'd be pretty much the opposite of a predictable outcome.
And if wishes were limosines, beggars would ride in style.
Who's wishing? I'm referring to the historical record, and the plain fact that after hundreds of thousands of years of vicissitudes, humans are still here.
And it will undoubtedly happen again. Yet here we are, a mere millenium and a half after the Roman collapse, bigger and better than ever before. That's the trend I'm referring to: Not the trend of civilizations rising and falling, but the trend of humanity enduring, and adapting, and surviving, and rising again to even greater heights after each inevitable fall.
If this kind of adaptability and survivability showed up once or twice, I'd call it luck, and wish for more. But when it turns out to be the normal thing, repeated constantly throughout all of human history, it stops being luck and starts being the fundamental nature of the human species.
We adapt. We endure. We survive. We build and grow and prosper. We respond to setbacks not by going extinct, but by overcoming them and growing beyond them. This isn't wishing. This is a reasonable interpretation of the historical record.
Cheetahs have a problem because their key surival trait is "run faster than gazelle, and catch them". When a cheetah runs out of gazelle, it's pretty much doomed, on account of its key survival trait suddenly being useless.
Our key survival trait isn't actually "consume oil", but rather "adapt to changing conditions". When humans run out of oil, we're pretty much not doomed, on account of our key survival trait being optimized for exactly that kind of situation.
You say that if we keep pushing our luck, sooner or later it's going to run out.
I say that if our luck consistently doesn't run out, after a while it's not really luck anymore, is it?
We don't say the cheetah is "lucky" because it's able to run so fast. We don't say the albatross is "lucky" because it's able to fly so far. Why should we say that it's "luck" that humans are naturally adaptive to changing conditions?
Besides all that, doesn't this study already consider future innovation in the only real way possible? They say they are using a projection of consumption. To come to that projection, presumably they have to look at what consumption has been over a period of time. Assuming there has been some innovation during that period, it considered into the net change in cosumption and thus will effect the projections accordingly. Short of taking the VERY unscientific approach of just assuming a "silver bullet" will arise soon, I don't know how else you can include future innovation.
That's a very good point. Thanks for bringing it up. I hadn't really considered it in this way before.
Why not? There's just as much scientific basis for predicting "oil-peeing unicorns" as there is for predicting "not oil-peeing unicorns".
But my complaint is more along the lines of contrasting
"If current trends continue, the situation will become dire"
with
"It's likely that current trends won't continue, which makes predicting the future situation very difficult, but history tells us the chances are, if it does get dire, it'll be because of something catastrophic and unpredictable, not something as simplistic as 'current trends continue'".
Well, good old progress has allowed us to produce a lot more food than we could back in the 70s, when people were fond of predicting we'd all be dead of starvation by now, on account of there being too many of us to ever possibly feed.
As it turns out, the population has grown as predicted, but progress managed to keep up.
You're saying that instead of reporting openly and honestly, to the best of their current knowledge and ability...... Scientists should pick and choose the information and interpretations they publish, in order to make sure that policy makers and the general public reach the same predetermined conclusions, and decide on the same necessary measures, that the scientists have already figured out.
Instead of saying what is true, you want scientists to say what is false, in order to support their biased, personal, unscientific agendas.
You are advocating blatant propaganda, and the manipulation of poblic opinion through the biased use of what should be a neutral source of information and analysis.
The only worrisome thing I see about this projection is that it's based on extending current trends into the future.
Probably because it's easier than predicting how technological innovation and the ebb and flow of the global economy will totally change the entire equation long before these simplistic predictions ever come due.
I think of it as more like using robots instead of slaves.
But then, I draw a hard line between "humans", which are not appropriate for slave labor or oppression, and "animals", to which moral concepts like slavery and oppression do not apply.
On the other hand, I think it's important for us humans to treat animals (and robots) humanely, because of the negative effects on us humans, who treat even animals inhumanely.
Animals are food. Butcher 'em up. Animals are slaves. Put them to work. But in either case, act with moderation, respect, and gentleness. For your own sake, not for the animal's.
You do make some valuable corrections to the parent post, but you seem to have missed its point: That no other nation came in and gave America the benefits of these things. Americans had to build these things themselves, for themselves. Likewise, other nations that wish to enjoy the benefits of these things will have to build these things themselves, for themselves. And they will have to pay the price for these benefits, just like America has.
Except that the range will be much longer, and most of the flight will be the more-green "spacecraft-type" flight rather than the less-green "business jet-type" flight.
Let "business jet" = "1 distance unit (DU)" = "1 pollution unit (PU)" Let "spacecraft" = "3DU" = "1PU"
With these figures, consider a travel distance of 4DU:
4 x Business Jet = 4PU
(1 x Business Jet) + (1 x Spacecraft) = 2PU
Obviously, for travel over 2DU or less, a regular business jet would be just as green or greener (not to mention much more efficient in other areas as well). But for travel over 4DU, the 2-stage jet/spacecraft hybrid will be much greener.
Of course, someone with better knowledge of the actual figures would be in a much better position to say one way or the other if this is the case...
I know! Let's ask the guy whose spaceship it is! I bet he knows the figures pretty well.
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Actually, it's been made LESS difficult.
Note that currently, some Internet access is allowed.
This makes education LESS difficult than before, when Universities had to provide an excellent education without any Internet at all.
Note that Universities were able to provide an excellent education for hundreds of years, without any Internet at all.
I disagree that the Internet "has to be a part" of a university education. Universities have been producing well-educated people for hundreds of years without the Internet being a part of it.
There's always been "additional information that your university doesn't have". In the past, students managed to get an excellent education without easy access to that additional information. How has the Internet changed the ability of students to get an excellent education without easy access to that information?
FWIW, I don't think it has changed the student's ability to get an excellent education, just their expectations regarding their ability to get an excellent education. Unreasonably changed their expectations, IMNSHO.
... that in a facility full of teachers and information, students would still have to make network connections to outside sources, in order to learn. ... that in an environment in which huge amounts of learning occurred for over hundreds of years before the Internet was even invented, it only takes one generation for people to become convinced that learning is impossible without the Internet.
Would I be right in assuming that you are not actively and directly involved, on a daily basis, in waste management efforts relating to the concerns you have raised?
I don't mean "do you recycle?"; I mean, "do you commit a majority of your personal time, energy, and wealth resources every day to solving the problem you describe?"
See, my theory is that real problems get solved in short order. Unreal problems, on the other hand, get a lot of lip-service from a lot of people who aren't really serious about solving them, as evidenced by their large amount of talk, and small amount of action.
To the extent that waste management becomes a serious problem, it will get serious solutions. To the extent that it isn't a serious problem, it will get a lot of people on the internet, taking time out from their non-waste-management-problem-solving lifestyles, complaining about how serious a problem it is and how we all need to take it seriously.
So which is it? Have you dedicated your life to the salvation of humanity, or have you dedicated your life to the twin grails of getting while the getting is good and of telling everybody else to take the problem seriously?
The dinosaurs were destroyed by a bona fide out-of-context problem: a bigass meteor to which they couldn't adapt. I don't rule out the possibility that a major unpredictable cataclysm--say, the sun exploding--would totally overwhelm human adaptability.
... I think it's going to take something more than MIT smarty men, to make committees useful.
Not to mention the natural resources located in Siberia, where climate conditions currently prevent us from profitably exploiting them. I predict that global warming combined with technological advances in robotics and materials science will change the playing field dramatically, a lot sooner than our current oil supplies run out.
In comfort and prosperity, obviously. There's a couple catches, though: One is, there's actually no compelling evidence that modern civilization will collapese between here and my grandchildren. The other is, there's actually no compelling evidence that there's really anything we can do today to prevent a hypothetical collapse from hypothetically occurring. I think my grandchildren will have much greater control over their own fate than I ever will.
The way I see it, this means we really have no fucking clue how this will play out.
Actually, we do have a clue: how things played out the last seventeen times the human race was faced with a new and unprecedented set of conditions: humans survived and prospered in the long run.
Fair enough, but don't forget that to begin with, no place on earth had the things you say slipped away from Afghanistand and Somalia. Every society on earth started out like Afghanistan and Somalia, and built from there. And the overall trend has been upwards, towards a better tomorrow.
It's obvious that suffering is part of the human conditioning, and that we bring a lot of our suffering on ourselves.
But the trend in human history is one of consistently overcoming hardship, recovering from setbacks, and building a better tomorrow.
I don't think that something as trivial as an oil shortage will be the magic bullet that ruins humanity. There's no precedent for it. Sure, it could happen. But it'd be pretty much the opposite of a predictable outcome.
Who's wishing? I'm referring to the historical record, and the plain fact that after hundreds of thousands of years of vicissitudes, humans are still here.
And it will undoubtedly happen again. Yet here we are, a mere millenium and a half after the Roman collapse, bigger and better than ever before. That's the trend I'm referring to: Not the trend of civilizations rising and falling, but the trend of humanity enduring, and adapting, and surviving, and rising again to even greater heights after each inevitable fall.
If this kind of adaptability and survivability showed up once or twice, I'd call it luck, and wish for more. But when it turns out to be the normal thing, repeated constantly throughout all of human history, it stops being luck and starts being the fundamental nature of the human species.
We adapt. We endure. We survive. We build and grow and prosper. We respond to setbacks not by going extinct, but by overcoming them and growing beyond them. This isn't wishing. This is a reasonable interpretation of the historical record.
Cheetahs have a problem because their key surival trait is "run faster than gazelle, and catch them". When a cheetah runs out of gazelle, it's pretty much doomed, on account of its key survival trait suddenly being useless.
Our key survival trait isn't actually "consume oil", but rather "adapt to changing conditions". When humans run out of oil, we're pretty much not doomed, on account of our key survival trait being optimized for exactly that kind of situation.
We used up all the oil? That explains why the price per barrel hit $200 in the 80s, and has been going steadily up ever since... only, not so much.
You say that if we keep pushing our luck, sooner or later it's going to run out.
I say that if our luck consistently doesn't run out, after a while it's not really luck anymore, is it?
We don't say the cheetah is "lucky" because it's able to run so fast. We don't say the albatross is "lucky" because it's able to fly so far. Why should we say that it's "luck" that humans are naturally adaptive to changing conditions?
That's a very good point. Thanks for bringing it up. I hadn't really considered it in this way before.
Why not? There's just as much scientific basis for predicting "oil-peeing unicorns" as there is for predicting "not oil-peeing unicorns".
But my complaint is more along the lines of contrasting
"If current trends continue, the situation will become dire"
with
"It's likely that current trends won't continue, which makes predicting the future situation very difficult, but history tells us the chances are, if it does get dire, it'll be because of something catastrophic and unpredictable, not something as simplistic as 'current trends continue'".
Well, good old progress has allowed us to produce a lot more food than we could back in the 70s, when people were fond of predicting we'd all be dead of starvation by now, on account of there being too many of us to ever possibly feed.
As it turns out, the population has grown as predicted, but progress managed to keep up.
Exactly.
See how much harder it is, to make realistic predictions about the future, instead of just assuming current trends will continue indefinitely?
I'm sorry, but that's a pretty weak argument.
... Scientists should pick and choose the information and interpretations they publish, in order to make sure that policy makers and the general public reach the same predetermined conclusions, and decide on the same necessary measures, that the scientists have already figured out.
You're saying that instead of reporting openly and honestly, to the best of their current knowledge and ability...
Instead of saying what is true, you want scientists to say what is false, in order to support their biased, personal, unscientific agendas.
You are advocating blatant propaganda, and the manipulation of poblic opinion through the biased use of what should be a neutral source of information and analysis.
The only worrisome thing I see about this projection is that it's based on extending current trends into the future.
Probably because it's easier than predicting how technological innovation and the ebb and flow of the global economy will totally change the entire equation long before these simplistic predictions ever come due.
The sweetitude of your ideafication awsomizes my brainery.
I think of it as more like using robots instead of slaves.
But then, I draw a hard line between "humans", which are not appropriate for slave labor or oppression, and "animals", to which moral concepts like slavery and oppression do not apply.
On the other hand, I think it's important for us humans to treat animals (and robots) humanely, because of the negative effects on us humans, who treat even animals inhumanely.
Animals are food. Butcher 'em up. Animals are slaves. Put them to work. But in either case, act with moderation, respect, and gentleness. For your own sake, not for the animal's.
You do make some valuable corrections to the parent post, but you seem to have missed its point: That no other nation came in and gave America the benefits of these things. Americans had to build these things themselves, for themselves. Likewise, other nations that wish to enjoy the benefits of these things will have to build these things themselves, for themselves. And they will have to pay the price for these benefits, just like America has.
Please keep your particular brand of emo out of the voting booths, thanks.
Except that the range will be much longer, and most of the flight will be the more-green "spacecraft-type" flight rather than the less-green "business jet-type" flight.
Let "business jet" = "1 distance unit (DU)" = "1 pollution unit (PU)"
Let "spacecraft" = "3DU" = "1PU"
With these figures, consider a travel distance of 4DU:
4 x Business Jet = 4PU
(1 x Business Jet) + (1 x Spacecraft) = 2PU
Obviously, for travel over 2DU or less, a regular business jet would be just as green or greener (not to mention much more efficient in other areas as well). But for travel over 4DU, the 2-stage jet/spacecraft hybrid will be much greener.
Of course, someone with better knowledge of the actual figures would be in a much better position to say one way or the other if this is the case...
I know! Let's ask the guy whose spaceship it is! I bet he knows the figures pretty well.
Good for them.
I hope the test was practical in nature, and will lead to useful contributions from China towards the achievement of practical fusion power.
This is good news. I look forward to following China's future progress and contributions.