I'm not sure whether inflation is good or bad overall, but I don't think inflation is a benefit for those paying of a mortgage. Lenders know about inflation, so they will increase the interest on the loan to compensate for it. There's no way that inflation is going to make your debt evaporate.
On Earth, gold veins are produced by aqueous processes. You wouldn't expect that on asteroids.
Platinum, and platinum-group metals, on the other hand-- these are siderophiles, and hence depleted in the Earth's crust. Good elements to look for in asteroids
In 2008 the average global electricity power generated was 2.3x10^12 watts. 2.5% of that is generated from wind power, call it 5x10^10 watts. Considering losses in generation, I'll assume we are actually taking twice that from the wind so about 10^11 watts.
Which is about 1 millionth of that upper limit for available wind power, or "1% of 1% of 1%" as you would put it.
Now factor in that wind power generation is growing exponentially, doubling every 3 years, and then it starts to become more plausible that there will be local climate effects within a few decades.
Of course. But it might still be a good way to balance a grid with a lot of variability from renewable sources. Having to dump your electricity on the market at negative prices is a bad thing as it just increases the cost of electricity at the times when there isn't an excess.
This could fix that. much wind/solar? Turn on the petrol synthesizers to absorb the cheap excess power.
Then again, maybe the capital cost would be too high to justify anything else than running the synthesizers 24/7. I have no idea.
I'm not sure why this orbit height is important enough to be mentioned in the summary. For comparison, the ISS orbits at about 400 km. Telecommunications satellites have geosynchronous orbits at about 36000 km.
Yes, the fact that the inhabitants of a simulation can't tell the difference between real or simulated is self-evident, that's indeed the premise of the thought experiment.
But the goal of the thought experiment isn't to prove whether our world is real or not, it's just to illustrate the *possibility* that our world is not real. It's to make you stop and think about what "real" means anyway.
That's the point of the thought experiment: if the simulation is good enough, you can't distinguish if you are real or simulated. So we can't know whether our reality is "real" or not.
Personally I resolve this with modal realism: "real" is relative to the world you find yourself in. What's an imaginary world to me is "real" to its inhabitants, and vice versa.
That can be fixed with a small modification to the thought experiment.
Do not let the experimenter and his copy communicate. Instead, give both a set of results of experiments which were done in the real world, and ask them to determine if they are in the real world or not by comparing the outcomes of their own experiments to the given results.
What is even worse is that Interpol acknowledges blasphemy as a crime.
According to article 3 of Interpol's own constitution, they are explicitly forbidden to engage in matters of religious character. So either they were deceived about the nature of the "crime" or they ignored their own principles.
Perhaps this has applications for silicon photolithography?
The semiconductor industry is already using ultraviolet because the minimum feature size created by photolithography is limited by the wavelength of the light. X-rays have a wavelength of about 1 nanometer (< 5 Si atoms). That should be small enough to push silicon semiconductors to their ultimate limit.
The original article is an opinion piece. It ends with a little editor's note that it represents the author's point of view only.
That's not the same as the Chinese government congratulating their new UK comrad.
This trick only improves bandwidth in one direction. It requires multiple transmitters in different locations, so the phone can't use the same trick to respond.
Apparently you missed the graph in TFA that showed how long it would take for us to consume the energy output of the entire galaxy at our current growth rate. And it would be two galaxies only 10 years later.
First of all the totality of energy available on the earth is not limited to the amount of sunshine falling upon it divided by an arbitrary efficiency of photovoltaic cells. Tide and geothermal are of value as well.
TFA explores the idea of capturing the entire energy output of the sun, and you are bickering over crumbs like geothermal?
Furthermore no one is of the opinion that unchecked exponential growth is sustainable in the long term
What? Our entire society is currently structured around the assumption that economic growth will continue indefinitely. If you hadn't noticed, zero growth in an economy is widely considered to be a disaster. But even modest growth of 1%/year is actually unchecked exponential growth.
Time to stop breeding, folks, or to get our butts into space.
Apparently the submitter didn't RTFA or didn't get the main point. We would be consuming the energy output of our entire galaxy within 2500 years if we try to sustain the current growth rate. And it would be 2 galaxies only 10 years after that, then 4, 8, 16,...
The point is that exponential growth can consume seemingly limitless amounts of resources in much shorter spans of time than you would intuitively expect.
Not that it matters, because the copyright holder can do whatever he wants with the code, even after he has given it to others under an open source license (like the Apache license or GPL). Accepting contributions dilutes the copyright ownership, but to deal with that contributions to Android are only accepted after a Contributor License Agreement is signed.
Anyway, if there is to be some future electronic currency then IMHO it should be based on IOUs traded between trusted "friends", to send to someone who is not your friend then the network could make a path between nodes with whatever has the best exchange rate and tah-dah, a currency based on trust, not on wasting cpu cycles (as how BitCoin works). I did see a project like this once but the name escapes me. From memory I also think it was centralized which is a big no.
You might be thinking of Ripple. It is not centralized though.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure whether inflation is good or bad overall, but I don't think inflation is a benefit for those paying of a mortgage. Lenders know about inflation, so they will increase the interest on the loan to compensate for it. There's no way that inflation is going to make your debt evaporate.
Um, gold is also one of the siderophile elements.
Actually, we do.
Wind is, directly and indirectly, powered by the sun heating our atmosphere. The total power received by the earth from the sun is 1.7×10^17 watts. 29% of this is immediately reflected back to space by the surface and clouds, so this leaves 1.2x10^17 watts to actually interact with our atmosphere somehow. Let's take that as an upper limit for wind power.
In 2008 the average global electricity power generated was 2.3x10^12 watts. 2.5% of that is generated from wind power, call it 5x10^10 watts. Considering losses in generation, I'll assume we are actually taking twice that from the wind so about 10^11 watts.
Which is about 1 millionth of that upper limit for available wind power, or "1% of 1% of 1%" as you would put it.
Now factor in that wind power generation is growing exponentially, doubling every 3 years, and then it starts to become more plausible that there will be local climate effects within a few decades.
Of course. But it might still be a good way to balance a grid with a lot of variability from renewable sources. Having to dump your electricity on the market at negative prices is a bad thing as it just increases the cost of electricity at the times when there isn't an excess.
This could fix that. much wind/solar? Turn on the petrol synthesizers to absorb the cheap excess power.
Then again, maybe the capital cost would be too high to justify anything else than running the synthesizers 24/7. I have no idea.
I'm not sure why this orbit height is important enough to be mentioned in the summary. For comparison, the ISS orbits at about 400 km. Telecommunications satellites have geosynchronous orbits at about 36000 km.
Yes, the fact that the inhabitants of a simulation can't tell the difference between real or simulated is self-evident, that's indeed the premise of the thought experiment.
But the goal of the thought experiment isn't to prove whether our world is real or not, it's just to illustrate the *possibility* that our world is not real. It's to make you stop and think about what "real" means anyway.
That's the point of the thought experiment: if the simulation is good enough, you can't distinguish if you are real or simulated. So we can't know whether our reality is "real" or not. Personally I resolve this with modal realism: "real" is relative to the world you find yourself in. What's an imaginary world to me is "real" to its inhabitants, and vice versa.
That can be fixed with a small modification to the thought experiment. Do not let the experimenter and his copy communicate. Instead, give both a set of results of experiments which were done in the real world, and ask them to determine if they are in the real world or not by comparing the outcomes of their own experiments to the given results.
You could have linked to your source instead of pretending that you came up with this theory yourself.
According to article 3 of Interpol's own constitution, they are explicitly forbidden to engage in matters of religious character. So either they were deceived about the nature of the "crime" or they ignored their own principles.
Perhaps this has applications for silicon photolithography?
The semiconductor industry is already using ultraviolet because the minimum feature size created by photolithography is limited by the wavelength of the light. X-rays have a wavelength of about 1 nanometer (< 5 Si atoms). That should be small enough to push silicon semiconductors to their ultimate limit.
Are we talking about the same game? The one with the uzis and flamethrowers?
The original article is an opinion piece. It ends with a little editor's note that it represents the author's point of view only. That's not the same as the Chinese government congratulating their new UK comrad.
That article is a hoax. There is no such thing as laser induced fission. No really, there isn't.
This trick only improves bandwidth in one direction. It requires multiple transmitters in different locations, so the phone can't use the same trick to respond.
Apparently you missed the graph in TFA that showed how long it would take for us to consume the energy output of the entire galaxy at our current growth rate. And it would be two galaxies only 10 years later.
TFA explores the idea of capturing the entire energy output of the sun, and you are bickering over crumbs like geothermal?
What? Our entire society is currently structured around the assumption that economic growth will continue indefinitely. If you hadn't noticed, zero growth in an economy is widely considered to be a disaster. But even modest growth of 1%/year is actually unchecked exponential growth.
Apparently the submitter didn't RTFA or didn't get the main point. We would be consuming the energy output of our entire galaxy within 2500 years if we try to sustain the current growth rate. And it would be 2 galaxies only 10 years after that, then 4, 8, 16, ...
The point is that exponential growth can consume seemingly limitless amounts of resources in much shorter spans of time than you would intuitively expect.
Sensors embedded in clothing? *shrug* Let me know when they've got contact lenses with embedded displays.
Good old IRC isn't centralized either! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netsplit
Not really. Microsoft or Apple have more revenue on their own than the global music industry put together.
Android is licensed under the Apache Software License 2.0.. Only the kernel (i.e. linux) is GPL.
Not that it matters, because the copyright holder can do whatever he wants with the code, even after he has given it to others under an open source license (like the Apache license or GPL). Accepting contributions dilutes the copyright ownership, but to deal with that contributions to Android are only accepted after a Contributor License Agreement is signed.
Anyway, if there is to be some future electronic currency then IMHO it should be based on IOUs traded between trusted "friends", to send to someone who is not your friend then the network could make a path between nodes with whatever has the best exchange rate and tah-dah, a currency based on trust, not on wasting cpu cycles (as how BitCoin works). I did see a project like this once but the name escapes me. From memory I also think it was centralized which is a big no.
You might be thinking of Ripple. It is not centralized though.
Note that you don't own the copyright on work you did for your employer.
How many times do we have to say it people? It's GNU/Hurd!