Rather than do all the challenging things you mention, how about re-engineering humanity to be more fit for space?
How about tolerance of low (10-100K) temperatures? Tolerance of 0 G? Tolerance of radiation? Remove requirement for O2, food, and water? Make extended hibernation more feasable? Make able to use interchangeable replacement parts?
Probably a solid state implementation of people.... Send those across the gulf between stars, and if they want, they can re-engineer themselves back into meat-bags on the far side. Or not.
Yeah, that was funny but to address your last sentence, would we be bothering with all the high tech surveillance if we didn't see Iran as more than a bunch of "turban wearin camel humpers"?
It's not easy to distinguish 202.13 and 208.17 "by magnitude" now is it?
Since the difference is in the 3rd sig figure, d'you think performing the calculation (actually a division) using a calculator is really that unreasonable?
Not that there aren't good tricks for doing division, like for example factoring small factors like 2 out of denominator/numerator quickly to eliminate them, but after a certain point it's just quicker to type (at 80wpm) the numbers into a Python shell and get an answer.
You're quite right. I think the best route to having off-Earth colonies is to engineer people so that they can deal with zero-G, high radiation, low temperatures, and live off sunlight.
It's not us, but our solid-state descendants who will inherit the galaxy.
No, I'm talking about NOT wiping out the species but rather modifying the species so that it doesn't carry disease.
Trying to wipe out a species applies HUGE selection pressure so that they become resistant to what is killing them. Selecting AGAINST something with no survival value, namely, their ability to give us disease, could produce a population of harmless mosquitos, with NO selection pressure to become resistant, so NO reason that we couldn 't dominate the entire species.
Instead of eradicating them, why not impose a strong selection just against the ones we don't like, namely, the ones that can carry yellow fever, dengue, etc.
If we start imposing a strong selection pressure against mosquitoes that carry disease, but leave the ones that DON'T carry disease alone, we wipe out the disease a lot more selectively. And we don't leave an open niche for something else (possibly worse) to occupy.
Yes, but what you need to realize, is that's 85% of people working on NONESSENTIAL things. If people stop having the means or will to buy NONESSENTIAL things (read, the middle class is eliminated by eliminatng their jobs, so they can't afford gadgets or entertainment or health care), then 85% of people will be out of work and will starve or revert to subsistence farming (if they can get land!), because while there's food for everyone, well, we can't force that productive 5% to feed everyone who has no means to pay them, now can we?
People don't seem to realize how dangerous this cycle of concentrating more and more wealth in the hands of the rich is. The rich don't generate enough demand to drive an economy. Why should a rich guy, whose factory is at 75% capacity, invest in more factory capacity? THIS is the current situation--too much wealth with the rich, not enough with the poor and middle class, who generate demand. And this is the fallacy of "supply side" economics right now. We have capital, there's just no reason to invest the capital in increased capacity because there's no demand. Tax cuts for the rich are horribly misguided right now. If we had factories at 95% capacity or more and no capital to invest, then yes, tax cuts for the rich so they can invest in capacity.
The sensible middle of both the Republican and Democratic parties needs to withdraw from the party system and form a centrist Moderate party that can get something accomplished. That means entitlement reform AND tax reform AND some tax increases!
The Parties are no longer serving this Nation. It's time to trash them.
The Electorate will love it. "I stand before you as neither a Democrat nor a Republican but as someone who will serve the Nation before any Party." That person has MY vote.
We're living under a tyranny right now, it's a tyranny of the stupid and idealogues on both ends of the spectrum. It's time to have a revolution in Congress. And hey, no one has to die!
In some parts of Africa, malaria is becoming vulnerable to the oldest drug against it, quinine, again. After quinine use was abandoned because it was ineffectual, malaria apparently got rid of the expensive biochemical hardware needed to deal with quinine.
How about if this works with antibiotics? Stop using penicillin for 20 years, and then it works again?
I think they just didn't want to hire you, so they "failed" you on those two questions. They could then give half an hour on each to the person they actually wanted. Maybe their preferred candidate was the interviewer's brother in law or something.
Then they justify choosing their BiL by saying "he scored the highest on our test!"
Yes, we disagree. Think longer and harder about the pre-requisites required for producing our technology. It all interlocks and interconnects, and pull out enough, and most of it will collapse.
Also, I think the knowledge would disppear pretty quick. You can't really read a CD if you don't have a working computer.... And microchip fabs and CD factories are very complicated affairs, that basically sit on the pinnacle of our technology.
I think you're pretty much correct on every point. The only way such a project might actually succeed is if humanity derives a continuous and strong benefit from the power generated from operating the thermal plant.
Don't worry, there'll be no rush to install a geothermal plant instantly to solve this, and keep it operating for the 10k years necessary to have an effect.
If there's enough time for us to have an impact, there's enough time to really think through all the problems, and perhaps even do some smaller scale testing on smaller volcanos.
Actually I think a better option is for us to reduce our population so we're less of a load on the planet, and stockpile food, and simply migrate out of the way of such an event--which is about as likely a prospect for us as a 10k-year operational massive thermal install!
I don't think you have the right concept of the fragility of our current system.
Agriculture will fail worldwide. Period. We don't have 2-3 years of food stockpiled. Period. People will rapidly eat all the food available, and anything that can be turned into food. Any "complex protective shelter" will be stormed and looted. Think zombie apocalypse, except everyone is starving rather than undead.
Any resource that *could* sustainably support a reduced population through the course of the disaster will, because of our excessive population, be used un-sustainably and destroyed, thus leaving everyone to starve.
Transport & power production will soon fail without society to maintain them. Any remaining enclaves will be too small to self-sustain technology. You can kiss technology goodbye, except for whatever remnants that can work without power.
Yes, technically, humans have the capability to survive much better than our prehistoric ancestors, IF we reduce our population to maybe 300M worldwide, and invest in massive amounts of stored food and complex protective shelters for EVERYONE.
As things stand now, I think about the only places that stand a chance would be inaccessible tropical islands where the locals limit the population to what their environment can sustain.
On a very grim note, I wonder, if we formed a cannabilistic pyramid, how many people would be left after maybe five years, when agriculture could restart? Humm, assuming you'd have to eat 5 people/year to live, after five years, we're down to 3200 people, very similar to the past genetic bottleneck....
So, create a permanent city of 100k people to create/maintain a thermal power install, which will have the useful byproduct of power, or suffer a global disaster where maybe 75% of everyone will die due to crop failure and famine?
Or, stockpile food for 2 years to get humanity through the mess, and evacuate South America when it blows?
I honestly don't know which is the best option, but if it will work and won't set the thing off, a large, permanent thermal power install seems like it MIGHT be nice. 65 years doesn't seem so long when you probably will have to run the plant for 10k or more years to avert disaster.
13k pipes seems like a cheap price to pay to preserve South America from an apocalypse and save the world from a global agricultural train wreck.
I guess an alternative is to relocate everyone in South America and stockpile 2 years of food for every person alive. That'd be a lot more practical if we only had a few hundred million people alive at the time--probably a better way to go.
Doesn't matter if you have losses in transmission. The point is to cool the magma and produce some power. And if you can't transmit it all, you can set up industrial operations to use the excess, like, for example, converting bauxite into aluminum or perhaps making titanium on a large scale, desalinization, glass making.... All as a by-produce of saving the planet.
The key problems are could you ever cool the magma fast enough (does the heat come in faster than you can get it out given heat transfer limits?), would the magma just go somewhere else.... Also, could you count on sustained civilization for long enough to pull the heat out, say, 20k years?
I'm interested to know the answer too, if you had a really large scale geothermal install and 20k years to pull heat out.
One point though. This is a supervolcano. If it erupts, it will take out much of South America, not just Bolivia, and it'll be a worldwide trainwreck since crops will fail pretty much everywhere.
A supervolcano eruption is a local apocalypse and a global disaster.....
Unfortunately, the less people know, the more they think they know.
The people who you are calling morons are incapable of realizing that they are in fact morons. Yet they have the same vote as you.
So, right you are, about anthropomorphic environmental change and the need to get off the planet in the long term. Good luck convincing people.
The best way to get "humanity" off this planet is arguable, though. I'd argue that getting humans as we are now out into space isn't worth it.
However, engineered "people" that are at the least space-adapted (can take much more hard radiation, don't need gravity, etc.) should be our goal. Better would be largely-solid-state "people". Imagine if you would be fine immersed in vacuum without any life support or radiation shielding, deriving energy from sunlight, extracting raw materials from asteroids, and able to go dormant during a migration to another star. By that argument, sending meat-people up into space at huge expense just detracts from the R&D required to send up properly space-adapted people.
Actually I DO pay a fair amount of my income to help the less fortunate.
Telling me to "put up or shut up" for not giving ALL of my income and worth to the less fortunate is BS.
Am I willing to pay more tax than people of lesser means than myself? Yes, and I do! I want to help fund the educations, for example, of children of welfare moms. I'm HAPPY to pay more than "my share" (1/300millionth of the total cost) to do so.
I hate freeloaders too, but I am NOT willing to cut off help to the unfortunate because SOME people freeload!
And as to you being "NOT BORN WITH A SILVER SPOON IN YOUR MOUTH", did YOU PAY for your own elementary school education? Middle school? High school? Did YOU PAY for the police and fire protection you enjoyed before you "built your career"?
Just HOW do you think you would have fared had you been born in Ethiopia without all of society's infrastructural support, which, incidentally, I'm happy to pay more than my share for? Ask most Ethiopians and I'm sure they'd be happy to say you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth!
No it isn't an argument against redistributing wealth amongst the states. I was merely pointing out that "North Dakota" benefits from Federal programs too.
Also, what's wrong with redistributing wealth among the states? It is NOT wrong for "North Dakota" to help California avoid disaster. Similarly, when a hurricane hits Florida, it's NOT WRONG to "redistribute wealth" from the rest of the country to send aid there to save lives.
Let me ask you this: why do you HATE your fellow Americans so much that you're not willing to "redistribute wealth" from the fortunate to the unfortunate?
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Rather than do all the challenging things you mention, how about re-engineering humanity to be more fit for space?
How about tolerance of low (10-100K) temperatures?
Tolerance of 0 G?
Tolerance of radiation?
Remove requirement for O2, food, and water?
Make extended hibernation more feasable?
Make able to use interchangeable replacement parts?
Probably a solid state implementation of people.... Send those across the gulf between stars, and if they want, they can re-engineer themselves back into meat-bags on the far side. Or not.
--PM
Yeah, that was funny but to address your last sentence, would we be bothering with all the high tech surveillance if we didn't see Iran as more than a bunch of "turban wearin camel humpers"?
--PM
I'm not sure these implants, at least at first, would even let people read.
I think cochlear implants, which can let the deaf "hear", only have something like 16 channels, maximum, that is, 16 frequencies that they respond to.
It's better than being deaf, but if retinal implants are similar in their capability, I don't know if someone could read with them.
--PM
It's not easy to distinguish 202.13 and 208.17 "by magnitude" now is it?
Since the difference is in the 3rd sig figure, d'you think performing the calculation (actually a division) using a calculator is really that unreasonable?
Not that there aren't good tricks for doing division, like for example factoring small factors like 2 out of denominator/numerator quickly to eliminate them, but after a certain point it's just quicker to type (at 80wpm) the numbers into a Python shell and get an answer.
--PM
You're quite right. I think the best route to having off-Earth colonies is to engineer people so that they can deal with zero-G, high radiation, low temperatures, and live off sunlight.
It's not us, but our solid-state descendants who will inherit the galaxy.
--PM
Wish I could mod you up. You nailed it.
Antibiotic R&D should be publicly funded just like we publicly fund the military. We're in a war against germs, too.
--PM
No, I'm talking about NOT wiping out the species but rather modifying the species so that it doesn't carry disease.
Trying to wipe out a species applies HUGE selection pressure so that they become resistant to what is killing them. Selecting AGAINST something with no survival value, namely, their ability to give us disease, could produce a population of harmless mosquitos, with NO selection pressure to become resistant, so NO reason that we couldn 't dominate the entire species.
Get it??
--PeterM
Instead of eradicating them, why not impose a strong selection just against the ones we don't like, namely, the ones that can carry yellow fever, dengue, etc.
If we start imposing a strong selection pressure against mosquitoes that carry disease, but leave the ones that DON'T carry disease alone, we wipe out the disease a lot more selectively. And we don't leave an open niche for something else (possibly worse) to occupy.
--PM
Yes, but what you need to realize, is that's 85% of people working on NONESSENTIAL things. If people stop having the means or will to buy NONESSENTIAL things (read, the middle class is eliminated by eliminatng their jobs, so they can't afford gadgets or entertainment or health care), then 85% of people will be out of work and will starve or revert to subsistence farming (if they can get land!), because while there's food for everyone, well, we can't force that productive 5% to feed everyone who has no means to pay them, now can we?
People don't seem to realize how dangerous this cycle of concentrating more and more wealth in the hands of the rich is. The rich don't generate enough demand to drive an economy. Why should a rich guy, whose factory is at 75% capacity, invest in more factory capacity? THIS is the current situation--too much wealth with the rich, not enough with the poor and middle class, who generate demand. And this is the fallacy of "supply side" economics right now. We have capital, there's just no reason to invest the capital in increased capacity because there's no demand. Tax cuts for the rich are horribly misguided right now. If we had factories at 95% capacity or more and no capital to invest, then yes, tax cuts for the rich so they can invest in capacity.
--PM
The sensible middle of both the Republican and Democratic parties needs to withdraw from the party system and form a centrist Moderate party that can get something accomplished. That means entitlement reform AND tax reform AND some tax increases!
The Parties are no longer serving this Nation. It's time to trash them.
The Electorate will love it. "I stand before you as neither a Democrat nor a Republican but as someone who will serve the Nation before any Party." That person has MY vote.
We're living under a tyranny right now, it's a tyranny of the stupid and idealogues on both ends of the spectrum. It's time to have a revolution in Congress. And hey, no one has to die!
--PeterM
--PM
In some parts of Africa, malaria is becoming vulnerable to the oldest drug against it, quinine, again. After quinine use was abandoned because it was ineffectual, malaria apparently got rid of the expensive biochemical hardware needed to deal with quinine.
How about if this works with antibiotics? Stop using penicillin for 20 years, and then it works again?
--PM
Hello,
I think they just didn't want to hire you, so they "failed" you on those two questions. They could then give half an hour on each to the person they actually wanted. Maybe their preferred candidate was the interviewer's brother in law or something.
Then they justify choosing their BiL by saying "he scored the highest on our test!"
--PM
That's because you learned what pointers were in Pascal first. I did that too, Pascal first, then C. C made sense because I knew what pointers were.
--PM
Yes, we disagree. Think longer and harder about the pre-requisites required for producing our technology. It all interlocks and interconnects, and pull out enough, and most of it will collapse.
Also, I think the knowledge would disppear pretty quick. You can't really read a CD if you don't have a working computer.... And microchip fabs and CD factories are very complicated affairs, that basically sit on the pinnacle of our technology.
--PM
I think you're pretty much correct on every point. The only way such a project might actually succeed is if humanity derives a continuous and strong benefit from the power generated from operating the thermal plant.
--PM
Don't worry, there'll be no rush to install a geothermal plant instantly to solve this, and keep it operating for the 10k years necessary to have an effect.
If there's enough time for us to have an impact, there's enough time to really think through all the problems, and perhaps even do some smaller scale testing on smaller volcanos.
Actually I think a better option is for us to reduce our population so we're less of a load on the planet, and stockpile food, and simply migrate out of the way of such an event--which is about as likely a prospect for us as a 10k-year operational massive thermal install!
--PM
I don't think you have the right concept of the fragility of our current system.
Agriculture will fail worldwide. Period. We don't have 2-3 years of food stockpiled. Period. People will rapidly eat all the food available, and anything that can be turned into food. Any "complex protective shelter" will be stormed and looted. Think zombie apocalypse, except everyone is starving rather than undead.
Any resource that *could* sustainably support a reduced population through the course of the disaster will, because of our excessive population, be used un-sustainably and destroyed, thus leaving everyone to starve.
Transport & power production will soon fail without society to maintain them. Any remaining enclaves will be too small to self-sustain technology. You can kiss technology goodbye, except for whatever remnants that can work without power.
Yes, technically, humans have the capability to survive much better than our prehistoric ancestors, IF we reduce our population to maybe 300M worldwide, and invest in massive amounts of stored food and complex protective shelters for EVERYONE.
As things stand now, I think about the only places that stand a chance would be inaccessible tropical islands where the locals limit the population to what their environment can sustain.
On a very grim note, I wonder, if we formed a cannabilistic pyramid, how many people would be left after maybe five years, when agriculture could restart? Humm, assuming you'd have to eat 5 people/year to live, after five years, we're down to 3200 people, very similar to the past genetic bottleneck....
--PM
So, create a permanent city of 100k people to create/maintain a thermal power install, which will have the useful byproduct of power, or suffer a global disaster where maybe 75% of everyone will die due to crop failure and famine?
Or, stockpile food for 2 years to get humanity through the mess, and evacuate South America when it blows?
I honestly don't know which is the best option, but if it will work and won't set the thing off, a large, permanent thermal power install seems like it MIGHT be nice. 65 years doesn't seem so long when you probably will have to run the plant for 10k or more years to avert disaster.
--PM
13k pipes seems like a cheap price to pay to preserve South America from an apocalypse and save the world from a global agricultural train wreck.
I guess an alternative is to relocate everyone in South America and stockpile 2 years of food for every person alive. That'd be a lot more practical if we only had a few hundred million people alive at the time--probably a better way to go.
--PM
Doesn't matter if you have losses in transmission. The point is to cool the magma and produce some power. And if you can't transmit it all, you can set up industrial operations to use the excess, like, for example, converting bauxite into aluminum or perhaps making titanium on a large scale, desalinization, glass making.... All as a by-produce of saving the planet.
The key problems are could you ever cool the magma fast enough (does the heat come in faster than you can get it out given heat transfer limits?), would the magma just go somewhere else.... Also, could you count on sustained civilization for long enough to pull the heat out, say, 20k years?
--PM
I'm interested to know the answer too, if you had a really large scale geothermal install and 20k years to pull heat out.
One point though. This is a supervolcano. If it erupts, it will take out much of South America, not just Bolivia, and it'll be a worldwide trainwreck since crops will fail pretty much everywhere.
A supervolcano eruption is a local apocalypse and a global disaster.....
-PM
So, we should pay multiple billions so that one or two people have "the human experience"?
Maybe when we have "Total Recall" and can experience other people's memories!
'till then, I'd rather send the robots, until we have a VIABLE strategy for actually exporting humans into permanent off-world colonies.
--PM
Unfortunately, the less people know, the more they think they know.
The people who you are calling morons are incapable of realizing that they are in fact morons. Yet they have the same vote as you.
So, right you are, about anthropomorphic environmental change and the need to get off the planet in the long term. Good luck convincing people.
The best way to get "humanity" off this planet is arguable, though. I'd argue that getting humans as we are now out into space isn't worth it.
However, engineered "people" that are at the least space-adapted (can take much more hard radiation, don't need gravity, etc.) should be our goal. Better would be largely-solid-state "people". Imagine if you would be fine immersed in vacuum without any life support or radiation shielding, deriving energy from sunlight, extracting raw materials from asteroids, and able to go dormant during a migration to another star. By that argument, sending meat-people up into space at huge expense just detracts from the R&D required to send up properly space-adapted people.
--PM
Actually I DO pay a fair amount of my income to help the less fortunate.
Telling me to "put up or shut up" for not giving ALL of my income and worth to the less fortunate is BS.
Am I willing to pay more tax than people of lesser means than myself? Yes, and I do! I want to help fund the educations, for example, of children of welfare moms. I'm HAPPY to pay more than "my share" (1/300millionth of the total cost) to do so.
I hate freeloaders too, but I am NOT willing to cut off help to the unfortunate because SOME people freeload!
And as to you being "NOT BORN WITH A SILVER SPOON IN YOUR MOUTH", did YOU PAY for your own elementary school education? Middle school? High school? Did YOU PAY for the police and fire protection you enjoyed before you "built your career"?
Just HOW do you think you would have fared had you been born in Ethiopia without all of society's infrastructural support, which, incidentally, I'm happy to pay more than my share for? Ask most Ethiopians and I'm sure they'd be happy to say you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth!
--PeterM
No it isn't an argument against redistributing wealth amongst the states. I was merely pointing out that "North Dakota" benefits from Federal programs too.
Also, what's wrong with redistributing wealth among the states? It is NOT wrong for "North Dakota" to help California avoid disaster. Similarly, when a hurricane hits Florida, it's NOT WRONG to "redistribute wealth" from the rest of the country to send aid there to save lives.
Let me ask you this: why do you HATE your fellow Americans so much that you're not willing to "redistribute wealth" from the fortunate to the unfortunate?
--PM