What about Ion thrusters and vasimir rockets. They are limited by power. Our current rockets are mostly fuel limited cause thats easier to produce and carry than energy generation. Proper fusion would solve that.
The biggest problem with space exploration is getting stuff from the surface to orbit, and ion and all other alternative thrusters are far too weak for that. Not because of energy, space probes have onboard nuclear reactors. We need fuel because of the conservation of impulse.
Food certainly can be grown using energy, no idea why you think it can't. And the planet is covered by water only limited by use of energy. You could move farming indoors if you had energy no problem.
Sure, you can build desalination plants. On the seashores where they already have more than enough rain. And farming requires water.
No idea why you think we need to break thermodynamics to use fusion or other methods to extract energy from matter.
I didn't say fusion was impossible, in fact, I was posting about what would happen were it possible. But parent suggested that we might discover a way of converting matter directly to energy, based on a misunderstanding of special relativity.
You're missing the forest for the trees. The non-labor component of housing and natural resources is just other people bidding up the price. It only costs as much as people, on average, are willing and able to pay. You can't realistically have a situation where a majority of the population is unable to afford housing, because the land is there and someone will have it. The rich aren't going to buy up all the houses and then refuse to let anyone live in them just so they can laugh at all the homeless people.
Well a robotic workforce would increase differences in wealth so yeah the majority would get less. Of course, in a properly functioning society that can be limited.
You, sir, are a worthy opponent. But there are, in fact, nine planets, as predicted by the Titus-Bode law, it's just that the one between Mars and Jupiter is a bit scattered. Also, if we are talking about Big Rocks, then there are only four.
Exponential growth in population isn't necessary for exponential growth in energy consumption. It's enough for consumption per capita to be exponential.
So isn't that just a highly connected CA? What about a CA where each cell is connected to all the rest - it might behave very differently to a more grid-like CA, but it still counts as one.
Yes, you can define CAs in a very general term so that everything counts as one but that makes it impractical to model anything with them. And in this case the physical arrangement of the molecules also counts, and if I understood correctly, external electric fields are also applied.
They are claiming that their setup could be parallel, not that it must be.
Of course, you can make any computer parallel, for example by using two of them. I was reflecting to the claims throughout the paper like this:
As an alternative to serial logic operation, von Neumann demonstrated parallel computing on a piece of graph paper by moving black and white dots together using simple rules.
The Neumann replicator is still linear even though it's on a CA.
Pluto shouldn't be classified a planet, as it doesn't share a lot of properties with them. First it's not a celestial body but 2. Second, its orbit is elliptical, as opposed to the circular orbit of the planets, and not in the ecliptic. Also, it's very small, smaller than the Moon.
This is an awsome project, but the researchers make some claims that are not true. First, this is not a CA, as molecules affect other molecules in a big radius not just their neighbours. Second, a computer is not massively parallel just because it's realized on a CA. That's like saying that silicon-based chips are massively parallel because each of the great number of electrons "computes" its path on its own.
Spaceflight potential (hell, it suddenly becomes a cinch to take a entire power station to the Moon or Mars and back - and while you're there look for fuel, etc.).
Space flight is limited by fuel, not energy. Except if we build a space elevator/giant railgun wich may or may not be possible.
Food, water, heat, light, etc. for humans, which leads to many more productive, educated, "worryless" humans (i.e. we have 7bn productive people learning science instead of most of them trying to scrape a living to earn enough to eat for most of their day).
Food and water can't be produced by energy. Human population can't grow exponentially much longer.
Particle physics (which can only help us throw more energy at more subatomic matter and find more possible fusion fuels - this is ignoring the fact that fusion is a quite efficient way of using a fuel, much more so than the stuff we use at the moment - e=MC^2 provides a lot of energy from a little bit of matter if you do it right).
You are assuming we find a way around the second law of thermodynamics.
I don't see that we would have major problems even if we assume that humans are inherently dumb and will just consume whatever they can (and everyone ends up pulling MWh's for themselves all day long).
I didn't assume humans are dumb, I assumed they will act according to their best selfish interest.
Sadly they are not just kids. There are idiots in every age. Also, sometimes a legal solution does work. In my city, when one of them got caught and made an example it stopped the others for half a year.
So the question is legit: how would efficient fusion change our lives? Personally I don't think it would be good, as a cheap, clean and seemingly endless source would trigger an exponential growth in energy consumption, and when fusion fuel runs out there will be no other source to satisfy those needs. With our current consumption we still have a chance to switch to renewable before fossile fuel runs out, using nuclear as an intermediate solution until we re ready to do it.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder how secure they are, it would be pretty bad if some of them got hacked by malicious people.
You can just take the money and buy bonds of another country for it, thus having a surplus and still using bonds.
What about Ion thrusters and vasimir rockets. They are limited by power. Our current rockets are mostly fuel limited cause thats easier to produce and carry than energy generation. Proper fusion would solve that.
The biggest problem with space exploration is getting stuff from the surface to orbit, and ion and all other alternative thrusters are far too weak for that. Not because of energy, space probes have onboard nuclear reactors. We need fuel because of the conservation of impulse.
Food certainly can be grown using energy, no idea why you think it can't. And the planet is covered by water only limited by use of energy. You could move farming indoors if you had energy no problem.
Sure, you can build desalination plants. On the seashores where they already have more than enough rain. And farming requires water.
No idea why you think we need to break thermodynamics to use fusion or other methods to extract energy from matter.
I didn't say fusion was impossible, in fact, I was posting about what would happen were it possible. But parent suggested that we might discover a way of converting matter directly to energy, based on a misunderstanding of special relativity.
Cool tech but from the video you could do the same by using 4 buttons at the corners.
You're missing the forest for the trees. The non-labor component of housing and natural resources is just other people bidding up the price. It only costs as much as people, on average, are willing and able to pay. You can't realistically have a situation where a majority of the population is unable to afford housing, because the land is there and someone will have it. The rich aren't going to buy up all the houses and then refuse to let anyone live in them just so they can laugh at all the homeless people.
Well a robotic workforce would increase differences in wealth so yeah the majority would get less. Of course, in a properly functioning society that can be limited.
You, sir, are a worthy opponent. But there are, in fact, nine planets, as predicted by the Titus-Bode law, it's just that the one between Mars and Jupiter is a bit scattered. Also, if we are talking about Big Rocks, then there are only four.
Exponential growth in population isn't necessary for exponential growth in energy consumption. It's enough for consumption per capita to be exponential.
It's not like there are so very many objects out there orbiting our sun that we actually NEED more adjectives or taxonomic categories.
What about other stars? With all the exoplanets being discovered, we know of significantly more planets now and the number is increasing.
So isn't that just a highly connected CA? What about a CA where each cell is connected to all the rest - it might behave very differently to a more grid-like CA, but it still counts as one.
Yes, you can define CAs in a very general term so that everything counts as one but that makes it impractical to model anything with them. And in this case the physical arrangement of the molecules also counts, and if I understood correctly, external electric fields are also applied.
They are claiming that their setup could be parallel, not that it must be.
Of course, you can make any computer parallel, for example by using two of them. I was reflecting to the claims throughout the paper like this:
The Neumann replicator is still linear even though it's on a CA.
The consumption of those sources is limited, thus an exponential growth don't appear.
Pluto shouldn't be classified a planet, as it doesn't share a lot of properties with them. First it's not a celestial body but 2. Second, its orbit is elliptical, as opposed to the circular orbit of the planets, and not in the ecliptic. Also, it's very small, smaller than the Moon.
This is an awsome project, but the researchers make some claims that are not true. First, this is not a CA, as molecules affect other molecules in a big radius not just their neighbours. Second, a computer is not massively parallel just because it's realized on a CA. That's like saying that silicon-based chips are massively parallel because each of the great number of electrons "computes" its path on its own.
Indeed, I have a Samsung with AR.
Spaceflight potential (hell, it suddenly becomes a cinch to take a entire power station to the Moon or Mars and back - and while you're there look for fuel, etc.).
Space flight is limited by fuel, not energy. Except if we build a space elevator/giant railgun wich may or may not be possible.
Food, water, heat, light, etc. for humans, which leads to many more productive, educated, "worryless" humans (i.e. we have 7bn productive people learning science instead of most of them trying to scrape a living to earn enough to eat for most of their day).
Food and water can't be produced by energy. Human population can't grow exponentially much longer.
Particle physics (which can only help us throw more energy at more subatomic matter and find more possible fusion fuels - this is ignoring the fact that fusion is a quite efficient way of using a fuel, much more so than the stuff we use at the moment - e=MC^2 provides a lot of energy from a little bit of matter if you do it right).
You are assuming we find a way around the second law of thermodynamics.
I don't see that we would have major problems even if we assume that humans are inherently dumb and will just consume whatever they can (and everyone ends up pulling MWh's for themselves all day long).
I didn't assume humans are dumb, I assumed they will act according to their best selfish interest.
Sadly they are not just kids. There are idiots in every age. Also, sometimes a legal solution does work. In my city, when one of them got caught and made an example it stopped the others for half a year.
I don't think you understand exponential growth.
True, both my Ericssons started having mechanical problems after about 4 years, although I was about to buy new ones anyway.
So the question is legit: how would efficient fusion change our lives?
Personally I don't think it would be good, as a cheap, clean and seemingly endless source would trigger an exponential growth in energy consumption, and when fusion fuel runs out there will be no other source to satisfy those needs. With our current consumption we still have a chance to switch to renewable before fossile fuel runs out, using nuclear as an intermediate solution until we re ready to do it.
Exactly like a Python IDE.
Indentation is a good habit even if it's not necessary in a language's syntax.
The participants didn't know the languages before. If anything, the study only proved that Perl has a steep learning curve.
Don't use paper. Seriously, it's the 21st century already. Let them try reconstruction after you shredded it.
Most AVs act like viruses. They can not be terminated, like 10+ hidden processes, scan/modify/delete other files constantly etc.
But no more.
Here is a link to the printable version.