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The Singularity in Our Past

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Re: The Singularity in Our Past

#31

Post by wazoox »

troystribling wrote: post #24

In Henery Adams's audio biography 'The Education of Henry Adams' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Education_of_Henry_Adams (i.e. Henery Adams the grandson of John Quincy Adams was a 19'th century historian). He discusses his theory of history. In his model history is driven by the law of Acceleration which discribes the exponential growth of energy consumption through the 19'th century http://www.bartleby.com/159/34.…

> Exponential growth in energy consumption was viewed as unsustainable as early as the 1860's but Henry Adams noted that it continued throughout his life up until the time he wrote his biography in 1904 and he saw no end to it.

We're seeing it now, however.

Re: The Singularity in Our Past

#32

Post by Helianthus16 »

VladRussian wrote: post #22
Helianthus16 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always amazed by such blatant anthropo-deprecating-centric (?) statements. -The difference in efficiency should tell you that that power spent is _worth_ something, like astonishingly superior abstraction capabilities and the ability to speak and write. -The ugliness (read; complexity) of QM could easily be interpreted as a tribute. Whether you like it or not, it is the best we have. To paraphrase HHG2G, if it's…

>The difference in efficiency should tell you that that power spent is _worth_ something nope. It is just that we didn't have strong enough competition from other predator species to force the efficiency increase. Instead we use the extensive way of increasing the size, even if it is accompanied by decreased efficiency. Like going cheap low-tech V8 instead of efficiently increasing horsepower of a V6 engine. >astonis…

>nope. It is just that we didn't have strong enough competition from other predator species to force the efficiency increase. Instead we use the extensive way of increasing the size, even if it is accompanied by decreased efficiency. Like going cheap low-tech V8 instead of efficiently increasing horsepower of a V6 engine.

ok, sure. point is our engine beats the pants off a dogs no matter how you slice it.

>yep. that one. The top manifestations of that ability were Inquisition, Hitler, Stalin, etc...

like I said, debbie downer. you have this absurd fixation on killings.

>I have an MS in Math, and spent enough time on QM to get a "grasp".

In other words you are not a physicist. The saying that no one understands QM is not a joke. Mathematics is useless without reality; it's like literary analysis without story-telling.

I've been joking and condescending in my responses to you, but I'm going to get a little serious now:

>If you look into the history of human species, it is a continuous blood-shed

Yes, it's continuous bloodshed. You know what? It's not your right to determine that what people fought for was meaningless, or too "violent" for your modern middle-class tastes. It's not your right to prissily look down on the human race from your ivory tower of Math and grumble about killing.

What I see when I look upon our history is a series of people taking their actions seriously. I see a series of people that slowly, agonizingly, painstakingly turned away from violence in order to serve those 'side-effects' that you think we killers disregard.

And that's the crux of it. Do you really think you're any better than the killers you despise? Maybe you don't, maybe you lump yourself in with us savages; if so, though, you must have some self-hatred issues that'll keep your therapist employed well beyond his retirement.

If all you see when you look at history is the pain, then all you will _feel_ is pain.

Re: The Singularity in Our Past

#33

Post by swombat »

wazoox wrote: post #31
troystribling wrote: post #24

In Henery Adams's audio biography 'The Education of Henry Adams' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Education_of_Henry_Adams (i.e. Henery Adams the grandson of John Quincy Adams was a 19'th century historian). He discusses his theory of history. In his model history is driven by the law of Acceleration which discribes the exponential growth of energy consumption through the 19'th century http://www.bartleby.com/159/34.…

> Exponential growth in energy consumption was viewed as unsustainable as early as the 1860's but Henry Adams noted that it continued throughout his life up until the time he wrote his biography in 1904 and he saw no end to it. We're seeing it now, however.

The point of the story above is that people in Henry's time were seeing it too - and yet it didn't happen.

Re: The Singularity in Our Past

#34

Post by gjm11 »

VladRussian wrote: post #22
Helianthus16 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always amazed by such blatant anthropo-deprecating-centric (?) statements. -The difference in efficiency should tell you that that power spent is _worth_ something, like astonishingly superior abstraction capabilities and the ability to speak and write. -The ugliness (read; complexity) of QM could easily be interpreted as a tribute. Whether you like it or not, it is the best we have. To paraphrase HHG2G, if it's…

>The difference in efficiency should tell you that that power spent is _worth_ something nope. It is just that we didn't have strong enough competition from other predator species to force the efficiency increase. Instead we use the extensive way of increasing the size, even if it is accompanied by decreased efficiency. Like going cheap low-tech V8 instead of efficiently increasing horsepower of a V6 engine. >astonis…

> The top manifestations of that ability were Inquisition, Hitler, Stalin, etc...

You may consider them the "top manifestations". I don't think many other people would. For my part, I'd put Bach and Shakespeare and Newton and Gauss higher up than Hitler on a list of top manifestations of the capacity for abstract thought.

> whenever there is a patch of technological progress it is most visibly expressed through new technological means of violence.

And yet today the world -- especially the industrialized, wealthy parts of the world, which have benefited most from a sustained application of that ability for abstract thought -- is less violent and longer-lived than ever before.

Re: The Singularity in Our Past

#35

Post by wazoox »

swombat wrote: post #33
wazoox wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Exponential growth in energy consumption was viewed as unsustainable as early as the 1860's but Henry Adams noted that it continued throughout his life up until the time he wrote his biography in 1904 and he saw no end to it. We're seeing it now, however.

The point of the story above is that people in Henry's time were seeing it too - and yet it didn't happen.

They were seeing it as not sustainable, while we're actually seeing the first hiccups. As you may now know, finally the EIA admitted in its latest report that peak oil already occurred :

http://www.iea.org/w/bookshop/add.aspx?id=422

quote :"If governments put in place the energy and climate policies to which they have committed themselves, then our analysis suggests that crude oil production has probably already peaked."

Of course this didn't make the news. Keep on the denial, people.

Re: The Singularity in Our Past

#36

Post by rbanffy »

wazoox wrote: post #35
swombat wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of the story above is that people in Henry's time were seeing it too - and yet it didn't happen.

They were seeing it as not sustainable, while we're actually seeing the first hiccups. As you may now know, finally the EIA admitted in its latest report that peak oil already occurred : http://www.iea.org/w/bookshop/add.aspx?id=422 quote :"If governments put in place the energy and climate policies to which they have committed themselves, then our analysis suggests that crude oil production has probably already peak…

Careful with your assumptions. Energy is nor equal to oil.

Re: The Singularity in Our Past

#37

Post by wazoox »

rbanffy wrote: post #36
wazoox wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were seeing it as not sustainable, while we're actually seeing the first hiccups. As you may now know, finally the EIA admitted in its latest report that peak oil already occurred : http://www.iea.org/w/bookshop/add.aspx?id=422 quote :"If governments put in place the energy and climate policies to which they have committed themselves, then our analysis suggests that crude oil production has probably already peak…

Careful with your assumptions. Energy is nor equal to oil.

Of course it isn't; however it represents the better part of our energy consumption, and we face an unknown : moving from one main source of energy to an inferior one (in the past, we always went from one source to a better one).

Re: The Singularity in Our Past

#38

Post by VladRussian »

gjm11 wrote: post #34
VladRussian wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The difference in efficiency should tell you that that power spent is _worth_ something nope. It is just that we didn't have strong enough competition from other predator species to force the efficiency increase. Instead we use the extensive way of increasing the size, even if it is accompanied by decreased efficiency. Like going cheap low-tech V8 instead of efficiently increasing horsepower of a V6 engine. >astonis…

> The top manifestations of that ability were Inquisition, Hitler, Stalin, etc... You may consider them the "top manifestations". I don't think many other people would. For my part, I'd put Bach and Shakespeare and Newton and Gauss higher up than Hitler on a list of top manifestations of the capacity for abstract thought. > whenever there is a patch of technological progress it is most visibly expressed through new t…

>You may consider them the "top manifestations". I don't think many other people would. For my part, I'd put Bach and Shakespeare and Newton and Gauss higher up than Hitler on a list of top manifestations of the capacity for abstract thought.

you don't get it. Bach and Shakespeare and Newton and Gauss were just 4 people. Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot were just leaders of millions. These millions were expressing and implementing abstract ideas who should be killed by doing actual killing. So, lets put it in easy way for you to understand - the top manifestations (number of people involved, total effort they put into it, including the ability for abstract thinking) are Inquisition, WWI, WWII, Khmer Rouge, ...

>And yet today the world -- especially the industrialized, wealthy parts of the world, which have benefited most from a sustained application of that ability for abstract thought -- is less violent and longer-lived than ever before.

this would sound so true right before WWI, and before WWII as well...

Re: The Singularity in Our Past

#39

Post by VladRussian »

Helianthus16 wrote: post #32
VladRussian wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The difference in efficiency should tell you that that power spent is _worth_ something nope. It is just that we didn't have strong enough competition from other predator species to force the efficiency increase. Instead we use the extensive way of increasing the size, even if it is accompanied by decreased efficiency. Like going cheap low-tech V8 instead of efficiently increasing horsepower of a V6 engine. >astonis…

>nope. It is just that we didn't have strong enough competition from other predator species to force the efficiency increase. Instead we use the extensive way of increasing the size, even if it is accompanied by decreased efficiency. Like going cheap low-tech V8 instead of efficiently increasing horsepower of a V6 engine. ok, sure. point is our engine beats the pants off a dogs no matter how you slice it. >yep. that…

>ok, sure. point is our engine beats the pants off a dogs no matter how you slice it.

no. point is whenever we have even a little more biologically advanced brain, like Einstein's (noticeably smaller than typical human's one, yet more densely packed with more energy supplying cells), it easily beats typical human's one. The Einstein's brain is still human (had it been even a bit more biologically advanced than it was it would be hard to call it human), yet it shows how inefficient the typical human brain is.

>like I said, debbie downer. you have this absurd fixation on killings.

no, i just have an ability for analysis, and keen interest for QM and biology.

>Yes, it's continuous bloodshed. You know what? It's not your right to determine that what people fought for was meaningless, or too "violent" for your modern middle-class tastes. It's not your right to prissily look down on the human race from your ivory tower of Math and grumble about killing.

that is my point. Human brain has unique ability to put "meaning" into killings which aren't necessary for satisfaction of immediate food or self-defense needs.

>What I see when I look upon our history is a series of people taking their actions seriously. I see a series of people that slowly, agonizingly, painstakingly turned away from violence in order to serve those 'side-effects' that you think we killers disregard.

that agony is exactly manifestation of the fact that i talking about - mathematics and physics aren't natural for human brain. Reasoning for violence is.

>And that's the crux of it. Do you really think you're any better than the killers you despise?

i'm human. I'm a specimen of a species which evolved as a pack hunting predator. It has beaten all other predators (including other species of humans) through evolutionary advantage of extensively evolved brain which improved pack hunting (through communication/organization and weapons - thanks to the ape's ability to grasp a stick or stone) at the start and later discovered that unmotivated aggression, ie. striking first without being in immediate danger, toward others predators is evolutionary advantageous if you have much better communication/organization and weapons.

Like any other human, i have ideas when i think violence is justified even though it wouldn't serve my immediate food or self-defense needs. Like any other human, i'd like to mislead myself into thinking that my reasons for violence are "valid and justified". Well, i have a human brain.

Re: The Singularity in Our Past

#40

Post by eru »

wazoox wrote: post #35
swombat wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of the story above is that people in Henry's time were seeing it too - and yet it didn't happen.

They were seeing it as not sustainable, while we're actually seeing the first hiccups. As you may now know, finally the EIA admitted in its latest report that peak oil already occurred : http://www.iea.org/w/bookshop/add.aspx?id=422 quote :"If governments put in place the energy and climate policies to which they have committed themselves, then our analysis suggests that crude oil production has probably already peak…

Who cares about oil? Oil is important for moving vehicles, but not so much for global energy consumption, like say, electricity.
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