Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist (2012)

Post by BlueTemplar » Thu, May 30, 2019, 11:28 AM UTC

cinquemb wrote: post #99

mnl wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the great thing about thermodynamics, you can determine bounds for a few magnitudes in a physical system ignoring all the details about its evolution. For instance you can't disrupt the 2nd law, so at some point it's actually true that it is impossible to mitigate overheating and you won't be able to improve Stefan-Boltzmann law (except for increasing our emissivity, at night I'd guess). You can try to play wi…

"Wavelength- and subwavelength-scale particles,[1] metamaterials,[2] and other nanostructures are not subject to ray-optical limits and may be designed to exceed the Stefan–Boltzmann law."

Post by cinquemb » Thu, May 30, 2019, 11:38 AM UTC

fallingfrog wrote: post #130

cinquemb wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kolmogorov was about 90 years ago. Shannon, similar. Neither of their accomplishments will limit future accomplishments and understanding (except those bound slavishly to such frameworks [as good as they may be today in certain applications]) >Existential risks in fact. (E.g. reliance on a single source of energy without fallback.) Existential risks for oil companies investors or CSP investors?

Now, not to be rude but if you think we are going to break the laws of thermodynamics or other physics then you literally believe in supernatural forces. As in magic.

Post by BlueTemplar » Thu, May 30, 2019, 11:43 AM UTC

ajnin wrote: post #58

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mars does look a lot closer in 2019 than it did in 2012. Back then it seemed like no real plan existed, except for one little company not a lot of folks believed in. Now we’ve got billionaires in a space race and suddenly it seems obvious that we’ll colonize space to some degree even in the next 100 years, likely with some aggressive growth. We’ve only recently come off the gloomy decades after Apollo where space exp…

Sure it seems closer now than before, but reaching Mars is still very very far, it's nothing like going down the road to the chemist, for example let's say that we want to pursue the current population growth but on Mars, that's an estimated 82 million new people per year (130 million if you count only births), using the Starship SpaceX is currently developing that would take 820000 launches per year or 2250 per day.…

Post by challenger22 » Thu, May 30, 2019, 11:53 AM UTC

Post by cinquemb » Thu, May 30, 2019, 11:55 AM UTC

BlueTemplar wrote: post #131

cinquemb wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Wavelength- and subwavelength-scale particles,[1] metamaterials,[2] and other nanostructures are not subject to ray-optical limits and may be designed to exceed the Stefan–Boltzmann law."

That's interesting - are they more efficient at getting rid of entropy ? (And what would be the new limits? If they only give, for instance, a single doubling worth, that won't buy us much more time...)