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Open Source Tractor

opensourceecology.dozuki.com

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Re: Open Source Tractor

#171

Post by WhisperingShiba »

bllguo wrote: post #167
WhisperingShiba wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it so as well. I was just reinforcing that I don't believe conventional war can occur without a major technological innovation in missile defense. It all comes down to sociology-economics, which is in turn downstream of culture. Neither the USA or China have close to optimal culture, but even accounting for western propaganda, the United States is a much happier place . Source: I met many Chinese people in…

1. selection bias 2. depending on when you went to college, your experience could be out of date surprised you would make such definitive statements on something as hard to measure as happiness, without better sources

Would you rather live in China, than the USA?

Not attacking, I am genuinely curious about what you think. From the outside looking in, it seems like people are overworked, overcrowded and rather unequal. Also they have a lot of pollution in many areas.

Re: Open Source Tractor

#172

Post by gnramires »

vasco wrote: post #140
gnramires wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I need to watch that! I'm developing an algorithmically-driven civilization architecture concept. (in the sense of, how to organize society from a blank slate point of view, while maximizing the wealth of experience for all individuals? I think we've gotten a little caught up in ideology and culture wars and stopped looking for ideas to move society forward with more efficient, humane, robust, collaborative (or adver…

What if we could throw what generations of people collectively built for a concoction some random dude came up with on their own? What about using the same time investment to contribute to improving our current systems? Whatever you come up by yourself has zero chances of coming to fruition outside your apartment. Working on your local community to improve lives of real people or joining a political party and influen…

Oh yes, believe me, I have enormous respect for our current system. It works really well. It has amazing emergent behavior.

In a way, I want to improve the current system; it's just sometimes an issue of branding, mental models, and compatibility, that it can be useful to think of it as something new. Like a new software that's inspired by legacy systems.

For example, by now it's clear that Open Source technology is almost a miracle. The potential for civilization for a large scale conversion to open source technologies is hard to grasp. Imagine every product sharing design files, and new manufacturers/designers being able to build upon all every other design with zero friction.

We have the problem of how to compensate the developers. Currently we're going with a bland of donations, support systems, and a few other apparently meager funding sources. I don't think our legal system is prepared to tackle this (i.e. you can't fix it completely with a well designed license), and neither our economic system can. So that already begs a certain kind of redesign... what if we had some kind of distributed/decentralized entity supervising the flow of technology/information and rewarding them according to societal impact?

We tend to think of a simple government/industry division, but government tends to be too centralized and imperfectly aligned to effectively fulfill this kind of role (industry due to its economic design tends to perform better).

One of the idea (please, give it a try as well!) is to have a decentralized network of adversarially cooperative evaluators for this (in a system that cross-validates itself and economically aligns estimation accuracy).

This seems naive or small-scale.

But almost every major issue from society stems from this imbalance: the improper/imperfect reward mechanism for doing what's good for us; imperfect coordination. Examples: Predatory advertisement, Pollution, Climate change, Open Source funding, Cultural funding, Addiction-driven design, ... I could go on.

I'm not thinking of completely replacing what we have, but having a third element working alongside government/industry.

This is literally the most important problem in the history of humanity and... there's no much on it, except for ideologically-driven discussion.

Remember: Ideology is a mind killer! [1]

[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9weLK2AJ9JEt2Tt8f/politics-i...

Re: Open Source Tractor

#173

Post by kbenson »

vasco wrote: post #140
gnramires wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I need to watch that! I'm developing an algorithmically-driven civilization architecture concept. (in the sense of, how to organize society from a blank slate point of view, while maximizing the wealth of experience for all individuals? I think we've gotten a little caught up in ideology and culture wars and stopped looking for ideas to move society forward with more efficient, humane, robust, collaborative (or adver…

What if we could throw what generations of people collectively built for a concoction some random dude came up with on their own? What about using the same time investment to contribute to improving our current systems? Whatever you come up by yourself has zero chances of coming to fruition outside your apartment. Working on your local community to improve lives of real people or joining a political party and influen…

> Whatever you come up by yourself has zero chances of coming to fruition outside your apartment. Working on your local community to improve lives of real people or joining a political party and influencing the direction of debate is way more actionable.

Just because someone isn't spending their time in the way you deem most effective doesn't mean it's not beneficial for themselves or others.

Iterative change is useful and helpful, but it's also how you get stuck in local maxima. They way out of local maxima is to step back and look at the problem fresh without some of the built in constraints of the current system, and is very useful as well even if they end up going back to us, and isn't something we should discourage people from doing.

If nothing else, they'll likely come away with a good understanding of the constraints of the system and why choices are made, and more importantly a "why" that's far more involved and justified than "well, that's how it is and we can't feasibly change it now."

This is the same reason why it's good to have people attempting to make a new HTTP server, or a new database system, or a new ORM. Those people often end up really understanding those systems extremely well even if they usually go back to using the status quo, and once in a blue moon they come up with something new and novel or at least beneficial under a slightly different set of constraints which better serves a certain audience.

Re: Open Source Tractor

#174

Post by lazide »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #142
lazide wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic tractors, like the AK-47, are also designable by most decent mechanical engineering students without a lot of work if they spent an afternoon googling first for prior art (and that prior art has long had any patents expire). Which if there is an ecosystem related to this, that’s great as the manufacturing is where you need economies of scale pretty badly and everyone benefits from it. There is no also no need f…

Look, I really want open source to meet the "real world", and not be stuck as another "socialism for the rich" where companies can do things on the cheap but the software is useless to the average person as an alternative to anything. (Great example: Google using Linux in Android does not mean the user is any more free of advertizing and spying!) But unless I misunderstand what this is for, I think the economies of s…

I think you’re right, and doing some more digging this seems if anything a somewhat useless engineer-wouldn’t-it-be-cool type project that isn’t solving any of the real problems that people face. Sigh.

Re: Open Source Tractor

#175

Post by saalweachter »

throwaway9870 wrote: post #159
timschmidt wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really enjoyed working with grandpa's Ford 8N. Thanks for your input!

Great example. Compare the traction of your machine to an 8N. That engine will outlast 4-5 briggs engines easy (10K vs 2K hrs). They have an efficient gear drive as opposed to hydrostatic. Lots less maintenance and no need for gallons of hydro fluid. They have a robust 3pt hitch with an excellent PTO drive. They will drag your tractor up and down the field all day long. I really mean to be constructive, sorry if I am…

I would also note the N-series was one of the first tractors with a 3-point hitch that worked reasonably safely.

Re: Open Source Tractor

#176

Post by bmn__ »

WhisperingShiba wrote: post #171
bllguo wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. selection bias 2. depending on when you went to college, your experience could be out of date surprised you would make such definitive statements on something as hard to measure as happiness, without better sources

Would you rather live in China, than the USA? Not attacking, I am genuinely curious about what you think. From the outside looking in, it seems like people are overworked, overcrowded and rather unequal. Also they have a lot of pollution in many areas.

> From the outside looking in

This perspective is not useful. You have to put yourself into the shoes of an abroad student, and then you will understand why the majority of them chooses to return home after getting the degree. Attraction factors are generally more important than the detraction factors you enumerated (overcrowding isn't even an objective one): these people want to be with their network of family and acquaintances, be part of a culture and speak the language they understand, and exploit their new knowledge to become wealthy without additional hurdles.

Re: Open Source Tractor

#177

Post by timschmidt »

throwaway9870 wrote: post #159
timschmidt wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really enjoyed working with grandpa's Ford 8N. Thanks for your input!

Great example. Compare the traction of your machine to an 8N. That engine will outlast 4-5 briggs engines easy (10K vs 2K hrs). They have an efficient gear drive as opposed to hydrostatic. Lots less maintenance and no need for gallons of hydro fluid. They have a robust 3pt hitch with an excellent PTO drive. They will drag your tractor up and down the field all day long. I really mean to be constructive, sorry if I am…

For example, here is another design with it's own unique advantages and disadvantages, built using many shared components: https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/MicroTrac_v17.10

Re: Open Source Tractor

#178

Post by saalweachter »

userbinator wrote: post #143

IMHO "open source" is not the right term for this because, besides sounding like it was created by people with a software-centric view, it legitimises the application of Imaginary Property laws to physical objects --- something that is a relatively recent phenomenon and one that I think should not continue. Perhaps "open design" or similar would be more representative of the intent. For example, the automotive afterm…

This exists for mid-century tractors as well; eg Steiner sells new parts for old tractors.

Re: Open Source Tractor

#179

Post by bllguo »

WhisperingShiba wrote: post #171
bllguo wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. selection bias 2. depending on when you went to college, your experience could be out of date surprised you would make such definitive statements on something as hard to measure as happiness, without better sources

Would you rather live in China, than the USA? Not attacking, I am genuinely curious about what you think. From the outside looking in, it seems like people are overworked, overcrowded and rather unequal. Also they have a lot of pollution in many areas.

I would still rather live in the US, as an American, but I don't think this is how to think about the original statement. It's all relative, right? In absolute terms you can say they're overworked and overcrowded, but they can still be happier than us because they reference their past experience and they see the progress the country has made. We see a lot of dissatisfaction in the US today, despite having higher QoL than China, because things have not improved for large swathes of the population. I'd honestly be surprised if the average Chinese citizen were less happy than the average American.

I also appreciate the Chinese faith in their government and their sense of national purpose. People talk ad nauseam about our political polarity, but another issue is that it's basically American culture to question government competence now. I don't think people fully realize how damaging that is for society. Pollution and inequality are problems, but the sense of most Chinese is that the government is working to fix them. What do you think they see if they look at us? Probably theatrics and gridlock, that's what Americans feel after all

Re: Open Source Tractor

#180

Post by saalweachter »

syedkarim wrote: post #22

Isn't this really a skid steer/wheel loader, rather than a tractor?

The core of the modern tractor is the "traction engine", an engine for pulling. By itself you could pull plows, disks, rakes, planters, etc, with the inconvenience of raising and lowering the implements manually.

Traction engines were not the first engines on the farm: prior to that, you could find steam engines on wheels that would be pulled by horses to different areas of the farm and fields to run belt-driven machines such as bailers or threshers, which were stationary -- you'd load hay into a baler with a pitchfork, and the machine would compact it into a bale.

Tractors absorbed this function with their own belt wheels or the PTO on modern tractors, which is used to power machines stationary or moving (modern bailers move around the field, but tractors will still be used to power a stationary grain elevator). They also added three point hitches and hydraulics to automatically raise and lower equipment.

But as long as it pulls, it's a tractor.

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