21–30 of 301 posts
This is an insanely extreme claim with very little evidence to back it up, if we watch this unfold at the hands of global leadership please know that it didn’t have to be this way and somebody is taking advantage of all of us for power and control.
There are two better explanations than the Great Filter: - Dark Forest theory is popular in China, that civilizations should conceal their existence to prevent being destroyed by a more advanced civilization - Our own high power TV and Radio transmitters will be shutdown soon in favor of fiber optics. Even better communication mechanisms should be no surprise
I've always had an intuitive feeling that theories like The Great Filter theory was a pretty arrogant simplification of "actual reality" beyond our narrow biological lenses and even narrower western definition of "life" or even spatial dimensions and time.
Just because some western scientist with only 350+ years of somewhat advanced tools, math and imagination can't see "something" doesn't mean something isn't there - we don't even know what "there" is, or who "we" are.
Math and science is an awesome "thing", but the ridiculous existential pop-science extrapolations from simple equations is laughable if not sinister, especially in light of the paradigmatic shifts in science and worldview over just the last couple of centuries.
Ctrl+F geoengineering: 0 hits Come on, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_geoengineering it entered mainstream just recently: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/opinion/climate-change-ge... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/26/planet... https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/08/09/615/what-is-geoe... By now one question should remain: why was the very idea of geoengineering silenced for decades behin…
Won't that significantly reduce the photosynthetic potential of Earth, and significantly reduce the carrying capacity of the Earth for life?
There are plenty of planets and moons that are cooler because they receive less sunlight. None of them host any life that we can detect.
Isn't there a real risk that geoengineering would just end up turning the Earth into something resembling Mars, irreversibly?
The Earth has supported abundant life with an atmosphere with a higher concentration of C02 than it has now. Has it ever supported abundant life with the solar energy being reduced to the extent required to reduce climate change?
Ctrl+F geoengineering: 0 hits Come on, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_geoengineering it entered mainstream just recently: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/opinion/climate-change-ge... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/26/planet... https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/08/09/615/what-is-geoe... By now one question should remain: why was the very idea of geoengineering silenced for decades behin…
Why wait all the time until global warming destabilizes every ecosystem on Earth? You can have it today, just by spraying the upper atmosphere!
People do take geoengineering quite seriously. People do talk seriously about carbon capture, about ecosystem husbandry, about forced forestation, even about ocean seeding (there have been enough research about this one to conclude we are not desperate enough yet). It's only global shading that isn't serious.
Ctrl+F geoengineering: 0 hits Come on, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_geoengineering it entered mainstream just recently: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/opinion/climate-change-ge... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/26/planet... https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/08/09/615/what-is-geoe... By now one question should remain: why was the very idea of geoengineering silenced for decades behin…
I think the general consensus is that we've proven to be complete and absolute rubbish when it comes to predicting how vast complex real-world systems that we can't read worth a damn behave when we put them under major stresses, and the vast majority of attempts to hack ecosystems have been disasters, meaning that we're just as likely to make things even worse if we try to apply our crude means and models to make pla…
Ctrl+F geoengineering: 0 hits Come on, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_geoengineering it entered mainstream just recently: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/opinion/climate-change-ge... https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/26/planet... https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/08/09/615/what-is-geoe... By now one question should remain: why was the very idea of geoengineering silenced for decades behin…
I think the general consensus is that we've proven to be complete and absolute rubbish when it comes to predicting how vast complex real-world systems that we can't read worth a damn behave when we put them under major stresses, and the vast majority of attempts to hack ecosystems have been disasters, meaning that we're just as likely to make things even worse if we try to apply our crude means and models to make pla…
So I'm totally unconvinced by this often recited and rarely supported mantra.
The programming languages that will best survive the apocalypse are the ones that can run on chips that best survive the apocalypse! I think that there're be a big turn toward highly-efficient compiled languages: Rust and Go are well-positioned for this, C will still be around, but languages like PHP and Ruby are very poorly suited for this. Anything that can be adapted to run on a microcontroller that you can scavenge from old cars that no longer can get gas will be in high demand.
I also think we'll see a turn toward more local production of semiconductors, which may require moving back in process nodes toward older technology where the supply chain and manufacturing process isn't as complex.
I don't think backwards-compatibility is as important as the author thinks it is. Enough other things are going to break in the economy that people will be willing to make due with software that gives them basic communication & computation abilities even if it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of modern software, particularly if modern software becomes completely unavailable due to infrastructure failures like cable lines coming down and there not being enough power to run datacenters.
Final thoughts: I think distributed technologies like mesh networks, data synchronization algorithms, networking, (proof-of-stake/storage) blockchains, etc. will become significantly more important. I wouldn't count on the cloud surviving: it has a lot of physical infrastructure dependencies, and physical infrastructure is already crumbling. Software that you can run locally on a device and communicate over unreliable networks will become very important.
I agree, but I'll bet some folks' left eyes started twitching, when they read that...
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/villains/images/6/68/Charl...
There are two better explanations than the Great Filter: - Dark Forest theory is popular in China, that civilizations should conceal their existence to prevent being destroyed by a more advanced civilization - Our own high power TV and Radio transmitters will be shutdown soon in favor of fiber optics. Even better communication mechanisms should be no surprise
Interesting! I've always had an intuitive feeling that theories like The Great Filter theory was a pretty arrogant simplification of "actual reality" beyond our narrow biological lenses and even narrower western definition of "life" or even spatial dimensions and time. Just because some western scientist with only 350+ years of somewhat advanced tools, math and imagination can't see "something" doesn't mean something…
fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space
