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Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

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Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#71

Post by hawski »

Scarblac wrote: post #64
maxbond wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that I know what it means, but I'll tell you a thought it brought to mind. A while ago I was having a discussion, and someone asserted that synthetic fertilizers are necessary because composting doesn't scale. And my reaction was, surely composting scales to an entire biosphere - like, empirically we know this, right? There was a massive biosphere long before there was a Fritz Haber. Surely it's that we…

The argument doesn't quite work imo because farmers are actively working against the normal ecosystem - we don't want the normal plants to grow there, we want our desired crops. With enough production for us to feed the world and to give farmers a living wage. I still think it's doable (but not if we also want to feed many times our mass in lifestock), but it's not easy.

Farmers also want to have a large swaths of a monoculture plant, because it is easy then to mechanize. That goes, as you say, against the normal ecosystem. Permaculture gardens look much different, but you can't easily mechanize that.

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#72

Post by hawski »

shiroiushi wrote: post #32
onionisafruit wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real trick is being somebody that a future generation will go to the trouble of defrosting.

That's a fool's errand. The trick is to make sure your body is continually controlled by some kind of computer that will wake you up when a set of conditions is met, so you don't need to rely on future humans. You also need to make sure your cryopod is stored someplace where troublemakers won't find it and turn it off. The best thing I can think of is putting your cryopod in a lava tube on the Moon, powered by a smal…

You wake up in the middle of the moon and then what?

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#73

Post by js6i »

flakeoil wrote: post #44
therein wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quote The Bible often but I think we can have some space for a quote here: "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?" Matthew 6:26

I'm curious, what does that quote really mean? I can attempt to draw a few conclusions, but I'm not quite sure of either and they can also almost be the opposite of each other.

It's interesting how people come and mock without having any framework of understanding the thing. It's almost like a lost language. Consider air - it is immaterial, the spirit/principle/reason/meaning/pattern of things. It's also the vehicle for speech, and when we stop breathing it we die. I don't think the quote (or the broader text) means a single concrete thing - it's saying something about how the world works, and should be applicable in multiple ways. Under appreciated rabbit hole!

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#74

Post by maxbond »

Scarblac wrote: post #64
maxbond wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that I know what it means, but I'll tell you a thought it brought to mind. A while ago I was having a discussion, and someone asserted that synthetic fertilizers are necessary because composting doesn't scale. And my reaction was, surely composting scales to an entire biosphere - like, empirically we know this, right? There was a massive biosphere long before there was a Fritz Haber. Surely it's that we…

The argument doesn't quite work imo because farmers are actively working against the normal ecosystem - we don't want the normal plants to grow there, we want our desired crops. With enough production for us to feed the world and to give farmers a living wage. I still think it's doable (but not if we also want to feed many times our mass in lifestock), but it's not easy.

I don't want to argue the point (but I also am not dismissing your points, the position I put forward is definitely not unassailable), but I think there's an opportunity to make my original point better here, which is; sometimes we get trapped in the logic of our own systems and fail to think outside the box. Is it monoculture or low-N culture really required? Or is it a local optimum we lack the imagination to see beyond?

What got you here might not get you there. You can go really far with a monolithic web app running on top of a relational database. But if you scale far enough, you'll need to pull some pieces out and hook them up to databases with relaxed constraints.

There are good engineering reasons for us to do things the way we do them, and maybe it was the only feasible way for us to get to this point. But presumably if we continue to grow, we will enter a different phase with a different set of tradeoffs. That phase will probably involve exerting less control, it will probably also involve worse unit economics, but may also scale further with fewer externalities.

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#75

Post by maxbond »

krisoft wrote: post #70
maxbond wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know that I know what it means, but I'll tell you a thought it brought to mind. A while ago I was having a discussion, and someone asserted that synthetic fertilizers are necessary because composting doesn't scale. And my reaction was, surely composting scales to an entire biosphere - like, empirically we know this, right? There was a massive biosphere long before there was a Fritz Haber. Surely it's that we…

> surely composting scales to an entire biosphere By definition, yes. > There was a massive biosphere long before there was a Fritz Haber. There are about five times more humans today than there were when Fritz Haber invented his process. The question is not “will there be an ecosystem”. Of course there will be. The question is are you ok with 4 out of 5 person potentially starving to death. > Surely it's that we don…

> Synthetic fertilizers is the required technology and accepting that is the wisdom.

Again, I don't want to get into a debate about agriculture, I'm trying to discuss the quote, but these are the types of assumptions I'm suggesting are worth questioning.

The question is, are there ways to exert less control and get better outcomes? I'm not suggesting we let 80% of people starve. I'm suggesting we not be obsequious to the logic of the technology we've already built, when deciding on what to build next. (I elaborate in a cousin comment.)

Consider that in the extreme, if you have a linear supply chain with Haber-Bosch on one end and a landfill on the other - when you scale to enough people, you will also have mass starvation. Haber-Bosch isn't a "wisdom we accept" or "the" definitive technology. It has tremendous application, but it isn't magic. We're not simply done innovating in this area.

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#76

Post by krisoft »

xyst wrote: post #59

To me, seems like this is what we describe today as a “comatose” state. Is the individual “brain dead” or did the person sustain so much damage that it required an “emergency brake”. The body and mind is healing itself but today’s scientists and doctors cannot fully quantify it. Only using “primitive” tools (EEGs, CT, MRI) which only allow us to see through a tiny keyhole of what is a vast number of possibilities.

> To me, seems like this is what we describe today as a “comatose” state. Is the individual “brain dead” or did the person sustain so much damage that it required an “emergency brake”.

I’m not sure what you are talking about, but “comatose” and “brain dead” are two very different states. If you are brain dead you are not comatose.

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#77

Post by krisoft »

kolinko wrote: post #41
lukan wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The best thing I can think of is putting your cryopod in a lava tube on the Moon, powered by a small nuclear reactor or maybe a large RTG." And then hope nothing critically fails for centuries ... Unless we have perfectionized robots by the time you go into the cryopod, you might as well bet on humans. And if we "perfectionized robots", that do not fail all the time, we already would have a very different world.

You could have multiple failsafes, and after a part of them fail, you dehibernate automatically. We have systems that work well with such approach - planes being the most notable example - multiple redundancies, and when sth critical fails, you land asap. Works most of the time.

> you dehibernate automatically

You what now? :) I think you watched too many scifies and started to believe that the plot devices are reality. “Hybernation” is a thing in movies because the writers wanted to write stories involving humans and long space travel. It is not a working technology in reality. It might become one day, but your RTG powered cocoon is not going to invent and perfect it for you while you are asleep.

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#78

Post by dukeyukey »

crakenzak wrote: post #50
therein wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quote The Bible often but I think we can have some space for a quote here: "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?" Matthew 6:26

[flagged]

Why do you assume OP is even religious?

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#79

Post by leobg »

wayoverthecloud wrote: post #25

When you get caught up on the hustle of modern society and lose yourself in modern technology, it's so easy to forget that you are a part of a larger whole and there is more life on Earth besides human. For some reason knowing that other animals exist just for the sake of existing and even sleep off when life gets harder gives a new perspective. I feel that we humans use too much knowledge and complicate problems eve…

Had a very similar thought this morning.

With the amount of technology today, we should be the happiest, wealthiest generation alive.

My grandmother, born in the 1920s, still experienced hunger as a child, fled from the Russians through the ruins of bombed out cities, and, up until not too long ago, had to make a fire in order to have warm water for the bathtub. But I’ve never heard the word “depression” from her even once. Then you look at today’s younger generations, and you see it everywhere.

When you bought a roll of bread 40 years ago, you would be entering a shop owned by the baker. You would be getting a roll that was made by hand with local ingredients. And the woman at the counter would be friendly and relaxed, and she would be earning enough doing this simple job to have a normal family. Today, when I want to buy a roll, I enter a shop that heats up rolls that they get from an industrial scale bakery. It costs about 5 to 10 times as much. And the woman standing at the counter is of the lowest socioeconomic status, because the salary she gets for her work is barely enough to afford her some tiny apartment.

I would be able to except that many things just don’t change, and every generation has its problems. But if we believe the mantra that progress in technology makes us happier and wealthier than those that came before, I think we’re kidding ourselves. That, to me, seems more and more like a modern form of organized religion. And I’m not sure who the priests are.

Re: Most life on Earth is dormant, after pulling an 'emergency brake'

#80

Post by wruza »

flakeoil wrote: post #44
therein wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't quote The Bible often but I think we can have some space for a quote here: "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?" Matthew 6:26

I'm curious, what does that quote really mean? I can attempt to draw a few conclusions, but I'm not quite sure of either and they can also almost be the opposite of each other.

What “real” meaning do you think here? It says look, birds live somehow and you’re a man, much more important being to the guy in the sky. So don’t worry and continue to pay, he’s on it.
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