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Ordinary Abundance

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Re: Ordinary Abundance

#131

Post by m463 »

ericyd wrote: post #99
carlgreene wrote: post #2

Hedonic adaptation really is something. I have been deeply trying to appreciate these modern marvels more and more, but it's hard. A hot shower, air almost 50 degrees cooler than the outside air coming out of my vents, communicating instantly thousands of miles away, it's all so easy to just forget and take for granted

Not trying to shame you but...50 degrees? Do you live in Phoenix and keep your home at 60 degrees?

It seems the Air Conditioner outlet temperature should be 15-20 degrees F cooler than the indoor temperature.

So to keep your home at 70, you need exit temperature to be 50-55F.

seems like it might be lower or higher, depending on humidity.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#132

Post by m463 »

physicles wrote: post #59

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. For the last month I’ve been living in a camper van, working and traveling, which I’m really lucky to be able to do by choice. It’s lonely to be sure, but I also feel mentally far more resilient than I have in ages, and I’m trying to figure out why. Being in nature is good for us, so that’s probably part of it, as is the constant practice of being self-reliant. Another theo…

just don't go full-on chris mccandless

EDIT:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_McCandless

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Wild_(film)

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#133

Post by ericyd »

m463 wrote: post #131
ericyd wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not trying to shame you but...50 degrees? Do you live in Phoenix and keep your home at 60 degrees?

It seems the Air Conditioner outlet temperature should be 15-20 degrees F cooler than the indoor temperature. So to keep your home at 70, you need exit temperature to be 50-55F. seems like it might be lower or higher, depending on humidity.

That is interesting and I didn't know that, though the commenter said air coming out of their vents almost 50 degrees below the outdoor air temp, so I'm tempted to think they weren't referring to the outlet temperature.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#134

Post by m463 »

ericyd wrote: post #133
m463 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems the Air Conditioner outlet temperature should be 15-20 degrees F cooler than the indoor temperature. So to keep your home at 70, you need exit temperature to be 50-55F. seems like it might be lower or higher, depending on humidity.

That is interesting and I didn't know that, though the commenter said air coming out of their vents almost 50 degrees below the outdoor air temp, so I'm tempted to think they weren't referring to the outlet temperature.

I think the vent temperature is the outlet temperature.

So on a 102 degree day, for 72 degrees indoors, you might need 52 degree vent temperature.

In phoenix - just go to work and come home after dark.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#135

Post by physicles »

m463 wrote: post #132
physicles wrote: post #59

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. For the last month I’ve been living in a camper van, working and traveling, which I’m really lucky to be able to do by choice. It’s lonely to be sure, but I also feel mentally far more resilient than I have in ages, and I’m trying to figure out why. Being in nature is good for us, so that’s probably part of it, as is the constant practice of being self-reliant. Another theo…

just don't go full-on chris mccandless EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_McCandless https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Wild_(film)

Ha, Chris McCandless is to vanlife what Alex Honnold is to rock climbing: technically the same activity but with a very different level of consequence for failure.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#136

Post by ifyoubuildit »

tshaddox wrote: post #68
carlgreene wrote: post #2

Hedonic adaptation really is something. I have been deeply trying to appreciate these modern marvels more and more, but it's hard. A hot shower, air almost 50 degrees cooler than the outside air coming out of my vents, communicating instantly thousands of miles away, it's all so easy to just forget and take for granted

Hedonic adaptation is a very good thing. Culture or technological stasis is a death sentence for civilization. Open-ended progress is the only chance civilization has to survive (and even that's not a guarantee). There is an infinite sequence of future problems to be solved. Each time you solve a problem, you don't reduce the total number of future problems, but you are left with one or more better problems than you…

> Culture or technological stasis is a death sentence for civilization

Why?

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#137

Post by breuleux »

tshaddox wrote: post #106
breuleux wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel that oftentimes our biggest problems come with the irresponsible scaling up of certain solutions, at which point it is usually too late to roll back because we have come to depend on them. There has to be some time between the moment we invent something great and the moment we make trillions of the thing and realize, oh, maybe that's a problem. But we don't pace ourselves. And if we keep plowing ahead heedless…

I don't think anything like a "general speed limit applied to experimentation" makes sense. In general we should move as fast as possible. When there's a specific explanation why a specific experiment should move slowly (or even be prohibited), I respect that, but the explanation can't just be "we don't know all the bad things that might happen as a result of this experiment." That's the precautionary principle, whic…

I'm describing a speed limit applied to production, not experimentation.

We can progress science, knowledge and technology all we want without necessarily committing every resource we can find to producing ten times more stuff than we need. Moving too quickly in terms of production can be detrimental to progress: first movers can and often do take over entire markets, leaving no room for the often better-designed second or third movers to shine. Moving more slowly allows for better maneuvering and making sure the best systems and technology can prevail. And it allows us to see problems coming before they hit us.

I think we could have made a utopia purely from fossil fuels if we had been more careful and restrained using them. In my view, the fact that we couldn't do that is a major indictment of our process.

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#139

Post by m463 »

physicles wrote: post #135
m463 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just don't go full-on chris mccandless EDIT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_McCandless https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Wild_(film)

Ha, Chris McCandless is to vanlife what Alex Honnold is to rock climbing: technically the same activity but with a very different level of consequence for failure.

I didn't know who that was, and read the article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Honnold

andthen down at the bottom it said this:

  Honnold met Sanni McCandless at a book signing in November 2015
is this some weird unexpected connection??

Re: Ordinary Abundance

#140

Post by blfr »

The same on a smaller scale happened with modern consumer computing. We like to complain but

* have OLED screens and dark modes which are amazing after sundown,

* virtually everything works on Linux, especially all effectively mandatory/government services (at least here in Poland),

* and with some hardware selection Linux works everywhere,

* batteries last ages and everything can be charged via USB-C,

* smartphone cameras now finally exceed my own vision, have amazing zoom and take great nighttime photos (although not of moving stuff yet),

* the ecosystem allows to magically summon a car,

* can have an e2e encrypted multimodal (video, photos, documents, text) conversation with virtually everyone we know, wherever they are in the world, live or asynchronously,

* not to mention LLMs just doing things for you like a tireless assistant.

All of these were a dream when I first set up a home server in 2004. Some like OLED were a dream I didn't even know I had, the LCD glow just annoyed me.

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