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Ephemeralization

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Re: Ephemeralization

#21

Post by oh-4-fucks-sake »

xcambar wrote: post #8

An interesting thought experiment, really. But when I read: > the ability of technological advancement to do "more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing" I add the footnote: "Terms and Conditions may apply" :) The blind spot of the idea is: limits. Should it be rephrased "eventually you can do almost everything with almost nothing", I'd have dropped the "thought experiment" l…

Agree 100%.

Stated another way: asymptotic functions convincingly appear that they'll hit zero--though obviously never do.

Same reason I'd be shocked if physicists ever achieve absolute zero Kelvins in a lab.

Re: Ephemeralization

#22

Post by kurthr »

gamegoblin wrote: post #13

This article is about technological progress enabling doing more with less. I’ve been having a tangentially related thought about general project planning as it pertains to technological progress. The thesis is: Unless you can create an optimistic project plan that results in the project’s completion within 5 years, the money would be better spent on doing basic research. The thesis is informed by the ITER fusion rea…

Agreed, for hardware and manufacturing related development it is very difficult to see out past 5 years where anything new is being attempted. Within 3-5 years you are largely constrained by current available manufacturing, fabs, and processes, but farther out there may be better choices. You may be better served by doing the research (or collaborating with a supplier) to build new production capacity (understanding their challenges) for anything further out.

Look at DUV lithography where a huge industry flipped on its head in 5 years, while X-ray lithography had been in development (and written off) for so many decades it had to be renamed. That required real R&D not tweaking current available equipment, which led to asymetric advantages and huge profits (Zero to One).

Re: Ephemeralization

#23

Post by missedthecue »

This is what I always point to when people say capitalism is unsustainable because it supposedly "requires infinite growth in a closed system."

It doesn't require that, it only requires endless incremental improvements in efficiency, which is perfectly possible, given that even just the tiniest incremental improvement on a massive problem can result in huge productivity gains. A great example is farming. We produce more crop output than ever before all while using less land, labor, and energy.

Re: Ephemeralization

#24

Post by theandrewbailey »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #4

Well you can only physically move an object so efficiently. Unless everything we know about physics is wrong - you'll never be able to move an object w/o any energy. For that reason - it's hard to imagine a world with 7Bn people flying around at mach-2. Our productivity gains are likely on an S-curve. It's hard to say where we are in the curve.

And for that matter, data can only be processed and transmitted at a certain efficiency.

Re: Ephemeralization

#25

Post by robomc »

joshmarinacci wrote: post #10

CDs and DVDs are a good example of this. I used to have a wall of my apartment dedicated to media, all completely immaterial now.

that's also a good example of how it's often mostly or partly faked through displacement as well though. your CD and DVD collection has been replaced by round the clock maintenance of the storage and transmission of that data, from the record label or movie studio through various data centers, via a number of middle-men companies all requiring their own ever-changing and complex infrastructures, through a system of caching and routing and cabling to your house, which needs to take place over and over, forever. The only dependencies for your old collection was shelving and the electricity grid, otherwise they were stamped out of plastic once and good for at least a few decades.

Re: Ephemeralization

#26

Post by alexpetralia »

sfink wrote: post #20

This is the sneaky, flawed premise behind many instances of what we call optimization. I have a Law of Optimization: the closer you get to optimal on your chosen metrics, the more cost is shifted to unmeasured externalities. (I imagine someone has named this.) A stronger version would be to say that the distance to optimal is inversely proportional to the externalized cost, so that the total externalized cost goes to…

Great comment. This is something I've thought for a long while, especially as we see the suppressed costs of "optimized systems" rear their ugly head against unplanned contingencies.

Re: Ephemeralization

#27

Post by sfink »

missedthecue wrote: post #23

This is what I always point to when people say capitalism is unsustainable because it supposedly "requires infinite growth in a closed system." It doesn't require that, it only requires endless incremental improvements in efficiency, which is perfectly possible, given that even just the tiniest incremental improvement on a massive problem can result in huge productivity gains. A great example is farming. We produce m…

Right, the outputs are higher than ever with the least conventionally measured inputs. Which was great for a while, but we're well into the tail portion of the curve where the advances are all accompanied with ever greater shifts of cost to the unmeasured externalities. Modern farming is a hyper-efficient process of converting fossil fuels -> fertilizer -> corn & soy -> food and its many imitations, along with massive environmental costs (CO2, runoff, freshwater usage and groundwater depletion, ...)

Re: Ephemeralization

#28

Post by diarrhea »

londons_explore wrote: post #7
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #4

Well you can only physically move an object so efficiently. Unless everything we know about physics is wrong - you'll never be able to move an object w/o any energy. For that reason - it's hard to imagine a world with 7Bn people flying around at mach-2. Our productivity gains are likely on an S-curve. It's hard to say where we are in the curve.

That's a poor example... The theoretical energy expended to move an object is zero. All energy losses in moving things are due to inefficiencies that we could theoretically engineer away. For example air resistance could be eliminated with roads becoming vacuum tubes. Wheel friction can be eliminated with magnetic levitation. Braking energy can theoretically be fully recovered, etc. Today we don't do that because we…

There are fundamental thermodynamical limits to certain processes involving energy transfer, conversion etc. Heat transfer comes to mind. Those cannot be engineered away.

For simple mechanical systems, yes, inefficiencies can be removed, but it's more like externalizing them. How is the vacuum created and maintained? That requires a compressor, an inherently not lossless machine.

Re: Ephemeralization

#29

Post by jjtheblunt »

sfink wrote: post #20

This is the sneaky, flawed premise behind many instances of what we call optimization. I have a Law of Optimization: the closer you get to optimal on your chosen metrics, the more cost is shifted to unmeasured externalities. (I imagine someone has named this.) A stronger version would be to say that the distance to optimal is inversely proportional to the externalized cost, so that the total externalized cost goes to…

Your Law of Optimization reminds me of the (often popularly ignored) denominator in the famous e = m c^2 equation.

I believe the full version has a (1 - (v/c)^2) denominator on the right side; I think the Lorentz transformations motivate this.

The upshot matches your observation in spirit: the closer you get to the optimum (the celeritas/speed of light) the more energy you require.

Re: Ephemeralization

#30

Post by JadeNB »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #29
sfink wrote: post #20

This is the sneaky, flawed premise behind many instances of what we call optimization. I have a Law of Optimization: the closer you get to optimal on your chosen metrics, the more cost is shifted to unmeasured externalities. (I imagine someone has named this.) A stronger version would be to say that the distance to optimal is inversely proportional to the externalized cost, so that the total externalized cost goes to…

Your Law of Optimization reminds me of the (often popularly ignored) denominator in the famous e = m c^2 equation. I believe the full version has a (1 - (v/c)^2) denominator on the right side; I think the Lorentz transformations motivate this. The upshot matches your observation in spirit: the closer you get to the optimum (the celeritas/speed of light) the more energy you require.

> Your Law of Optimization reminds me of the (often popularly ignored) denominator in the famous e = m c^2 equation.

> I believe the full version has a (1 - (v/c)^2) denominator on the right side ….

I think the question is what you mean by `m`. If it's inertial mass, then I believe no correction is necessary. The point is that the inertial mass `m` is the rest mass `m_0` divided by `\sqrt{1 - (v/c)^2}`, as you say.

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