pharke

None of that is possible without digital computers and those generalize to a much larger domain of devices and technologies that have revolutionized the world in thousands of ways. So no, the smartphone has not had a larger impact on the world than the invention of the digital computer. As for the other examples, GPS is not possible without the Theory of Relativity, video calls are not possible without motion pictures, the integrated circuits that make up the smartphone are not possible without plastics, and I doubt we would have many close connections with the rest of the world without air travel. Besides that, remote working and doctor's visits are possible without a smartphone, same thing with GPS which predates smartphones by quite a bit, same with access to entertainment. None of those things are really very revolutionary. GPS is the closest since it does provide a novel and superior way of navigating but you'd be hard pressed to make a case for entertainment or remote working being on par with manned flight or plastics.

The smart phone doesn't even belong in the same category as the others you listed. The digital computer certainly does but it's been 80 years since that occurred. The smartphone is simply a refinement of that basic technological leap. Practically everything people are listing here falls in the category of refinement of existing technology rather than a completely novel form of technology. That is the scary and correct assertion of the article, we've almost completely stopped discovering or inventing novel technology or at least the rate of discovery has slowed to the point where 100 years of our present progress is equal to 10 years of the previous.

Spent fuel rods are a much safer destination for radioactive material, much better than particulate matter released into the atmosphere.

If wiping is the main problem you could just wipe them with a cloth or some other device. They are exposed and highly visible after all.

I don't see why the contacts on the demonstrated devices would be any more vulnerable to the real world than the port on an iPhone. I'm not sure these devices would be mass market since some skill is required to understand and use the software but they would absolutely have a good run at serving the same size market as 3D printers. They could even work hand in hand with 3D printers by providing the 'brains' for prototyped projects.

Changing the Earth's albedo at the surface would be more controllable than pumping a bunch of particulate matter into the atmosphere. Probably a lot more expensive as well but the tradeoff is worth it since it would allow you to quickly undo it or modify it if things go badly.

It reads more like a humorous and self-deprecating aphorism to me. He was a comedian after all.

I think the second link with the collimating lenses is more what's needed. I was just looking at another page and saw that you can also buy collimating reflectors which might be cheaper than lenses. I wonder if that's something you could 3D print and then coat with something to make it reflective. It'd probably be better to build a tool to punch them out of stainless steel sheet metal and then polish them to a mirror finish.

You'd also be changing the focus of your eyes nearly constantly as they saccade from one object to another. I agree that it's ridiculous using a study like that as a way to dismiss the conventional wisdom that staring at things close to you face for long periods of time is what causes nearsightedness since this study is proving the point that not spending a lot of time doing indoor activities is better for your eyesight.

The dangers of having a very strong point light source are, I think, a good argument for distributing the lights across a large area. Since distance matters with light intensity it would also help to never be very far from a lightsource wherever you go in a room. Maybe the best option would be to cover your ceiling in LED light strips or a bunch of those LED lights that look like fluorescent light fixtures.

Would be nice to find somewhere that sells these lenses in bulk, from a quick search they seem to be quite expensive.

This is exactly the rebound effect. The Wikipedia article unfortunately makes it out to be a Bad Thing and frames it as a wasteful increase in energy usage. It clearly isn't if you look at the given examples or think of some yourself. The example of LED lightbulbs, as you point out, shows that there is an existing need that was not being met due to the previously high cost of generating a lot of light indoors. An increase in efficiency allows that need to be met, energy consumption rebounds to the previous levels because the available money in the system hasn't changed. It's perverse that people suggest we should tax that extra efficiency to prevent such things happening, that would effectively hobble technological innovation because 1) why would you choose the more efficient option if it costs you exactly the same and 2) you are no longer freeing up that cash to be spent on novel uses of those more efficient systems. Again the LED example is illustrative, if you taxed them to the point that it is just as expensive as before to make the lighting in your room a closer analog of daylight then a lot of people, myself included, would simply stick with incandescent lighting since it has a nicer quality and you wouldn't be seeing any increase in activity around creating better indoor lighting by using more LED lights.

The same could be said for any example where the rebound effect applies, which is pretty much every technological advance in human history.

Those sub $1000 options from daylite don't look very bright, despite the reviews they have very few images that show what they look like in a room and the ones they do have look like a regular LED panel stuck on the wall. I doubt this comes anywhere close to simulating real daylight. It looks like they're just supposed to be a fake window that gives off a little light. Maybe their fake skylights are better, I can't find anything other than a single image. Not even an option to buy one.

The wind force on Mars is not very strong, the surface pressures is only 0.6% of Earth's and the top windspeed is around 100 km/h or 62 mph.

If we converted all energy production to geothermal, would it be possible to significantly increase the cooling of the Earth's core?

The flow from the Earth's core to the surface is estimated at 47±2 terawatts[0]

The total energy supply for 2017 was 162,494 TWh[1]

World energy demand is expected to grow 27% by 2040

Currently, heat escaping from the Earth accounts for only 0.03% of Earth's total energy budget at the surface which is dominated by the 173,000 TW contributed by solar radiation[0] What effect would it have if the vented heat were equal to the amount contributed by the sun?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_internal_heat_budget

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consum...

Considering that Putin came to power in Russia's first (and possibly only) democratic election, I'd say a lot hinged on his view of how the West would treat them. Sentiment at the time was that he enjoyed an unfair media and power advantage due to his former position within the government as Prime Minister and then acting President but it was still a remarkably open election for a formerly autocratic state. From reading his rationalization of his actions in Ukraine, it seems to me that he is motivated by his perception of the US and NATO as an ever encroaching threat to Russia. He likely believes he is effectively a war time president and sees it as his duty to remain in office until he has secured his country against her enemies.

These are the sections of the address that back up this view:

"they are trying to convince us over and over again that NATO is a peace-loving and purely defensive alliance that poses no threat to Russia. Again, they want us to take their word for it. But we are well aware of the real value of these words. In 1990, when German unification was discussed, the United States promised the Soviet leadership that NATO jurisdiction or military presence will not expand one inch to the east and that the unification of Germany will not lead to the spread of NATO's military organisation to the east. This is a quote."

The quote referenced is by U.S. Secretary of State James Baker speaking to Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017...

"There can be only one answer – this is not about our political regime or anything like that. They just do not need a big and independent country like Russia around."

"its military infrastructure has reached Russia’s borders."

"positioning areas for interceptor missiles are being established in Romania and Poland as part of the US project to create a global missile defence system. It is common knowledge that the launchers deployed there can be used for Tomahawk cruise missiles – offensive strike systems."

He is referring to the Aegis system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis_Ballistic_Missile_Defens... He is correct that Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles can be part of that system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis_Combat_System

"It is like a knife to the throat."

No one can know if history would have played out differently after that meeting in 2000 if he had been assured that Russia could join NATO if it worked towards meeting the requirements. We also cannot know his true motivations, perhaps all of this talk of the West as a threat to Russia is simply a ploy to justify their actions. His statements are consistent with reality though and so this could actually be the way he feels about the relationship between Russia and NATO. If that is true, then his actions in Ukraine would be motivated by a now or never viewpoint. If he does nothing and Ukraine eventually joins NATO, they will have two fronts placed very close to Moscow and Belarus will be held in a pincer rendering it next to useless. His gambit seems to be to secure the breakaway republics as a buffer and perhaps extend them to the Dnieper or even further creating a more advantageous position when Crimea, Moldova, and Belarus are considered.

I thought this part of Putin's address on the 21st was surprising and interesting if true

> "Moreover, I will say something I have never said publicly, I will say it now for the first time. When then outgoing US President Bill Clinton visited Moscow in 2000, I asked him how America would feel about admitting Russia to NATO.

> I will not reveal all the details of that conversation, but the reaction to my question was, let us say, quite restrained, and the Americans’ true attitude to that possibility can actually be seen from their subsequent steps with regard to our country. I am referring to the overt support for terrorists in the North Caucasus, the disregard for our security demands and concerns, NATO’s continued expansion, withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, and so on. It raises the question: why? What is all this about, what is the purpose? All right, you do not want to see us as friends or allies, but why make us an enemy?"

https://web.archive.org/web/20220224100924/http://en.kremlin...

> But, giving enough predictions, you will have a lot of hits in a sea of misses.

I somehow doubt that he made the range of varied and contradictory predictions necessary to make this hypothesis correct. I don't know what to call this muddled assertion that so many people seem to be making about hindsight bias or survivorship bias. It's like a bias towards claiming bias, which seems absurd to me. Is everyone just hunting for places where they can use some witty sounding assertion that they saw someone else use and so they're incorrectly applying it everywhere with little discrimination?

Please take a look at the inflation adjusted prices of early personal computers for a fair comparison.

I think the freedom of an untethered headset is a big selling feature, at least for people who have used both tethered and untethered VR headsets. Since the Simula has full color passthrough, it should be easy to get up and make a cup of coffee while still wearing the headset. This is a big deal, taking a headset off and putting it back on again is annoying and focus breaking. It adds inertia that isn't there when using a non-wearable device. Minimizing the number of times you have to do that in a day is a win.

Untethered also allows you to be much more active, you can change seats or switch to standing as easily as if you were just holding a phone or tablet. It'd be nice to stretch my legs while I catch up on email or check a dashboard or flop on the couch while I watch a video or read an article.

If the battery life isn't great, you only need to be plugged in while your sitting at your desk and can easily unplug the cable when you want to get up. Hopefully they made the port easy to find while wearing the headset.

> I find them excruciatingly boring

I find the best antidote to boredom when lifting weights is to find the right weight and number of reps so that you're pushing through the burn for at least a third of the set. Hard to stay bored when your arms are on fire. Music is the other major component, you have to really amp yourself up and listening to music can put you in that mind set. Maybe even doing some circuit training would be better for you since you don't have to deal with long wait times between sets.

Maybe I'm optimistic, but these are just problems to be solved. Space exploration is a big risk / big reward investment. Yes it would require a comparatively huge investment to mine an asteroid vs. open a pit mine in Brazil but "mining" an asteroid likely means carving off hunks of solid metal for transit back to the Earth's surface rather than processing megatons of rock by blasting, trucking, and smelting. Like many things about space, it boggles the mind that a single asteroid mining mission could produce more platinum group metals than have ever been mined on Earth throughout human history. How does the total amount of money and resources spent on mining those metals on Earth stack up against the cost of a single successful asteroid mining operation?

I think this argument extends to colonization efforts as well. What is the economic and cultural benefit of founding a new nation? It's not something that we are familiar with at this point in history so we are relatively blind to it. We just take it for granted that the nations in which we live have always been there since they have always been there for us. I have no doubt that once we begin colonizing Mars or the Moon or even just Earth orbit it will have as great of an impact as the colonization of the New World.

I'm of the opposite opinion. I think we need to spread out as soon as possible because it's not clear we can ever completely future proof our civilization here. There are simply too many things that can go wrong, many of which are not within our control. Take the pandemic for example, if it had been 10x worse it could have collapsed our current global civilization. There's no way of preventing it from spreading to every corner of the Earth without also destroying civilization as we know it. Same goes for asteroid impacts, super volcanos (consider Tonga a warning), tsunamis, solar flares, CMEs. Then there are the man-made disasters that we may or may not be able to keep under control such as war, terrorism, religious fanaticism, industrial accidents, pollution or even just apathy and hedonism.

I'm not saying we should ignore all the other things in favour of escaping to space. The Earth is the largest volume of habitable space that we have right now but it is also the only one and that's the problem. We should be building other habitats in parallel with solving our current problems. We need a literal backup plan in case things go seriously wrong.

Couldn't this be solved with a service that automatically archives Discord chat in a forum format and hosts it online?

> soil

Both aquaponics and aeroponics provide ways to grow plants without soil. Breeding insects or algae may provide nutrition with very small amounts of mass needing to be transported.

> nuclear reactors

Yes, these are a necessity but we've sent one to Antarctica before and we could send a more modern one to Mars.

> nuclear and other fuels

The good thing about nuclear fuel is that you need a very small amount of it to produce a lot of energy for a long time.

> machinery for every eventuality (including chip fabs)

Colonists by necessity must make do with less and that does mean a lower standard of living and higher mortality but you know what they do it anyways because some things are worth trading comfort and a decade or two of life for. English colonists didn't bring the entire industrial infrastructure with them to the New World. They brought what would fit on the boats and had to make do with what they could create from local resources or do without. They had the benefit of subsequent voyages but I don't think anyone here is imagining colonizing Mars or Antarctica with a single expedition.

> raw materials

Mars (and Antarctica for the most part) do lack anything biological in origin, no oil or wood or crops as feedstock for chemical reactions but there are always alternatives. We usually don't use those alternate sources here because they are too labour or energetically or materially expensive but when they are your only option price and effort become less of a concern.

> all the challenges are at least an order of magnitude harder

No one who is attempting to work towards this is doing it because it is easy. I remember there being a speech about that which ended up with some pretty spectacular results.

Futurists and sci-fi authors always focus on the destination, we're the ones that get to experience the journey.

Might be a bit sooner than 2100

https://www.roadtovr.com/neuralink-brain-interface-limb-trac...

The main point of the article seems to be that because we are the only branch of life on our planet that became multicellular and started reproducing sexually that it is unlikely that this ever happens. I think that neglects the possibility that once multicellular life arises and begins the arms race of competing with other multicellular lifeforms as well as single celled life, it quickly gets to the point where it can easily outcompete any newly multicellular life. In other words, perhaps the precondition for the development of multicellular life is the absence of other multicellular life.

I don't think we will remain as is but I also don't think we will never leave the solar system. Everyone seems to miss the next great technological advance that's currently under way. Biology as a practical science is still in its infancy. We haven't yet learned to fully control the cell and its many forms and functions but I don't doubt that we will given enough time. Once we do, there is no reason we could not adapt fully to space travel.

I think the Arthur C Clarke quote "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" should perhaps be amended to "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature" it doesn't quite have the same ring to it but it's probably more truthful, at least for very, very, very advanced technology.