We have no idea what happens next | Hacker News Reader

We have no idea what happens next

collaborativefund.com

136 pointsRickJWagner36 comments

Reads a bit like a 'Connections' episode :-) But I agree with the fundamental premise, the harder you perturb a system, the less predictable the output of the perturbation will be.

This year has shown a lot of people (myself included) that they can live in a very different way in the world. Some of that may become the new normal.

I completely agree. For those who haven't experienced Connections-style history, four episodes are on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XetplHcM7aQ

My favorite is this one about proto-computers that came about due to the Black Death: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6yL0_sDnX0

Internet archive has them all (3 seasons) and downloadable.

https://archive.org/details/ConnectionsByJamesBurke

This was shot on film. Which means that a 4k release is technically feasible. ...

Thank you for this. I've been meaning to check this out since Burke was interviewed on Hardcore History way back when.

It does and I feel the example is just as contrived.

The writer seems to imply that Fritz Haber would not have developed the Haber process without Liebig and effectively without the Mt Tambora eruption.

Nice theory, but I don't know if we can be sure of all that.

And even if that were true, Haber and Bosch were not the only nitrogen chemists and chemical engineers working near the state of the art.

The processes might have different names attached, but we'd still have them.

It probably would get invented eventually, but the timing would be different, throwing off whatever predictions you might try to make.

This sort of thing is a good argument against the idea of anything like Asimov's psychohistory really working in a general sort of way. There are too many random contingencies, and they don't average out.

We have no idea when the next pandemic might be, or who will win the next presidential election, or what new things will be invented. Some preparations can be made, but they have to pretty multi-purpose.

I think a counter-factual is an invention that came along many years after all the precursors were present. And would have been in demand / successful / useful much earlier.

Are there any examples of that? Wheeled suitcases is sometimes cited, even if it is a slightly less profound advancement than the ammonia/nitrogen process.

There's no apparent reason why supermarkets or other self service stores weren't invented until the 20th century. The precursor to railways, the Diolkos in 600 BC, was not developed into wooden mining railways for another 2000 years.

Tangentially, when COVID-19 forced my company to go work from home it thrust in to my face all the things that about that company that made me hate my job and gave me anxiety attacks.

I ultimately quit that job with nothing lined up and found a much more fulfilling job, with better pay. I don't think I would have quit that last job if it wasn't for the disruption, and I would have still been miserable.

> when COVID-19 forced my company to go work from home it thrust in to my face all the things that about that company that made me hate my job

The main thing we had to adjust to at my work during that period was understanding just how many decisions were being without all the stakeholders present.

I had a good two months where every day felt like being a chef who was asked how the banquet preparations were going, without anyone having ever informed me there was even a banquet scheduled.

"Oh, we had an hour long call the other day about that. Didn't figure out needed to be in on it"

Congrats on taking that decision. I bet it felt empowering.

I'm very tempted to do the same, tomorrow morning possibly. I only stuck out my job for so long because it was fully remote before the pandemic and that was hard to find.

Now actually feels like a good time to switch with so many companies forced into remote working and stating they will stick with it.

What kind of things did you hate about your job? Did you face many questions about quitting with nothing lined up?

Go for it :)

Sounds like you should do it ;)

Let us know how it went!

In case it is not commonly known, Collaborative Fund is widely held to be the VC firm in question that was roasted in the now-viral note from Ryan Caldbeck of CircleUp.

Where can this note be read? I’m having trouble googling it.

I'm thinking it's this: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17tEc9ETL4tjfTmNbpwJJ5OSx...

There's a oft-repeated (and possibly true) story that Isaac Asimov, L. Ron Hubbard, and Robert Heinlein made a bar bet in the late 30's about who could make a book that could better form the basis of religion.

L. Ron Hubbard used his offing to create the Church of Scientology.

Asimov's Foundation (the omnipotent and all knowing moon) was eventually the inspiration for Musk's SpaceX and Tesla, which (no matter what you think of him or his companies) has definitely moved the bar on electric cars etc, self driving, space development, satellite deployment etc. - no knowing where the influence of that will end.

Heinlein, with "Stranger in a strange land" was more reserved, and included tracings of the actual work of Hubbard. It becoming famous when it was quoted in some court case as the blueprint for using religion to milk the system - don't recall the details now.

Point is, sometimes the darndest of things will change the world. Make every minute count.

I didn't realize Musk took any inspiration from Asimov, much less Foundation (the one he recommended in particular). His dream seems to reflect more Heinlein's Delos D. Harriman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delos_D._Harriman

I used to enjoy Morgan Housel's writing but it feels to me like it has grown somewhat vacuous and formulaically click-baity of late. And those short, one-sentence paragraphs which every copywriter claims pull your eyes down the page? I see them and I click elsewhere.

This author seems to imply that it's not a catastrophe until it also affects Europeans...

"Ten thousand locals died instantly. Most of those who survived the blast went on to die of starvation after nearly all vegetation on the island of Sumbawa was destroyed."

"Then came the real catastrophe."

That's obviously not at all what was intended. Please don't project your biases onto others by suggesting dark, cynical interpretations which were obviously not what the author meant.

There were obvious, short-term, localized negative effects. There were non-obvious, long-term, global effects. The author is making the reader aware that the latter surprisingly contributed to more total human suffering.

> ” Would he have pursued a career in chemistry, focused on agriculture, and discovered nitrogen-based fertilizer if it weren’t for Mt. Tambora’s eruption 7,000 miles away that caused a German famine?
Probably not.

Which is wild.”

I would say “maybe”, but that isn’t “wild”. What’s the base of this assumption? Also, I would say that probably other person would have discovered it. It’s not like that weren’t incentives to improve agriculture before the famine. The author just glossed over of the essential research of synthesizing ammonia not made by Liebig. Who are all those people? Were they all motivated by the famine?

It's difficult to model the truth conditions for counterfactuals.

You all might also enjoy a 10-minute podcast on the Year Without Summer: https://thememorypalace.us/no-summer/

Variance, diversity, and large population can solve problems by chance. Combinatorial diversity due to genetics helps too. It may suck for some individuals, but for humanity as a whole, 'tis good.

Isnt it lovely, a possibly whole new era of the world and its markets and its workforce just unfolding infront of our eyes.

We wouldn't have had Frankenstein, either.

Ah, to write a whole article about a known concept without giving it due service. Methinks "The butterfly effect" deserves a mention.

I think it's a bit different than the butterfly effect. When a major event affects everyone somewhat, it's like billions of chances for a butterfly effect all happening simultaneously. An aggregate butterfly effect where major change is practically guaranteed.

Why do we celebrate Liebig and his dark lord successor Haber-Bosch? We do get more nitrogen but at the cost of assimilation failure back in the environment. Non-assimilated nitrogen and its volatile compounds create just the conditions for a pandemic virus to develop..

I guess go convince four billion they should never have been born because we need more nitrogen assimilation ...

Sure, we could do a rousing rendition of Monty Python's "Every Sperm Is Sacred". There's a theoretically infinite number of people who aren't being born.

On the other hand, lots of people dying of Malthusian starvation would not have been pretty.

There's probably some reasonable middle ground here.

> Non-assimilated nitrogen and its volatile compounds create just the conditions for a pandemic virus to develop..

(genuinely curious) how so?

Population.

Haber-Bosch converts oil into people.

The "conditions for a pandemic" are just modern global society.

(The jury is out, if over-population causes an environmental crash that kills billions, will it all have been worth it? We are victims of our own success, and have a needle to thread.)

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