2,369 karma · joined May 19, 2013
reach.me.if.you.wish [ a t ] gmail.com
F-droid repository format would be easy enough to support a commercial repository you could manually activate, with signing and all.
It really seems like the straightforward solution to me, even more than carbon credits which seem to have some issues (I believe you can get paid for 'not emitting' in some cases, which of course can lead to almost-fraudulent behavior) -- taxing emissions is much more concrete and verifiable.
Also deforestation and afforestation are shown incredibly powerful. It really seems to me one of the most important aspects, since it means we also get "for free" the security of our forests and habitats that are collapsing (and even expansion of wild habitats hopefully!).
The difference is that it (largely) stays confined within a directory without even needing elevated privileges and such for installs (which brings peace of mind for community installs). Repository is more centralized and automated too it seems.
Not perfect in a few edge cases, like other programs expecting a certain install location. Overall enormous time saver.
Trusted platforms are pretty interesting IMO in their ability to essentially provide FHE by means of tamper-resistance instead of mathematical security. Objections should be more directed at the control of keys being with Intel; maybe some other orgs should be in charge, maybe there could be a number of trust vendors you could choose, or at least veto (and allow external users of your external platform to choose). Something more in line with TLS authentication: we all need to trust 3rd parties to use the internet, and nobody protests -- with good reason. It's a well designed, open, decentralized system with good oversight.
Cognition and agency in the real world is often hierarchical in nature. You learn a task by breaking it down into simpler tasks, and if necessary breaking down the simpler tasks into yet simpler. This is due to nothing more than algorithmic efficiency (when at all possible -- it usually is IRL), divide and conquer.
The fundamentals are the basic tasks which higher level tasks rely on. Sometimes (quite common really) the nature of this (inverted) tree is such that the higher level tasks have a sort of soft max-min relationship: your overall skill will only be about as good as your weakest subskill. An example that comes to mind is manual driving. You could be the most brilliant, strategic, high-reflex rally race car drive in the world, if you miss most of your stick shifts you will likely be a mediocre driver, if even competitive. Shifting properly and quickly makes a significant difference. So much that it's almost completely futile to practice those higher skills unless you've nailed down the basics.
When you're just having 'fun', learning something intuitively, without the sharp focus on improving, it's easy to neglect those fundamentals. They are likely areas where you have some natural relative difficulty, which can lead to shying away from them (in larger contexts sometimes this is even wise -- you want to use what you're good at afterall!) -- it could be because they're uncomfortable, painful, repetitive, boring, too difficult (break it down!) and so on. Compensating for weaknesses exists I believe, but in high levels of competition it's something extremely subtle; again risking generalizations almost every high skill individual will have fundamentals mastered.
Most of my activity is academic, and I have some anecdotes in this regard. I feel like I've really evolved when (a) I've focused on learning the basics of my field really well (going down to the math foundations and axioms) (b) focused on improving weaknesses. It wasn't intuitive to me that this attention to fundamentals could yield so much.
edit: It should be noted (as others noted) that identifying what are the fundamentals can be something difficult itself. Common tools here are reviewing your games/production/etc, or asking others (teachers, peers, etc).
I support Nuclear Energy too, but I can see it has difficulty gaining traction for a huge list of reasons, and this is across the political, social and economic spectrum. But basically the need for Nuclear is largely obsolete -- it was the only attractive option when Solar (and Wind to an extent) wasn't so cheap. Solar costs about the same or less, is available more or less everywhere, and has no contamination issues.
Also of very worthy note IMO is that the (electrical) energy supply isn't the whole picture. A good chunk of emissions are from transportation sector and some from industrial processes. There is also advocacy in those sectors (which comes off as 'progressive') simply because of consistency and necessity to achieve a reasonable climate plan. Note that nuclear energy, or solar energy, can't solely avoid incoming disasters.
Like cinemagraphs, but unique and alive in a nice way.
The problem isn't apps (or 'tech') per se, it's more of a systemic problem. The solutions will almost definitely involve a mix or cultural evolution, technology, and the impact of various groups and organizations.
- Humans are actually fantastic space exploration hardware.
We already have robotic vehicles exploring other planets. They are not autonomous, and have glorified Arduinos in them. Not for lack of money or development, but because it is extremely difficult to do autonomous exploration, and the hardware is essentially currently impossible because there's nothing good enough, and not even remotely close to good enough that can survive radiation and space environment. Exploration currently is extremely slow, done through remote control, with up to 24 minute delays (Mars).
- Humans can self-reproduce with low-tech inputs
We are perhaps from >50 to >>100s years away from machine compact self-reproduction, then imagine self-reproduction with human-like intelligence. Only humans can make colonies for the near future.
- AGI (or just good enough scientist AI, explorer AI, etc) is uncertainly distant
It could be 20, or it could be 100 years or more away (if our civilization even survives that long before wars/climate change/etc), economically viable AGI is uncertain, economically viable compact radiation-resistant AGI is vastly uncertain.
- It is worthwhile to bet on long term space exploration and habitation
This is the most difficult case. I think it's worthwhile to devote resources on long term space exploration and habitation. In particular research since it is so expensive right now and we still experiencing rapid technological change. We want to eventually live on other planets (and even other star systems). The other aspects are complementary, like inspiring people to work in engineering and science; the main thing is giving hope for the future, even if it's a future you won't live.
Most of the research anyways finds applications in terrestrial systems (remember that we still do pure Mathematics, whose research value tends to crop decades later or more).
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It is expensive, yes (ISS costs about $3 billion per year for NASA apparently), but overall I think it's a tiny investment for great returns (at varying levels of risk).
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Finally, to expand on hope: hope is great things many things, but one of them is simply the way people act on expectations of the future. If they don't expect to live long, or a long term future worth living for other generations, you expect we will act more selfishly and greedily, a self-fulfilling prophetical aspect. Thus it's extremely important not to neglect sustainability and somewhat distant dreams.
In general modern astronauts have many roles -- flight managers, technicians (doing and evaluating repairs), scientists, experimental subjects, and finally yes communicators to an extent (frankly great to inspire people). Obvious Hadfield isn't a perfect human being and I'm sure he doesn't like adulation, but his vast set of skills, including communication effectiveness is quite impressive (and music ability -- check out his space video clip!). I assure you he's no crank (perhaps you're biased by early space program people that were test pilots). I recommend checking out his and other ISS youtube videos to get an idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Hj3GnPRsJ4
I am part of the science/engineering community. I also know oceanographers (personally), a handful of climate scientists (indirectly), several biologists from several fields, physicists, and more. People usually leave this stuff to specialists -- a physicist usually won't delve deep into climate science. Everyone I know that is informed (i.e. that doesn't say "I haven't looked at the climate data and projections") is deeply worried, and the oceanographer and climate scientists I know are the least hopeful (which should be worrying). Engineers generally just assume it's going to be fine for practical purposes -- I know a handful of civil engineers and electrical engineers working on large projects. The electrical engineer is informed on climate change and doesn't know how it will impact the project long term.
Just look at the data. It's the ethical thing to do, at least I believe. If you don't, we're both wasting our times.
Where to start?
I recommend simply reading the wikipedia article in its entirety:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
paying special attention to this section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming#Mitigation
Look at the emission pathway -- it demands massive, immediate action.
Also read this:
https://archive.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg3/ipcc_w...
again pay attention to page 11:
https://archive.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg3/ipcc_w...
again the emission targets. You can see if emissions keep increasing, i.e. pathways RCP6.0 and RCP8.5 are unlikely to keep warming under 3C (see table on page 13) -- likely to go to 4-5C of warming.
Finally, you can see some of the effects here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming
(note that no emission reduction, i.e. RCP>6.0, >3C warming isn't given much attention, given it's quite apocalyptic)
and also here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_and_ecosystems#...
It's anyone's guess what would happen under this scenario, almost certainly mass extinction on ocean and land, the tropics become literally almost uninhabitable, effects on civilization anyone's guess in the range of catastrophe to collapse (imagine all of India and large parts of China trying to migrate).
Europe is already on IPCC 2C targets, and it's clearly not starving, its economy is fine. What they need to do is show the rest of the world how we're toast without action.
Just look at the 3 or 4C targets -- that themselves largely predict quick oil phase out! Civilization runs real risk of collapse before the end of the century in those targets, and 3 decades from now it'll already start looking bleak. Imagine if we do nothing.
I guess the most dark humor thing is (most) people imagining their kids living in happy wonderlands, making retirement plans, etc. while the world is literally going to hell.
It really feels like a failure of science, technology and engineering community. We're failing at communicating. Because I owe to and admire so much of our scientific history and people, I'll gladly campaign for climate action to my last day (or at least until we're at a somewhat sane track).
1) Some industries refuse to even consider it because it means they're effectively dead -- coal, oil, and a few other industries. They fuel propaganda because of this
2) Sheer ignorance
I say because it's very difficult and fragile to try and profit off a genuine catastrophe. We are indeed heading for a disaster (2C warming) even under quite optimistic assumptions about world politics and people accepting climate change and whatnot; if there is not enough action, if some technologies are not developed quickly enough, we are facing genuine catastrophe (I think there's far too much faith in a magical technological solution (rapid carbon capture) in current scenarios) -- 3 or 4C warming, where you start to talk about civilization collapse. This seems like a very weird thing to gamble with, specially since gambles require long term payoffs. If the economy and politics is a mess and there's general instability, how can you guarantee ability to monetize your bets?
No, I think most people are just genuinely not aware, willfully ignorant, don't believe humans could alter the climate, etc.
In a way it's good, because it means you can fight it to an extent with information.
Compare it to mercury (which some years back was still in batteries), which evaporates easily when heated, stays in your body for very long times (and is cumulative), and has clear neurological impact.
I wouldn't worry about even a large number of those breaking.
Second, well, private investors give money to whoever they want. If they believed they'd get most out of their money by just following some academic metric like citation count or impact factor (and throwing money at them), that's what they'd likely be doing; I don't think this would work all that well for them, do you? For one it's very hard to come up with any objective metric that can't be gamed, distorted, etc. The Media Lab has a rich history of collaboration with industry and yes developing innovative products/ideas. They promote this history, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
[1] If it costs more, or even not significantly (an order of magnitude at least) less than the cost of oil for equivalent emissions, than the economic proposition is dire. Solutions so far have those economic difficulties afaik, and we're still at a stage where we have easily available capture resources (i.e. we haven't depleted or saturated a number of them) -- we're talking about a planetary scale solution here
There are practical problems with the technology though, as light sources we can currently make have some minimum size limitations, and incoherent optical behavior starts to degrade at very small lens size (at or below micron scale I guess).
[1] You could probably create a good approximate phased array optics with led-scale (~ 10 micron scale) coherent lasers as light sources, but again I don't see any application that's not scientific
To demand sole attention unconditionally and continuously is thought-police-alike.
That said, there are certainly perils with too much distraction and smartphone usage. I'm a firm believer in human instinct guiding toward positive usage of technology, but there are unquestionably failings in our instincts -- there have been for quite a while.
Television was a big one for me -- it's immensely more attractive than a book; but books can be much more gratifying and educational once you get started; it's just more work. Yet there was always a lot of value added by judicious usage of television -- documentaries, non-vacuous talk shows, good film, etc.
Online games too -- I've spent a good chunk of my childhood in front a PC playing an MMORPG. Seems like a waste of time (and some of it was), but I've experienced a world of politics, fierce competition, intense cooperation, trading and all sorts of economical endeavors, friendship, cruelty and kindness in the safety of my home, with people of diverse backgrounds and cultures; I've learned a English and became extremely proficient almost entirely through the game. It also ran the risk of getting me addicted and isolating me entirely from real life social interactions; that risk was averted (and I would certainly still have a dearth of social interaction due to family problems) -- mostly through my own good judgement but also from pleads of caution from my parents and siblings. I still remember events, lessons and friends from those days.
Surprise: we'll have to keep dealing with the ambivalence of technology.
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"The one solid fact is that the difficulties are due to an evolution that, while useful and constructive, is also dangerous. Can we produce the required adjustments with the necessary speed? The most hopeful answer is that the human species has been subjected to similar tests before and seems to have a congenital ability to come through, after varying amounts of trouble. To ask in advance for a complete recipe would be unreasonable. We can specify only the human qualities required: patience, flexibility, intelligence."
From 1955: Can we survive technology?
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~kite/doc/von_Neumann_1955.pdf
"What kind of action does this situation call for? What-ever one feels inclined to do, one decisive trait must be considered: the very techniques that create the dangers and the instabilities are in themselves useful, or closely related to the useful. In fact, the more useful they could be, the more unstabilizing their effects can also be. It is not a particular perverse destructiveness of one particular invention that creates danger. Technological power, technological efficiency as such, is an ambivalent achievement. Its danger is intrinsic. "
What Gödel apparently missed (although it's hard to tell without going over his writings carefully), is that humans, by the same criterion, can't "solve" mathematical problems. This is essentially a re-statement of the halting problem (undecidability).
You can't expect to go to the best mathematician in the world (o.c. that's not a thing, but say for example Terry Tao), give him an arbitrary problem and expect the problem to be solved within a fixed time. Or even some arbitrary but finite time (even if he had infinite scratch paper). If he had an obligation to solve the problem (within an axiomatic basis), there could be problems that go unsolved. Any mathematician knows this -- there's no guarantee the Riemann hypothesis will be resolved -- it could be within a year, within a century, or never.
It's very attractive to think we have some kind of higher powers (that transcend ordinary matter, or computers, or w.e.), but we do not and mysticism is not necessary to explain our abilities.
This whole destruction thing is very economically and environmentally nonsensical to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Nh_vxpycEA
(or the studies themselves https://www.gwern.net/docs/co2/2015-stafford.pdf and others)
I.e. I think air quality is likely a big factor. When it's windy and I get good airflow through my room it doesn't feel as different from outside. It's probably not only CO2, but also dust, VOCs, funghi, microorganisms, etc.