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Wouldn't it be great if we could produce fertilizer out of air? Wouldn't it be great if we could get energy by just digging in the ground? Wouldn't it be great

Wouldn't it be great if we could produce fertilizer out of air? Wouldn't it be great if we could get energy by just digging in the ground? Wouldn't it be great if we could just prevent polio with a simple injection? Wouldn't it be great if we could travel by just flying over the ocean?

aetherson 11y ago
Sure. It's a heuristic, not a logical proof. And, I mean, we can't get energy just by digging in the ground. We didn't just poof, start flying over the ocean. We don't produce fertilizer just poof out of the air. Also: we knew before the Wright brothers that heavier-than-air flight was possible (birds). We didn't go from nothing to oil-fired modern powerplants in one step. If someone had claimed to generate electricity from something random in the ground -- even inefficiently -- without piggybacking on centuries of preexisting power generation technology, I'd probably have been skeptical. And my skepticism would probably have been justified.
- murbard2 11y ago
  We know from biology that nanoscale factories are feasible, we know from human intelligence that AI is feasible, we know from Newtonian mechanics that space elevators are feasible, we know from stars that fusion is feasible.
  - aetherson 11y ago
    Yep. And if someone said, "I've developed a nanoscale factory that has output fundamentally similar to what a biological cell has," that wouldn't trigger my skepticism. People who imagine that in the next few decades, we'll have nanotechnology that is two or three orders of magnitude faster, less error-prone, more centrally controllable, and more versatile than biology do. I didn't say anything about AI or space elevators. I'm not skeptical about hot fusion the way in skeptical about cold fusion.
    - murbard2 11y ago
      Well, you said you disbelieve these things on the ground of them being too good to be true. I get that people are more likely to exaggerate the likelihood of success of some technology if it seems extremely promising, and thus one should be more skeptical of those... But given all the other information available, that's a very weak proxy. You can make your own opinion by looking at the science.
yongjik 11y ago
To take one example, nitrogen was discovered in 1772. Haber process (which converts nitrogen gas to ammonia) was discovered in 1909, and was successfully industrialized in 1913.[1] In other words, when Haber process was discovered, the question was NOT "wouldn't it be great if we could produce fertilizer out of air?". The question was, "We know the air is full of substance that makes fertilizer. How can we make that happen?" Or, alternatively, when nitrogen was discovered, nobody said "We paved road for making fertilizer out of air!" It was probably something like "How weird, air is full of this strange stuff that makes animals suffocate." And apparently its discoverer went on to call it "noxious air". Honestly, I can't think of any important scientific discovery that was accompanied by "This is great! Think what it could do for civilization!" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Haber_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Haber_process
- murbard2 11y ago
  >Honestly, I can't think of any important scientific discovery that was accompanied by "This is great! Think what it could do for civilization!" Radioactivity.
  - isolate 11y ago
    Fire.
    - yongjik 11y ago
      "This is great! We can burn down Ook's village! He'll never know what hit him!" "We can what down Ook's village?"

aetherson 11y ago

Sure. It's a heuristic, not a logical proof. And, I mean, we can't get energy just by digging in the ground. We didn't just poof, start flying over the ocean. We don't produce fertilizer just poof out of the air. Also: we knew before the Wright brothers that heavier-than-air flight was possible (birds). We didn't go from nothing to oil-fired modern powerplants in one step. If someone had claimed to generate electricity from something random in the ground -- even inefficiently -- without piggybacking on centuries of preexisting power generation technology, I'd probably have been skeptical. And my skepticism would probably have been justified.

murbard2 11y ago
We know from biology that nanoscale factories are feasible, we know from human intelligence that AI is feasible, we know from Newtonian mechanics that space elevators are feasible, we know from stars that fusion is feasible.
- aetherson 11y ago
  Yep. And if someone said, "I've developed a nanoscale factory that has output fundamentally similar to what a biological cell has," that wouldn't trigger my skepticism. People who imagine that in the next few decades, we'll have nanotechnology that is two or three orders of magnitude faster, less error-prone, more centrally controllable, and more versatile than biology do. I didn't say anything about AI or space elevators. I'm not skeptical about hot fusion the way in skeptical about cold fusion.
  - murbard2 11y ago
    Well, you said you disbelieve these things on the ground of them being too good to be true. I get that people are more likely to exaggerate the likelihood of success of some technology if it seems extremely promising, and thus one should be more skeptical of those... But given all the other information available, that's a very weak proxy. You can make your own opinion by looking at the science.

yongjik 11y ago

To take one example, nitrogen was discovered in 1772. Haber process (which converts nitrogen gas to ammonia) was discovered in 1909, and was successfully industrialized in 1913.[1] In other words, when Haber process was discovered, the question was NOT "wouldn't it be great if we could produce fertilizer out of air?". The question was, "We know the air is full of substance that makes fertilizer. How can we make that happen?" Or, alternatively, when nitrogen was discovered, nobody said "We paved road for making fertilizer out of air!" It was probably something like "How weird, air is full of this strange stuff that makes animals suffocate." And apparently its discoverer went on to call it "noxious air". Honestly, I can't think of any important scientific discovery that was accompanied by "This is great! Think what it could do for civilization!" [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Haber_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Haber_process

murbard2 11y ago
>Honestly, I can't think of any important scientific discovery that was accompanied by "This is great! Think what it could do for civilization!" Radioactivity.
- isolate 11y ago
  Fire.
  - yongjik 11y ago
    "This is great! We can burn down Ook's village! He'll never know what hit him!" "We can what down Ook's village?"