5 ms·

> Energy is abundant now. Good luck paying for energy equivalent to ten times your food budget, and the time taken to charge.

lovich 9y ago
It would be more expensive yes, but a lot of the cost is currently in getting unique flavors and in the preparation which is a bit of a fixed cost. People also throw out large amounts of food. If you just wanted large amounts of calories you could just eat pounds of grains or potatoes
- ajmurmann 9y ago
  Well, a Jack in the Box large Oreo milk shake vines in at 1,150 calories. Finally one can have a bunch of those without feeling bad.
sigstoat 9y ago
a 2000 food calorie diet is ~2.4 kilowatt * hours, if units(1) hasn't failed me. 10x, 24 kilowatt * hours, is still little more than a few dollars at today's energy prices. getting 24kWh out of a wall and into a portable something in less time than a person spends eating in a day, though, would require some serious cabling.
- VLM 9y ago
  An interesting analogy is the war on transformer based battery charger wall warts, because as much as 24 watt hours of "Energy vampires" will destroy the earth when multiplied by a billion or so people and their cellphones. 24 billion watt hours per day is a moderately impressive electric power plant, so there is some truth in that. Of course the fancier construction and shorter life of the elaborate chargers almost certainly causes more environmental damage in total (classic greenwashing). Hence the short lived hot running expensive switching power supply wall wart we've all come to know and tolerate. You're talking about all or most of humanity using over a thousand times as much energy, yeah that's not going to go over well. Another example is it costs about $1 per watt-year where I live, and people completely freak out about using old desktop computers that draw 100 watts (aka $100/yr) and suggest the usual greenwashing solutions of spending hundreds of dollars on exotic new hardware that will pay for itself in only 50-100 years (of course its realistic lifespan is more like 5 years tops ...). 2400 watts continuous draw means $2400 per year to the electric company, roughly, aside from demand for air conditioning from all those sweaty heads. Most people are very poor in our current pyramid so this would likely be an issue only for 1%er types. I would find it more interesting in terms of reducing total death rate to be able to drop burn rate to 10 watts or so and genetically engineer some photosynthesis in to skin. So in a famine you seem to exist by doing little more than sleep while sunbathing, not entirely unlike an elderly housecat. Or in the winter even without photosynthesis, turn the dial down to hibernate levels. Odd that solitary animals like bears seem to hibernate pretty well but supposedly (note, supposedly...) hyper social hyper extroverted humans don't hibernate although a tribe structure would seem to enormously benefit... Probably some pre-conception is wrong or there's something about higher human consciousness that doesn't tolerate dreamworld for 23 hours per week.
  - Terr_ 9y ago
    > genetically engineer some photosynthesis in to skin The "infrastructure costs" for making that possible will probably outweigh any benefit, unless you also genetically engineer people to be immobile brains connected to bat-wing-like collection surfaces. Even with energy-conversion inefficiencies, it makes much more sense to construct/build something big and immobile that indirectly collects that energy which we can then tap.
Terr_ 9y ago
Currently in our civilization, blind calories aren't that expensive. I think the bigger issue is how you carry that energy while moving, since I don't think anyone wants to operate tethered to an outlet. In terms of stored energy per kilogram, regular old fat kicks the ass of any consumer battery tech. Suppose that your augmentations rely on battery-fed electricity, and you eat 2,000 kcal per day for your bio-bits, and charge 18,000 kcal each night for your mech-bits... In that scenario, you'd need to carry around an extra 120 kilograms of lithium-ion batteries to cover your daily activity, which probably won't involve much jumping.
- fulafel 9y ago
  Affordability of food is because food prices exclude most externalities (and subsidies). Food is one of the biggest global warming drivers. So we cannot afford more food consumption unless our diet composition changes.
  - Terr_ 9y ago
    > Food is one of the biggest global warming drivers. I'd say meat is one of the biggest global-warming drivers. That's why I referred to "blind calories", as in, calories and you don't care where they came from.
    - fulafel 9y ago
      But you can't not care of course.
    - fulafel 9y ago
      But you can't not care of course.

lovich 9y ago

It would be more expensive yes, but a lot of the cost is currently in getting unique flavors and in the preparation which is a bit of a fixed cost. People also throw out large amounts of food. If you just wanted large amounts of calories you could just eat pounds of grains or potatoes

ajmurmann 9y ago
Well, a Jack in the Box large Oreo milk shake vines in at 1,150 calories. Finally one can have a bunch of those without feeling bad.

sigstoat 9y ago

a 2000 food calorie diet is ~2.4 kilowatt * hours, if units(1) hasn't failed me. 10x, 24 kilowatt * hours, is still little more than a few dollars at today's energy prices. getting 24kWh out of a wall and into a portable something in less time than a person spends eating in a day, though, would require some serious cabling.

VLM 9y ago
An interesting analogy is the war on transformer based battery charger wall warts, because as much as 24 watt hours of "Energy vampires" will destroy the earth when multiplied by a billion or so people and their cellphones. 24 billion watt hours per day is a moderately impressive electric power plant, so there is some truth in that. Of course the fancier construction and shorter life of the elaborate chargers almost certainly causes more environmental damage in total (classic greenwashing). Hence the short lived hot running expensive switching power supply wall wart we've all come to know and tolerate. You're talking about all or most of humanity using over a thousand times as much energy, yeah that's not going to go over well. Another example is it costs about $1 per watt-year where I live, and people completely freak out about using old desktop computers that draw 100 watts (aka $100/yr) and suggest the usual greenwashing solutions of spending hundreds of dollars on exotic new hardware that will pay for itself in only 50-100 years (of course its realistic lifespan is more like 5 years tops ...). 2400 watts continuous draw means $2400 per year to the electric company, roughly, aside from demand for air conditioning from all those sweaty heads. Most people are very poor in our current pyramid so this would likely be an issue only for 1%er types. I would find it more interesting in terms of reducing total death rate to be able to drop burn rate to 10 watts or so and genetically engineer some photosynthesis in to skin. So in a famine you seem to exist by doing little more than sleep while sunbathing, not entirely unlike an elderly housecat. Or in the winter even without photosynthesis, turn the dial down to hibernate levels. Odd that solitary animals like bears seem to hibernate pretty well but supposedly (note, supposedly...) hyper social hyper extroverted humans don't hibernate although a tribe structure would seem to enormously benefit... Probably some pre-conception is wrong or there's something about higher human consciousness that doesn't tolerate dreamworld for 23 hours per week.
- Terr_ 9y ago
  > genetically engineer some photosynthesis in to skin The "infrastructure costs" for making that possible will probably outweigh any benefit, unless you also genetically engineer people to be immobile brains connected to bat-wing-like collection surfaces. Even with energy-conversion inefficiencies, it makes much more sense to construct/build something big and immobile that indirectly collects that energy which we can then tap.

Terr_ 9y ago

Currently in our civilization, blind calories aren't that expensive. I think the bigger issue is how you carry that energy while moving, since I don't think anyone wants to operate tethered to an outlet. In terms of stored energy per kilogram, regular old fat kicks the ass of any consumer battery tech. Suppose that your augmentations rely on battery-fed electricity, and you eat 2,000 kcal per day for your bio-bits, and charge 18,000 kcal each night for your mech-bits... In that scenario, you'd need to carry around an extra 120 kilograms of lithium-ion batteries to cover your daily activity, which probably won't involve much jumping.

fulafel 9y ago
Affordability of food is because food prices exclude most externalities (and subsidies). Food is one of the biggest global warming drivers. So we cannot afford more food consumption unless our diet composition changes.
- Terr_ 9y ago
  > Food is one of the biggest global warming drivers. I'd say meat is one of the biggest global-warming drivers. That's why I referred to "blind calories", as in, calories and you don't care where they came from.
  - fulafel 9y ago
    But you can't not care of course.
  - fulafel 9y ago
    But you can't not care of course.