5 ms·

> An unlimited growth in a finite environment isn't possible, it's called instability. but our environment is the universe, and the universe is infinite in res

by kmlx 7y ago

> An unlimited growth in a finite environment isn't possible, it's called instability. but our environment is the universe, and the universe is infinite in resources...

swarnie_ 7y ago
> but our environment is the universe, and the universe is infinite in resources... Get a human permanently and self-sufficiently out of LEO and i'll agree a limited part of the solar system is our environment. For the foreseeable future our environment is earth and not a lot else.
- kmlx 7y ago
  for the foreseeable future we're planning on mining asteroids and the having a base on the moon... so i don't understand your point.
  - lm28469 7y ago
    See that's exactly what I'm talking about. We have a very real thing happening right now on earth with extreme consequences: major species extinction, air pollution, water pollution, soon to be ecological refugees, &c. But the answer is mining asteroid and having a moon base. Why would we care about asteroid gold and the few (<100) people that might go to the moon and live an extremely strenuous life. It's not like we'll all go to the moon, crack open a cold one and watch the moon superbowl.
    - oceanplexian 7y ago
      Try telling someone from a few hundred years ago they’d catch a jet airplane to an undiscovered continent thousands of miles away for a quick vacation. And on the way they could crack a cold one traversing oceans that explorers would spend months trying to traverse in a wooden boat. They could even buy tickets on a magic handheld machine which can teleport information through thin air to anywhere on the planet in fractions of a second. If you change your sense of scale from a few years to a few hundred, yeah, I think it’s likely humanity will be watching the moon superbowl, in fact it’s probably the most dull and conservative view of the future someone could have.
      - adrianN 7y ago
        We don't have time to wait a few hundred years for technology to improve though. The fate of the climate is decided in the next ten to twenty years. If we don't stop catastrophic climate change now, it's quite likely that technological society will be busy fighting for scarce resources here instead of building space colonies.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    For the foreseeable future those involve a handful of people getting there as a novelty (in the same way people having been on the ISS for decades), not 8 billion needing to survive. Not to mention they're still vaporware... Brochures are easy. In 30 years Miami might be under the waters, and we'd still be extremely lucky if we have a 200 sq ft base on the moon. (On which a man haven't even set foot for the last 48 years).
  - kmlx 7y ago
    > Why would we care about asteroid gold and the few (<100) people that might go to the moon and live an extremely strenuous life. scientific progress.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    It will take at least a century of focused effort until an off world colony can be self sufficient. Think of how complex even the simplest things are that you interact with on a daily basis and how difficult it would be to replicate the industries that manufacture them on the Moon or Mars.
8draco8 7y ago
You are correct but infinite resources of universe are out of our reach at the moment and if we will not work smart with Earth local resources we may never reach a level at which we will be able to benefit from resources outside of our planet.
lm28469 7y ago
Yeah right, how much does it cost to ship 1kg in space again ? Do we even have the raw resources on earth / the tech to move everyone to a new planet and terraform it before we're all toast ? Even if we do what's your moral standpoint on the fact that humanity destroyed 3+ billion years of evolution on earth in a few hundred years ? Who in their right mind think that terraforming a planet is easier than just stopping destroying our home planet ? Even if we do move to a new planet, in what kind of conditions will we live, I doubt we'd have even 10% f the comfort we have today. So why not scale down here, on earth, in the first place ?
- kmlx 7y ago
  > Even if we do what's your moral standpoint on the fact that humanity destroyed 3+ billion years of evolution on earth in a few hundred years ? didn't the earth go thru numerous planet-wide extinction events? and those were much much faster than a few hundred years.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    Yes, but we weren't there as a civilization then. And the next one could wipe us all out. In which case it will be little consolation that amoebas or even cockroaches and squirrels might survive...
  - lm28469 7y ago
    The very big difference is that we are, at least partially, causing it, aware of it, aware it's going to be bad, and we know how to improve it. So we're making the decision, as a specie, not to care. But sure in the big scheme of things it's not changing much, it's more of a personal / moral position.
    - oceanplexian 7y ago
      But plenty of things cause extinction events, hell humans were causing the Wolly Mammoth to go extinct long before we had anything resembling a civilization. Plenty of other plants and animals will drive other animals to extinction. It’s the circle of life, one which we, being animals, are a part of.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
Unless we make a breakthrough in physics (which is pretty unlikely to be possible in our current understanding), the universe will be limited to us. The best we can do is a sphere of human economy expanding its radius at near the speed of light. That still leaves out a good chunk of universe forever inaccessible to us. Physics does seem to put a limit on growth.
coldtea 7y ago
No, our environment is Earth, and only because we evolved to its conditions, and only by a very much luck that had them be in a very narrow zone that was good for life (and even Earth could not care less about us). Our immediate environment aside from Earth is the vastness of the solar system, in planets totally unsuitable to support us, and with extreme costs to even get us to the nearest one, and with vast expanses of space and radiation to go through to get to the next. We got humans to the closest rock for a few years, on a huge cost and effort, and with big risks (and some casualties), based on the competition of 2 superpowers. Since then, not only we haven't established any "base", but we haven't even been there for 48+ years (almost half a century)... And even if by a very slim chance (which people who view technological progress as some kind of boundless Paolo Coelio fairy tale take for granted) we manage to do something in those planets, the next step (some earth like habitable planet elsewhere) is extremely more challenging, and speed of light limits would apply (of course people who view technological progress as some kind of boundless Paolo Coelio fairy tale bypass them with exotic contraptions that have us riding wormholes and what have you...). And that's if war and climate mayhem doesn't have us concentrate all our efforts here... Some food for though: don't concentrate on the pedantic details, but the high level arguments: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/11/the_myth_of_the_starship.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/11/the_myth... http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high_frontier_redux.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high...
- oceanplexian 7y ago
  I think the idea that science is some kind of fairy tail or magical solution to all our problems is a bit off. But, ask someone in the 1800s how they feel about the future and you’d get some pretty ignorant and wildly inaccurate responses. The thing is, you and I are no more qualified to speculate on the future than someone from 100 years ago would be qualified to speculate on the Internet. However I can say one thing: if we even make a fraction of the progress in the next 100 years compared to the progress in the last, I don’t think we have anything to worry about when it comes to energy or transportation.
  - coldtea 7y ago
roscorollo 7y ago
Our current environment and resource reach only extends to low earth orbit. Even the moon which is the closest stable near earth resource is at least a couple of decades away from any practical use. Chances are that the climate of earth will become more unstable before any kind of space based economy can really be taken seriously.
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  The moon is "a couple decades away from any practical use" in the same way that fusion power is. Likewise, there have been models of orbital economies for decades, and no one has even tried to actually do it. For all practical purposes our current reach extends to the surface of the Earth and no further.
akvadrako 7y ago
The universe might be infinite, but growth will eventually be limited by the speed of light. Per capita energy usage is about 6 MWh / year and our population has been doubling every 53 years. Assuming that continues, in 10000 years we'll be using 4e69 Wh / year. If we figure out 100% conversion of mass to energy, that's 1e56 kg of fuel, which is a lot more than all the matter in the visible universe. You can play with these numbers a little, but even reducing the energy usage per person by a million only gives us another 1000 years. Soon we'll be growing so fast that every year we'll use all the resources within one light-year.
- Carlee 7y ago
  You should check out Hans Rosling's lectures [1]. Statistics points towards the fact that as people become more wealthy, they have less children. It should stagnate around 11 million people by most models. [1] https://youtu.be/FACK2knC08E https://youtu.be/FACK2knC08E

by kmlx 7y ago

> An unlimited growth in a finite environment isn't possible, it's called instability. but our environment is the universe, and the universe is infinite in resources...

swarnie_ 7y ago

> but our environment is the universe, and the universe is infinite in resources... Get a human permanently and self-sufficiently out of LEO and i'll agree a limited part of the solar system is our environment. For the foreseeable future our environment is earth and not a lot else.

kmlx 7y ago
for the foreseeable future we're planning on mining asteroids and the having a base on the moon... so i don't understand your point.
- lm28469 7y ago
  See that's exactly what I'm talking about. We have a very real thing happening right now on earth with extreme consequences: major species extinction, air pollution, water pollution, soon to be ecological refugees, &c. But the answer is mining asteroid and having a moon base. Why would we care about asteroid gold and the few (<100) people that might go to the moon and live an extremely strenuous life. It's not like we'll all go to the moon, crack open a cold one and watch the moon superbowl.
  - oceanplexian 7y ago
    Try telling someone from a few hundred years ago they’d catch a jet airplane to an undiscovered continent thousands of miles away for a quick vacation. And on the way they could crack a cold one traversing oceans that explorers would spend months trying to traverse in a wooden boat. They could even buy tickets on a magic handheld machine which can teleport information through thin air to anywhere on the planet in fractions of a second. If you change your sense of scale from a few years to a few hundred, yeah, I think it’s likely humanity will be watching the moon superbowl, in fact it’s probably the most dull and conservative view of the future someone could have.
    - adrianN 7y ago
      We don't have time to wait a few hundred years for technology to improve though. The fate of the climate is decided in the next ten to twenty years. If we don't stop catastrophic climate change now, it's quite likely that technological society will be busy fighting for scarce resources here instead of building space colonies.
- coldtea 7y ago
  For the foreseeable future those involve a handful of people getting there as a novelty (in the same way people having been on the ISS for decades), not 8 billion needing to survive. Not to mention they're still vaporware... Brochures are easy. In 30 years Miami might be under the waters, and we'd still be extremely lucky if we have a 200 sq ft base on the moon. (On which a man haven't even set foot for the last 48 years).
- kmlx 7y ago
  > Why would we care about asteroid gold and the few (<100) people that might go to the moon and live an extremely strenuous life. scientific progress.
- adrianN 7y ago
  It will take at least a century of focused effort until an off world colony can be self sufficient. Think of how complex even the simplest things are that you interact with on a daily basis and how difficult it would be to replicate the industries that manufacture them on the Moon or Mars.

8draco8 7y ago

You are correct but infinite resources of universe are out of our reach at the moment and if we will not work smart with Earth local resources we may never reach a level at which we will be able to benefit from resources outside of our planet.

lm28469 7y ago

Yeah right, how much does it cost to ship 1kg in space again ? Do we even have the raw resources on earth / the tech to move everyone to a new planet and terraform it before we're all toast ? Even if we do what's your moral standpoint on the fact that humanity destroyed 3+ billion years of evolution on earth in a few hundred years ? Who in their right mind think that terraforming a planet is easier than just stopping destroying our home planet ? Even if we do move to a new planet, in what kind of conditions will we live, I doubt we'd have even 10% f the comfort we have today. So why not scale down here, on earth, in the first place ?

kmlx 7y ago
> Even if we do what's your moral standpoint on the fact that humanity destroyed 3+ billion years of evolution on earth in a few hundred years ? didn't the earth go thru numerous planet-wide extinction events? and those were much much faster than a few hundred years.
- coldtea 7y ago
  Yes, but we weren't there as a civilization then. And the next one could wipe us all out. In which case it will be little consolation that amoebas or even cockroaches and squirrels might survive...
- lm28469 7y ago
  The very big difference is that we are, at least partially, causing it, aware of it, aware it's going to be bad, and we know how to improve it. So we're making the decision, as a specie, not to care. But sure in the big scheme of things it's not changing much, it's more of a personal / moral position.
  - oceanplexian 7y ago
    But plenty of things cause extinction events, hell humans were causing the Wolly Mammoth to go extinct long before we had anything resembling a civilization. Plenty of other plants and animals will drive other animals to extinction. It’s the circle of life, one which we, being animals, are a part of.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

Unless we make a breakthrough in physics (which is pretty unlikely to be possible in our current understanding), the universe will be limited to us. The best we can do is a sphere of human economy expanding its radius at near the speed of light. That still leaves out a good chunk of universe forever inaccessible to us. Physics does seem to put a limit on growth.

coldtea 7y ago

No, our environment is Earth, and only because we evolved to its conditions, and only by a very much luck that had them be in a very narrow zone that was good for life (and even Earth could not care less about us). Our immediate environment aside from Earth is the vastness of the solar system, in planets totally unsuitable to support us, and with extreme costs to even get us to the nearest one, and with vast expanses of space and radiation to go through to get to the next. We got humans to the closest rock for a few years, on a huge cost and effort, and with big risks (and some casualties), based on the competition of 2 superpowers. Since then, not only we haven't established any "base", but we haven't even been there for 48+ years (almost half a century)... And even if by a very slim chance (which people who view technological progress as some kind of boundless Paolo Coelio fairy tale take for granted) we manage to do something in those planets, the next step (some earth like habitable planet elsewhere) is extremely more challenging, and speed of light limits would apply (of course people who view technological progress as some kind of boundless Paolo Coelio fairy tale bypass them with exotic contraptions that have us riding wormholes and what have you...). And that's if war and climate mayhem doesn't have us concentrate all our efforts here... Some food for though: don't concentrate on the pedantic details, but the high level arguments: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/11/the_myth_of_the_starship.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/11/the_myth... http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high_frontier_redux.html http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high...

oceanplexian 7y ago
I think the idea that science is some kind of fairy tail or magical solution to all our problems is a bit off. But, ask someone in the 1800s how they feel about the future and you’d get some pretty ignorant and wildly inaccurate responses. The thing is, you and I are no more qualified to speculate on the future than someone from 100 years ago would be qualified to speculate on the Internet. However I can say one thing: if we even make a fraction of the progress in the next 100 years compared to the progress in the last, I don’t think we have anything to worry about when it comes to energy or transportation.
- coldtea 7y ago

roscorollo 7y ago

Our current environment and resource reach only extends to low earth orbit. Even the moon which is the closest stable near earth resource is at least a couple of decades away from any practical use. Chances are that the climate of earth will become more unstable before any kind of space based economy can really be taken seriously.

0xffff2 7y ago
The moon is "a couple decades away from any practical use" in the same way that fusion power is. Likewise, there have been models of orbital economies for decades, and no one has even tried to actually do it. For all practical purposes our current reach extends to the surface of the Earth and no further.

akvadrako 7y ago

The universe might be infinite, but growth will eventually be limited by the speed of light. Per capita energy usage is about 6 MWh / year and our population has been doubling every 53 years. Assuming that continues, in 10000 years we'll be using 4e69 Wh / year. If we figure out 100% conversion of mass to energy, that's 1e56 kg of fuel, which is a lot more than all the matter in the visible universe. You can play with these numbers a little, but even reducing the energy usage per person by a million only gives us another 1000 years. Soon we'll be growing so fast that every year we'll use all the resources within one light-year.

Carlee 7y ago
You should check out Hans Rosling's lectures [1]. Statistics points towards the fact that as people become more wealthy, they have less children. It should stagnate around 11 million people by most models. [1] https://youtu.be/FACK2knC08E https://youtu.be/FACK2knC08E