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In order to build systems to extract and use energy requires an educated society - that is the root deficiency. And it’s a lot more than just dropping books fro

In order to build systems to extract and use energy requires an educated society - that is the root deficiency. And it’s a lot more than just dropping books from airplanes.

ebiester 4y ago
What if that's mixing cause and effect? If you have energy, you have refrigeration. You have the manufacturing properties to produce the things necessary for children to focus on education. You have the agricultural properties to increase yield and reduce the number of people needed for the agricultural sector, making education more valuable.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- svnt 4y ago
  > If you have energy, you have refrigeration. Not without having invented and scaled manufacturing for the refrigerator is the point. It is clearly not a given that access to energy results in the existence of certain technologies, although it does increase their probability of existence. All of these things intermix. Having energy is a cause and an effect.
- bottlepalm 4y ago
  Educated societies existed before refrigeration and manufacturing so those aren’t prerequisites. The real prerequisite is an ‘educated society’ so there’s a bit of a bootstrapping/chicken/egg problem which is super difficult to solve.
  - 8note 4y ago
    Cooled areas existed before refrigeration too. What changed is the incentives and relative ease of different ways of cooling
xyzzyz 4y ago
18th and 19th century Brits who first built these systems were not very educated by our standards. Many of them, in fact, were uneducated tinkerers.
- bottlepalm 4y ago
  That time period in Britain didn't just see big advancements in industrialization, but in engineering, medicine, finance, and legal systems. You have to see the difference between individuals and the the society itself.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    It’s kind of silly to argue the “intelligence” difference between someone who can build a nuclear power plant given a society with supply chains available and someone who with fifty or a thousand men can go into the wilderness and build a functioning city with little or no foreign input for years. They’re entirely different skill sets. Each year brings our “current” technology level further and further from “if you have some hand tools you can restart”. And it’s not clear to me that importing everything into a country is a better method than letting them build their own infrastructure using what they have locally (eg only import knowledge). See the “clothing and food dumping” problems in Africa.
    - bottlepalm 4y ago
      No one person knows everything needed to build a nuclear power plant, but as long as there's enough people who understand the different principles and disciplines required then yea they could restart with just hand tools. Knowledge is the key, the tools are not.
michaelt 4y ago
Well, there's a circular dependency here - or if you're more optimistic, a virtuous cycle. People who have to fetch water by hand and wash clothes manually don't have time to read books on nuclear power plant design. And societies with poor education can't build and maintain complex power infrastructure like nuclear power plants.
MrsPeaches 4y ago
Access to electricity is a major driver of educational attainment. 1. Access to lighting at night means students can actually do their homework. 2. Access to internet also boosts students attainment. 3. Having access to electricity means you are able to retain the best teachers as they won’t stay for long without all the mod cons. We’re trying solve both problems at the same by teaching kids electronics by building a solar charge controller: https://energymakers.academy/ https://energymakers.academy/
- bottlepalm 4y ago
  Number 3 is your strongest point, but the bottleneck there is really teachers not energy. On a scale needed to pull a society out of poverty you need not just a massive amount of imported teachers, but collegiate level teachers as well, and for decades.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    And if the people educated can leave for better lands, they often will. There aren’t easy ways to prevent that.
  - MrsPeaches 4y ago
    I found this policy note that provides a decent overview of the research linking energy and educational. Results are mixed. I am still biased towards the link being there (study finding no link studies 200 students over 3 months, whereas the study finding a link was over 3 years with 10,000 students). https://www.theigc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/40418-policy-brief.pdf https://www.theigc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/40418-poli...
mrshadowgoose 4y ago
In the present day, yes, that's true. However, once we develop AGI, this deficiency could* go away permanently. An "educated society" just means a "necessary amount of trained cognitive power to direct energy towards the goals/purposes we value". Currently that's exclusive domain of the human brains within our workforce. However, there is absolutely no fundamental requirement for the cognitive power to be human. Once AGI is achieved, artificial constructs could rapidly (no 20-30 year training cost per single unit!) take over the vast majority of cognitive burden from humans. I personally believe that we will achieve AGI on a timescale far far shorter than any kind of mass attempt to improve education across the world. *Whether AGI is used to usher in a utopic civilization, or one of many possible dystopias, will of course depend on what groups end up being in control of it.

In order to build systems to extract and use energy requires an educated society - that is the root deficiency. And it’s a lot more than just dropping books from airplanes.

ebiester 4y ago

What if that's mixing cause and effect? If you have energy, you have refrigeration. You have the manufacturing properties to produce the things necessary for children to focus on education. You have the agricultural properties to increase yield and reduce the number of people needed for the agricultural sector, making education more valuable.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
svnt 4y ago
> If you have energy, you have refrigeration. Not without having invented and scaled manufacturing for the refrigerator is the point. It is clearly not a given that access to energy results in the existence of certain technologies, although it does increase their probability of existence. All of these things intermix. Having energy is a cause and an effect.
bottlepalm 4y ago
Educated societies existed before refrigeration and manufacturing so those aren’t prerequisites. The real prerequisite is an ‘educated society’ so there’s a bit of a bootstrapping/chicken/egg problem which is super difficult to solve.
- 8note 4y ago
  Cooled areas existed before refrigeration too. What changed is the incentives and relative ease of different ways of cooling

xyzzyz 4y ago

18th and 19th century Brits who first built these systems were not very educated by our standards. Many of them, in fact, were uneducated tinkerers.

bottlepalm 4y ago
That time period in Britain didn't just see big advancements in industrialization, but in engineering, medicine, finance, and legal systems. You have to see the difference between individuals and the the society itself.
- bombcar 4y ago
  It’s kind of silly to argue the “intelligence” difference between someone who can build a nuclear power plant given a society with supply chains available and someone who with fifty or a thousand men can go into the wilderness and build a functioning city with little or no foreign input for years. They’re entirely different skill sets. Each year brings our “current” technology level further and further from “if you have some hand tools you can restart”. And it’s not clear to me that importing everything into a country is a better method than letting them build their own infrastructure using what they have locally (eg only import knowledge). See the “clothing and food dumping” problems in Africa.
  - bottlepalm 4y ago
    No one person knows everything needed to build a nuclear power plant, but as long as there's enough people who understand the different principles and disciplines required then yea they could restart with just hand tools. Knowledge is the key, the tools are not.

michaelt 4y ago

Well, there's a circular dependency here - or if you're more optimistic, a virtuous cycle. People who have to fetch water by hand and wash clothes manually don't have time to read books on nuclear power plant design. And societies with poor education can't build and maintain complex power infrastructure like nuclear power plants.

MrsPeaches 4y ago

Access to electricity is a major driver of educational attainment. 1. Access to lighting at night means students can actually do their homework. 2. Access to internet also boosts students attainment. 3. Having access to electricity means you are able to retain the best teachers as they won’t stay for long without all the mod cons. We’re trying solve both problems at the same by teaching kids electronics by building a solar charge controller: https://energymakers.academy/ https://energymakers.academy/

bottlepalm 4y ago
Number 3 is your strongest point, but the bottleneck there is really teachers not energy. On a scale needed to pull a society out of poverty you need not just a massive amount of imported teachers, but collegiate level teachers as well, and for decades.
- bombcar 4y ago
  And if the people educated can leave for better lands, they often will. There aren’t easy ways to prevent that.
- MrsPeaches 4y ago
  I found this policy note that provides a decent overview of the research linking energy and educational. Results are mixed. I am still biased towards the link being there (study finding no link studies 200 students over 3 months, whereas the study finding a link was over 3 years with 10,000 students). https://www.theigc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/40418-policy-brief.pdf https://www.theigc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/40418-poli...

mrshadowgoose 4y ago

In the present day, yes, that's true. However, once we develop AGI, this deficiency could* go away permanently. An "educated society" just means a "necessary amount of trained cognitive power to direct energy towards the goals/purposes we value". Currently that's exclusive domain of the human brains within our workforce. However, there is absolutely no fundamental requirement for the cognitive power to be human. Once AGI is achieved, artificial constructs could rapidly (no 20-30 year training cost per single unit!) take over the vast majority of cognitive burden from humans. I personally believe that we will achieve AGI on a timescale far far shorter than any kind of mass attempt to improve education across the world. *Whether AGI is used to usher in a utopic civilization, or one of many possible dystopias, will of course depend on what groups end up being in control of it.