3 ms·

If the climate warms significantly, we are getting millions of kilometers of previously unusable taiga in what is now largely empty regions of Canada and Russia

by blfr 3y ago

If the climate warms significantly, we are getting millions of kilometers of previously unusable taiga in what is now largely empty regions of Canada and Russia. And the population in most countries is already in decline. We will need less food and farming, not more. The fall of ancient civilizations is always a great story but I think we have fundamentally changed when we attained systematic knowledge. There will be no great collapse with massive loss of capacity because we put our understanding of the world and our tech into models and then wrote it all down millions of times. Basically, we know how to build a nuclear reactor, an internal combustion engine, and a computer, we will never forget it, and therefore can always run an industrial civilization.

saulpw 3y ago
Sorry to say, the ideas in your comment are false. It's engineering hubris at its worst. Primarily, this idea that we've written it all down so we'll never forget it, is not true. Advanced technology requires industrial infrastructure and gobs of tacit knowledge that absolutely can be unlearned at a societal level. It would be quite easy for us to forget how to build a nuclear weapon (much less a nuclear reactor) or a microprocessor. Sure you can learn the conceptual framework and think you know how to do it, but when it comes time to actually pull it off, you're going to have to figure out a lot of the secret sauce again--and that process looks like redevelopment, not just filling in some gaps. And as that development process will require the coordination of millions of people to set up and maintain the supply chain of materials and logistics, it won't be possible in an unstable society that doesn't have the natural endowment of cheap energy that we've had for the past 100 years. For one paper that explores this, see "Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons" (1995): https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/230699 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/230699
- blfr 3y ago
  > It would be quite easy for us to forget how to build a nuclear weapon (much less a nuclear reactor) or a microprocessor. Sure you can learn the conceptual framework and think you know how to do it, but when it comes time to actually pull it off, you're going to have to figure out a lot of the secret sauce again This is simply not true. There is no secret in this sauce any more. Sure, you would need to relearn how to actually do some things, but the recipes are all there, well documented. Not quite youtube tutorials but we have videos. This is not a hypothetical. We tested this[1] and it matches my expectations (I studied physics). Esoteric materials, very precise optics, or spare parts to f22, things that are made in one or two places, we may lose that capacity. But fundamental inventions like flight, electricity, radio, fertilization are gonna stay with us as long as there's some version of us around. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment
  - saulpw 3y ago
    A "credible design" is not a functional nuclear weapon. See again the link to the paper I posted. Any country that tries to create a nuclear weapon takes the same amount of time (~5 years) to figure it out, and no amount of designs or specs or written down information speeds it up. Only embedding actual people who have developed their tacit knowledge will do so. But it sounds like we've both made up our minds, and you believe in the immortality of information, and I can see as evident that knowledge has been lost time and time again. We only have to wait awhile to see how it actually turns out.

by blfr 3y ago

saulpw 3y ago

Sorry to say, the ideas in your comment are false. It's engineering hubris at its worst. Primarily, this idea that we've written it all down so we'll never forget it, is not true. Advanced technology requires industrial infrastructure and gobs of tacit knowledge that absolutely can be unlearned at a societal level. It would be quite easy for us to forget how to build a nuclear weapon (much less a nuclear reactor) or a microprocessor. Sure you can learn the conceptual framework and think you know how to do it, but when it comes time to actually pull it off, you're going to have to figure out a lot of the secret sauce again--and that process looks like redevelopment, not just filling in some gaps. And as that development process will require the coordination of millions of people to set up and maintain the supply chain of materials and logistics, it won't be possible in an unstable society that doesn't have the natural endowment of cheap energy that we've had for the past 100 years. For one paper that explores this, see "Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons" (1995): https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/230699 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/230699

blfr 3y ago
> It would be quite easy for us to forget how to build a nuclear weapon (much less a nuclear reactor) or a microprocessor. Sure you can learn the conceptual framework and think you know how to do it, but when it comes time to actually pull it off, you're going to have to figure out a lot of the secret sauce again This is simply not true. There is no secret in this sauce any more. Sure, you would need to relearn how to actually do some things, but the recipes are all there, well documented. Not quite youtube tutorials but we have videos. This is not a hypothetical. We tested this[1] and it matches my expectations (I studied physics). Esoteric materials, very precise optics, or spare parts to f22, things that are made in one or two places, we may lose that capacity. But fundamental inventions like flight, electricity, radio, fertilization are gonna stay with us as long as there's some version of us around. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nth_Country_Experiment
- saulpw 3y ago
  A "credible design" is not a functional nuclear weapon. See again the link to the paper I posted. Any country that tries to create a nuclear weapon takes the same amount of time (~5 years) to figure it out, and no amount of designs or specs or written down information speeds it up. Only embedding actual people who have developed their tacit knowledge will do so. But it sounds like we've both made up our minds, and you believe in the immortality of information, and I can see as evident that knowledge has been lost time and time again. We only have to wait awhile to see how it actually turns out.