4 ms·

Humanity needing that amount of energy seems obviously absurd, but then I suppose a CPU with 100 billion transistors seemed clearly impossible in 1960. Maybe a

by Nition 3y ago

Humanity needing that amount of energy seems obviously absurd, but then I suppose a CPU with 100 billion transistors seemed clearly impossible in 1960. Maybe a few hundred years from now, Internet archaeologists will find your comment as one of the first harbingers of the coming World Energy Crisis, much as we see the 1912 Rodney & Otamatea Times "Coal Consumption Affecting Climate" snippet today.[0] Then they'll find this comment... ---- [0] https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/rodney-and-otamatea-times-waitemata-and-kaipara-gazette/1912/08/14/7 https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/rodney-and-otam...

mNovak 3y ago
A direct link to the mentioned snippet: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ROTWKG19120814.2.56.5 https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ROTWKG19120814....
littlestymaar 3y ago
> one of the first harbingers of the coming World Energy Crisis, It's been well known since at least The limits to growth[1], 51 years ago. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth
- hgsgm 3y ago
  250 years https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus
frind 3y ago
It is interesting to see how little humanity has advanced in the last century. Still unable to keep from being wildy optomistic, pessimistic, and absolutely sure their predictions about the future are going to be more correct than those in the past about the present that they know are proved wrong. If only collective intelligence could rise above it all we might be well on the way to enjoying the creation of a more efficient, less wasteful, and more worthwhile future. . . but that too mentally taxing to engage with. . .so it goes
7speter 3y ago
Right now, the minds that conceive of any practical way of a spacecraft reaching the speed of light says we need the energy of multiple suns to be able to even reach that speed, so who knows where humans are in 500 years…
- ben_w 3y ago
  Right now, most of the suggestions for going at actually the speed of light (rather than just very close) require a negative energy, which is much much harder than even a huge positive energy as nobody has any idea if it's even possible[0] let alone how. [0] no a Casimir cavity won't do that: https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2017/04/20/can-a-casimir-cavity-be-used-to-construct-true-negative-mass-metamaterials/ https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2017/04/20/can-a-casim...
- RetroTechie 3y ago
  Either some new physics is found enabling faster-than-light travel, which would break a good chunk of our current understanding of physics. So... doubtful (imho). Or the only thing achievable is travel at some fraction of the speed of light. Say, a few %. At which point the nearest stars are a few-centuries away (one way trip), making interstellar travel feasible at least in theory. But say, 99% or 99.99% of lightspeed? That's what's done with a few particles in huge projects like the LHC. So ehm.. no. Not unless (see above).
  - nojvek 3y ago
    Suppose one could send a futuristic molecular assembly to another star system that can use resources of the planet to build anything from a bunch of bits. Then to send that equipment requires sub light speed - say 0.1C Once the equipment is on the other planet, then sending information is 1C. I think the assumption that we need to send humans to other planets is not true. Once we figure out how to build better space faring beings that we can stream our consciousness at light speed, that seems more feasible for space travel. Humans are squishy meat bags that need to eat multiple times a day, pee, poop, sleep, stable temperature and many other needs to survive. There’s a reason why humans have only made it to moon which is about 400,000km but for all other planets only rovers have touched down. I highly doubt Elon/SpaceX will have living humans on Mars in our lifetime, it’s much more likely they’ll have their Optimus robot or a descendant of it on mars receiving instructions from Earth. Human intelligence and consciousness isn’t that special. Just an algorithm running on biological hardware.
strken 3y ago
I don't think it's impossible for energy consumption to scale to those levels, but presumably it can only happen in conjunction with massive changes (maybe orbital manufacturing? maybe we run server farms on Mars and do our futuristic energy-intensive computing there?) that invalidate the entire frame of the argument. Maybe in 1950 people would have argued that soldering all those vacuum tubes would be too difficult, and they'd have been correct, but transistors and CAD changed the entire reference frame.
crote 3y ago
I'd say that the CPU example actually proves the point. A computer today costs roughly the same as a computer in the 1980s, and it also consumes roughly the same amount of energy as a computer from that era. We got faster computers because we got better at making transistors. If we look at laptops, a device which consumes 200W already gets hot enough that it is uncomfortable to actually place on your lap. A 1kW desktop computer is pretty much impossible to cool. At our current population, those 5 million exajoules a year is a constant power consumption of roughly 16 megawatt per person. For comparison, that's about the same magnitude of energy you'd need for every human to launch a Falcon 9 to eat lunch in the ISS. Once figures get this big, you simply run out of things to do.

by Nition 3y ago

mNovak 3y ago

A direct link to the mentioned snippet: https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ROTWKG19120814.2.56.5 https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/ROTWKG19120814....

littlestymaar 3y ago

> one of the first harbingers of the coming World Energy Crisis, It's been well known since at least The limits to growth[1], 51 years ago. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth

hgsgm 3y ago
250 years https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus

frind 3y ago

It is interesting to see how little humanity has advanced in the last century. Still unable to keep from being wildy optomistic, pessimistic, and absolutely sure their predictions about the future are going to be more correct than those in the past about the present that they know are proved wrong. If only collective intelligence could rise above it all we might be well on the way to enjoying the creation of a more efficient, less wasteful, and more worthwhile future. . . but that too mentally taxing to engage with. . .so it goes

7speter 3y ago

Right now, the minds that conceive of any practical way of a spacecraft reaching the speed of light says we need the energy of multiple suns to be able to even reach that speed, so who knows where humans are in 500 years…

ben_w 3y ago
Right now, most of the suggestions for going at actually the speed of light (rather than just very close) require a negative energy, which is much much harder than even a huge positive energy as nobody has any idea if it's even possible[0] let alone how. [0] no a Casimir cavity won't do that: https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2017/04/20/can-a-casimir-cavity-be-used-to-construct-true-negative-mass-metamaterials/ https://kitsunesoftware.wordpress.com/2017/04/20/can-a-casim...
RetroTechie 3y ago
Either some new physics is found enabling faster-than-light travel, which would break a good chunk of our current understanding of physics. So... doubtful (imho). Or the only thing achievable is travel at some fraction of the speed of light. Say, a few %. At which point the nearest stars are a few-centuries away (one way trip), making interstellar travel feasible at least in theory. But say, 99% or 99.99% of lightspeed? That's what's done with a few particles in huge projects like the LHC. So ehm.. no. Not unless (see above).
- nojvek 3y ago
  Suppose one could send a futuristic molecular assembly to another star system that can use resources of the planet to build anything from a bunch of bits. Then to send that equipment requires sub light speed - say 0.1C Once the equipment is on the other planet, then sending information is 1C. I think the assumption that we need to send humans to other planets is not true. Once we figure out how to build better space faring beings that we can stream our consciousness at light speed, that seems more feasible for space travel. Humans are squishy meat bags that need to eat multiple times a day, pee, poop, sleep, stable temperature and many other needs to survive. There’s a reason why humans have only made it to moon which is about 400,000km but for all other planets only rovers have touched down. I highly doubt Elon/SpaceX will have living humans on Mars in our lifetime, it’s much more likely they’ll have their Optimus robot or a descendant of it on mars receiving instructions from Earth. Human intelligence and consciousness isn’t that special. Just an algorithm running on biological hardware.

strken 3y ago

I don't think it's impossible for energy consumption to scale to those levels, but presumably it can only happen in conjunction with massive changes (maybe orbital manufacturing? maybe we run server farms on Mars and do our futuristic energy-intensive computing there?) that invalidate the entire frame of the argument. Maybe in 1950 people would have argued that soldering all those vacuum tubes would be too difficult, and they'd have been correct, but transistors and CAD changed the entire reference frame.

crote 3y ago

I'd say that the CPU example actually proves the point. A computer today costs roughly the same as a computer in the 1980s, and it also consumes roughly the same amount of energy as a computer from that era. We got faster computers because we got better at making transistors. If we look at laptops, a device which consumes 200W already gets hot enough that it is uncomfortable to actually place on your lap. A 1kW desktop computer is pretty much impossible to cool. At our current population, those 5 million exajoules a year is a constant power consumption of roughly 16 megawatt per person. For comparison, that's about the same magnitude of energy you'd need for every human to launch a Falcon 9 to eat lunch in the ISS. Once figures get this big, you simply run out of things to do.