3 ms·

The idea of the Dyson swarm is just taking humanity as we've seen it over the past 200 years and assuming the exact energy curve would continue for 2K more year

The idea of the Dyson swarm is just taking humanity as we've seen it over the past 200 years and assuming the exact energy curve would continue for 2K more years. It's kind of silly. People don't need infinite energy to live. Many people are happy to live as much in harmony with nature as they can. This whole line of thinking is short sighted. For example "No magic theorized materials are required;" but we literally WILL have 'magic' materials in the future. Of course we can't predict the things we don't have yet, but assuming we'd just move in some linear line from where we are is probably unlikely.

hotnfresh 3y ago
This stuff made a lot more sense when it wasn’t yet crystal-clear that we’re on a shortish path to zero or negative population change. Why build and pay for a complex life support system in space when… I’m living on a really big and really good one for free? It doesn’t seem like we’re going to run out of space for people, so why expend resources making mediocre space environments for people to live on, except for certain narrow purposes? [edit] I think the problem becomes obvious if one considers colonizing the oceans with big ships and floating platforms. We haven’t really done it, and it’s hard to imagine why we would—it’s just so much more expensive and less convenient than living on land. Space is like that, except all the bad parts are even worse. What do we have on the oceans? Resource-gathering operations, shipping, exploration ships. I don’t see why space would see more colonization than the oceans have (which is nearly zero, mostly temporary purpose-specific habitation and movement across it to land) I’d include Mars and such as places much worse and more expensive to colonize than the oceans. I don’t see it happening any time soon—why would it?
pixl97 3y ago
Define live.... Dinosaurs lived for 100+ million years on Earth, then boom, extraterrestrial events extincted them. As an intelligent species (somewhere above dinosaur/ape intelligence) eventually you discover that planets and stars are unstable. You are not living in harmony with nature. Nature is just temporarily not killing you. Now you've further pushed the question to "Does an intelligent species accept its eventual planetary extinction". It doesn't matter what many do. For example with bacteria it only takes a single cell to make a single change to become the dominant form of that species in some number of generations if it gives them a evolutionary advantage.
jmyeet 3y ago
> People don't need infinite energy to live Our current rate of energy consumption is unsustainable. This is a problem no matter how you want to live (unless you want the entire civilization to go primitive). This is a problem. > This whole line of thinking is short sighted. That's a strange assertion. It's a really long term solution, like billions of years long. As for your magic materials, I hate this kind of argument. It's really just hand-waving "we don't know what we don't know". But we do know physics and we know we need energy. That energy has to come from somewhere. We can't just make it up from nothing. So far the only viable long-term energy options we have are solar power and nuclear power (particularly fusion). There are some far future options like antimatter and using black holes but these don't actually solve the energy problem. They just make really great batteries (eg to have antimatter you have to make it and that takes energy).
- TheBigSalad 3y ago
  "Our current rate of energy consumption is unsustainable." How do you figure? We use a lot of energy in terms of the environmental damage of burning fossil fuels, but that's a really terrible way to get energy. All energy on Earth comes from the sun and we only get one billionth of that even reaching the planet. And we use far less of it. There's enough energy contained in matter for all of our current needs thousands of times over.

hotnfresh 3y ago

This stuff made a lot more sense when it wasn’t yet crystal-clear that we’re on a shortish path to zero or negative population change. Why build and pay for a complex life support system in space when… I’m living on a really big and really good one for free? It doesn’t seem like we’re going to run out of space for people, so why expend resources making mediocre space environments for people to live on, except for certain narrow purposes? [edit] I think the problem becomes obvious if one considers colonizing the oceans with big ships and floating platforms. We haven’t really done it, and it’s hard to imagine why we would—it’s just so much more expensive and less convenient than living on land. Space is like that, except all the bad parts are even worse. What do we have on the oceans? Resource-gathering operations, shipping, exploration ships. I don’t see why space would see more colonization than the oceans have (which is nearly zero, mostly temporary purpose-specific habitation and movement across it to land) I’d include Mars and such as places much worse and more expensive to colonize than the oceans. I don’t see it happening any time soon—why would it?

pixl97 3y ago

Define live.... Dinosaurs lived for 100+ million years on Earth, then boom, extraterrestrial events extincted them. As an intelligent species (somewhere above dinosaur/ape intelligence) eventually you discover that planets and stars are unstable. You are not living in harmony with nature. Nature is just temporarily not killing you. Now you've further pushed the question to "Does an intelligent species accept its eventual planetary extinction". It doesn't matter what many do. For example with bacteria it only takes a single cell to make a single change to become the dominant form of that species in some number of generations if it gives them a evolutionary advantage.

jmyeet 3y ago

> People don't need infinite energy to live Our current rate of energy consumption is unsustainable. This is a problem no matter how you want to live (unless you want the entire civilization to go primitive). This is a problem. > This whole line of thinking is short sighted. That's a strange assertion. It's a really long term solution, like billions of years long. As for your magic materials, I hate this kind of argument. It's really just hand-waving "we don't know what we don't know". But we do know physics and we know we need energy. That energy has to come from somewhere. We can't just make it up from nothing. So far the only viable long-term energy options we have are solar power and nuclear power (particularly fusion). There are some far future options like antimatter and using black holes but these don't actually solve the energy problem. They just make really great batteries (eg to have antimatter you have to make it and that takes energy).

TheBigSalad 3y ago
"Our current rate of energy consumption is unsustainable." How do you figure? We use a lot of energy in terms of the environmental damage of burning fossil fuels, but that's a really terrible way to get energy. All energy on Earth comes from the sun and we only get one billionth of that even reaching the planet. And we use far less of it. There's enough energy contained in matter for all of our current needs thousands of times over.