4 ms·

> Everything you listed required a base of energy dense fuels for the process in some fashion What about wood, or more "advanced" biofuels (idk, some kind of

> Everything you listed required a base of energy dense fuels for the process in some fashion What about wood, or more "advanced" biofuels (idk, some kind of highly productive grass or a refined algae product), prevents us from developing wind and hydro power? Those were both developed before fossil fuels were widely used anyway. They produced mechanical power instead of electrical, but only because electricity was not understood yet. The more energy you have, the easier it is to scale energy production up, but you have the resources required to initiate that process with just biofuels. And once you have a base of wind and hydro energy, that allows you to begin the feedback loop of using that energy to assist in constructing more power generation in a virtuous cycle. edit: I'll also add that the industrial revolution came about after there had already been notable advances in mechanization and manufacturing - the introduction of fossil fuels quite literally threw gas on the fire, but people had started developing increasingly sophisticated machinery like the cotton gin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin) and mechanically-powered loom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire_Loom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancashire_Loom) before fossil fuels started being widely used. And indeed, many of these were hydro-powered.

Jedd 3y ago
It's a bit more complicated than this, but one shortcoming is that wood simply doesn't burn hot enough to smelt steel (1100 or so?). Coal was, for us, effectively an essential step. Advances you mention in your third paragraph don't include the jumps in precision that were predicated on this capability, and indeed necessary for the next steps. There may of course be some civilisations out there that managed what you're describing - it's a big ol' universe after all - but my gut feel is mitochondria is probably the great filter, rather than an abundance of energy-dense naturally occurring fuel. This link pops up regularly on HN. It's a spectacularly good read, highly relevant here, in terms of the necessary set of converging prerequisites for an industrial revolution: https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/ https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus...
- andrewflnr 3y ago
  Mitochondria are just a hack to integrate efficient oxygen metabolism into archaean cells, and I wish people wouldn't worship them so much. Mitochondria started as free living cells that had that metabolism. There's no reason life on a different world couldn't develop it directly in the same lineage as cells destined for multicellularity.
  - Jedd 3y ago
    Worship? I appreciate I only have a sample size of one - but then, so does the 'it's no big deal' crowd. On this planet we have no alternative routes to the same outcome, and no clear evidence that alternative routes a) couldn't have come about, or b) did but were subsequently out-competed. I suggest everyone with a Fermi-opinion is in the same camp - massively speculative and a single datapoint (unless you count the myriad (in their absence) counter-points).
    - andrewflnr 3y ago
      The original bacteria that were engulfed to become mitochondria are the "alternative route". It's clearly possible for a cell to have oxygen metabolism on its own because that's how we got here. So the question is, is endosymbiosis the only way to integrate that with a large, complex cell? When you phrase it that way, it should be clear which way the odds lie. But yes, "worship" is not quite the right word for whatever obsession it is that people have with mitochondria.
- opportune 3y ago
  Sorry I'm a bit late to reply here, but I still think coal isn't strictly necessary. You don't need steel to develop wind and hydropower, and you can electrify with metals that don't require such high temperatures. Once you have sufficient electrical power, you can heat things in other ways - for example, aluminum smelting requires even higher temperatures than steel and uses electricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_smelting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_smelting.

Jedd 3y ago

It's a bit more complicated than this, but one shortcoming is that wood simply doesn't burn hot enough to smelt steel (1100 or so?). Coal was, for us, effectively an essential step. Advances you mention in your third paragraph don't include the jumps in precision that were predicated on this capability, and indeed necessary for the next steps. There may of course be some civilisations out there that managed what you're describing - it's a big ol' universe after all - but my gut feel is mitochondria is probably the great filter, rather than an abundance of energy-dense naturally occurring fuel. This link pops up regularly on HN. It's a spectacularly good read, highly relevant here, in terms of the necessary set of converging prerequisites for an industrial revolution: https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/ https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus...

andrewflnr 3y ago
Mitochondria are just a hack to integrate efficient oxygen metabolism into archaean cells, and I wish people wouldn't worship them so much. Mitochondria started as free living cells that had that metabolism. There's no reason life on a different world couldn't develop it directly in the same lineage as cells destined for multicellularity.
- Jedd 3y ago
  Worship? I appreciate I only have a sample size of one - but then, so does the 'it's no big deal' crowd. On this planet we have no alternative routes to the same outcome, and no clear evidence that alternative routes a) couldn't have come about, or b) did but were subsequently out-competed. I suggest everyone with a Fermi-opinion is in the same camp - massively speculative and a single datapoint (unless you count the myriad (in their absence) counter-points).
  - andrewflnr 3y ago
    The original bacteria that were engulfed to become mitochondria are the "alternative route". It's clearly possible for a cell to have oxygen metabolism on its own because that's how we got here. So the question is, is endosymbiosis the only way to integrate that with a large, complex cell? When you phrase it that way, it should be clear which way the odds lie. But yes, "worship" is not quite the right word for whatever obsession it is that people have with mitochondria.
opportune 3y ago
Sorry I'm a bit late to reply here, but I still think coal isn't strictly necessary. You don't need steel to develop wind and hydropower, and you can electrify with metals that don't require such high temperatures. Once you have sufficient electrical power, you can heat things in other ways - for example, aluminum smelting requires even higher temperatures than steel and uses electricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_smelting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_smelting.