6 ms·

On Twitter, Colin Fraser pointed out that Black Mirror was somewhat optimistic in that the horrible evil technology actually works as described[1]. Truly pessi

On Twitter, Colin Fraser pointed out that Black Mirror was somewhat optimistic in that the horrible evil technology actually works as described[1]. Truly pessimistic science fiction would have - people worshipping an AI God which is demonstrably dumber than a dog - friendly humanoid robots which don't really understand how to walk down a flight of stairs - gravitational warp drives which are purely cosmetic and cannot travel anywhere, though it leads to terrible cancer - a Potemkin Dyson Sphere where only 5% of the panels work and the government blames out-of-system immigrants for the blackouts [1] https://xcancel.com/colin_fraser/status/1911129344979964207#m https://xcancel.com/colin_fraser/status/1911129344979964207#...

Legend2440 1y ago
Hilariously, a dyson sphere operating at 5% capacity would still generate more power every second than humanity currently generates in 10,000 years.
- Calwestjobs 1y ago
  Sure, but 89 % of that 5% will be still used for interplanetary yacht fleet of owner of Chocó-Darién Inc.
  - philipkglass 1y ago
    The remaining 11% of 5% would need about 8 seconds to generate more energy than humanity currently generates in 10,000 years. Luminosity of the sun: ~380 yottawatts (3.8 * 10^26 watts) Sunlight conversion efficiency of a silicon based solar panel: ~20% A Dyson swarm around the sun built with silicon solar panels: ~76 yottawatts A Dyson swarm around the sun where 5% of the panels work: ~3.8 yottawatts The leftovers from a Dyson swarm around the sun where 5% of the panels work and 89% of the output has been used for interplanetary yachts: ~418 zetawatts (4.18 * 10^23 watts) Primary power production on Earth: ~20 terawatts (2 * 10^13 watts) 10000 years times 20 terawatts is 10000 * 365.25 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 10^12 = 3.16 * 10^24 joules Since a joule is just a watt-second, it takes 7.6 seconds for that 418 zetawatts of leftover Dyson swarm output to match up to 10,000 years of current human energy consumption.
    - Calwestjobs 1y ago
      ok so are you saying that it is so much that we need 450 more planets worth of people to be able to use that or you're saying that if we can harness that much energy amount/density then we can just make matter on spot and we do not have to travel anywhere anymore, because we can make gold bricks or platinum sieves in particle accelerators just for fun? (this is same argument as why alcubierre drive is nonsense, having capability to manipulate such energy density makes us not want to travel anymore)
      - Legend2440 1y ago
        We would find new things to do with that energy. Making matter from energy would still be inefficient though. c^2 is a really big number.
        Calwestjobs 1y ago
        No we wont. Because if you can drive car to your weekend house 6 miles away, you wont be taking Boeing 747. If you can manipulate such insane energy density you can do anything already even before you reach that capability. Also Dyson sphere is old school idea, new more efficient idea is to make small black hole right next to star and harvest energy from that more concentrated flow. So actually black holes colliding (gravitational waves) can be sign of civilization... Previous post with all those calculations says that you can power 4 149 473 current earths with that amount of energy. I write this with assumption that person is correct (im lazy to calculate that by my self, but it roughly has proper orders of magnitude). My amazon joke was sarcasm.
        nottorp 1y ago
        > if you can drive car to your weekend house 6 miles away, you wont be taking Boeing 747 No, you will take that elusive flying car because you can afford the energy for it now. And it will be much less efficient than a 747.
        1y ago
- ben_w 1y ago
  But at even just 4%, the thermal emissions from a partial Dyson swarm would still be enough to heat Earth by twice what anthropogenic climate change has managed so far: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927024825001904?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092702482...
  - Legend2440 1y ago
    Interesting. Luckily with that kind of energy you can do absolutely insane things, like build planet-sized sunshades or push the earth to a more distant orbit. These challenges can be engineered around.
    - zaphirplane 1y ago
      Or planet wide air conditioning to cool down the earth
  - hoseja 1y ago
    "anthropogenic climate change" isn't heating the planet by literally heating it up with joules from burning stuff but by shifting the balance between absorbed and radiated heat from the sun.
    - IAmBroom 1y ago
      The cause of the energy isn't as important as the amount. Either way, our ecosystem heats up.
    - ben_w 1y ago
      Yes, and? The same is the case with the Dyson swarm. Space goes from being empty to partially re-emitting as a warm object in our direction. The joule heating from current human power is negligible; conversely, a 4% partial Dyson swarm directly heating the earth (i.e. not just greenhousing Sol) wouldn't be just +3 K change in equilibrium, it would be something like +24,400 K, which would vapourise and gravitationally unbind the planet.
- AIPedant 1y ago
  It would also cost more power to construct than humanity is currently capable of generating in 10,000 years, so I am not sure what your point is. Presumably a 5% functional Dyson sphere would be a corrupt boondoggle in the same way as a power plant which is down for maintenance 95% of the year, but the financial calculation would use much larger numerators and denominators than we are used to.
ben_w 1y ago
You may be interested in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where, due to a terrible miscalculation of scale, an entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog. The planet on which the dog was located then exploded, but not due to the battle fleet, instead it was because some people didn't want the planet to provide the right question to an answer they already had, but they didn't realise they didn't need to owing to the accidental interference of a dead species that had sent away all their telephone sanitisers before being wiped out in a pandemic caused by a dirty telephone.
gcanyon 1y ago
There is a science fiction story, I don’t remember who wrote it or the title, where humanity discovers a way to modify the speed of light within a region. Excited, they work incredibly hard to implement the technology, only to discover they can only make it slower. Maybe it was jumping to a parallel universe to travel and then jumping back. But the same issue: the limit was lower.
- aaronbrethorst 1y ago
  Something similar to this comes up in Death's End, the last book in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy.
  - gcanyon 1y ago
    Thanks! I haven't read it, and this was maybe forty years ago, and it was a short short story, so it has to be something else.
- cpeterso 1y ago
  ChatGPT suggests the story is "Local Effect" by D. L. Hughes, published in 1968. An alien named Firefoal of Swaylone observes that human physicists mistakenly believe in a constant light speed because humanity was unknowingly situated in a region of space where the speed of light had been artificially reduced. Humans discover they can modify the speed of light but find they can only make it slower.
  - shawn_w 1y ago
    Ah, the joys of trusting a LLM for story IDs... This one actually exists (a rarity in my experience), and the plot largely matches the description up to the last sentence (though the speed isn't exactly reduced; it's made a constant) >Humans discover they can modify the speed of light but find they can only make it slower. That doesn't happen in the story. It ends with the aliens disabling the device (the drive of a derelict starship) generating the field that caused experiments to suggest the speed of light is constant, and then leaving, destroying "the whole basis of their physics, but that is just a fantasy anyways."
m463 1y ago
I think optimistic scifi needs to lie a bit: - allow you to exceed the speed of light, or better yet portal somewhere - learn we are not alone in the universe - store basically infinite energy in your hip-mounted blaster - get the girl/guy in the end
- aleph_minus_one 1y ago
  > - learn we are not alone in the universe This is neither a message that is optimistic nor pessimistic. Isn't it much more likely that this species (despite having something that can be called "intelligence" in an appropriate sense) simply be so different that the difference is insanely much larger than between an human and an octopus? Example: Stanisław Lem; Solaris > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(novel) where the alien species is an intelligent ocean.
  - nathan_compton 1y ago
    Everyone read Solaris.
    - blacksmith_tb 1y ago
      It is of course an absolute classic, but funny to recommend in this thread, as it's probably the most pessimistic first contact story I can think of, in fact I think it raises serious questions about humans communicating successfully with each other (let alone anyone else).
      - aleph_minus_one 1y ago
        > it's probably the most pessimistic first contact story I can think of 三体 by 刘慈欣 (English: "The Three-Body Problem" by Liu Cixin) is clearly a much more pessimistic first contact story. :-) And honestly: I did not find Solaris pessimistic; for me it was just a story about a first contact that fails because humanity still has a lot of things to learn.
bazoom42 1y ago
The movie Brazil is a take on 1984 where the technology does not work very well. The thought police is not all-seeing but quite inept (although just as brutal). The plot is set off by an actual bug getting caught in a typing macine evetually causing the wrong guy to get arrested. The rebel hero is a rogue plumber who actually fixes things which are broken.
- jeffwass 1y ago
  One note - in the 1984 novel the technology (or at least the product quality) didn’t work very well either. Eg the “victory” cigarettes that fall apart, or terrible coffee with a daily allocated saccharin pill.
  - bazoom42 1y ago
    Good point - only the tools of oppression really works in 1984, all consumer products are crap. It is suggested this is deliberate, but even that might be propaganda. And apparently it is a common workplace injury to get ones arm caught in a novel-writing machine.
croes 1y ago
Don’t forget this scenario: The file with the life saving code, text, formula etc. can’t be read because the license server needed to get access doesn’t exist anymore
barryrandall 1y ago
Please note that this isn't a call for investments or request for startups.

Legend2440 1y ago

Hilariously, a dyson sphere operating at 5% capacity would still generate more power every second than humanity currently generates in 10,000 years.

Calwestjobs 1y ago
Sure, but 89 % of that 5% will be still used for interplanetary yacht fleet of owner of Chocó-Darién Inc.
- philipkglass 1y ago
  The remaining 11% of 5% would need about 8 seconds to generate more energy than humanity currently generates in 10,000 years. Luminosity of the sun: ~380 yottawatts (3.8 * 10^26 watts) Sunlight conversion efficiency of a silicon based solar panel: ~20% A Dyson swarm around the sun built with silicon solar panels: ~76 yottawatts A Dyson swarm around the sun where 5% of the panels work: ~3.8 yottawatts The leftovers from a Dyson swarm around the sun where 5% of the panels work and 89% of the output has been used for interplanetary yachts: ~418 zetawatts (4.18 * 10^23 watts) Primary power production on Earth: ~20 terawatts (2 * 10^13 watts) 10000 years times 20 terawatts is 10000 * 365.25 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 10^12 = 3.16 * 10^24 joules Since a joule is just a watt-second, it takes 7.6 seconds for that 418 zetawatts of leftover Dyson swarm output to match up to 10,000 years of current human energy consumption.
  - Calwestjobs 1y ago
    ok so are you saying that it is so much that we need 450 more planets worth of people to be able to use that or you're saying that if we can harness that much energy amount/density then we can just make matter on spot and we do not have to travel anywhere anymore, because we can make gold bricks or platinum sieves in particle accelerators just for fun? (this is same argument as why alcubierre drive is nonsense, having capability to manipulate such energy density makes us not want to travel anymore)
    - Legend2440 1y ago
      We would find new things to do with that energy. Making matter from energy would still be inefficient though. c^2 is a really big number.
      - Calwestjobs 1y ago
        No we wont. Because if you can drive car to your weekend house 6 miles away, you wont be taking Boeing 747. If you can manipulate such insane energy density you can do anything already even before you reach that capability. Also Dyson sphere is old school idea, new more efficient idea is to make small black hole right next to star and harvest energy from that more concentrated flow. So actually black holes colliding (gravitational waves) can be sign of civilization... Previous post with all those calculations says that you can power 4 149 473 current earths with that amount of energy. I write this with assumption that person is correct (im lazy to calculate that by my self, but it roughly has proper orders of magnitude). My amazon joke was sarcasm.
        nottorp 1y ago
        > if you can drive car to your weekend house 6 miles away, you wont be taking Boeing 747 No, you will take that elusive flying car because you can afford the energy for it now. And it will be much less efficient than a 747.
        1y ago
ben_w 1y ago
But at even just 4%, the thermal emissions from a partial Dyson swarm would still be enough to heat Earth by twice what anthropogenic climate change has managed so far: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927024825001904?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092702482...
- Legend2440 1y ago
  Interesting. Luckily with that kind of energy you can do absolutely insane things, like build planet-sized sunshades or push the earth to a more distant orbit. These challenges can be engineered around.
  - zaphirplane 1y ago
    Or planet wide air conditioning to cool down the earth
- hoseja 1y ago
  "anthropogenic climate change" isn't heating the planet by literally heating it up with joules from burning stuff but by shifting the balance between absorbed and radiated heat from the sun.
  - IAmBroom 1y ago
    The cause of the energy isn't as important as the amount. Either way, our ecosystem heats up.
  - ben_w 1y ago
    Yes, and? The same is the case with the Dyson swarm. Space goes from being empty to partially re-emitting as a warm object in our direction. The joule heating from current human power is negligible; conversely, a 4% partial Dyson swarm directly heating the earth (i.e. not just greenhousing Sol) wouldn't be just +3 K change in equilibrium, it would be something like +24,400 K, which would vapourise and gravitationally unbind the planet.
AIPedant 1y ago
It would also cost more power to construct than humanity is currently capable of generating in 10,000 years, so I am not sure what your point is. Presumably a 5% functional Dyson sphere would be a corrupt boondoggle in the same way as a power plant which is down for maintenance 95% of the year, but the financial calculation would use much larger numerators and denominators than we are used to.

ben_w 1y ago

You may be interested in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where, due to a terrible miscalculation of scale, an entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog. The planet on which the dog was located then exploded, but not due to the battle fleet, instead it was because some people didn't want the planet to provide the right question to an answer they already had, but they didn't realise they didn't need to owing to the accidental interference of a dead species that had sent away all their telephone sanitisers before being wiped out in a pandemic caused by a dirty telephone.

gcanyon 1y ago

There is a science fiction story, I don’t remember who wrote it or the title, where humanity discovers a way to modify the speed of light within a region. Excited, they work incredibly hard to implement the technology, only to discover they can only make it slower. Maybe it was jumping to a parallel universe to travel and then jumping back. But the same issue: the limit was lower.

aaronbrethorst 1y ago
Something similar to this comes up in Death's End, the last book in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy.
- gcanyon 1y ago
  Thanks! I haven't read it, and this was maybe forty years ago, and it was a short short story, so it has to be something else.
cpeterso 1y ago
ChatGPT suggests the story is "Local Effect" by D. L. Hughes, published in 1968. An alien named Firefoal of Swaylone observes that human physicists mistakenly believe in a constant light speed because humanity was unknowingly situated in a region of space where the speed of light had been artificially reduced. Humans discover they can modify the speed of light but find they can only make it slower.
- shawn_w 1y ago
  Ah, the joys of trusting a LLM for story IDs... This one actually exists (a rarity in my experience), and the plot largely matches the description up to the last sentence (though the speed isn't exactly reduced; it's made a constant) >Humans discover they can modify the speed of light but find they can only make it slower. That doesn't happen in the story. It ends with the aliens disabling the device (the drive of a derelict starship) generating the field that caused experiments to suggest the speed of light is constant, and then leaving, destroying "the whole basis of their physics, but that is just a fantasy anyways."

m463 1y ago

I think optimistic scifi needs to lie a bit: - allow you to exceed the speed of light, or better yet portal somewhere - learn we are not alone in the universe - store basically infinite energy in your hip-mounted blaster - get the girl/guy in the end

aleph_minus_one 1y ago
> - learn we are not alone in the universe This is neither a message that is optimistic nor pessimistic. Isn't it much more likely that this species (despite having something that can be called "intelligence" in an appropriate sense) simply be so different that the difference is insanely much larger than between an human and an octopus? Example: Stanisław Lem; Solaris > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(novel) where the alien species is an intelligent ocean.
- nathan_compton 1y ago
  Everyone read Solaris.
  - blacksmith_tb 1y ago
    It is of course an absolute classic, but funny to recommend in this thread, as it's probably the most pessimistic first contact story I can think of, in fact I think it raises serious questions about humans communicating successfully with each other (let alone anyone else).
    - aleph_minus_one 1y ago
      > it's probably the most pessimistic first contact story I can think of 三体 by 刘慈欣 (English: "The Three-Body Problem" by Liu Cixin) is clearly a much more pessimistic first contact story. :-) And honestly: I did not find Solaris pessimistic; for me it was just a story about a first contact that fails because humanity still has a lot of things to learn.

bazoom42 1y ago

The movie Brazil is a take on 1984 where the technology does not work very well. The thought police is not all-seeing but quite inept (although just as brutal). The plot is set off by an actual bug getting caught in a typing macine evetually causing the wrong guy to get arrested. The rebel hero is a rogue plumber who actually fixes things which are broken.

jeffwass 1y ago
One note - in the 1984 novel the technology (or at least the product quality) didn’t work very well either. Eg the “victory” cigarettes that fall apart, or terrible coffee with a daily allocated saccharin pill.
- bazoom42 1y ago
  Good point - only the tools of oppression really works in 1984, all consumer products are crap. It is suggested this is deliberate, but even that might be propaganda. And apparently it is a common workplace injury to get ones arm caught in a novel-writing machine.

croes 1y ago

Don’t forget this scenario: The file with the life saving code, text, formula etc. can’t be read because the license server needed to get access doesn’t exist anymore

barryrandall 1y ago

Please note that this isn't a call for investments or request for startups.