Continuing Mission: Year Six
If this blog were original Trek, it would presumably be heading back to Starfleet Command at the conclusion of its five-year mission. (Well, if it were really original Trek it would have been canceled by the network two years ago.)
I am still not caught up, so will again have to a) beg your collective indulgence, and b) rely on the commenter community to bail me out of a lame post.
According to Blogger analytics, through yesterday Rocketpunk Manifesto has had precisely 271,284 visits, and just over half a million page views, from 79,641 unique visitors. I don't know if there is a statute of limitations on being unique, and if you read this blog on two different machines the analytics probably count you as two 'unique' people.
In any case, over the past couple of years traffic has been fairly steady at 2500-3000 'unique' visitors each month. Monthly visits have fallen off slightly - since I haven't been posting as frequently - but 'unique' visitors have held steady or even very gradually risen. Roughly 1700-2000 of you seem to be regulars. Thanks for hanging around!
Again according to the analytics, just over half of you are from the US - the international contingent gradually expanding toward the 50 percent mark. And in the last year or so, I am happy to note, I've picked up a regular Russian readership.
On the production side, this is the 277th published post here, including an initial test post to make sure things would actually show up. The next post, and first substantive one, defined rocketpunk. As it turns out, though, this blog's name has turned out to be a bit of a misnomer. I have talked often enough (but not primarily) about midcentury SF, and have made practically no effort to further define or create an SF subgenre around the midcentury vision, analogous to steampunk.
As it has from the beginning, this blog tends to waver between being about space travel and being about space-oriented SF, conjoined topics that it shares with Atomic Rockets. With occasional broader excursions into the great super-genre of Romance, to which SF belongs.
Expect this general pattern of digressions to continue, perhaps with a little more focus on the literary side, since there are plenty of 'nonfiction' space blogs out there. Last post's comment thread suggests no lack of interest in the meta-fiction side of things.
On the other hand, when I think of new zaps or whacks to be made on the subject of space warfare, I will make them. We should all be ashamed of ourselves, but admitting it won't stop me from doing it.
If anyone wants to suggest topics they'd like to see discussed here, I make absolutely no promises, but suggesting them is one thing the comment thread is for.
As always ... Discuss!
Yeah, I recycled the image of the Enterprise from last year. Why not?
478 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 400 of 478 Newer› Newest»Tony,
Ohhh, Phil...you mean you want me to do my own research? Say it ain't so.
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No -- you are welcome to critisize my retelling of an economic theory I only partly understand, dont relate all that well -- and doubt myself.
But if you really want to criticise "Mosler" by name as you did in your previous statement - you aren't being very fair if you dont read his book.
Kind of like how you wanted to critisize Moore without reading his book.
But at least in that case I supported that guy's work without reservation. Mosler's I dont.
(SA Phil)
Tony,
The problem comes with the assertion that if the government needs money, it doesn't need to issue debt or tax, it can just print and spend. Okay, start printing, but how do you get the money back out of the economy, so that it doesn't cause inflation? Taxation and debt, right? And once you have the money on hand, what do you do with it? You can't dev/null it, even as entries in an electronic ledger, it has an existence. Or if you do destroy it, what you're doing is in effect the same thing as taxation and issuing debt, with the added steps of creation and destruction. Why not just move it between accounts?
=================
One of the primary assertions is that the US Government/ Fiat system has never taxed and then spent.
It always spent then taxed. That is how the accounting works.
And destroying the Tax money is precisely what happens to it.
He suggests if you could pay your taxes in cash to a local IRS office they would give you a reciept and then put yout cash into a shredder.
Moving money in accounts also takes place - but not with taxes. He suggests there is no link between the IRS and the Federal reserve.
He is also saying that isnt how it would be done, but rather that is exactly how it works now.
(SA Phil)
Also keep in mind I mainly brought it up as an illustration of Keynes+1
The first time I brought it up I was a little more taken with it. Not so much now.
Remember, I personally think all these economic theories arent much different than religious doctrine
(SA Phil)
"Neither does any theory make adequate predictions."
Prediction: cutting taxes will increase revenue enough to lower the deficit. Result: exploding deficits and debt.
Prediction: austerity policies in a recession will increase confidence and spark expansion: Result: deeper recession.
Prediction: raising interest rates will curb runaway inflation, at the cost of employment. Result: success.
Prediction: lower interest rates in normal times will boost employment and inflation. Result: success. These are tested in dozens of countries every few months.
Prediction: austerity policies in a recession will make things worse. Result: success.
Prediction: the euro as constituted, monetary union without fiscal union, would lead to crisis, just like past currency pegs and the gold standard. Result: success.
Prediction: progressive income taxes and mandatory safety net spending creating automatic Keynesian stabilizers that duck some of the need for political intervention. Result: success; Galbraith pointed this out years ago, and it's been vindicated by the Great Recession.
Prediction: wages and prices are sticky downward. Result: success. (Europe's been providing lots of data on this recently.)
Prediction: Obama's stimulus was too small for full recovery. Result: success; there was stabilization and modest improvement but not full recovery.
If you think all economic theories are the same, you're just showing your ignorance of economics. A 1970s high school course doesn't cut it. There's lots of predictions and data and natural experiments out there... most of them unfavorable to the policies of the very rich, kind of like how global warming data is inconvenient to a few large corporations and small government advocates in general.
The interesting thing about supply side economics is the program has only ever been implemented halfway. While several governments in different time periods have cut taxes and presided over large increases in growth, the tandem act of spending cuts has never been implemented.
In Ontario, for example, Premier Mike Harris cut taxes over 30%, and saw government income increase from $8 to $16 billion/year, employment rise by over 300,000 jobs and three balanced budgets in a row. However, the government did not use the flood of new revenues to pay down the existing debt, but tried to buy votes by increasing spending.
As for the high school example, I was simply pointing out that the orthodox theories of the time were not matching the reality on the ground. Today, we are in the grip of a huge debt crisis, and one hardly needs an advanced education in economics to realize since the cause of the crisis is excessive debt, the solution is to pay off the debt. Any homeowner or credit card debtor in over their heads knows this, but since the State can appropriate assets through taxation and other means, successive governments have been living far beyond their means for over 40 years now.
Perhaps the wisest approach would be to advocate for a hands off approach, since sticking your hands into the moving parts of a highly complex system like an economy has so many unintended consequences, and since the most common result of State intervention in the economy becomes crony capitalism, transferring assets from productive taxpayers to the flavour of the month cronys.
"Perhaps the wisest approach would be to advocate for a hands off approach"
Sure, if you think double-digit unemployment for years is wise.
"huge debt crisis"
Which in the US is mostly owed to ourselves. One American's debt is another American's asset. That's true of the public debt as well as the mortgages and credit cards and education loans.
And... the US debt/GDP ratio is lower than the ratio other countries have had while booming. It's not so simple as "get this much debt, have a crisis". The actual crisis was a banking run, turning into depressed demand; you can't sell if no one's buying. Businessmen don't make jobs, customers do, and there's no customers. Partly because they're worried about debt, and largely because they don't have jobs. Which they don't have because there aren't customers.
"since the cause of the crisis is excessive debt, the solution is to pay off the debt."
You need income to do that, which you don't have if you have high unemployment.
Thucydides said...
Today, we are in the grip of a huge debt crisis, and one hardly needs an advanced education in economics to realize since the cause of the crisis is excessive debt, the solution is to pay off the debt. Any homeowner or credit card debtor in over their heads knows this, but since the State can appropriate assets through taxation and other means, successive governments have been living far beyond their means for over 40 years now.
===========
Not everyone agrees that that is the cause of the problem.
The Keynesians and the MMT people definitely don't.
There is definitely some reason to suspect they might have a point.
If money has no inherent value, than neither does debt.
If debt's main problem is it shakes confidence in the system -- then if you do something else to ensure said confidence, the debt might be managable at any supposed level.
(SA Phil)
Damien Sullivan:
"Prediction: cutting taxes will increase revenue enough to lower the deficit. Result: exploding deficits and debt.
Disingenuous at best. The comparison is apples and oranges, because the spending rate was increased. If you keep upping expenditures past revenues -- even expanded revenues.
"Prediction: austerity policies in a recession will increase confidence and spark expansion: Result: deeper recession."
When did the US government ever practice austerity? Certainly not during the Reagan era. Are you perhaps thinking of the Hoover Administration? The government had a lot less influence on the economy because it was already at a minimal level for the size and complexity of the country. A little more austerity there wasn't going to change the trajectory of the economy in 1930-32.
WRT to Keynes, the one thing you seem to miss was set out very starkly in my Econ 101 class. Deficit spending at the bottom of the business cycle is never matched -- in the real world -- with austerity and debt-reduction at the top of the cycle. Or, as one economist I once heard described it, telling a politician to spend is like prescribing crack to a cocaine addict.
In my mprevious post, it should read:
"If you keep upping expenditures past revenues -- even expanded revenues -- you'll always run a deficit.
SA Phil:
"No -- you are welcome to critisize my retelling of an economic theory I only partly understand, dont relate all that well -- and doubt myself.
But if you really want to criticise "Mosler" by name as you did in your previous statement - you aren't being very fair if you dont read his book."
Where I come from, either you understand a subject and can explain in your own words, or you don't understand the subject.
"Kind of like how you wanted to critisize Moore without reading his book.
But at least in that case I supported that guy's work without reservation. Mosler's I dont.
I criticised bringing a political agenda to the party and deconstruction of a genre that doesn't need reconstructing, except in the minds of people with agendas. You never objected that Moore didn't have an agenda, and you pretty explicitly demanded that if you thought a deconstruction was necessary, you should have it.
"One of the primary assertions is that the US Government/ Fiat system has never taxed and then spent.
It always spent then taxed. That is how the accounting works.
And destroying the Tax money is precisely what happens to it.
He suggests if you could pay your taxes in cash to a local IRS office they would give you a reciept and then put yout cash into a shredder.
Moving money in accounts also takes place - but not with taxes. He suggests there is no link between the IRS and the Federal reserve.
He is also saying that isnt how it would be done, but rather that is exactly how it works now. "
I mean no disrespect to you personally, but the idea is ridiculous on its face. The process, in part, is that the government borrows money, spends, then taxes to repay the loan. The other big part of the process is generating a constant cash flow through withholdings.
WRT the Federal Reserve System, you do realize that revenues collected from taxes and fees are deposited directly into accounts in the central bank, from which government obligations are in turn paid, right? You do know that the bank also uses those revenues to pay off government debts on bonds, right? You do know that the Fed, when it issues money, is just changing the size of the supply to match the good and services available for sale, right?
Tony,
When did the US government ever practice austerity?
========
Most notably during the Jackson admisinstration. For a brief time they brought the national debt to zero.
Austerity was fairly common prior to the depression. The progressive parties platform in 1896 was directly in response to what was considered prolonged deflation.
Since the depression though Austerity has not been practiced, and inflation since 1940 is pretty high when compared to the inflation from the 70 years prior to 1940.
We have had surpluses since the Great Depression though.. interestingly this usually procedes something bad happening.
(SA Phil)
Tony,
You never objected that Moore didn't have an agenda, and you pretty explicitly demanded that if you thought a deconstruction was necessary, you should have it.
----
Nah I only meant that if I thought a deconstruction was necessary -- then I was allowed to think a deconstruction was necessary.
Not that I "should have it". Though I still think it would be interesting.
----
The agenda came off a bit different than you described but I didnt see anyway to explain that to you - you didnt seem at all open minded about the possibility.
In the end it came off as an Anti-Cold war piece. Which in the 1980's could have been anti-Reagan. Since he was a "cold-warrior" in some people's view. But Reagan wasn't actually in the book. Nixon got 4 terms instead. It was definitely anti-Nixon.
In the movie Reagan is mentioned at the very end as possibly running against Nixon. In the comic it was Robert Redford.
(Sa Phil)
Tony,
WRT the Federal Reserve System, you do realize that revenues collected from taxes and fees are deposited directly into accounts in the central bank, from which government obligations are in turn paid, right? You do know that the bank also uses those revenues to pay off government debts on bonds, right? You do know that the Fed, when it issues money, is just changing the size of the supply to match the good and services available for sale, right?
==========
I dont know that at all.
And neither do you. Neither of us has any background in Reserve accounting.
Mosler does and does not describe it as you do. Which I have seen economists who disagree - I haven't seen any rebuttals by reserve accountants.
According to Mosler when he touches on the subject with Economists the exchange always ends with the Economist addmiting they dont understand reserve accounting.
(SA Phil)
Which is to say the actual process evidently differs from what it says on the tin.
(SA Phil)
The process described is more like this. (It also evidently meshes with statements by Bernake)
When the Fed needs to spend money it takes the account it is paying money to and adjusts the number upward. Thats it. The entire process.
Taxing and borrowing are carried on the balance sheet of course - but it doesnt work anything like a checking account.
(SA Phil)
SA Phil:
"Most notably during the Jackson admisinstration. For a brief time they brought the national debt to zero.
Austerity was fairly common prior to the depression. The progressive parties platform in 1896 was directly in response to what was considered prolonged deflation.
Since the depression though Austerity has not been practiced, and inflation since 1940 is pretty high when compared to the inflation from the 70 years prior to 1940.
We have had surpluses since the Great Depression though.. interestingly this usually procedes something bad happening."
Ummmm...I think we need to decouple government deficits from government debt. Surpluses can be used to retire debt, but at this point we always want to have government debt to some degree. It's a major investment vehicle. About the best idea I've heard on this is that we should balance the budget, to make sure we don't keep increasing debt obligations, and then, over time, we maybe reduce the amount of debt the G incurs every year to a reasonable rate.
"I dont know that at all.
And neither do you. Neither of us has any background in Reserve accounting.
Mosler does and does not describe it as you do. Which I have seen economists who disagree - I haven't seen any rebuttals by reserve accountants.
According to Mosler when he touches on the subject with Economists the exchange always ends with the Economist addmiting they dont understand reserve accounting. "
Mosler is an academic. He has no more background in reserve accounting than anybody else that doesn't actually work in the central bank's accounting departments. he has a lot of theories about how it works in "reality". I put reality in quotes because, as you describe Mosler's argument, the central bank is sealed box, with a black hole at one end, into which money disappears, a white hole at the other, out of which money appears, and internal workings that are what he says they are. Well, I could build a black box machine, into which power disappears, out of which work appears, and I tell you what happens inside, but insist that you can never know for yourself, because it's my box, not yours. Utter, effing BS.
Okay, I've been doing some reading in the Mosler book Phil linked to. It's pure snake oil. The central assertion is that the government can pay for anything it wants to at any rate required because all it has to do is tell a bank to increase the magnitude of some dollar value in some account, and the bank has to do it (because the law says so). The problem is that if the government keeps putting markers (called "dollars") into the banking system by fiat, without removing them from the system in some other way, the amount of value that each marker can hold is reduced. This is because the quantity of goods and services available are relatively constant.
In effect what Mosler suggests is the government keeps shaking down the ecnomy, enforcing the shakedown by law. How does that work? The government pays you $1,000 newly "minted" dollars for this that or ther good or service. But if the government doesn't take in that same $1,000 from somehwere else, the money supply grows by that $1,000 and every dollar decreases in value, because there's now more money in circulation today than there was yesterday, but no more goods and services to be had today that there were yesterday. The government gets $1,000 of goods and services, but the seller gets $1,000 minus the infation rate of the money supply in monetary value.
See, even if it's just an accounting fiction at some level of abstraction, the government still has to borrow and tax in order to keep accounts balanced. Otherwise, the what the government is doing is saying that it gets $1,000.00 worth of value today for $1,000.00 in accounting markers, but tommorow everybody else gets only $999.99 in value for that same $1,000.00. Welcome to Weimar.
=Milo=
If there are currently nine trillion dollars in circulation, and the government prints an additional one trillion dollars, the end effect (in terms of real wealth, not the money used to measure it) is that the government has taxed 10% of everyone's assets (they still have the same amount of dollars, but those dollars are now worth 10% less).
In some ways this is easier than normal taxation - you don't have to manually take money from every person in the country. In some ways this is more problematic than normal taxation - it doesn't allow setting different tax rates for different people, service types, etc., and it damages people's intuition on monetary value due to the rapidly changing worth of the dollar.
Overall, it doesn't strike me as worth it.
Tony,
Mosler is an academic. He has no more background in reserve accounting than anybody else that doesn't actually work in the central bank's accounting departments
-------
Actually that is not true. He is not an academic. And his former background was in finance and reserve accounting.
(SA Phil)
Tony,
Ummmm...I think we need to decouple government deficits from government debt. Surpluses can be used to retire debt, but at this point we always want to have government debt to some degree. It's a major investment vehicle. About the best idea I've heard on this is that we should balance the budget, to make sure we don't keep increasing debt obligations, and then, over time, we maybe reduce the amount of debt the G incurs every year to a reasonable rate.
-------------
Why? -- I didnt get them confused.
Jackson paid off the Debt. The entire thing. Jan 8, 1835.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/04/15/135423586/when-the-u-s-paid-off-the-entire-national-debt-and-why-it-didnt-last
Austerity implies that you are "living within your means" Low deficits or running surpluses.
We have run surpluses at certain times in our history.
In the Post War Era --
*1947-1949
*1951
*1956-1957
*1960
*1969
*1998-2001
During those times we had Debt, but didnt add to it presumably since we were running surpluses.
(SA Phil)
Economics strikes me a bit like medicine. Economies in human society exist, there's no mistaking it, but they were not designed, they evolved. In similar fashion, the human body exists and is the product of undirected, purposeless evolution. We study the body like we study the economy and create theories to explain what we observe.
The goal of any doctor is to keep his patient healthy. The goal of any economist should be to keep the economy healthy. Of course, when we're talking about the real world, it's more like sports medicine.
The goal of the sports doc is to keep the athlete chugging along at maximum performance in the short term, i.e. the period covered by his contract. The private physician retained by the team's owner is trying to keep the guy healthy with as high a quality of life as possible. Quality of life for the athlete is immaterial; if it weren't the sports doc would be screaming at him about steroid abuse and the long-term damage caused by repeated concussions.
When reading about economic theory, I always go back to asking who the economist is working for. Is he trying to maximize gains for the people at the top of the system or for as many people throughout the system as possible? I want to know the agenda long before I get into the nitty-gritty of the theory.
Going back to the science of medicine comparison, there's so much we don't know and we are exploring the very limits of our ignorance. There is so much room out there for well-meaning mistakes, so much potential for persuasive, convincing, believable bunk. And the bunk peddler isn't deliberately BS'ing his audience, doesn't have a hidden agenda, he believes he's doing the lord's work, just like an old-timey doctor with his mercury tinctures and leeches.
Tony,
See, even if it's just an accounting fiction at some level of abstraction, the government still has to borrow and tax in order to keep accounts balanced.
--------
Taxing are covered. Its in the first few pages. He suggests using Taxes to control inflation.
Taxes are supposedly what is necessary to force people to use the fiat money.
------------
Borrowing is what he says isnt really necessary.
How does the government borrowing control inflation? The government has to pay those dollars back with interest.
It is usually listed by austerian economists as inflationary, not deflationary.
(SA Phil)
Between 1901 and 1930
the US had 19 surplus years and 2 balanced years, including surpluses in 1929 and 1930.
So I suppose this period was the closest to austerity.
(SA Phil)
SA Phil:
"Actually that is not true. [Mosler] is not an academic. And his former background was in finance and reserve accounting."
His background was in commercial banking and market investments. There's nothing in his C.V. that has anything to do with reserve banking, either on the commercial or government side. He seems to sit in his haven in the B.V.I. and write tracts. His knowledge of reserve banking is purely academic.
"Why? -- I didnt get [gvoerments deficits and government debt] confused."
I never said you did. I was making the point about their realtionship to each other, which isn't as imtimate as a lot of people seem to think.
"Taxing are covered. Its in the first few pages. He suggests using Taxes to control inflation.
Taxes are supposedly what is necessary to force people to use the fiat money.
------------
Borrowing is what he says isnt really necessary.
How does the government borrowing control inflation? The government has to pay those dollars back with interest.
It is usually listed by austerian economists as inflationary, not deflationary. "
It helps secure the utility of fiat money by requiring public debts to be paid using it. But fiat money would have its own utility in simply being more efficient than commodity money in more complex economies. What Mosler and the chatalist/MMT bunch are doing is inflating a feature into the whole of the thing.
WRT borrowing, it's a means of generating immediate liquidity, more than anything else. But of course seeing things that way relies on not seeing money as essentially created out of thin air. And borrowing need not be infaltionary. The borrowing done to support wars, for example, is simply meeting unexpected immediate obligations now, and paying for them over time. Where government borrowing gets inflationary is when you make it a habit.
Thing is, printing money to buy stuff now, without a borrowing mechanism to get that money back out of the economy quickly, is inflationary. That's why all of the war bonds during WW2. It was a conscious tool to keep all of the money from government contracts, whcih couldn't be immediately spent on consumer goods, from inflating the economy.
jollyreaper:
"The goal of any doctor is to keep his patient healthy. The goal of any economist should be to keep the economy healthy. Of course, when we're talking about the real world, it's more like sports medicine.
When reading about economic theory, I always go back to asking who the economist is working for. Is he trying to maximize gains for the people at the top of the system or for as many people throughout the system as possible? I want to know the agenda long before I get into the nitty-gritty of the theory. "
An economist is not necessarily an economic mechanic. An economist is not even usually an economic mechanic. He's usually a person studying the economy to understand it. and his understanding is usually used to teach people about the economy or to advice an employer or customer how to maneuver within it. Very few economists directly affect economic policy in any way, shape, or form.
And why are we yet again so sure that agendas are divided between the figurative 1% and 99%? There are as many agendas for economists as there are positions in the economy that care to get economic advice. Very few, if any of them, are drawn along such simplistic classist lines.
"When did the US government ever practice austerity?"
Funny question. It seems to imply that the US is the only country, or the only one that matters, so that the experiences of the dozens of other countries with austerity policies don't tell us anything. This is obviously false.
But even in the US: in 1937, partway through recovery, FDR got concerned about deficits and cut back on spending. The economy promptly dipped.
In the early 1980s, Volcker imposed austerity via monetary policy, bringing down inflation and raising unemployment.
"Deficit spending at the bottom of the business cycle is never matched -- in the real world -- with austerity and debt-reduction at the top of the cycle."
False. Clinton had surpluses. Canada's often run surpluses as a matter of course. Sweden and Chile have fiscal rules designed to build in responsible counter-cyclical spending. The US isn't so well designed, but even so we have automatic mechanisms: in recession there's unemployment, a fall in revenues, and a rise in benefits: the deficit increases. (This is in fact the cause of most of Obama's deficits, not deliberate spending.) In good times people go off the rolls and revenues rise, and the deficit shrinks.
As for deliberate debt never being reduced: the massive debt the US picked up partly in the Depression and mostly in WWII was, in fact, reduced. So your claim is false again. Spending went up, spending went down.
If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion -- attributed to George Bernard Shaw
This seems to apply equally to commenters here arguing about economics.
I'll spare you all belaboring my own opinions, which longtime readers here can probably guess.
Carry on anyway!
I have some new topics - related broadly to the Romance super-genre, not space as such - which I will be discussing here sometime fairly soon. (How's that for a shameless teaser?)
Tony,
His background was in commercial banking and market investments.
----------
Are you sure its me who doesn't understand how the system works?
The Fed and Commercial banks are in bed together. Heck its so bad someone should call room service and send them up energy drinks.
Where do you think all these people at the Fed and the Treasury come from?
An interesting article about the incestuousness of it all is located here:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machine-20100405
As an aside take my no-prize about the assumed "academic" part.
(SA Phil)
Tony,
Thing is, printing money to buy stuff now, without a borrowing mechanism to get that money back out of the economy quickly, is inflationary. That's why all of the war bonds during WW2. It was a conscious tool to keep all of the money from government contracts, whcih couldn't be immediately spent on consumer goods, from inflating the economy.
---------------
That isn't actually the same thing. The MMT people only advocate printing or borrowing money (either would be fine to them) to buy goods and services /labor that could be produced were demand not depressed.
Once available resources are being utilized they advocate shutting the "excess" money off.
You are talking about printing money in the case of an employment shortage with surplus aggregate demand.
================
The Keynesians would borrow it instead of creating it out of thin air, but that is still often called "printing money" They would do pretty much the same thing with the money but not spend as much.
The Austrians want to not spend the money in the first place. Counting on people with disposable income to spend their money instead (invest w/e)
(SA Phil)
It is probably more interesting to contemplate the creation of new economies in a colony setting.
The economy will probably resemble a boom area like Texas or Saskatchewan, with labour commanding a high premium (i.e. high wages), while shortages of tools and infrastructure will induce lots of bottlenecks in the economy and keep prices high. The real story will be in the background as people try to create workarounds out of available resources.
What will they use as money (markers of value?), since the official currency supply may not match up with the economic conditions. Where will the resources go? Will the company/government intervene? Will the intervention create a mis allocation of resources and create economic chaos (Think of the "New Deal" and the prolonged length of the Great Depression. Intervention and the chaos it caused eventually led to the Capital Strike of 1937=38 and the lowest point in the Depression).
This is probably the basic background of many basic story line
None of the theories will ever work as advertized:
==============
Austerity will fail because it relies on confidence of the masses. That confidence is impossible to generate because the short term belt tightening required will leave the masses in a state of low confidence.
It may have worked 100 years ago because no one expected anything requiring the government- no health care, no social security, no college tuition assistance, etc. But nowadays ... pfft.
So before the investment kicks in and employment picks up everyone is already sick of the conditions and they vote the Austerians out. (see Europe)
===============
Keynesian and MMT will fail because common people cant comprehend the massive deficits and associated piles of debt. They will fear future inflation whether or not it is happening at that time. No one is willing to "mortgage the country" to the extent it would have to be mortgaged to bring about the conditions the advocates suggest is possible. And thus before it really works they will vote out the Keynesians.
============
Communism will fail because the only way the Socialist Precursor State can separate people from a market economy is to oppress them. And those doing the oppressing will no longer see any way to transform to the Stateless Utopia (if such a thing were even possible)
That and there is the practical problem of how to motivate the proles.
=========
The Paranoia Command Computer scenario will fail because no matter how fair the computer system would be, the humans who programmed it would introduce flaws. Either they would change it until it was essentially a monetary system, or they would make it so it unfairly benefited an oligarchic oppressive group.
It also shares the prole motivation problem.
So it will always be some hodgepodge of available ideas. And those will be in conflict. And we will muddle through with a system as imperfect as those who created it.
The bigger the population the worse it gets. The great global mess.
=================
Which becomes the real macguffin for space colonization --- to get away from all the economic fanatic nutjobs.
(SA Phil)
Damien Sullivan:
"False. Clinton had surpluses."
Not by design he didn't. He let the government get shut down rather than reduce the rate of spending increase.
"The US isn't so well designed, but even so we have automatic mechanisms: in recession there's unemployment, a fall in revenues, and a rise in benefits: the deficit increases. (This is in fact the cause of most of Obama's deficits, not deliberate spending.) In good times people go off the rolls and revenues rise, and the deficit shrinks."
That's within-program cycles. The problem is the ever increasing number of programs that never get sunsetted.
"As for deliberate debt never being reduced: the massive debt the US picked up partly in the Depression and mostly in WWII was, in fact, reduced. So your claim is false again. Spending went up, spending went down."
Not the same thing. War debt is not constant issue of debt over decades.
SA Phil:
"Are you sure its me who doesn't understand how the system works?
The Fed and Commercial banks are in bed together. Heck its so bad someone should call room service and send them up energy drinks.
Where do you think all these people at the Fed and the Treasury come from?"
I understand enough to know that hte people who know the Federal funds business aren't all throughout banks like you suggest. My mother was a career banker. She started out as a teller at a small Bank in Hawaii and ended up an executive in the trust business in a major national bank in California. She could tell you something about the theory of Federal funds, but she would never try to snow you that she was intimately knowledgeable, or had a "background" in it.
Mosler was in debt collection and then market investment, first within a bank in Connecticut, then in Wall Street firms. If that's all he did -- and that's all we have evidence that he did -- he was never in the Federal funds part of the business. In fact, he was nowhere near it. He was on the commercial side of the business, which does all of its banking within the public-facing accounting system of the institution.
"That isn't actually the same thing. The MMT people only advocate printing or borrowing money (either would be fine to them) to buy goods and services /labor that could be produced were demand not depressed.
Once available resources are being utilized they advocate shutting the 'excess' money off.
You are talking about printing money in the case of an employment shortage with surplus aggregate demand. "
You're missing the point. Creating demand that way still inflates the economy, because more money is still being put in the system than is being taken out.
Thucydides said..."It is probably more interesting to contemplate the creation of new economies in a colony setting."
I'm surprised we're not contemplating the creation of whole new economics right now. I won't lie, I'm no economist and my knowledge on the matter is limited to simply knowing things aren't all that great. But regardless, I'm puzzled as to why politicians and economists from both wings of the political spectrum are relying on historical dogmas and creeds to tackle the problems of an entirely different world faced with new challenges.
Maybe I'm being misguided and naive and perhaps someone can set me straight, but shouldn't 21st century solutions be used to solve the problems of the 21st century?
I doubt it it possible to create "new" economics; the basic principles were mapped out by traders in the ancient world (if not long before) and analyzed in the 1700's.
If anything, we now understand economics involves far more interdependent variables than Adam Smith recognized (or not, Smith also wrote on the morality of economics, but lacked the mathematical and observational tools we have today), but are still constrained by the lack of tools to fully understand what is going on.
Indeed, since many of the relationships between variables is non linear, chaos theory suggests it is impossible to fully describe, understand or predict what is happening. Many of the basic assumptions of classical economics have long and well proven track records in describing economic activities in broad strokes, trying to go deeper and especially trying to make policy based on such a limited understanding is like trying to fix a classical Swiss watch with a hammer.
"If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion -- attributed to George Bernard Shaw"
Thing is, mid-century that wasn't true. There was a strong Keynesian consensus. In 1971 Nixon called himself Keynesian and gave a speech Krugman would be proud of, in reaction to the horrors of 6% unemployment. Sadly, as I said, he was entering a period when the problem was "expensive energy" not "quirks of the macroecon cycle" and the growing plutocracy took that as a chance to discredit the ideas... even though they're still the best model we have, and the alternatives fail to describe reality.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/opinion/krugman-plutocracy-paralysis-perplexity.html
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/05/the-incredulity-problem/
"Think of the "New Deal" and the prolonged length of the Great Depression"
The New Deal started after the Depression had already stretched on for four years. Blaming the length on the government is pretty hilarious.
"Keynesian and MMT will fail because common people cant comprehend the massive deficits and associated piles of debt. They will fear future inflation whether or not it is happening at that time"
Again, this ignores that there used to be a Keynesian consensus. "We are all Keynesians now." -- Milton Friedman. So obviously the ideas are not intrinsically too hard to grasp. And "a country is not a household or a business" is a mantra to hammer in.
"That's within-program cycles. The problem is the ever increasing number of programs that never get sunsetted."
Apart from the crisis, has spending as a percentage of GDP been trending up or down? Spoiler: down.
"War debt is not constant issue of debt over decades."
And get-out-of-depression debt is not constant issue of debt over decades.
"shouldn't 21st century solutions be used to solve the problems of the 21st century?"
The problem of the 21st century bears a striking resemblance to the 1930s. Bank panics are an old phenomenon. So are asset bubbles: the Dutch tulip mania was in 1637. Aggregate demand in a country is aggregate demand. New chrome, old currents.
Thucydides does have a point; developing an economy on another world would probably be as difficult as exploring that world, and present just as many unique challanges. Interesting to think of what a Mars or Callisto colony might use for money, and what it might be based on, as well as its wider economies.
Ferrell
The argument that the New Deal extended the Great Depression is actually a very old one (dating back to the Great Depression itself), and explored in great depth in: The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes
It is also an interesting observation that most depressions prior to the Great Depression solved themselves quite quickly without any government intervention (and indeed in US history, most financial crisis were shorter and less severe during the era of free banking than after the establishment of the Federal Reserve).
Damien,
Again, this ignores that there used to be a Keynesian consensus. "We are all Keynesians now." -- Milton Friedman. So obviously the ideas are not intrinsically too hard to grasp. And "a country is not a household or a business" is a mantra to hammer in.
===========
Except there didn't really used to be a consensus.
-----------------------------
====================
"The phrase was first attributed to Milton Friedman in the December 31, 1965, edition of Time magazine. In the February 4, 1966, edition, Friedman wrote a letter clarifying that his original statement had been "In one sense, we are all Keynesians now; in another, nobody is any longer a Keynesian."
================
-----------------------
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for a forthcoming consensus either.
Unless the hammer you are talking about is applied liberally to Paul Ryan type adherents in a dark alley.
(SA Phil)
Thucydides said...
The argument that the New Deal extended the Great Depression is actually a very old one (dating back to the Great Depression itself), and explored in great depth in: The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes
It is also an interesting observation that most depressions prior to the Great Depression solved themselves quite quickly without any government intervention (and indeed in US history, most financial crisis were shorter and less severe during the era of free banking than after the establishment of the Federal Reserve).
=================
You could make the point that they had to be.
After the new Deal and safety nets- those with the capital were no longer obligated to "do something"
Prior to that if they didn't start hiring people, the resulting starvation and discontent could have led to a Marxist style coup.
(SA Phil)
A little more clarification of why I say there has been no consensus.
I wouldn't say there is an Austerity based consensus in the US - even though politics has allowed them to stop further stimulus and convince "everyone" there is a debt crisis.
Same with Europe even at the height of the Austerity craze. There were plenty of opponents in the wings waiting to change things. (And now we see what is looming for France)
It was exactly the same with Keynesians seemed to be calling the shots -- opposition was always there waiting to reverse course.
Nixon had plenty of opponents, Johnson had plenty of Opponents, as did Kennedy, Eisenhower, going all the way back to Washington (who had Hamilton running their plan -- opposed famously by T. Jefferson.)
It always swings back and forth between ideas. There is never a consensus ... just brief periods where one group has or seems to have control of the agenda.
(SA Phil)
Damien Sullivan:
"Apart from the crisis, has spending as a percentage of GDP been trending up or down? Spoiler: down."
I'm sorry...I didn't realize the metric for appropriate spending was percentage of GDP.
"And get-out-of-depression debt is not constant issue of debt over decades."
If we were talking about debt WRT the Great Depression, I'd agree with you. But the fact is that most programs innaugurated in the Depression are still with us. The size of the armed forces rapidly decreased after WW2. The size of the rest of government didn't, or if it did, not by much.
Tony,
If we were talking about debt WRT the Great Depression, I'd agree with you. But the fact is that most programs innaugurated in the Depression are still with us. The size of the armed forces rapidly decreased after WW2. The size of the rest of government didn't, or if it did, not by much.
===============
Actually, amazingly, not as much as you may think. At least in terms of spending.
http://politicsandprosperity.wordpress.com/2012/02/28/defense-as-an-investment-in-liberty-and-prosperity/defense-spending-in-2005-dollars_1929-2011/
As a percentage of GDP it is not as bad but still elevated beyond the pre-war era.
Still, I didn't realize the metric for appropriate defense spending was percentage of GDP.
Its possible we have been piling on partial World War 2 -like military debt for a couple of generations.
(SA Phil)
Interestingly this sustained budget is 30-50 times NASAs historical budget.
http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/6e97d7177e5a.png
Arguing that a sustained space program several times the the scale of Apollo actually be affordable at some point in the Plausible Midfuture.
(SA Phil)
The Great Depression was caused, in part, by the massive debts the Great Powers had taken on to prosecute the Great War of 1914-1918. WWII did not see such a depression in the post war era since the financing was done differently (War bonds more or less excluded private spending from the economy, and when the war was ended the pent up demand from the civilian side took over from the rapidly decreasing government side), and since the economic circumstances had changed (most of the global economy was in ruins, so the US economy was reacting to global demand).
Our modern debt crisis is caused because of decades of deficit spending (mostly on "entitlements", which far exceed military spending), and the fact that both the public and private sector are heavily in debt; unlike WWII, there is no enforced savings mechanism like War Bonds, and voluntary savings mechanisms like US 401K programs are nowhere near the scale and scope of the debt. US 401K plans have a combined total of about $2 trillion dollars. This administration has piled on well over a trillion dollars of debt each year in office just on the Federal side; State debts and unfunded liabilities like public sector pensions also dwarf the saved amounts (unfunded public sector liabilities in pensions alone are more than $2 trillion in the United States).
So if people are starting to get jittery about the size of the debt and wonder if it is possible that it will never be paid (or bondholders will be forced to take Greek style haircuts of 60% of the value of their investment), it isn't too hard to understand why.
Even using Kennedy or Reagan style tax cuts to invigorate the economy is only a partial solution, while a rapidly growing economy can soak up excessive money supply and reduce inflation while generating new wealth to pay the debt, the timeline may be too long for jittery investors to wait, and politicians and special interests will seek to capture the new revenue streams for their own purposes.
Sorry, forgot this point:
During the Free Banking era, there was no "obligation" to do anything either, and while local banks may have taken local action to protect their assets, no individual person or institution could affect much more than what was within "arm's reach".
Generally, the only thing that could be done was to write off bad debt, and watch as overextended institutions collapsed. New investors then picked up assets for pennies on the dollar and reused them for other purposes, bringing the economy back into equilibrium.
Blogger Thucydides said...
Sorry, forgot this point:
During the Free Banking era, there was no "obligation" to do anything either, and while local banks may have taken local action to protect their assets, no individual person or institution could affect much more than what was within "arm's reach".
=============
Actually you completely missed my point, the obligation I referred to was in the sense of self-preservation interest.
IOW the safety net not only protects those at the bottom, it protects those at the top from those at the bottom.
(SA Phil)
Blogger Thucydides said...
The Great Depression was caused, in part, by the massive debts the Great Powers had taken on to prosecute the Great War of 1914-1918...
========
That is certainly how the Austerity focused types see it.
The Keynes adherents see it differently.
The Marxists see it differently than either of those.
The "futurist" slant which in mentioned by Kaku (among others) sees it differently as well.
There is no consensus on what caused that depression, or this one.
(SA Phil)
SA Phil:
"The 'futurist' slant which in mentioned by Kaku (among others) sees it differently as well."
There's a "futurist" school of economics which Kaku subscribes to? Couldyou elaborate on that?
Tony,
There's a "futurist" school of economics which Kaku subscribes to? Couldyou elaborate on that?
======
Not a school of economics .. a slant on why economics turns out the way it does.
I mentioned it early in this thread. Essentially they see boom and bust cycles as directly related to certain technological advances.
An intial boom as the technologies takes off, followed by a bust caused by overextention.
So for example the 2008 bust was the resut of increases in cell phones/ smart phones, internet/computer developments. (and so on - with more detail than I remember) -- The Boom periods was the 1990's, and then sometime before 2008.
While the 1929 bust was the backlash related to all the technological progress of the preceding decades. An example made was there were 2000 US car companies in 1920.. but most fell apart before the crash.
The idea is you can look at every boom and bust cycle in history and find technological advances that appear related.
Are they right? To any extent? Who knows? being right doesn't seem to be a criteria for having an economic explanation of things.
(SA Phil)
SA Phil:
"Not a school of economics .. a slant on why economics turns out the way it does.
I mentioned it early in this thread. Essentially they see boom and bust cycles as directly related to certain technological advances."
Correlation does not imply causation.
And Kaku is a snake oil salesman.
Tony,
Correlation does not imply causation.
And Kaku is a snake oil salesman.
------------
Sure, it also possible the boom times lead to those advancements because there is more money for Product Development/ R&D
As to the snake oil salesman bit - there are people say the same thing about Marx, Keynes, Mises, Paul Ryan, Merkel, Bernanke, Greenspan ... the list goes on.
And some probably are. Can't keep the players straight without a program.
Unfortunately its common to dismiss those of opposing points of view (on whatever subject) as disingenuous.
(SA Phil)
This economics discussion is getting tedious; can we change the subject? Seriously, can we talk about something else? Like mining asteroids for fun and profit, or looking for ET's under the ice of Europa, or cruising the deserts of Titan...this science is just too dismal...
Ferrell
There's a huge difference between the Federal Reserve messing up and extending the Depression, and the New Deal -- which didn't start for four years, and which was quickly followed by improvement -- extending the Depression.
"In one sense, we are all Keynesians now; in another, nobody is any longer a Keynesian."
That sounds like there was a consensus, but one that wasn't pure Keynesianism. Most of the post-war period has been what I'd call a Keynesian-monetarist hybrid, using central bank money supply to control the economy, in addition to the automatic Keynesianism of progressive taxes and safety net spending. The full bore fiscal stimulus is only needed in a liquidity trap, which we managed to avoid for so long that we forgot how to deal with it.
"It always swings back and forth between ideas. There is never a consensus ... just brief periods where one group has or seems to have control of the agenda."
There was a bipartisan consensus in the US, and domination of economic faculty. Not unanimous, no.
"I'm sorry...I didn't realize the metric for appropriate spending was percentage of GDP."
That's like someone talking a lot about space and then mentioning they didn't realize mass ratios were significant.
"But the fact is that most programs innaugurated in the Depression are still with us"
What does that have to do with debt? Taxes were raised to pay for the increased social spending, and debt/GDP fell for decades, until Reagan.
"The Great Depression was caused, in part, by the massive debts the Great Powers had taken on to prosecute the Great War of 1914-1918."
11 years after war, with an intervening huge stock market boom and adoption of new technologies?
"Our modern debt crisis is caused because of decades of deficit spending (mostly on "entitlements", which far exceed military spending)"
A majority of spending is on entitlements, yes. However, the *change* in budgets that led to large deficits was a combination of tax cuts (especially for the rich) and increased defense spending. The biggest entitlements, SS and Medicare, have their own tax and ran surpluses for most of the period.
"This administration has piled on well over a trillion dollars of debt each year in office just on the Federal side"
But that's because of the crisis, not a cause of it. Revenues fell by hundreds of billions of dollars, and spending increased by hundreds of billions in food stamps and unemployment insurance.
"So if people are starting to get jittery about the size of the debt and wonder if it is possible that it will never be paid (or bondholders will be forced to take Greek style haircuts of 60% of the value of their investment), it isn't too hard to understand why."
If the people are ignorant of both arithmetic and history and don't look at debt/GDP graphs, yes.
"So for example the 2008 bust was the resut of increases in cell phones/ smart phones, internet/computer developments. (and so on - with more detail than I remember) -- The Boom periods was the 1990's, and then sometime before 2008. "
Cell phones caused a bubble in real estate?
Damien Sullivan:
"That's like someone talking a lot about space and then mentioning they didn't realize mass ratios were significant."
Poor analogy. Percentage of GDP perhaps sets a ceiling, but it doesn't set a minimum.
"What does that have to do with debt? Taxes were raised to pay for the increased social spending, and debt/GDP fell for decades, until Reagan."
The problem is that hte social spending was predicated on a much higher ratio of workers to recipients than we enjoy today. Taxes can't be raised any more. And we can't afford the deficits either.
Tony,
The problem is that hte social spending was predicated on a much higher ratio of workers to recipients than we enjoy today.
=====================
Actually that is not true. While the current Labor participation rate is the lowest it has been in Decades, it is higher than it was in the 35 years following World War 2.
(see chart)
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RP9xynXqLVc/T5dw3H1oOPI/AAAAAAAAAy4/-HUKPuC9GfE/s1600/lfpr+2.jpg
========================
Tony,
Taxes can't be raised any more. And we can't afford the deficits either.
==================
Taxes have been much higher in the past.
The Top marginal rate for example is lower today that for almost the entire post war Era
http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/archive/2010/02/86_marginalgrowth.jpg
Corporate Taxes have also been a much higher percentage of GDP
http://i.imgur.com/SKQIr.png
Both Deficits and the national debt as a percentage of GDP were much higher in World War 2 than they are now.
http://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2009/feb/deficit/deficit.gif
So its probably a hyperbole to say taxes can't be raised and we cant afford the deficits
Not that it would be a good idea necessarily.
(SA Phil)
There's a certain phrase "being on the right side of history" which implies that there can be a kind of vindication in hindsight. We can think of numerous issues in the past that were bitterly contested and yet now few would argue with. Slavery, segregation and civil rights, women's suffrage, child labor, these are settled matters.
In any of these debates the two sides were the reformers and the preservers. And the preserver argument usually goes as follows:
There's not a problem to begin with. Everything is fine. This is the way things have always been done. Shut up.
Later, when the public shows a growing concern about the matter at hand the preserver will concede yes, it's certainly terrible but there's simply nothing that can be done about it. It's impossible even if we wanted to. Shut up.
As reform pressure mounts, it becomes perfectly clear that change is possible and the preserver will now say of course we could but we shouldn't because of blah-blah made-up facts. Shut up.
After the change finally happens, the preserver will then take credit for always being for the idea to begin with. That is, until sufficient time has passed that he thinks he can get away with trying to undo all those gains won with blood and sacrifice all those years ago. This is why we're seeing an assault on the women's reproductive rights, the entire legacy of 20th century labor reform including outlawing child labor, etc.
It's really tiresome.
jollyreaper:
"trying to undo all those gains won with blood and sacrifice all those years ago."
Hyperbolic nonsense.
Most workers in this country never saw a Pinkerton's detective or a sheriff's posse. Many so-called "scabs" -- and not a few guards and agents -- were beaten bloody by union thugs. We won't even go in to small wars like Matewan. If anything, honors were pretty even.
What actually made things better for workers in this country was enough people getting fed up and voting for representatives that would change the laws.
"This is why we're seeing an assault on the women's reproductive rights, the entire legacy of 20th century labor reform including outlawing child labor, etc."
Let's get something straight. Abortion is only a crime if the fetus is considered by the law to be a legal person with rights. At that point, there's no woman's reproductive right that is more important than the rights of the unborn person. THe abortion battle is about whether a fetus hould legally be a person, not about whether a woman has reproductive rights.
WRT labor reform, really? Where are the child labor laws under "assault"? Hmmm? What other reforms are so terribly threatened, and how?
See, JR, it's easy to ape the propaganda of this or that agenda, but can you back it up?
SA Phil:
"Actually that is not true. While the current Labor participation rate is the lowest it has been in Decades, it is higher than it was in the 35 years following World War 2."
The labor force participation rate is not the figure of merit. The figure of merit is the number of workers per recipient.
See this infographic:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e1/Social_Security_Worker_to_Beneficiary_Ratio.png
Long story short, SS was invented for a world where relatively many workers supported relatively few recipients. That's not the case any more.
"Taxes have been much higher in the past.
The Top marginal rate for example is lower today that for almost the entire post war Era
Corporate Taxes have also been a much higher percentage of GDP"
It's not income tax that's going to kill us. It's separate taxes designed to support social programs, like Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. See above for the reason why.
"Both Deficits and the national debt as a percentage of GDP were much higher in World War 2 than they are now."
A global total war is hardly the model for long term economic organization.
Tony, I'm not engaging with you anymore. Reply if you want but I'm not reading, I'm not responding. Not worth the time or effort.
jollyreaper:
"Tony, I'm not engaging with you anymore. Reply if you want but I'm not reading, I'm not responding. Not worth the time or effort."
Sorry to hear that.
Here's food for thought -- when I was a teenager, I hung around with a groups of older, adult wargamers. They held no hostility towards myself personally, but they were absolutely ruthless with the stereotypes and cliches I filtered the world through. It was very hard to take at times, but I did not give up, and I eventually learned to think for myself. I have had reason on many occasions since to be thankful for that.
"Taxes can't be raised any more"
Dude, now I really can't take you seriously. Taxes have been cut and cut for the past 30 years. As a percentage of GDP they're lower than they've been in decades (note that obviates worrying about interactions between nominal rates and loopholes; of course the rates are low as well)
Yes, demographics have changed. But we have better demographics and lower taxes than other countries that still manage to run a surplus. And it's not like there was a huge change in demographics between the Clinton surpluses and the Bush tax cuts.
'Where are the child labor laws under "assault"'
Republican legislators have talked about repealing those laws. Still fringe AFAIK, but they're moving it into the realm of the speakable.
Newt suggested putting poor elementary age kids to janitorial work when he was on the campaign trail.
(SA Phil)
Damien Sullivan:
"Dude, now I really can't take you seriously. Taxes have been cut and cut for the past 30 years. As a percentage of GDP they're lower than they've been in decades (note that obviates worrying about interactions between nominal rates and loopholes; of course the rates are low as well)
Yes, demographics have changed. But we have better demographics and lower taxes than other countries that still manage to run a surplus. And it's not like there was a huge change in demographics between the Clinton surpluses and the Bush tax cuts."
Here are the facts, as put out by Urban and Brookings, themselves cribbing off of OMB:
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=205
If you graph these numbers out, it turn out that:
Personal income tax revenues have hovered right around 8% of GDP since 1944. (They were under 3% until then.) The peak was at 10.2%, in 2000. For those that are wondering, yes, that coincides with the record Clinton surplus year.
Corporate taxes did come down steadily from a high of 7.2% in 1945. But that all ended as of 1981. Since then they have mostly bounced between 1% and 2%. Exceptions were a short run in the mid 1990s at a little bit above 2% and, for some reason, a post 1971 high at almost 3% in FY 06-07.
Social insurance revenues were at less than 2% of GDP in 1944. But they have hovered right around 6.5% since the mid 1980s.
Combined revenues -- including income taxes, social insurance, and excises -- have been hovering around 17.5% of GDP since 1952. Significantly, I think, the post 1945 maximum was -- you guessed it -- in 2000.
Now, I gather you get "As a percentage of GDP they're lower than they've been in decades" from the fact that revenues have fallen off precipitously after FY 07. But it should be pretty obvious why that happened. Also it should be noted that between FY 04 and FY 07, they had actually been climbing, during the recovery from the post 9/11 recession.
Simply put: The Clinton surpluses were sitting on top of a bubble. They were simply unsustainable. What you are doing is taking an exceptional condition -- the peacetime equivalent of an overheated wartime economy -- and advertising it as some form of normality that can be achieved over the long term.
Historically, it seems that the safe long term average for all federal revenues seems to be at around 17.5% of GDP. But maintenance of that level is threatened by deficit spending (and the consequently increasing debt service load), and the likely increases in social insurance expenditures.
"Republican legislators have talked about repealing those laws. Still fringe AFAIK, but they're moving it into the realm of the speakable."
Yeah -- a state senator in Missouri, gaining about zero traction. And Newt being Newt. That's harldy an assault, by any stretch of the imagination.
In fact, the cause of protecting children in the workforce marches on. Note that Labor recently tried to enact a rule that would keep children under 16 from working on non-family farms. I'm personally ambivalent. A lot of kids make a lot of money in the summer on farms held by non-family members or even by agribusiness. At the same time there's a lot of abuse of adolescent labor. I think Labor should have been more nuanced in its approach, but I'm not totally opposed to keeping younger teens out of dangerous situation in the agricultural fields and lots of this country.
SA Phil:
"Newt suggested putting poor elementary age kids to janitorial work when he was on the campaign trail."
Good ol' Newt is full of knee slappers. He's not in the running anymore, largely, I think, precisely because he floats such outrageous ideas.
When Romney or Obama or anybody sitting in a national legislative office starts getting votes based on relaxing child labor laws, then we can revisit this. k?
I think the only response I have left is ..
http://www.teapartyinspace.org/
(SA Phil)
I eventually learned to think for myself. I have had reason on many occasions since to be thankful for that.
In spite of which, your assertions here are pretty much generic right-leaning boilerplate.
Mind you, I'm not saying any other recent assertions in this thread are better. And adding my own boilerplate wouldn't really change anything, either.
Discussion of space colony economies would be interesting, in principle, but I suspect it would devolve into the same old arguments that can be found in the comment sections of pretty much every political blog.
Yeah, I know - I need to write a front page post so people can move on.
Since this is becoming an economics superthread, perhaps we can ask our host to post again on gathering space resources for fun and profit (as James Cameron and friends are attempting to do) or revisit post scarcity economics.
Even looking at how the PMF will change now that it has been recognized that North America is sitting on a bonanza of hydrocarbon wealth (It has been estimated that the oil royalties from the North Dacota Bakken formation may be enough to put a huge dent in the US national debt; similarly the reserves identified in California (although to tap thiose would require horizontal drilling from Nevada under the current political situation)).
Will a wealthy PMF be different from what is currently being forecast? Or will the wealth drive rivalries and create conflict (i.e. China suddenly discovering the Americans are still going to be the largest and wealthiest economy for generations to come)?
Rick:
"In spite of which, your assertions here are pretty much generic right-leaning boilerplate."
To some people here -- perhaps even yourself -- what I have to say is indeed right-leaning. To the people on more conservative discussion sites I've been known to frequent, I'm equally dissatisfying, but in the opposite direction. Truth is, I don't subscribe to anyone's orthodoxy. I just express my own opinion.
"Mind you, I'm not saying any other recent assertions in this thread are better. And adding my own boilerplate wouldn't really change anything, either."
Funny thing is, of all the people here, I consider your opinions, even the ones I don't agree with -- sometimes vehemently -- to be Grade A, 100% boilerplate-free. I've always admired your ability to think for yourself and express your opinions in your own way. I guess I always thought there was a symmetry of opinion on that point, despite other disagreements. I guess we all need disillusionment from time to time, huh?
SA Phil:
"I think the only response I have left is ..
http://www.teapartyinspace.org/"
I've got Tea Party friends, but I'm about the most Tea Party skeptical person you're likely to meet. Of course I'm also #occupy skeptical. Just because I get more scope here to address the latter, that doesn't mean I'm all one way.
BTW, WRT the site you provided a link to, I think my record is pretty clear that I thin Libertaianism IN SPAAACE! to be a pretty dumb idea.
One other suggestion is to explore where the Rocketpunk future actually went.
This article in NBF provides one POV: http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/05/where-did-future-go-strategy-of.html
Naturally there are many other factors in play as well.
Thucydides:
"One other suggestion is to explore where the Rocketpunk future actually went.
This article in NBF provides one POV: http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/05/where-did-future-go-strategy-of.html
Naturally there are many other factors in play as well."
An interesting commentary on some aspects of political and social history, and the history of technology. But I think the reasons we've always kicked around here are the real story -- space is just damned hard.
Discussion of space colony economies would be interesting, in principle, but I suspect it would devolve into the same old arguments that can be found in the comment sections of pretty much every political blog.
Honestly, it seems to me like we're getting our scifi economic problems long before our starships and AI's.
Thing is, discussing economics is pretty much as radioactive as sex, politics, and religion -- things never to be discussed in polite company.
It's fashionable to make sweeping pronouncements about entering grand new eras of this and that with rules no longer applying -- the end of history, the permanent bull market, etc. There's also a fallacy of mistaking one's self for living in a unique and unprecedented time -- I forget the term for this myopia but it first came up talking about premillenialist christians who felt that all the prophecies were coming true in their lifetime.
Still, for all that, there are unique times. The 20th century has a lot of factors going for it that were beyond everything that came before. Bigger technology, bigger wars, greater consequences.
I think we're certainly in store for Chinese times ahead, the "interesting" kind.
JR,
Thing is, discussing economics is pretty much as radioactive as sex, politics, and religion --
-------
My contention is (barring a few details) they are all pretty much the same thing anyway.
(SA Phil)
SA Phil:
"My contention is (barring a few details) they are all pretty much the same thing anyway."
I think it's more accurate to say that they all, including economics, partake of each other in such an intimate way that nobody can remain aloof.
Thing is, discussing economics is pretty much as radioactive as sex, politics, and religion --
-------
My contention is (barring a few details) they are all pretty much the same thing anyway.
Well, I tend to agree that politics basically boils down to "who gets what, when, and how." Economics can be defined as "the branch of knowledge concerned with the production, consumption, and transfer of wealth" or "the branch of social science that deals with the production and distribution and consumption of goods and services and their management." So you can well imagine that will be political. And people tend to know what they believe and won't let facts get in the way which can be described as taking things religiously. And religion can give you power over the politics and the economics. And as a certain Cuban philosopher once said, "You gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women."
Ok, we've come up with the Grand Unified Theory of Human Nature. And we can't discuss it with anyone lest the talk turn uncivil!
jollyreaper:
"Ok, we've come up with the Grand Unified Theory of Human Nature. And we can't discuss it with anyone lest the talk turn uncivil!"
Of course it can be discussed civilly, at least in principle. The problem is that one needs every party to relinquish dogma and take a pragmatic attitude.
Tony,
Of course it can be discussed civilly, at least in principle. The problem is that one needs every party to relinquish dogma and take a pragmatic attitude.
======
Warp Drive, Transporters and Anti-gravity are more plausible.
(SA Phil)
As to what the economies of Space Colonies would look like.
I expect it would change based on the size/age of the colony.
Early on it would probably resemble Antartica's economy.
Basically everything they had would come from Earth and it would be assigend to the member of the expidition/or the colony based on need.
The first local trade would probably be Barter. Wages from the sponsor on Earth would probably have little day to day value.
(SA Phil)
SA Phil:
"Warp Drive, Transporters and Anti-gravity are more plausible."
Indeed.
"As to what the economies of Space Colonies would look like.
I expect it would change based on the size/age of the colony.
Early on it would probably resemble Antartica's economy.
Basically everything they had would come from Earth and it would be assigend to the member of the expidition/or the colony based on need.
The first local trade would probably be Barter. Wages from the sponsor on Earth would probably have little day to day value."
Actually, a prison economy wouldn't be a bad model. Everybody gets a standard ration of everything, but nobody uses precisely that much of anything. So, yes, barter would probably be in effect for a lot of commodities And services -- maybe not crack whores, but a girl could certainly be nice to a guy who had something she wanted, like shower privileges he didn't use, or ciggies, or liquor...
=Milo=
So if anyone wants some mindless violence to ease the tension, this is going to make gamma ray lasers a lot easier.
It also has some non-violent applications but who cares about that?
Milo:
"So if anyone wants some mindless violence to ease the tension, this is going to make gamma ray lasers a lot easier.
It also has some non-violent applications but who cares about that?"
The problem is that gammas are too energetic. If you had them at weapons grade density, they would destroy the lens. Actually, they would probably destroy the generator. See bomb-pumped x-ray lasers.
Tony said..."The problem is that gammas are too energetic. If you had them at weapons grade density, they would destroy the lens."
I can't imagine it's too much of a leap to suppose that material sciences will produce lenses capable of directing weapons grade gamma-rays.
Sean:
"I can't imagine it's too much of a leap to suppose that material sciences will produce lenses capable of directing weapons grade gamma-rays."
No disrespect intended, but that's faith in progress talking. Materials science has to work with known materials and known physical principles. The properties of both are pretty well understood at this point. There just doesn't appear to be that much wiggle room in which to discover a material to focus high density gammas, no matter how useful such a thing might be.
If you had a space warfare setting with Anti-matter ships... the Gamma Ray lens would be pretty helpful I imagine in detection.
Either in longer range detection (no stealth) or determining someone has been thrusting around recently (stealth in Spaaace!)
(SA Phil)
SA Phil:
"If you had a space warfare setting with Anti-matter ships... the Gamma Ray lens would be pretty helpful I imagine in detection.
Either in longer range detection (no stealth) or determining someone has been thrusting around recently (stealth in Spaaace!)"
Pretty much any canonical torch drive is going to spit out gammas at a high rate. But here's the thing...if the exhaust doesn't consume the drive (e.g. Orion) then the gammas are propagating in a narrow cone, at the speed of light, and any particle interactions they have in interplanetary space -- or even with matter components of the exhaust -- are going to leave all kinds fossils that by definition won't be gammas.
I have been looking over some of the Laser power/difraction formulas at Atomic Rockets and I have a question about Tony's comment.
If difraction equals
"RT = 0.61 * D * L / RL
where:
•RT = beam radius at target (m)
•D = distance from laser emitter to target (m)
•L = wavelength of laser beam (m, see table below)
•RL = radius of laser lens or reflector (m)"
Why is the Gamma Weapon Laser immediately disqualified? Difraction seems to be is a function of wavelength. The Gamma laser would need a lot less Energy at the lens than a visible light laser to have the same energy density at the target.
By a lot less it looks like thousands of times less.
The difference between 700nm (visible red) and 0.01nm (low end gamma) is 70,000.
(SA Phil)
Tony,
Pretty much any canonical torch drive is going to spit out gammas at a high rate. But here's the thing...if the exhaust doesn't consume the drive (e.g. Orion) then the gammas are propagating in a narrow cone, at the speed of light, and any particle interactions they have in interplanetary space -- or even with matter components of the exhaust -- are going to leave all kinds fossils that by definition won't be gammas.
========
Even interplanetary space is pretty empty.
How about Interstellar Space? The Antimatter deccelrating warfleet?
Is there any advantage to detecting gamma vs IR?
(SA Phil)
SA Phil:
"I have been looking over some of the Laser power/difraction formulas at Atomic Rockets and I have a question about Tony's comment.
...
Why is the Gamma Weapon Laser immediately disqualified? Difraction seems to be is a function of wavelength. The Gamma laser would need a lot less Energy at the lens than a visible light laser to have the same energy density at the target.
By a lot less it looks like thousands of times less.
The difference between 700nm (visible red) and 0.01nm (low end gamma) is 70,000."
Well, first of all, beam width is really a constraint on effective range, not a constraint on weapon energy. No weaponeer -- much less a paying customer -- would likely accept the beam strike extending beyond the corpus of the target.
But that's not the big problem.
Gammas are simply more energetic per photon than visible or UV light. For any given output energy, one has fewer photons, but each photon's interaction with any given atom in the refractive material is much more energetic.
So far so good? Okay...
Here's where this gets a weaponeer in trouble: gammas come from very energetic events, like lightning and nuclear explosions. (We'll leave things like material falling into black holes and supernovas out of the discussion, for reasons that should be obvious.) The energy flux from such events pretty much tears up anything material it comes in contact with.
Well, one might say, why not scavenge low-density gamma rays off of less energetic events and focus them into a beam? In principle that's possible. But how much energy is being wasted in generating relatively low energy events, compared to how much energy in gamma rays you get out of them?
"Even interplanetary space is pretty empty.
How about Interstellar Space? The Antimatter deccelrating warfleet?
Is there any advantage to detecting gamma vs IR?"
If they're pointing their drive in your direction right when you're looking, yeah. But the energy densities in question mean that existing gamma detectors are probably good enough. Gamma refraction is really just useful in making passive gamma detectors more efficient.
Tony,
Well, first of all, beam width is really a constraint on effective range, not a constraint on weapon energy. No weaponeer -- much less a paying customer -- would likely accept the beam strike extending beyond the corpus of the target.
--------
Doesn't diffraction cover both?
You need X energy density to do Y damage to the target.
Diffraction reduces said density in a linear manner, and thus reduces your effective range.
Thus if I use a low wavelength laser I can get exactly the same target energy density at exactly the same range with a lower input energy.
The lower required input energy should also reduce the required efficiency of the laser to some extent.
If my input energy requirement is 10% of another system, I can be 10% as efficient and it is still a wash.
(SA Phil)
SA Phil:
"Doesn't diffraction cover both?
You need X energy density to do Y damage to the target.
Diffraction reduces said density in a linear manner, and thus reduces your effective range.
Thus if I use a low wavelength laser I can get exactly the same target energy density at exactly the same range with a lower input energy.
The lower required input energy should also reduce the required efficiency of the laser to some extent.
If my input energy requirement is 10% of another system, I can be 10% as efficient and it is still a wash."
You're conflating energy density with total energy delivered.
If you're trying to punch through armor, using gammas might give you an advantage. But the problem with using gammas is as already discussed: practical issues with the energy output of a compact enough beam generator.
Tony,
You're conflating energy density with total energy delivered.
----------
No I dont think I am. The size of the spot is directly proportional in a linear fashion to the Wavelength of the beam. Thus for a given spot size, the total delivered energy should be the same.
As you said it increases range. But that also means at the same range input energy will be less. Since the range/spot size is completley linear.
Ill look at the math again unless someone already knows but I suspect the graph is a simple ramp.
============
If you're trying to punch through armor, using gammas might give you an advantage. But the problem with using gammas is as already discussed: practical issues with the energy output of a compact enough beam generator.
================
Why would it give you an advantage? The energy is the same?
The practical issue I can see, but the GRL device can also be much less efficient than the larger wavelength Laser.
(SA Phil)
The discussion of X ray lasers in Atomic Rockets points out that at X ray wavelengths, matter is no longer "smooth" so the idea of using sheets of dense materials as "X ray mirrors" to focus or direct the Xaser beam becomes moot. Some sort of diffraction grating is needed instead.
A Gamma ray laser would have the same problem with much higher energy density, unless somthing hyper exotic like an electron gas mirror (proposed for the Sanger antimatter drive) could be produced. I had once come across a proposal for a Gamma ray laser generator which was similar in principle to the bomb pumped "Excalibur" X ray laser device, but utilized needles of high density material embedded in a matrix to convert the bomb's energy to coherent gamma rays. With this in mind, it would seem that Xasers and Gamma ray laser weapons might be more practical as missile warheads rather than the primary weapons of Laserstars.
SA Phil:
"No I dont think I am. The size of the spot is directly proportional in a linear fashion to the Wavelength of the beam. Thus for a given spot size, the total delivered energy should be the same.
As you said it increases range. But that also means at the same range input energy will be less. Since the range/spot size is completley linear.
Ill look at the math again unless someone already knows but I suspect the graph is a simple ramp."
If you scroll down a ways, you'll find that Winch gives this equation:
BPT = BP/(π * (D * tan(θ/2))^2)
where:
•BPT = Beam intensity at target (megawatts per square meter)
•BP = Beam Power at laser aperture (megawatts)
•D = range to target (meters)
•Î¸ = Theta = Beam divergence angle (radians or degrees depending on your Tan() function)
•Ï€ = Pi = 3.14159...
What it means is that the energy density is exponential WRT range, because the area of a circle is exponential WRT radius.
Aside from that, yes, if you put a certain amount of energy into a certain area, it is independent of the energy of each photon. You just have to squeeze in more photons at a lower wavelength.
But nota bene: you still have to feed the same energy into the beam at the source to get the same energy at the target. All that using higher frequencies does is put the same energy in a smaller spot.
Which is why gammas may have an advantage in punching through armor at any given range.
"The practical issue I can see, but the GRL device can also be much less efficient than the larger wavelength Laser."
Well, yes, it can be less efficient. The problem is that it will be ridiculously, preposterously less efficient, because you have to use a nuclear explosive to generate the gammas.
Thucydides said...
The discussion of X ray lasers in Atomic Rockets points out that at X ray wavelengths, matter is no longer "smooth" so the idea of using sheets of dense materials as "X ray mirrors" to focus or direct the Xaser beam becomes moot. Some sort of diffraction grating is needed instead.
===========
I think that is the point of Milo's article - some of those earlier assumptions may have been flawed and they have come up with a mirror that works with Gamma Rays.
It seems that would mean it would work for the in between gamma and Visible light as well although that is not expressly stated.
(SA Phil)
Tony,
But nota bene: you still have to feed the same energy into the beam at the source to get the same energy at the target. All that using higher frequencies does is put the same energy in a smaller spot.
==========
I realized driving home what my mistake was.
I wasn't solving for energy but diffraction. I was treating Lasers sort of like momentum - which was wrong.
Instead it is more interesting the Laser doesn't lose Energy over distance in a vacuum -- instead the energy spreads out over distance.
This means that like you said the Gamma Laser needs the same total energy as the Red Visual Laser.
However - the variables in the diffraction equation can be modified in extreme ways. The Gamma Laser's Mirror can be extremely tiny.
Using the earlier wavelengths 70,000 times smaller than a Red Visual to accomplish the same diffraction for instance.
Even if the Gamma Laser were impractical due to device efficiency you could get a smaller but respectable gain using say a short wavelength UV laser.
This makes me wonder about throwaway lenses or a rotating system where you would limit how long you sent the laser through the lens to minimize the damage you referred to earlier (presumably heat damage)
Gatling Lasers away.
(SA Phil)
I meant lens not mirror* In that earlier comment.
(SA Phil)
"Will a wealthy PMF be different from what is currently being forecast? Or will the wealth drive rivalries and create conflict (i.e. China suddenly discovering the Americans are still going to be the largest and wealthiest economy for generations to come)?"
Are we? Leaving aside any doubts about the true scale of the reserves, China has 4x our population and growing investment in education and infrastructure, while we have flat education and crumbling infrastructure. Smart people beat raw materials, which China has a lot of anyway.
And massive oil wealth tends to be bad for the equality or unity or economic diversity of a country. A few people get rich, and feel entitled to their unearned windfall, while the rest of the country gets priced out of making goods or services by a strong currency. It's possible to manage the tiger, like Norway, but that takes political foresight and cohesion not common in the US.
"What it means is that the energy density is exponential WRT range, because the area of a circle is exponential WRT radius."
Uh, quadratic, not exponential.
WRT mirrors at x ray and gamma ray frequencies, while it is possible to have "mirrors" to work in these frequencies (there was an X ray satellite observatory decades ago), they have only been demonstrated on low energy xrays and now gamma rays.
A coherent, high energy beam of x ray or gamma ray photons will interact with the material of the mirror and probably vapourize it. I would like to be proven wrong, since this would have all kinds of exciting applications besides being death rays of stupendous power.
Lens rather mirror I misspoke there - which I mentioned.
But the lens may work - that was the purpose of the article Milo linked us.
(SA Phil)
Alright, I discovered this blog a couple months ago, and in the time between then and now I have read or at least skimmed every single post (the main posts, not the comments), and I've been waiting about a month to add my own opinions here. So here goes.
I've noticed that you spend a lot of time on this blog talking about the various reasons we will NOT go into space; it's expensive, there's no McGuffinite out there to mine, and there aren't any worlds out there that can currently support human life. So your opinion is that we won't colonize space on purpose, but by accident.
But I've also noticed that you have yet to mention the single most important reason why we WILL go into space: If we don't go into space, we will die. I can't remember which physicist it was, I think Hawking, who said that space colonization is the surest method to ensure the continued existence of humanity. There are too many disasters that could befall civilization on Earth to risk us just staying here. We can't keep all our eggs in one basket.
In fact, if humans don't develop a substantial presence in space, we will go extinct in about 5 billion years when Sol goes red giant. Even if we have colonize in the outer solar system by then, we will have just bought ourselves a few more billion years before Sol eventually runs out of fuel completely and becomes a black body. Which means that not only do we have to have colonies on other planets, but in other star systems as well.
Now I know that space travel is expensive. I know that colonization would be expensive, terraforming would be expensive, and interstellar travel would be VERY expensive. But none of these things are impossible, and all of them are necessary. Before too long, governments and laymen will pick up on this, and there will be political pressure to push into space, which will bring the necessary funds with it.
From the article ...
"20 years ago many people doubted you could do optics with x-rays – no one even considered that it might be possible for gamma-rays too," said Michael Jentschel, research scientist at ILL, in a statement.
=============
(SA Phil)
Also, what's so hard to believe about the Singularity?
John G said...
Also, what's so hard to believe about the Singularity?
=============
In the sense that eventually the combined raw computer power will exceed the mental processing power of all humans?
I imagine that will happen someday.
I don't think it will be some monumental event though - since I do not think there is anything particularly "special" about the combined mental processing power of human.
Therefore I do not think the singularity will lead to instant technological advance to Clarksian proportions, superhuman artificial intelligences, and the assorted predictions.
A computer has no creative thinking ability - and therefore I think it will only be a tool for humans at least for quite some time. (Well past the 2045 date some singularity forecasters mention) If not forever.
I still think computers will excel at helping humans design things far beyond anything we can do today. To the point no one believed me. But that is a computer being able to repackage things we have already figured out. A much lower bar.
(SA Phil)
As to the rest I agree it would be great to leave Earth .. and I think someday it will happen -- if we are still around.
But the 5 billion number is a non-starter. There is no data to suggest we will last 5 billion years even if colonize other planets and star systems.
Its kind of like the Fermi Paradox on roids. There is no evidence anyone else out there has lasted 5 billion years.
Lets try for 5 million years first. That way at least we are almost halfway there. (sort of)
(SA Phil)
Re: The Singularity, the human brain is a computer, and the human brain can think creatively, ergo computers can think creatively.
Re: colonization, we haven't FOUND any evidence that life has lasted 5 billion years, but that doesn't mean the evidence isn't there. IF we play our cards right, I believe we CAN last billions of years and more. If we don't, you may be right and we might not make it another million years.
As to the Gamma Ray Laser; use an array of them and focus them all at the same target, thus utilizing phase amplification.
I do think that we (and by that I mean humans), have a tendency to get sidetracked by pondering why things aren't as me want them to be; we then convence ourselves that something is impossible, even though it turns out later that at least half the time, we're wrong about what is and what isn't impossible.
Ferrell
John G
If we don't, you may be right and we might not make it another million years.
=========
We may be a successful species and colonize everything for 1000 light years worth colonizing and still not make it a million years.
A million years is a really long time. A million years ago the contemporary humans weren't actually our species.
It might be possible we would survive a billion years say ... making us more successful than any animal species we know about.
A million years is comprehensible at least- we have human ancestors older than that.
A billion is practically incomprehensible. We know things have lasted that long-- planets, stars, "life" in the general sense - but it may not be the timescale of our species survival.
That is all I am saying. A billion years ago mammals didn't even exist.
(SA Phil)
So what you're saying is that it's not impossible, just that it's too big a number to think about. Hey, if that works for you, go for it. As for me, bring on the eons. I want to see humanity (or its descendants) last trillions of years at least. I want to see it last as long as the universe does.
It is possible even probable that a trillion years would be considerably longer than time.
(SA Phil)
"If we don't go into space, we will die"
That doesn't mean we'll go into space. The alternative is that we just die.
5 billion years is long time away. "Go into space now because the sun will run out" is not an urgent compulsion.
"Before too long" If we wait 4 billion years, we'll still have another billion years left.
"Also, what's so hard to believe about the Singularity?"
Depends how you define the Singularity. Definitions range from "the creation of beings smarter than any human" to "one self-improving AI and some nanotech will take over the world in hours".
"A computer has no creative thinking ability"
That's not really true.
It is true that programming creativity has never been a top goal, and our computers are still pretty stupid in most senses.
"As for me, bring on the eons. I want to see humanity (or its descendants) last trillions of years at least. I want to see it last as long as the universe does."
Me too but rushing to launch monkeys in tin cans on firecrackers isn't necessarily the best way to do that.
Hell, you believe in the Singularity? Lots of Singularity/transhuman type tech would make space a lot easier to access and exploit. Zero-gee adaptations, radiation resistance, biological immortality, self-replicating industry, AI/robots/uploading...
I'm not saying that Sol's red giant phase is our only existential threat, it's just the only one that we know for sure is coming. There are also potential threats, like war, bioterrorism, disease, famine, climate change, asteroids, etc. that could wipe us out, and as long as we have only one planet under our boots we're at a greater risk of extinction.
Tony said..."No disrespect intended, but that's faith in progress talking."
None taken, but I don't think that its faith at all, but rather an expression of my imagination. I guess you could say I have difficulties when comes to imposing limitations on scientific research and the technologies that may, or may not arise, long after I'm dead.
"There just doesn't appear to be that much wiggle room in which to discover a material to focus high density gammas"
What are you basing this judgement off? I wasn't aware that we were even close to approaching the ultimate potential of materials research.
"...no matter how useful such a thing might be."
Probably not very, I've always favoured the use of solid projectiles myself.
=Milo=
Damien Sullivan:
""Before too long" If we wait 4 billion years, we'll still have another billion years left."
To be fair, the 5 billion year number is somewhat approximate. We don't know exactly when the sun will become hot enough to make life unsustainable, so you might want to add plus or minus 1 billion years.
We can definitely last at least 1 billion years on Earth, though, and I would not dare speculate what kind of technology we'll have by then. You're definitely right there's no reason for us to worry about getting into space NOW.
Anyway, even if we flee everything, we can't escape the heat death of the universe... unless we find a way to travel to different universes... well, it's possible? Given the timescales we're talking about here, I'd be reluctant to say anything is completely and utterly out of the question.
"Me too but rushing to launch monkeys in tin cans on firecrackers isn't necessarily the best way to do that."
Particularly since firecrackers won't help us move beyond the solar system, AT ALL.
To really prepare against the death of the sun we'll need to travel to other stars, and rockets as we know them will put us basically 0% of the way towards that goal.
John G:
" I'm not saying that Sol's red giant phase is our only existential threat, it's just the only one that we know for sure is coming. There are also potential threats, like war, bioterrorism, disease, famine, climate change, asteroids, etc. that could wipe us out,"
Good luck getting one of those to wipe out all 7 billion of us.
We can survive the mere collapse of civilization. We HAVE, multiple times, and it didn't even set our technology back by all that much.
If you wanna kill humans, you got to make life totally unlivable for us. A lucky shot isn't going to off every single last one of us.
Welcome to a new commenter!
Quibbles 'R' Us: I don't think I've ever said 'We won't go into space.' What I have said is that I doubt there will be deliberate colonization and a very large space population in the next few hundred years, aka the Plausible Midfuture.
The furthest I think I've looked into the future here is 40K years or so - barely dipping a toe into the ocean of time.
A slightly similar response on the Singularity: My basic contention is we still have almost no understanding of how humans think. And we can't sim it until we understand it. So we can't yet venture an informed guess about high-level AI.
Computers 'as we know them' strike me as projections of human intelligence. Deep Blue plays chess the way I would if I had a billion years per move: brute force. How human grandmasters manage to be competitive with that approach remains a deep mystery.
On gamma ray lasers, my gut feeling is that if (a major caliber 'if') we gain enough mastery of plasma manipulation to build torch drives, related technologies might also make gamma lasers viable.
I know what you've said isn't "We won't go into space." But I am fairly confident in the possibility of deliberate space colonization, not just accidental colonies.
=Milo=
Yes, but deliberate colonies will probably only appear after we already have experience with accidental colonies.
Let's see...
1. Quadratic is correct.
2. Space exploration's role in the fate of the human race. If the goal is explicitly species survival, it's a possible tool to that end -- just the exploration, mind you: quantifying the environment is important to making good decisions. Colonization is a separate issue.
3. Space colonization. Hmmm...where to colonize, why, and how? Exploration actually answers those questions for you. Colonization puts the answers to work. First things first, I think.
4. Singularity. Idiotic idea, on the math alone. Technoligcal develoment curves are not quadratic (J-shaped curve), they're logistic (S-shaped curve). The singularity doesn't exist somewhere to the right of the graph, with ever-increasing growth. It exists towards the top, with continued marginal improvement, but ever-decreasing marginal efficiency.
5. Intelligent computers or "hard" AI. The problem is that we really don't know what we mean when we say "think" and "mind". Until we do, we won't be able to design a machine that can think. Even when we do, it may turn out that thinking is a product of biological evolution that can't be mimiced in human-built hardware.
One should understand that computers are functionally just very fast abaci with automatic answer storage. And I mean that literally -- all a CPU does is put numbers in an electronic binary abacus and adds or subtracts quantities, then shunts the result off to storage. Even massively parallel processing just gangs a whole bunch of these ultra-fast abaci together, all running the same program at the same time. We know for a fact that the human brain is way more complex than that.
6. Gamma ray refraction and materials science. It should be understood that there are limits to fundamental knowledge. We've pretty thoroughly explored these limits to the level of energy that we can affordably generate for the purpose of pure research. There's nothing in that body of knowledge that would lead us to believe that we could develop materials that would survive the gamma flux from an attainable gamma generator (nuclear explosion).
Rick:
"Computers 'as we know them' strike me as projections of human intelligence. Deep Blue plays chess the way I would if I had a billion years per move: brute force. How human grandmasters manage to be competitive with that approach remains a deep mystery."
And "brute force" is exactly the terminology computer programmers use to describe the way a lot of naive problem-solving programs are written. Even with well thought-out heuristic algorithms, one is still brute-forcing the problem, just preemtively cutting off divergent lines of progress that don't appear to be meeting the objective. But humans still give the computer the algorithm and define the objective. The computer just counts and stores numbers.
"On gamma ray lasers, my gut feeling is that if (a major caliber 'if') we gain enough mastery of plasma manipulation to build torch drives, related technologies might also make gamma lasers viable."
The problem is that any event that generates gammas doesn't generate a lot of them, compared to other products, like x-rays and highly energetic particles. Feeding a fusion or even matter conversion torch (if such a thing ever exists) into a machine, just to scavenge the gammas for a laser, wouldn't make a lot of sense.
Good points, but I do have a couple things to argue against. I highly doubt that thought, critical thinking, and creative thinking cannot be recreated in a computer. Whether or not they should be is a different story, though. It is true that we don't yet know how the human brain thinks, but that's why we're studying it.
After all, what is the human brain if not a highly complex and compact abacus? It takes external stimuli, codes them, stores them, and combines them using preprogrammed routines that eventually result in an output in the form of behavior.
I remember reading or hearing somewhere that certain internet viruses have been programmed to avoid detection and deletion, and have been programmed so well that they've achieved a level of intelligence basically equivalent to that of a cockroach.
Having said all that, though, my ideal scenario in terms of the Singularity would be an expansion of human intelligence, as opposed to the creation of super-human AI or mind-uploading, and I'd prefer a biological approach to a cybernetical one.
John G:
"I know what you've said isn't 'We won't go into space.' But I am fairly confident in the possibility of deliberate space colonization, not just accidental colonies."
To start colonizing, you have to have a reason and a methodology. Exploration finds out what the possible reasons (leaving aside motivations not succeptible to analysis, like a species-level version of "spread out and take cover") are and tests the possible methodologies. I have to agree with Rick that at some point while that is going on accidental colonists will emerge.
Also, exploration may return the answer that there aren't any reasons to colonize that meet economic criteria. It may also reveal to us that even if there are good, analytically supported reasons, there may not be an economical methodology. Or maybe even both might turn out to be true -- no rational reason and no rational methodology.
So, in the end, explore first, then think through what you find out. There's no case to colonize just to colonize. No, not even robustness in the face of species-level threats -- off-Earth colonies are likely to be so dependent on Earth technology and resources for so long that thinking of them as separate, self-sustaining ecosystems at this date is probably not rational.
My guess is if we don't go extinct we will get out there. However, I think that we will be transhuman by that point if we get out there in any numbers. We'd be like Clarke's monolith builders. It won't be trek, it won't be empires in space. Like the 20th and 21st century with a few changes is the least likely prospect imaginable.
John G:
"Good points, but I do have a couple things to argue against. I highly doubt that thought, critical thinking, and creative thinking cannot be recreated in a computer. Whether or not they should be is a different story, though. It is true that we don't yet know how the human brain thinks, but that's why we're studying it.
After all, what is the human brain if not a highly complex and compact abacus? It takes external stimuli, codes them, stores them, and combines them using preprogrammed routines that eventually result in an output in the form of behavior."
The human brain is not an abacus. It's not even a highly complex array of abaci. If anything, it's more like the electro-mechanical fire control computers of the Forties than anything else. Each piece receives data, processes it in some way, and passes the result on to another data processor. The problem is that we really don't understand how all of that is organized -- which processors do what, what the input quantities mean to the processor, what the output quantites mean to the next elements in line, or what the combined significance of all of the inputs, outputs, and processes are.
All we really know is that a neuron accepts electrical charge and at some point fires off, sending electrical charge down the chain to several recipient neurons. We're not sure whether the number of inputs received is significant, or the magnitude of any particular one, or the number and magnitude of one or more together, blah blah blah. And even if we did, we wouldn't understand how the neurons are organized to make information and thought out of all of these extremely low voltage and amperage microscopic events.
IOW, we barely know anything except that the human brain is nothing like a binary computer processor.
"I remember reading or hearing somewhere that certain internet viruses have been programmed to avoid detection and deletion, and have been programmed so well that they've achieved a level of intelligence basically equivalent to that of a cockroach."
Not quite. Their human programmers have managed to simulate survival behaviors at a level of complexity and reliability that would do an average cockroach credit. They don't do it the same way a cockroach does, and their survival algorithms rely on special knowledge about the environment and threats that not even a cockroach has after tens or hundreds of millions of years of evolution.
"Having said all that, though, my ideal scenario in terms of the Singularity would be an expansion of human intelligence, as opposed to the creation of super-human AI or mind-uploading, and I'd prefer a biological approach to a cybernetical one."
That's presuming the answer and saying "gimme". We don't even know how to simulate a human mind, much less provide a home for it in a piece of digital hardware. And if one prefers wetawre to begin with, well, one already has wetware. What's the point?
jollyreaper:
"My guess is if we don't go extinct we will get out there. However, I think that we will be transhuman by that point if we get out there in any numbers. We'd be like Clarke's monolith builders. It won't be trek, it won't be empires in space. Like the 20th and 21st century with a few changes is the least likely prospect imaginable."
Clarke's monolith builders were mortal and starfaring long before they were transbiological. I suspect that even from the relatively dim perspective of 1968 he was more right about that than Kurzweil or any of his ilk. Heck, it's 11 years after 2001 and we still don't have a HAL 9000, even though we have a lot of things that Uncle Arthur didn't come close to predicting.
Re: colonization, the colonies may be Earth-dependent at first, but in order to be successful they'll eventually have to be able to sustain themselves.
Re: Singularity, the point is to make the wetware better.
John G:
"Re: colonization, the colonies may be Earth-dependent at first, but in order to be successful they'll eventually have to be able to sustain themselves."
Yes. But at what point in the future? If we're talking hundreds or thousands of years -- which seems quite likely to me -- then we run into the inability of human projects to persist. Any self-sufficiency would arise organically from projects that initially had some kind of rational economic reason, like mining or exploration.
"Re: Singularity, the point is to make the wetware better."
I see...design something better than hundreds of millions of years of evolution could do. Hmmm...
Tony:
"The inability of human projects to persist"
The what?
"Design something better than hundreds of millions of years of evolution could do"
Yeah, pretty much.
Some suggestions that the brain is an analogue computer rather than a digital one: http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/05/could-analogue-computer-simulate-human.html
The answer will probably be far stranger than anything we can guess at today.
"as long as we have only one planet under our boots we're at a greater risk of extinction."
True. OTOH, "let's avoid species extinction" is a motivation for approximately no one. People are about not dying themselves. The effort to make 100% self-sufficient space colonies (which is what you need) could be more productively spent on making ourselves more robust.
"I wasn't aware that we were even close to approaching the ultimate potential of materials research."
Depends on the subdomain, I'd think. One can be pretty confident that there's not going to be many substances with higher energy density than hydrocarbons, for example, largely because there's only a few elements high in the periodic table (and thus with low mass per chemical energy.) Or with higher binding strength than carbon or boron-nitrogen.
"rockets as we know them will put us basically 0% of the way towards that goal."
Chemical rockets, yeah. We already have ion drives and know solar sails work.
"We can survive the mere collapse of civilization. We HAVE, multiple times, and it didn't even set our technology back by all that much."
To be fair, because our technology wasn't all that advanced to be set back from.
Tony:
"The what?"
The inability (or lack of capability, if you will) of human projects to persist over significant lengths of time. IOW, the fact that human projects direct towards a defined goal do not last very long. Institutions are more robust and longer-lived, but their objectives tend to drift over a relatively short time.
WRT to space colonization, any project or even institution that started out to colonize space -- "for teh colonyzashun of spase", as it were -- would, if history is any guide, simply shut down or drift off of objective before the thing was done.
"Yeah, pretty much."
Then I would say I have much greater faith in evolution finding the most efficient answer than you do. We shall see. Please don't take it personally that I'm so not holding my breath.
Thucydides:
"Some suggestions that the brain is an analogue computer rather than a digital one: http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/05/could-analogue-computer-simulate-human.html
The answer will probably be far stranger than anything we can guess at today."
I think that the identification of the human brain as an analog computer would be very old news to anybody who's thought about it. Being a professional programmer of digital computers, but also a student of military technology -- which used to use a lot of analog computers -- I see no reason whatsoever to disagree.
WRT simulating the brain in a digital computer, I think one would first have to create a taxonomy of abstract neurons -- software objects that adequately simulate the structure and behavior of biological neurons -- then set them up in a running program that connected them in the same way that neurons would be connected in the human brain.
Oh, wait, we're there already -- it's called an artificial neural network. But nobody really knows how well such simulations correspond to the brain, even on the smallest scales. Nobody is even sure how to accurately model a single neuron.
And even if one could accurately model a single neuron and hook the models up into a virtual network that corresponds to some microscopically small part of the human brain, well, the brain is macroscopic. Nobody knows how to even trace and record all of the interconnections -- not even in theory.
And if one did do all of that, how does one, using digital computer hardware, have all of those software objects loaded up in memory at once, interacting with each other all at once? A massively parallel supercomputer taking up an entire mondo data center? All to simulate a single human brain? Maybe?
And even if you do that, for whatever arbitrary reason you decide to do that, how does one get information in and out in a coherrent form? Now we're simulating the sensors of the human body (eyes and ears, at least), along with the effectors (diaphram, lungs, larynx, and vocal cords, at least).
And, oh yeah, in order for this exercise to have some meaning, every single input and output at every point in the system has to be recorded. How much data is that going to turn out to be, even for a simple thought, and how are we going to store it? Then how are we going to analyze it? And how long is that going to take?
All of that is just to simulate the human brain to a degree of fidelity sufficient to figure out how it works in situ. I'm not sure how or why anybody would sign up for that.
"Technoligcal develoment curves are not quadratic (J-shaped curve), they're logistic (S-shaped curve"
Uh, now you've made the reverse confusion. The J-shaped curve actually is exponential, not quadratic. 2^n not n^2.
"We know for a fact that the human brain is way more complex than that"
No we don't.
Damien Sullivan:
"Chemical rockets, yeah. We already have ion drives and know solar sails work."
Problem is electric rockets and sails don't get you off the ground into orbit. They're not even very good at getting you on an interplanetary transfer trajectory, when human factors (like not taking too much time and not getting burned up by radiation in the Van Allen belts) are taken into consideration. On the other hand, chemical bipropellants just don't get the job done very efficiently, and we won't use nuclear fission rockets powerful enough to do the job. On the gripping hand, what's the big motivation anyway?
The answer will probably be far stranger than anything we can guess at today.
Probably so - and equally probable that it will be 'obvious' in hindsight.
Compare to the pre-history of human flight. People watched birds for ages without grasping the role of wing camber - it wasn't recognized until Cayley in the 19th century. Instead, the mental focus was on wings flapping, a dead end.
And an important proviso to my remarks on the human mind. I'm not arguing that it is in any way mystical, only mysterious at present. (Perhaps it is also mystical, but I have no particular reason to think so.)
We may well be able to simulate human thought, with enough brute force, but in addition to the brute force we also have to know what we're simulating. So far as I can tell we are still at the flapping-wings stage: We haven't yet had the crucial insight needed to see the path forward.
Which means we can't really guess yet how long it might take. When we know what we are trying to do, then we can begin to guesstimate how long the sequential steps might take.
Damien Sullivan:
"Uh, now you've made the reverse confusion. The J-shaped curve actually is exponential, not quadratic. 2^n not n^2."
No, logistic is correct, of the general form:
f(t) = 1 / (1 - k^t)
The upper limit is always at 1, defined, in this case, as 100% of all the possible knowledge of a given technology. This form has been observed in observations of real world technoloigcal development -- start out slow, pick up fast, increase at an approximately exponential rate for a time, then slow down and finally add only a very little knowledge over a very long time.
Kurzweil seems to want to plot all of the curves for all of the technologies on top of each other, and so derive an approximately quadratic increase in human knowledge, without limit. The problem that runs into is that each technology or science is just a special case of all fundamental knowledge to be learned. Eventually, we'll hit to top of that curve too -- maybe quicker than we think.
"No we don't."
Actually, we do. A digital computer has exactly one processing register in which the program executes. Even with multicore processors, each CPU core is in effect a single computer, running a unique program. Even when software is designed to run multiple threads simultaneously, the overall process has to be taken in steps, with each thread being checked at intervals for progress, and decisions made based on that progress.
The human brain manifestly does not work like that. Each neuron is more like an accumulator directly wired to other accumulators. There's no clock timing the CPU cycles, and no master process stopping the bus and checking everybody's papers at the border of every time step. Neurons just sit and wait for input, and when they get the input they're looking for, they send output to a bunch of other neurons, who in turn go on about their business independent of any master architecture.
So what you're saying is that the human brain can't be replicated digitally without making it enormous. OK, but that still leaves wetware as a viable option. And it's not like you have to design a brain from the ground up; you just take the existing design as you understand it and identify possible improvements. "So this is the region of the brain that processes language. If we apply X change to its design [make it bigger, move it closer to another region of the brain, whatever], perhaps we can improve our linguistic capacity."
And on colonization, there's a limit to how robust we can make ourselves while still remaining on one planet.
The space colonization gets hung up on the timetable.
We like to talk about the PMF like Rick mentioned -- a 200-300 years out type of time frame.
But barring major accident (like if the most extreme global warming Cassandras turn out to be right) --> That isnt a realistic time frame for a "need" for colonization.
If we change the time frame to the plausible far future 2000-3000 years out, then it seems a lot more likely we will have space colonization.
Its likely we will still be around - we were here 3000 years ago pretty much exactly like we are now. And it is likely we will have solved most of the more immediate challenges by then.
(SA Phil)
John G:
"So what you're saying is that the human brain can't be replicated digitally without making it enormous. OK, but that still leaves wetware as a viable option. And it's not like you have to design a brain from the ground up; you just take the existing design as you understand it and identify possible improvements. 'So this is the region of the brain that processes language. If we apply X change to its design [make it bigger, move it closer to another region of the brain, whatever], perhaps we can improve our linguistic capacity.'"
Well, to be 100% truth in advertising here, I was making a whole string of pessimistic assumptions, like you have to model the whole brain to model any piece. There are probably a lot of optimizations in there somewhere. But the point remains that it's whole series of non-trivial problems, each depending on the outcome of all of the others. Which is why the brain is so hard to understand to begin with.
In any case, I don't think it's doable with an understanding we have of the world now, except in principle, and only for very small parts of the brain. Come again in a couple hundred -- or a couple thousand -- years and we'll talk.
WRT wetware improvement, at least as you imagine it, I see a whole raft of ethical issues to overcome, even before the practical genetic ones are touched on. You're basically advocating turning the knobs on the human brain control board and seeing what the machine does, without understanding what's happening insdie the machine. I don't think that's going to go over too well.
"And on colonization, there's a limit to how robust we can make ourselves while still remaining on one planet."
That's a statement of fact. What conclusions does it lead to? That we should get some of the crew off the ship and onto other ones? That's okay in principle, but it might not be doable in practice. Even if it is doable in practice, what's cost, balanced against the benefit?
IOW, what's our actuarial stance on the whole idea, not just our philosophical one? You know, some insurances you don't buy, and some insurances underwriters won't issue, simply because the cost-benefit structure isn't right.
Isn't a wetware computer that uses a human brain - even modified, assuming you could make it work, essentially a human being?
Its not really a computer at that point.
(SA Phil)
That's the point: make humans smarter.
And on colonization, the difference between establishing a colony and buying insurance is that going uninsured doesn't carry the risk of you dying.
I dunno - I doubt a few colonists dying would end human colonization. Once it was decided there was a reason to do so.
I dont think Roanoke slowed down England one bit.
(SA Phil)
John G:
"That's the point: make humans smarter."
Quantify "smarter"? Faster to make a decision? Capable of making more accurate decisions?
Compared to the world I grew up in, most people in the West -- which includes large parts of developed Asia, for this purpose -- are already there. Thanks to the Internet, we can have more data, more quickly, than we ever had before. Leaving the signal-to-noise ratio problem aside, most of us know more, see more, decide more per day than we've ever done before.
So what's left? Give humans abilities to see things they can't see now? How do we do that, when we by definition can't conceive of what it is that we're missing? Even if we tweaked away until we accidentally hit on the superhuman brain, could that mind even communicate to us the things it sees that we can't? Are we so altruistic as to create the Coming Man, then let him have any scope at all for his skills, simply because he says, "I know what you don't...trust Me?"
"And on colonization, the difference between establishing a colony and buying insurance is that going uninsured doesn't carry the risk of you dying.
Oh yes it does. If you don't have insurance and can't afford the treatments on your own, cancer will kill you. If you have a heart attack, the hospital will stabilize you even if you can't pay. But then you're out the door with instructions to follow up with a specialist. If you have no insurance and can't personally afford the gammut of drugs and surgeries to keep you alive, heart disease will have you long before it would have somebody who can afford stents/CABG/drugs/whatever.
And that's in essence what we're talking about here -- health insurance for a species living in and indifferent and sometimes hostile cosmos. Nice thing to have, but if you can't afford it, you can't afford it.
Tony,
Quantify "smarter"? Faster to make a decision? Capable of making more accurate decisions?
==============
I think increasing memory might be a big one. It seems to me one of the big differences between people who are considered "smart" and more average is their ability to remember complex things accurately.
(SA Phil)
Regarding the ethical issues brought up on changing the human brain, I'm not suggesting just randomly switching on and off different genes. Obviously, any potential treatment would be tested extensively on animals first, before anyone even considered trying it on a human.
And on colonization, are we sure we can't afford it? I know it's expensive, but the cost of sending humans into space is likely to fall in the relatively near future. Just look at Bigelow Aerospace, the guys working on what used to be TransHab. Remember when Rick said in one of his posts that a big help in reducing costs would be modularization and mass production of space equipment? The Bigelow guys are doing exactly that.
And I'm not saying that self-preservation alone is going to send us into space, I'm just saying that I'm not willing to rule out the possibility and definite likelihood of conscious space colonization efforts, at least once we have a significant presence in space. And the self-preservation drive will contribute to that, both politically and economically.
=Milo=
Damien Sullivan:
"Depends on the subdomain, I'd think. One can be pretty confident that there's not going to be many substances with higher energy density than hydrocarbons, for example,"
Chemical binding energy, no. But then we go ahead and find out about nuclear energy.
"Chemical rockets, yeah. We already have ion drives and know solar sails work."
That's still 0% of the way towards interstellar travel.
"To be fair, because our technology wasn't all that advanced to be set back from."
Nonsense. That level of technological sophistication took us thousands of years to develop.
Tony:
"Then I would say I have much greater faith in evolution finding the most efficient answer than you do."
Evolution doesn't do anything of the sort. Evolution finds an answer that is "good enough". Life is plagued by all sorts of misfeatures that evolution didn't bother to get rid of.
Additionally, there are many things that would be useful for human (or transhuman) civilization but that simply has never been selected for in nature.
"And even if one could accurately model a single neuron and hook the models up into a virtual network that corresponds to some microscopically small part of the human brain, well, the brain is macroscopic."
Yours is, maybe. I have my doubts about some people :)
Rick:
"Instead, the mental focus was on wings flapping, a dead end."
For a while. Ornithopters are making a resurgance in study recently. Turns out they actually are more efficient and agile than fixed-wing craft at smaller sizes (not so useful for passenger aircraft, useful for aerial robots).
SA Phil:
"But barring major accident (like if the most extreme global warming Cassandras turn out to be right)"
Global warming will not kill humanity. In the worst-case scenario, it will flood numerous coastal cities (which tend to be the most important ones) and cause the collapse of civilization, but like I just said, we've survived the collapse of civilization before and can do so again. The remaining lands will even increase in fertility (warm climate means more rain), so in the long term it will even be beneficial to our successor civilization.
Only if practically all of Earth is flooded leaving no dry land anywhere, are we in serious danger. This will not happen, because there just isn't that much ice locked up anywhere.
"WRT wetware improvement, at least as you imagine it, I see a whole raft of ethical issues to overcome, even before the practical genetic ones are touched on. You're basically advocating turning the knobs on the human brain control board and seeing what the machine does, without understanding what's happening insdie the machine. I don't think that's going to go over too well."
...Yyyyeah.
The only "improvement" to human brain design that I'd be willing to attempt at our current level of understanding is through artificial selection from genes that are already there.
We certainly aren't going to attempt to genetically improve brains until we've had experience genetically improving other, simpler organs.
John G:
"Obviously, any potential treatment would be tested extensively on animals first, before anyone even considered trying it on a human."
Kinda tricky, considering the treatment we're considering here (altering how the brain thinks) affects exactly the think that sets humans apart most from other animals.
SA Phil:
"I think increasing memory might be a big one. It seems to me one of the big differences between people who are considered "smart" and more average is their ability to remember complex things accurately."
Also considerably improved for the average Westerner. Niven and Pournelle, in writing a backgrounder for Mote in God's Eye, admitted that they wrote themselves into a corner by introducing pocket computers (think smart phone, but not as smart). The problem was that a certain scene, and much of what developed after it, turned on a character failing to remember a crucial piece of data. Well, with a pocket computer, that character could just wirelessly log-in to the local netword and consult some library files that had the vital information. They eventually embraced the consequences and found a satisfactory resolution. But they were essentially writing about the world as it exists today, not the world of 3017 AD, which they thought they were writing about.
So in a somewhat artificial way, most people with access to the technology do have better and more accurate memories. Now if your talking about having more accurate and better recall natively, okay, one might credit that as "smarter", but the change would be one of skewing the distribution to the right to some degree, not producing an absolutely smarter person. We have plenty of evidence of very smart people (by those standards anyway) who would be hard to supercede by any significant degree.
John G:
"Regarding the ethical issues brought up on changing the human brain, I'm not suggesting just randomly switching on and off different genes. Obviously, any potential treatment would be tested extensively on animals first, before anyone even considered trying it on a human."
But animal brains aren't human brains. The likelihood that knowledge gained from them is scalable or transferable to humans is a very open question. And even when you do get to human trials, you're still tinkering with the human. All of your failures are going to be real human people that you screwed up, knowing full well that you wouldn't be perfect. With medications the worst your doing is not curing somebody, and risking some side affects with fully informed consent. With tryingto make people "better" your bringing genetically engineered people into the world, absent consent, with the full knowledgethat you're conducting an experiment. That's the general objection to genetic engineering right now.
"And on colonization, are we sure we can't afford it? I know it's expensive, but the cost of sending humans into space is likely to fall in the relatively near future. Just look at Bigelow Aerospace, the guys working on what used to be TransHab. Remember when Rick said in one of his posts that a big help in reducing costs would be modularization and mass production of space equipment? The Bigelow guys are doing exactly that."
The question is not whether or not we can afford it. The question is recognizing the very real possibility that we may not be able to, and preparing ourselves both intellectually and emotionally for that possibility. I think most people who think about the possibility at all merely give it lip service, without really believeing that that might be the shape of the real world. IMO one has to actually and firmly believe in the possibility to claim a realistic viewpoint on the subject.
"And I'm not saying that self-preservation alone is going to send us into space, I'm just saying that I'm not willing to rule out the possibility and definite likelihood of conscious space colonization efforts, at least once we have a significant presence in space. And the self-preservation drive will contribute to that, both politically and economically."
I have precisely 0.0% faith in colonization of space for the prupose of colonizing space. A more rational reason will have to present itself. And yes, national prestige is actually a more rational reason than species preservation for this purpose. It may be the only rational reason that ultimately counts in the end.
WRT Bigelow et al, I'm sorry, but I don't see that they have a real market or a real business plan.
Milo:
"Evolution doesn't do anything of the sort. Evolution finds an answer that is 'good enough'. Life is plagued by all sorts of misfeatures that evolution didn't bother to get rid of.
Additionally, there are many things that would be useful for human (or transhuman) civilization but that simply has never been selected for in nature."
I'm firmly in the camp that evolution is about survival of the fit, not the fittest. But we also need, I think, to recognize that evolution does constantly redefine "fit" upwards. In the Cambrian world, a fairly smart rodent would have quite an advantage in speed and strategy.
"Yours is, maybe. I have my doubts about some people :)"
Speaking purely in the sense of physical scale, was I.
And if I have a macroscopic brain in any sense, we're all in deep trouble.
Tony,
I have precisely 0.0% faith in colonization of space for the prupose of colonizing space.
------------
I disagree -- I think that is exactly why it will be done. Because I think most of the other potential reasons are all solvable problems making them moot.
I think it will happen a long time from now, and it will probably start out a lot smaller scale than typically imagined in the dispora of many SF fiction.
Find a planet - send a terraforming biological factory a hundred years later - send a seedship thousands of years after that- and so on.
(SA Phil)
SA Phil:
"I disagree -- I think that is exactly why it will be done. Because I think most of the other potential reasons are all solvable problems making them moot.
I think it will happen a long time from now, and it will probably start out a lot smaller scale than typically imagined in the dispora of many SF fiction.
Find a planet - send a terraforming biological factory a hundred years later - send a seedship thousands of years after that- and so on."
Well, first of all, I was thinking on the interplanetary scale, not the interstellar one. But even on the interstellar scale, I think it would have to be done with surplus energy that nobody ahs a better use for. So it will be a national prestige or "because it's there" type of thing, not something pursued for its own sake.
Yeah "because its there" I think sums up what I think the motivation will be.
I think the most impressive technology involved will be biological in nature - rather than spacecraft design.
I also think the spacecraft will be pretty slow .. to conserve the energy you mention. Maybe with hundreds of years as a travel time.
I dont think people wil travel to other stars.. I think we will send genetic material that will become people and then call them when the get there.
If they are anything like my kids - they will still figure out a way to ask for money.
(SA Phil)
SA Phil:
"Yeah "because its there" I think sums up what I think the motivation will be.
I think the most impressive technology involved will be biological in nature - rather than spacecraft design.
I also think the spacecraft will be pretty slow .. to conserve the energy you mention. Maybe with hundreds of years as a travel time.
I dont think people wil travel to other stars.. I think we will send genetic material that will become people and then call them when the get there.
If they are anything like my kids - they will still figure out a way to ask for money."
I think "because it can be done" sums up much of the most important things about human nature.
In any case, I'm thinking that star travel, it it happens at all, will probably be undertaken by perfectly conscious, recognizable humans. They'll probably jump about 10-20 ly at a time at anything between .25 and .50 c. Figure travel times in the neighborhood of 50-150 years, at something like .01 G acceleration. They probably will move in big groups (at least thousands, possibly tens or hundreds of thousands) and won't be looking for Earthlike worlds, just some place to mine resources and a star to give them energy.
=Milo=
Tony:
"In the Cambrian world, a fairly smart rodent would have quite an advantage in speed and strategy."
Actually, in the Cambrian world, a rodent would starve because there were no land plants yet :)
But aside from that detail, this principle clearly demonstrates that if Cambrian trilobites had access to genetic engineering, they could significantly improve their fitness by designing in features now available to rodents (or whatever present species might be more suitable for trilobites' niches). It wouldn't give them anything evolution wouldn't eventually come up with on its own, but it would put them several hundred million years ahead of the competition. Now, of course, trilobites didn't have access to genetic engineering, but we might...
"So it will be a national prestige or "because it's there" type of thing, not something pursued for its own sake."
I consider "because it's there" and "pursued for its own sake" to be synonymous.
Tony, did you just completely reverse your previous opinion? First you agree with Rick and say it'll only happen by accident, and then you start talking about sending thousands of people across interstellar distances at 25% c. I agree that "because it's there" and "because it can be done" are perfectly valid reasons to justify space colonization, given human drive and ambition.
Tony,
In any case, I'm thinking that star travel, it it happens at all, will probably be undertaken by perfectly conscious, recognizable humans. They'll probably jump about 10-20 ly at a time at anything between .25 and .50 c. Figure travel times in the neighborhood of 50-150 years, at something like .01 G acceleration. They probably will move in big groups (at least thousands, possibly tens or hundreds of thousands) and won't be looking for Earthlike worlds, just some place to mine resources and a star to give them energy.
----------------
I think it will be normal humans as well, indistinguishable from us.
I just think the life support requirements, etc are so much lower for frozen embryos or zygotes that it makes the bar much lower.
Store the propellant as liquid water, use the water to shield the genetic cargo and crack hydrogen and oxygen with a long life fission pile to use for fusion or anti-matter (or whichever system)
When the ship arrives robots will "hatch" the crew and raise them. Pretty soon they will be self sustaining.
I think they will look for habitable worlds - I have a feeling exo-planetary science is going to improve a lot in the next thousand years.
One of the arguments made for the Fermi Paradox is that even with STL ships and a reasonably slow rate of expansions it should only take about a million years to colonize the entire galaxy.
I imagine that means in 100,000 years we might have a pretty good amount of colonies out there.
=Milo=
Anonymous:
"I just think the life support requirements, etc are so much lower for frozen embryos or zygotes that it makes the bar much lower."
However, embryos or zygotes cannot take care of themselves, so you would have to add mass for artificial wombs to gestate them in, followed by robotic caretakers to raise, educate, etc. them, all completely autonomously without any human guidance.
That offsets any life support you're saving.
"One of the arguments made for the Fermi Paradox is that even with STL ships and a reasonably slow rate of expansions it should only take about a million years to colonize the entire galaxy.
I imagine that means in 100,000 years we might have a pretty good amount of colonies out there."
That's one approach. Another approach would be to say that if (A) statistically intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy is almost certain to exist, and some of it will have predated us by a measly few million years, and (B) even slow interstellar colonization should spread across the galaxy fast enough that we'd have noticed them by now if someone was doing it, but (C) we haven't noticed any, then (D) even slow interstellar colonization just isn't possible.
John G:
"Tony, did you just completely reverse your previous opinion? First you agree with Rick and say it'll only happen by accident, and then you start talking about sending thousands of people across interstellar distances at 25% c. I agree that 'because it's there' and 'because it can be done' are perfectly valid reasons to justify space colonization, given human drive and ambition."
Different contexts.
In the early interplanetary exploration and exploitation context, the point will be to find things out or get stuff and bring it back to Earth. Any more or less permanent communities that develop will have to be unplanned and emerge organically, from groups and individuals sent out for other reasons.
When we talk about manned insterstellar exploration, we're talking about such an open-ended commitment that it's going to have to be big enough to reasonably ensure success, but not take more than easily disposable resources, because there's no profit to be had in any of it. The reasoning will literally have to be because it can be done -- but done as a flyer, not as something anybody's counting on.
SA Phil:
"I think it will be normal humans as well, indistinguishable from us.
I just think the life support requirements, etc are so much lower for frozen embryos or zygotes that it makes the bar much lower.
Store the propellant as liquid water, use the water to shield the genetic cargo and crack hydrogen and oxygen with a long life fission pile to use for fusion or anti-matter (or whichever system)
When the ship arrives robots will 'hatch' the crew and raise them. Pretty soon they will be self sustaining."
I don't believe in the capability of automatons to hatch and rais humans.
"I think they will look for habitable worlds - I have a feeling exo-planetary science is going to improve a lot in the next thousand years."
What if the nearest habitable world is 100 ly away? Or even only 50 ly? And while it appears that most stars probably have planetary systems of some type, it also appears that very few of them have Earthlike worlds. To travel the stars, humans are going to have to learn to live off of space minerals and sunlight.
"One of the arguments made for the Fermi Paradox is that even with STL ships and a reasonably slow rate of expansions it should only take about a million years to colonize the entire galaxy.
I imagine that means in 100,000 years we might have a pretty good amount of colonies out there."
I'm completely agnostic about solutions to the Fermi paradox. We'll know soon enough, one way or the other.
Tony,
I'm completely agnostic about solutions to the Fermi paradox. We'll know soon enough, one way or the other.
----
Except my point wasn't about the Fermi Paradox. It was about STL expansions speeds estimated for advanced cultures and how they might be applied to ours.
(SA Phil)
SA Phil:
"Except my point wasn't about the Fermi Paradox. It was about STL expansions speeds estimated for advanced cultures and how they might be applied to ours."
Then don't mention it. One can make the point that even non-relativistic sublight expansion can populate the galaxy relatively quickly, and do it without bringing the paradox into things.
Tony,
Then don't mention it. One can make the point that even non-relativistic sublight expansion can populate the galaxy relatively quickly, and do it without bringing the paradox into things.
=========
Ah , I forgot your duties as hall monitor.
Please disregard my reference to where I encountered the suggestion about STL expansion rates.
Ill get a note from my mom you can give to Rick.
(SA Phil)
lol. Sorry, but it's kinda impossible to talk about interstellar expansion without talking about the Fermi Paradox. They go hand in hand.
Also, why can't you take everything you just said about interstellar colonization and apply it to interplanetary colonization?
"Problem is electric rockets and sails don't get you off the ground into orbit"
You think I don't know that after all this time here? But I think I was responding to a line about general space travel.
"No, logistic is correct, of the general form:"
But a logistic is an S-curve. Simple J-curve is exponential. And I *said* J-curve.
"approximately quadratic increase in human knowledge"
Kurzweil's Singularity is exponential, not quadratic.
What's with you? You're repeatedly making elementary mistakes today.
"Each neuron is more like an accumulator directly wired to other accumulators"
Nothing about that says "not a digital computer". It's not a standard Von Neumann architecture, but that's irrelevant.
"there's a limit to how robust we can make ourselves while still remaining on one planet"
Yeah, but we haven't even approached that limit. And again, "save the species" as opposed to "save ourselves" has yet to be an goal acted on by much of anyone.
"Isn't a wetware computer that uses a human brain - even modified, assuming you could make it work, essentially a human being?
Its not really a computer at that point."
That's begging the question, assuming the conclusion, etc.
"That's still 0% of the way towards interstellar travel."
What's that even mean? Once you hit solar escape velocity -- what, 66 km/s from Earth's orbit? -- interstellar travel is just a matter of time. Could we build 100 km/s drives if we wanted to? Or 9000 km/s (3% c) with Project Longshot drives? Seems like a good chance of that.
"Nonsense. That level of technological sophistication took us thousands of years to develop."
Yes, but most people were farmers, often subsistence, a lot of the technology skills didn't require complex networks, and the ones that did had gotten lost.
"The remaining lands will even increase in fertility (warm climate means more rain)"
At a global level, yes. It also means more evaporation, so faster drying out. And shifting climate can mean less rain for some places, including the ones that currently have fertile soil.
Ice Age: Sahara was wet and fertile. After Ice Age: warmer world, dry Sahara. Ditto for the American South West, which used to be a lot of lakes and rivers.
"When the ship arrives robots will "hatch" the crew and raise them. Pretty soon they will be self sustaining."
If you have AI good enough to raise humans from scratch, you don't need the humans any more. The robots can be the colonists.
John G:
"lol. Sorry, but it's kinda impossible to talk about interstellar expansion without talking about the Fermi Paradox. They go hand in hand."
I don't see a necessary connection. Yes, they can be discussed together. But one can also talk about insterstellar expansion simply as interstellar expansion, without reference to whether it's happened before, and what that might mean.
"Also, why can't you take everything you just said about interstellar colonization and apply it to interplanetary colonization?"
Like I said, different contexts. On the interplanetary scale, we would be sending out people who would send back valuable information or resources in very near time. On the interstellar scale, we'd be sending out people who aren't sending anything back. One is for profit, the other is for essentially altruistic reasons.
Damien Sullivan:
"You think I don't know that after all this time here? But I think I was responding to a line about general space travel."
General space travel implicitly includes getting into space. It can't be ignored.
"But a logistic is an S-curve. Simple J-curve is exponential. And I *said* J-curve."
And I said that the J-curve is the wrong model. The S-curve is the correct model for technological development.
"Kurzweil's Singularity is exponential, not quadratic."
See above. Kurzweil is wrong.
"What's with you? You're repeatedly making elementary mistakes today."
Exponential means some exponent of e. That could mean many different shapes of curves, depending on the exponent. The shape of the curve is determined by the degree of the function. Degree 2 gets you the simplest J-curve. There's no tangible reason to think that the expansion is of any higher degree.
"Nothing about that says 'not a digital computer'. It's not a standard Von Neumann architecture, but that's irrelevant."
Actually everything about it says "not a digital computer". An analog computer is a physical model of a problem, and only one problem. A digital computer is a generalized processor that processes an abstract model of any problem you want it to. The human brain is a physical model of the problem: "manage a complex bilogical organism for 80+ years".
=Milo=
Damien Sullivan:
"But a logistic is an S-curve. Simple J-curve is exponential. And I *said* J-curve."
Actually, a J-curve is any curve that grows faster than linear. Quadratic, exponential, whatever.
"What's that even mean? Once you hit solar escape velocity -- what, 66 km/s from Earth's orbit? -- interstellar travel is just a matter of time."
At 66 km/s, Proxima Centauri takes a little over 19000 years to reach.
This is longer than human civilization has existed.
We can't even build machinery that will remain reliable over that time period, nor do we have any incentive to. We'd need to become immortal transhumans before even considering it, and even then I'd still pass.
Tony:
"General space travel implicitly includes getting into space. It can't be ignored."
Getting into space is costly, but it's a problem that can be solved by throwing money at it. Which we currently can barely afford to, but might be able to in the future, when society as a whole is wealthier.
Interstellar travel is difficult due to inherent technological reasons, even if you're willing to throw all the money in the world at it.
"An analog computer is a physical model of a problem, and only one problem. A digital computer is a generalized processor that processes an abstract model of any problem you want it to. The human brain is a physical model of the problem: "manage a complex biological organism for 80+ years"."
And yet, the human brain is quite good at processing abstract models of any problem it wants to.
In fact, the entire point of intelligence is that we're equipped to solve an open-ended range of problems, rather than only knowing how to solve those problems we evolved an instinct for dealing with.
Hmm. Wikipedia defines J-curve as something with an actual dip, like a real J. So neither quadratic nor exponential.
But yes, the right half of an upward parabola is ever-increasing at faster and faster rates, like an exponential curve. It's still the fact that the type of growth Singularity advocates talk about is exponential, not quadratic.
"Exponential means some exponent of e. That could mean many different shapes of curves, depending on the exponent. The shape of the curve is determined by the degree of the function. Degree 2 gets you the simplest J-curve. There's no tangible reason to think that the expansion is of any higher degree."
That doesn't even make sense.
An exponential function is one where the independent variable is in the exponent. 2^n, e^n, 1.1^n. A polynomial function has fixed exponents of the independent variable. n, n^2, n^3, n^1000. The area of a circle is quadratic polynomial in the radius, r^2. Unconstrained population growth is usually exponential, e^t. Constraints push you toward logistic models among others, like "peak and crash".
Re: Damien
I'm simply not visualizing Kurzweil's theory in the same way you are. That doesn't make either of us right or wrong. Quadratic, exponential, the point is an accelerating function of some type, without an upper bound.
In any case, the problem isn't with our visualiztions. The problem is with Kurzweil's analysis. An accelerating function doesn't naturally have a limit. What happened was that SF writer Vernor Vinge presumed a point beyond which we couldn't predict the shape of the future, calling it a "singularity" by analogy with a black hole singularity. Kurzweil thought that this was an exceptional metaphor and ran with it, even though it has nothing to do with a mathematical singularity. When you see this graphed out, and you see the cutoff at the right end, supposedly indicating the "singularity", what you're seeing is an artificial limit put in by hand. It's pure pseudo-scientific flim-flammery.
At the same time, Kurzweil ignores real world limits like the finite amount of fundamental knowledge to be learned, the higher energies required to explore smaller scales, and the limited amount of resources to do anything in particular. IOW, Kurzweil is invoking magic.
Damien Sullivan:
"An exponential function is one where the independent variable is in the exponent. 2^n, e^n, 1.1^n. A polynomial function has fixed exponents of the independent variable. n, n^2, n^3, n^1000. The area of a circle is quadratic polynomial in the radius, r^2. Unconstrained population growth is usually exponential, e^t. Constraints push you toward logistic models among others, like 'peak and crash'."
Not that a quadratic function is in fact a special case of exponential function where the exponent = 2. I used it in discussion so that the reader could be sure of the shape of the curve I was talking about. Higher order functions give all sorts of curve shapes with multiple inflections. The classic X
x^2 parabola gives the picture I wanted to implant in the reader's mind -- an accelerating function taking off into forever.
In any case, your last sentence echoes my main point. When you consider real world limits, you don't have accelerating functions taking off into forever. You get logistics curves.
You know, "Not that a quadratic function is in fact a special case of exponential function where the exponent = 2." is completely wrong. Duh.
'You know, "Not that a quadratic function is in fact a special case of exponential function where the exponent = 2." is completely wrong. Duh. '
I assume 'Note' not 'Not' but yeah, that's been my *entire point* for the past few posts. I wasn't defending Kurzweil, I was defending basic math terminology. A quadratic function is a polynomial function where the exponent equals 2.
Damien Sullivan:
"I assume 'Note' not 'Not' but yeah, that's been my *entire point* for the past few posts. I wasn't defending Kurzweil, I was defending basic math terminology. A quadratic function is a polynomial function where the exponent equals 2."
But not[e] the rest of what I had to say. I was just using "quadratic" as a prototypical accelerating function.
You're making an assumption, Tony, the assumption being that interplanetary colonization is undertaken with the explicit intent of establishing trade routes.
Most historical colonization was indeed for the purpose of establishing trade routes. The British Crown granted monopolies for various Royal companies starting in the late 1500's, even Classical Greek Polis sending out people to establish colonies had the idea of securing more resources and trading them between the daughter colonies and the mother city.
I think the consensus here is the PMF will see many "settlements" out in the Solar system, most being analogues of research stations in Antactica or oil drilling platforms in the North Sea, but usually single purpose installations run for the benefit of a government or a corporation. (Even if the private sector is contracted to run a government installation, we are still talking about a fairly limited founding metric; KBR isn't going to build a Moon Colony for fun).
The colonization part may happen if:
a. People start having relationships and bringing children into the place either by birth or as a condition of employment ("bring my family or I'm not going")
b. The installation is large enough to create its own economy and attract outsiders interested in building a service econopmy around it (similar in fashion to "garrison towns" surrounding bases)
c. Technological development allows for inexpensive transport of people and things to and from the Earth and space installations.
If "c" happens, then a and b become much easier. Factor "c" may also support less obvious reasons for colonization, such as sects deciding to isolate themselves from the influences of the Earth (although as a countervailing POV, if the technology exists to qwuickly and cheaply exit the Earth, the technology also allows Earth to send bureaucrats and police to enforce the rules wherever you go.)
John G:
"You're making an assumption, Tony, the assumption being that interplanetary colonization is undertaken with the explicit intent of establishing trade routes."
Uhhh...no. I'm looking at the expense of manned spaceflight and concluding that it won't be done for any other purpose than exploration or resource exploitation. There won't be any trade routes, because the stations that are established are designed to send information or resources directly back to the sponsor on Earth. Permanent settlement will grow organically out of that, as one or two individuals at a time, as they discover it's just easier for that individual, in his particular situation, to stay in space rather than come back to Earth.
A few random notes:
Much public discussion of possible interstellar colonization rates has been in the context of Fermi's Paradox. So while the subjects are formally independent, mentioning Fermi's Paradox seems perfectly reasonable as a way to cue up a point.
On a somewhat kindred note, I suspect that, in common parlance, 'exponential growth' is simply a way of saying 'growing faster and faster,' not a formal reference to the exponential function.
And slightly meta to both of the above, what exactly is human intelligence, and what does it mean to have more of it? There's a commonplace snark that Mensa is Underachievers Anonymous, and the whole premise of 'Big Bang Theory' is that really smart science guys can do as many dumb things as ordinary schlubs.
Transhumanism is essentially a spiritual concept ('Rapture of the Nerds'), and I'm just not a very spiritual person.
I think that any off-world colonies will mostly be of the 'accidental' type; the kind that grows organicly as individuals stay and families grow: a very few will be either national prestiqe projects, or 'isolationists' type fringe-groups that simply take their 'seperation from the rest of civilization' ideology to the extreme. This of course all depends on spaceflight developments in the next century or so...
So while 'ease' and 'cost' are oftentimes synonomus, something that is (relatively) easy, but still pricy, more people will think of it as being possible. As of now, travelling to (say for example) Mars, is nearly the opposite of easy, people don't consider it; however, it we had a spacecraft that could take people from Earth orbit to Mars orbit (and back), then the expense would be more berable (in people's minds), even though the cost from surface to orbit hasn't changed; the overall cost of travelling from Earth surface to Mars surface has been reduced, *in the opinon of the traveller*, whether it really has or not.
Ferrell
=Milo=
Thucydides:
"Factor "c" may also support less obvious reasons for colonization, such as sects deciding to isolate themselves from the influences of the Earth (although as a countervailing POV, if the technology exists to quickly and cheaply exit the Earth, the technology also allows Earth to send bureaucrats and police to enforce the rules wherever you go.)"
Throughout most of history, there have been places that were close enough they were just sortakinda reachable, but not too easily. Which are a good place to hide from authorities.
The thing is that currently, everywhere on Earth is fairly easily reachable, while everywhere in space is practically impossible to reach. The intermediate "reachable but only with difficulty" distance currently doesn't exist, a historical anomaly resulting from the fact that Earth is round and so our "frontiers" simply grew into each other.
Rick:
"On a somewhat kindred note, I suspect that, in common parlance, 'exponential growth' is simply a way of saying 'growing faster and faster,' not a formal reference to the exponential function."
Yes. I'm okay with that when you're jokingly describing attributes that don't actually have a well-defined numerical value ("this show's coolness keeps growing exponentially", or something), but it annoys me when it's done with proper numerical quantities where it's demonstrably incorrect.
"And slightly meta to both of the above, what exactly is human intelligence, and what does it mean to have more of it?"
Human intelligence is that thing that only I have and that I keep being annoyed that other people don't have it.
I suspect that if you round up the people who want to genetically engineer humans for increased intelligence, most of them will turn out to be using the same definition :)
Rick:
"Much public discussion of possible interstellar colonization rates has been in the context of Fermi's Paradox. So while the subjects are formally independent, mentioning Fermi's Paradox seems perfectly reasonable as a way to cue up a point."
Point taken.
But maybe we should remember that the Fermi Paradox was actually a spinoff of earlier speculation about interstellar colonization.
"And slightly meta to both of the above, what exactly is human intelligence, and what does it mean to have more of it? There's a commonplace snark that Mensa is Underachievers Anonymous, and the whole premise of 'Big Bang Theory' is that really smart science guys can do as many dumb things as ordinary schlubs."
I sometimes wonder where the boys find time to do science. They're so busy playing videogames, watching anime, paintballing, and eating takeout. Of course, the same applies to the girls, spending all their time hanging out with each other, complaining about the boys. I guess maybe the conclusion you come to is that geeks are people too.
"Transhumanism is essentially a spiritual concept ('Rapture of the Nerds'), and I'm just not a very spiritual person."
Yep.
=Milo=
Tony:
"I guess maybe the conclusion you come to is that geeks are people too."
*gasp* You don't say!?
Transhumanism is essentially a spiritual concept ('Rapture of the Nerds'), and I'm just not a very spiritual person.
I'd say that it comes in several flavors, kind of like atheism. The first example of transhumanism I've ever encountered was Asimov's The Last Question. There's no woo-woo there, just explorations of what could be as far beyond our current state of being as man is from the early hominid, and looking back from there the first mammals scampering between the feet of dinosaurs.
Weak atheists would be your quiet types, keeping to themselves about their beliefs. Strong atheists would be the evangelicals, the ones waggish commentators compare to beings similar to religious proselytizers.
The Kurzweil Singulatarians and other transhumanists who get into a lot of pseudo-spiritualistic woo are what I would call strong transhumanists or transhumanitarians.
I would say that the weak transhumanist position is:
1) There's been a whole long span of time with life on this earth. (2 billion years for any kind of life, 500 million for multicellular.)
2) There is no end-point of evolution. Everything is a continuum. Change is continuous and will continue as long as life persists.
3) There's no reason to assume that humanity circa now is the apex of intelligence and represents the sum of everything that can and will be.
4) Therefore, assuming no global extinction event, something is likely to come after. And if it comes from human stock, it's transhuman. Or post-human.
5) If we have the ability to monkey with the selection pressures or directly tinker with the genetic buildings blocks, we're into the realm of intelligent design and self-directed evolution of h. sapiens.
No claims of spiritual discovery, revelation, or epiphany is promised. No afterlife, metaphysical, metaphorical, or digital postulated. The weak premise is talking about cold, hard, materialist fact.
I feel it's a completely valid line of speculation. It's not prophecy, just extrapolation and contemplation with a sense of curiosity and wonder. Can't fault any of that.
I think even the softest transhumanist would argue that the philosophy implicitly and necessarily includes humanity (or parts of it) jumping out of the evolutionary cycle and consciously improving (for certain definitions of "improve") on that which we consider "human". That's why it's "transhuman", meaning beyond human, rather than something like "meliorhuman", meaning better human.
Damien
If you have AI good enough to raise humans from scratch, you don't need the humans any more. The robots can be the colonists.
----
Sure, but if your goal is to move humans out there - you will still need them.
Maybe the wetware computer could do it.
(SA Phil)
Thucydides said...
c. Technological development allows for inexpensive transport of people and things to and from the Earth and space installations.
---------
Lets say 1000 years from now our anti-matter production capacity is 1 trillion times what it is today.
That seems plausible to me - and would facilitate your point c.
(SA Phil)
Milo:
"*gasp* You don't say!?"
While you and I may know better, you'd be suprised (or maybe you wouldn't) how many people in everyday life think geeks don't have lives. And...to some degree that's absolutely true. BBT actually depicts a fair sampling, I think, from Sheldon to Leonard. (Though I think Amy's sexual fixations and Bernadette's inner tramp are a bit overdone.)
Damien said:
If you have AI good enough to raise humans from scratch, you don't need the humans any more. The robots can be the colonists.
Well, only if you make the robots like humans; metal-people as mechanical analogues to humans...and maybe other animals and plants...kinda like that SF novel set on Titan whose name escapes me at the moment.
Ferrell
Ferrell:
"Well, only if you make the robots like humans; metal-people as mechanical analogues to humans...and maybe other animals and plants...kinda like that SF novel set on Titan whose name escapes me at the moment."
Code of the Lifemaker, James P. Hogan. The machine ecosystem wasn't intentional. It was the result of a million years of evolution. A Von Neumann probe that landed on Titan had had it's data stores corrupted by supernova radiation.
A semi-random tangent ...
Thinking on these super-long range lasers for a moment. Gamma or whatnot (its not important what type).
Lets suppose it is possible to make a laser that is lethal to such a long range that your major limitation is targeting not power. Which seems fairly reasonable.
You then have an advantage to making the smallest ship you can get away with that has a lethal laser near the limit of your range limitation.
For reasons of-
*cost
*expendability (number of targets to attack, etc)
*Target angles
And so forth. Similar to the modern naval situation where it just doesn't take a battleship to mount the most effective ship killers. Meaning you don't need battleships.
The size of the ship would be a function of how small you can get the reasonable kill at good range laser into a warship.
Invoking the zeroth law -- and you get ... Space Fighters. Purple Style.
Or Green Style - whichever one is lasers again.
(SA Phil)
Tony said: "Code of the Lifemaker, James P. Hogan. The machine ecosystem wasn't intentional. It was the result of a million years of evolution. A Von Neumann probe that landed on Titan had had it's data stores corrupted by supernova radiation."
Thank you!
Ferrell
SA Phil:
"The size of the ship would be a function of how small you can get the reasonable kill at good range laser into a warship.
Invoking the zeroth law -- and you get ... Space Fighters. Purple Style.
Or Green Style - whichever one is lasers again."
The problem is in fact the size of ship and the cost of the weapon system. Lasers that powerful put you in capital ships, not fighters.
Lasers how powerful?
Which costs?
I didnt see the Bill of Materials.. maybe you have a link.
----
(SA Phil)
SA Phil:
"Lasers how powerful?
Which costs?
I didnt see the Bill of Materials.. maybe you have a link."
The root of the problem is in this:
"Lets suppose it is possible to make a laser that is lethal to such a long range that your major limitation is targeting not power."
Let's ignore beam dispersion for a minute, and presuppose that power does not need to increase with range in a linear fashion. So "power" per se is not a limiting factor. The limiting factor is the resolution of your fire control instrumentation, and the precision of your pointing mechanism. One supposes that both would be maximized, and that failing to have the best equipment available puts one at a significant disadvantage in combat. That in turn means that you're only going to be able to build a relatively few of these systems. Which in turn means you want to maximizethe power that they can direct at a target.
It's not an endless upward spiral, because eventually you run into hard physical limits. But the trend would be towards larger, more effective systems, not smaller, less effective ones. No bill of materials is needed to know that.
Sounds like you are making a ton of assumptions.
You are making the technical equivilent of a strawman argument.
Basically,
Decide the process will take X,Y,Z .. claim you can only have X,Y,Z in a capital ship.
What if instead you weapons system was more like this... you could have 99% of the range for 25% of the cost and complexity.
If I say that it seems to me I might be better with 2 or 3 ships.
If I then go further and say I can have 95% of the range and 90% of the power for 10% of the cost and complexity. Then I would likely be better off with 6 or 7 ships.
Essentially you made your assumptions up - so can I.
(SA Phil)
SA Phil:
"Sounds like you are making a ton of assumptions.
You are making the technical equivilent of a strawman argument.
Basically,
Decide the process will take X,Y,Z .. claim you can only have X,Y,Z in a capital ship.
What if instead you weapons system was more like this... you could have 99% of the range for 25% of the cost and complexity.
If I say that it seems to me I might be better with 2 or 3 ships.
If I then go further and say I can have 95% of the range and 90% of the power for 10% of the cost and complexity. Then I would likely be better off with 6 or 7 ships.
Essentially you made your assumptions up - so can I."
I'm only going on what we know about the history of technology. Cost vs return curves aren't strictly linear, but they ain't skewed so far off of linear that 50% of the coast gets you almost all of the capability. If anything, 50% of the cost gets you less than 50% of the capability, because there's irreducibile overhead in any complex system. And we're talking about complex systems.
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