ERE with massive spending

[George the original one]

But unless you think owning a golden tower in the middle of NYC with endless access to material possession is in fact quality, what is the actual qualitative difference?

That's easy... the difference is the displays of dominance affect more people than what are gathered in the local dive bar when someone says "Here, hold my beer". *Far* more people!

[chenda]

I've been banging my head at the big problem for 3+ years now ... not much further than when I began. The difference between the two being "other people". Since I'm getting nowhere, my operating framework is probably wrong.

It often said that great breakthroughs and innovations occur by people with a background completely different from the one they succeed in. A fresh pair of eyes as it were. Maybe you need to work with people from an entirely different background to you i.e. non scientific ?

[7Wannabe5]

But the bottom line is, you have made my point. RK just has a higher net worth than me. And Bill Gates has higher net worth than RK. But unless you think owning a golden tower in the middle of NYC with endless access to material possession is in fact quality, what is the actual qualitative difference? Typing this post in an even more luxurious chair? Someone bringing me my coffee instead of me having to walk to another room to get it? I'm a grade A certified douche but even I reflect upon that as a distinction without a qualitative difference. However, if I was typing this in a chair, having fetched my own coffee AND worrying about a missile flying into my window, AND the government restriction my ability to procreate, AND my family disappearing without a trace, and me not being able to access this website in the first place to talk about whatever comes into my mind, well, that, to me, is a distinction with a qualitative difference. And a huge one in that. To the extent that I would consider it an entirely different system, one in which permaculture and a house voluntarily built out of mud and straw could not transform into the one I have (fortunately) found myself in.

I agree with this. I was focusing on the "crapping on side of hut" part of your previous post, not so much the mention of cruise missile. The point I was trying to make is that your lifestyle isn't necessarily qualitatively better than, for instance, Jean's lifestyle inclusive of poop-pipe set up, for the same reason that Kiyosaki's lifestyle isn't necessarily qualitatively better than yours.

Also, I was practicing solving a math story problem based on your suggestion, because I had to sit for a standardized exam this morning, which I passed (yay, old lady brain still working!)

[steveo73]

A cultural preference for boys combined with ready availability of ultrasound and abortions. Lots of baby girls got terminated and hence the shortfall in women. I'm sure attitudes are changing but it's created a major social problem for China.

This is interesting. I didn't know that were aborting girls.

[Jason]

Jesus. A bare knuckle fighting, pipe shitting, forest dwelling, anarchistic ginger or a helicopter riding, house flipping, cult marketing, unctuous infomercial book selling business titan. It's like the Sophie's Choice of lifestyle aspirations.

[steveo73]

I also think we should be very careful of stating that Robert Kiyosaki is some sort of smart operator or something like that as well. He might be wealthy but I think he and people like him are scammers.

https://thecollegeinvestor.com/4726/ult ... ankruptcy/

[jacob]

It often said that great breakthroughs and innovations occur by people with a background completely different from the one they succeed in. A fresh pair of eyes as it were. Maybe you need to work with people from an entirely different background to you i.e. non scientific ?

So far my "biggest hits" has come from the edges between fields, that is, by essentially emigrating from one field to another. About a decade ago, I tried more or less what you suggested in gathering an interdisciplinary group of people to work with (see the non-profit comments in the https://www.getrichslowly.org/early-retirement-extreme/ ) but it did not work out as expected. I think part of that is that interdisciplinary work happens at a much higher level when it happens in the same [polymathic] brain than when it happens in a group of specialists.

I think that's my issue with building bigger structures --- here phrased as massive spending. Yes, they're more effective, but their efficiency declines logarithmically.

I think the direction of "non-scientific" is hinting at the right solution---or rather a solution I haven't tried yet. My present approach to the predicament has been too intellectual and that has also been the case for many others; thus I can't contribute anything intellectually [to the predicament] that hasn't already been contributed intellectually before and failed at it by someone else already... for decades and going. Lack of education is the problem but more educating is not the answer.

[7Wannabe5]

@jacob:

I wish I could help you. I find myself stuck on trying to find anything written by anybody that can truly explain the A in the Cobb-Douglas production function. I know/grok what Hall, Piketty, and Greenspan/Ridley have to say about it, but I can't thoroughly accept or reconcile any of their perspectives (I am maybe 80/10/10.) Also, I can't do the math at that level.

[daylen]

I think the direction of "non-scientific" is hinting at the right solution---or rather a solution I haven't tried yet. My present approach to the predicament has been too intellectual and that has also been the case for many others; thus I can't contribute anything intellectually [to the predicament] that hasn't already been contributed intellectually before and failed at it by someone else already... for decades and going. Lack of education is the problem but more educating is not the answer.

This also says something about your 'morphism detector'. Some structures can be transformed into each other in a way that information is preserved (however that is defined). Yet, the existence of a morphism does not imply the structures are so similar as to be redundant, because other agents may assume a difference and that matters when teaching. Related to how learning the 'wrong' way first is necessary for mastery.

Also, 'non-scientific' seems to me like a tolerance for ambiguity that comes with letting 'small' differences act as 'large' impacts on an irregular basis. Perhaps 'thinking stupidly' in a controlled way is necessary to jump the production hurdle.

[chenda]

I think the solution may be a global spiritual revival. A mature spiritual perspective, reconcilable with science, compatible with modern values and non-exclusive could have a really positive impact on both addressing these problems and coping with the impact of them. This process I think has already begun.

[Jason]

Imagine all the people
living ERE
Ah-ah

[7Wannabe5]

Maybe make some collages of all different sorts of attractive, enjoyable lifestyles available for less than $8000/year spending with focus on activities only available to those with a great deal of free time? For instance, promote having sex every day lifestyle as superior to own your own private jet lifestyle.

[iopsi]

The "solution" is more technological advancement, as it has always been for increasing "the pie" for everybody (and/or the carrying capacity).

Gradual independence from uncontrollable and less predictable natural systems.

We are not even close to the limits of technological development yet.

(not to say that an ERE lifestyle isn't important to improve one's freedom and financial security/material wealth ofc).

[7Wannabe5]

@iopsi:

As I noted above, I ten-percent agree with your take, but it's just the Religion of Progress if you can't even properly define a basic term like "Innovation" and/or explain the underlying mechanism and/or straight-forwardly play your part in the overall technological system towards solution. Also, quite obvious that the correlation between that-which-is-often-referred-to-as-"innovation" and availability of cheap high-quality energy supplies is pretty damn solid. "It's always green grass, because it's always green grass!" is just what one lemming says to another the minute before they fall together off of the cliff.

[iopsi]

@7W5

There is no lack of energy resources tho. The sun and wind will not finish any time soon and the share of energy from renewable sources is increasing faster and faster.

Fissile materials can last for tens of thousands of years with breeder reactors that recycle nuclear waste and have insane energy density.

Also i think automation (such as of automobiles) will massively increase efficiency. For example i bet we will have much less automobiles around when they reach SAE level 5 of automation.

Then there are many several coming advances in food production, especially protein production (precision fermentation, solein, algae, probably many others).

The future is bright.

Also if it can interest you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDvMzWD ... f8x6iiblaV

It's a MiT course about the economics of growth, innovation, etc (i think the theoretical aspects of it and how it happens in practice). It is interesting.
I watched a few months ago only the first three lectures, but sooner or later i'll continue it.

@ZAFCorrection

That's such an interesting field.

But the fact that it didn't improve much for a lot of time, doesn't mean other fields won't.

Also i recognize that innovation is not easy to achieve. But it is worth it to pursue imo.

[jacob]

Research and development into breeder reactors is almost 75 years old at this point. Breeders have been built w/o commercial scale success by several countries and have largely been abandoned at this point. There are only two commercially operating breeder reactors left in the world. Both Russian sodium-cooled fast reactors. The French program (Superphenix, also a fast reactor) was shut down in 1998 due to poor reliability---it had a duty cycle of only 7%. They never managed to close the fuel cycle and as a result ended up with a bunch of plutonium instead. Sad.

Obviously we're far from the technological limit at which breeder reactors become viable. However, it's been 75 years and billions of dollars already, so the question is whether we'll ever get there. Same with fusion. Yes, the technology can be imagined, but that's not the same as building something that works and this has also been attempted for 50+ years. These technologies always seem to be about 10-20 years out in the future. Maybe they always will be? Same story about thorium. Basically, there's a shitload of theoretical designs that seemingly can't be engineered into existence.

Without breeders, the world's supply of uranium is rather limited (200 year supply at current usage, but keep in mind that nuclear is only 4% of the world's energy mix), and without energy that's too cheap to meter, it's not going to be extracted from seawater. If we suddenly scaled up nuclear massively, that supply would run out quickly.

Solar and wind are growing rapidly but they're still only 4% of the world's energy mix despite having grown "rapidly" for 30 years. That's another way of saying that relative growth rates are and have been spectacular. Absolute growth, not so much. The world's total supply of wind and solar could just about power half the US at this point. This leaves the other 7.5 billion people using something else.

PV only recently became economically viable. As you note supplies are nearly infinite (at least in duration), but that's because these are flow sources (not stock sources like fossil fuels). Unfortunately, they're rather low density sources and thus require a lot of energy and resources to concentrate. This is energy that is not free and have to be diverted from other economic activities---unlike the oil&gas industry where this is not a concern.

Compare the specific energy of the fanciest batteries (Lithium-Polymer) clocking in at around 100-250Wh/kg with a finite number of charging cycles to the specific energy of gasoline which clocks in at 12500Wh/kg and can be stored in a bucket which can be refilled ... many many times.

Also, lithium batteries are not all that recyclable and that if you ran the entire worlds energy supply on lithium batteries, there would be enough to build them and replace them (IIRC) about once before the world's lithium reserves are depleted.

But I suppose hope is infinite and resources could be mined from the asteroid belt ... once Elon Musk finishes his spaceship. The thing is the energy cost of lowering these minerals into of gravitational wells. But then someone could maybe invent a space elevator made out of unobtanium.

You can see this as a glass half full situation where there's an enormous amount of technological innovation to be done ... or a glass half empty situation where we've been waiting for technological breakthroughs for decades or where basic resource math says that these ideas are simply too expensive to be viable.

Roughly speaking this may come down to whether you're the technologist (like a nuclear physicist) getting paid for trying to make this happen OR you're the one paying for it and not seeing much return on your investment.

[ZAFCorrection]

@iopsi

Short of discovering whole new areas of physics, it's unlikely that even in the most optimistic scenarios we are going to make major improvements over the current fossil fuel paradigm. As you mentioned, the sun is the primary input of new energy. The primary mechanism for harnessing that energy is the photovoltaic effect. The Shockley-Quiesser limit defines the maximum efficiency for a single-junction photovoltaic device depending on band gap and assuming everything else is perfect [1]. That number is ~33% for the optimal case and ~32% for silicon which has a slightly suboptimal band gap. CdTe, the other commercially viable technology, has a theoretical max of 28%. The internet is telling me the most efficient commercially-available Si module is around ~23% from SunPower and FirstSolar has reported a CdTe module (not commercialized as far as I know) of ~22%. So assuming an army of geniuses takes over photovoltaic research, we are going to see an efficiency boost slightly less than 50% over current values. Given that at current efficiencies, PV is just barely starting to move the needle, I'm not super sanguine about it leading us into the Jetsons future. When we have to move off fossil fuels (due to climate change or the simple lack of them), PV has to pay the energy bill for current usage as well as the capital replacement costs for all the shit that currently runs on a fossil fuels infrastructure.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockley% ... sser_limit

Also, look up the efficiency of a tandem cell, keeping in mind that they are exponentially more difficult to design and produce.

[7Wannabe5]

@bigato:

I hear you on human powered future, but that scenario comes with its own set of serious problems. First one would be that humans are ultimately solar powered and already less efficient than solar panels built in solar panel powered factory for many functions. So, for instance, if you were post-fossil fuel non-altruistic manager of a given solar acreage, you would likely prefer giving some not insignificant portion over to panels rather than corn and beans to provide sustenance plus calories necessary for task to another human worker.

Another obvious problem with human powered future is that humans aren’t very powerful. Beasts of burden were pretty early innovation for that reason. Also, the fact that some humans are more powerful than others dies not make human powered future seem all that great for those of us who are female. Number one reason why I am rooting for intelligent design green tech edge of low tech.

[iopsi]

@jacob

I wrote a relatively long reply but i lost it .....

(a function that automatically saves the post would be very useful..)

Anyway the point of the longer post was that with a combination of: solar, wind, hydro, geo, bio, nuclear, etc. We can provide all the energy needed.

For the cases where storage is required, we can use a combination of batteries and hydrogen production.

Hydrogen could be transformed to ammonia to be used as a better fuel too.

Transportation could be powered by a combination of battery cars, hydrogen cars and maybe ammonia cars (?). And self driving technology will bring way down the number of cars

Also i knew that batteries were recyclable, but i'm not sure how much. At worst, the -renewable electricity to hydrogen to ammonia- cycle (the last one if needed), should be 100% renewable.

Japan and Sud Corea are making the transition to a "hydrogen based economy" for example.

Carbon capture could have breakthroughs to make it more viable (Bill Gates was funding one company that was doing it and producing fuel from the captured carbon for example).

Last point was that if we are able to transition to a fully renewable-powered society, then there is all the time of the world to eventually develop the more game changing technologies.
Such as Fusion, breakthrough in batteries perhaps, super advanced artificial intelligence, robotics, etc.

Could take centuries or more, but when you have literally millions of years thanks to renewable sources, time is not a problem.

Obviously this is way beyond the scope of our own lives tho (unless anti aging tech gets developed this century.. crossing fingers but not betting on it).

Overall i'm kinda optimistic at least regarding the transition to a fully renewable advanced society (strangely i was much more pessimistic when i joined this forum).

@ZAFCorrection

Yes but PV doesn't need to be the only one to be used.

Wind, hydro, geo, bio, nuclear, etc will all be part of it.

And Solar too obviously.

I think that at this point it's more about energy storage than production.

But with batteries becoming more and more efficient (even tho they also have hard limits) and perhaps even hydrogen to store excess energy, i think the tech is pretty much already here.

It's more a matter of actually making the transition to 100% renewables. Also carbon taxes should be applied to speed up the process.

Sure it won't exactly be like using fossil fuels, but you can still sustain an advanced society such as ours.

[Loner]

self driving technology will bring way down the number of cars

I heard this argument put forward a few times. I actually doubt this will be the case. I actually fear it will be the opposite--by far. By making driving less costly (more relaxing, less demanding, etc.), you encourage driving. I am not sure so much money would be pouring into developing these technologies if they were to encourage the reduction of the number of cars.

I would love to see collective transports and biking be encouraged a bit more, but that'll have to wait apparently.