Saturday, January 28, 2023

Gaining perspective: imaging Earth - and deep space

Modeling this planet. Having cut my teeth long ago on the Whole Earth Catalogue, and later having written a novel called Earth, I'm a bit of a sucker for macro planet modeling projects. Here’s one of the latest that’s just a crowd sourced mapping to Supplement Google Earth… Soar.Earth is a digital atlas of world maps, crowd-sourced from individuals, organizations, and the broader community. 


WIRED co-founder Kevin Kelly – whose lavishly huge and beautiful photography 3-volume set Vanishing Asia I have blogged about before – is also working on an Earth modeling project. He asked me for others to look at. 


Then there are speculative Earth models that take scenario-based, rather than science-fictional approaches. Here's one recently inaugurated by Benjamin Bratton and the Berggruen folks - the Antikythera project.  And another - Earth2 -developed at UCSD. (They have some problems with both concept and funding, but you may find it interesting.) 


A much larger scale and SFnal and vivid portrayal of the near future - one I contributed a fair amount to – is Earth 2050. Just be wary, since it's key sponsor is Moscow-located Kaspersky.


Envisioning space: Here's a compilation of 21 Cosmic websites you need to visit - stunning images from the scale of our solar system - to the scale of the known universe, and much more.


== Astronomy updates ==


The first water exo-worlds? Planets that seem likely to orbit their red sun very closely and to have thick layers of high pressure water and steam! The inferences through modeling are amazing. Such smart folks, we sometimes make.


Comparing 17 nearby, almost-identical twins to our sun, scientists measured the fine structure constant in the most precise astronomical test ever performed. Next, they've recently identified new solar twins much further away, about half way to the center of our Milky Way galaxy. In this region, there should be a much higher concentration of dark matter.

Gorgeous. NASA’s Webb Space Telescope revealed once-hidden features of a protostar within the dark cloud L1527, only visible in infrared light. The protostar itself is hidden from view within the “neck” of this hourglass shape. An edge-on protoplanetary disk is seen as a dark line across the middle of the neck. Light from the protostar leaks above and below this disk, illuminating cavities within the surrounding gas and dust.

This is a real time-lapse video of planets orbiting the star HR 8799, 133 light years away: four super-Jupiter worlds dancing around their sun. Amazing! Images collected at the Keck Observatory, processed by William Thompson. (Thanks Corey Powell & Mike Gannis.) 


And it makes some weird sense… that our sun’s 11 year activity cycle) actually 22 yeas) might be due to a dark matter planet whose 11 (or 22) year elliptical orbit takes it diving through the Sun’s interior at that rhythm, disturbing things with its gravity.  I have doubts that these passages would not leave detectable effects upon each entry and exit, though. 


== Deeep… and flashy… space! ==


Sometimes a black hole that’s eating a nearby star spews superheated jets, accelerated to nearly the speed of light and rarely they’re pointed directly at us. Which was the case for 2022cmc,  the brightest and most distant tidal disruption event yet-known; its source is a supermassive black hole about 8.5 billion light-years away. Twenty-one telescopes around the world viewed the jet in the X-ray, radio, optical, and ultraviolet wavelengths. 


Deeper? Astronomers using the Webb have discovered galaxies whose light left them toward us only 350 million years after the Big Bang. Our understanding of the first billion years after the Big Bang is extremely limited, and finding earlier and earlier objects can help shed light on this crucial time of formation.


== “Fermi” explanations get repetitive… ==


Groups of scientists and commentators keep discovering (aha!) explanations for what I in 1983 called “The Great Silence” – well before the coining of the far less apropos “Fermi Paradox.”  

Up near the top of popularity among notions, the “Great Filter” theory — as in “filtering out” various forms of life — argues that other civilizations, possibly several, have existed during the life of the universe. But they all destroyed themselves before they could make contact with Earth. According to a paper by a team of researchers based at NASA’s JPL: “The key to humanity successfully traversing such a universal filter is… identifying [destructive] attributes in ourselves and neutralizing them in advance.” 

Only been writing about this most of my life. And I do agree. In fact, my own #3 hypothesis is that humans appear to be rather exceptionally logical, peaceful and cooperative and smart, compared to most kinds of mammals. We even escape the noxious/toxic effects of male reproductive strategies in perhaps 1% of our civilizations! And that 1% was responsible for almost all genuine progress. NOT my favorite fermi theory because, well, we are still (especially human males) pretty damned unreasonable and reflexively dumb.

This Isaac Arthur episode is very interesting about the Gaia Hypothesis.  Though it seems worth mentioning that my novel Earth is about this at many levels... weak, moderate or strong Gaia, it's got 'em, including a scientifically plausible (if rather a reach) way that the bulk mass of the planet might become sapient. I know Isaac has read it and hence I feel a bit puzzled, since several notions from the book would seem to be branching pertinences. But his channel is superb.

Oh, and this. A civilization on a tidally locked planet orbiting close to a red star would likely have huge numbers of solar collectors along the rim zone facing sunward, some reflecting light into the shadow zone. I wonder if such collectors might have visible techno-signature effects on telescopes aimed to track those planets nearing opposition.


== The Moondoggle, redux ==


As implicit in this Nikkei (Japan) article, the current Artemis 'race to the Moon" is a horrible, valueless symbolism junket, imposed on us by a horrible, valueless symbolism junkie. It will waste billions on a wretchedly expensive throwaway, obsolete rocket system, justified by blithering nonsense about "lunar resources."

I eviscerate the insanely never-justified yammers about 'lunar resources' in this podcast  .. as well as whether any such 'resources' (again, mere fantasies) could possibly be utilized best by astronauts stomping about.

Mind you, I am all in favor of US efforts to advance lunar robotics. The one and only lunar resource of near term value is (possibly) some polar ice deposits and we've funded robotic mining studies at NASA's Innovative & Advanced Concepts program - (NIAC). Along with studies of farside robotic radio telescopes. And studies to robotically explore possible lava tube caves. Fine. As for non-robotic endeavors, I favor the earlier NASA lunar endeavor to build a 'Gateway" space station in moon orbit, with a dozen good uses. Like #2 below.

But this Artemis 'race' to throw away billion dollar behemoth rockets in order to plant symbolic footprints on a sterile plain of poison dust? Bah!

1. The U.S. and Japan have begun exploring asteroids, where the real wealth of the Solar System can be found. These are steps forward that only the U.S. & Japan (with some European help) can take! Why not focus on doing things that only we can do?

2. Humans are going back to the moon, anyway! Soon hordes of Apollo-wannabe tourists will be rushing there, eager for their manhood-ritual 'bar moonzvahs.' So? Let's rent 'em hotel rooms on the lunar orbiting station and then rent them landers for their photo ops!

3. "Beating China in a race to land on the moon"?  Sure let's humiliate a Rising Power, shaming them at their moment of "today I am a man" accomplishment! So, so wise to do (not)! Seriously, how's such a pueril, low-minded and fundamentally nasty imperative gonna serve any benefit for the West, or America or taxpayers? Other than the typically MAGA-Trumpian motive of grabbing a "Nyah Nyah!" moment?

(Far better, have a rocket and lander ready to come and assist, should they need rescue or aid!)

4. Even with cost-spreading 'partners' there's no way this helps us. NASA will have to share technologies with every partner. And we benefit from that how?

Oh, it's too late to back out now. Another idiotic Trumpist-"Shelby" moondoggle that aliens might have imposed on us, if they wanted to slow down our real advances into space. 


In fact, Trump's one first rate appointee, NASA Administrator Bridenstine, managed to insulate NASA's science departments from depredation for Artemis, and I wish Biden had found a way to make use of him.



== …and finally… ==


My former Caltech classmate - U. of Colorado Astronomy Prof Doug Duncan - is hosting a gathering event for those wanting to view the April 8, 2024 Great Texas Solar Eclipse, with interesting speakers and ideal positioning. He also has an inexpensive product – app and filters – to let your cell phone snap an eclipse. 


It may not be too soon to start planning for it!


166 comments:

Tony Fisk said...

Supernova remnant from two colliding white dwarves provides a fascinating image unlike any I've seen.

scidata said...

JWST
First a MIRI glitch in Sep of last year, now another with NIRISS last week. Concerned but not panicked. Maybe ETIs are trying to blind us. I offered my Forth skills to both CSA and ESA (back in the Rosetta days). Polite silence was the reply in both cases :)

David Brin said...

The latest gelded 'law' passed by McCarthy's razor thin GOP House majority? Other than the 30% national sales tax? To ban presidents selling from the US petroleum reserve, as Biden just did when prices were high... then using profits to refill the reserve when prices drop. Um, isn't that basic capitalism? Clinton, Obama & Biden did it to soften market gyrations for consumers AND make the US a profit. Bushes & Trump did the opposite, giving away our reserves - especially minerals and HELIUM(!) to pals at low prices, followed by sharp shortages, so those pals could sell high.

So... which party (cult) lectures us about markets, again? Now wager me which party is ALWAYS more fiscally responsible re debt and deficits. That's always. And which supports science. Which is rebuilding infrastructure and in-shoring (hugely) US manufacturing for the 1st time in 40 years, resulting in a lot of great jobs and reducing carbon emissions.

Notice ALL of those are things Republicans CLAIM they care about! But only in yowling abstract. Dems are often the good guys - even from an Adam Smith point of view - but absolute klutzes as actually telling ANY of these polemical stories.

Polemical Judo, by David Brin: http://www.davidbrin.com/polemicaljudo.html

Larry Hart said...

Dr Brin:

Clinton, Obama & Biden did it to soften market gyrations for consumers AND make the US a profit. Bushes & Trump did the opposite, giving away our reserves - especially minerals and HELIUM(!) to pals at low prices, followed by sharp shortages, so those pals could sell high.


Democrats represent us--the American people--and so consider making a profit for the treasury to be a good thing.

Republicans represent the companies or powerful individuals those profits are being made off of. And they see the market as a zero-sum game. So of course their view is opposite. It's not that they think a profit is a bad thing, but they are more interested in the gain or loss by the private companies than of the government.

That the two parties have opposite valuations of such transactions is no more surprising than the prosecutor and defense attorney having opposite valuations of a court verdict.

Unknown said...

Re: 30% sales tax

I read an AP snippet that referred to it as a 23% sales tax because that's what the GQP calls it, without any pushback on why it is, in fact, 30%. This seems to be an abdication from journalism to stenography.

I used to check Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy site for new images and discoveries, but he went "...and thanks for all the fish" a few months ago. Is there a good replacement for me to bookmark?

Pappenheimer

Larry Hart said...

@Pappenheimer,

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2023/1/26/23563563/fairtax-national-sales-tax-kevin-mccarthy

...
The point is that at a 30 percent rate, it’s reasonable to expect the FairTax to increase the federal budget deficit by trillions of dollars a year.

I assume the FairTax people have … a response to this.
They do. For one thing, they don’t like it when you refer to their tax rate as “30 percent.” While it increases the cost of, say, a $10 item by 30 percent, or $3, they argue that because $3 is 23 percent of the $13 post-tax cost, it’s actually a 23 percent tax.

Wait … seriously?
Yes, it’s stupid. More substantively, Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economist and avowed FairTax partisan, and a team of co-authors wrote a working paper responding to Gale and the Bush tax reform panel, and insisting that a rate of 31.27 percent (23.82 percent “tax-inclusive”) would make the proposal revenue-neutral. That is, the FairTax proposal would barely increase the deficit as written.
...

Dennis M Davidson said...

Total Solar Eclipse
Along with my fellow astronomical artists, I witnessed the July 11, 1991 total solar eclipse from the Big Island of Hawaii. It was one of the most incredible visual experiences of my life. Surprisingly for me, the prominences were magenta! Not orange, not red, nor yellow like in so many illustrations and time-lapse videos. These were intense, brilliant neon magenta prominences emerging motionless from the blackest black I've seen in the sky, day or night. Go forth, if you can, to see the upcoming April 8, 2024 solar eclipse. There is nothing like it in our technological world.

Unknown said...

For one thing, they don’t like it when you refer to their tax rate as “30 percent.” While it increases the cost of, say, a $10 item by 30 percent, or $3, they argue that because $3 is 23 percent of the $13 post-tax cost, it’s actually a 23 percent tax.

I would be interested in seeing how many Republicans could do the calculation if you gave them a sample problem such as "A car costs $43000 before tax, and the tax is 15% of the total the consumer pays. How much does the car cost the consumer?".

Santos of course could do it — what else would you expect from someone who won a Nobel Prize in math — but I can't see Boebert getting the right answer.

Alfred Differ said...

Heh. Nobel prize in math.

------

I think Phil Plait got a little tired of all the cranks. Last I heard he had shifted to a mostly subscription model. Cranks aren't likely to pay to be cranks.

------

23% is still an increase to me.

No doubt locumranch will appreciate the language game they want to play with the taxation rate they propose. It's definitely up there among the frauds perpetrated by officials who think we are too stupid to understand. Double plus good!

Larry Hart said...

I'd love to hear them explain in detail why a tax which adds 30% to the price without the tax is really only a 23% tax, especially with a dissenting voice pointing out repeatedly that a $100 jeejaw would cost 30 extra dollars regardless of how you frame it.

Hey, according to their math, there could never be such thing as a 100% tax. A tax of $95 on a $5 candy bar would clock in as a mere 95% tax, despite what you and I would note is an increase in the total cost of 1900%.

Larry Hart said...

This is what I once tried to explain to Dave Sim. If you systematically rid your life of the things which make it enjoyable, don't be surprised if life seems to be not worth the living. Or in simpler terms, thirst is more of a distraction and an impediment to productivity than enjoying a drink of water is.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/25/opinion/health-pleasure.html

...
While I’m certainly not suggesting that we all start binge drinking daily, eating hot dogs at every meal and breathing deeply over gas ranges, I do wonder what’s lost if we don’t let go of our superegos from time to time in pursuit of perfect health and potential longevity.

I decided to get in touch with academics who study pleasure and happiness to see what their research indicates. They didn’t mince words. “We need pleasure to survive,” said Morten Kringelbach, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Oxford who’s also the director of the Center for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing. His research over the past few decades, he said, has been in identifying the “machinery of the brain that makes you want something.”

He described that machinery as a choreography of “wanting, liking and satiety.” For example, he said that while he was talking to me, he really wanted to have an espresso. His brain was fixated on the idea of the coffee and his future enjoyment of it. Once he could pop out of the room and drink an espresso, he’d be satisfied and could go about his day. Or, as he put it: “You have this moment of orgasmic pleasure, then at some point you can do other things.”
...


P.S. The designers of AI might want to pay more attention to "a choreography of 'wanting, liking and satiety.'" than they seem to be.

scidata said...

"After a time, you may find that 'having' is not so pleasing a thing after all as 'wanting.' It is not logical, but it is often true."

Unknown said...

Gods, I'm having Jurgen flashbacks. He's the guy who sees his ultimate love asleep in her bed and decides not to pull the cover back or wake her, because he wants to keep his IMAGE of her clear in his mind and not ruin it with the reality.

He is, indeed, a monstrous clever fellow. And he's an ass.

Pappenheimer

David Brin said...

So creepy. I will offer wager stakes these kids will turn on their monstrous parents.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/home-school-nazis-telegram-dissident-saxon_n_63d596c4e4b01a43638e6a0a

Unknown said...

Dr. Brin,

At first I thought that was parody.

Some will turn. I'd be willing to bet, though, that some won't. "As the twig is bent..."

The good news is that kids today grow up in a cacophony of conflicting messages, which parents can only dam up so far unless they raise little Adolf and Ilsa in the basement and never let them get a life in the outside world.

Pappenheimer

Lloyd Flack said...

I support forms of the rare Earth as partial solutions to the Fermi Paradox.
I find the suggestion quite plausible, that formation, or at least rapid formation, of life might require solar systems with unusually high concentrations of phosphorus. And that only systems with high phosphorus concentrations would be good targets colonization. That might reduce the number of inhabited systems by a few orders of magnitude.
And of course, a star has to be long lived and stable for a billion years or so for intelligent life to form. That restricts the origin of intelligent life to type G, K and M main sequence stars. While tidal locking would not make intelligent life impossible around type M stars it would not help. I think it is quite likely that most intelligent life has formed on planets orbiting type G and K stars.
These initial condition filters are probably not enough by themselves to explain the Fermi Paradox but probably do cut the number of suitable systems by quite a lot.

Alfred Differ said...

Pappenheimer,

Conflicting messages and occasional friends who will let them crash on their couch to get away from controlling parents.

It's not just fascist and religious dogma parents doing this. I know of one case with parents who pushed hard on a son to get education credentials fast and early. He'd earned three MS degrees by the time he was old enough to leave HS. Once he did, though, one of his friends let him hide for awhile as he made his decision to break from his pushy parents.

Some people don't get that it really is a community that raises children. Parents play a huge role, but not an isolated one without doing severe damage nowadays.

Unknown said...

Alfred,

Have to agree. Tiger parents break kids. My youngest took his sweet time to decide to do anything, and I'd rather he'd gone on to a full college from community college, but he's married and happy. My dad was pushing me to push him, but no. Decided to break that chain for better or worse.

Pappenheimer

John Arnold said...

I entirely agree that an Apollo rerun is an appalling waste of resources. Buuuut - I can't help being thrilled by it!

Larry Hart said...

From the Nazi homeschooling link above:

“Without homeschooling our children,” Mrs. Saxon once wrote, “our children are left defenseless to the schools and the Gay Afro Zionist scum that run them.”


Back in the early 80s, there was a comic series called American Flagg! which took place in a dystopian future of 2032. One of the groups of antagonists was the American Survivalist Labor Camp, a neo-nazi collective which ranted against the influence of the "Italo-Brit-Zionist conspiracy." At the time, I figured that was over the top parody of the way those sorts of groups talked. Who'd have thought it was torn from today's headlines?

Lena said...

Tony,

That image really is a trip. The question is: is the thing entirely unique, or will bigger, more powerful equipment find more and more like it? As a freak event, that tells us one thing, as an uncommon occurrence, that tells us something else. I'm guessing the structure must relate to the chemical composition, perhaps the explosion formed molecules that have a chemical affinity to each other, causing them to cluster?

PSB

Alfred Differ said...

WD collisions should happen a lot, but maybe not at a frequency high enough for us to be around to catch many debris shots.

With no huge stellar mantle crashing in on a degenerate core, the blast should look different even if the luminosity curve isn't radically different.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap230108.html

David Brin said...

Lloyd F - all solid speculations on Fermi factors. Though I expect – despite my “pee” jeremiads in EXISTENCE – that Phosphorus might get substituted in other biologies. Life likely abounds under the ice of Europa worlds next to every star, not just stable ones or G/K…. but again, unlikely to get tech, or even multicellularity.

Pappen did you see IRON SKY? The idealist woman raised on the Nazi escape colony on the Moon was brainwashed as amusingly as it was chilling with the idealist boy in MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE.

John Arnold. I see three benefits from Artemis: (1) Some improved tech, if inefficiently done, (2) lander systems we can rent to Apollo wannabes, (3) winning over feminists and minorities with symbolism. Alas, none of that compensates for the stoopidity of shaming the Chinese, instead of letting them have their moment.

Darrell E said...

Successful wet dress rehearsal of the Ship-24 / Booster-7 stack last week and a final Booster static fire test, all 33 engines, scheduled for this week. To me, this is by far the most exciting thing happening in the space launch industry. If SpaceX can get this spaceship and launch system working with performance reasonably close to the design goals, the cliché will be accurate. It really will change the game in a big way.

The ridiculousness of Artemis is really clear when you note that NASA has awarded SpaceX a contract for the lunar lander for the Artemis missions, and that what SpaceX submitted was their Starship. Starship is much more capable than the Artemis spaceship, Orion. Orion can carry up to six, while a Starship has enough space to carry 100 people. And the whole Starship / Super Heavy stack is significantly more capable than the SLS. And is fully reusable.

Of course, Orion and SLS actually exist and have one flight under their belt already while Starship / Super Heavy are still at the prototype stage. But it isn't a paper system. The first orbital attempt of the system will happen sometime in the next 1-3 months. Meanwhile, SpaceX already has 3 or 4 prototypes of both ship and booster already built, with more in the pipeline, and they are producing Raptor 2 engines at a rate of 1 per day.

Lena said...

I'm listening to a show called "On Point" which is discussing the international rescue of the ozone layer, at a time when normal human beings understood that science is real. Worth checking out:

https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/01/30/how-the-world-came-together-to-save-the-ozone-layer

PSB

Lloyd Flack said...

David, all the things mentioned are things which probably make life, or intelligent life more likely but their absence probably does not make it impossible.
And there is the possibility that planets likely to form life are more common now than earlier on.
But my hunch is that species capable of interstellar travel and communication go down a pathway that leads to us not noticing them. Some sort of singularity or apotheosis. Childhood's End.

scidata said...

Lloyd Flack: Some sort of singularity or apotheosis.

Perhaps something more mundane. Artificial worlds, simulated reality. Especially if it turns out that the universe is actually a simulation anyway - what's the point of space exploration?

David Brin said...

I see our level of sapience as very rare:
- because it too so long here
- because PRE-sapience - e.g. dolphins, apes elephants, parrots, appears so frequently as to likely be trivial; our crash thru the glass ceiling was by orders of magnitude
- It suggests a universe filled with lively biospehere, many of them with animal life, but few to no techno rivals.

#3 sounds lonely, but also safer. It is my top "fermi."

Fermi#2 is water worlds... Earth is likely especially dry for an ocean world. Maybe a lot of poet whales out there.

Fermi #3 is dismal. Male reproductive strategies suggest feudalism happens everywhere, favoring winner males but leading to catastrophic governance, as here on Earth. Perhaps our enlightenment alternative is very rare. Alas, we can blow that, all too easily and return to the feudal death spiral.

Paradoctor said...

My Fermi Paradox resolution is to accept the evidence as is. So there's no evidence of intelligent life in the universe? Very well then, there isn't any. Simple!

You say: but wait, Earth's in the universe. I reply: that is correct. Now contemplate all of human history and judge for yourself.

We say that we are intelligent life forms, and we do sporadically try, but unintelligent life forms can have mistaken beliefs about themselves.

So now the question is: why is there no intelligent life in the universe?

Paradoctor said...

If you don't like that simple explanation, there here's another:

Building a Dyson sphere is not an intelligent thing to do.

Alan Brooks said...

Intelligent life may exist octillions or so light years away.

Paradoctor said...

Show me a galaxy with a Type III Kardashev civilization, and I will show you a galaxy with no intelligent life.

Unknown said...

Dr. Brin,

I started Iron Sky and stopped in about 5 minutes, thinking that Heinlein had done this at 60 years ago (I'm wrong; re: wiki, Rocket Ship Galileo was published in 1947.) I can give it another shot...

I take it your point is that fascism can twist people who would otherwise be good neighbors to think and do horrible things? Well, yes.

Re: Fermi, looks like the available data point firmly against interstellar panspermia - no easy way for life to jump between stars and another notch for an emptier cosmos. Rats.

Pappenheimer

David Brin said...

Pappenheimer too bad. Iron Sky was hilarious. Especially every scene with Sarah Palin as President.

We may live to see a kind of 1st contact, in the asteroid belt as I depict in EXISTENCE.

Tony Fisk said...

If technological civilisations were common, then it would imply that interstellar travel is impractical.
If they're rare (as it seems), then we don't have enough data to draw any conclusions.

Of course, one of the filters might be overcoming the growth habit.
Like Pappenheimer, I think the Kardyshev scale is a bit silly.

scidata said...

A corollary to the 'people who know stuff' target is 'machines that know stuff'. Expect to see scorn of the former expand bigly to the latter. And chatGPT is muddying the waters, not helpful.

Larry Hart said...

scidata:

A corollary to the 'people who know stuff' target is 'machines that know stuff'. Expect to see scorn of the former expand bigly to the latter.


A Butlerian Jihad on the way?

Larry Hart said...

Paradoctor:

We say that we are intelligent life forms, and we do sporadically try, but unintelligent life forms can have mistaken beliefs about themselves.


The definintion of intelligence in a lifeform is one of those "I'll know it when I see it," things, but I have to believe that anyone who can ask the question "Is there intelligent life in the universe?" qualifies as intelligent.

Unknown said...

I used to have an old tabletop game named "Outreach" about interstellar civilizations developing - it assumed that FTL was possible. Each hexagon on the map, once explored, showed the resources that could be developed there. The rules pointed out that the resources weren't minerals, but other sentient or upliftable* species that could be incorporated into your empire, or federation, or interstellar floral arrangement society. (The map covered about 1/4 of the galaxy and showed only superbright "beacon stars", used for navigation, since each hex contained hundreds to thousands of stars, but was colored to show the star density; the arms were star-rich and the gaps between the arms were usually not worth exploring).

Every so often you would randomly find an NPC civilization that had colonized out a hundred parsecs or two and then said "OK, we're good" and watched paint dry for the rest of eternity. I used to wonder what those guys knew that we PC civs didn't.

Pappenheimer

*only uplift wasn't a widely used concept back in the 70's.

Tony Fisk said...

Poul Anderson's Technic civilisation would have been one of those 'NPC's.
Having expanded out by a couple of hundred light years, it found itself caught between other civilisations (eg Merseia) and the administrative overhead

Tony Fisk said...

Like Asimov's Foundation series, Anderson was using Gibbon's Decline and Fall as a basis.

Paradoctor said...

Larry Hart:
I aver that merely asking if intelligence exists gets you as far as philosophy - the love of wisdom - but not to the possession of wisdom.

When the oracle at Delphi called Socrates the wisest man in Greece, Socrates himself was astonished. He knew by introspection that he had no wisdom at all; so he went around Athens, asking people for their wisdom. He found none. Was it wise of him to do that? For Athens eventually gave him a cup of hemlock, which to everyone's surprise, he drank. This was partly because he was annoying, but (in Athens' defense) also partly because two of his friends were the narcissistic traitor Alcibiades and the sociopathic tyrant Critias.

GMT -5 8032 said...

Just read this today:

https://www.cjr.org/special_report/trumped-up-press-versus-president-ed-note.php/

Not from a conservative source.

I am not a Trump fan; I loath him. I hate what he did to politics. But the media are responsible for their own failures.

This version of the post has a better link to the story.

Larry Hart said...

Paradoctor:

I aver that merely asking if intelligence exists gets you as far as philosophy - the love of wisdom - but not to the possession of wisdom.


Ah, but now you're moving the goalposts from intelligence to wisdom.

If you're implying there is no wise life in the universe, you might be right. At the macro level--a "wise species"--even moreso. I would have thought humanity wise enough not to do Brexit, for example.

Larry Hart said...

GMT -5 8032:

I am not a Trump fan; I loath him. I hate what he did to politics. But the media are responsible for their own failures.


It was painfully obvious at the time--even moreso in retrospect--that the media gave Trump more free coverage and more benefit of the doubt than they would afford any other candidate. Trump gave them ratings, clicks, and round-the-clock attention.

It may also be the case that everyone "knew" Trump would lose the election, so they didn't see any harm in propping him up and keeping the horserace going. There was one CBS bigwig who I remember saying something like, "Trump may be bad for his party and bad for the country, but he's great for CBS." I wonder if he still feels that way. Certainly, at the start of the Biden administration, when the human on the street could finally stop worrying about what Cheetolini was about to tweet next, some in the media were lamenting the drop in viewership and pining for the days of Trump.

David Brin said...

GMT I wrote Polemical Judo partly in despair over the stupidity of the Good Side in this phase of the American Civil War. Evil vs. Stupid. It sounds like 1862 all over again.

---
Paradoctor, in Men In Black Tommy Lee Jones says "A person is smart, people are panicky beasts and you know it."

Diametrically opposite to true.

My own wisdom STARTS with Socrates's "I am not wise..." but then moving on from that despairing (truthful) shrug to the next level. Recognizing that I am beneficiary of a CIVILIZATION that has proved capable of glacially developing wisdom. Along with graciousness, honor and decency, especially in light of of the wretched litany of horro called history.

I am grateful to whatever made this happen. I know it can easily fail and never, ever re-appear. I suspect the Galaxy may have this one chance for gracious Elder Ones to arise... out of stinky-bellowing, pain-drenched humanity. This experiment must have my utter loyalty. Nothing else deserves it, but this glimmer does.

I have tried to show HOW this civilization did it... by never trusting one set of subjective delusions. By using freedom and reciprocal criticism, to pierce every smug, delusional bubble, including my own.

Alas, I feel like Don McLean in "Vincent."

They aren't listening, they do not know how...

David Brin said...

Bill Maher loves to be hated. If you add up all of his positions on STRATEGIC GOALS, he is about 95% liberal. If you tally his rants about TACTICS, he skewers the left almost as often as the right. In fact, the left's inability to re-evaluate failed tactics may kill us all and is the reason that I wrote Polemical Judo! The mad/confederate/putinist /MAGA right will only be sent into political oblivion - thus rescuing civilization, science, the planet, our kids, America, and even a saner conservatism - if we on the Union side of this civil war stop declaring dumb tactical mistakes to be the same thing as virtue, tolerance and victory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PPVRAl3WTQ

Alas, Maher repeatedly fails to make this distinction - between goals and tactics - entirely clear in his rants. Yes, I can see that he THINKS he makes it clear. But no, he doesn't. Take this latest raving about PRIVATE JETS. Yes, he is absolutely right to skewer the hypocrisy of liberal celebrities - including himself! - lecturing us about carbon then flying home on a G5. Maher makes clear that everyone does it if they get a chance to bypass the pit of hell that commercial airlines have become... except Ed Begley and Greta Thunberg. But alas...

...he neglects to say "yes, but, alas!" He fails to follow up on WHY airline travel has gone rotten! It is BECAUSE the rich and mighty no longer travel in the same airports and airplanes we do, and when that happens, every mode of transportation enters decline, because the mighty no longer care!



I have railed before about the importance of solving this, first with steep taxes on the private jets and terminals. The very solution Maher did NOT mention, that would have saved his choice rant.

Metaphorically speaking (but just barely) we must go with torches and pitchforks to those terminals and poke the powerful with revolutionary zeal, shouting:

"Back you go! Back into First Class where you belong! Sit there in your leather seat only twice the width of mine, obey the corporate flight attendant, sip your mimosa and endure every delay until you use your influence to make things better for us all!"

Oh and also: "You are not gods... nor even feudal lords. If you keep pretending to be, there's another mode of travel just for preeners like that. It's called a tumbrel. Look it up."

Unknown said...

Tony,

"Merseia" does look like a portmanteau of "Medes and Persians", the greatest thorn in Rome's side until the Volkwanderung period. Never noticed that before.

Dr. Brin,
Even if they are not listening - pro tip: removing body parts does NOT help. You want people lending you THEIR ears.

Kind of happy today - wife's feeling a little better.

Pappenheimer

duncan cairncross said...

Dr Brin

Back when I worked for Cummins we had a number of corporate aircraft

The Turboprop was an amazing time saver - I could leave Columbus (Indiana) at 7am - do almost a full days work at our North Carolina (or one of the other plants) and be home by 7pm
(Note this was Columbus Indiana - not the big city - there were NO commercial flights from our small airport)

If we had flown commercial it would have taken all day just to get there - The Company Bus would visit one of the other plants for 4 days a week - the pilots worked on their golf game while we worked

There was a jet as well - for the executives - I traveled on that once and along with my boss was instructed to sit in the back and shut up

The "Company Bus" was much much nicer than flying commercial - and much more cost effective for the company

But was not some type of Aristocrats conveyance

Lena said...

Dr. Brin,

I can't even listen to "Vincent" anymore - too depressing.


PSB

Lena said...

Paradoctor,

If I recall correctly, Socrates' take on the Delphic Oracle was that he just happened to be there and was chosen to represent the general ignorance of all humankind. I think this is a good place for all of us to start. All humans are individuals, with their own individual predilections and tendencies, foibles and follies, brilliant flashes and massive blind spots. As soon as I think I am right, I find out that my ideas are gross simplifications of an immensely complex reality that none of us have a monopoly on. People who think they have a connection with some god or other presume that they have that monopoly, but none of them are gods and cannot possibly know what they think they know. Likewise, adherents to famous thinkers, like Marx or Descartes or Socrates, might think they have found wisdom, but all they have done is limited their own perspective. Embrace individuality - until we develop telepathy, it is the only reality.

PSB

Unknown said...

"People who think they have a connection with some god or other presume..."

Boy, do they. Once read that A. Crowley (a person I find otherwise questionable) advised on how, through intense meditation and mental honing, one could attain a mystic connection to a divine being; he then recommended giving yourself a mental reboot (not his words) and, using the same process, attaining a mystic connection to an entirely different divine being. So, unless Heinlein's Multiple Pantheistic Solipsism is a real thing, we're connecting to something within, not without. But that's not something I want to run around in churches shouting, particularly in Eastern WA.

Pappenheimer

Re: telepathy - human empathy and familiarity can go a long way to mimicking telepathy; my wife and I occasionally know exactly what the other is thinking. I also have gotten the same mental sensation while fencing or SCA heavy fighting an opponent at about my (pretty low) skill level. It's them mirror neurons, I guess.

duncan cairncross said...

Hi Alfred
What else were the pilots to do?

They flew for about two or three hours - landed - we got off and took a minibus to the plant

They were sitting in an aircraft at a small town airfield waiting for us to come back so that they could fly us home

And a different small town airfield each day -

I normally went to CDC in North Carolina and Rocky Mount was about the same size as Columbus - only not as salubrious

Alfred Differ said...

The idea was to have the pilots training students rather than sitting around. If you pick a non-standard aircraft that gets used outside CONUS more than inside, then 'students' would get flight time that might prove useful in other markets.

The idea boiled down to this... Where do you get flight experience for bush planes? Big or little cities? We were looking at a range between Salt Lake City and Reno where there are a lot of NV towns that aren't big enough to justify big planes but ARE big enough to justify some flights. There is a whole lotta nothing on the NV/UT border... until you get on the ground and meet people. Then you discover the problem is distance. Way too much of it.

It was an idea. We didn't get far enough with it to test the market, but ANY income derived from the plane would have been better than having it and a pilot sitting around.

Larry Hart said...

Lena:

As soon as I think I am right, I find out that my ideas are gross simplifications of an immensely complex reality that none of us have a monopoly on.


Chicago Cubs fans learn pretty early in life that reality doesn't bend to our whims. I think I learned to internalize, "I may be wrong..." fairly quickly because of that. Even the 2016 World Series was just the exception that proves the rule.

scidata said...

Re: [people's] ideas are gross simplifications of an immensely complex reality

An example is the mathification of the universe. Also a clear, succinct rationale for computational psychohistory.

Larry Hart said...

Dr Brin:

Alas, Maher repeatedly fails to make this distinction - between goals and tactics - entirely clear in his rants. Yes, I can see that he THINKS he makes it clear. But no, he doesn't. Take this latest raving about PRIVATE JETS. Yes, he is absolutely right to skewer the hypocrisy of liberal celebrities - including himself! - lecturing us about carbon then flying home on a G5. Maher makes clear that everyone does it if they get a chance to bypass the pit of hell that commercial airlines have become...


Bill Maher is as much a contrarian as you are, although you each manifest it in different ways. I think he tends to skewer liberals because he feels, as many conservatives seem to, including sane ones like Tacitus2, that they're fighting a defensive battle in a country or a world gone wild with leftism (the current "woke" sums up more what they're fighting off than "leftist" does, but by any other name). Why else does he feel the need to feature right-wingers on reputation-saving book tours such as Bill Barr, Kellyanne Conway, and Sean Spicer to name a few.

I may have some personal understanding of his motivation to be like that. In the 80s, my arguments with conservatives usually ended up in the form of a living indirect proof. They were not going to bend and see the things I suspected they were wrong about, so my own judo move was to accept their worldview at face value and let it play out until the inevitable consequences showed themselves for all to see.

By the 90s, I had learned the problem with this strategy. Once you keep letting them have their way, they've taken it many steps further beyond the flaws which show up from the earlier steps. It's all well and good to jump on the bandwagon in order to demonstrate that the wheels have fallen off, but once you're letting them drive the car you're in off of a cliff just to demonstrate that they're incompetent, you're in dangerous territory from which there is no return.

Maher's recent rant about private jets was spot-on as far as it goes, but the major flaw I see is that he accepts the right-wing narrative that wealthy elites who flout their own laws and mores are characteristically liberal. As if the Davos crowd gets to Switzerland by canoe. Even worse than that--as if the Davos crowd are a bunch of George Soros socialists. The party of Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, Reagan, and at least three generations of Bush has managed to successfully brand itself as fighting for the common man against the wealthy and powerful. That has to be the greatest polemical coup in history. And as long as we accept their framing, we're already losing the war.

Tim H. said...

LH, yes, reality seems unfavorable to right wing reactionaries:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/us-still-has-the-worst-most-expensive-health-care-of-any-high-income-country/
The story suggests that voting for the most progressive Democrats has superior potential for saving Mothers & infants. The (Formerly) GOP seems excessively deferential to the "Cult of Mammon".

Lena said...

Larry,

"By the 90s, I had learned the problem with this strategy. Once you keep letting them have their way, they've taken it many steps further beyond the flaws which show up from the earlier steps."

In other words, give them an inch, they take Poland.

PSB

Lena said...

Pappenheimer,

You're stuck out in Eastern Washington? I'm sorry. It could be worse, though. It could be Colorado Springs. When I was growing up during the AIDS crisis, the churches used to send out death squads to hunt gays. The bodies usually ended up in the creek behind the apartment complex I lived in when i was nine.

If we actually had real telepathy (if that's even possible), then everyone would know what everyone is thinking all the time. People like Trump would be confined to mental institutions, and no one but the insane would commit any kind of crime, because everyone would be caught immediately. It would make for quite the paradise, but only in science fiction. Most sci-fi that shows telepathy, however, makes it into this rare thing that only a tiny handful of people have. Not a lot of imagination there.

PSB

Larry Hart said...

PSB (sorry for the "Lena" before) :

In other words, give them an inch, they take Poland.


Recall the Nazi in Mel Brooks's version of To Be or Not To Be, not realizing that he's speaking to a disguised Bronsky, describing what he thought of that actor's performance on stage.

"And what he did to Hamlet, we did to Poland."

Larry Hart said...

PSB:

It could be Colorado Springs.


Are you familiar with the movie Black Klansman? (I think it's actually called "BlacKKKlansman"). It's based on a real-life story of a black policeman in the 1960s who infiltrated a local Klan group. And it took place in your old home town.

The Colorado Springs police force as depicted was surprisingly tolerant, given the time and place. I was expecting them to be sympathetic to the Klan.

Unknown said...

PSB,

Spider Robinson had some thoughts on mass telepathy - it would certainly be the end of the world as we know it, and we might not survive the transition as a species.

I'm in the blueish spot on the ID border (Spokane) and my wife's best friends are university professors that invited us to their Great Gay SCA wedding. It's not wall to wall RWNJ out here, but we're certainly outvoted. Beautiful country, though. Had to have mountains around where I retired.

Pappenheimer

Lena said...

Larry,

I grew up there in the '70s and '80s, and when people started shooting at my Jewish friend, the police were not interested at all. Times sure change, don't they? These days most conservatives pretend they're not Archie Bunker in public, but they still vote for bigots, support bigoted policies, and bobblehead fascist propaganda.

PSB

On the "Lena" thing, no biggie. Just a reminder.

Lena said...

Pappenheimer,

That's why if I write a story that involved telepathy, it's usually an alien species that was telepathic from the get-go.

I'm with you on the mountains. Love them. The only thing that might persuade me to move back to Colorado would be if I could get some affordable land up in the Rockies. Orographic precipitation is going to huge for the West, what with our 1200 year drought.


PSB

David Brin said...

Alfred at minimum harshly taxing the private planes and terminals would be fairness and a great source of revenue to spend on airports etc. And sure, also on eco stuff.

The uber elites would just shrug anf pay it, bragging then that their carbon footprint is paying for new rain forest.

The marginal ones, forced sometimes back into First Class, would grumble at the airlines and FAA and TSA with more influence than we can, and improve the 'bus" thereby.

As is, private is SUBSIDIZED by the rest of us. WTF?

Carumba. NEXT YEAR, according to my longstanding prediction - the rich will get flying cars or at least air limos to soar above our congested traffic. We must take a stand somewhere.

Larry Hart said...

PSB:

These days most conservatives pretend they're not Archie Bunker in public, but they still vote for bigots, support bigoted policies, and bobblehead fascist propaganda.


In the 30s and 40s, Nazis could claim with a Pence-like smirk, "I'm not anti-Semitic. (comic beat)...I like Arabs a lot."

These days, they seem to despise Arabs more than Jews. But really, they're not too fond of either, making them true anti-Semites.


The only thing that might persuade me to move back to Colorado would be if I could get some affordable land up in the Rockies.


Maybe you could find Galt's Gulch.

David Brin said...

The problem with So-crates’s “I’m not wise riff is that it amounted to humble-bragging. It’s a pity that the guy who promoted questioning as a ‘method’ nevertheless – (at least according to the dialogues later issued by Plato) – still wound up portraying an authority-structure and ex cathedra rulings on correct interpretation.

Flattery of authority – and authority self-flattery – is so thoroughly ingrained in our nature that it took forever for the Socratic method of impudent questioning under tight authority control to evolve into the impudent questioning OF those asking leading questions aimed at a teleological point.

An ecosystem of impudence that truly can piece most delusion bubbles…

…and thus is under full scale assault by cabals of would be self-flatterers.

Larry Hart said...

Every time I hear Republicans complain that government is weaponized against Republicans, I imagine criminals complain that the justice system is weaponized against criminals. I mean, that's really what they're saying.

It's a bit humorous that they're the ones saying that particular thing.

locumranch said...

The problem with the world is the vast number of lovers who choose to masquerade as thinkers, when the former is full of hopeful romantic aspirations and the latter is (for lack of a better word) skeptical.

But, as the song goes, I could have told you Vincent (that) this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.

Me, I lean more toward 'Castles in the Air', as I find suicidal self-martyrdom without allure, in the complete & cynical knowledge that literally no one is ever coming to save me. Or, you. Or, us.


Best

Unknown said...

https://www.jobyaviation.com/

Now in the building where we installed solar panels.

David Brin said...

If there's one person who should never replace George Santos in Congress, it's his former opponent who let the country down by failing to do even a scintialla of homework on Santos/Devolder before the election. Dereliction on a stunning scale.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/02/01/robert-zimmerman-george-santos/

scidata said...

The chair could be occupied alternately by the children Ignorance and Want from "A Christmas Carol". Representing neither party, just a silent and ever-present reminder of what the business of Congress should be.

Alfred Differ said...

David,

Heh. I'm still not convinced, but I could get behind the end of airport subsidies that prop up private plane air travel. The uber-elites would build their own airports and I'm fine with that. Everyone else would fly on the bus.

I'd like to see many of the small city airports turned over. I've lived in a few cities that just close them and turn the land into houses that result in property tax revenue. If the elites want to fly, let them pay a legitimate amount of property tax in exchange for it. However... when they turn those small airports into profit centers again (cities are often terrible at that) then treat the resulting entity as a business.

Alfred Differ said...

regarding telepathy...

We can already do some of it. That's what big brains do. We model each other well enough that we 'know' things about each other.

Where exactly is PSB? Inside one skull? Doubtful if his wife loves him. He's over there too, though not at the same high resolution as he is inside his primary skull.

Human telepathy comes from the power of love. Do it right and you know things about other people... because you've partially copied them into your primary skull.

duncan cairncross said...

Dr Brin

If I was standing for Parliament (God help us) then I would be campaigning on what I wanted to do - what my Party wanted to do

Investigating my opponent and publishing his/her flaws would NOT be a priority - and would probably lose me votes

scidata said...

Alfred Differ: because you've partially copied them into your primary skull

Mirror neurons and syntonicity* are two key concepts in computational psychohistory.
Fun fact: I got my start in computational models writing flight simulators way back when you had to craft your own multiprocessing rig to run them on. My biggest issue working closely with pilots was that they guzzled all the coffee and never made more.

* a music theory term that Seymour Papert repurposed for computational thinking

Unknown said...

MY "...biggest issue working closely with pilots..." was that the fighter pilots paid more attention to my female co-workers (weather observers) than to their weather briefings.

Pappenheimer

P.S. Trying to imagine what Galt's Gulch would really be like. Several score unshaven, starving, self-proclaimed geniuses squabbling over whose turn it was to clean the john, while keeping an eye over their shoulder because it was going to be someone's turn in the cooking pot next.

Alfred Differ said...

scidata,

My view on this goes a lot like Douglas Hofstadter described in "I am a strange loop". I think he nailed the recursiveness inherent in a believable definition for "self".

There is a chapter later in the book where he talks a bit about how he was struck down when his wife died. It was rather sudden in that the diagnose for her headaches led to the blunt reality that she'd be dead in a month. Anyone who has read more than one of his books can see a discontinuity in his enthusiasm for life right around that period... and he talks about it in that book in a way that reveals more about what he means with the term "self" than anything else I've ever read.

When we say someone is 'survived by' others (family, kids, friends) one can use Hofstadter's definition to see that we can take the phrase literally. We all kinda know it too.

Lena said...

Alfred,

Sure, but that's not exactly what people mean by telepathy. What I wonder is, will it ever be possible to create it with technology? If we went for a Cyberpunk style suite of brain implants that would allow for direct mind-to-mind communication, would people then learn to hack the system to listen in on conscious thoughts that people do not intend to transmit? That could be fun...


PSB

Lena said...

Larry,

I haven't met a whole lot of people who know that the original meaning of Semite includes both Arabs and Israelites.

If I ever found Galt's Gulch, I would be tempted to nuke it.

PSB

Lena said...

Dr. Brin,

I heard a really cool story on the radio as I was driving home from work. It was an interview with a behavioral ecologist, who was studying a pod of dolphins. I thought you might find it interesting, though they were dolphins in Brazil rather than in space. For the past century the dolphins had been driving schools of fish into a lagoon, and the local people would grab their nets and catch some of the fish. The local hominids insist that they catch a lot more fish when the dolphins help them. The science team went in with submersible drones and other equipment to see how the human fish predation affects the dolphins' feeding. It turns out that both species get more fish when they work together. In fact, the local hominids told them that there are some dolphin pods that help them fish (good dolphins) and other pods that try to keep the hominids from getting fish (bad dolphins). It's not hard to guess who gets the most fish. The ecologist said that he had heard of similar arrangements elsewhere, including India, Myanmar, the west coast of Australia, and the east coast of Africa.

I don't remember who it was who said that competition is the rule in the animal kingdom, but cooperation is the rule with humans. It seems that there might be more to it than that.

PSB

David Brin said...

PSB andwolves learned that chasing herds toward humans would get a lot of meat for everybody.

Alfred Differ said...

PSB,

not exactly what people mean by telepathy

Very true, but I think it is connected to how things would work in a real sense. For example, suppose you had the tech right now. I think you'd find we already have a mechanism to exploit for data capture. If you could listen in, you'd be modeling the target person in your head... which you already know how to do. The tech would just help make it all go faster.

If we exploit our current capabilities, I'd argue we'd kinda fall in love or at least into friendship with the target of our attention. I'd also argue there is only just so much room in your head, so it would be best to build datastores to augment your Dunbar number. We'd need both types of tech.

Tim H. said...

I wonder how society would be distorted if AC Clarke's "Brainman" (3001, Final Odyssey) intruded on reality)? I'd prefer that to Niven's "Wire" (Known Space stories).

DP said...

Larry - "Maybe you could find Galt's Gulch."

How about a liberal version?

Highly recommend "The Deluge" a cli-fi novel by Stephen Markley which include a band of ecologists starting a green version in Wyoming.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/10/books/review/stephen-markley-deluge.html



Larry Hart said...

Pappenheimer:

Trying to imagine what Galt's Gulch would really be like. Several score unshaven, starving, self-proclaimed geniuses squabbling over whose turn it was to clean the john, while keeping an eye over their shoulder because it was going to be someone's turn in the cooking pot next.


No, see, someone would live there whose passion was for cleaning toilets, and who resolved each time that the toilet he cleaned would be the cleanest toilet in history.

PSB:

If I ever found Galt's Gulch, I would be tempted to nuke it.


You'd do better to clean their toilets at $10 of gold coins a pop.

Unknown said...

Trying to imagine what Galt's Gulch would really be like.

Well, the Libertarian version got a trial run, and it was amusing if you didn't live there. Read A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear for the story.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling

From what I (dimly) remember from skimming Rand's book decades ago, the version there was an autocracy with the übermensch firmly in charge — medieval power structure with capitalist trappings. Could easily be wrong about that — it was a lifetime ago and I wasn't that interested in the book.

Larry Hart said...

Pappenheimer:

From what I (dimly) remember from skimming Rand's book decades ago, the version there [Galt's Gulch] was an autocracy with the übermensch firmly in charge — medieval power structure with capitalist trappings. Could easily be wrong about that...


I think you misremember, although maybe a distinction without much difference. It wasn't an autocracy, but everybody who lived there all agreed on the same things (because there are no contradictions and A equals A).

And they weren't claiming special privileges. Anyone who just happened to stumble across a secluded, uninhabited tract of land rich in gold, oil, and farmland was welcome to set up a similar paradise.


— it was a lifetime ago and I wasn't that interested in the book.


I was interested by way of curiosity. And then, I really enjoyed the book--enough to read it a second time. But then again, I'm the world's biggest fan of the Adam West Batman tv show. It wasn't the philosophy that I liked, but the boys' adventure tale structured much like a comic book.

And I did have to keep reminding myself what I--the reader--am supposed to be cheering and booing for.

Larry Hart said...

I said:

It wasn't the philosophy that I liked, but the boys' adventure tale structured much like a comic book.


I mean, it even had a pirate swinging on a rope and crashing through a window. What's not to love?

:)

Unknown said...

"a Cyberpunk style suite of brain implants that would allow for direct mind-to-mind communication"

Yes, there would be hacking. And spam. And viruses.

Maybe that's the Fermi filter

Pappenheimer

Larry Hart said...

On telepathy...

Science fiction has primed us to think that someone else's thoughts can be broadcast like radio and stored like computer data, meaning that any target can interpret the thoughts of any source.

I doubt biology works that way. The message and the messenger are way too intertwined. I suspect that Dr Brin's depiction in Kiln People, where only a body modeled on the same original is capable of holding that original's thoughts, is closer to reality.

Larry Hart said...

Dr Brin:

Alas, I feel like Don McLean in "Vincent."

They aren't listening, they do not know how...


In the musical 1776, John Adams was unable to promote any of his ideas personally because he was so off-putting that no one would listen. It was necessary for someone else like Thomas Jefferson to relay those ideas to the public before they became mainstreamed.

I'm often in a similar position myself, and I suspect that you are in the same boat. What you need is an anti-Tucker Carlson to do the publicity work.

Paradoctor said...

From the point of view of the other animals, we humans already have telepathy. It has to do with the sounds that we make with our mouths. The animals closest to us can partially read us, specifically our emotions; but somehow we can transfer detailed information beyond that. Evidently there's more to it than vocabulary; the _order_ in which we make noises matters. We're a mystery to them.

And yes human telepathy (i.e. language) has all the properties and problems that you ascribe to telepathy. Mass mind, recordings, manipulation, hacking, spam, and viruses. As ever, science fiction excels not at predicting the future, but at imaginatively observing the present.

Paradoctor said...

So imagine telepathic saucer aliens who relate to us as we relate to cats. They'd teep at us constantly because they're compulsive teepers. They like the sound of their own minds. We'd detect the psi waves that they make; we could make out how they are feeling, but not what they are thinking. They'd be a mystery to us, and us to them. There would be psi waves that we make back to them, but never to each other, as a way to manipulate them. They'd think they own us; we'd think we own them. If we play our cards right, then our case would be the stronger.

locumranch said...


The liberal progressive version of Galt's Gulch is our current Laputan university system, replete with airborne rock-throwing narcissists & ivy-covered professors in ivy-covered halls.

What PSB says goes both ways, even though a simple urban power outage will do, as these urbane intellectuals typically self-segregate before disarming themmselves.

Insomuch as our so-called intellectuals yammer on incessantly about their desire to cull the common man, telepathy is not necessary to communicate this their intent.

Adapt & decentralize if you would survive.


Best

Paradoctor said...

Locum:
Scatter, adapt, remember?

Der Oger said...

Yes, there would be hacking. And spam. And viruses.

Maybe that's the Fermi filter


And total immersion in virtual realities.

I once wrote a short piece on my blog about a retirement/nursing facility in which the (wealthy) clients were all tied to a virtual reality. An AI would slowly replace parts of the client's mental capabilities once dementia would set in.

Maybe I should get a patent on the process.

Larry Hart said...

Der Oger:

And total immersion in virtual realities.


On his radio show, Hal Sparks admitted (although facetiously) that once sex robots were perfected, he'd never need to interact with another human being again.

I suspect there was some "kidding on the square" in that statement.

Lena said...

I'll take tursiops over canids any day. Way more uplift potential. Sure, they aren't fluffy, but if what you want is some fluffy/cuddly mammal, guinea pigs do that job fine. Not very smart, but they won't bite your arm off.


PSB

Paradoctor said...

Lena: Sure, dolphins have smarts and sonar, but no hands; and dogs have no opposable thumbs. I vote for raccoons. They already have hands, and they'll uplift themselves, just to get into our trash.

A small woodland creature with clever hands figures out how to crack electronic locks, in order to eat garbage. That's self-uplift, in a nutshell.

Lena said...

Paradoctor,

I'm totally okay with the procyonidae. They're cute, fluffy, pretty bright, and at least somewhat social. And, unlike dogs, they won't rip your arm off. Maybe Dr. Brin can write a new Uplight novel featuring them...

PSB

matthew said...

Catching back up to the comments - GMT-5's media criticism article from CJM way above here is a laughable hit piece, deserving of the reader pondering "Was this written under the influence of blackmail, or just a shit-ton of oligarch payola?"

The author is plain in their intent to defraud. For example, he neglects to mention that both Clinton and the FBI were interested in Russian control of Trump because of intercepted Russian communication *bragging* about how they controlled him. He just mentions that they were interested, not the why, all the while insinuating that there was foul play with *Clinton*.

It is an ugly piece of re-written history, disguised as media criticism.

Thanks for posting it; but perhaps your intention was to spread the meme that the author wants spread. At least, GMT, you should re-read it in conjunction with the articles it is meant to criticize.

David Brin said...

DP: “Larry - "Maybe you could find Galt's Gulch."

How about a liberal version?

Keith diMano? his novel The Bridge set in a future when rabid vegans insist everyone eat only green sludge from bio reactors. Then comes word that humans are still killing quadrillions of fellow creatures as bacteria and such. So everyone must suicide by midnight.

In fact, Ayn Rand allows for existence of government with a monopoly on force and ‘courthouses’ mostly to enforce contracts. But with govt mostly about contracts and preventing force.

Not fostering fair competition, one notes.

“I'm totally okay with the procyonidae. They're cute, fluffy, pretty bright, and at least somewhat social. And, unlike dogs, they won't rip your arm off. Maybe Dr. Brin can write a new Uplight novel featuring them…”

They were my models for Synthians. As otters were for the Tytlal. And I wouldn’t trust either without a taser collar!

Semites are descended from Noah’s son Shem. Much later Abraham had Ishmael via Hagar - legendary father of all Arabs and then his legitimate son Isaac by Sarah, forerunners of the Israelites via Jacob. This leaves out the whole line of Jacob’s brother Esau. He’s the one I’m curious about.

Tony Fisk said...

In case you hadn't noticed, we've had 'telepathy' in our back pockets for the last decade or two. If you don't agree, consider this an invitation to ponder what 'telepathy' actually means, to you.

Adding to the list of human-animal relationships, the Yuin people of SW Australia had a close working relationship with the local killer whales: they'd co-operate in hunting other whales.
(Cameron's Metkayini and 'tulkuls' would never do that sort of thing, of course). European whalers got involved but, alas, disrupted it.

Larry Hart said...

Dr Brin:

Semites are descended from Noah’s son Shem.


Yes, and I'm not clear why, but in the King James Bible, that boy is referred to interchangeably as Sem and Shem. I don't recall him changing his name the way Abram became Abraham--it's just like they spelled it differently in different verses.

I don't know that this is Jewish teaching, but the fundamentalist Christians assert that the inhabitants of the three known continents at the time are respectively the descendants of Noah's three sons.* Semites (or Shemites) are Asians, specifically middle-eastern. I've heard of Egyptians referred to as Hamites, which I suppose is not meant to be taken lit'rally, but refers to any inhabitants of Africa. The fundies seem to think that Ham's accidental viewing of his drunken father's nakedness justifies African slavery. By process of elimination, Caucasians must be descendants of Japeth, although I've never heard them called Japethites.

* One of the quad preachers at the University of Illinois was a STEM teacher in his own right--I don't remember now if he taught math or physics--and his theory was that God closed the door of the ark from inside, meaning that God was in the ark with Noah and company. And (direct quote), "The radiation field in that ark must have been intense.") So the sons' genes were affected such that they produced distinct races of man.


Much later Abraham had Ishmael via Hagar - legendary father of all Arabs and then his legitimate son Isaac by Sarah, forerunners of the Israelites via Jacob.


The musical Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat refers to the Arab characters as "Ishmaelites". I've never heard that used anywhere else, but it makes sense.


This leaves out the whole line of Jacob’s brother Esau. He’s the one I’m curious about.


Wow! That's as brilliant, obvious-in-hindsight a detail as Dave Sim's noticing that Eve was never kicked out of the garden of Eden.

Alan Brooks said...

Lotus Ranch,
Let us say you are correct that universities contain airborne rock-throwing narcissists. And ivy covered Ivy Leaguers in ivy covered halls. Yet I’d much prefer Ivy Leaguers and their airborne rock-throwing students to knuckle-draggers.
Spent a couple of years in the South—and have no intention of setting foot there again. Shall we say too exciting for words. Depends Where, naturally. In Carolina it was tolerable, at least in the civilized surroundings of a college town. But when you leave a bubble community, things become the Real World—that is to say decidedly Uncivilized.
It’s of course idiosyncratic: some of us prefer civilization to harsh reality. Civilized, such as the campus wherein the med school you attended was located.
——
Lotus Branch, you are unique; you’re either the smartest imbecile I’ve encountered; or the dumbest genius.

DP said...

Was Galt's Gulch the original prepper community? Or just an early version of uber-rich people owning bunkers in New Zealand?

As for liberal v. conservative, if you had to join a prepper community would you chose: a sustainable hippy ecovillage liberal commune or a paranoid gun nut conservative bunker?

The hippie ecovillage would be a much more enjoyable stay (and your odds of having sex are much higher) but your survival chances are probably better with the gun nuts.

Tim H. said...

Comp sci failed rocket science:
https://www.npr.org/2023/02/02/1152481564/we-asked-the-new-ai-to-do-some-simple-rocket-science-it-crashed-and-burned
A synthetic bull s**t artist?

Cari Burstein said...

DP wrote:
The hippie ecovillage would be a much more enjoyable stay (and your odds of having sex are much higher) but your survival chances are probably better with the gun nuts.

Your survival chances might be longer with the gun nuts, but how long before you want to use one of those guns to put yourself out of your misery? (this is assuming of course they share the guns with you)

Also your chances of the sex being consensual are way higher in the ecovillage.

Alan Brooks said...

Besides, what if the gun nuts decide to divvy up your possessions—after you disappear one Moonless night.

Lena said...

DP & Cari,

Actually, your long-term prospects are much worse with the gun nutbags. Assuming they don't shoot you, their general toxicity will take years off your life. Now if the gun nut commune met up with the hippie commune, the hippies wouldn't have a prayer. If you can keep them separated, though, you would life a much longer and happier life with the peace and love people than the blood and nuts people.

PSB

Don Gisselbeck said...

I'm sure these preppers would be able to hold off the first few hundred starving city slickers.

Unknown said...

The original prepper community - I could make a case for it being Jomsborg, the fortress of the Jomsvikings - a band or order so manly that women were not allowed inside. If you were a viking and thought regular vikings were just wimps and girly-men, you went to Jomsborg.

Of course, nobody's ever been able to conclusively identify the site of Jomsborg and it's possible the Jomsvikings are entirely mythological.

Pappenheimer

P.S. It's not Galt's Gulch, though - the Jomsvikings were supposed to share the loot equally. Communism!

duncan cairncross said...

PSB

I'm less sure about Hippies V Gun Nuts - a cooperative group usually beats a group of individualists

Der Oger said...

Hippies vs. Gun Nuts:

The problem with the Former is: They could revere Charles Manson.
The problem with the latter is: They could accidentally run out of ammo or shoot themselves (Don't know what would be worse for the survivors of humanity).

David Brin said...

Right de Oger. Most of the hippie communes I knew were much less utopia and drifted a bit toward Jonestown.

Alfred Differ said...

I have no anecdotal evidence for gun nut communities and only a little for gun nuts themselves. That's intentional since I don't believe for a moment that an armed community is a peaceful one.

------

I have one experience with a 'hippie' commune. They were mostly about isolating themselves from the rest of us with whom they disagreed. Without picking on Vegans, imagine a group of them not wanting to tolerate being around omnivores. The group I met required conformity with their standards. It was a matter of faith, so breaches were taken as disloyalty.

I have a low opinion of all commune life not centered on structures that look like extended families and 'bands' in the sense of our nomadic HG ancestors. If we could easily slap together new viable social structures today, I think they would have existed long ago. I suspect we already know in our bones what structures work since we are descendents of them.

DP said...

Der Oger -

Actually if you combine the two to create hippy gun nuts you have the Manson Family.

Alan Brooks said...

the Cartridge Family.

toduro said...

FWIW the religious group my family was in while I was a kid which taught the same stuff about descendants of Shem, Ham, Japheth, and Ishmael that Larry Hart mentioned above said that Esau's descendants became the Turks.

Larry Hart said...

Except for the plural number of "kids", this sentence could have been written about me.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/arts/television/schoolhouse-rock-50th-anniversary.html

When my kids were school-aged, I got the full “Schoolhouse Rock” DVD set for them, which is to say, I got it for me.

Unknown said...

Alfred,

Monastic structures are obviously a viable alternative to family life, because there are durable examples. All the successful ones, though, left no room for noncomformity. Of course, you can also have a monastic AND well-armed group - see the Hospitallers - that might be acceptable neighbors.

Pappenheimer

Alfred Differ said...

Pappenheimer,

Yah. Thing about monasteries is that many of them were where we sent children we didn't want having children of their own. Genetic sinks down which we wash away the unwanted.

I'm probably oversimplifying, but that is the mental image I have in my head. Some are sewer drains. Some are more pleasant. All are shunts that let us avoid murdering our children and siblings.

Yah. I'm kinda dark on that subject. If anyone would like to correct me with counter-examples, I'm willing to listen.

Lena said...

Alfred,

The tradition in Spain from the Middle Ages to the Conquista was for the first son to inherit the land, the second son went to the church, and the next five sons went to the army. One daughter was to make a financially useful marriage alliance with, the rest were dumped out in the woods as babies. Naturally it was expected that a majority of the sons would die heroes in battle.

PSB

Paradoctor said...

Alan Brooks 5:50:
<< Lotus Branch, you are unique; you’re either the smartest imbecile I’ve encountered; or the dumbest genius. >>

Two poems of mine address that issue:


A. Minimum or Less
Yes, I freely admit that I take as a rule
That anyone dumber than me is a fool.
But alas! That implies what is quite plain to see;
That my wisdom, at best, is the least that can be.

B. Upper Bound
Yes, anyone wiser than me is a sage!
That’s a thought I have sadly accepted with age.
But there’s one consolation I take from this rule;
That at worst, I’m the wisest conceivable fool!

Alan Brooks said...

I shouldn’t complain about Lotus Branch; it’s just that after becoming interested in Futurist Stuff decades ago, it became apparent that one only really knows one’s own specialty.
Lotus was trained as a doctor—but he writes on other matters as a quack.
Not reassuring.

scidata said...

I just can't get Nena's 1983 hit "99 Luftballons" out of my head.

Tony Fisk said...

All this talk of john isuues in communes with nuts in gulches makes me wonder if they have a fear of 'latrina dentata'.

Alfred Differ said...

Alan Brooks,

Yah. There is a dark joke physicists play on economists when we show up at their events.

Hi! I'm here to tell you all what you got wrong!

They've seen us dabble in their field SO often that they collectively groan when we walk into the room. They see us as something between quacks and cranks depending on our moods while we know damn well their grasp of mathematics is weak at best.

The real mathematicians watch us both from the sideline and just roll their eyes.

Lena said...

Scidata,

I always keep a default tune in my head, so if I get something stuck in there, I can override it. It works best if the tune is loud and energetic.


PSB

Lena said...

Dr. Brin,

Good use of the Animal Kingdom. You can bet your bottom dollar that most people here would be ecstatic if you wrote another sci-fi novel, especially an Uplift novel. Dolphins in space!


PSB

Lena said...

Alfred and Alan,

When I was getting my degree in Anthro, a number of the professors made a point of discussing the borrowing of ideas from other disciplines, and showed us examples of this being done well and being done badly. Fields need to cross-pollinate, but they have to do it cautiously and with mutual respect.


PSB

Larry Hart said...

PSB:

I always keep a default tune in my head, so if I get something stuck in there, I can override it. It works best if the tune is loud and energetic.

This one will do it every time. There was even an episode of the cartoon where the characters used this song for that very purpose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0PpsQ3wcUc

A.F. Rey said...

DP: “Larry - "Maybe you could find Galt's Gulch." How about a liberal version?

I always wanted to see a version where the "little people" can't take anymore of being oppressed by the few that own everything and strike. (Did you know that Ayn's original title for the novel was "The Strike." :) )

Meanwhile, others reverse-engineer Galt's miracles and improve on them, pricing out the original inventors. Are there any copyright laws in "Atlas Shrugged?" ;)

And, of course, see how some of these iconoclasts deal with having children, and losing their self-righteous ideals. :D

It would be fun watching Ayn's house of cards crumble.

scidata said...

Re: song in my head

Agree about usefulness. But in this particular case, that song was a cold-to-hot war scenario triggered by stray balloons. If Mango Unchained was in charge, I'm sure there'd be a hissy fit about JY-na.

Alfred Differ said...

PSB,

...the borrowing of ideas from other disciplines...

Preaching to the choir my friend. I'm one of the cross discipline folks. In the US most would say I was trained as a physicist. In Europe I look more like an applied mathematician. I don't work in either field at the moment because employers threw money at me to pretend I'm a software engineer even though I'd rather be an entrepreneur.

Cross pollination is how I see it... and I don't worry much about annoying purists. 8)

------

Until Larry offered up Phineas & Ferb I was going to suggest "Flight of the Valkyries" (with tongue in cheek) as a way to drive out all ear worms.

------

Dolphins in space are fun to read about, but I want to see more about the otters. Some dark comedy appeals to me right about now. 8)

Larry Hart said...

scidata:

But in this particular case, that song was a cold-to-hot war scenario triggered by stray balloons.


Y'know, I must be dense, because when you first posted about "99 luft-balloons", I had no idea what brought that on.

My recollection of the original incident which inspired that song was that some sort of celebratory balloons from West Berlin floated over the Berlin War, and the East German guards on the other side shot the balloons. That was it. The escalation described in the song was pure dystopian fantasy.


If Mango Unchained was in charge, I'm sure there'd be a hissy fit about JY-na.


One reason I've heard that we don't shoot down the Chinese balloon is that it would cause considerable damage on the ground. My cynical thought was "Shoot it down over a red state." Biden wouldn't actually do that, but if the previous guy was in charge, he might have had it shot over St Louis, or some other big city with Democrats and black people in it.

Larry Hart said...

Dr Brin:

“I'm totally okay with the procyonidae. They're cute, fluffy, pretty bright, and at least somewhat social. And, unlike dogs, they won't rip your arm off. Maybe Dr. Brin can write a new Uplight novel featuring them…”

They were my models for Synthians. As otters were for the Tytlal. And I wouldn’t trust either without a taser collar!


I now and evermore picture your Synthian ambassador in The Uplift War as Susan Collins.

Tim H. said...

At one time the USAF had the ability to snag a parachute out of the air, which might be applicable to a deflated balloon, though at a risk. Having listened to, perhaps too much, Dr Demento, "99 Dead Baboons" gets stuck in my head. ;)

Larry Hart said...

Tim H:

At one time the USAF had the ability to snag a parachute out of the air


We could sure use a Jewish space laser about now.

Unknown said...

Tim,

I ran across a truly hair-raising stunt successfully used to medevac wounded Chindits in Burma during WWII in areas where there were no landing fields

1. Put injured man's stretcher on the ground and attach bungee cord
2. string other end of bungee cord between 2 trees
3. USAAF aircraft does low, slow pass, trailing hook
4. Yoink. Insane pilot guns engine and climbs hard to avoid crashing/bouncing stretcher off other trees

Luckily, helicopters became available not too long after.

Pappenheimer

P.S. I think I've stated before that we should uplift dogs, if only to apologize to the Pekes.

Larry Hart said...

Pappenheimer:

I think I've stated before that we should uplift dogs, if only to apologize to the Pekes.


There was a radio commercial that was current when my wife and I were dating in the mid 90s. I've long forgotten the product being advertised, but it was one of those commercials that implied that everything is going wrong in your life until you try their product, and then everything magically gets better.

One of the bad things the woman's voice mentioned in the "before" part of the ad was "And I had a yorkie that nobody liked." In the "after" part of the ad, she mentions, "And my yorkie learned to talk!" That was followed by a very upper-class British accent, going "Sorry about all that dreadful yapping."

David Brin said...

Heh Pappenheimer they also used that method to yank gliders from French and Holland fields back to UK for repair. But alas there were no "bunjee cords" then. I doubt they'd use expensive rubber. Jute, likely.

Unknown said...

Dr. Brin,

I'd agree with you, except that there were, and are, rubber plantations all over Burma, and the author (Capt. Masters) specified bungee cords (I think - been a long time since I read "The Road Past Mandalay".

Pappenheimer

P.S. please don't uplift the naked mole rats

DP said...

The real life Galt's Gulch:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff

The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse

They started out innocuously and predictably enough. Bitcoin or ethereum? Virtual reality or augmented reality? Who will get quantum computing first, China or Google? Eventually, they edged into their real topic of concern: New Zealand or Alaska? Which region would be less affected by the coming climate crisis? It only got worse from there. Which was the greater threat: global warming or biological warfare? How long should one plan to be able to survive with no outside help? Should a shelter have its own air supply? What was the likelihood of groundwater contamination? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system, and asked: “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?” The event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, solar storm, unstoppable virus, or malicious computer hack that takes everything down.

This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from raiders as well as angry mobs. One had already secured a dozen Navy Seals to make their way to his compound if he gave them the right cue. But how would he pay the guards once even his crypto was worthless? What would stop the guards from eventually choosing their own leader?

The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers – if that technology could be developed “in time”.

I tried to reason with them. I made pro-social arguments for partnership and solidarity as the best approaches to our collective, long-term challenges. The way to get your guards to exhibit loyalty in the future was to treat them like friends right now, I explained. Don’t just invest in ammo and electric fences, invest in people and relationships. They rolled their eyes at what must have sounded to them like hippy philosophy.

This was probably the wealthiest, most powerful group I had ever encountered. Yet here they were, asking a Marxist media theorist for advice on where and how to configure their doomsday bunkers. That’s when it hit me: at least as far as these gentlemen were concerned, this was a talk about the future of technology.


Larry Hart said...


The real life Galt's Gulch:...


Must I now defend Ayn Rand?

Yes, Galt's Gulch had many trappings of a survivalist prepper encampment, but that's not exactly what it was. For one thing, it was not simply a retreat to ride out an "event". As I recall, many characters lived there full time, and the only reason Galt and some others ever went back out into the rest of civilization was to meet with other worthy industrialists and convince *them* to join. Galt's Gulch wasn't so much a hideaway as a garden of Eden for those who knew the best way for humanity to live (in Rand's opinion).

The worst thing about her "heroes" was not that they prepared for life after the collapse, but that they actively sabotaged civilization to prompt that collapse, and then went full "Rorschach" over what they imagined were the cries of help from civilization. If they had merely self-Raptured themselves to Galt's Gulch and left the rest of us alone, I suspect it would have been a win-win.


Did you know that Ayn's original title for the novel was "The Strike."


Having read Rand, I suspect that that title was deliciously ironic to her. Normally, it is drudge workers who go on strike. In her mind, the response should be, "Fire their asses and bring in the next load--there's plenty more where they came from." But if the real producers ever got fed up with the lack of appreciation they receive and stopped doing their work, that would show on whose shoulders the rest of us have been standing.

Lena said...

Put a single bullet through the envelope of the balloon. It will lose helium and sink slowly so it doesn't do any damage. Whatever equipment is on it will probably survive the grounding, then military intelligence can examine it and find out what they were really up to.

PSB

Unknown said...

PSB,

Not all these balloons are helium-filled anymore. I inflated weather balloons with He in Panama before launching and tracking them, but the guys I met in the army years later (launching short-run packages for the artillery) used H generated by mixing chemicals. H gives more lift but I assume it escapes faster.

DP,

Read the same article. It's like these guys are asking, "which way to the tumbrels? I want the one with cushions!" There's no interest in solving the problems they help cause, just avoiding the Gotterdammerung.

Pappenheimer

Lena said...

Pappenheimer,

Whether it's helium or hydrogen, a small hole will still do the trick.

PSB

David Brin said...

Pappenheimer for most of the war Burma was Japan occupied. Allies made do with very narrow supply from Brazil and petro substitutes. Easy enough to “say” the word bunjee,

DP: I too have consulted with prepper lord or two about the security staff question and told them “I know the answer. It’d work. And I won’t tell you.”

I am no longer asked. Were they remotely sapient, they’d hold conferences like I describe in EXISTENCE. They’d realize that flatterers are death.

Galt’s Gulch is where you have ONE scene showing a mother and child. Otherwise, Rand’s characters are proudly sterile.

Lena said...

Dr.Brin,

How about geckoes? They have brains the size of lentils, so you would have to exercise the imagination to come up with a sentient version, but it could be fun to imagine what they would do with their climbing abilities (besides sell car insurance).


PSB

Lena said...

Here's a fun one I heard on the radio yesterday, on the marketplace show, surprisingly. They were talking about an experiment in behavioral ecology that was quite simply. They had pairs of people play Monopoly. However, instead of everyone getting the same amount of money to start out with, they gave one player several times more than the other. Naturally the one who started with the most money always won. The interesting part was that they asked the winners why they thought they won, and every one of them bragged about their intelligence and skill. Not one mentioned the fact that they were born rich. Meritocracy is nothing more than rich people stroking their egos.

PSB

Paradoctor said...

Larry Hart:
If the 1% of the 1% decided to go on strike by withdrawing from the world, then you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be 'scabs'; ambitious mere-1%s who will take the opportunity to seize the means of appropriation. Meanwhile, some dirt-poor auto mechanic will reverse-engineer Galt's free-energy gizmo, and the uber-psychos in the Gilded Gulch will fight over whose turn it is to do the dishes.

There are lots of comic opportunities in watching Ayn's house of cards collapse. I'd write that book, but finding more detail to satirize would require re-reading "Atlas Shrugged". Ugh!

Title? Oh, I dunno... "Hades Grinned"?

Larry Hart said...

Pappenheimer:

Read the same article. It's like these guys are asking, "which way to the tumbrels? I want the one with cushions!" There's no interest in solving the problems they help cause, just avoiding the Gotterdammerung.


The last time someone posted that same article, I remember a comment that they were metaphorically trying to drive a car fast enough to outrun the damage the car itself was causing.

Larry Hart said...

PSB:

Put a single bullet through the envelope of the balloon.


Hal Sparks just cautioned against such action. He asked rhetorically what if their spy balloons are booby-trapped with biological hazards? You want to be the one who dumps a load of anthrax over St Louis?

As far fetched as that sounds, I find it more believable than any other explanation as to why we haven't already "Top Gun"-ed the thing already.

Larry Hart said...

Paradoctor:

Title? Oh, I dunno... "Hades Grinned"?


How about Rapture Sucked ?

Unknown said...

Paradoctor,

I believe "Telemachus Sneezed" is already taken.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Illuminatus!_Trilogy

I seriously doubt anyone, China included, would put some bioweapon in a balloon that's easily trackable back to its source. That is literally a casus belli, and chancy - balloons can shred way early. Some more unscrupulous weathermen than I have, in the past, drawn on their launch balloons with magic markers, because the slight acid was supposed to eat into the latex and create a hole early. Balloon doesn't reach its full height and you don't have to track it for hours. There - a new sin for your perusal, though not as fun as poking badgers with spoons.

Pappenheimer

scidata said...

So let that be a lesson to Gliese and others: Don't Mess With Terra

Larry Hart said...

Interesting anecdote beginning at 1:51:20 on this video of Hal Sparks's radio show. Ukrainian intelligence tapped into a Zoom call between eastern Ukraine Quislings and Russians, listened in, then broke into the conversation telling the Ukrainians "We know who you are, and we consider you traitors."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd9-SGZDwbs

Sorry, I don't know how to link directly to a particular time on the video.

Unknown said...

Balloon is kaput. We'll see if it's the Apocalypse Luftballoon.

Pappenheimer

Alan Brooks said...

You mean there’s 99 of ‘em?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k8qjxT1iIAM

David Brin said...

Rand's entire scenario is based upon an uber-super genius inventing a wonder machine for free energy that no one else on earth is smart enough to reverse engineer. Yes, that was true for Heron of Alexandria... when there were maybe 100 skilled craftsmen on the planet. Less so even when she wrote.

PSB "Meritocracy is nothing more than rich people stroking their egos."

Baloney. Replace Meritocracy with inheritance-brat oligarchy and you have a point.

Every rich child already benefits from growing up with every privilege and enrichment camp. The parent presumabgle did something meritorious to get rich, so should have the peace of mind that the kid has a house and a grocery account forever, pus maybe $1 million in seed capital, in case brilliance is inherited.

The rest is monstrous. Carnegie said: "I'd leave my chilren a curse rather than the almighty dollar."

----

onward

David Brin said...

omward
onward

Alan Brooks said...

...now 98

Alfred Differ said...

Larry,

When your adversary hands you free signals intelligence, best smile and accept it. Capture the equipment later and learn even more.