<!DOCTYPE html><html><head><title></title><style type="text/css">p.MsoNormal,p.MsoNoSpacing{margin:0}</style></head><body><div style="font-family:Arial;">Highly recommend John Brunner's <i>The Sheep Look Up</i> for fans of ecological disaster.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">davew<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div>On Fri, Aug 6, 2021, at 8:28 PM, Steve Smith wrote:<br></div><blockquote type="cite" id="qt" style=""><p>... unbending the psychonaut thread<br></p><blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:BAFEC2EA-6F08-48CA-8168-7F8F34262271@snoutfarm.com">And something will have to power the artificial magnetosphere
after the teraforming..<br></blockquote><p>... as I understand it, Mars lost it's magnetosphere a (long)
while back and nobody knows why (with the atmosphere and liquid
water following, blown off into space by the solar wind). <br></p><p>I think we should just wait another millisecond in our
exponential technological growth curve and build a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olaf_Stapledon">Stapledon
Sphere</a> (more commonly referenced as a Dyson Sphere)
instead. Stapledon's Golden Age era <u><i>First and Last Men</i></u> presaged both terraforming and genetic engineering . <br></p><p>Jack Williamson (whose horn I toot here often), another Golden
Age author, wrote (in modernish times - 2001) the novel
Terraforming Earth (he died at 98 in 2006). A good friend of
mine (who introduced us) met Jack when he (my friend) was a
pre-teen and kept in touch for the next 50+ years, gave him the
title "Terraforming Terra" which Jack really liked but they both
were ultimately overruled by his publisher. <i>Terraforming
Terra </i>is much more poetic than <i>Terraforming Earth</i>,
no?<br></p><p>(speaking of Terraforming... Mars) I held off reading Kim Stanley
Robinson's Red/Green/Blue Mars trilogy (ca early 90s) until Musk
started being convincing (to me) that he might get a modest number
of humans TO Mars in his (and my?) lifetime. I'm still an
ffFFFing luddite about these things, but I also see an inevitable
arc here. Robinson did a good job (I thought) of characterizing
the sociopoliticalspiritual implications of all this. I forget
how he solved the magnetosphere problem (or powered it).<br></p><p>For anyone who thinks there are endogenous existential threats
afoot (e.g. climate change) and also appreciates speculative
fiction, I highly recommend Robinson's <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50998056-the-ministry-for-the-future">Ministry-for-the-Future</a> written/published before COVID but not by much. While it doesn't
exhaustively discuss every sociopoliticaleconomictechnical
response to a tumbled gyro of our noo-bio-cryo-sphere of a planet,
it covers a lot very convincingly. I don't suggest any of his
maunderings will come true or even have more than passing
resemblance to the future we are stumbling into in the next few
decades, but it was satisfying to read someone who has clearly
researched the hell out of the stuff coming at us like a swarm of
bugs hitting our windshield (while we proudly outdrive our
headlights).<br></p><blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:BAFEC2EA-6F08-48CA-8168-7F8F34262271@snoutfarm.com"><div dir="ltr"><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div>On Aug 6, 2021, at 4:52 PM, Steve Smith <a class="qt-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:sasmyth@swcp.com"><sasmyth@swcp.com></a> wrote:<br></div><div> <br></div></blockquote></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><div> Marcus Daniels wrote:<br></div><div> <br></div><blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:BYAPR11MB3830966761AAA379FE0C0F76C5F39@BYAPR11MB3830.namprd11.prod.outlook.com"><pre class="qt-moz-quote-pre">Don't forget about Mars!<br></pre></blockquote><div><br></div><p>LANL physicist Steve Howe was a proponent of <a href="https://www.lanl.gov/science/NSS/issue1_2011/story4full.shtml"> plowsharing Rover</a> into a nuclear rocket for Mars with
the argument that the radiation exposure to astronauts by
the drive was less than the extra time spent outside the
earth's magnetic field (charged-particle shield) in the
cosmic/solar radiation flux.<br></p><p>He went on to promoting antimatter (anti-protons) instead:<br></p><p> <a class="qt-moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2020/06/steven-howe-breakthroughs-for-antimatter-production-and-storage.html"> https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2020/06/steven-howe-breakthroughs-for-antimatter-production-and-storage.html</a><br></p><p>Oh yeh, and he's the first person I know to have
self-published (science) fiction through Amazon (before Doug
Roberts even). <br></p><p>He used to carry a briefcase full of copies on his
work-travels to sell on the plane and/or restock the rack at
the ABQ Sunport. I Just checked his Amazon page and it
seems he's continued to riff:<br></p><blockquote><p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B005L9MAL2?_encoding=UTF8&node=283155&offset=0&pageSize=12&searchAlias=stripbooks&sort=author-sidecar-rank&page=1&langFilter=default#formatSelectorHeader">Steven-Howe</a><br></p></blockquote><p>His first book exposes his techno-libertarian tendencies.
I just learned of the sequel(s).<br></p><p><br></p><blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:BYAPR11MB3830966761AAA379FE0C0F76C5F39@BYAPR11MB3830.namprd11.prod.outlook.com"><pre class="qt-moz-quote-pre">-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <a class="qt-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com"><friam-bounces@redfish.com></a> On Behalf Of <a class="qt-moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:thompnickson2@gmail.com">thompnickson2@gmail.com</a>
Sent: Friday, August 6, 2021 8:24 AM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <a class="qt-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:friam@redfish.com"><friam@redfish.com></a>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] for our psychonauts
Reminds me of that period in which people were desperately looking for something to do with nuclear explosives other than kill one another. Like: "Let's blow a new hole in the Isthmus of Panama!" Project Plowshares, it was called.
Nick Thompson
<a class="qt-moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:ThompNickSon2@gmail.com">ThompNickSon2@gmail.com</a>
<a class="qt-moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/">https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/</a>
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <a class="qt-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com"><friam-bounces@redfish.com></a> On Behalf Of u?l? ?>$
Sent: Friday, August 6, 2021 10:57 AM
To: FriAM <a class="qt-moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:friam@redfish.com"><friam@redfish.com></a>
Subject: [FRIAM] for our psychonauts
What Should We Make Of Sasha Chapin's Claim That Taking LSD Restored His Sense Of Smell After COVID?
<a class="qt-moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/what-should-we-make-of-sasha-chapins">https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/what-should-we-make-of-sasha-chapins</a>
I haven't read it, yet. I'm hoping posting it here will remind me to actually read it.
--
☤>$ uǝlƃ
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