[FRIAM] off-label technologies, exaptatiion and exponential technological growth.

Sat Aug 7 13:41:08 EDT 2021

The pushback on everything from low wattage lighting to mask mandates leaves me thinking that there is really only one thing that motivates certain people:  That they can do whatever the hell they want and, crucially, that other people cannot.   A living wage infringes on that ranking and so must be terrible.   What if there were physical space for everyone, food for everyone, and many optional ways to invest one’s time?   What if one didn’t need a wage at all?  What if you had to decide for yourself what was worth doing?  Heck, what if one (some post-human) didn’t even need food and didn’t need to reproduce?

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Saturday, August 7, 2021 10:24 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] off-label technologies, exaptatiion and exponential technological growth.

NST -

until Musk started being convincing (to me) that he might get a modest number of humans TO Mars in his (and my?) lifetime.

Rocket rich guys to Mars, fight a war against… (North Korea, Iran, Russia, even China), ANYTHING to avoid paying a living wage on earth.

And what about "paying a living wage" does not simply continue an oppressive system of  "wage slavery"?

There are stories that suggest the people who built the pyramids (the ones who cut/hauled/placed the stones) were not literally slaves (chains, whips, severe privation, chattel, threat of death, etc) but rather a "fully utilized skilled labor class with sufficient resources provided for a comfortable happy life".   But it is not like they had any upward mobility or alternative livelihood (Exodus notwithstanding).

Anyone who has ever survived a "company town" knows that even if most have modest houses, new vehicles, large screen TVs, and lots of tasty food and drink and the hope of a gold watch and an RV to snowbird in at retirement, that such dreams either are false utopias or at least come to an end for the next generation or so.

I don't endorse Mars Colonization nor continued/enhanced wage-slavery at-poverty-level, and as a minimal "good start" I do endorse "living wage".  But I don't believe it does anything more than nudge the boundaries of poverty far enough to keep those previously below the poverty line from "eating the rich" (which *most* if not all of us actually represent here)...  some of us are more well marbled than others.

Whether I like it or not, I'm pretty sure that Musk, the royalty of the Emirates, China and gawdess knows who else will continue to angle to colonize Mars.   For me, it makes for a good enough opportunity for the thought experiments around what it means to start fresh with a few lessons learned.   Of course, we may soon use up the earthlike planets in our solar system and have to wait a few generations to start Amurika-forming similar planets in other systems (assuming we don't extinguish ourselves/one-another first).

Or alternatively: "It's Complicated..."

SAS

N
Nick Thompson
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com<mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com>
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com><mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Saturday, August 7, 2021 9:49 AM
To: friam at redfish.com<mailto:friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] off-label technologies, exaptatiion and exponential technological growth.

Highly recommend John Brunner's The Sheep Look Up for fans of ecological disaster.

davew

On Fri, Aug 6, 2021, at 8:28 PM, Steve Smith wrote:

... unbending  the psychonaut thread
And something will have to power the artificial magnetosphere after the teraforming..

... 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).

I think we should just wait another millisecond in our exponential technological growth curve and build a Stapledon Sphere<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olaf_Stapledon> (more commonly referenced as a Dyson Sphere) instead.   Stapledon's Golden Age era First and Last Men presaged both terraforming and genetic engineering .

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.   Terraforming Terra is much more poetic than Terraforming Earth, no?

(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).

For anyone who thinks there are endogenous existential threats afoot (e.g. climate change) and also appreciates speculative fiction, I highly recommend Robinson's Ministry-for-the-Future<https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50998056-the-ministry-for-the-future> 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).

On Aug 6, 2021, at 4:52 PM, Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com><mailto:sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:

 Marcus Daniels wrote:

Don't forget about Mars!

LANL physicist Steve Howe was a proponent of plowsharing Rover<https://www.lanl.gov/science/NSS/issue1_2011/story4full.shtml> 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.

He went on to promoting antimatter (anti-protons) instead:

    https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2020/06/steven-howe-breakthroughs-for-antimatter-production-and-storage.html

Oh yeh, and he's the first person I know to have self-published (science) fiction through Amazon (before Doug Roberts even).

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:

Steven-Howe<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>

His first book exposes his techno-libertarian tendencies.  I just learned of the sequel(s).

-----Original Message-----

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com><mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of thompnickson2 at gmail.com<mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>

Sent: Friday, August 6, 2021 8:24 AM

To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <friam at redfish.com><mailto:friam at redfish.com>

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

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com<mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com>

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com><mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ?>$

Sent: Friday, August 6, 2021 10:57 AM

To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com><mailto:friam at redfish.com>

Subject: [FRIAM] for our psychonauts

What Should We Make Of Sasha Chapin's Claim That Taking LSD Restored His Sense Of Smell After COVID?

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/what-should-we-make-of-sasha-chapins

I haven't read it, yet. I'm hoping posting it here will remind me to actually read it.

--

☤>$ uǝlƃ

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