New imports

content/bookmarks/-playing-chess-in-postscript.md

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 ---
 title: Playing Chess in PostScript
-emoji: ♟️
 date: "2024-10-02T05:20:01Z"
+emoji: ♟️
 bookmarkOf: https://seriot.ch/projects/pschess.html
 references:
   bookmark:

content/bookmarks/cognative-bias-in-space-exploration.md

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+---
+title: Cognative bias in space exploration
+date: "2024-10-16T06:50:02Z"
+emoji: "\U0001F680"
+bookmarkOf: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/10/conceptual-models-of-space-col.html
+references:
+  bookmark:
+    url: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2024/10/conceptual-models-of-space-col.html
+    type: entry
+    name: Conceptual models of space colonization
+    summary: 'I''m thinking morose thoughts about the practical prospects for space
+      colonization (ahem: stripped of the colonialist rhetoric, manifest destiny bullshit,
+      "the Earth''s too fragile and vulnerable to keep all our eggs in one basket",
+      and the other post-hoc attempts at justification) and trying to sort them out
+      in case I ever feel inclined to go back to writing the sort of medium term SF
+      epic that Kim Stanley Robinson nailed in his Mars trilogy in the 1980s.'
+tags:
+- SciFi
+- space
+- speculative
+---
+Charles Stross explores the biases we bring to “Space Colonies” by using that name, and wonders if there are other approaches that may succeed.
+
+I really enjoy Stross’ analytical dives; at this point I reckon I’ve read almost every published story he’s written and I can absolutely see how analyses like this one build the worlds he writes about. It’s one of the reasons I appreciate his writing so much, this approach is the very definition of Hard [SciFi](/tags/scifi) but every story I’ve read is also _firmly_ planted in the human experience & human motivations. (In short: he’s a _good author_.)
+
+### Highlights
+
+> When we talk about a spaceship, a portmanteau word derived from "\[outer\] space" and "ship", we bring along certain unstated assumptions
+
+---
+
+> [a spaceship is not like a sea-going vessel](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/11/the%5Fmyth%5Fof%5Fthe%5Fstarship.html), can't be operated like a sea-going vessel
+
+---
+
+> Which leads me to the similar term "space colony": the word _colony_ drags in all sorts of historical baggage, and indeed invokes several models of how an off-Earth outpost might operate, all of which invoke very dangerous cognitive biases!
+
+---
+
+> The American model of colonization—a cognitive bias that underpins both the American _and_ Russian space programs' associated ideological drive towards human expansion—is biased towards an unpopulated or underpopulated terrestrial biome with breathable air, plentiful sources of water and minerals, a biosphere that naturally turns sunlight into biomass that can be directly eaten or fed to food animals, and so on.
+
+---
+
+> companies are artificial social constructs that _offload all their externalities onto the state they are embedded in_.
+
+Now _this_ is an interesting framing! It explains why _countries_ are having a hard time when they fail/feel they are unable to tax companies effectively (for fear of scaring a company off): the externalities are pushed into the country and, without effective taxing, the profits kept for the company; the burdens of handling kept by the country, but also the expectation of handling them.
+
+---
+
+> Worryingly, religious belief rather than economics seems the most plausible incentive for space colonization.
+
+Stross includes “the Earth's too fragile to keep all our eggs in one basket” here.

content/bookmarks/limits-to-economic-growth.md

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+---
+title: Limits to economic growth
+date: "2024-10-16T10:54:00Z"
+emoji: "\U0001F4C8"
+bookmarkOf: https://tmurphy.physics.ucsd.edu/papers/limits-econ-final.pdf
+references:
+  bookmark:
+    url: https://tmurphy.physics.ucsd.edu/papers/limits-econ-final.pdf
+    type: entry
+    name: Limits to economic growth
+    summary: Nature Physics, doi:10.1038/s41567-022-01652-6
+    author: Thomas W. Murphy
+tags:
+- economics
+- learn
+- politics
+---
+A fascinating (and relatively short) read on why economic growth has multiple factors limiting it entire before the end of the century.
+
+### Highlights
+
+> Sensibly, the most easily accessed  resources are exploited first. This means that  past experience regarding ease of extraction  is not the best guide to future prospects.
+
+---
+
+> Across the world, decisions on investment and policy are made under the assumption of continuous economic  expansion. Fundamental physical limits may soon put an end to this phase of development
+
+---
+
+> Growth is imagined to offer a  solution to inequality between developed  and developing nations: redistribution today  is unnecessary if growth will eventually  address the problem by growing the pie.
+
+---
+
+> The landmark report The Limits to  Growth1, now 50 years old, explored models  for interactions between various elements  of civilization, including population,  agricultural output, industrial output,  non-renewable resources and pollution.  Alarmingly, most sets of assumptions  resulted in a significant collapse before the  year 2100 — often around the middle of the  present century
+
+---
+
+> In brief, inelastic demand for  critical resources in limited supply will not  permit prices for these things to become  arbitrarily small, which would be necessary  to maintain indefinite economic growth
+
+---
+
+> human lifetimes impose  decades-long delays on resource and  pollution impacts that do not restrict  excessive consumption until it is too late
+
+---
+
+> In a continued progression, we would exceed  the total solar power incident on Earth in  just over 400 years, the entire output of the  Sun in all directions 1,300 years from now,  and that of all 100 billion stars in the Milky  Way galaxy 1,100 years after that
+
+The first part of this sentence immediately made me thing “solar panels in orbit!” and “but we understand the concept of Dyson spheres!”, but of course, the point here is that the progression persists — at some point we will need to stop growing even with new ways to make energy.
+
+---
+
+> At present,  the waste heat term is about four orders  of magnitude smaller than the solar term.  But at a growth factor of ten per century,  they would reach parity in roughly 400  years. Indeed, the surface temperature  of Earth would reach the boiling point  of water (373 K) in just over 400 years  under this relentless prescription
+
+---
+
+> The energy growth  phenomenon has also been almost entirely  made possible by the discovery and rapid  exploitation of a one-time energy store  in the form of fossil fuels. Growth in this  sector is likely to cease within decades,  not centuries, so that the main driver  of energy growth will be removed from  the table
+
+---
+
+> Another way to frame physical  limitations to growth is in terms of waste  heat, which is the end product of nearly  all energetic utilization on Earth. Adding  an exponential power output to the heat  incident from the Sun and equating this to  the Stefan–Boltzmann relation for power  radiated to space
+
+---
+
+> Continued economic growth in the face  of steady-state physical resources would  require all growth to be effectively in the  non-physical sector, possibly assisted by  modest efficiency improvements in how  we use physical resources. If, for example,  50% of economic activity is tied to physical  resources, 100 years later only 5% of  the economy would be represented by  physical activities, as the economy will have  expanded by a factor of ten for the same  physical footprint
+
+---
+
+> Not all economic activities involve  intense use of physical resources. Trading  fine art, counselling, professional services  and gambling are examples of activities  that can involve non-trivial flows of money  without substantially adding to demands on  physical resources
+
+---
+
+> Light-emitting diode  performance is a factor of ten better than  incandescent technology, but only a factor  of three worse than theoretical limits to  efficiency for white light4. We cannot  expect efficiency to provide an eternal  source of growth: much less than an order  of magnitude of improvement will be  achievable in most applications
+
+---
+
+> In other words, physical resources in  this forced scenario must shrink to an  ever-smaller fraction of the economy,  translating to a small and diminishing  fraction of an individual’s annual income  having to go toward physical goods. All the  food, energy and material purchases would  become essentially free
+
+Very interesting; though perhaps not the fully automated luxury utopia I’ve considered in the past, it’s fascinating to see the reduction in cost of physical goods be determined “from the other side”, ie. by consequence of sustained growth in the _non_-physical sector requiring it. (As much as this is unachievable)
+
+---
+
+> A different way to put it is that a limited  supply coupled with mandatory demand will  find an equilibrium price that saturates at a  finite value
+
+…And the flip side of the above, somewhat illustrating that continued growth is infeasible.
+
+---
+
+> We would be wise to plan for a  post-growth world
+
+---
+
+> Even if growth  stopped today, the pressures on ecosystems  at the present scale may be enough to  drive the system into collapse
+
+---
+
+> Any limit on the fraction of an  economy that is decoupled from physical  resources will act to limit economic growth  in the context of saturated physical growth.
+
+---
+
+> An end to quantitative economic growth  need not translate to an end to innovation or  other forms of qualitative development and  improvement. But growth as we have known  it will no longer be able to drive the way  civilization operates
+
+---
+
+> Since growth to some extent depends on  faith in future growth in order to spur  investment, this nonlinear feature could  translate into a fairly rapid evaporation of  capitalist ambitions

content/bookmarks/moneylike.md

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+---
+title: Moneylike
+date: "2024-10-13T06:58:01Z"
+emoji: "\U0001F4B8"
+publishDate: "2022-09-05T15:30:28Z"
+bookmarkOf: https://locusmag.com/2022/09/cory-doctorow-moneylike/
+references:
+  bookmark:
+    url: https://locusmag.com/2022/09/cory-doctorow-moneylike/
+    type: entry
+    name: 'Cory Doctorow: Moneylike'
+    summary: The magazine of the science fiction, fantasy, and horror field with news,
+      reviews, and author interviews
+    author: locusmag
+tags:
+- economics
+- politics
+---
+Cory Doctorow describes why money feels so _necessary_, and why cryptocurrencies don’t.
+
+A very interesting read indeed! I’ve not looked into the origins of money before, but Cory’s explanation of the ideas behind _Debt: The First 5,000 Years_ is extremely thought provoking. It certainly explains why money can feel so… oppressive.
+
+### Highlights
+
+> There’s no indication that coin money ever emerged spontaneously from the difficulty of arriving at confluences of needs.
+
+---
+
+> Soldiers were paid in coin, minted and controlled by the state, which punished counterfeiters with the most terrible torments. Conquered farmers were taxed in coin, on penalty of violence and expropriation.
+
+---
+
+> The value of money, then, came from taxation – from the fact that farmers _needed_ coins.
+
+---
+
+> Coins became money because there was a nondiscretionary, terrible obligation that you could only fulfill with coins.
+
+---
+
+> Every year, conquered Africans under British rule would have to pay a tax for their huts, payable only in imperial shillings. If you failed to pay your hut tax, imperial soldiers would burn it down.
+
+---
+
+> he’ll hold up a handful of his business-cards and ask, “Who will stay after the lecture and help stack the chairs and mop the floor in exchange for one of my cards?”
+> 
+> When no hands go up, Mosler adds, “What if I told you that there were gun-toting security guards at the all the exits, and they will only let you leave in exchange for one of my cards?”
+> 
+> Every hand shoots up.
+
+---
+
+> He is the sole supplier of his cards, and while the audience will treat them as money, Mosler won’t. Mosler doesn’t need business-cards
+
+“Government budgets are not like household budgets”
+
+---
+
+> Mosler isn’t a currency _user_ in this thought-exper­iment, he’s a currency _issuer_. Mosler needs your work, not your “money.”
+
+---
+
+> When you pay your door-tax to Mosler’s armed agents, you aren’t giving him _your_ money – you’re giving him _his own money back_.
+> 
+> That’s why we call it “revenue” (from a Latin root meaning “return”).

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