🚀 go-pugleaf

In article 92Jun10212607@sgi417.msd.lmsc.lockheed.com, slagle@lmsc.lockheed.com (Mark Slagle) writes:
> 
> Your statements beg the question of the meaning of EXTERNAL.  Depending
> on the scale and scope of the system, the classification of resources
> can be shown to be either completely external or internal.  If the 
> system in question is my home or even my neighborhood, then virtually
> every resource is external.  I fail to see how that is a problem,
> however.  If the system is the entire planet Earth, then none of the
> resources that we utilize are external except the energy of the Sun.
> Since your model of our system does not scale, it is of little or
> no value in describing, much less in predicting, the various systems
> with which we interact.

The discussion arises from considering various boundaries for the life-
support system for human civilization. The conventional approach is to
take the civil infrastructure of settlements, roads, buildings, farms,
etc. An alternative approach often proposed by environmentalists is to
take the planet as a whole, the biosphere, and to talk of managing it
like a spaceship -- Spaceship Earth. I am arguing that neither model
works. The planet taken as a whole is too large with too many internal
entropic sinks. Conventional boundaries are too open, with too large an
interface to the rest of the planet external to it.

Since anything smaller than the planet has to be sealed from the rest of
the planet to be viable in the long term, then the question arises of
what is the viable size range and what is the optimum size. I estimate
that it is in the range of .4-4 km -- the size of a city. Sealed houses
or spacesuits are too small. A megastructure the size of a continent
would be too large if stationed on a planet (but might work in space).

> I'm nearly dumbfounded by your hubris.  Suffice it to say that you
> are not the first person to have predicted the end of science.  There
> have been well educated scientists from virtually every generation of
> recorded scientific history who have baldly stated that there is little
> left to be learned or discovered.  Need I point out that they have all
> been wrong so far?  Why are you an exception?

Scientific models are not just about how things will probably work under
a given set of circumstances, but also about how they will almost surely
NOT work. It is a process of discovering the limits on what can be done,
as a practical matter. What we are left with are many marvelous things
we can do, but always within constraints.

Every scientific model is a partitioning of the class of possible pheno-
mena into the permissible and the not permissible, and the not permissible
is a much larger class.

Of course, physical phenomena are fundamentally stochastic, so all our
empirical models are cast in the language of probabilities, not possibil-
ities, but it is the language on the basis of which rational players make
their bets. As we say in mathematics, a set of measure zero is not
necessarily empty. But pretty close.

Now, in fairness it must be said that it is presently possible to charac-
terize the class of all possible theories in only a few highly mathematical
fields, such as fundamental physics and cosmology, and that the classes
are large and not easily grasped. However, enough is understood about
physics to allow us to put some bounds on what remains to be discovered 
in chemistry and materials science, and therefore on the technologies that
are based on those fields. The bounds permit, for example, nanotechnology,
but not reversing the increase in entropy of closed systems.

Unfortunately, much of the technological optimism held by persons who
share your views often depends, in the final analysis, on the violation
of simple, well-established laws like the three laws of thermodynamics,
when properly applied to the complex systems of which we are a part. The
only reasons why this is not obvious to more people is precisely because
those systems are so complex and the processes so slow.
 
> When we begin to see limits, that is when we begin to seek alternatives.
> When we begin to seek alternatives, we begin to see everything
> differently.  When we see everything differently, the outlook for
> posterity does not seem so dismal.

I see the limits, and am seeking alternatives. Unfortunately, sometimes
the alternatives are not immediately perceived as being palatable.
Sometimes they are not palatable at all, even after thorough examination.

The Universe is not organized for our comfort and convenience. Sometimes
all of the alternatives are bad.

> 
> That is, of course, my point.  Our EXTERNAL supply of energy is
> abundant and, for the purposes of this exercise, endless.  All 
> other resource difficulties are transient and/or localized.

So do you propose that we grow in numbers and consumption rates forever?
Until we are a sphere of flesh expanding at the speed of light? Or
until our mass collapses into a black hole? When does it stop? Under
what conditions? Will any part of the natural ecosystem be a part of
that future, or must all of it be sacrificed to our greed? Do you want
your descendants to live in a planetwide slum, even if that were sustain-
able for very long?

> 
> Your pessimism is, in my opinion, unwarranted.  I hope that I am
> correct.  I am, however, very wary of your "leadership".  If there
> are grounds for concern, they are just that the kind of "leadership"
> that you and others call for will result in political systems that
> none of us can live with.  If, as you contend, market forces are
> insufficient to the task of allocating the energy of the Sun, then
> perhaps you are right.  Perhaps we are doomed, but not to collapse
> to a stone age, but to collapse back into the totalitarian models
> that have dominated a large part of the world within the past century.
> I do hope you are wrong.

I am proposing the same kind of leadership that has always been needed
to help us achieve the things civilization has achieved, leadership
that people want and will accept if the necessity for it is understood
and it is fairly conducted.

---

jdr@starflight.corp.sun.com, starflt@uunet.uu.net
Jon Roland
Starflight Corporation, 1755 E Bayshore Rd #9A,
Redwood City, CA 94063-4142, 415/361-8141