IANA physicist, so grain of salt etc. but yes, I agree with your assessment - even if not as impressive as we're all hoping, at the least we have a very promising new vein of superconductor research to mine (as it were).
In other words: even the downside here is great, and the upside is...
It still hasn't been a week. Giving a bunch of these teams and one's with no announcements yet an additional year will hopefully lead to some very exciting findings
Having read the essay, I'll take a crack at a causal hypothesis: "geniuses" in the sense that the author seems to be using the term[1] cluster in periods and settings where:
1) their societies were "recently" exposed to existential threats (eg. Persian invasion for Athens, Spanish Armada for England, etc.), that were
2) mastered (Battle of Marathon, defeat of the Armada)
3) but left underlying problems unresolved
So, there would be incredibly motivation for these societies to try and address these problems, and perhaps some additional measure of confidence that problems could be mastered. And, in periods of existential crisis, normal patterns start to break down and new modes of expression and organization, new perspectives, etc. can start to manifest.
It's also interesting that the essay calls out that
> all three’s florescences were ended by right-wing revolutions (the Rule of the 400, Savonarola, and Cromwell).
as these responses are often prompted by some perception of chaos/lack of 'order' in a society - a breaking down of accustomed patterns.
So, in the spirit of the goal as stated by the essay:
> We want explanations that make sense, and which can be corroborated by specific historical research.
I would say: look for genius where there is also social turmoil and crisis - where there was a belief within a society that it may not be able to survive the problems that faced it, or where it experienced such rapid change that within a generation or two the previous assumptions about how the society worked and what was and wasn't acceptable/normal came into question - and you might find geniuses there.
And it would probably be a good idea to have a concrete, sensible definition of genius that we all agree on.
Extremely high-quality work here - I spend (what I think is) a significant amount of time trying to understand systems, in general and in detail, and this feels on first reading like something I'll be referring to repeatedly in future.
Already it suggests a surprising idea, which may or may not be fleshed out elsewhere, that a good way to understand an existing system is to try and solve the same problem without reference to how the existing system works:
> You will often expend more cycles understanding the existing design than you would solving the problem from first principles. ...
> Even good solutions can bias your thinking towards a particular part of the design space. ... A great time to look at other systems is after the Design phase, to see if you can map those solutions to your space. Even better, you can often reverse-engineer the details of solutions simply by understanding where they fit in your design space.
If it doesn't already exist somewhere else, we can call it Balakrishnan's Law - the best way to understand a problem is to solve it!
True, this is why I sometimes prefer not to look too closely at the state of the art when addressing a new system architectural problem.
By trying to solve it from first principles, and making some progress but most likely failing to completely solve it, I get a good sense of that the design forces and challenges are. Then, when I go back to study the state of art, I'm much better placed to understand what I'm studying.
Another good thing about this approach is that I minimize pre-biasing my thinking by what is out there now. Then, when studying existing afterward, solutions, I can more clearly begin to see gaps in them that I can direct my efforts to solving.
After reading this, I'm also reminded of (among other things) one of the points that Paul Graham made in "Lies We Tell Kids"[1]:
> You can't distinguish your group by doing things that are rational, and believing things that are true. If you want to set yourself apart from other people, you have to do things that are arbitrary, and believe things that are false.
"Stupidity" seems so strongly associated with a motivation to identify with a particular group, in almost exactly the sense that I understand the old Sinclair quote about what a man will and won't understand when his salary is involved, that
I wonder now if "stupidity" as a phenomenon is JUST social signalling to demonstrate group association. Or does it has aspects beyond social conformity?
There are some areas (including this one) where pg’s stream of consciousness thoughts are just that, and shouldn’t be taken as much more. Raising kids in suburbia is no more lying to a kid then sending them to school instead of off to work in a mine. There are entire rural cultures that have no exposure to modern conveniences or vices and haven’t for hundreds of years. They are not living a lie.
That said, I’d recommend not lying to your children to the best of your ability. For us that means certain American traditions aren’t celebrated in our house (Santa, tooth fairy, etc.). That also means sometimes having tricky conversations regarding propaganda from “trustworthy” sources as they learn to understand more about the world.
Having age-appropriate conversations about subjects isn’t hard and doesn’t require lying. It does require having some idea of a child’s developmental level and reference to the subject at hand. You wouldn’t tell a 3-year old that smoking causes emphysema, but telling them that it could make you sick is true.
I also think this is especially true for religious families. Ultimately that is a decision for individuals to make. Parents can teach their kids to the best of their abilities, but kids will have to take that and choose their own way. (Comments about how religions are lies are unnecessary and unwelcome.)
Obviously, no one person can have a completely accurate view of the world and all subject areas, and that’s important to teach kids as well. “I don’t know” or “let’s learn more about that” or even “here’s what I think annd here’s what some other people think, what do you think?” are perfectly acceptable answers at any age. We’re all going to be biased in certain areas. As kids get older, I think letting them know the foundation of that bias (cultural, socio-economical, educational, etc.) may help reasoning from different perspectives.
How do you deal with the social tension of telling your kids the truth about Santa, etc.? My wife convinced me that if we didn't conform, then all other parents in the area would dislike us.
Interestingly enough, when a classmate's dad told my 1st grade daughter about the (Christian) god, she got home and asked me why people believe in false things like that. But, she still continued to believe in Santa and the tooth fairy as well as her imaginary friends, etc. I think that maybe she knows they also don't exist, but she's enjoying the fantasy and experience.
Kids are really dumb and really smart at the same time.
And they know when you’re lying, eventually. Especially when you tell them something that isn’t something you believe.
But you often don’t have to lie to explain something that’s too complicated or not necessary for them to know, as a simple explanation is not a lie, even if it’s not completely true.
Yes, it’s not hard to use “it’s a bit like X” or it’s “kind of like Y” when giving a simplified explanation or using an analogy. Even young kids can understand that. And I’ve never understood why people would make something up if they don’t know something - in fact, it’s a good learning opportunity in two ways - first, it’s good to show you’re not embarrassed or ashamed by not knowing something, and secondly it’s a good exercise to encourage the child to try and think of ideas together of what might be the explanation.
(That said, if you are good at switching demeanour to make it obvious to them that you're not serious, kids do often enjoy the absurd and ridiculous, so it can be fun to 'lie' to kids in that way by offering increasingly absurd explanations. But care must be taken to ensure they know you're not actually trying to mislead them!)
I was reminded of Sinclair too. Conformity is certainly likely but I think it goes even deeper than that. If one identifies their own material survival with any particular group, system, nation, tribe, etc, it creates an irrationality that short circuits logic and reason. It appears as stupidity to those who don't identify their survival with those groups, systems, etc.
> I wonder now if "stupidity" as a phenomenon is JUST social signalling to demonstrate group association...
I considered myself stupid when I came to this realization years ago. I recall thinking "why didn't my parents teach me how to be stupid to fit in?" Well, better late than never? The realization had some pretty significant effects on my life. It has enabled me to sympathize with people on a whole new level. It has brought me much closer to my family and made me better in all of my personal relationships, but at the same time it has made me feel so much more alone than I ever felt before.
For the unfamiliar - the book is an illustrated guide to how different kinds of mechanisms and designed systems work starting from simple machines, levers, wheel and axle, etc. through to nuclear fission and moving on through computers in the sequels.
David Macaulay's writing and illustrations are top-notch. Honestly, all of his books are great, but this is the one that I actually owned when I was younger so I read it all the time - hard to put into words the impact it had on me at around that same age.
These books actually have an interactive software couterpart which came out in the 90s. It might be hard to get a hold of it legally and to run it nowadays, though.
> Are you not interested in ensuring that the answer or solution is based on the most authoritative information that exists, the source material on which all regurgitations are based?
Not OP, but I'll answer: No, I am almost never interested in finding the most authoritative source for anything, because the effort vs. reward of those searches is not favorable and the cost of being incorrect on any given point is pretty dang low.
EDIT: However, with respect to the idea of using ChatGPT for answering general knowledge questions - there's enough demonstrations of it providing fabricated information that I've adopted the low-cost heuristic of not trusting ChatGPT for anything and preferring to seek information elsewhere. I guess this means I seek moderately-authoritative sources (say, Wikipedia) as a general rule.
> I don’t like the phrase “normal reward behaviors” in this article... Maybe these responses are adaptive and provide a fitness advantage under historically normal conditions even if they appear maladaptive in the current environment.
Agreed - the cant of this article could just as easily be "environmental factors during formative years influence behavior at maturity" without representing a particular set of responses as "normal" or "abnormal". I'm surprised they didn't use adaptive/maladaptive, like you do; it seems more appropriate.
I gotta say, it's hard to know how much of a hurdle has been cleared here when this project seems to be absolutely nothing but hurdles to clear. Normally I would guess that getting this report approved would be a big deal in that construction could finally really get going, but then I read this:
> The Board’s certification of the San Francisco to San Jose Final EIR/EIS and approval of its project section will move the project section closer to being “shovel ready” when funding for final design, pre-construction and construction becomes available.
"Closer" to being "shovel ready" when "funding for final design... becomes available" is not a series of words that gives me confidence that meaningful progress has been made. However, I grant that I am no expert in the art of parsing press releases about big infrastructure projects.
Anybody out there with meaningful understanding of what this announcement might mean in practical terms?
that's referring specifically to the SF->SJ section; building of the HSR is apparently already underway in the central valley: https://www.buildhsr.com/
> They should have used the existing right of way on I5, no stops between SJ and LA.
If you build high speed rail, you want ridership. Adding Fresno to the line takes the distance from San Jose to LA from roughly 340 miles to 366, adding roughly[1] 7 minutes to the route for express trains - hardly a dealbreaker. This also allows other trains to stop at Fresno and Bakersfield, adding a population of ~1million to the route, increasing its' viability.
A straight shot down I-5 would save a few minutes but severely limit the economic and social benefits it will have by increasing access to the central valley.
[1] 26 miles/220 miles per hour = 7.1 minutes. Trains that stop will add a few more minutes. Equivalent systems in every country with HSR have a mixture of express trains and local trains in this situation
Nitpick: on a 26 mile stretch with stops at both end, that train will do closer to half its top speed. It has to decelerate and accelerate one more time. I think that will add closer to 15 minutes to the time on the full stretch.
But yes, they need riders, and thus intermediate stops. Most train passengers don’t ride the full track, just as most highway drivers don’t ride the entire highway.
Yes, that is why I explicitly noted the "express train" thing in my footnote. The route itself is longer, so a direct train will take a little bit longer. A local train that stops will add more time.
Bigger nitpick: 220MPH is the top speed. Average speed is going to be more like 130MPH, so more like 12 minutes (before considering the time for any stop).
They should have gone down the 101 corridor in the central coast area. The weather is pleasant and I could see people living along route and commuting to SF or LA.
Central Valley was a dumb move.
> They should have gone down the 101 corridor in the central coast area.
You can't even put a decent speed freeway, much less high speed rail, on parts of the 101 corridor.
Of all the armchair alternative route planning for HSR I've heard—and there's been a lot—this is the worst.
> The weather is pleasant and I could see people living along route and commuting to SF or LA. Central Valley was a dumb move.
People do live along the planned alignment (which is why it was chosen) and do already commute to the Bay Area as far as that is practical (and a bit more than most people would think reasonable) with existing transportation options (same on the LA end), and both displacing expected growth in freeway trips from that and extending the viable commute radius along that existing route is part of what HSR is aiming to do.
I’m confused doesn’t the 101 corridor go down the coast between Salinas and San Luis Obispo? And doesn’t the existing Coastal Starlight go along it?
I’ve actually taken that train. It takes 12 hours. A lot of that is padding because of the unreliability of the tracks, but also because the route is really tight. I doubt you would be able to improve the tracks there such that 5-6 hours would be possible, let alone the 2 hours through the valley.
I wish we had rail, including HSR, everywhere but the real world comes with financial constraints. While a Central Coast trunk alignment would be nice, any reasonable analysis indicates it really should be lower priority than the Central Valley trunk. It's something that would only be built in addition to and after the core system is running through the CV; to add additional capacity, redundancy, and to serve the Central Coast communities.
The Central Valley has millions more people and is projected to add millions more in the decades to come, which matters for ridership and the viability of the system. On speed, the Central Coast is only faster as the crow flies. It may not seem like it, but CV is actually is faster and more direct than the Central Coast on the ground. There's a reason people drive I-5 rather US-101 or CA-1/PCH when doing the NorCal-SoCal trip, unless they're intentionally taking the slower scenic coastal route [0]. There are formidable Coastal Ranges on Central Coast (and much California and Pacific coast of North America) [1][2]. This results in an alignment that is slower and more expensive due to more curves, elevated viaducts, and tunneling. It's also much more vulnerable to erosion, landslides, and flooding. [3][4] CalTrans and local DoTs struggle to keep roads open after winter storms.
But you can use the same track to run high speed rail going the full distance as well as a lower speed train going only half the way (or it could be high speed too just with an extra stop).
Much of the work in the Central Valley incorporates grade separation for the existing freight rail lines. So they have a small win every time they replace an at grade crossing with an overpass.
The whole thing seems like a self licking ice cream cone for consultants and construction firms. I’ll be amazed if anything useful staggers across the finish line decades from now.
Sorry, hold on. It was my understanding that the state had a vast surplus of money. Even with a rail project as drawn out and over funded as this one, is that something you expect to happen in the near future?
> Just in time for the state to declare bankruptcy again!
The state has not declared bankruptcy (because it legally can't), not has it repudiated it's debts without bankruptcy (which it also legally can't), so I'm not sure what your point is.
It stopped paying debts for quite awhile, and defaulted on a lot of tax sharing agreements it had with counties and the like. Which they didn't really have any recourse for.
You're right though it wasn't technically bankruptcy!
It isn't the first time the State has had solvency issues either.
It stopped paying a subset of its obligations from July-September 2009.
> and defaulted on a lot of tax sharing agreements it had with counties and the like.
It did not. It suspended, with the required governors declaration and legislative supermajority, a protected reservation of certain funding streams for local use that had only been adopted in 2004 (and only effective since 2006), before which such diversions by the state were common, to temporarily redirect $1.9 billion (which would be repayed) to deal with the state cash flow situation; note that proponents of the 2004 measure noted that $40 billion had been permanently redirected (not borrowed) by the state from the funds that would be protected by it over the preceding 12 years, or about $3.3 billion per year.
These aren’t “tax sharing agreements” made between different parties, they are assignments of revenue to particular uses under the State Constitution, which have exceptions.
> It isn’t the first time the State has had solvency issues either.
No, but it was the last, and Like literally all of the previous ones, it was a cash flow crises as a result of a budget impasse due to the 2/3 budget supermajority requirement (which has since been repealed), resulting in fund exhaustion without authority to do normal cash management things like selling short-term revenue anticipation bonds (there was more involved in 2009, but that was the foundational problem, the other complications were complications in solving the budget deadlock.)
States can't declare bankruptcy, but California was insolvent a bit over a decade ago.
I still have an "IOU" from those years sent by the state instead of the money I was owed due to overpaying state taxes. The state was essentially bankrupt for a signification time, even though no proceedings took place.
> States can't declare bankruptcy, but California was insolvent a bit over a decade ago.
California had a cash flow crisis in 2009.
> The state was essentially bankrupt for a signification time, even though no proceedings took place.
Not really. It was unable to make payments because of the political inability (due to supermajority requirements in the legislature—one of the key ones of which has since been removed—legislative/executive disunity, reliance on voter approval for certain actions which failed, etc.) to decide how to change operations to do so, not because of lack of resources.
Yes. It was a warrant which returned a couple percent interest on the balance. It said I could take it to a bank and cash it like a check in a few months, which I did.
No. And... I can't even imagine a way to bring hope or scale to the process. I appreciate the question, but it made me laugh.
...The best thing we could do would be to lobby to get regulators to:
- increase the number and type of CEQA exemptions.
- Add mandatory automatic approvals on things if there's no response after x number of days. CDFW does this sort of thing for Lake and Streambed Alteration Notifications. If they don't get back to you within 90 days, you get automatic approval. It's a beautiful thing. In practice, it keeps the agency running with much improved efficiency. They still try to stall occasionally by declaring your application "incomplete" for bullshit reasons, but that only resets the clock another 90 days, and if you respond with all requested information, they can't do shit.
But... the political climate in CA is relatively unfavorable to such things. Lots of NIMBY's and environmental groups will oppose it.
The exact problem of California's High-Speed Rail is that individuals (as well as local municipalities) keep suing them. The original timeline and budget would probably not have been too far off if it weren't for this
The current route has been modified a bunch to appease local municipalities that want, or don't want, part of the tracks or a stop near them. Maybe that can be stopped by voting, but the wealthy individuals will continue to sue and force more expensive litigative battles like the one that resulted in this environmental assessment needing to be cleared
I don’t think that is the only thing that is keeping this slow and expensive. I think the first estimates were way to optimistic (especially in terms of costs and funding opportunities).
I think the main thing that has been slowing things down is severe lack of funding, both from the state of California, and especially from the federal government. This is probably due to the fact that there was a lack of experience (both from the rail authority and especially from the legislator). Thankfully it looks like they have stopped withholding funds and at this point they have gained some experience. I doubt there will be another doubling of cost estimate nor much more delays (perhaps a year or two more at most).
> The exact problem of California's High-Speed Rail is that individuals (as well as local municipalities) keep suing them.
No, it's funding.
The switch to exclusive focus on environmental clearance outside of a particular area of focus was based on funding, not lawsuits. HSR has always relied on massive additional funding besides it's dedicated bond fund, much of which was expected from the federal government, and which has not materialized.
You can actually see that in action. The day before this EIS was cleared it was announced that contracts for advancing designs on the two remaining sections in the Central Valley (Madera to Merced and Shafter to Bakersfield; essentially preparing for construction packages 5 and 6, if I understand correctly). This news came just days after the federal government granted them 25M USD from the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
It is not even 4 years since Gavin Newsom ordered the stop on any new construction packages (which ironically made this a train from nowhere to nowhere) because there simply wasn’t enough funding to finish anything that hadn’t already started. Thankfully it looks like this era is over now, and we can finally start seeing things get the funding it needs and deserves.
Pass laws which provide less grounds for suing these kinds of projects, or at least group them into one class action lawsuit instead of a smattering of actions. Provide abridged proceedings for infrastructure projects so judgements can be rendered more quickly. I'm thinking things like judge only trials, etc.
I think these are great ideas, with not much chance of passing. Imagine all the environmentalist groups screaming that they're going to silence legitimate criticism, shut off debate, push through poorly thought-out projects, destroy our environment, etc. etc.
I said "not much chance" rather than "no chance." Eventually, some watered-down version of a law like that might pass.
In my experience, pro-environmental regulation is always passed over a chorus of screaming capitalists pointing out that it makes it very expensive and difficult to build things. There is a reason that China is the factory of the world - it is legal in China to build things cheaply. There are only a tiny handful of people who know how to build things that are compliant with the regulation (& demonstrate that compliance).
So while the last step in the sequence of events is wealthy people suing, the actual problem here is probably that the CHSR may be illegal to construct and there are people with an interest in testing that theory.
Irresponsible uses like building suburbs when we could live in cities? Like flying when could be taking trains? Like driving when we could be biking? Environmental law is the main force requiring us to do those things.
Sorry, what? Are you implying that streamlining the already absurdly long and frankly abused NEPA reviews so we can get them done in a more timely manner is somehow a bad thing?
Perhaps I should clarify: "disruptive" in data-intensive and sensitive decision-making processes, e.g. involving ecosystems and environmental processes for which there is limited knowledge and very often unavailable information, means in practice "careless" rather than "timely".
According to their 2022 business plan, sometime in 2023/2024. There are two sections left to clear: Palmdale to Burbank, and LA to Anaheim (they cleared Burbank to LA earlier this year if I remember correctly):
> Our last two project sections, Palmdale to Burbank and Los Angeles to Anaheim, will be advanced in 2023/2024
> Kerosene makes aviation viable because it has a high energy return on investment and is readily available because it is produced by fractional distillation that would occur regardless.
Kerosene (and liquid petroleum-derived fuel generally) works well as an aviation fuel because it is relatively stable and energy-dense in both volumetric and mass terms. That it often has a high EROI means it can be dollar-cheap as well, which doesn't hurt, but it's still used even when the EROI is terrible (eg. military aviation - delivering fuel to a war zone costs a lot of energy) because the other advantages are still overwhelming relative to the energy cost.
> Hydrogen and e-fuels involve substantial energy losses even in ideal circumstances
Absolutely, though this is true of every industrial activity.
> and require dedicated supply chains that would not otherwise exist, which adds additional energetic costs.
While this is certainly true for hydrogen, e-fuels (which I take to mean synthetic electrochemically-produced hydrocarbon fuels, though perhaps you mean something different) can be produced and distributed using the much of the same infrastructure that exists today - for example, if you're making Sabatier methane, there's no reason you need to build new pipelines and tanks for it, though I'll grant that you do need new production facilities.
Of course, the rub is that the energy to drive it all has to come from non-carbon-producing (in operation) sources - solar, wind, hydro, or nuclear - and there's no denying that building out that infrastructure is going to be a massive project.
> In a world where available energy is going to become scarcer, I don't think using these fuels is going to make sense.
Available fossil energy is indeed going to decrease, but what makes you think that's true for renewables too?
As I was writing this comment, I took a small detour to do a bit of rough figuring here:
- Assume $77/MWh (Q1 2021) for utility-scale solar+storage [1]
- Assume 75 cents/L (today) for wholesale gasoline [2]
- Assume 105 L of gasoline contains 1 MWh (roughly) [3]
Then: $77 of solar energy can, if 100% efficiency were possible, produce 105 L of gasoline having a wholesale value of $78.75 at today's prices.
Obviously, 100% energy efficiency (or anything close to it) is impossible. But if solar energy instead cost $30/MWh, it suggests that an industrial process with an overall efficiency of 38% in energy terms (i.e. 2.625 MWh is needed to make 1 MWh of fuel) would be able to produce gasoline that matches the current market wholesale price.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to find anything quickly that describes industrial process efficiency in quantitative terms, so I don't know if 38% overall efficiency is reasonable to expect; personally, I think that probably would be considered high efficiency, so solar would need to get even cheaper (which it will) and/or gasoline will need to get more expensive (which it will) to improve the economics.
I think energy is going to be scarce based on analysis of the material circumstances, such as land and resource availability and the involved thermodynamics. Price is irrelevant, because price is a social phenomenon, not a material one.
While land and resource availability are definitely reasonable concerns in any discussion about, say, shifting humanity's primary energy source to direct solar (lots of panels means lots of factories to build them and lots of land to put them on) as opposed to indirect solar (oil and coal) I'm struggling to understand why you think "thermodynamics" means that usable energy will become scarcer on a timeline that is meaningful to human civilization. Happy to listen if you care to explain, but no worries if not.
