Comments by "DynamicWorlds" (@dynamicworlds1) on "Sabine Hossenfelder" channel.

If I might disagree and re-muddy those distinctions, philosophy (specifically epistemology) is actually really useful here. The most philosophically honest thing we can say about what happens to things that fall into a black hole is "our models of physics break down at the event horizon so we can, at best, only make educated guesses influenced by our own biases with no means to test them against each other". You can't do good physics without solid grounding in philosophy just as you cannot do good physics without solid grounding in math. Science requires an overlap of evidence, math, and philosophy and right now, we don't even have experimental confirmation that Hawking radiation even exists. We assume it does (and I include myself in that "we") but we must not loose track of when we are making assumptions.
2
Yes, please! Those seem by far the most practical option to me due to longevity, modular deployment, mass manufacturing, low material costs, low maintenance costs, and ease of recycling, but I'd be very interested to see her take on their viability as while I'm far better at identifying pseudoscience than the average person, there are areas of science that I don't have the skills and knowledge to catch more than the most obvious problems with and several of them come up in battery tech.
2
I'd be VERY interested to see you look over liquid metal batteries due to their claimed longevity, modular deployment, simple mass manufacturing, low material costs, low maintenance costs, and ease of recycling. I'm far better at identifying pseudoscience than the average person, there are areas of science that I don't have the skills and knowledge to catch more than the most obvious problems with and several of them come up in battery tech. It feels right on the edge between "that sounds like a great idea. Why would we be using the same batteries for grid storage as we use for vehicles? They have entirely different design requirements, not the least of which is weight/kW." and "that sounds too good to be true"
2
@everythingisalllies2141 I only know of one reason people disagree with Einstein that would trip censor filters and yes, that vile conspiracy BS should get banned.
1
@everythingisalllies2141 you had your chance to walk out with plausible deniability, but you blew it, now take your echo posting elsewhere, Nazi. I know your dogwhistles and that you're ideologically opposed to science in the first place.
1
@zubstep the difference is with economics it is exponentially worse and there is FAR more bias involved in influencing things to lean in one way or another to the point where some "disciplines" of economics will flat-out reject evidence that conflicts with its assumptions and models to the point of diving head-first into the realm of unfalsifiable pseudoscience.
1
"maybe because they sell quantum computers" 😂 "no it won't let you stay in the European Union and leave at the same time" 🤣 Schroeder's geopolitics! 💀
1
"If there was nothing instead of something, we wouldn't be here talking about it, would we?" is my preferred response to that question. Even if it is just a finite but arbitrarily small fluke of chance, there's no possible vantage point by which observations could be made of the alternative.
1
Reminder that Bitcoin is not actually money. It is a pyramid scheme wrapped up with money laundering and other organized crime.
1
Here's a big problem with that: any method of concentrating that waste heat is not only very costly in materials to build said systems, but it inevitably provides resistance to those devices dumping their waste heat as quickly as possible, which translates to inefficiency. Whether you're using peltier devices or a more traditional method of extracting energy from a heat differential (using fluids to drive electric motors in reverse), you're functionally creating an insulation system. The closest we can practically get to that in practical engineering terms is most likely just using heat pumps to pump waste heat into the ground the building is sitting on during the day/summer and drawing it back out during the night/winter. Really, though, the waste heat we generate is nothing compared to even a tiny change in the energy balance in how much energy is absorbed vs reflected from the sun. IF we're ever producing so much waste heat that it's more efficient to try and capture it than to try and reduce the energy absorption/retention of the planet, then we're talking about a situation where our energy production and usage is sufficient that we should be looking into moving people into O'Neal cylinders in space. (The point where it becomes a good idea to start living in space is when your energy usage and waste heat production is a bigger limiter on your economy than material availability) Assuming that our waste heat will continue to increase exponentially is a BIG assumption too. We know that the population is on track to level off and that we can in other ways should expect the waste heat per person to also eventually level off. We can't just look at current trends and assume they will continue indefinitely without evidence.
1
Here's a big problem with that: any method of concentrating that waste heat is not only very costly in materials to build said systems, but it inevitably provides resistance to those devices dumping their waste heat as quickly as possible, which translates to inefficiency. Whether you're using peltier devices or a more traditional method of extracting energy from a heat differential (using fluids to drive electric motors in reverse), you're functionally creating an insulation system. The closest we can practically get to that in practical engineering terms is most likely just using heat pumps to pump waste heat into the ground the building is sitting on during the day/summer and drawing it back out during the night/winter. Really, though, the waste heat we generate is nothing compared to even a tiny change in the energy balance in how much energy is absorbed vs reflected from the sun. IF we're ever producing so much waste heat that it's more efficient to try and capture it than to try and reduce the energy absorption/retention of the planet, then we're talking about a situation where our energy production and usage is sufficient that we should be looking into moving people into O'Neal cylinders in space. (The point where it becomes a good idea to start living in space is when your energy usage and waste heat production is a bigger limiter on your economy than material availability) Assuming that our waste heat will continue to increase exponentially is a BIG assumption too. We know that the population is on track to level off and that we can in other ways should expect the waste heat per person to also eventually level off. We can't just look at current trends and assume they will continue indefinitely without evidence.
1
We've basically failed at producing tidal power so it's been largely abandoned. The dual problems of the corrosiveness of seawater and marine fouling made the maintenance challenges effectively impossible to solve in an economic fashion, unfortunately. That's why almost no-one talks about it anymore. It would be great if that weren't true, as it would put a lot of power generation right where we would want it for desalination, but unfortunately it seems to be a dead end.
1
I was first introduced to that one as a programming joke.
1
Vertical axis wind turbines are significantly less efficient than horizontal axis ones, so $/Watt they'll never be more economical. There is apparently a pretty simple and cheap solution to reduce bird strikes, though: paint the blades purple. The unusual color sticks out against the blues, whites, greens, yellows, and browns of the natural landscape and enables the birds to notice and judge their speed easier, so they can simply avoid the blades in a way that they find much harder to do when we paint the blades the same color as the clouds. Incorporating gravity storage into the structure seems like a decent idea if it can be done in a cost effective way, though, since you're already building a big tall hollow tower and if you got really clever about the design it might be workable to go right from kinetic energy of the wind to potential energy of the weight without losing efficiency going back and forth between mechanical and electric power. That part is clever.
1
@philosoaper unfortunately the inefficiencies I was referring to extend to efficiency in extracting energy from a given cross section of wind. Vertical axis turbines have niche advantages that can make them a good choice for off grid systems, but for efficient grid power, the standard design we see of the large 3-bladed horizontal design is extremely well optimized, especially when placed offshore where wind is pretty constant and low-turbulence....and just about every design (including the ones that look and are marketed as new) were already designed decades ago. As much as I like to share in the cautiously optimistic excitement of promising new tech, the aerodynamics here are extremely well-tread ground, so we should expect anything more than small, incremental improvements. :\
1
@Bill about as many different fields of academic study reject the idea of a sex gender binary as reject young earth creationism. None support either. Sex≠gender and neither is a binary. The facts don't care about your bigoted feelings, and neither do I. Transwomen are not men no matter how much you want to insist they are. I'm not interested in entertaining your facade that you actually care about the truth. If you did, you'd do your research and follow the evidence to its conclusion rather than what you're doing.
1