Large segments of international shipping would be completely untouched by ice-highways; Australia and Brazil would still be sending their Iron Ore the same ways, and Saudi Oil likewise. Out of 10Gt a year, even with ice conjoining Russia and Canada, then down to the Hudson, I don’t see even half of that on the ice, which was why I mentioned originally that ‘I would consider it complete with only ten lanes in each direction’. There are still immense volumes of refrigerated cargo and time-sensitive goods which would benefit from fast, cold transport. And, those goods earn higher premiums; I expect the ice-highway’s margins would punch above their market share.
In terms of load-transfer, I would love it if global deep water ports were some genius of efficiency—a few huge or wealthy ports are such marvels. But, in contrast, the bottleneck at most major ports was just recently a year-long global boondoggle. I’m not sure you want to argue that it was somehow the best possible solution; the real solution to transferring loads involves replacing union labor with robots. And THAT is much easier to do at a new transfer-location, which can connect to one of the more numerous small ports, for the shorter, local hop that would be needed. Giant ports are only necessary for giant ships, and those are only necessary for long voyages. By switching to ‘last-mile’ boats, you can go small, which lets you utilize those hundreds of under-utilized small ports, closer to their destination. That sounds like efficiency, not loss.
In regards to your concern for “an entire tech base...” being needed; yes, it is a different tech-set. And, I don’t see that as a limitation; the tech required is minimal capital cost, mass, operating labor, and it provides an immense multiple of capital-into-capital, as well as energy-into-energy. (A few hundred kg to lay 200,000 tons of ice each winter is not an ‘overwhelmingly exorbitant tech base’ that would prevent feasibility. Similarly, spending 1 joule to pump and spray water that transfers 3,200 joules of heat is a simple device with insane energy-yields, not an insurmountable tech-hurdle.)
I like batteries, and I also fear that competing sectors’ demand for them will slow our transition; already, California’s solar abundance creates perverse daytime rates, driving-out the incentive for more capacity.
It’s easier to replace workers with robots in existing ports. There already use automatable heavy machinery for most of the work.
New ports are unlikely to happen with pre-singularity technology—the port is there because a city is there, and the city is there because the port is there. There is an activation threshold to start fresh anywhere else, and a period of time where the competition with existing infrastructure is cheaper.
(Post singularity you probably would just skip right to vacuum trains)
See CATL sodium ion batteries for something that scales arbitrarily where sufficient batteries for all users could be produced.
I agree, pre-existing infrastructure and coagulation of agglomerated capital are a huge inertia to change; that doesn’t make the idea itself a bad one. If I had a junker car that was so horrible, it was unable to drive me to the dealership where I could buy a new one, then that does not cause “the car at the dealership isn’t worth it.” The car at the dealership is still worth-it; I just have a junker that prevents me from attaining that desirable. So, considering that it is the junker which stands in the way, then the fact that “the junker can’t get us to the optimum” is actually a good argument against the junker.
This is true in other scenarios, where others often abuse the mistake in reasoning. The stereotypical case is when someone say “We could improve the economy/politics with XYZ” and the responded dismisses the new alternative by saying “But the current system would never let us get to that new alternative—therefore, the new alternative is unattainable, and ‘sour grapes’ - the new alternative must not be any good.”
That line of reasoning is false; in fact, if the current system prevents improvement, that is a strike against the current system, NOT a strike against the improvement.
So, yes, I agree: there is immense inertia in our current system, making Arctic Ice Highways very unlikely—yet that inertia is a sign of the current system’s limitations, and those limitations don’t “make the ice highway fail to function”. I hope we can be clear about those two different claims: “Ice Highway can’t work,” vs. “Ice Highway would likely never be done in our particular path-dependent timeline .”
“Ice Highway can’t work,” vs. “Ice Highway would likely never be done in our particular path-dependent timeline .”
Either way they have no utility to any reader here. An article about the theory of a particular class of restrictions on AI, or how to outsmart EMH and potentially earn alpha gets a lot more traction here on lesswrong and engagement. This is because AI obviously isn’t an unreachable outcome, it’s very reachable and dangerous AGIs may be a real future possibility. Similarly, while beating EMH is hard, you can try right now if you have some money.
As for inertia to change : so there are arguments either way on this. Main thing is that cost isn’t just a nominal number, it’s reflected in real blood sweat and tears by humans. So picking the investment that has the lowest cost for the return is quite rational.
Now, for certain technologies that we are pretty sure do work, but they are far away in development-space, it is worth massive investments to overcome the barriers in the way.
The thing is, if you write down some of the things that get such massive investments, you will notice a common factor. They promise immense gain. Like not saving 30% of the cost of freight which is a small cost of the cost of a manufactured good, but “increase national GDP 10,000%” (AGI) or “tell our enemies in the middle east to take a hike” (fusion power’s promise) or “free energy from the sky” (solar power and the associated batteries).
And that’s the issue with your proposal. It’s not, in real world terms, enough of a factor. A quick google seemed to say that the percentage cost of freight for all imports to a developed country (so it’s the average, obviously the freight cost for a container full of game consoles is a much smaller percentage than for a bulk transport of sand) is about 5%.
Not sure if that includes the port costs.
So even a project to research stable wormholes—if somehow we knew a plausible way to make them—at most makes things 5% cheaper. (If you were trying to make a business case to make money solely with freight. Obviously wormholes would be a game changer and worth almost any cost to develop if we knew they were possible)
If we have singularity level technology and could go for any tech we know about now, obviously robotic mag-lev vacuum trains would be how you do it.
“Either way they have no utility to any reader here.”
Inspiration and first drafts are valuable and valid, without needing to be a polished, market-ready, ‘perfect’ solution. And, the exploration of failure-modes is valuable for generating new ideas which avoid those pitfalls. Discussion of potential options expands the view; the ‘Bohmic’ dialogues were based on a principle: that we’ll need to say “No, because...” to a lot of ideas, and we also need to say “Yes, and...” to create those ideas. The key insight of David Bohm was to do “Yes, and...” FIRST, and “No, because...” SECOND. You want to generate a panoply, then narrow things down. Reversing that order leads to creative stagnation; we end-up begrudging imperfections, without innovating on our own.
I mentioned the strategy for idea-generation in another thread on LessWrong, involving first ‘exploration of the design space’ to understand what is possible; at that point, none of the ideas need be perfect or best, and you include the bad ones, because of Step Two. Step Two: find the pattern between bad ideas which causes those disparate solutions to suffer from a similar failure. Now, you can better identify the patterns of failure… and there are two other steps, before you might find a good solution! Those are explained here, if you’re curious: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mfPHTWsFhzmcXw8ta/?commentId=so7DDoMannPAYDHWb
The point of that process is to include bad ideas, and find patterns, to direct you toward good ones.
For your other point, that “It’s not, in real world terms, enough of a factor.” A problem is not deemed worthy by the total addressable market; you have to look at the ratio of capital sunk and the rate of return, regardless of total scale. So, while AGI offers +10,000%, and ice-highways might only save 30%, that 30% can be valuable enough if it is afforded at a good rate—that’s the real economic constraint. And, that only comes from accounting for all the gains and losses, not ‘pointing to a single source of loss to claim that the gains are gone.’
[[Side-Note: it would also be weird if LessWrong refused all the posts which are “not… enough of a factor” compared to AGI, as you do. That’s kinda the highest bar imaginable… and most posts are about cute, nuanced little tid-bits, of significantly lower market-value than “5% of total commercial goods’ prices”]]
Thank you for getting into details :)
Large segments of international shipping would be completely untouched by ice-highways; Australia and Brazil would still be sending their Iron Ore the same ways, and Saudi Oil likewise. Out of 10Gt a year, even with ice conjoining Russia and Canada, then down to the Hudson, I don’t see even half of that on the ice, which was why I mentioned originally that ‘I would consider it complete with only ten lanes in each direction’. There are still immense volumes of refrigerated cargo and time-sensitive goods which would benefit from fast, cold transport. And, those goods earn higher premiums; I expect the ice-highway’s margins would punch above their market share.
In terms of load-transfer, I would love it if global deep water ports were some genius of efficiency—a few huge or wealthy ports are such marvels. But, in contrast, the bottleneck at most major ports was just recently a year-long global boondoggle. I’m not sure you want to argue that it was somehow the best possible solution; the real solution to transferring loads involves replacing union labor with robots. And THAT is much easier to do at a new transfer-location, which can connect to one of the more numerous small ports, for the shorter, local hop that would be needed. Giant ports are only necessary for giant ships, and those are only necessary for long voyages. By switching to ‘last-mile’ boats, you can go small, which lets you utilize those hundreds of under-utilized small ports, closer to their destination. That sounds like efficiency, not loss.
In regards to your concern for “an entire tech base...” being needed; yes, it is a different tech-set. And, I don’t see that as a limitation; the tech required is minimal capital cost, mass, operating labor, and it provides an immense multiple of capital-into-capital, as well as energy-into-energy. (A few hundred kg to lay 200,000 tons of ice each winter is not an ‘overwhelmingly exorbitant tech base’ that would prevent feasibility. Similarly, spending 1 joule to pump and spray water that transfers 3,200 joules of heat is a simple device with insane energy-yields, not an insurmountable tech-hurdle.)
I like batteries, and I also fear that competing sectors’ demand for them will slow our transition; already, California’s solar abundance creates perverse daytime rates, driving-out the incentive for more capacity.
It’s easier to replace workers with robots in existing ports. There already use automatable heavy machinery for most of the work.
New ports are unlikely to happen with pre-singularity technology—the port is there because a city is there, and the city is there because the port is there. There is an activation threshold to start fresh anywhere else, and a period of time where the competition with existing infrastructure is cheaper.
(Post singularity you probably would just skip right to vacuum trains)
See CATL sodium ion batteries for something that scales arbitrarily where sufficient batteries for all users could be produced.
I agree, pre-existing infrastructure and coagulation of agglomerated capital are a huge inertia to change; that doesn’t make the idea itself a bad one. If I had a junker car that was so horrible, it was unable to drive me to the dealership where I could buy a new one, then that does not cause “the car at the dealership isn’t worth it.” The car at the dealership is still worth-it; I just have a junker that prevents me from attaining that desirable. So, considering that it is the junker which stands in the way, then the fact that “the junker can’t get us to the optimum” is actually a good argument against the junker.
This is true in other scenarios, where others often abuse the mistake in reasoning. The stereotypical case is when someone say “We could improve the economy/politics with XYZ” and the responded dismisses the new alternative by saying “But the current system would never let us get to that new alternative—therefore, the new alternative is unattainable, and ‘sour grapes’ - the new alternative must not be any good.”
That line of reasoning is false; in fact, if the current system prevents improvement, that is a strike against the current system, NOT a strike against the improvement.
So, yes, I agree: there is immense inertia in our current system, making Arctic Ice Highways very unlikely—yet that inertia is a sign of the current system’s limitations, and those limitations don’t “make the ice highway fail to function”. I hope we can be clear about those two different claims: “Ice Highway can’t work,” vs. “Ice Highway would likely never be done in our particular path-dependent timeline .”
“Ice Highway can’t work,” vs. “Ice Highway would likely never be done in our particular path-dependent timeline .”
Either way they have no utility to any reader here. An article about the theory of a particular class of restrictions on AI, or how to outsmart EMH and potentially earn alpha gets a lot more traction here on lesswrong and engagement. This is because AI obviously isn’t an unreachable outcome, it’s very reachable and dangerous AGIs may be a real future possibility. Similarly, while beating EMH is hard, you can try right now if you have some money.
As for inertia to change : so there are arguments either way on this. Main thing is that cost isn’t just a nominal number, it’s reflected in real blood sweat and tears by humans. So picking the investment that has the lowest cost for the return is quite rational.
Now, for certain technologies that we are pretty sure do work, but they are far away in development-space, it is worth massive investments to overcome the barriers in the way.
The thing is, if you write down some of the things that get such massive investments, you will notice a common factor. They promise immense gain. Like not saving 30% of the cost of freight which is a small cost of the cost of a manufactured good, but “increase national GDP 10,000%” (AGI) or “tell our enemies in the middle east to take a hike” (fusion power’s promise) or “free energy from the sky” (solar power and the associated batteries).
And that’s the issue with your proposal. It’s not, in real world terms, enough of a factor. A quick google seemed to say that the percentage cost of freight for all imports to a developed country (so it’s the average, obviously the freight cost for a container full of game consoles is a much smaller percentage than for a bulk transport of sand) is about 5%.
Not sure if that includes the port costs.
So even a project to research stable wormholes—if somehow we knew a plausible way to make them—at most makes things 5% cheaper. (If you were trying to make a business case to make money solely with freight. Obviously wormholes would be a game changer and worth almost any cost to develop if we knew they were possible)
If we have singularity level technology and could go for any tech we know about now, obviously robotic mag-lev vacuum trains would be how you do it.
“Either way they have no utility to any reader here.”
Inspiration and first drafts are valuable and valid, without needing to be a polished, market-ready, ‘perfect’ solution. And, the exploration of failure-modes is valuable for generating new ideas which avoid those pitfalls. Discussion of potential options expands the view; the ‘Bohmic’ dialogues were based on a principle: that we’ll need to say “No, because...” to a lot of ideas, and we also need to say “Yes, and...” to create those ideas. The key insight of David Bohm was to do “Yes, and...” FIRST, and “No, because...” SECOND. You want to generate a panoply, then narrow things down. Reversing that order leads to creative stagnation; we end-up begrudging imperfections, without innovating on our own.
I mentioned the strategy for idea-generation in another thread on LessWrong, involving first ‘exploration of the design space’ to understand what is possible; at that point, none of the ideas need be perfect or best, and you include the bad ones, because of Step Two. Step Two: find the pattern between bad ideas which causes those disparate solutions to suffer from a similar failure. Now, you can better identify the patterns of failure… and there are two other steps, before you might find a good solution! Those are explained here, if you’re curious: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mfPHTWsFhzmcXw8ta/?commentId=so7DDoMannPAYDHWb
The point of that process is to include bad ideas, and find patterns, to direct you toward good ones.
For your other point, that “It’s not, in real world terms, enough of a factor.” A problem is not deemed worthy by the total addressable market; you have to look at the ratio of capital sunk and the rate of return, regardless of total scale. So, while AGI offers +10,000%, and ice-highways might only save 30%, that 30% can be valuable enough if it is afforded at a good rate—that’s the real economic constraint. And, that only comes from accounting for all the gains and losses, not ‘pointing to a single source of loss to claim that the gains are gone.’
[[Side-Note: it would also be weird if LessWrong refused all the posts which are “not… enough of a factor” compared to AGI, as you do. That’s kinda the highest bar imaginable… and most posts are about cute, nuanced little tid-bits, of significantly lower market-value than “5% of total commercial goods’ prices”]]