build and provide clean and effectively unlimited energy
How? The closest thing I can think of is nuclear fission but calling it “clean” seems controversial to say the least. Nuclear fusion seems a long way away from being economically viable. If you’re talking about solar and wind, I think there are good arguments against calling it “effectively unlimited”, or “clean” for that matter. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXv-ugeTLlw for a lecture about this.
I am referring to, among other things, humanity’s unfortunate retreat from space exploration.
Can you say more about why you think this is unfortunate? My default view (i.e., not having thought a huge amount about this) is that there are currently lots of investment opportunities with better expected returns than space exploration, almost regardless of what your values are (e.g., whether you care about making money, or want to reduce x-risks). Maybe a couple of exceptions are 1) you care about space exploration for its own sake and 2) you want to use it to signal intelligence/competence or to compete for national prestige. What is your own thinking about this?
Solar is effectively unlimited. Yes, our storage capacity is not yet sufficiently developed to carry solar energy to the darker & colder periods, but that will get developed & installed as solar gets more and more competitive with other energy sources—which it rapidly is becoming year by year. More energy comes to the Earth from sunlight every year than we have received from fossil fuels throughout the entirety of human history.
I think that I would consider people’s access to food “effectively unlimited”—the binding constraint is how much you have any reason to want, not cost. We are short of that for energy not just because energy is dirty, but because it’s a limiting cost factor for many people’s travel, etc. So I would claim that we don’t need costs to come down by more than an order of magnitude to get there, and that’s plausible with current technology—traditional nuclear, solar electric, solar thermal, geothermal, etc. (And there is a key issue with making the available clean energy usable in transportation—but it seems unrelated to the eventual limits.)
I am referring to, among other things, humanity’s unfortunate retreat from space exploration.
Can you say more about why you think this is unfortunate? ...there are currently lots of investment opportunities with better expected returns
Tow answer these in the wrong order, yes, I agree that there are many other goals we can and should pursue, but excepting a few areas where we don’t know how to get what we want—AI Safety being the most critical example—I think we could saturate them in terms of funding and manpower without dedicating more than a moderate fraction of humanity’s resources.
But I view space exploration as both an investment into a prosperous longer term future, and a signpost. I’m not claiming that it has a near-term very large return, just that it’s very clearly net positive. Given that, it’s bizarre that we’d stop doing it, especially given how cheap government capital is and has been. (And see the comment here for more on that point.)
How? The closest thing I can think of is nuclear fission but calling it “clean” seems controversial to say the least. Nuclear fusion seems a long way away from being economically viable. If you’re talking about solar and wind, I think there are good arguments against calling it “effectively unlimited”, or “clean” for that matter. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXv-ugeTLlw for a lecture about this.
Can you say more about why you think this is unfortunate? My default view (i.e., not having thought a huge amount about this) is that there are currently lots of investment opportunities with better expected returns than space exploration, almost regardless of what your values are (e.g., whether you care about making money, or want to reduce x-risks). Maybe a couple of exceptions are 1) you care about space exploration for its own sake and 2) you want to use it to signal intelligence/competence or to compete for national prestige. What is your own thinking about this?
Solar is effectively unlimited. Yes, our storage capacity is not yet sufficiently developed to carry solar energy to the darker & colder periods, but that will get developed & installed as solar gets more and more competitive with other energy sources—which it rapidly is becoming year by year. More energy comes to the Earth from sunlight every year than we have received from fossil fuels throughout the entirety of human history.
I think that I would consider people’s access to food “effectively unlimited”—the binding constraint is how much you have any reason to want, not cost. We are short of that for energy not just because energy is dirty, but because it’s a limiting cost factor for many people’s travel, etc. So I would claim that we don’t need costs to come down by more than an order of magnitude to get there, and that’s plausible with current technology—traditional nuclear, solar electric, solar thermal, geothermal, etc. (And there is a key issue with making the available clean energy usable in transportation—but it seems unrelated to the eventual limits.)
Tow answer these in the wrong order, yes, I agree that there are many other goals we can and should pursue, but excepting a few areas where we don’t know how to get what we want—AI Safety being the most critical example—I think we could saturate them in terms of funding and manpower without dedicating more than a moderate fraction of humanity’s resources.
But I view space exploration as both an investment into a prosperous longer term future, and a signpost. I’m not claiming that it has a near-term very large return, just that it’s very clearly net positive. Given that, it’s bizarre that we’d stop doing it, especially given how cheap government capital is and has been. (And see the comment here for more on that point.)