Fundamentally this distinction (re: 'engineerism') seems to embody the difference between *technology* and *product* - the capacity to deliver some kind of value proposition versus the mechanism that actually undertakes the delivery. And I love the coinage. You definitely see it amongst engineers, but I also think you see it in the policy world, too - we should have e.g. state-run grocery stores, or should e.g. invade Saddam Hussein, not because it nets us some outcome that people want, but because *doing so intrinsically is de-ontologically good*.
All such approaches are, to me, fundamentally variations of the same kind of micro-utopianism: that the point of life is to conduct oneself in accordance with the Way — and opponents are, in their opposition, primarily apostates.
For me, the advent of flying cars would lead to a sudden uptick in dematerialization because it would be another great reason to NEVER leave the house.
Lane markings offer average drivers a great deal of assistance of in staying out of each other's way. Did Hall describe a credible system of lane markings in the sky?
How could Americans ever have flying cars when they can barely maintain their actual cars? Imagine how many crashes there would be if lots of people had flying cars? It's already a problem with General Aviation.
Noah- given your range of curiosity, you’d do yourself a disservice by not familiarizing yourself with the engineering work of Tom Gilb. He will upend your sense of engineering and its root: which is actually humanism and a commitment to clarity, within the context of the design constraints and imagination constraints of those doing the work. His work is dense, proven over 50+ years in companies from Fortune 50s to start ups, and will only add needed nuance to your sense of engineering and engineers. Start with Humanized Keyed Input, co-author Gerald Weinberg: it’s as much philosophy as engineering.
What is the source of the assumption (in the GPT estimate) that flying cars require "20 minutes total for takeoff/landing/preflight"? That seems to be what's making them unattractive for short trips. If your flying car (or, I suspect, your flying Waymo) can take you on a 25-mile cross-town journey in 10 minutes instead of 25 minutes (or more realistically, instead of 45 minutes), suddenly it becomes much more attractive.
I’m grappling with your seeming disdain for nuclear energy. I don’t know the area required to electrify Philadelphia, but I imagine it would be very large, and you’d need to cover it with solar cells. In addition, you’d have to have quite the battery farm to store enough energy to power factories, a subway, and students' computers at Villanova.
Supplying Philadelphia's energy needs with solar seems technologically impossible in January, with 3 or 4 days of cloud cover when the sun is at its lowest. Whereas nuclear power could do so quite easily.
Noah, if you read the Axios Defense newsletter yesterday, you would have read a blurb about a microreactor being built at Ft Bragg and an SMR being built at Ft Campbell. A Rolls-Royce unit is building SMRs in Sweden. GE Vernova and Hitachi are building an SMR somewhere in the Midwest.
I don’t know if solar could power a hyperscaler, or how big an area would be needed, but it would seem that doing so would really enrage those who believe they are taking farmland to build a data center.
I am an all-of-the-above person, and I am surprised to see you are not.
I think they were very afraid of nuclear energy after 3 Mile Island, "The China Syndrome" and Chernobyl, and no one in a position of authority or the press was able to see the forest for the trees and publicize how many deaths per year were attributable to fossil fuel emissions that could have been saved by nuclear power.
Fundamentally this distinction (re: 'engineerism') seems to embody the difference between *technology* and *product* - the capacity to deliver some kind of value proposition versus the mechanism that actually undertakes the delivery. And I love the coinage. You definitely see it amongst engineers, but I also think you see it in the policy world, too - we should have e.g. state-run grocery stores, or should e.g. invade Saddam Hussein, not because it nets us some outcome that people want, but because *doing so intrinsically is de-ontologically good*.
All such approaches are, to me, fundamentally variations of the same kind of micro-utopianism: that the point of life is to conduct oneself in accordance with the Way — and opponents are, in their opposition, primarily apostates.
For me, the advent of flying cars would lead to a sudden uptick in dematerialization because it would be another great reason to NEVER leave the house.
Lane markings offer average drivers a great deal of assistance of in staying out of each other's way. Did Hall describe a credible system of lane markings in the sky?
How could Americans ever have flying cars when they can barely maintain their actual cars? Imagine how many crashes there would be if lots of people had flying cars? It's already a problem with General Aviation.
Noah- given your range of curiosity, you’d do yourself a disservice by not familiarizing yourself with the engineering work of Tom Gilb. He will upend your sense of engineering and its root: which is actually humanism and a commitment to clarity, within the context of the design constraints and imagination constraints of those doing the work. His work is dense, proven over 50+ years in companies from Fortune 50s to start ups, and will only add needed nuance to your sense of engineering and engineers. Start with Humanized Keyed Input, co-author Gerald Weinberg: it’s as much philosophy as engineering.
What is the source of the assumption (in the GPT estimate) that flying cars require "20 minutes total for takeoff/landing/preflight"? That seems to be what's making them unattractive for short trips. If your flying car (or, I suspect, your flying Waymo) can take you on a 25-mile cross-town journey in 10 minutes instead of 25 minutes (or more realistically, instead of 45 minutes), suddenly it becomes much more attractive.
I’m grappling with your seeming disdain for nuclear energy. I don’t know the area required to electrify Philadelphia, but I imagine it would be very large, and you’d need to cover it with solar cells. In addition, you’d have to have quite the battery farm to store enough energy to power factories, a subway, and students' computers at Villanova.
Supplying Philadelphia's energy needs with solar seems technologically impossible in January, with 3 or 4 days of cloud cover when the sun is at its lowest. Whereas nuclear power could do so quite easily.
Noah, if you read the Axios Defense newsletter yesterday, you would have read a blurb about a microreactor being built at Ft Bragg and an SMR being built at Ft Campbell. A Rolls-Royce unit is building SMRs in Sweden. GE Vernova and Hitachi are building an SMR somewhere in the Midwest.
I don’t know if solar could power a hyperscaler, or how big an area would be needed, but it would seem that doing so would really enrage those who believe they are taking farmland to build a data center.
I am an all-of-the-above person, and I am surprised to see you are not.
"Americans aren’t afraid of energy,"
I think they were very afraid of nuclear energy after 3 Mile Island, "The China Syndrome" and Chernobyl, and no one in a position of authority or the press was able to see the forest for the trees and publicize how many deaths per year were attributable to fossil fuel emissions that could have been saved by nuclear power.