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[Trekkin]

Well, we control its study through sheer incomprehensibility. We've done a pretty good job of it, too- how many computer scientists implement machine learning algorithms on a day-to-day basis without the slightest clue how any of it works?

Enough to suggest that an incapacity for clear communication with laypeople is perhaps not as powerful as we might wish it to be, as everyone else is able to carry on regardless.

Kind of endemic to a lot of "X secretly control the world!" theories, really. They presuppose a world orderly enough to be centrally controlled.

[bloop_bleep]

(We are approaching a point where the collective whole of a project is incomprehensible to individual humans, and requires a group of specialists, and some interdisciplinary persons to glue them together with for inter-specific communication of ideas. General AI, should it ever appear, will be so complicated on the "how it works", that no single human will be capable of holding a complete picture of that understanding.)

Or we have already reached such a point, with high-end processors. I bet you could take one of the many engineers that worked on one part of a computer processor, show them a set of couple dozen transistors elsewhere on the chip, and they probably wouldn't be able to make heads or tails out of it.

Reminds me of Multivac from several of Isaac Asimov's stories, basically a huge machine the size of a city, consisting of billions of components and maintained by an enormous team of engineers. I wonder what he thought when he saw this very thing coming into reality near the end of his life, except that it could fit in a square inch and millions of them were being mass-produced every day.

[Max™]

So as a sorta rerail I'll toss up something that is kinda a pet CT of mine, with the caveat that I don't believe shit, and am not endorsing this as a plausible description of reality, was just an idea that seemed like a dark cyberpunk future plot thread: carbon taxes get introduced and eventually become accepted as normal before some market manipulation takes place and it becomes viable to track every source of CO2, like breathing...

[wierd]

Unlikely to happen.  A recent analysis showed that it was financially feasible, and potentially even PROFITABLE, to extract atmospheric CO2 in bulk for processing or sequestration.

What you will instead see is "Big Climate" (or whatever becomes the buzzword for large, established interests in the carbon dioxide collection and sequestration industry) leveling a baseline surcharge against emissions "To pay for re-collection, and disposal".  Of course, the really BIG sources of such emissions (fossil fuel driven power plants, farming, etc) will all get subsidies, but ordinary people will get hit with such charges. I would expect the final incarnation would be similar to mandatory vehicle insurance--- Even if your vehicle is totally electric, and runs on wholesome solar energy.

[Trekkin]

That does tend to be the science-adjacent conspiracy pattern: "[Thing] would be cheap and free and easy and wonderful if only those bastards at Big [Thing] weren't artificially manipulating the prices to advantage Other Big Things at the expense of normal people like us."

[Cthulhu]

i found a new conspiracy theory i haven't seen before, on the moon landing:  incorrect stereo parallax effects on distant objects

this one's great because the dude just wiggles a gif and says some random numbers and hopes you just take the entire thing on his word

Unlikely to happen.  A recent analysis showed that it was financially feasible, and potentially even PROFITABLE, to extract atmospheric CO2 in bulk for processing or sequestration.

stop  looking  for  political  solutions  to  engineering  problems

the actual solution to global warming is to blow all our human capital on AI and machine learning research.  the biosphere won't matter when we're all dead and machines have replaced us

[Trekkin]

i found a new conspiracy theory i haven't seen before, on the moon landing:  incorrect stereo parallax effects on distant objects

this one's great because the dude just wiggles a gif and says some random numbers and hopes you just take the entire thing on his word
ch.

I especially like how they described their analysis of the images (being generous here) as "more than a million equations." See, they have more math than us, so they must be right.

As a side note, I copied and pasted "USA Landed On The Moon=Yep" more than two million times. I trust this settles the issue.

[wierd]

i found a new conspiracy theory i haven't seen before, on the moon landing:  incorrect stereo parallax effects on distant objects

this one's great because the dude just wiggles a gif and says some random numbers and hopes you just take the entire thing on his word

Unlikely to happen.  A recent analysis showed that it was financially feasible, and potentially even PROFITABLE, to extract atmospheric CO2 in bulk for processing or sequestration.

stop  looking  for  political  solutions  to  engineering  problems

the actual solution to global warming is to blow all our human capital on AI and machine learning research.  the biosphere won't matter when we're all dead and machines have replaced us

Machine learning algorithms that are tailored to maximizing bitcoin blockchain computations are very unlikely to produce dynamic machine intelligences, which would be what is required to maintain the artificial hardware that the intelligences would need to continue in the absence of humans.

Though I suppose "The machines will destroy us all!!" IS technically a CT.

[dragdeler]

-snip-

[wierd]

in low gravity (such as on the ISS), water droplets form sphereoids due to surface tension.  However, in a gravity well, they tend to assume a wide variety of shapes.  Most of them area topologically identical to sphere though. (Damn those mathematicians!! Gotta explain how a sheet of paper is the same as a sphere!)

[Kagus]

I just wanna come in and say Hairy Ball Theorem.

[Max™]

I just wanna come in and say Hairy Ball Theorem.

Kagus can something something comb the hair something something my balls flat.

Also: why does large scale CO2 removal terrify me? I'm not an elf, I kick tree ass and mutilate the corpses all the time, but I suppose I'm partial to breathing?

[Bumber]

You don't breath CO2, silly. (Unless you're actually part garden herb!?)

I wouldn't worry about it. As CO2 concentration decreases, so does the effectiveness of removing it. Plus, you can always just release it back into the air.

[Egan_BW]

2103: "We've finally succeeded in removing all elements but oxygen from the earth's atmosphere. I sure hope nobody ever lights a match."

[bloop_bleep]

You don't breath CO2, silly. (Unless you're actually part garden herb!?)

I wouldn't worry about it. As CO2 concentration decreases, so does the effectiveness of removing it. Plus, you can always just release it back into the air.

I think Max is saying he is worried that the widespread removal of CO2 would start to kill trees, thus stopping the creation of new oxygen from said CO2.

Which is probably not much to worry about, since the amount of CO2 required to be removed in order to do that is much larger than the amount we need to remove to stop massive climate change, so doing something like that is completely unnecessary.