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[MrRoboto75]

Battletech promised me General Motors would have fusion engines like 3 years ago wtf

[dragdeler]

Well had I said gothic cathedrals you would have made the case around the cottage industry, and the arts and such, the point is the pyramids kinda were viable since they exist, but also not viable in the sense that they probably weren't created without unethical labor practices or at least grotesquely comical levels of self sacrifice given the payoff. They were built first and foremost to last, and that they did. We build to sell and that we do.


Might we have bottlenecked if we tried? Possibly, but did we actually try? I remain unconvinced. Common building advice post war was insulation is a waste of money, fuel is cheap. It sounds so surreal you want to nitpick at it, did they not intend to spend a generation or two worth of time in the house, at those lengthts it should amortise right?!?! The available materials might have been less desirable, then again, what chance would such an industry have had to really scale up and go through a bunch of research cycles in such a climate. It is my impression that it took scarcity to knock on the door and say a quick "hi!" for us to make a bunch of efforts in the direction.


Idk man, if I try to picture a dream house, a dream "car", a dream street, they are all very much unalike what we use. It boggles my mind that we aren't balancing stuff like should I hide from the wind or catch it and make a funnel through my house with a windturbine, and also get some air in summer when the roof is cooking. Maybe I'm just an idiot, as I started my other message with I hope I've gotten better in trusting people who should know better. I do realize that there is way too much noise, oftentimes people only complain when they are unconvenienced, and then what comes out is basically just some dumb nagging. Everyday I could seek out a bunch of people telling me which rules are pertinent and which not, bunch of stuff I know to be boogus, other stuff where if I don't in detail why our outlet channels impose these conditions, it's definitly not up to them to make up their own mind. Worst is when they quote some shit shmocumentary from 20 years ago.

Ugh guilty as charged I suppose.

[Maximum Spin]

It boggles my mind that we aren't balancing stuff like should I hide from the wind or catch it and make a funnel through my house with a windturbine, and also get some air in summer when the roof is cooking.

The "dogtrot" house design has historically been popular in certain climates, but it just fundamentally wouldn't be efficient to try to put a wind turbine in the middle. The math doesn't work out. Even if it did, having a turbine there would slow down the airflow - that's what turbines do, extract energy from the wind, slowing it down in the process - so it would defeat the purpose of the breezeway, because the air would just stagnate and heat up.

Incidentally, I think the main reason dogtrot homes aren't common anymore is because it wastes a lot of dead space, and space is at a premium more than anything else because they aren't making any more of it.

[dragdeler]

Hey these are cool. Yes it's challenging the two don't mix best but a hybrid of two strategies mustn't excel at both so long as it works enough to justify the effort. I fully admit I could never start even start to make such an estimation for a given case.

I'm sorry for the can of worms I'm going to open but it's like a splinter in my mind: say it is absolutely true that we could not build to last, it's just a bad idea for a myriad of reasons... Okay fine but then that categorically refutes the possibility of safe end storage for nuclear waste too then. I must insist.

[Grim Portent]

Well had I said gothic cathedrals you would have made the case around the cottage industry, and the arts and such, the point is the pyramids kinda were viable since they exist, but also not viable in the sense that they probably weren't created without unethical labor practices or at least grotesquely comical levels of self sacrifice given the payoff. They were built first and foremost to last, and that they did. We build to sell and that we do.

IIRC there are surviving records from the guys in charge of the labour teams used in making a few of the later pyramids. Fairly ethical for the time. Well paid masons and architects, paid menial labourers. Probably something of a casualty rate from workplace accidents, cranes failing and so on, but the workers weren't actively mistreated or intentionally exploited as far as we can tell.

The pyramids were essentially mortuary-temples to living god-kings, and Egypt had a lot of seasonal labour with little to do with their time. They could have done something more productive I imagine, improve roads and bridges and so on, but employing thousands of skilled and unskilled labourers during for decades isn't the worst thing that could have been done. It's not all that different from the Catholic Church pouring money into grandiose cathedrals later on. Could the money and effort have been used in better ways? Of course, it's not like medieval Europe wouldn't have benefitted from robust sewers as much if not more than from the Sistine Chapel, but they had different priorities.

[Maximum Spin]

I'm sorry for the can of worms I'm going to open but it's like a splinter in my mind: say it is absolutely true that we could not build to last, it's just a bad idea for a myriad of reasons... Okay fine but then that categorically refutes the possibility of safe end storage for nuclear waste too then. I must insist.

What's "safe"? Nuclear waste isn't really that big a deal, especially since we now have processes to wring more and more energy out of it before it reaches a (for the moment) totally unusable form. Certainly, I would argue, it's impossible to build any structure that will keep future generations from messing around with it for even a significant part of the time in which it would be dangerous to do so, and the current attempts to do so - THIS IS NOT A PLACE OF HONOR - are laughable largely because they're so shallow (to assume that any of the languages used will still be recognizable indefinitely is one thing, but worse, even that the words used will mean the same thing! It's like trying to tell a society of jazz musicians that it's "a bad place to go".)
Ultimately, though, who cares? There are worse, more dangerous places on Earth already, naturally. Bung it in a hole and try to make it modestly inconvenient to visit, but eventually some cave explorer is going to break in and die, and then it will be That Cursed Place Where Everyone Who Goes There Dies, and people will learn to stop messing around with it. Or are we going to put these big multi-language monoliths around that island with the wall-to-wall venomous snake shag carpeting too? Much less all the caves where you can get trapped and boil to death.

ETA: Maybe I should address the main point too.
It's not that we can't build to last. It's that there's no such thing as building to last. Entropy must always increase. We can build to last within certain parameters and expectations, but everything is always tradeoffs, and we know much less about what the future will hold than we can even imagine. The limits to our knowledge and abilities are fundamental and we can't surmount them by just guessing or trying to extrapolate from a more familiar scenario. Most importantly, everything is always tradeoffs. Everything takes constant effort to maintain. There are no perfect solutions, just a series of choices of what to prioritize today.
I'm not saying that the things we have now are the best we could possibly have, but it's certainly true that, usually, if you think you have a great idea but you know you have zero engineering experience to understand how to implement it, there's a reason nobody who does has bothered to try it. And, almost certainly, if Shell really bought a hydrogen engine patent, it would be because they wanted to build one to make even MORE money, then found out it didn't work well enough to be worth it and dumped it in storage instead.

Of course, it's not like medieval Europe wouldn't have benefitted from robust sewers as much if not more than from the Sistine Chapel, but they had different priorities.

Sistine Chapel is solidly Renaissance. >:|

[Egan_BW]

If batteries have such problems why don't we just make cars which store energy gravitationally? Put a water tower up there and have the falling water run a waterwheel attached to your axle. This is a flawless plan.

[King Zultan]

What about steam engines, why don't we just replace all car engines with steam powered ones then we can burn renew able stuff like wood and lawyers.


Also I was told by a reputable source that the pyramids were made by aliens that were super superior to us, because we are to damned dumb to figure out how to do it even though there's proof that we can and did build them.

[Loud Whispers]

I think society can* choose and pursue goals that are not necessarily perfectly aligned with the basic idea of "living" but how society goes about those goals will pretty much always gravitate towards cost effective methods. If that means that you're not actually fulfilling your real goal, then you need to change the goal your working towards to more closely align with whatever it is you want to do.

*Although admittedly in a modern enlightened democracy I think it can be hard since the goal that society goes for is generally more towards "improve peoples quality of life" and less "make a giant semi-phallic monument to the dictator" and quality of life is fairly unending and difficult as  goals goes, maybe if we eventually reach some post scarcity society and everyone in the world is living a comfortable and dignified existence we can go back to megaprojects more.

A more apt version of "building monument to dictator" in a democracy is "building a 60 year lifespan luxury condominium out of non-renewable resources" instead of "build a 2000 year lifespan affordable house out of non-renewable resources"
A lot of times in a democracy private individuals will make choices that are individually cost effective, but pass on far greater costs to future generations

Certainly, I would argue, it's impossible to build any structure that will keep future generations from messing around with it for even a significant part of the time in which it would be dangerous to do so, and the current attempts to do so - THIS IS NOT A PLACE OF HONOR - are laughable largely because they're so shallow (to assume that any of the languages used will still be recognizable indefinitely is one thing, but worse, even that the words used will mean the same thing! It's like trying to tell a society of jazz musicians that it's "a bad place to go".)

If any future generations can show me their dance of death and defeat my infinite maze of the radioactive minotaur they deserve all the delicious glowing magic rocks they can eat

[Lord Shonus]

"build a 2000 year lifespan affordable house out of non-renewable resources"

This is fundamentally impossible. Even if we halve your obviously hyperbolic figure (a structure 2000 years old would be on par with the Flavian Amphitheater in Rome) you find very few structures still in use that are that old. Even fewer such structures have persisted without extensive remodeling, and the handful that aren't disqualified under that criteria have received an enormous amount of maintenance. Most of the other buildings from that same era, built to exactly the same standards and quality, fell down centuries ago.

And the issue doesn't end there. Most of those old buildings are absolutely horrible to actually use, and are probably a net loss (in environmental and economic terms, not cultural/historical/heritage ones) compared to what would have been spent with regular demolition and replacement, because the people who were putting up buildings a thousand years ago had very different priorities and understanding of requirements than we do today. Hell, a lot of buildings a tenth as old (as in, early 20th century) are outright nightmares to climate condition and waste enormous amounts of energy. It is pure folly to think that anything we build now will be of great use to the people of the 31st century.

[Loud Whispers]

This is fundamentally impossible. Even if we halve your obviously hyperbolic figure (a structure 2000 years old would be on par with the Flavian Amphitheater in Rome) you find very few structures still in use that are that old.

I would double it, not halve it

Even fewer such structures have persisted without extensive remodeling, and the handful that aren't disqualified under that criteria have received an enormous amount of maintenance. Most of the other buildings from that same era, built to exactly the same standards and quality, fell down centuries ago.

Maintaining a building is easier when the building is robust and well designed. Persistence without renovation or new curtains is cool as fuck but also completely missing the point. If I have a 300 year old redbrick Georgian house that needs its windows replaced with double glazing I'm gonna be hype as fuck when that house is still in use 300 years later and they're replacing the windows with nuclear fallout blast windows. If I have a 700 year old wooden country house I'm not going to weep that I had to change the floorboards and dig out all the murdered poets buried beneath when that house was fucking well designed as fuck.

"Oh no my house needs maintenance let me stick my iron rebar dick in all this cement so my legacy of rust can burden everyone who comes after me"
We will not leave behind an amphitheatre 1000 2000 years from now because our design principles fucking suck

And the issue doesn't end there. Most of those old buildings are absolutely horrible to actually use, and are probably a net loss (in environmental and economic terms, not cultural/historical/heritage ones) compared to what would have been spent with regular demolition and replacement, because the people who were putting up buildings a thousand years ago had very different priorities and understanding of requirements than we do today. Hell, a lot of buildings a tenth as old (as in, early 20th century) are outright nightmares to climate condition and waste enormous amounts of energy. It is pure folly to think that anything we build now will be of great use to the people of the 31st century.

Building the same building every 50 years costs more environmentally and economically than building it right once. Demolishing beautiful, historical and useful buildings in the name of replacing them with an inferior version that only suits short term developer interests is iconoclastic retardation that just passes on the cost to future generations, whilst wasting resources future generations will kill each other for

Gaze upon my efficient use of enormous amounts of energy and despair

[Lord Shonus]

Maintaining a building is easier when the building is robust and well designed. Persistence without renovation or new curtains is cool as fuck but also completely missing the point. If I have a 300 year old redbrick Georgian house that needs its windows replaced with double glazing I'm gonna be hype as fuck when that house is still in use 300 years later and they're replacing the windows with nuclear fallout blast windows. If I have a 700 year old wooden country house I'm not going to weep that I had to change the floorboards and dig out all the murdered poets buried beneath when that house was fucking well designed as fuck.

Remodeling doesn't mean "oh no! new windows!" or "gotta change the floorboards!". The vast majority of old buildings that are still in use are essentially Buildings Of Theseus - they've been repeatedly gutted and rebuilt over the centuries. Those that aren't have had literal millions of man-hours spent patching and mending.

If you raised the guy who built your "redbrick Georgian" "700 year old wooden country house" from the dead and showed him around, he wouldn't recognize the place.

You're also falling heavily into Survivorship Bias. You only see the handful of buildings that are still here, not the hundreds of thousands that aren't.


And that sand shortage? Can be solved easily by just regrinding concrete. Only reason that's not being done now is that it is slightly cheaper to dredge the sand up. Even the guy who wrote the paper all the reporting is based on says that we're not literally going to run out, just face higher construction prices.

[McTraveller]

The sad fact of the matter is that cost really does matter, and it often is indeed "too expensive" to update things to be more efficient, especially on an individual basis.

Often times the cost to an individual is higher than the perceived (and sometimes actual!) benefit to the individual.  If the costs are higher than the benefit - people just aren't going to choose those things.

[Loud Whispers]

Remodeling doesn't mean "oh no! new windows!" or "gotta change the floorboards!". The vast majority of old buildings that are still in use are essentially Buildings Of Theseus - they've been repeatedly gutted and rebuilt over the centuries. Those that aren't have had literal millions of man-hours spent patching and mending.

My POV is the UK, where one in six buildings are <1900s and a Georgian house offers a price premium because of the quality. They haven't been "rebuilt." That's what destroying and rebuilding a building is, which is what you favour in the name of not wasting. But if you don't destroy it, it doesn't need to be rebuilt. Which is not wasteful.

If you raised the guy who built your "redbrick Georgian" "700 year old wooden country house" from the dead and showed him around, he wouldn't recognize the place.

And he doesn't need to. Because changing the decoration, windows and wiring on a house is a lot easier than knocking its walls down and rebuilding it -_-

You're also falling heavily into Survivorship Bias. You only see the handful of buildings that are still here, not the hundreds of thousands that aren't.

No I'm not. I am saying good buildings are good. Bad buildings are bad. Ones that do not last the test of time suck. How is that an argument in favour of intentionally building more buildings that suck. If you intentionally design a building to not last, you are wilfully being a prick to future generations. Look at all the beautiful, livable and robust old houses that sit at the top of the UK or French property market. Tell me we can't make more with all of our modern technology and understanding, tell me we can't anticipate what future generations will want to live in or need, and you'll be lying. Victorian sewer engineers showed more forethought into what Londoners would need 200 years later than Thames Water does for Londoners today. This isn't a dick waving contest between old thing good new thing bad. This is a call to ambition to MAKE NEW THING GOOD. Making a building you know will have to be demolished within 3 generations is like making games as a service vs make a game. You can tout as many QOL advantages and tout how dynamic your practises are, at the end of the service life you are intentionally burning your own legacy up in the name of short-term profits. Demolish a shit old building and make a new building that will serve its purpose for hundreds of years. "Oh but it will cost the developer more a bloo bloo" then design a public house to last with taxes. Barbican estate is 60 years old, council-built and a single one of its flats sell for £1,000,000 - £3,000,000. It will continue to serve well for a hundred years because they did not design the buildings wrong as a joke

And that sand shortage? Can be solved easily by just regrinding concrete. Only reason that's not being done now is that it is slightly cheaper to dredge the sand up. Even the guy who wrote the paper all the reporting is based on says that we're not literally going to run out, just face higher construction prices.

Making a building correct once is always cheaper than making it wrong, destroying it, rebuilding it wrong on purpose, destroying it, rebuilding it wrong on purpose ad infinitum. The sand shortage is a problem that does not need to exist. The crisis can easily be solved by not wasting concrete. If we can get nuclear fusion then we can waste as much energy as we want grinding up concrete for buildings they designed wrong as jokes, in the mean time the cost of regrinding concrete into sand fine enough to be turned into concrete to waste on more useless shit is astronomical and just offloading the environmental cost onto carbon emissions and energy demands

Or

You could make a house right once

[dragdeler]

Ugh can we not pretend everybody is rational AF, many people would rather have something new than something old of higher quality.

edit: this would definitly have fitted better above LW, now one could think that I'm rebuking you when I fully agree