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Showing content with the highest reputation on 07/02/23 in all areas

  1. For technological progress I expect S-curves, not exponential ones - they just look similar... for a while. Even aside from the physical impossibility of endless exponential growth there are limits - like limits of physical properties of materials, like limits to return on investment. Aircraft can exceed the sound barrier - it is not an absolute limit - but it costs too much to become widely used. We may get working fusion power plants but if the engineering requirements are too exacting they may be too costly. We can launch people and materiel into space but as long as it costs too much and delivers too little there won't be space colonies. I suspect we are already overshooting the environmental limits of our world and unless clean energy tech advances a lot more (and quickly) the economic impacts of climate change will impose limits on how much nations can afford for far reaching R&D. Those impacts are going to get a lot more serious over the next few decades given total emissions are still rising and opposition (out of ignorance and apathy and out of being misinformed) to taking sufficient aggressive action remains strong. Living within our means means setting aside some aspirations whilst some are just made a lot harder.
    2 points
  2. Apologies for today's downtime. This was due to a power outage at our hosts. All should now be up again and good to go, but let us know of any issues you encounter.
    1 point
  3. Exponential growth in the non-mathematical physical world (i.e., with limited resources) is just temporary..
    1 point
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