26 AUG 2024 by ideonexus
The Rate of Change in United States
Imagine you are a typical inhabitant of the United States in 1870.11 You live on a rural farm; you produce most of your food and clothing yourself. Your only sources of light are candles, whale oil, and gas lamps if you’re lucky. If you’re a man, you face gruelling physical labour, sometimes from the age of twelve onwards. If you’re a woman, you face unrelenting toil as a housewife: one calculation found that in 1886 “a typical North Carolina housewife had to carry water 8 to 10 times...26 AUG 2024 by ideonexus
Quantifying the Rate of Change
We live in an era that involves an extraordinary amount of change. To see this, consider the rate of global economic growth, which in recent decades averaged around 3 percent per year.51 This is historically unprecedented. For the first 290,000 years of humanity’s existence, global growth was close to 0 percent per year; in the agricultural era that increased to around 0.1 percent, and it accelerated from there after the Industrial Revolution. It’s only in the last hundred years that the ...18 NOV 2021 by ideonexus
All Efficient Strategies Have Their Limits
At the end of the day, all of the efficient approaches and winning strategies have their limits. For example, say there's this great move in some fighting game that only a certain character can use. Everyone knows that using it makes you stronger, so everyone starts using it. Pretty soon, everyone's playing the same way. The move is so influential that everyone depends on it. I would never use that move in such a situation. It wouldn't be easy, of course, but it is never impossible to win wi...Folksonomies: competition strategy
Folksonomies: competition strategy
28 FEB 2021 by ideonexus
Gravity is Energy
The laws of thermodynamics decree that each quantity of en^rgy has a characteristic quaUty called entropy associated with it. The entropy measures the degree of disorder associated with the energy. Energy must always flow in such a direction that the entropy increases. Thus, we can arrange the different forms of energy in an "order of merit," the highest form being the one with the least disorder or entropy. Energy of a higher form can be degraded into a lower form, but a lower form can never...10 MAR 2019 by ideonexus
Estimating Technical Progress
Overestimating the potential upside of every new sign of tech progress is as common as downplaying the downsides. It's easy to let our imaginations run wild with how any new development is going to change everything practically overnight. The unforeseen technical roadblocks that inevitably spring up are only one reason for this consistent miscalculation. Human nature is simply out of sync with the nature of technological development. We see progress as linear, a straight line of improvement. ...Folksonomies: futurism technical progress
Folksonomies: futurism technical progress
02 MAR 2019 by ideonexus
Space is Negative Energy
The great mystery at the heart of the Big Bang is to explain how an entire, fantastically enormous universe of space and energy can materiahse out of nothing. The secret lies in one of the strangest facts about our cosmos. The laws of physics demand the existence of something called "negative energy." To help you get your head around this weird'd but crucial concept, let me draw on a simple analogy Imagine a man wants to build a hill on a flat piece of land. The hill will represent the univ...02 MAR 2019 by ideonexus
Entropy in our Everyday Lives: Active Stability
Because things naturally move to disorder over time, we can position ourselves to create stability. There are two types of stability: active and passive. Consider a ship, which, if designed well, should be able to sail through a storm without intervention. This is passive stability. A fighter jet, in contrast, requires active stability. The plane can’t fly for more than a few seconds without having to adjust its wings. This adjustment happens so fast that it’s controlled by software. Ther...04 NOV 2018 by ideonexus
Complexity in Systems
On the far left are fixed systems that remain unchanging.hand, a screen that is full of random static would be completely The relationships between their elements are always the chaotic, with the color of a dot at one moment having nothing same. The black, unchanging TV screen is a good image for this kind of system. To the right of fixed systems in the chart are periodic ones. Periodic systems are simple systems that repeat the same patterns endlessly. The simple two-building version of the...31 OCT 2018 by ideonexus
Mercurial Identities When Growing Up Online
From October 2015 to the present day, I have lived approximately 168 different lives on the internet. I was Eve the Nobody before I was Eve the Sex Writer before I was Eve the Comedian before I was Eve the Depressed Girl before I was Eve the Drunk before I was Eve the Feminist before I was Eve the Tech Blogger before I was Eve the Democratic Socialist before I was Eve the Hater before I was Eve the Teetotaler before I was Eve the Professional Politics Writer before I was Eve the Sword Girl be...27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus