Last time, I imagined what a world with endless energy might be like in light of the new fusion breakthrough. This is one way an author can world-build a totally new civilization: you take one variable like the energy supply, change it, and see how it might affect everything from the morning coffee to marriage customs to the global economy. But lest you think our problems would be solved with enough energy (without the downsides of torching the world), I don't think it's going to be that simple... WE'VE HAD ENOUGH FOR OVER A CENTURY According to some sources, we've had enough energy to feed, house, clothe, and care for every human on earth since about 1870. Yes, it came with the downside of torching the world, and no, we haven't actually done that with our munificent bounty, but not enough energy is not our problem and hasn't been for a while. The problem and opportunity, and challenge, are what we build with that energy. The true constraint is taking that raw energy … [Read more...] about We’ve Had Enough Energy Since 1870. What Have We Done With it?
World Building
How to World Build a New Future with Endless Energy
A scientist made a tiny sun on earth a few days ago, and it took less energy than it produced. It's been all over the news with good reason. It's huge. Endless energy for everyone! Well, maybe. Someday. It's important to note that sustaining a tiny sun on earth may never be possible; though we said that about the energy! At the very least, this solution is decades and decades away. If it ever happens, what does it mean? Let's do a little world-building, shall we? One of the most fun and important steps of writing speculative fiction is, well, speculating. Change a variable in your made-up world and play out all of the implications on money, religion, gender, power all of it. Variable: We now get energy from fusion, not from ancient dead plants. What does a world like that look like? POWER INDUSTRY I feel like this would be the least changed, ironically, since it doesn't fundamentally change electricity. We already have the grid. We even have real estate for … [Read more...] about How to World Build a New Future with Endless Energy
The Future is Now… In Fiction
There is a big misconception that science fiction is about the future. SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY ARE ALWAYS ABOUT NOW Whether authors intend it or not, speculative fiction is always a commentary on the present. Ironically, often more than a lot of contemporary fiction. One of my favorite short stories by Asimov, and I wish I could find it again, had miners working in space with essentially, nanotechnology. But the conflict of the story was about women working in the mines, which was eventually solved with a priest. Women in the mines turned out to be fine, so long as there was somebody there to marry everybody! This is what I'm talking about. Successfully predicted nanotechnology, but thousands of years from now, everyone will act like it's the 1950s... Frank Herbert was particularly topical, whether he intended to be or not. He anchored Dune in politics, government, religion, power and those evolved to match the world from the 50s to the 80s. So I did a little … [Read more...] about The Future is Now… In Fiction
How to Learn to Love the Wicked World
DON'T SOLVE PROBLEMS; GET NEW AND BETTER IDEAS I talk a lot in this newsletter about how to dismantle your assumptions and beliefs and question the water that you swim in. But equally important, if not more important, is the ability to get new and better ideas once you've done that. One of humanity's main tools for seeing things differently is the scientific method. Don't click away! I know, boring, Middle School level science, but we have a massive problem. We were never really taught the first step! WHAT WE DID LEARN IN SCHOOL? How many tests and experiments did you run in school? How many times did you have to come up with the question, not just the answer? I remember an upper division writing class in college. I got a C on my first paper. Somewhat gobsmacked, I went to the Professor who informed me that I had come to a different conclusion, not the one he gave me. I said, "Let me get this straight, you gave me the hypothesis, the evidence, and the conclusion … [Read more...] about How to Learn to Love the Wicked World
The Greatest Social Experiment in History
WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH A BOX OF THUMBTACKS, A MATCH, AND A CANDLE?This isn't the start of a joke, but one of the best experiments ever devised.The Candle Problem shows how we can inadvertently ignore blatantly obvious solutions because we ignore function, made famous by Daniel Pink in his book Drive, from the research in the 40s of Gestalt Psychologist Karl Duncker.Participants are handed a collection of items and asked to affix a candle to a wall without it dripping on the table.Half are given a box of thumbtacks, matches, and a candle. Half are given a box, thumbtacks, matches, and a candle.Do you spot the difference? That one little difference drastically changed the likelihood of solving the problem.People who were given the thumbtacks separately from the box almost always solved the problem. Take a thumbtack and affix the box to the wall and put the candle in the box. It's on the wall and will not drip on the table.The people who were given the tacks in the box solved it far less … [Read more...] about The Greatest Social Experiment in History
Lesson from Star Wars: How to Fail Spectacularly
MY FIRST BRUSH WITH SKYWALKERS I was 7 years old and wandered into the living room to see what my parents were watching... And froze. The scene playing out onscreen was unlike anything I had ever seen in my short life. It was Jabba's palace in Return of the Jedi, and the only thought in my head was that they had discovered Sesame Street for grown-ups. (Which, given Yoda's antecedents, was truer than I realized.) I was transfixed. It was dynamic, tense, and shocking for a girl whose main media diet was Disney and PBS. I was hooked. ONCE A FAN GIRL I watched all of the films, over and over again, which at that point numbered three. (And have never gotten over the fact that I watched them out of order and never got the shock of Luke's Father.) I ditched school for the first and only time with friends from marching band to see the first prequel when it came out in theaters. I avoided the … [Read more...] about Lesson from Star Wars: How to Fail Spectacularly
Placebo Effect is Responsible for World Domination??
Photo: Anders Sandberg Do you remember learning about the placebo effect? I remember a few references to it in high school biology, and a few jokes about it in various TV shows, but it just seems to be one of those concepts you learn by osmosis and never question. But it is insane! IT'S GETTING STRONGER We have powerful drugs to change our brain chemistry, how our guts work, and how our immune systems heal, and we must very carefully design studies to account for the fact that none of them measure up to the power of eating a sugar pill that you’re told might make you better. And even then, sometimes the effect that you think is the drug turns out to also be placebo. Sedatives are less effective if the pill is red or yellow and more effective if they’re green or blue. Was it the drug or the color? Not only that, but the placebo effect is getting stronger. The more time goes on, the harder it is to get an efficacious drug passed because every … [Read more...] about Placebo Effect is Responsible for World Domination??
Life is just dirt and sunshine
Photo: fotomanu_93 Here are some tricks to help see the existing world in new ways and hopefully shine a different light on the water we’re swimming in and come up with new solutions in the existing world. Or just make you giggle. Fundamental #1: Life is dirt and sunshine, full of ocean. Every bit of energy, movement, heat, light, thought, and life in the world comes from our sun (with very few nuclear exceptions). It shines down on the world; the plants take dirt and marry it with that sunshine and fill it up with water; we eat the plants and break down those bonds to make ourselves. Complex life is just dirt and sunshine full of ocean. And it’s not just that we do this once; we run out of ocean every few minutes and sunshine and dirt every few hours. We are constantly remaking ourselves and trying to maintain our own complexity. And we will eventually, inevitably fail, decaying back into just the dirt without any ocean or sunshine, and we know it. It … [Read more...] about Life is just dirt and sunshine