I can see how oodles more energy would mean more housing, construction, spaceflight, and so on, leading to higher GDP and higher quality of life. I don’t see how it would lead to revolutions in biotech and nanotech – surely the reason we haven’t cured aging or developed atomically precise manufacturing aren’t the energy requirements to do those things.
Given my reading of his arguments in the book, it does seem that at least nanotech and nano-scale manufacturing at a societal scale would require much more energy than we have been willing to provide it, so in effect, maybe using a lot more energy in the short term is a prerequisite? Of course, there are also all the regulatory issues and the Machiavellian “power struggles” in academia that Hall claims as reasons for why we don’t have advanced nanotech already. Biotech might be different though since a lot of innovation there is mediated by computing and software.
“at least nanotech and nano-scale manufacturing at a societal scale would require much more energy than we have been willing to provide it”
Maybe, but: 1) If we could build APM on a small scale now we would
2) We can’t
3) This has nothing to do with energy limits
(My sense is also that advanced APM would be incredibly energy efficient and also would give us very cheap energy – Drexler provides arguments for why in Radical Abundance.)
I don’t think regulatory issues have hurt APM either (agree they have in biotech, though). Academic power struggles have hurt nanotech (and also biotech), though this seems to be the case in every academic field and not particularly related to creeping institutional sclerosis (over the past several hundred years, new scientific ideas have often had trouble breaking in through established paradigms, and we seem less bad on this front than we used to be). Regardless, neither of these issues would be solved with more energy, and academic power struggles would still exist even in the libertarian state Hall wants.
I can see how oodles more energy would mean more housing, construction, spaceflight, and so on, leading to higher GDP and higher quality of life. I don’t see how it would lead to revolutions in biotech and nanotech – surely the reason we haven’t cured aging or developed atomically precise manufacturing aren’t the energy requirements to do those things.
Given my reading of his arguments in the book, it does seem that at least nanotech and nano-scale manufacturing at a societal scale would require much more energy than we have been willing to provide it, so in effect, maybe using a lot more energy in the short term is a prerequisite? Of course, there are also all the regulatory issues and the Machiavellian “power struggles” in academia that Hall claims as reasons for why we don’t have advanced nanotech already.
Biotech might be different though since a lot of innovation there is mediated by computing and software.
“at least nanotech and nano-scale manufacturing at a societal scale would require much more energy than we have been willing to provide it”
Maybe, but:
1) If we could build APM on a small scale now we would
2) We can’t
3) This has nothing to do with energy limits
(My sense is also that advanced APM would be incredibly energy efficient and also would give us very cheap energy – Drexler provides arguments for why in Radical Abundance.)
I don’t think regulatory issues have hurt APM either (agree they have in biotech, though). Academic power struggles have hurt nanotech (and also biotech), though this seems to be the case in every academic field and not particularly related to creeping institutional sclerosis (over the past several hundred years, new scientific ideas have often had trouble breaking in through established paradigms, and we seem less bad on this front than we used to be). Regardless, neither of these issues would be solved with more energy, and academic power struggles would still exist even in the libertarian state Hall wants.