Reply To: turn heat into electricity

[zapkitty]

wolfram wrote: the human body operates at 100 watts, in the pretty heavily industrialized countries there’s about a 1000 watts per person, an order of magnitude more. a megawatt is another 3 orders of magnitude, it’s like the average person has 10000 people’s worth of mechanical slaves

… but the human brain/body combination is actually pretty efficient at using that energy to accomplish a very wide range of tasks… but as for our gadgets at this time? Not so much. They tend to be either very efficient at a very limited set of tasks or not so efficient at a wider range of tasks. Thus more gadgets and/or more power per gadget are needed to accomplish a given set of tasks.

So while a megawatt per capita would be a giant leap forward in comparison to current available reserves it seems that at this time it would be nowhere near the equivalent of 10,000 people supporting one person. But that will change over time with advances in technology.

… BTW…. doesn’t “slave” in that usage imply sapience? Probably not a good idea to tick off the AIs…

wolfram wrote: I wonder if anyone has done that analysis, position in a hierarchy or something based on available wattage.

I’m sure Cordwainer Smith would have had no problem at all adding the concept to the list.

wolfram wrote: Anyway, non sequitur.

No sequin left unturned.

wolfram wrote: You seem pretty confident that deviating/abandoning from every bodies favorite economic models will be a walk in the park.

The timing would indicate no need for that.

The current state of play is that the <1% spend good money just to perpetuate the myth that anyone can rise to the elites with luck and pluck... while simultaneously utilizing utterly corrupt governments to maintain their position at the top.

They then spend about an equal amount perpetuating the myth that any attempt to rein them in and hold them accountable to the society that created and supports them is actually an attempt by “moochers” and “leechers” to “seize their hard-earned wealth…”

All that aneutronic fusion would do would be to enable the first myth to come closer to reality than they’ll like while removing any grounds at all tor the second myth.

Given the elite modus operandi I’m sure they will try to justify seizing control of the practically limitless power that aneutronic fusion represents… if for no other reason than just to see if they can… but they’ll be trying to do that at the [em]exact same time[/em] that the global population is realizing that the elites casually condemned billions of them to an early death just to maintain their (literal) grip om power.

They live in a love-hate relationship with the idea of mass revolt but they need not be torn down… unless their fear and lust for validation through force causes them to insist on it.