[ExI] future of warfare again, was: RE: Forking

[Stefano Vaj]

On 5 January 2012 06:06, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:

> Tokamak fusion as a terrestrial source of economic energy is a dead end.
> Will never happen.
>

This would really break my heart. Would you elaborate? What about inertial
confinement, and other alternatives?

What is happening in terrestrial solar volume growth is definitely very
> impressive however. Thin-film PV will kill dirty coal stone dead in
> less than half of a century.
>

Mmhhh. Low-temperature, discontinuous, obvious limitations as to square
meters available, low theoretical maximum efficiency. Why would this not be
a dead end?

Energy is just one thing. Food is another, and we've had peak of
> (some) minerals/elements. None of the old industrialized places are
> driving innovation hard enough to be avoided to be creamed by that.
>

That given enough energy and information you can do anything, and that
energy and information are the only resources that ultimately matter, may
be an oversimplification, but an oversimplification that I suspect with
time and progress to become more and more accurate...


> I don't really understand why U.S. is intending to bleed itself dry
> for campaigns that *on the surface* do not make any sense. There
> must be some hidden motivations.
>

Or they may be the actually be the irrational final product of "rational"
decisions of multiple players, as Anders suggests. Or the decisions
involved may simply be wrong, myopic and superficial, in spite of a
pretence of imperial clairvoyance, it would not be a first time in history.

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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