There's a spectrum of writing, corresponding to supply/demand or push/pull. The article is giving advice for oversupplied writing, where the audience doesn't really want to hear you, and you're trying to badger it into reading it anyway - typically, for some sort of personal gain (getting an interview, making a sale, promoting a political cause). Yes, attention hacking is important in this case.
There is also a writing where people are looking for the information, and they are showing up at your door because they already care. Presumably you wrote, because you saw the open question, and want to try answering it. History books, encyclopedias, classic literature by dead people, falls under this. Ironically, so does the example of Venice - you would read about Venice if you were already curious; there is little profit in "making someone care" about Venice otherwise. An attention grabby style would be forced and counterproductive in this.
This was a very confusing article, full of filler. I couldn't stand to read the "detective story" style.
Sounds like the technique is for high-dimensional ellipsoids. It relies on putting them on a grid, shrinking, then expanding according to some rules. Evidently this can produce efficient packing arrangements.
I don't think there's any shocking result ("record") for literal sphere packing. I actually encountered this in research when dynamically constructing a codebook for an error-correcting code. The problem reduces to sphere packing in N-dim space. With less efficient, naive approaches, I was able to get results that were good enough and it didn't seem to matter for what I was doing. But it's cool that someone is working on it.
A better title would have been something like: "Shrink-and-grow technique for efficiently packing n-dimensional spheres"
>You can give a quick explanation in terms they understand, which makes your job sound easy and makes them wonder how anybody gets paid to do it.
What is the problem with this?
Most jobs, when simplified, sound like "anybody can do it". I think it's generally understood among adults who have been in the workforce that, no, in fact anybody cannot do it.
There is no problem with it, but I assume there are many people who will look upon you favourably if they think you do a highly skilled job. While many of us may not care to impress those people, there are certainly those who do (possibly people with similar attitudes who care more about validation from people who think like them)
But we should also acknowledge that there's an entire culture built around valuing people and their time relative to one's perception of their "importance", that this culture can influence one's earning potential and acquisition of material possessions, and that many people do care about things like "seeming important" or moving upwards in this hierarchy as a result.
I think which direction you choose is about knowing your audience. As you mentioned, different people value different things and humans often want to present a different view of ourselves to different people at different times.
If we assume 100 colonists on the ship, with 10 tons of mass per person, accelerating to 0.2c over 2 ly and then back down, the energy required is quite substantial. Multiple centuries of the total output of the whole planet.
With Alpha Centauri being only 4 light years away, interstellar travel seems almost feasible. But then you consider all the inconvenient details, and realize such a journey would have to take hundreds, maybe thousands or even more years on top of some incredible advances in rocket tech.
If you go to something like Trappist (40 ly) at 0.01c (very optimistic), it's not just that everyone you know will be dead when you arrive. Your entire nation will have disappeared to the sands of time. The landfall announcement you send back will be incomprehensible because of language shifts, and you won't live to see the reply. Meanwhile, such a trip would be an enormous investment, requiring multiple nations to bankrupt themselves, with no hope of even surviving to see the outcome.
With that, it's very hard to imagine interstellar travel being feasible with our current understanding. There would have to be something like FTL travel or wormhole. The only "realistic" development, (much) better engines that can do 0.1c, would not actually change much.
I recently read this in an interview with Juergen Schmidhuber:
> Of course, such life-like hardware won't be confined to our little biosphere. No, variants of it will soon exist on other planets, or between planets, e.g. in the asteroid belt. As I have said many times in recent decades, space is hostile to humans but friendly to suitably designed robots, and it offers many more resources than our thin layer of biosphere, which receives less than a billionth of the energy of the Sun. Through life-like, self-replicating, self-maintaining hardware, the economy of our solar system will become billions of times larger than the current tiny economy of our biosphere. And of course, the coming expansion of the AI sphere won’t be limited to our tiny solar system.
Or humans with their consciousness uploaded to a silicon or other substrate.
Of course, this is in the realm of science fiction but so is interstellar travel.
Greg Egan's Diaspora has a fantastic treatment of interstellar travel - it involves sending copies of your consciousness to different spaceships traveling to different destinations. On arrival, a preset program will verify if the planel/galaxy is worth waking up to. If not, the clone is terminated.
If more than 1 clone wakes up in a hospitable environment, then you have a problem of two copies of yourself separated by light years.
In Diaspora that wasn’t considered to be a problem. Merging two individuals was almost automatic once you’d both decided to do it, and everyone participating in the Diaspora had decided ahead of time whether they wanted to sync back up at the end of it and merge. Also, it was fun that different individuals chose different conditions for waking up, and some stayed awake for the whole trip, or even all of them. Good book.
A similar idea appears in a more recent short story, How It Unfolds (2023) by James S.A. Corey. The premise is using a technology called “slow light,” which can clone people and objects using “enriched light.” The National Space Agency scans a group of 200 people (not only their physical forms, but also their consciousness, memories, and feelings) and transmits several thousand copies of this data package across the galaxy. The hope is that, on arrival, each package can "unfold" into a fully reconstructed version of the original team and habitat on some distant alien world.
I used to often hear people joke that because of Moore's law, there was no point running any computation which would take longer than 4 years, as you'd instead be better to wait 2 years for computers to double in power, then run your problem then.
Interstellar travel probably has a similar problem, even if you have an engine that can do 0.1c, you have to be sure in 5 years you won't have one that can do 0.2c, or that ship would beat you.
Propulsion technology advances much more slowly than Moore's Law. The rate of progress in terms of ISP or maximum velocity has been approximately zero since 1969. The only way we'll ever be able to afford sending a probe to another star is with some new breakthrough technology, and disruptive technologies don't appear on any predictable schedule.
In addition to nradov's point: double your speed, quadruple the blast energy of collisions along the way. Interstellar space (in galaxies) is not as empty as we could wish.
And the relativistic mass equation imposes a very lower upper bound. Light is slow.
Worse, you have no idea what you will find on the other side and weather that includes somewhere that doesn't make the arctic poles on earth look like paradise. And you'll be traveling in a small confined space. For ages. The good news is, you'll probably be unconscious for the journey. The bad news is that a lot can happen in decades/centuries/milennia and there's no guarantee you'll actually wake up. And everything else you said.
That raises the question who would want to travel and why. And what's wrong with them. Because the profile for people that want this would be hard to distinguish from somebody that is depressed and suicidal.
Given those time frames, maybe don't send primates. Send a computer babysitting a diverse zoo of bacteria and algae, with a variety of landing devices and instructions in what order to deploy them under which circumstances.
Same problem: the best-case outcome is that we never hear anything interesting from that rocket ever again. But it should be a lot cheaper.
Those age too. Especially out there without the earth's shields. If you make one that lives longer than a human it's already quite the feat, add only a bit more radiation, it only gets worse. Computers are much worse with failures than brains too.
The nice thing about biological systems is the self-assembly from tiny molecule parts. Worst case, you can create a closed system with birth/death renewal. For tech the machines that build the machines, and the machines that build or repair those in turn, will all have to be brought along too, or you need to have some impossibly tough requirements for the product to last.
We may need some similar automatic self-assembly for tech for such use cases. The whole spaceship and all its components will deteriorate too.
Even when we sent out ships to venture around the world they had to be able to do replacements for broken parts, like masts. We probably need that capability for space ships too, to stop at some asteroid and rebuild. But then you get the equivalent of the rocket equation: On the one hand, you need a lot of stuff to support that manufacturing, on the other hand, every item you add itself needs maintenance and rebuilding at some point. The way out is this molecular-level self-assembly. You throw a few tiny nano-machinery dust spores on an asteroid, and ten years later you grew some useful machinery...
The notion of a general-purpose molecular assembler or nanofactory appears to be a pure fantasy. We don't even have a theoretical approach to making that happen.
That’s not entirely true. Drexler’s books contain quite a few solutions to nanoscale engineering problems, though not for all of the problems. He designed and characterized a nanoscale mechanical system for separating CO₂ from the air, stripping the oxygen from it, then using the carbon atoms to build tiny blocks of diamond, then using the tiny diamond blocks to build macroscale objects under computer guidance.
Yes it is, but what does that have to do with my comment? It does not change anything I wrote regardless of if it was already real, is feasible but not now, will never be possible.
Yes, we have a long ways to go before we can be considered a starfaring species, one that can make and keep long–term agreements when they involve round–trip times in the tens of thousands of years. Still, it can be useful to altruistically start colonies before then.
There’s a book called Count to a Trillion which explores these ideas, and others. At the end of it the main character’s wife sets out on a mission to M33 and isn’t expected to return for at least 70,000 years. He gets stuck on Earth, unable to catch up with her, and promises to be here when she returns. The sequel is all about what he has to go through to keep Earth a going concern while she’s away.
I love science fiction because they usually try to play these scenarios in a somewhat feasible future. The 3 Body Problem series (more specifically the 3rd book) goes well into what it would take for humanity to be interestellar even without lightspeed or wormholee tech.
Avoiding spoilers it would basically be through hibernation and/or generational ships. Which basically implies of losing all ties to earth and anyone/anything you left there.
But, then again, why would nations invest in such expensive endeavours if there is no prospect of seeing something back out of it. I imagine only an emergency situation would cause this no?
I've been reading some sci-fi by Kate Elliott lately. While she gets around large distances with the usual FTL tech of sci-fi, in-system space battles hew a little more to physics, so that you get situations like, "Crap! The bad guys fired all their missiles at us! We have sixteen hours to decide what to do ...." Fun stuff.
I bet you're right about emergency situations. On top of that, people have been getting on boats and pushing off into the ocean for at least 25,000 years[1] when there was plenty of good land to keep them occupied. It's not that we're talking the same time scales, but rather the fact that they probably did it despite completely unknown time scales. It makes me wonder if the right philosophy or religion will come along that makes somebody try a generation ship for non-emergency reasons.
I'm reading the sci-fi ExForce series by Craig Alanson. There is jumping (wormholes) and speed of light restrictions where lightseconds, lightminutes, lighthours come in to play. What you see (position of enemy ships) might not be true anymore.
Ah yes! I remember that from "The expanse" as well: "let's do a meeting to decide how to evade the missile!"
I think that Physics-compliant sci-fi novels are more entertaining because the solutions (feasible or not) are more ingenious and the consequences more surprising.
> it's very hard to imagine interstellar travel being feasible with our current understanding.
Even with massive advancements in tech, and getting close to the speed of light, interstellar travel will be a lot of "one way heading into the unknown forever" kind of initiative. Interstellar empires only work with truly sci-fi tech that mostly ignores distances, like in sci-fi (instant subspace comms or warp travel with no relativistic effects)
This will never be the same kind of age of exploration as when we crossed the oceans and explored our planet. The scales are so mind blowing that even the fastest speed known to mankind is too slow. The times and distances involved to move and even just send signals (both ways!) and relativistic effects means at best we can "seed" a distant planet and hope that turns into a new (human?) civilization, forever separated from us for all practical purposes.
> it's very hard to imagine interstellar travel being feasible with our current understanding.
Sometimes it's hard realize the with have a good understanding of only 5% of what composes our universe. Let's hope there's still some surprise lest for ours Centauri Dreams...
It's always a bit revealing, with these kids of interstellar missions, how people reveal their own unseen biases.
Clearly such a mission is beyond the capabilities of our world currently. Like, obviously such a mission is something that capitalism cannot accomplish. That communism or anarchism or any -ism just cannot do. And I think that when people look at jaunts out to Alpha Centauri and think in terms of cost, they whole thing is hopeless from the get-go.
To make something like a trip out to Vega, even with just a probe one way at .1c, that's 500 years (right?). We can't fathom doing that right now as staying around to check out any answer. The ultimate 'plant trees in whose shade you'll never sit.'
Generation ships out there, even with magic hibernation tech, I just don't think we have the mental capabilities as great apes to think about this properly. The time scales, the advances in tech, the costs, just even thinking about things in this way shows to me that we're not at all ready to be serious about this.
You don't build a ship by teaching people how to hew oaks or caulk bulkheads. You build a ship by teaching people to yearn for the sea.
Space is still 'not worth it'. Until just being there in the void elicits the same feelings you get when reading about the bowsprits, white with sea-foam, before a quick and fast wind, look, we're not going to do this.
We have to love the trip itself first. The first stars until morning. The good ship to guide by them.
Some of my favorite sci-fi deals with monasticism and space travel.
If you were to create a constitution for a multigenerational space trip, it might look like the Rule of St Benedict. Many of the monastic rules were intended for “families” whose lifespan were intended to infinite.
There’s already some very good sci-fi on this topic, but it seems most of it is quite old. Most recent would be Babylon 5, that I know of.
> it's not just that everyone you know will be dead when you arrive. Your entire nation will have disappeared to the sands of time.
Humans are just a stepping stone. Earth intelligence will transcend our 77 year lifespans and primate brains.
Our lungs are adapted to gas exchange on this particular gravity well and its unique biogeochemistry. There's no reason redox reactions need to happen like this, or indeed even be the primary propulsion mechanism.
This is our frail biases speaking. We are limited by our biology, but we won't be forever.
This exactly. Evolution is a stepping stone to engineering., which then will also be subject to evolution. (Is there a word for engineered evolution?)
The trick will be to remain -human- perhaps. Or we just accept the fate of the loser of natural selection, and are replaced by our children of an obsolete god.
I have posited an idea on how this could work and done a bit of world building in that space, perhaps I will overcome my reticence toward writing fiction and publish one day.
>Most of this carnivorous botany is small, but the diversity of different trapping mechanisms raises an evolutionary question.
Isn't the obvious conclusion that:
1. There are many peaks in the fitness hypersurface for plants that correspond to meat eating
2. The peaks have smooth gradients at the outskirts
3. All peaks are minor local maxima
1 is because low nitrogen alone is not enough to make carnivory a net positive contributor to fitness. You need additional factors to make the gradient positive to begin with. That means the peaks (niches) are random and narrow.
3 is because carnivory implies an arms race against prey defenses, competing scavengers, and competing predators. Specialist animals are at a large advantage against plants, especially if meat is still a side dish to sunlight.
To me the interesting question is 2 - most plants don't digest animals at all, so how does this begin to evolve?
Depends. rear wheel drives can get stuck on pavement if it is raining and they are trying to go uphill. Snow and ice make it worse. But put some load on and you get enough weight over the axel to be fine. Of course betteries may be under the bed thus providing good weight distribution.
It seems performative. They remove a bunch of stuff nobody ever complained about, like paint or radio. Meanwhile it still has an app and it's still electric with pitiful range. The goal isn't to actually fix the car market, but provide a sort of self-flagellation experience so people can feel good about suffering with no radio, no ac, no auto windows... And I doubt they will reach that goal, sounds more like some kind of investor scam. With all these controversial design decisions they can brag to investors it's "making waves on popular platforms like hn".
The most interesting point in this is that people don't/can't fully utilize LLMs. Not exposing the system prompt is a great example. Totally spot on.
However the example (garry email) is terrible. If the email is so short, why are you even using a tool? This is like writing a selenium script to click on the article and scroll it, instead of... Just scrolling it? You're supposed to automate the hard stuff, where there's a pay off. AI can't do grade school math well, who cares? Use a calculator. AI is for things where 70% accuracy is great because without AI you have 0%. Grade school math, your brain has 80% accuracy and calculator has 100%, why are you going to the AI? And no, "if it can't even do basic math..." is not a logically sound argument. It's not what it's built for, of course it won't work well. What's next? "How can trains be good at shipping, I tried to carry my dresser to the other room with it and the train wouldn't even fit in my house, not to mention having to lay track in my hallway - terrible!"
Also the conclusion misses the point. It's not that AI is some paradigm shift and businesses can't cope. It's just that giving customers/users minimal control has been the dominant principle for ages. Why did Google kill the special syntax for search? Why don't they even document the current vastly simpler syntax? Why don't they let you choose what bubble profile to use instead of pushing one on you? Why do they change to a new, crappy UI and don't let you keep using the old one? Same thing here, AI is not special. The author is clearly a power user, such users are niche and their only hope is to find a niche "hacker" community that has what they need. The majority of users are not power users, do not value power user features, in fact the power user features intimidate them so they're a negative. Naturally the business that wants to capture the most users will focus on those.
There is also a writing where people are looking for the information, and they are showing up at your door because they already care. Presumably you wrote, because you saw the open question, and want to try answering it. History books, encyclopedias, classic literature by dead people, falls under this. Ironically, so does the example of Venice - you would read about Venice if you were already curious; there is little profit in "making someone care" about Venice otherwise. An attention grabby style would be forced and counterproductive in this.