10 ms·

I get where you're coming from, but this website is called Hacker News. Getting around limits is a primary part of the tradition.

RC_ITR 5y ago
Sure I just wish for ONCE the goal of the hacking zeitgeist on here would be “how do we get around limits to do something good for society” rather than “how do we use our cleverness to exempt ourselves from the rules that enable society?”
- giantg2 5y ago
  I'll probably get downvoted, but... Maybe we also accept that some limits can't be surpassed, at least not at an acceptable cost. In my opinion, the world cannot sustainably support so many people. So artificial limits we like to defeat, natural limits are much tougher.
  - eru 5y ago
    What do you mean by 'so many people'? The carrying capacity of earth is likely hundreds of billions of humans, if we were to set our mind to it. Just to concentrate on food alone: we are barely harvesting anything from the oceans. Even on land, using greenhouses everywhere would give us vastly more agricultural yield. We are not using greenhouses everywhere right now, because that's a huge capital investment; and given current food prices, it's generally not worth it. But if push came to shove, we could totally do it. (Just like we _could_ totally get rid of fossil fuels, if we really had to and run everything on wind and solar. It's just not economically viable to do that right now.) There's lots more techniques you can do to produce more calories. For example fusion power could help a lot to power lots of artificial lighting in vertical farms, and to purify sea water. (And even without fusion power, we could generate lots and lots of power from fission with current technology. It's just unpopular.) > Maybe we also accept that some limits can't be surpassed, at least not at an acceptable cost. I guess you would say that the suggestions I made above fall under the second clause of unacceptable costs? Do you mean economic costs or some kind of ethical or moral or metaphysical costs? I can see how some people might be queasy about putting fission reactors everywhere. But I don't really see anything against Dutch-style greenhouses apart from economic costs?
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      > The carrying capacity of earth is likely hundreds of billions of humans, if we were to set our mind to it. At an absolute poverty level in a Warhammer like hive city perhaps.
      - eru 5y ago
        According to Google, the land surface area of earth is about 510 million km^2. Divided by a trillion people, that gives you 510 m^2 per person. For comparison, Singapore has 128 m^2 per person.
    - StanislavPetrov 5y ago
      >Just to concentrate on food alone: we are barely harvesting anything from the oceans. Just to cite one of of your statements, the oceans have been decimated with countless species extinct and many more on their way there due to overfishing and habitat destruction. The oceans are also filled with industrial chemicals, plastics and have numerous massive "dead zones" due to nitrogen run off from the huge factory farms we run to sustain our massively overpopulated planet. The suggestion that the earth isn't overpopulated, let alone the idea that the earth could support "hundreds of billions of people" is beyond absurd. We are losing biodiversity among animals, insects, fish and every other form of non human life due directly to massive overpopulation. Saying this ignores the decimation of our ecosystem and the food web that has left our planet teetering on the brink.
      - eru 5y ago
        You are right that we are past what hunter-gatherer approaches can yield from the ocean. And that we are doing a bad job at protecting the habitat of wild-life. However, there's vast patches out in the open ocean where almost nothing grows. Mostly because the areas with sunlight (at the top) are not where the minerals are that plants need to grow (mostly the sea floor). See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization for an overview. If you mind putting fertilizer directly into the open ocean, someone more clever than me can probably work out a scheme for enclosing some water in a giant floating bag, and growing your stuff in there. (Or something much better than this.)
- vba616 5y ago
  Americans just don't understand if you say a 55 mph speed limit enables society. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law "From April to June 1982, speed was monitored on New York's Interstate highways, and an 83% noncompliance rate was found despite extreme penalties" There was a legendary coast-to-coast race in the 70s, defying the national 55 mph limit: "Dan Gurney, winner of the 1967 24 hours of Le Mans...won the second Cannonball in a Sunoco blue Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona. Gurney said, "At no time did we exceed 175 mph" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_Baker_Sea-To-Shining-Sea_Memorial_Trophy_Dash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_Baker_Sea-To-Shinin... While the races ended due to police crackdowns, people still do the coast to coast run individually and set records: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_Run_challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_Run_challenge "In May 2020, Arne Toman, Doug Tabbutt, and spotter Dunadel Daryoush set the new cannonball record of 25 hours and 39 minutes during the COVID-19 pandemic in a modified 2016 Audi S6 disguised to look like a Ford Taurus police interceptor. Police-evasion modifications included brake light kill-switches, radar detectors, laser diffusers, CB-radio, and a roof-mounted thermal camera. Performance modifications included a trunk- mounted 67-gallon auxiliary fuel cell..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cannonball_Run https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cannonball_Run A comedy where: "JJ McClure, a famous racing driver and team owner (Reynolds), and Victor Prinzi, his chief mechanic and sometime co-driver (DeLuise), drive a Dodge Tradesman ambulance fitted with a NASCAR engine (Hal Needham and Brock Yates used the same vehicle in the actual 1979 race)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Can%27t_Drive_55 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Can%27t_Drive_55 "...it took two and a half hours to drive there from Albany. And I was driving from Albany, New York at 2:00 in the morning, burnt from all the travel. Cop stopped me for doing 62 on a four lane road when there was no one else in sight. Then the guy gave me a ticket. I was doing 62. And he said, 'We give tickets around here for over- 60.' and I said, 'I can't drive 55.' I grabbed a paper and a pen..." Really, (and I just learned this) it says it all that there was a punk album titled as a reaction to "I can't drive 55" called "Double Nickels on the Dime". In Soviet America, the rebels drive 55! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Nickels_on_the_Dime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Nickels_on_the_Dime
  - 5y ago
- kortilla 5y ago
  That is the zeitgeist. If you think hackers are only selfish then you don’t know anything about the open source world.
goodpoint 5y ago
You might be browsing a different HN than other people. "hacker" news workships FAANGs, VC money and VC/billionaires themselves. The original https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic is pretty incompatible with big companies & co.
- naoqj 5y ago
  The change has been notable in recent years. This has always been a very libertarian forum but it's been drifting to the left at an alarming speed. Very dark times for entrepreneurship and society advances indeed.
  - JaimeThompson 5y ago
    What examples of "drifting to the left" have you seen and how are those dark times for the future of society?
    - cplusplusfellow 5y ago
      ITT and it’s criticism of vehicular personal transportation. And I hope that answers both questions you have.
      - JaimeThompson 5y ago
        I don't know how you are using ITT here nor is "criticism of vehicular personal transportation" all that common on this site. It does generate a decent amount of discussion but it isn't the prevailing attitude in my experience. I also don't understand how that is "left" either.
        m1gu3l 5y ago
        “In this thread”
        5y ago

RC_ITR 5y ago

Sure I just wish for ONCE the goal of the hacking zeitgeist on here would be “how do we get around limits to do something good for society” rather than “how do we use our cleverness to exempt ourselves from the rules that enable society?”

giantg2 5y ago
I'll probably get downvoted, but... Maybe we also accept that some limits can't be surpassed, at least not at an acceptable cost. In my opinion, the world cannot sustainably support so many people. So artificial limits we like to defeat, natural limits are much tougher.
- eru 5y ago
  What do you mean by 'so many people'? The carrying capacity of earth is likely hundreds of billions of humans, if we were to set our mind to it. Just to concentrate on food alone: we are barely harvesting anything from the oceans. Even on land, using greenhouses everywhere would give us vastly more agricultural yield. We are not using greenhouses everywhere right now, because that's a huge capital investment; and given current food prices, it's generally not worth it. But if push came to shove, we could totally do it. (Just like we _could_ totally get rid of fossil fuels, if we really had to and run everything on wind and solar. It's just not economically viable to do that right now.) There's lots more techniques you can do to produce more calories. For example fusion power could help a lot to power lots of artificial lighting in vertical farms, and to purify sea water. (And even without fusion power, we could generate lots and lots of power from fission with current technology. It's just unpopular.) > Maybe we also accept that some limits can't be surpassed, at least not at an acceptable cost. I guess you would say that the suggestions I made above fall under the second clause of unacceptable costs? Do you mean economic costs or some kind of ethical or moral or metaphysical costs? I can see how some people might be queasy about putting fission reactors everywhere. But I don't really see anything against Dutch-style greenhouses apart from economic costs?
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    > The carrying capacity of earth is likely hundreds of billions of humans, if we were to set our mind to it. At an absolute poverty level in a Warhammer like hive city perhaps.
    - eru 5y ago
      According to Google, the land surface area of earth is about 510 million km^2. Divided by a trillion people, that gives you 510 m^2 per person. For comparison, Singapore has 128 m^2 per person.
  - StanislavPetrov 5y ago
    >Just to concentrate on food alone: we are barely harvesting anything from the oceans. Just to cite one of of your statements, the oceans have been decimated with countless species extinct and many more on their way there due to overfishing and habitat destruction. The oceans are also filled with industrial chemicals, plastics and have numerous massive "dead zones" due to nitrogen run off from the huge factory farms we run to sustain our massively overpopulated planet. The suggestion that the earth isn't overpopulated, let alone the idea that the earth could support "hundreds of billions of people" is beyond absurd. We are losing biodiversity among animals, insects, fish and every other form of non human life due directly to massive overpopulation. Saying this ignores the decimation of our ecosystem and the food web that has left our planet teetering on the brink.
    - eru 5y ago
      You are right that we are past what hunter-gatherer approaches can yield from the ocean. And that we are doing a bad job at protecting the habitat of wild-life. However, there's vast patches out in the open ocean where almost nothing grows. Mostly because the areas with sunlight (at the top) are not where the minerals are that plants need to grow (mostly the sea floor). See eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization for an overview. If you mind putting fertilizer directly into the open ocean, someone more clever than me can probably work out a scheme for enclosing some water in a giant floating bag, and growing your stuff in there. (Or something much better than this.)
vba616 5y ago
Americans just don't understand if you say a 55 mph speed limit enables society. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Speed_Law "From April to June 1982, speed was monitored on New York's Interstate highways, and an 83% noncompliance rate was found despite extreme penalties" There was a legendary coast-to-coast race in the 70s, defying the national 55 mph limit: "Dan Gurney, winner of the 1967 24 hours of Le Mans...won the second Cannonball in a Sunoco blue Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona. Gurney said, "At no time did we exceed 175 mph" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_Baker_Sea-To-Shining-Sea_Memorial_Trophy_Dash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_Baker_Sea-To-Shinin... While the races ended due to police crackdowns, people still do the coast to coast run individually and set records: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_Run_challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_Run_challenge "In May 2020, Arne Toman, Doug Tabbutt, and spotter Dunadel Daryoush set the new cannonball record of 25 hours and 39 minutes during the COVID-19 pandemic in a modified 2016 Audi S6 disguised to look like a Ford Taurus police interceptor. Police-evasion modifications included brake light kill-switches, radar detectors, laser diffusers, CB-radio, and a roof-mounted thermal camera. Performance modifications included a trunk- mounted 67-gallon auxiliary fuel cell..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cannonball_Run https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cannonball_Run A comedy where: "JJ McClure, a famous racing driver and team owner (Reynolds), and Victor Prinzi, his chief mechanic and sometime co-driver (DeLuise), drive a Dodge Tradesman ambulance fitted with a NASCAR engine (Hal Needham and Brock Yates used the same vehicle in the actual 1979 race)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Can%27t_Drive_55 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Can%27t_Drive_55 "...it took two and a half hours to drive there from Albany. And I was driving from Albany, New York at 2:00 in the morning, burnt from all the travel. Cop stopped me for doing 62 on a four lane road when there was no one else in sight. Then the guy gave me a ticket. I was doing 62. And he said, 'We give tickets around here for over- 60.' and I said, 'I can't drive 55.' I grabbed a paper and a pen..." Really, (and I just learned this) it says it all that there was a punk album titled as a reaction to "I can't drive 55" called "Double Nickels on the Dime". In Soviet America, the rebels drive 55! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Nickels_on_the_Dime https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Nickels_on_the_Dime
- 5y ago
kortilla 5y ago
That is the zeitgeist. If you think hackers are only selfish then you don’t know anything about the open source world.

goodpoint 5y ago

You might be browsing a different HN than other people. "hacker" news workships FAANGs, VC money and VC/billionaires themselves. The original https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic is pretty incompatible with big companies & co.

naoqj 5y ago
The change has been notable in recent years. This has always been a very libertarian forum but it's been drifting to the left at an alarming speed. Very dark times for entrepreneurship and society advances indeed.
- JaimeThompson 5y ago
  What examples of "drifting to the left" have you seen and how are those dark times for the future of society?
  - cplusplusfellow 5y ago
    ITT and it’s criticism of vehicular personal transportation. And I hope that answers both questions you have.
    - JaimeThompson 5y ago
      I don't know how you are using ITT here nor is "criticism of vehicular personal transportation" all that common on this site. It does generate a decent amount of discussion but it isn't the prevailing attitude in my experience. I also don't understand how that is "left" either.
      - m1gu3l 5y ago
        “In this thread”
        5y ago