I think the mobility point makes sense, but what sort of mobility are we talking about here?

Is it limited to social mobility within a single unified system, or can there be like sideways or orthogonal movements to alternative societies where that particular behavior fits in better?

I think you could achieve the latter through functional boundary rules creating discrete interaction zones. The most rigid (but accordingly simple and very enforceable) rules should apply to these boundary and movement rules, to make sure people can’t be trapped. I’d even permit a voluntary interaction zone of 1.

Once within an interaction zone, the rules could be set by the people within that interaction zone. This allows for a broad range of people to just be who they are, with people who will accept them for who they are, without forcing the same poorly fitting straitjacket on everyone.

I agree somewhat tough to imagine readily implementing now, but if we can get to a point where we can build livable structures out in space, we have a lot of the latter to work with. We could consider and apply interaction zone concepts even now and start taking some baby steps in that direction, thanks to some geographical detachment, which we’ve seen works very well in many contexts during the COVID response.

EDIT: And in terms of the adrenalin junkies that get a kick out of participating in or watching bloodsport, can we point them in the direction of the as-yet unexplored dangers of like the nearest galaxy that isn’t where the people who want to stay safe all the time live? Like it doesn’t even have to be a galaxy away, as long as they’re occupied doing a thing they enjoy, channeled in a way that doesn’t hurt others.

Edits made.

Any volunteers to go find out?

Hi reddit philosophers!

I’ll admit upfront that I don’t really consider myself a philosopher and generally avoided the subject like the plague (other than an elective that I took that some friends had tricked me into thinking were easy credits, and like one philosophy club meeting I was hoodwinked into attending for the free Chinese food, which I regretted other than the Chinese food).

I also either didn’t read or don’t really remember reading Plato’s Republic (sorry if it was on the syllabus!) and I secretly suspect people are like taking old Plato’s words out of context, because I like that guy a lot, possibly because he reminds me of this colorful, funny-smelling clay substitute that I coveted as a child.

With that b.s. caveat out of the way, here’s my link to my link to my original showerthought.

So here’s Britannica’s summary of the philosopher-king concept, and here’s a briefer summary that someone else pointed me to, wherein Plato seems to be bemoaning the fact that the so-called “perfect” society can only exist if “kings become philosophers or philosophers are made kings.”

So my point is that you can just slot in (SET = everyone), having been societally educated and trained towards being “philosophers,” whatever that means, and make them mutual “kings” in terms of the decision-making function granted to philosopher-kings even in the supposedly ideal aristocracy model, which does admittedly do a pretty cool job of trying to create society-centric functions and slotting in people who are good at and inclined to perform those functions into those slots.

This philosopher-king idea also reminded me of this “wangdao” or “kingly way” concept of an enlightened and benevolent dictator that appears in Confucian Chinese philosophy, which ended up clashing with legalism for like a weirdly extended period about the fundamental nature of humans, I think mostly because it became a feud and they just wanted to fight.

Like it was pretty obvious to all involved that people could be BOTH:

• helped to be better, kinder and more excellent to each other (the real point of the kingly way proponents, in my view),

AND

• real fucking dicks sometimes, or maybe even a lot, depending on your point of view, but regardless you wanted a system that protected from that sort of behavior it (the real point of the Mohists, in my view).

Which suggests that instead of arguing about who’s incrementally more correct about human nature, we should really have been focusing on putting in place a system that both encourages people to be better and also prevents the system from abuse from bad actors (which is effectively what it ended up being irl anyway, just maybe not in like the best way it could have).

So yeah. False choice. Make everyone more excellent and give everyone a voice in any decision-making that affects them, then you can bypass the need for any kooky dictatorships (regardless of name).

Edit: Punctuation, links, etc.

Man, peanut allergies. Allergies are like freakishly different from each other, right? Like peanuts you get worse from exposure while others you can actually “outgrow” through sufficient early exposure, I think (or maybe I’m just hoping that’s true). This lady Katherine Wu recently wrote an article about allergies mysteriously going away for the Atlantic (magazine not ocean) recently, including her own cat allergies going away.

I wonder if peanuts make peanut allergies worse, if there’s like an anti-peanut that could help make peanut allergies go away.

Some of my friends have had some really crazy allergies. One was technically allergic to himself!^1

^1 Technically to like some chemical that his body naturally produces in trace amounts, but regardless of technicalities, that’s gotta suck. :( Yet he’s like strangely like one of the most happy, positive and optimistic people I know, despite like always being realistic about likely disappointment from others and being into the deathest of death metal.

Edit typos and bad writing. Boo!

Oooh! I want to see that also! I was just about to make an oblique reference to the Confucian-Legalism debates. Or an attempt anyway.

Ha, no, I also mentioned elsewhere that I really like the ITER shutoff design that allows for multiple different circuit-breakers to basically turn the whole thing off for any number of more dangerous scenarios.

What I’m mostly worried about, for immobile energy sources that can be “weaponized” (used broadly to mean being harm to others), is:

• The ability for a small group of coordinated bad actors with the right knowledge to weaponize it, in this case presumably by somehow keeping the reaction and tritium replenishment (or equivalent) going despite the mechanisms in place to prevent that. I consider this a more likely scenario than people might realize, because my view is that the tech to “hack” any defensive tech structure exists simultaneously with the creation of that defensive tech structure, effectively converting all of those scenarios into like these condottieri-style waiting games with only one ultimate absorption point: the defender slips up and fails to maintain all the necessary resources to defend against hacking attackers. I do think that an inside job is more likely to succeed for sabotage.

• The fact that this neutron radiation is deadly to humans, and also eats away at the very structures that are designed to keep it safely isolated. That’s like putting deadly acid in a jar and hoping that you’re still going to be around later to replace it. And what weirds me out is that all the formal safety/risk papers don’t even mention the fact that the neutron radiation from the fusion reaction itself can be weaponized, instead focusing only on like uranium production or whatever to make bombs (in what they categorize as like three different ways, that sound to me like Sneaky Mode 1, Sneaky Mode 2, Grunt Rush).

• If there’s even a possibility that it can be weaponized, then people need to consider strategic defensive and war-related crap, too. And I’m going to guess that’s going to mean a lot of annoying-as-fuck games of chicken and wasteful positioning. Also, my guess is that it’s going to be rare that “best for us in terms of energy infrastructure” is going to perfectly line up with “best for us if we’re fighting,” which means that whatever we do won’t be optimal, and at worst, we’ll just be missing two birds with one stone.

Haha, and yeah, I did hit the high hyperbole note with the “doom for all” rhetoric - you’re right about that and I don’t have any good excuses for that bit!

The relevant links are probably scattershot throughout the comments to the post, but here’s the most recent research paper that I’d found talking about it.

Here’s another article, somewhat older and using more impassioned(-ish) language, though easier to follow for folks like me.

Hey, did you see this recent article about chaining photons together in like a quantum relay?

I have to admit I was like making up some words and concepts in my head for all the stuff I wasn’t getting, but it sounded like if you started with an already entangled pair of photons, you could much more easily tack on additional entangled photons to make like a long entangled photon chain, and for some reason (super curious but not sure I followed that part), it’s easier to do that than trying to entangle two random photons from scratch.

Who’s up for a relay race around the multiverse?

Thanks! I did like the remote ancillary support structures design of ITER, which means that anyone with bad intentions would need to figure out how to keep the reaction going and keep the tritium flowing in particular. The latter part seems very hard to surmount, but I’d guess that tech improvements that actually let us run fusion with energy gain would also help with “hacks” to both of these for bad actors.

What are your thoughts on this article, written by someone who worked for decades on the Princeton fusion project, which notes in particular the danger of neutron radiation (which seems to erode the very structures intended to keep it contained and protected over time)?

EDIT: Found this!, wherein we are testing out how bad neutron radiation can fuck shit up! Damn!

Also, I admitted at some point that it’s been years since I looked at any of this stuff, and will admit now that I’m about two levels below layman on the topic. Also, I absolutely do not mean to offend anyone or make anyone feel bad (at least not too much if I can help it), but my suspiciousness hackles really get raised when people shut down what seem to be reasonable questions with fanatic fervor. That type of reaction always makes me suspect that there’s some sort of bullshit shield being put up.

This article was funded through a $1.5 billion government contract for the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, whose primary mission is fusion (so perhaps a tiny bias), and they basically conclude not as dangerous as fission but more research and analysis needed.

Haha yeah I was just reading the article and seeing the extensive security measures, including the giant concrete barriers that are intended to stop like neutrons from flying everywhere and destroying us all.

Also seems like still at energy loss in the process, and I’d be leery of any energy efficiency that could be gained by sacrificing safety measures.

Oh well. :(

So basically the only possible states are:

• On and safely contained; or

• Off and incapable of harm?

That almost sounds too good to be true, but pretty exciting if it is! I think I’d need to understand it better - the last time I remember reading about it is some old article that disappointingly concluded that cold fusion was impossible.

But these plants would presumably be on and going, right, protected by whatever we have in place to keep it from wreaking havoc on our global backyard?

So an ill-intentioned person could focus on attacking and taking down those safeguards, in order to trigger the adverse consequences they’re there to prevent.

I may not be following you on this weaponization point though, because it seems almost like you’re saying that fusion both is (or has been) and isn’t weaponizable?

Are you saying fusion reactors are just much harder to sabotage? Or impossible?

EDIT: I’m pretty sure some of you are trying to double up nation-based (non-global) defense strategies with energy strategies for the savings. But the first needs to be a thing of the past really soon. REALLY SOON.

Yeah, but for widespread energy use, we’d be talking about putting like potential fusion bombs everywhere, right, with the required security protocols to make sure some nutter doesn’t mess it up for everyone?

Like wasn’t the whole thing with the Ukrainian power plants and Nuke Zombie Boss Chernobyl kind of stressful, to say the least?

EDIT: Haha, sorry if like this is your profession or what you’ve devoted your life to. I wasn’t trying to suggest it wasn’t worthwhile, and I’d expect we’ve learned and discovered a ton of stuff in our efforts!

Keep ‘em coming, Sunk Costs! ;)

I’m not sure that legal liability actually does as much (at least now), especially compared to reputational effects. Like most of these are going to presumably be produced by slimly capitalized corporate entities that would declare bankruptcy if any significant litigation occurred, no?

I think reputation and public response expectations are actually more meaningful and direct and affect decisions a bit better, maybe because it’s more intuitive?

I do like efficient energy, including one that could be used in space, but I feel like we should consider potential weaponization (including inadvertent or neglect-based weaponization) of the related energy source/means of producing energy when deciding what to implement IRL. Perhaps they already are, just in the opposite direction of what I’d assume to be better for everyone.

Given how plentiful solar power is out in space, I feel like I heavily favor tech advances in harnessing and utilizing these sorts of energy sources that are just floating out there, free for the taking.