sethoflagos

We should also mention BS&W (Basic Sediment & Water) which is mainly removed in upstream production operations, but still contaminates commercial crude shipments typically at the level ~0.2%. In theory, even this material could be processed further into clean, reusable resources. In practice, it tends to be 'quietly disposed of'. Afterthought: 0.2% may not sound very much, but in a 4 million barrel crude shipments it's knocking on 1,000 metric tonnes.

I watched a few episodes of the first series over thirty years ago when it was hosted by Richard O'Brien. My children seemed to enjoy it at the time. This conversation is beginning to rot my brain. Have to go now. Nice meeting you!

Nothing remotely natural about it. It's called "escapism" because that's what it is: an escape from reality. How much time do you spend watching television?

In what strange universe do you believe that shows like 'Crystal Maze' teach you anything about how to live a worthwhile life out in the real world?

A life well-lived is its own reward, not just for oneself but also for those around you. High IQ cannot achieve this on its own, but is a facet of developing strong cognitive abilities which definitely do help in formulating and achieving one's personal goals more easily. More important, though, is the manner in which you live your life. Behaving in such a way as to form and maintain positive connections with those around you, and so forth. Intelligence can help here too, but in general it is a different type of intelligence. Another crucial factor is developing the emotional strength to maintain a positive attitude and act in an authentic manner especially in times of adversity. Please read that last paragraph again, carefully this time, as I don't believe that IQ (however you define it) is the real issue emerging from your OP.

This dropped into my feed today. Are we being seduced by Fully Automated Luxury Interstellar Communism? I find his arguments difficult to dismiss.

Me too. And talking about the legality of Russian expansionism... Eva, can I, Tolstoy, escrow orc's eyot's lot in a cave?

Eva, can I taste bro's detartrated sorbet sat in a cave? Eva, can I put a cat up in a cave?

Enima felt ten Arabs play not, Sarah, as ne'er got gnu dung to green Sahara stony alps bar a nettle. Famine.

Effectively limitless solar energy and an efficient means of waste heat disposal is enough 'free income' to drive a stable economy of any degree of technological complexity. Ask the termites. ... within an effectively unchecked capitalist system that prioritises short-term growth over long-term sustainability regardless of the long-term consequences. Other forms of societal organisation are possible. "Society exists to transcend itself" - Proudhon With @TheVat , that makes three of us. Only a few billion to go.

I didn't realise termite flat bread was a real thing until I looked it up just now. I've eaten fried alates, of course; Mrs Seth and her sisters are quite fond of them. I'll have to drop a few in my next batch of roti. Thanks!

Life is a particularly efficient mechanism for converting high grade energy (eg. solar radiation) into waste heat (eg in extremis, CMBR). The more life (and associated low entropy structures like Dyson swarms) the more waste heat. The thing about waste heat is, by definition, it's useless. Even for K3 civilisations. Like c, the 2nd Law appears to be another fundamental hard limit to the spread of advanced technology societies.

There's a reason the pessimist school went out of fashion. It is destructive, especially to the psyche. Since being able to see a light at the end of the tunnel, whatever the circumstances is an essential part of my nature, I am unable, for the sake of my mental wellbeing, to take seriously anyone who persistently claims that the light is mere illusion. I hope you will understand why I am going to cease responding to your posts. I believe this would be better for both of us. Please respect my reasons and reciprocate.

Haha! Did that last night. ...and they're actually fennel seeds. Honestly, they are.

As before: no discrimination; no nuance; all the glasses are empty. Pure Schopenhauer. Even Nietzsche moved on from this.

But what we do know is that if any ecosystem were able to 'terraform' say an entire galaxy to make it uniformly hospitable to the very narrow range of physical conditions necessary to support that ecosystem, harvesting and converting all asteroids and Kuyper belt type objects into purpose built space-ships, living spaces, factories etc., this would have very profound thermodynamic consequences due to the galactic scale reordering and reduction of diversity such a process would represent. The production and disposal of collosal amounts of kinetic energy, comparable with the energy equivalent of the masses involved as they are manoeuvred between different gravity wells has already been discussed. But that is really only the start. Such a grand scale reordering of orbitals, structures, and chemistry into an ever lower entropy state is going to produce a truly epic intensity of waste heat. Where is all that going to go? We're beginning to get our heads around the causes and effects of global warming. Now imagine galactic warming.

From a Nigerian perspective, the site is currently responding unusually rapidly. What to do with all that extra spare time on my hands?

Isn't memory strange. Never read any Sturgeon, and only one Heinlein - the rambling 'Time Enough For Love'. Fifty years on I remember it as being in the book. Turns out it was in Sturgeon's review of the book which must have been requoted in the softback edition. Am I forgiven my data retrieval error? PS - if you're going to start name-dropping, not so long ago one of Ghislaine Maxwell's brothers - the UK's biggest bankrupt - holed out for a year or so in my local watering hole in Lagos. Wanna see the Maxwell files?

I don't see the 'understanding'. What comes across is an endless stream of glib, out of context aphorisms from Nietzsche's early, pessimistic Schopenhauer phase parading as insights. Equating my opinions with those of Musk and referring to them as 'illusions' is hardly likely to make me more sympathetic. No resource is free of bias. Grok's is homogenous, suppressing the alternate perspectives that might facilitate critical thinking. The 'bots', (I note the dismissive tone), present inconsistent biases, often multiple contradictory biases within the same document. This IMHO is preferable for the enquiring mind that can pick up on the inconsistencies and be prompted to research further. Whether the bias problem is 'unrecognised' is down to the individual. "95% of everything is crap" - Robert Heinlein.

Perhaps a universe capable of engineering itself in such a way as to allow for the development of life on a very few isolated celestial bodies, is equally capable of ensuring that a population on any one of those bodies is incapable of adversely impacting life on any other. The Second Law is very fond of diversity.

Situation Normal for some of us.

And the problem with this sort of absolutist nihilism is that you lose the ability to make quality distinctions between any real world objects that fail to meet your unicorn purity threshold. There is no nuance. The glass is always empty.

Which fundamental problem (affecting both cases) are you referring to? I see them as diametrically opposed (one entirely wrong, the other less wrong) and therefore subject to their own distinct issues. Perhaps to clarify this - Grok seeks to suppress diversity: ChatGPT (AFAICT) doesn't. Also, inside my few remaining grey cells, diversity is moreorless synonymous with entropy. But that's just me.

Rabbit holes, rabbit holes... Lady knits as time loop's secret sac node - Doncaster cesspool - emits a stinky dal.

No. I accepted your metaphor as a stand in for all other aspects of developing into a responsible adult. To be clear, I was more focused here on the self-discipline, self-restraint aspects of personality which for my generation in the UK were inculcated early and unfashionably forcefully.