Above all, in 2020 we saw the lowest population growth in the World since at least 1950 with 1,05%. Just in 2012 the growth rate was 1,2%. It may be that some of us (those younger) will witness peak human population. — ssu

I don't think population matters much.

Of course, it's easiest to imagine just having less people would lower our impact, than to imagine some actually sustainable system.

However, in the equation of Impact = Population x Technology x Affluence; it's the technology and affluence that can be changed significantly in relatively short periods of time (without the catastrophe we are trying to avoid).

1) I blame the media.

The journalists pick up the most damning forecast (from a variety) and run with the worst possible early outcome. — ssu

I wouldn't say this is true. Also, if we're blaming the journalists, journalist in turn blame the collapse of paid journalism due to the internet (and no policies put in place for value-extraction of search engines and aggregators to pay for what they're using to make profits).

In the 90s, before the media collapse, I think communication was pretty good, and there was lot's of discussion and "in depth" reporting, denialists existed but were easily defeated (as they new forms of media entirely dedicated to propaganda, such as Fox News, didn't exist yet), and all this culminated in the Kyoto Protocol, which was supposed to be the "Montreal Protocol" protocol moment for the climate, and was sold as such.

2) Then I blame that some issues have been overcome. DDT has been banned. The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer has been working: Since the ban on halocarbons, the ozone layer has slowly been recovering and the data shows a trend in decreasing area of the ozone hole – subject to annual variations. It has even closed sometime. We have already hit peak conventional oil production and oil production hasn't grown for some time. — ssu

As mentioned above, Kyoto Protocol could have actually worked (been made better to begin with, or then actually followed), but it wasn't. So, although I agree we definitely can make these international agreements that effectively deal with pollution, so far we haven't for green house gases.

Yes, we've peaked in conventional "sweet" crude, but we've gone all in for things like tar sands and fracking and haven't even phased out coal globally. The Amazon turning from a sink to a source of greenhouse gas emissions also means that we need to cut the difference to be at the same "spot" of net-emission when the Amazon was still a sink.

We are starting to saturate other buffers as well (a cold ocean can dissolve CO2 pretty well, but a warmer ocean may start to emit the CO2 it previously absorbed).

3) And finally, I think that the society can cope with even more problems. We can have this economy limping with the pandemic limitations for years. We can not travel as much as before. Tens of millions of jobs have been lost in the tourism sector and flights have basically halved. We can change our behavior and never ever shake each others hands. Who needs so much travel? The fact is that our societies can endure radical changes. Thanks to the pandemic, carbon emissions have fallen at the most rapid rate since WW2. Primary energy consumption fell by 4.5% in 2020, the largest decline since 1945, yet solar Wind, solar and hydroelectricity all grew despite of this plummeting demand. — ssu

Sure, if you're arguing we can do something, no objections from me. The question is are we doing something, and fast enough.

Once systems get overwhelmed, they collapse. Has happened to previous civilizations, can happen to ours.

People tend to be myopic, it's hard motivate them with something that is gradual and in the longterm. If some accident happens they typically do want to jump into action. — ChatteringMonkey

True in a sense, and, in a general sense as well the fundamental cause of the problem of climate change (or any human caused problem) is "human weaknesses" of one sort or another.

At the same time, it's not inevitable. People can be lazy, but can also be disciplined; society's as well. Indeed, in a longer view, many societies seem to be very far sighted, building large defensive structures that might see use in the next centuries.

It's easy to link social problems to social vices, just as for the individual, but this simply begs the question of why such vices developed in the first place.

There's the denialists definitely, but not so much in Europe indeed. I also do think green parties, and the left in general, have been bad strategically in selling their ideas to the public... to much finger pointing blame game, and to little constructive motivating vision put forward. — ChatteringMonkey

I completely agree here. Why the movement doesn't have "more and better people" is one question (that may not have any definitive answer, just more and more historical context further and further back in time). However, what is clear is that the movement that does exist makes terrible decisions and is ineffective, even with the resources they have.

Though I agree with you point here in one sense, I think the fundamental (at least intellectual) problem is the exact opposite and not enough "finger pointing" to avoid (uncomfortable) critical debate around ethical and political theory questions.

It has been dragging for a long time, and for someone invested in the topic as long as you have been I get that this doesn't exactly fill you with optimism, but I think once things start moving, they might move a lot faster than one thinks. I don't think the conversion to renewables is a linear process. — ChatteringMonkey

I also had this theory while starting 20 years ago, and I do still believe the transition can be very rapid. However, it's too late to prevent catastrophe's, which are already happening.

For instance, 20 years ago, mass coral bleaching of, in particular, the great barrier reef but also reefs in general, was one of those unthinkable, terrible "apocalyptic signs" that we want to work hard to avoid.

The apocalypse comes and goes.

So yes, for exactly the reasons you describe, that were true 20 years ago in the 90s, and, as @Benkei points out, obviously true even for a 7 year old in the 80s, and also true in the 70s and 60s to all those dirty hippies, we can avoid "worse outcomes". However, the current outcome is already pretty bad, the climate catastrophe is already triggered, it's simply a question of how bad it will get.

Since effects are baked in 20 years (overcoming the ocean thermal buffer) after actually getting to 0 emissions, the affects are already bad now, we are no where close to zero emissions, therefore, the effects are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

And even the IPPC now concludes climate change is irreversible. So we are going "somewhere" new, and the nature of a system as complex as the whole world is that no one can know exactly where.

That the effects could be extremely bad -- that hitting a tipping point in arctic ocean ice, which may trigger tipping points with permafrost, forest ecocystems, land-based ice, and the system can accelerate and dominate human emissions (i.e. further human emissions become irrelevant) etc. -- is the reason to not run this experiment in the first place.

That maybe things aren't so bad, or then we should do our best for the survivors anyways (preserve as many seeds, and knowledge, and minimize our damage on the way out; i.e. clean up a bit when our party ends, before leaving unceremoniously), are all reasons to do what is morally justified, regardless of one's level of optimism or pessimism on the eventual outcome. That there is a chance of extinction means, by definition, there is also a chance of not-extinction.

This does make a lot of sense, the models are only a rough approximation of an underlying reality afterall. We kindof know the rough ballpark of where, how and when things will go wrong, but there's still a lot of uncertainty about the specifics, and about what the interaction are between the moving parts. Nevertheless better save than sorry, I agree. — ChatteringMonkey

Yes, even before computer models were even possible, it had already been worked out that the earth would warm due to the amounts of pollution involved, and that even 1 degree of warming would be significant risk.

Computer models don't inform much more than this baseline analytic result worked out in the 70s.

They confirm this analytic result in demonstrating all sorts of catastrophic scenarios, but it's more of narrative than decision making value. In the 70s, the scientists that worked out the 1 degree of warming risk threshold, maybe couldn't tell a story about it other than they didn't know what would happen but the risk of experimenting on the entire globe isn't reasonable to take.

Computer models can provide stories ... but there are lot's of models, each model can be run thousands of times with different results, so it's still the same conclusion that the risk of running to the experiment to confirm which computer model got it "best" isn't reasonable to take.

These kind of long term, high impact/uncertain probability risks are difficult to sell politically I suppose, because you do know the impact of the policy measures on your constituency typically. — ChatteringMonkey

This is correct for most politicians, at any given time.

But the real question is why there isn't wide spread awareness and powerful movements, or then why the movements that do exist have so far failed. The denialist industry was and still is well funded, but it's not really a given they would win, and they've only really "won" in the US; here in Europe there's not really much climate denialism, but the policies are weak sauce; the "concerned" politicians of Europe never get together and do anything of significance.

I'm honestly not sure; it's not like the information is in secret books that an institution will systematically burn both the books and anyone possessing them. "Truth" seems to have gotten out far worse obstacles.

Things do seem to be picking up traction now, technologically, economically and politically. — ChatteringMonkey

Although I hope so, and I've been working in the field for 20 years, I am more pessimistic as you may have gotten.

It's been long predicted (by the people that do objective analysis) that once we start to feel the problems, it maybe too late.

First, 20 years of further warming is always inevitable, even if emissions suddenly stopped (which they obviously won't); so, even if we stopped now it would get worse for 20 years before stabilizing.

Second, actually "stopping" actually means stopping: no net emissions from mankind. A lot of journalists put the goal posts at stopping growth in emissions as what we need to do, and so write articles about not growing emissions "as much as expected" as some sort of victory and that with all the solar and wind and stuff we're getting close to zero growth (leading the reader to believe that's the goal, if we're getting close to it in an optimistic sense and the article doesn't mention any other metric).

However, all human caused net emission adds carbon to the atmosphere and increases warming. To actually stop warming we need to get net emissions to zero.

The size of this task is absolutely massive.

Therefore, all honest analysis I have seen by people (whatever their background) who have "gone deep" into the issue and clearly understand the subject matter and make coherent arguments, have all, over decades, come to the conclusion that business as usual until the affects are clearly felt, is basically too late. If we started feeling the affects and we were already down to 5% current levels of emissions, that would be one thing, but if we haven't even reversed growth in emissions, we are so far from the target it's simply not fathomable such a large change could happen in a decade or two.

These large infrastructure changes are 50 to 100 year time scales ... so, had we started in the 70s in a serious way we'd be probably net zero emissions by now, and had we started "more seriously" in the 90s, we'd be feeling some of the affects as we currently are, but less, and we'd be "on our way" to avoiding total catastrophe.

Not only are we now basically "screwed", as the infrastructure changes we need simply can't happen over night, but, an easy corollary of this prediction is that once we start feeling the affects, it disrupts economic systems taking away capital and "social energy" that could otherwise be directed towards the problem. Supply chains, financial systems, political tensions, all become disrupted, leading to a less stable world, less able to deal with the underlying problem.

An easy example is trains. A very large portion of transport (car, truck and plane) can be moved onto trains and trams, running on electricity, which, even powered by fossil fuels, is still far more energy efficient and can be burned far cleaner (it's much easier to control particle and other emissions from a power plant than millions of cars).

In terms of blank-page engineering, it's really easy to design an efficient train-tram-metro transportation based system that can displace a significant amount of emissions, even if still powered by fossil!

But it's a 2 birds with 1 stone situation, because transitioning an electric train based system powered by fossil fuels to being powered by sustainable electricity requires no changes to the transportation system. So, emissions for the transport are already lower, and it's easy to transition the system to low emissions by simply adding low-emissions electricity to the grid.

However, if you take such a blank-page engineering design and then overlay it on the current transport system and work out the costs and time to go from one to the other, the values are very large.

Assuming politics is not an issue, that there's "the will", it still involves a decade of simply planning and then multiple decades of building such a system and then a solid decade to transition to using the new system efficiently, for a country like the US (all while needing to maintain the previous system in the interim). Countries with truly robust rail networks have literally 2 centuries of continuous rail development, not only of the rail but also of organizing society in a way that's efficient for rail (many Europeans don't have a car; because they can easily move to places where they don't need a car, because things have been designed over centuries for people without cars), and it's actually ambitious to try to do likewise in a half century, with few technically possible ways of going much faster.

Hence, the electric car! Which still takes a lot of energy to make, needs new infrastructure ... and doesn't solve the truck or plane problem at all (whereas trains can move containers, and high-speed trains can also move people far faster than cars and so realistically compete with plane journeys in terms of time, especially when airports are outside of the city center and boarding times are long and weight restrictions exist and so on, and there's more space on the train, and it's much cheaper, especially if the plane's needed to internalize the real costs of the pollution).

Therefore, if we reach a point where infrastructure cannot be realistically changed, it won't be changed, but if it is not sustainable, neither will it be sustained.

But purely based on those models we're going from on stable state to another right? That's what crossing those tipping points does, even if we stop emmissions, temperature keeps rising. — ChatteringMonkey

There's lot of variations possible, it's not an inevitable process from one point to another.

For instance, a lot of ice melting is driven by black particles from burning fossil fuels. So, if we stopped burning fossil fuels and made sure what we do burn is done super cleanly, then maybe Greenland doesn't melt, antarctic doesn't melt, there's still snow in the arctic in winter.

In other words, ice-free summer arctic ocean may have a lot of snow covering meta-stable states associated with it. For, once we get an ice-free arctic ocean summer ... there's no more summer arctic ocean ice to melt, so that particular feedback process stops.

The arctic is currently in a climate regime transition to an summer-ocean-ice-free state, but this does not inevitably trigger all the other tipping points possible (this has little to do with the Amazon right now). Meta-stable transition is one subsystem at a time; some subsystems maybe strongly or weakly coupled, and we don't really know, and it could even be going from one climate subsystem transition to the next always requires human help of more emissions.

For example, another big tipping point would be shutting down the thermohaline current, which has been proven to be slowing, but, as far as I know, still seems unlikely in more scenarios ... but not impossible. The process that drives slowing down this current is fresh water melting into the arctic (that is not salty and so doesn't do the haline part of the process). So, the more we slow down ice melt, the less likely we are to hit this tipping point (which maybe difficult to trigger anyways, and really needs a "good go" at it to have a good chance).

Turning the Amazon into a carbon source rather than carbon sink (bad for the climate for obvious reasons), seems more to do with just normal capitalism driven deforestation, and not a climate change effect (such as snow melting at the poles; though, climate change doesn't help the Amazon). Snow-less ecosystems in the tropics could be not so affected by climate change, if we stopped destroying them directly and severely weakening them: as it stands, our direct destruction of these ecosystems in conjunction with a bit of climate change can tip them into transitioning to savanna type ecosystems.

In short, currently, we are going towards a snow-less summer arctic ocean; changes in ocean snow cover is the most rapid systems change (as warm water melts ice quickly). As far as I know, climate change could be more-or-less stabilized around this new meta-stable state (if we did massive, global action now). Other tipping points are not "inevitably" triggered by a ice-free arctic ocean summer.

There's also geo-engineering. Maybe with human intervention, we could "seed back" arctic winter ice that then survives summer. However, all such schemes only make sense if we actually stop the cause of more warming, otherwise it's a massive cost that doesn't actually solve anything (adds a tiny bit of delay, but not really, as more warming will eventually melt that "human caused ice" anyways; it's only useful if more warming actually stops, and "nudging" things back towards more ice therefore long term trend setting, not the fashion of the week).

On-land ice melt is a lot longer process, and preventing Greenland and the Antarctic from significant melting, would be a big difference. We know from the geologic record that glaciers can experience catastrophic melting, but it's not known the exact details; so again, less heating, less likely we are to trigger such events (even if it's already "likely", there's always a chance that action in combination of the luck of natural cycles still achieves a less likely result; however, especially with the antarctic, it's unlikely we could actually melt it all, only some parts that actually sit below the water line are at good chance of melting, and so more heating can make a big difference of what actually melts, and how fast; likewise for Greenland, if we stopped black particles and more heating, maybe it's melt rate stabilizes).

Land-ice, the shear volume of the ocean and time to heat it up, ecosystems that have not yet been completely destroyed for cattle and palm oil, etc. are all buffers in the system that have longer response times than ocean-ice.

The sooner we arrest green-house emissions, the less likely we are to saturate these buffers, the more time we have to try to get carbon out of the atmosphere and promote ice forming and staying over winter (in a slow and stable way, instead of some last-ditch effort fast and reckless way such as pumping reflecting aerosols into the stratosphere), and the more stable our ecosystems are throughout the changes, meaning less likely wars and so on will intervene to make things even more chaotic.

However, this is no longer the 90s. Severely problematic ocean rise is going to happen, severe climate disruptions are already happening and will get worse, crop failures, large scale famines. We do, however, currently have a choice of "how bad". "Survival" could mean 100 000 people in small communities around the poles, or, something more-or-less similar to our current civilization (based on solar energy, distributed, very different, but something we can "imagine" as "pretty good transformation" of current lifestyles around the world) and a world with more-or-less the current ecosystems (rather than basically the apocalypse with a totally unrecognizable world for those 100 000 survivors).

Well, it's never a guarantee, less fast you're going the more likely to survive.

However, in this analogy, the height is not yet guaranteed to be fatal. Right now it's comparable to just likely breaking a bone, nothing too "serious" (if we did everything we could do engineering wise to stop green house emissions, stop burning the Aamazon etc.).

However, although catastrophe is already "baked in", as I've mentioned by any standard of "catastrophe", there's really big variations. There's also natural variations that can work in our favour or not.

However, the biggest thing is that implementing the best sustainable system we can, sooner rather than later, stabilizes global society, making nuclear wars and AI warfare less likely.

For instance, converting all our mono-crop land to forest gardens would increase food yield but also be far more resilient, as trees are not only more resilient to droughts but protect the soil with shade and transpire more water into the atmosphere (making rain more likely) (and of course diverse plants are less risk than a single plant; basic "risk management" economists happily apply to investing ... but somehow a single plant species, and not only a single species but genetic copies, on huge areas is "economic").

However, it takes some decades to grow trees, decades we currently have. So, if we did that, we'd still have a lot of disruptions, but things would probably be "ok" (of course, there's still risk of the tipping points being severe anyways, but it's no a guarantee, so lowering the risk is still the coherent choice).

If forest gardens are so efficient, why don't we currently do so to make money?

Because they are efficient at making food in terms of energy input, but are not profitable in terms of labour input (low skilled labour to pick fruit from mono-crop orchards is high ... so imagine the cost of high skilled labour to manage a little ecosystems). Forest gardens do not "drive profits", through unsustainable extraction of soil wealth (it is more profitable to run machines over mono-crops while degrading the land ... then just move to other land using those profits, than make a sustainable system). However, if one says "hmm, well, maybe if we want a sustainable system we don't actually want unsustainable mono-crop plantations, with unsustainable mineral and fossil inputs (something like 9 calories of fossil energy are required to grow 1 calorie of food in the current system)", then the analysis changes, and highly skilled labour is not "profitable" but is super energy efficient, if those people happen to live there and like living in a forest garden and doing high skilled work over long periods of time because it's their home and source of food. Such people would still need energy of course, but solar technology solves that.

This is the sort of system that is "efficient", but it basically means ending capitalism as is currently practiced, in which the purpose is the running of personal vehicles.

But what are you actually saying about what the models predict? — ChatteringMonkey

Well, numerical models of complex systems don't really make "predictions" in the usual scientific sense (such as predicting the position of a star behind the sun during an eclipse is a "prediction", falsefying the theory if it doesn't happen).

Numerical models of complex systems basically inform us about risk.

For instance, that the earth will warm if we emit green house gases, is a prediction, made over hundred and twenty years ago using pretty basic analytical (in the math sense of on paper solutions) methods, following experiments on gases to understand their basic atmospheric properties.

However, having zero clue how this would impact the earth's ecological system, the discover of the global warming theory concluded this warming would actually be a good thing, helping pants grow and boost agriculture.

Had the globe not actually warmed, then this would have refuted the theory.

Numerical models come in to inform risk, but, even then, they are viewed as inferior to extrapolation from retrospective geological data. As soon as there is retrospective data, for instance data about galaxy types and sizes, the modelers can't be trusted anyways, as they obviously tweak their models to show what we see.

In other words, the models of relevance are simply basic extrapolation of climate history.

Where numerical models come in is informing more detailed risk analysis. For instance, there's no geological data on how past climate change affects city infrastructure, because cities didn't exist back then, so, you can (and people do) build models to try to evaluate infrastructure risks (like the recent damn and levy busting in Germany).

However, we don't actually need these models to know the risks are ridiculously high and we shouldn't change the climate. The basic thing is climate sensitivity, which we already know because of the ice ages: that very subtle changes caused by very slowly changing orbital characteristics (with basically no material being added or taken away from the earths surface bio-physical systems) can bring and take away massive glaciers kilometres thick over a significant area of the globe.

So, if slow and subtle orbital changes can cause such a big change, the risk that a really massive and sudden change (adding billions of tons of material to the earth's surface processes, every year! for over a century!!!) is simply extreme madness.

The non conservative models show stable states and tipping points, the holocene stable state we are leaving, and a new one we're heading to, several degrees higher (the anthropocene stable state let's say)? — ChatteringMonkey

Yes, basically this is correct. The earth has two meta-stable climate regimes, climatologists call the "hot-box" and the "cold-box". The cold box has ice at both polls and wild swings in ice-cover due to orbital changes. The "hot box" doesn't have ice at both polls and is much hotter. This is driven by the physics of snow, that it melts quickly passed a threshold (the aptly names melting point); i.e. the difference between rain and snow can be a few degrees, not some linear proportional change, such as at 20 C we get 90% rain and 10% now, at 0% we get a 50-50 mix, and then at -20 C we get 90% snow and 10% rain.

If there was land at both polls, we'd be essentially locked into a cold box state, very difficult to break out of.

If there were free oceans at both polls, we'd be for sure in a hot box state.

With land at one poll, and a constrained ocean surrounded by land at the other poll (making heat exchange with warmer oceans not so efficient), gives us the recent cold-box, but only insofar as an ice cap covers the North poll. It's "pretty stable", lasting millions of years, but it's no where near as stable compared to a situation where land simply covered the whole North poll connecting Canada to Russia.

- Is the implication then not that only reducing greenhouse gas-levels on a large scale, to maybe get back to holocene stable state, would have a tangible effect on climate, because anything less will just end us in the anthropocene stable state anyway? — ChatteringMonkey

If you're going to jump out of a building, it's still better to jump from a lower floor.

Also, for people who think environmental "alarmists" have been saying the crisis is massive for decades ... but it never happens.

An analogy would be if an engineer on the Titanic pointed out the risk of hitting an iceburg in a couple of days to a few days, and people dismissed this as alarmism.

Then, the next day pointed out the same as a big risk tomorrow, and then people not only dismissed this as alarmism but ridiculed it as the exact same alarmism said yesterday and it didn't happen!!

Then with the iceburg literally approaching a day and a few hours later, people laughing at how the prediction didn't come true, as a couple days already passed!

Finally, after the iceburg is hit and the ship is obviously sinking, people say "idiot! we'll just innovate out of this problem; how'd we build the ship in the first place and make it go super fast if not for innovation".

That's pretty much the climate debate since decades.

Recharge rate is not an issue where there is conduction through rock, from a higher temperature energy source. Rock is a good conductor of heat. Any energy you take out of heated rock will immediately be replaced from the higher temperature region adjacent. It's the second law of thermodynamics. Heat always moves from hotter to cooler regions, and passes easily through stone. — counterpunch

This is simply not true. On the scale of literal insulation being a good insulator and a heat pipe being a good heat conductor, rock is closer the insulation side. Energy flows from hot to cold, but it takes time.

Indeed, the reason you need to drill to the depths you're talking about it because the rock is insulating pretty well. If you drill to those depths and extract heat from a small volume, it will indeed recharge pretty fast, but the larger the volume the slower it will recharge.

The volume of rock you need to power something significant (like a continent) is completely massive. To justify the capital equipment of the power station, not to mention the hydrogen production and storage and transport terminals you've been talking about, the amount of power needs to be "worth it".

Which is why, as has posted, many wells fail even in super sweet spot regions such as Geysers that is "the most developed", 15 wells produce 725 MW. An average of 49 MW per well.

That's just not a lot of energy. If heat just "instantly" recharged the rock at 700 C, you wouldn't limit your generation capacity to 49MW per well, you'd just "let her rip" and have nuclear gigawatt power station sized pipes. The reason, once you have a well, you can't just circulate as much water as you want to get as much energy as you want with the rock heat recovering "instantly", is because it's not instant. You're energy extraction must be equal to the recharge rate of the rock volume you're extracting energy from, otherwise the heat source cools to a point you can no longer generate power. Indeed, many geothermal stations end up running at a fraction of their original design capacity, because the recharge calculations were wrong.

The volume of rock will cool as energy is extracted from it, but will only heat up proportional to the surface area below (and to the sides somewhat, but doesn't change the proportionality here).

When you have these sorts of volume to surface area proportionality constraints, the solution is to have a small volume to keep that proportion low; hence stations are in the single or double digit MW range and not the GW range.

Another way to look at it is the heat gradient from the core to the surface. The earth is efficient at trapping all that heat: i.e. the opposite of being efficient at bringing it to the surface; we can make it more efficient by drilling down there and circulating water, but once we do that for a large volume we are constrained again by general heat gradient context of the surrounding rock.

Solar energy does not have this problem, but the energy extraction is a surface area (PV or hot water panels, mirror for solar concentrates, or just windows to heat buildings) and the "recharge" rate is proportional to the surface.

That the energy is spread out over the globe just means it's its own distribution network and we don't need that capital cost.

However, I am not arguing that solar energy will prevent the the climate change catastrophe. I am arguing that it could have, if fossil costs were internalized in the 70s - 80s - 90s, but now it is too late to avoid major tipping points.

The Amazon being a carbon source now, instead of a carbon sink, is a major such tipping points (I remember being discussed literally decades ago as a "oh shit moment" we should try to avoid). Likewise, that temperature records have been recently broken by several degrees, is also evidence of the climate breaking out of the meta-stable Holocene epoch, but the entire Quaternary geologic period, and is currently in an unstable region that will move rapidly towards a new metastable point several degrees hotter than present.

The IPPC models are wrong, on the conservative side, but it was known that they were wrong on the conservative side. The "surprise" is only that the wishful thinking that making conservative models provides a sense of security, turns out to be completely stupid.

However, decades ago to the present some climate modelers worked on realistic models (sometimes the same modelers that work on IPPC models too, and pointed out the things missing that make them conservative), which have always been terrifying in terms of the risk indication (numerical models of complex systems and things that haven't happened yet, only inform risk, never actually predict what will happen).

So, I'm not arguing solar energy can now arrest or reverse the climate crisis, only that it could have easily do so in an economically feasible way if the costs of fossil were internalized (whereas your magma technology could not have done likewise), and, even today, a massive proliferation of solar technology (and adapting society to use solar energy efficiently) would mitigate the crisis, but that is a political problem that is less and less feasible as the world is disrupted more and more by climate change and derivative affects.

So yes, billions of people are likely to perish, and it is definitely murder by the West in both a collective sense of apathy and specific sense on the part of the denialist industry, but that is not a "solution" proposed by us environmentalists pointing it out, it's just largely inevitable at this point.

Certainly, if you could prove magma energy to work, or even be "worth a shot", some billions should be spent finding that out and then a few 10s of trillion building your system if you turn out to be right.

Likewise, some billions should be spent on solar energy to discover the same, and some 10s of trillions spent converting the world to solar (in both installation of solar energy, and converting infrastructure to efficiently use it, with more local production using local energy, removing the large energy costs of both transport and large transport infrastructure).

Neither of these scenarios are happening, and spending trillions on bailing out the banks (i.e. corruption) from the consequences of their own corruption, in combination with the costs of more bailouts of the system in general due to the pandemic, and costs bailing out the system due to the affects of climate change, will likely lead to the kinds of economic dislocations that make large scale global investments no longer possible.

But the reason no alternative to fossil is being developed in a serious way (a way that would actually reverse carbon emissions) is political, not technological nor economic (we have the technology, and, as the world is discovering, eating the costs of climate change head on is not "economic bravery and realism" but complete idiocy).

As a note, water is an excellent mover of heat via convection, and if heat conduction to rock was instant as you say, then it would efficiently re-heat any hot water that's down there.

You can also look at the physics and economics of heat storage for power. They exist (such as for solar thermal energy), but for relatively short periods of time, because the material volumes required are simply massive. You'll also note that things like molten salt are used that efficiently transfer heat by convection, and if you work out just having a big cube of rock heated from below, it's not an efficient system (which would be analogous to having a a large cube of rock below the surface heated from further below that).

As an aside, the solution to the intermittence of solar energy is to simply match energy consumption to the energy availability as much as possible, which brings the problem down to a manageable level.

There really isn't though, and herein lies the point. We'd have to cover an area of 225,000 square miles with solar panels to meet current global energy demand. Sunlight is spread over a large area, and we cannot physically gather energy from the entire surface of the earth. But we could extract enough magma energy to meet and exceed current global energy demand because magma is a concentrated, high grade source of clean energy, and there's a lot of it. — counterpunch

You keep repeating this number as if it's some sort of problem for solar energy.

Your 225 000 square miles is about 580 000 square kilometres.

Surface area of earth is 510 000 000 square kilometres.

Assuming your value is correct, it is not really a problem; it is a thousand times less than the surface of the earth. We occupy (and degrade) far more land with mono-crop agriculture than we would need with solar energy.

Solar energy devices can be placed on roofs, over roads (or replace roads that we no longer need), placed over plants that require shade, and other duel use purposes, and so the "land cost" can be close to zero in this regard.

Furthermore, by reducing and reversing large scale infrastructure (that not only occupies a lot of land in itself, such as those 20 lane highways, but also divides the ecosystem making it less efficient), would actually be a net-positive in terms of land bio efficiency (the ecosystems being the primary value of land).

Whether you are right, (you are not right) or wrong - we are close to an impasse of direct and repeated contradiction. I can't explain why again, because I tried twice. Then again, they say third time's a charm. — counterpunch

Do some calculations then, of the volume of rock/magma you need at 700 C to power the world.

I can assure you it's a huge volume of rock, and, once it's cooled (the energy extracted from it) it will recharge very slowly, either through the heat diffusion from below or the slow recharge of magma chambers. The volcanoes we have aren't taps that can be opened to release indefinite magma flows.

This the basic problem of all sources of geothermal energy.

There are "sweet spots" where the recharge rate is pretty good, like iceland, but it is no where good enough to power all of the UK, not to mention Europe.

Drilling 10,000 m deep geothermal wells
15 September 2010 — counterpunch

I have been reading these sorts of press releases for over 20 years.

"Moon landing" and "we just need to technology to harvest it".

People have even literally made press releases of harvesting the moon's orbital energy, and of course mining it for stuff ... if we only had the technology.

There's actually plenty of energy sources "we really have enough of": Quasars, stars in general, zero point energy.

The point of these press releases is to get some grants. Scientists are always like "peer review, evidence, skepticism" ... except when it comes to grant applications and the press releases that provide plausible reasoning (on part with any creationist) for spending public money on their project.

Meanwhile, solar energy, the energy source humanity has mostly used for it's entire history (to grow crops, trees, grow plankton for fish, and also heat most buildings most of the year), and has been pointed to as the obvious better source of energy than fossil with easily demonstrated calculations that don't change, has proven itself cost-effective (even against fossil fuels with subsidies and basically no "polluter pays" principles), and it wouldn't be all that complicated to replace fossil with solar energy on a global scale (indeed, the savings would be enormous, as all the various costs of the pollution are very real and paid somewhere, sometime, by somebody; indeed, all of us), not "if only we had the technology to harvest it"; we have the technology now.

The problem is not now, nor has ever been, a technological one. Had the "polluter pays" principle as has been referring to, been implemented; our climate change problem would not exist, and, by definition, it would not have cost us any money (as what the polluter is paying are real costs to the economy; so, making the polluter pay, by definition, doesn't harm the economy: just moves it in a more efficient direction of technologies with low real-costs, rather than simply low production production costs).

What processes? In what way optimal? I also said previously, geothermal refers to a great many technologies. You've taken a problem with one form of geothermal and applied it incorrectly to the technology I propose, so that's just wrong. — counterpunch

The problems I describe are inherent to the geothermal energy source, they apply to all implementations of geothermal energy.

For instance, all solar energy technologies won't work in a dark cave, for reasons to do with the characteristics of solar energy source, not the technology.

Petroleum is a refined product. — counterpunch

Really?

Petroleum, also called crude oil, is a fossil fuel. Like coal and natural gas, petroleum was formed from the remains of ancient marine organisms, such as plants, algae, and bacteria. — literally the first search engine result for the word 'petroleum'

All these processes imply energy costs. These are physical facts, but are not valid criticisms against hydrogen; if fossil fuels are even less efficient by the same measure. — counterpunch

Yes, my point is that petroleum pays that energy cost. So, if it is "on hand" (such as high quality, close to the surface, oil fields), then it easily pays the energy cost of it's transport.

Hydrogen is never "on hand" in a similar way, and so the situation is no analogous.

Not feasible, why? You're not suggesting are you, that the energy is not there? There is an unimaginably massive amount of energy in the earth's interior. That so, it's a matter of the right technological approach to extracting that energy; and I agree that existing technological approaches are sub-optimal. — counterpunch

It's not about "sub optimal", it's about needing to drill a lot of pipe, and then cooling that volume of rock, which doesn't recharge at the same rate of depletion, requiring more drilling.

These processes are pretty close to optimal. There are basic physical limits to the efficiency of cleaving and lifting rock out of the ground, of heat engines. There's not some "drilling breakthrough" anyone is proposing to happen ... except for Elon Musk but that was walked back to "it's cheaper to drill smaller diameters! so we'll do that".

You mean, like the transport infrastructure for coal, oil and gas? We manage to get that from A to B somehow, and I explained how I intend to distribute magma energy in the previous post. I said: — counterpunch

We manage to get that from A to B by burning a lot of coal, oil and gas in both building up massive infrastructures and also to run them.

Why make the same point again? — counterpunch

Your point of shipping around petroleum (using petroleum) is not analogous to shipping around hydrogen.

First, technically, hydrogen is a lot more challenging (need to compress and freeze it, and much more difficult to store even compared other gases).

More importantly, hydrogen is not a cheap source of energy like petroleum (insofar as it's still in easy accessible locations in forms easy to process). Petroleum pays the energy cost itself to transport it as well as build the infrastructure. If you have a bunch of petroleum, you can always "get it somewhere" on the globe to sell it (the only wrinkle is if plenty other people have plenty petroleum too, so the margins are thin; solution: promote an insanely inefficient economy that wastes energy wantonly and also make both implicit and explicit cartels to control the price; both to extract profit sometimes with high prices as well as disrupt competing industries with super low prices sometimes).

Hydrogen needs to be made, which costs energy, as it's not a source, and that energy cost and the cost of infrastructure can easily exceed the costs of other sources of energy that are available at the location you want to sell in (like the sun shining there, or the wind blowing there, and just way cheaper than buying magma-to-hydrogen energy ). Hydrogen doesn't "pay" the energy cost to make and move it. Why your system doesn't exist, but solar and wind systems do; but they are most efficient locally, as, if you don't need to move energy, there's only an energy cost to doing so with no benefit (distributed system also has less, or no, systemic failure points, could be robust against Carington events, etc. etc.).

I'm looking to drill through rock at temperatures of 700'C - close to magma chambers and subduction zones, line the bore holes with pipes and pump water through - producing contained superheated steam. The volume and temperature of the rock suggests there would be no recharge rate issue. — counterpunch

700 C rock isn't all that much energy; it sounds more impressive than it is. Heat capacity of rock isn't so high, and if we're talking super heated steam at 400 C, then there's only 300 C difference to work with.

To power a whole major country we're talking massive amount of rock, that costs money to put pipes through. If the heat extracted is equal to the recharge rate, no problem. However, even in incredibly convenient places for this technology, like iceland, the idea of powering a substantial part of Europe is just not remotely feasible.

Drilling pipe and circulating water is simply not all that hard, if this massive energy source was there, we'd be tapping it on a significant, and not niche, scale.

It's basic thermodynamics, very well understood, extremely low room for improvement of our heat engines (as you mention, steam is still a pretty solid choice of working fluid ... which is what was used at the very beginning of the aptly called steam age). This isn't something like nuclear fusion where we can always spectacular a breakthrough is possible.

Compared to our advancements in computing, heat engines have basically not advanced in a hundred years.

I plan to convert electrical energy into liquified hydrogen fuel for transport. Liquified hydrogen gas contains 2.5 times the energy of petroleum per kilo - and we ship petroleum around the world. — counterpunch

The problem this plan is:
- hydrogen is so small it seeps through materials, causing micro cracks; this isn't a problem if you need hydrogen and just a) tolerate leakage since the amount isn't a danger nor relevant economic loss b) replace the equipment when you need to, but is a problem if you want to build out a massive complex infrastructure of tanks, pipes, valves, gauges, etc. with high efficiency and low maintenance and few explosions.
- Even with the technical challenges resolved, the infrastructure involved is so massive that it would take decades to actually build.
- The only point of hydrogen infrastructure is to power personal vehicles and trucks ... but trains exist and can be built and powered by electricity far cheaper. I.e. even if it was doable, the basic justification doesn't exist, outside some niche applications that have no relevant to climate change.

It's difficult to generalise about geothermal energy because every geothermal energy source has different characteristics. Current extraction techniques are sub-optimal. The particular design, I've described here many times - was created with these problems in mind. There are over 500 volcanoes in the Pacific Ring of Fire alone, and 1500 globally, plus subduction zones - where large volumes of rock heated to very high temperatures, are within reach of modern drilling technologies. — counterpunch

Volcanoes are impressive as they release stored energy in a short amount of time. To power anything significant, we're talking about a massive continuous volcanic eruption; the earth doesn't recharge the magma chambers fast enough. Magma moves pretty slowly, significant pressure can be stored up over time, but release that pressure and it doesn't just flow out like a tap. The exceptions of super active volcanoes, are not impressive but really small, not regular Mount Saint Helen eruptions (which is impressive in terms of energy).

Solar energy is weak and diffuse; it must be gathered from a large area and concentrated. An area of 225,000 square miles would need to be covered to meet current global energy demand from solar. Then, the same transport problem arises. How do you get that energy to where it is needed? Solar energy must be stored, for when the sun doesn't shine, which is around half the time. All sorts of toxic metals are used in production, to make solar panels, and after 25 years, solar needs replacing at similar cost, plus the cost of recycling. — counterpunch

Incorrect. Geothermal has a transport problem because the "sweet spots" where it's economic are concentrated in very few locations (such as the 500 active volcanoes you mention), so, the energy is far from where people live and you'd need a massive and costly transport infrastructure even if the energy was there (which it isn't).

Solar, on the other hand, is diffuse but not in a bad way, it lands where people live.

Imagine you had the following:
- garden (powered by sunlight)
- energy (powered by sunlight)
- wood or bamboo construction material (powered by sunlight)
- ceramics (powered by sunlight)
- basic tool and machine shop, both in hour home and short distance in the community (powered by sunlight)
- the ability to recycle metals (powered by sunlight)

Then, ask yourself how much personal transport you would need.

Then ask yourself how much high volume transport infrastructure you would need. Certainly some inputs and trade are still needed for this local economic system to work ... but 10, 20, even 1 lane highways? Would they be needed?

If you actually calculate out how much energy is required to run this techno-peasant system, it's a small fraction of what is anyways required to grow food and materials. We grow food and materials (we mostly waste) in this way now, and with a lot of transport, mono-crop and rotting inefficiencies (with lot's of good land occupied by suburban sprawl accomplishing noting food wise), so, basically by definition, if you matched people to where food is currently grown, then matched solar technology (mainly solar thermal technology is needed in this system) to the enclosure of inefficiencies in the current system (roads, mono-crops, suburbia), etc. problem solved.

People can easily live in this semi-autonomous way right now, growing most of their food and making most of their capital equipment themselves, imagine if a large system to make it easy and efficient was in place? (a network of drones delivering materials and small things that do need a factory (like computer chips), local blacksmiths, and elevated bike and small vehicle paths connecting everywhere, and the Uber of helicopters if you need to go somewhere quickly, like to a hospital). Infrastructure that still enables high mobility and trade of dense quality (metals that can be recycled, "clean-room" electronics, medicines, machine tooling, and, of course, spice) could be insanely light compared to today's infrastructure, if bulky things (like food, wood, other plant fibers, and clay) are derived locally, and energy input (the sun) also derived locally.

If you've ever encountered this homesteading life, it's actually pretty lazy compared to most jobs in the capitalist system (especially low-paying jobs), and far more fulfilling. The homesteaders that work hard is because they make a point to do even more for themselves than is economically efficient in their system (to make a political point that it is possible to do it locally, leading by example, even if, right now, it would take less effort to trade for it), but even these hard working hippies would work a lot less hard if they had a network of craft-people and a light infrastructure of the kind I describe (to enable ethical and sustainable trade).

Why doesn't this happen if it's so lazy? Lot's of poor people try, but they can't buy the land necessary.

Why is land expensive? Because the private control of land is the foundation of capitalism. Had land remained a communal resource, where, of course, you just put a poor person in a "cottage" and at least they'll make enough food for themselves, maybe produce a soldier or two.

We could easily produce sufficient energy from solar power and solar generation plants are being built, but probably not fast enough. Although it’s probably to late anyway, as the tipping points are already being triggered. Even if we do manage to reduce emissions significantly, the damage is already sufficient for civilisation collapse, as we have discussed before. — Punshhh

We definitely agree on this.

Of course, from a purely engineering point of view, things could be radically changed and the result (still a pretty big catastrophe by any standard) still a lot better than otherwise.

However, the environmental movement of the "large scale" essentially doesn't exist anymore. The denialist industry won with the moral delialism in the exterior, as I explain at some length in my post above, but this geothermal debate is the denialism industry winning from within the climate movement

Promoting "niche" energy sources that have no global relevance consumes research, development and installation capital, while solving nothing. Environmentalists that don't bother with basic engineering principles, then spend time arguing about which of the irrelevant nice ideas (always in the future) are best, and declaring "small victories" along the way that are actually counter productive (and generate subsidies for the oil industry who own and promote these "clean" niches; subsidies that finance more denialism), while everyone else sees that "renewable energy" doesn't really work (doesn't actually displace fossil on a large scale).

It is also not just a question of energy source, but of organizing society to use those energy sources efficiently. Trying to keep a system (such as highways and personal vehicles) going that doesn't even use fossil fuels efficiently (but was invented precisely because fossil fuels starts in a super abundance and needs to be wasted on a large scale to profit), is just pure intellectual insanity.

Yet, decades after the "biofuels" revolution proved to be a total lure (which was obvious at the time to even the most cursory scrutiny), what's all the rage? Electric cars!!

On the question of "threat level".

Although I would agree climate change, in itself, isn't an existential threat to humans, it is through interaction with nuclear war systems and, now, also killer AI systems (assuming they get good enough that, if set to "kill all enemies" (if friend and enemy is even a stable definition to these machines through time), and then those people who pressed that button die, they would simply track down and kill everyone using the most creative, ingenious, and patient means possible, essentially guaranteed to succeed against dispersed populations regressing in technological capacity).

Magma energy is one potential, and I think promising source of high grade clean energy, in theory, more than adequate to replace fossil fuels. — counterpunch

Unlike , I do have truck with your Magma energy proposal.

There's a basic physical problem called the "recharge" rate, which reduces to simple geometry. To extract energy efficiently from rock, we don't dig down and then install a big metal plate as a single surface heat exchanger. Rather, we dig a bunch of tubes over a volume or then use natural occurring tubes of water in fissures and cracks that's is already down there.

Point is, this volume of rock will only heat back up as if it had a big surface plate heat exchanger below it. In terms of "renewable" it's this recharge rate below the volume of rock that matters, which is very low per square meter. The earth is efficient at trapping heat, that's why it's hot down there, but it doesn't produce much heat. This is the general problem of geothermal energy.

Now, exceptions like volcanoes, where energy gets out more efficiently and look more impressive, still have the basic problem of being recharged in energy and pressure overtime. In addition, volcanoes are in inconvenient locations, so even if the recharge rate was better than elsewhere, there's a large added cost of transporting the energy.

For instance, Iceland is a place where you can get a lot of geothermal energy, and they do make a lot pretty cheaply; so much that they have a big aluminum industry as processing aluminium takes a lot of electricity. However, they don't have so much that they could power all of Europe.

In general, Geothermal is, along with tidal, bio-energy, hydro, an energy source that is not globally applicable, there's just some impressive "sweet spots" (some bays, big forests, large rivers, Iceland). Those sweet spots aren't so great that you could transport energy all over the globe.

The globally applicable renewable energy source is the sun, with it's first derivative wind power (2% of sun energy is converted to wind energy ... but even then it's still localized in a "sweet spot" of higher latitudes, due to the Coriolis affect, and so, we only think of it as "on par" with solar energy because there's a lot of rich countries North, where there's lot's of clouds and good wind; and rich countries determine research and investment dollars). Point is, "recharge" rate of the sun is way higher than geothermal and there's no surface area to volume problem.

Not strange at all. The "I told you so" aspect of it refutes the open conspiracy of ignorance and forgiveness. I think it's important for future generation to know we were lying sacks of shit when we pretended that we didn't know better. And when we pretended we were doing it "all for the children" (when we were really doing it for our own selfish selves, that next man-toy, vacation, McMansion, etc.). — James Riley

20 years ago, leading up to the "Kyoto Protocol" I would say there was actually more concern and less denialism then there is now.

I would say "more concern" because there was simply less "big issues" back in the 90s to compete, such as the "big existential" of terrorism, new cold war, financial collapse, China, Trump, of course coronavirus today, and, ironically, weather catastrophes I would argue also take up this discursive concern space (the awareness climate change is a problem may increase, but the actual time and energy spent on climate change is still displaced by discussing the catastrophe in question, be it hurricane or wildfires or drought, and of course money on the symptom and not the cause).

The denialism industry back then was less robust than it is now. Back in the 90s, denialists still at least pretended to be "doing science", and they then they lost the scientific debate. "Pretending to do science" at least focuses on what the scientific issues are and people can decide what case is more credible. Likewise, "science based denialism" of the 90s still implicitly accepted the basic framework that if there was a problem, we'd have a moral onus to do something about it ... just, there isn't a problem. Since then, denialism has shifted to what I would call "moral denialism" which is far more effective. Moral denialism simply refutes, one way or another, the basic premise that "we should do something", even if there is a problem, which there isn't (and no moral onus to back that up, one has a right to believe anything) ... but even if there was a problem, we shouldn't do anything about it. True believers are beyond the reach of critical and factual debate, and, more importantly, these doctrines tip people in the middle towards apathy. I.e. it both fuels an insane cult while creating a powerful apologetics for the lazy moderates (who would otherwise want something to be done, maybe over a long period of time with little personal cost, but at least something that would actually work; such as had the movement in the 90s achieved something significant, instead of the weakly worded "suggestion" of the Kyoto protocol).

For instance, when I started to get environmentally aware and talk about issues, my father's extended family and acquaintances etc., all left or far left on social issues, would always joke "I'll be dead by then!" and then laugh about it, whenever the subject of climate change was brought up, by me or anyone. The moral denialism of moderates, fueled by a total misunderstanding of what exponential rise in fossil consumption means and the risks of that, was already germinating.

Denialists in the 90s at least pretended to be working in a sane intellectual framework, just claiming "the facts" aren't in yet (taking advantage of the general public's lack of risk analysis skills, in an otherwise coherent debate where arguing on the facts did move people's opinions).

The 90s itself, was an echo of the 70s, where the same environmentalism debate also occurred, due to the oil shocks and discovering how poisonous pesticides and the like are.

Anyways, just my perspective supporting your basic point that we did know, did nothing, and future generations will view the Westerners that caused this as worse than the Nazi's (who only tried to illegitimate a few group in one species, in a mad lust for power and greed, and not destroy most species, in a mad lust for power and greed).

Weather catastrophes are leading people, who live through them, to regret the inaction of the last 40 years, but I think we are definitely in the "too little too late" phase and the large scale catastrophe is now "baked in". Though this was obvious to me 15 years ago (after the "environmental movement" declared biofuels a success), and, looking at the computer models that were still pretty good back then for decision making purposes, looked at where on the globe would become uncomfortably hot and where would stay ok (both in terms of environment and political stability) for a long time. I couldn't afford to move to New Zealand, so I moved to Northern Europe. If you're going to be a climate refugee, I highly recommend doing so at least a decade in advance. What does my old network say now: "it's really hot".

Although I agree with @Protagoras about the many trolls and nasty people out there, especially as you invite other private avenues of communication, and, online, that can be difficult to deal with, for the part of this forum, I have not generally observed much problem with emotion or vulnerability. It seems pretty well accepted round these parts.

It is only if you stake a philosophical claim of some sort here, that you should expect criticism and scrutiny. Purely friendly messages that don't really argue a philosophical point, are generally friendly received with friendly advise from different points of view, as already apparent in this thread.

My own friendly advice, having experienced when I was younger an analogous sense of disconnection from the people immediately around me (due to my longing for coherent principles, actions and real justice), is that connection with other people can, by definition, only really happen as part of a collective project (humans are a political animal, as Aristotle almost gets right).

Without some genuinely justified goal, "connections" in the modern world are the mere acting out of what people think are genuine connection (informed by mostly by movies). For instance, "bros" may act out what they perceive to be the bonds of brotherhood in a world war 2 platoon, fighting the evil Nazis (subconsciously, but more often than not with overt analogous symbolism and language of justice and missions and so on: see startup culture for this phenomenon on hyper-drive; or, more ironic still, acting out the bonds of brotherhood "gansta's" in sidelined communities create to deal with, or then a response to, systemic oppression propped up by the "bro" culture that mirrors them through the commodification and glorification of the ersatz sense of purpose of at least obeying no rules of an unjustified society: the dignity, ephemeral perhaps but arguably better than nothing, of being an autonomous moral agent in unjust circumstance).

The difference of course (and I think accurately described by the post-modernists, even if their proposed "cures" are worse in my view), is that a WWII platoon had genuine connection, a genuine mission, a genuine sense of mission (as much on the Nazi side as the allies!), and clear moral principle held in common, and an objective basis for that collective project. World War II veterans (on the winning side) had a life long feeling of accomplishment and bonds, despite trauma and loss that went with it, due to the, if not valid, commonly believed and justified goal. Take the veterans of not merely a losing side (where losing is shame enough; such as the Japanese), or then a side that lost (and could normally deal with that, such as World War I) but turns out the supposed objective basis of the cause evaporates (concentration camps, mass murders, etc. which most German soldiers on most front lines didn't know about, or then were in denial about, very solidly insofar as a sophisticated propaganda apparatus supported both the denial and the justifications of the atrocities if they were happening ... which they weren't, but if they were, well, only Jews, retards, and other undesirables). Likewise, the war in Vietnam, contemporary Iraq and Afghanistan; the experience of veterans is extremely sensitive to the perception of real justice of the cause.

What we can conclude of such contemplation -- and, even if they seem extreme, war is the most banal of all human pursuits and the most universal -- is that the mere experience of "close collaboration", "connection" in itself, cannot be divorced from the justification of the common goal. If we doubt later the purpose, the perception of the "bond" with collaborators is clearly impacted.

All this to say, clearly the purpose of collaboration must logically precede the search and construction of bonds of collaboration.

Joining a just war may indeed bring a lifetime sentiment of deep connection, purpose and accomplishment (even if one loses the war but the sense of justification is preserved!), however, the mere existence of such a psychological phenomena we may see play out in others cannot justify joining any war for any arbitrary cause. In this second case, it is clearly simply the theater representation of the first justified case; similar language and gestures may be used, and similar experiences encountered, but clearly it is not the same to kill for a just cause compared to some randomly selected cause; neither in the experience as a whole, nor the future reflections upon that experience. In other words, going to war for "the experience", regardless of the justification for the war, is a bad idea. Likewise, joining a startup for "the experience", regardless of the justification for the startup, is a bad idea. And so on and so forth until we have concluded joining any group at all, regardless of the justification for the group, is a bad idea.

What we are left with is the simple obvious questions in their simple and obvious order: What ends are justified? What ways of achieving these ends are justified? Who is worthwhile to cooperate with to achieve these ends? Where are these people? How do I find them? How do I know that they are who I think they are?

Any mistake in this chain of clear, simple and obvious questions: spells disaster, hardship, suffering, if not for oneself, then others.

lol But he didn't, did he? Is that your "evidence"? — Apollodorus

I said he's capable.

The evidence is his erratic, irrational, obvious poor grasp of new concepts, and morally void behavior.

I don't understand your scepticism. I cited an article that summarises the analysis of "a joint exercise between the WHO and the Chinese health commission. In all, there were 17 Chinese and ten international experts, plus seven other experts and support staff from various agencies."

Doubtless they have "actually studied maths", too. — Banno

Unfortunately, this isn't how science works, it's how politics works.

Can we do any reproducible experiments to verify these claims for ourselves?

Can we examine their statistical model (that includes the cutting edge of bioweapons research and capabilities/intentions of various state and non-state actors with varying degrees of proficiency relative the cutting edge)?

China investigating itself and finding no wrong doing isn't very convincing. The WHO is a small organization with limited resources and politically constrained and isn't going to conclude anything politically disruptive (i.e. is not going to carry out any honest intellectual exercise of analysis and call a media armegedon onto itself / start international tensions (that's not it's job, countries respective intelligence agencies have that job; WHO's job is to reassure the public in this situation, which it has been doing). Civilian experts are, in anycase, simply not useful in this case.)

The best analysis that currently exists has been done by bio-weapons experts (who's job it is to do things like model pandemics, see what statistical signatures a bioweapon may leave compared to what's expected naturally etc.) and such analysis is not available to us. Actual analysis of actual experts on what is the cutting edge (assuming their opponent doesn't outclass them) are state secrets currently.

There was no Trump attack on China though, was there? — Apollodorus

How do we know?

I'm pretty confident Trump is capable of signing a paper authorizing a strategic bioweapons attack and not even remember doing so, if he even understood vaguely the general subject matter at the time.

...which is exactly what the article said. So what is your point? — Banno

My points have been in response to your claim:

There's an oddly one-sided scepticism at work here, were "might have escaped from a lab" becomes an extended narrative about genetic engineering and intentional infection, while the much more likely notion that it crossed from an animal is ignored. — Banno

You say it's "much more likely notion".

I have actually studied maths, and if you bring up the idea of "likely" you need some way to calculate that. If I say I'm more likely to get a pair of kings than a straight flush, that's only true based on some model of how the cards and game work which will allow me to make that calculation.

Months ago I've already explained anyone talking of "likely" in the cause of the pandemic will need to do a lot of work to actually make probabilistic claims.

And, on both sides of the narrative battle: for instance, is it even an "unlikely" event the pandemic would first emerge near a lab? To say so one would actually need to map out where such labs are, where a natural pandemic would likely emerge, consider the fact a disease is more likely to be detected near a place capable of detecting disease etc.

You're the one claiming you know what's a more likely notion, please explain how you know.

The question that needs to be asked is cui bono?

Obviously, in a dictatorship like Communist China, the state has the means to keep an epidemic under control. In liberal democracy, it's a different story.

So it's a calculated risk worth taking. — Apollodorus

It's a possible scenario (and my fellow leftists saying a regime doing concentration camps in the broad daylight of the international press, is too pure and innocent to contemplate such a move, I don't get; I don't think there are moral limitations on China's current policy), but the problem with cui bono on large scale events is that there are many parties that are going to benefit. Amazon has also benefited, as the other tech giants. Various other countries also can be argued to have benefited.

One must also take into consideration that complex global events are not predictable and often people are extremely stupid. Someone may have attacked China not realizing they would be able to contain it and the West would do everything possible not-to-contain it. I don't think this was a foregone conclusion at the time.

Likewise, precisely because Trump is an incompetent buffoon he may have authorized some crazy general, colonel, what-have-you to carry out an attack on China.

The argument seems to be that the possibility can't be excluded, therefore it happened. — Banno

What are you talking about?

I said pretty in my list of possibilities "Or perhaps it's just one of those random things nature does from time to time".

I didn't provide much analysis of why this possibility is possible because we agree it is, and if it's just some random natural variation, then there's not really any scenario to develop.

There's an oddly one-sided scepticism at work here, were "might have escaped from a lab" becomes an extended narrative about genetic engineering and intentional infection, while the much more likely notion that it crossed from an animal is ignored. — Banno

It's right in my list of possibilities that it could be:

Or perhaps it's just one of those random things nature does from time to time. — boethius

The point of my narration of other possibilities is that they are possible.

"What's more likely?" assumes some model in which we can calculate likelihood. I have already written many months ago why making a model of the globe and relevant phenomena (including what intelligence agencies may or may not be capable of, might be willing or not to do) is basically impossible.

Without solid direct, verifiable evidence, "it's more likely it was natural" is just hand-wavy bullshit.

The narration in the media was never attached to some sort of factual basis, but political expediency.

It was politically expedient to downplay (without any factual or theoretical basis) a lab origin (accident or intentional) as that would help Trump with whom the establishment media was at war with.

Now, Trump is an incompetent buffoon, incapable of managing the crisis and so a scapegoat would have deflected attention from obvious mismanagement (that had nothing to do with where the virus came from anyway) and that could only help Trump in many ways.

However, precisely because Trump is an incompetent buffoon, the (potential) last year of his presidency is the optimum moment to carry out a strategic bioweapons attack.

There's lot's of intelligence agencies on the planet with all sorts of agendas and employing all sorts of crazy people without any moral limitations (nor real intelligence, let's be honest here).

Causing a pandemic is so attractive precisely because it can be made to look natural, look like an accident, and so easily started anywhere on the planet (to support whatever narrative you'd want to establish; if you want to eventually blame China, just start the pandemic near a lab that has worked with the same kinds of viruses, which you expect a potential link China will try to cover up as a matter of course and look guilty anyways; if you're China and want to start the pandemic (to institute next level mass surveillance, crush Hong Kong protests, deflect from the casual genocide concentration camps things etc.) but have a plan B of saying it's "an oopsie" just start it close to your lab anyways as an eventual fallback explanation).

If you look at the history of clandestine operations (that we know about), completely insane things are done all the time in the past. The narration that crazy shit doesn't happen today, all the intelligence agencies (including fairly powerful extra-national private contractors nowadays also) are now all just wise old men who wouldn't harm a fly or disrupt public order in anyway, is just fantasy.

The possibility can't be excluded based on the opinion of a few civilian experts. We don't even know what the state of the art in bio-engineering even it.

Yes, there is the letter published in 17 March 2020 in the journal Nature Medicine led by Kristian G. Andersen, that said it's natural. Basically the argument was that because there aren't tell tale signs of cutting and pasting, it had to be natural. Unfortunately newer technologies don't leave those traces. So the article is wrong in ruling out the hypothesis. — ssu

In addition to this, simply evolving a pathogen in different hosts is also engineering, and can't really be distinguished between just natural evolution.

Weapons tech we can also presume is far ahead of what is known about by civilians, so civilian scientists commenting on what weapons labs can and can't do (unless it is breaking the laws of thermodynamics or something) is simply foolish.

The simple truth is, @Benkei, the establishment downplayed potential lab origins (weapon or accident) because saying otherwise would benefit Trump and the right wing insane conspiracy machine that fueled things up to and including storming the US capital looking to capture and hang US senators.

Now that an establishment politician is in the white house, the great game must continue and it is in the establishment's interest to up-play the lab origin to create tensions with China.

However, what is true is independent of what is good/bad for Trump or what is good/bad for the US establishment.

It's potentially true the virus did come from a lab, by accident or then even on purpose: by China in a classic "start the pandemic in China" fake out (the ol' burn my own house down to start a neighborhood fire because I'm a maniac, to both seem innocent as well as immediately deploy the next phase of the 1984 totalitarian state technologies to "fight" the virus; deflect from their genocide, deflect from Hong-Kong, which both mattered before the pandemic, but no one gives a shit about nowadays), or some adversary trying to harm China thinking they'd be particularly harmed with high population densities (if you told me an insane general or intelligence officer got 5 minutes with Trump in a Helicopter or wherever and asked him to quickly sign a paper authorizing releasing a bio weapon on China, not realizing the potential blow-back because their an insane idiot, that is definitely something I'd be surprised Trump not signing; and if you agree, then the system in place to prevent this sort of crazy shit happening was prevented for 4 years by aides who couldn't even stop Trump tweeting even with measures like hiding his phone from him) which didn't work as expected, or then to frame China for the pandemic and make it (eventually) appear like a classic fake out, or perhaps it was made (/ found and released) by some billionaire, or mere multi-millionaire, and was started in multiple places and simply went exponential first in China, etc (perhaps such a plan isn't expected to work, but plenty of crazy rich people have tried over the years and this one happened to work). Or perhaps it's just one of those random things nature does from time to time.

However, if it was one out of any number of defense departments or intelligence agencies that did it by accident or on purpose, the only thing we can be sure of is that it's some crazy tale involving macho off-the-cuff global strategic improvisation and many goose-bumpy moments that their having a good laugh about now (now that the evidence is buried pretty deep and we're unlikely to ever know the truth anyways).

That's why the word "basically" is there. It's definitely a statistical majority. Which is as good as you're going to get. — khaled

Is it a majority? Where's your data?

But, even so, who cares?

If a majority of physicists in the time of Newton believed physics was fully determined (or then to arbitrary precision of all variables such as position and momentum), did that conclusively prove anything at the time?

All communities are affected by "group think", and the point of science is that real experiments can settle differences, not votes. If a bunch of physicists "voted" about something, really, who cares about that? Do the physicists themselves even care about it more than just an opinion poll of the moment that obviously doesn't "prove" anything?

If a majority of physicists were defending your point of view, where's their experiment to prove it? Are you really defending the idea that these physicists would say "ah, ah, ah, not so fast, we're a majority and therefore correct"?

Yes we can because if it did the interference pattern wouldn't emerge. — khaled

What does this point make? We agree the electron cannot be said to be "at one place" when we aren't observing it (even though there are fully deterministic theories where the particle is "at one place" at all times, but we seem to agree on at least this point; still, worth making a note of), and we agree that the "substance" of the electron, in some sense, is represented by the probability distribution, which has wave characteristics and can interfere with itself to make interference patterns etc.

What we're debating is what happens to this "probability related substance" when a measurement is made.

My point is that to "know" a measurement is made is to become conscious of the measurement result. The "probability waves going away" happen at that moment or before. If you argue "before", how do you prove it? In science you need to go and check, but this just kicks the can up the road, as @Wayfarer has really described super well, so read his comments. I'm just adding some quantum math lingo to what Wayfarer has already adequately described (and my math lingo I'm adding just to explain to you, or other readers here interested, that the math lingo doesn't really change the philosophical arguments of principle that pre-existed Quantum Mechanics, of determinism, skepticism, solipsism, panpsychism, everything possible actually happens in eternal infinite chaotic universe, etc.; although if a poster here knows of an interpretation of QM that does not map "pretty well" to pre-existing philosophical arguments, it would be interesting to add it to the mix).

As above. — khaled

You backup your claim by just asserting "physicists agree with you", without providing any "well controlled experiment" of how this is even supported?

No but if throwing a bunch of people through two slits produces the result that the people act as "waves" until measured that precisely means that they don't act as particles all the time. In other words, that the people are "truly everywhere" in the probability distribution.

Now replace people with electrons.

Or in other words, if the electron really did exist as a particle in a spot, with a certain momentum, how do you explain why an interference pattern emerges when we don't measure the electron's location? — khaled

I don't know what we're debating here. I've said our knowledge about the person lost at sea is a probability distribution (labeling it a "wave" or not doesn't matter), my point is that if you claim the person is "really somewhere" and not somehow "co-existing" in all the places they can be according to what we know, how do we prove they are "really somewhere"? We go and check.

As for making interference patterns with people; so far there is no known bound for making interference patters with atoms, so in principle, as far as we know, it's possible with people too. Of course, you'd need to cool them incredible close to absolute zero and you may need literally hundreds of trillions of throws to see any pattern in a whole bunch of noise, as well as do the experiment in deep inter-galactic space; but, until we find an upper bound of number of particles for making interference patterns, we can't say we can't do it with "people too" (well, at least the particles making up their bodies).

Except in this case... For some reason in this one case, when collapse happens at time t5, it also happens backwards for times t1,t2,t3,t4. It's either that, or everything we know about Cosmology is just wrong, and we can't really know it. — khaled

Collapse does not happen backwards. All the possibilities related to t1, t2, t3, and t4 can be still "in play" and those possibilities are still co-existing at t5 as well, but when we make a measurement at t5, all the other possibilities "that could have happened" go away.

Cosmology only tells us that now, when we look up at the stars, we see starts in definite locations corresponding to a definite history we can piece together. There is zero problem saying plenty of other possibilities "co-existed" until the first consciousness emerged to make such observations to collapse the wave function. Definiteness occurs at observation, how would we check it occurred before? We'd have to go and observe what occurred before, defeating the purpose of the checking.

You claim this. But it's clearly false. We know definite situations followed one to the other even though no one was around to see them. That's what Cosmology establishes. By your theory we shouldn't be able to do cosmology. Since waves don't collapse unless seen by a conscious agent, and since we can't see the past, we should not be able to know anything about it. It should just seem like quantum soup. — khaled

I really don't see where you get this. All possible cosmologies propagate from the big bang, and then the cosmic wave collapse happens and one definite cosmological history is "retained" once a "sufficient" consciousness emerges (in at least one of the possible cosmologies) and the wave function collapses.

This theory explains fine-tuning, and also solves the problem of the universes splitting and questions about energy conservation and quantum information copying (which if universe splitting doesn't just ignore, I haven't seen any experimental evidence proving this isn't a problem); however, we know probability waves can and do exist without violating information or energy conservation, so the entire cosmos in such a state creates zero problems in this regard. Maybe inflation was a super low probability event, likewise matter and antimatter asymmetry, weakness of gravity, and so on, but the first consciousness emerged in this super probability edge case, so that's what we see. Why is humanity so stupid? > edge case, "sufficient consciousness" is a pretty low bar.

I mean.... that is pretty much what happened when it comes to whether or not consciousness is necessary. They basically all drew the conclusion that it isn’t. That’s one of my first arguments. — khaled

They don't all agree on an interpretation. I don't see where you get this, maybe read some of @Wayfarer''s posts.

But we can KNOW that the electron, unlike the drowning person, doesn’t “really exist somewhere” that we are finding out correct? Or else interference effects wouldn’t happen. — khaled

No, we can't know. We can't know if the person is in a superposition of possibilities, unless we go and check and make an observation.

You are claiming to know? How would you backup your claim? By going and finding the person and pointing to a definite location the person is in, or then making other observations that at least constrain the possibilities. Does that establish you "know" the person is in a definite position before you go and check? No, it doesn't establish that.

And DESPITE, no one being conscious before to say otherwise, we know certain things happened at certain times. — khaled

We do not know.

The whole cosmic wave function could have been happily existing in its quantum splendor representing all possibilities a conscious being might see, and only collapse due to a conscious being existing in one possibility and therefore the cosmic wave function collapses to a coherent single, or at least greatly constrained, possibility.

What you’re suggesting here is that in the xyz-time “block”, you start from time = 0 and as you move along particles take every which path available to them. But the second one of these paths hits consciousness, suddenly, the awesome power of consciousness causes collapse “back in time” correcting history so that only one path happened all along. This contradicts what you say here: — khaled

It does not "correct history".

The other possibilities "go away" upon observation, just like any other experiment.

How do we, or "the universe", know there's an observation that has happened? Because someone or something becomes conscious of the observed results.

There is no correcting history, obviously our "definite universe" is a coherent possibility, just as any other; it's just the other possibilities "went away" somehow for some reason. Before anyone was conscious of what possibility the universe is actually in, there's no way to go back and check whether the possibilities co-existed in a quantum probability wave sense (or any sense) or then definite situations followed one to the other even if there was no one around to see it.

"The evolution of conscious life on this planet is due to appropriate mutations having taken place at various times. These, presumably, are quantum events, so they would exist only in linearly superposed form until they finally led to the evolution of a conscious being—whose very existence depends on all the right mutations having 'actually' taken place!" — khaled

I've already mentioned, it can just be supposed that all the possibilities propagate, including ones in which evolution happens, and the first possible consciousness collapses the cosmic wave function. No problem, no one's conscious before that to say otherwise, perfectly explains why we live in an extreme probability edge case, based on what we know of quantum mechanics so far, that there's more matter than antimatter for instance.

Of course, if, why and how this happens is pure speculation. The difference is that I'm labeling my speculations as speculations.

Point is, these probability distributions are “ontological” for QM. It’s not that there “really is an electron somewhere” we just don’t know where, the electron “is really everywhere” in the probability distribution. Otherwise you wouldn’t get interference patterns. — khaled

This is literally what I explain, as the electron somehow "co-existing" in detached regions.

What is at issue is what to make of this.

That’s what I mean by not JUST updating the model with new information. Observations in QM change what is happening, not just what we think is happening. — khaled

That's not a problem. The model includes these interactive effects, so when we measure position precisely of a particle we update the model with this increase in constraint on position but also decrease the constraint on momentum.

We can do all this without making any ontological claims as to what exists apart from our calculating and measuring. This is where the "shutup and calculate" expression comes from; it works and it doesn't "have to" make any intuitive sense nor does one "have to" take a position on the ontological status of the electron apart from variables being more or less constrained in mathematical models that take real world inputs.

We take information from the real world, we put it in a model, we get information out that corresponds to future information we can take from the real world. This is all that "we know" is happening. What happens between information gatherings we don't know.

In the case of the classical "probability waves" of large objects, even if the above is true "in principle", we are free to imagine the drowning person somehow co-exists is in all possible locations and the possibilities "collapse" to one possibility when we find them (how do we check if the person is "really somewhere", we need to go and find them and check), nevertheless, the assumption that the person is "really somewhere" doesn't run into intuitive problems (the statistical model is completely compatible with this assumption).

In the case of quantum mechanics, not only is it a problem "in principle", but it's also a problem that our intuitions about how "real objects" should behave simply don't work.

If there was an obvious conclusion to be drawn, the best physicists of the last hundred years would have drawn it and all agreed.

I think Feinman says it best when he describes "doing quantum mechanics" as the same state of knowledge as Mayan priests (I think it was Mayan) calculating the next eclipses. They've discovered a pattern, and they can do the calculations and make predictions and those predictions come true, but they have no knowledge of orbital mechanics and what is "really happening". So, any explanation the high priest gives is complete speculation and doesn't seem much better than plenty other explanations available. In such a state of knowledge where the "true causes" are simply lacking, we just have a mathematical pattern of what we observe, "these are lucky numbers for the Sun God" is going be just as reasonable to believe as "things are floating up there and they can block each other ... coincidentally following the pattern we've discovered for some reason".

And speculation is fine; I'm simply arguing that unless there's an experiment that proves one equally reasonable speculation is more credible than another ... one equally reasonable explanation is not more credible than another.

And mostly, interpretations boil down to ontological positions that predate quantum mechanics. "Everything that can happen does happen," is a very old concept. Likewise, we simply can't know what reality is "really like", goes thousands of years before Kantian skepticism. Similarly, there is a specific state of the universe and the future is fully determined is also an old idea.

All we are doing in this conversation is throwing in some quantum jargon, which is useful because it can help readers here understand quantum mechanics a tiny bit better, but doesn't really setup anything really different in the speculations available. We know quantum mechanics "is wrong" and maybe a better theory lends itself to one over another speculation, just as Newtonian physics lends itself to a deterministic interpretation and Quantum Mechanics, at least on the surface viewing, lends itself to Kantian style skepticism of "not knowing anything about things in themselves"; but QM isn't "proven" as some sort of end all and be all of physics, so maybe some future theory gives us other indications about "the true ontology" (and perhaps equally misleading as the indications of Newtonian, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics).

It’s not like when the probability distribution of the location of the drowning person “collapses” when we see them, but really, there was always a person there even without us observing them. — khaled

Yes, we are "JUST" updating the model with the new information, but in quantum mechanics updating the model with new information can impact on the model in ways that aren't intuitive. If we measure a particles location precisely (constrain that variable) it also changes constraints on momentum, and we may now know less about the particles momentum than we did before. We do not need to make ontological assumptions about what "really exists" between measurements to make use of quantum mechanics.

But it’s not just “updating the model with new information” is it? — khaled

In science, yes, that is what is happening.

If we don't have new information, we cannot say what is happening other than the probability distributions that we already have based on old information.

If you make a claim about what is happening, how can that claim be verified?

By getting new information through new observations.

Talking about what is happening without any actual information about what is happening, is pseudoscience. It maybe true, it maybe false, but it's not a scientific claim that can be verified by experiment.

I appreciate the long explanation but there is nothing there I didn’t already know. — khaled

I very much doubt this is true.

“Really exist in some physical definite state” = collapse. — khaled

But how do we know this? We observe the world and see a definite state?

How do we know we've observed the world to see a definite state? We become conscious of the observation.

If we just had the wave function we can have as many particles as we like, and nothing in the math of the wave function "forces" us to collapse our possible states to more definite states.

The reason viewing the reality as "just the wave function" is that it conflicts with our being conscious of definite states.

Correct. And MWI is the idea that this is what happens, for each possible universe. Again, you have each possible single path block, not a single multi path block (though that’s what you get if you were to superimpose all the blocks on each other) — khaled

You do not understand my point.

There is nothing in quantum mechanics that prevents setting up a wave function state of however many things you want, and simply propagating it forward in time to the end of the universe.

There's nothing preventing a "spacial" view of time in such a mathematical structure so everything is "one block" and all the particles represented by all their possible world lines and spacially representing the probability density of each world line, and having one block.

What's "wrong" with such a view of the universe? (And whether the block-universe we're considering we define as Newtonian, General Relativity or Quantum terms )

The problem is the supposition that there are conscious beings that experience the flow of time. The idea the universe, however it is mathematically described, is one "single block" with past, present and future coexisting (just as up and down direction co-exist) is that it conflicts with the idea of conscious beings inhabiting the universe and experiencing time, and we get that idea from being conscious ourselves.

The point is that it is an analogous problem of a perfectly "fine" interpretation of a mathematical structure of which the only problem is the supposition of conscious beings experiencing time and change (rather than experiencing no time and no change as something existing as a solid changeless block would suggest).

Likewise, that wave functions just propagate indefinitely and never collapse is a perfectly "fine" interpretation of the mathematics of the wave function, of which the only problem is the supposition of conscious beings experiencing definite states represented by real numbers and not these probability distributions represented by complex numbers.

In both cases, since consciousness is "the problem" that prevents, it is entirely reasonable to consider some special relationship between consciousness and these things.

So a single path, for every possible path a world. — khaled

Again, you do not understand my point nor the mathematics of quantum mechanics.

It is not the case that when the wave functions "collapses" that a particle is then considered to have taken a definite path, only the properties observed become more definite for the time of observation, but it is still the case that the particle in some way (we really don't understand) when through all possible paths to get to that observation point: which is why interference patterns emerge (the particle went through, in some sense, both slits and then interfered with itself).

No the point is this isn’t the “result” of the experiment. The variable we want to examine is whether or not the wave function can collapse without our conscious interference. If we get a cookie, where was the conscious interference? We definitely didn’t measure which slit the electron went through. And we didn’t interpret the results on the screen. All that was done by things that aren’t conscious. Yet in the end, when we look at the cookie dispenser, it won’t be “in a superposition of dispensing and not dispensing a cookie” it will either dispense or not dispense a cookie. Based on that we can know whether or not collapse happened without measuring which slit the electrons are going through. That’s the point. Same with the cat. All you’d need is a cookie dispenser there too to know specifically whether or not the cat is alive without observing the cat, just the dispenser.

And, again, address the historical argument: — khaled

Wave function collapse is not a variable.

Variables are states of particles or fields that we can observe. "Wave function collapse" is simply what the "other possibilities" going away is referred to.

For instance, you can have a "probability wave" of a particle in classical mechanics, such as a random walk of a particle Brownian motion or someone who fell of a boat and is adrift at sea. Take the person at sea, based on known constraints, relevant laws of physics etc, a probability distribution of where we are likely to find the person after some time t can be calculated. "Our probability wave" representing where the person might be is the exact same sense of probability as where we might find a particle in a quantum mechanics experiment.

We then go and find the person, and the "wave function" or where they could have been "collapses" in our model because we have new information. This the exact same process as quantum physicists doing measurements and "collapsing" other possibilities that didn't happen when they find one possibility that did happen, they update the model with new information and continue. For instance, finding the persons boot (or what is evaluated as 50% likely to be the persons boot) would update the "lost at sea" model based on this new constraint of observing a boot at location x,y.z at time t.

The difference between classical and quantum probability "wave collapse", is that classical probabilities of the above scenario act only as a one sort of "blobbty diffusion" wave and don't have tell-tale characteristics we'd associate with classic waves such as waves in water.

Critically, as the classical "probability wave / blob" diffuses in space, it always remains cohesive. The probability wave representing where a person maybe based on some initial condition, has no disconnected regions. A person might fall down an elevator shaft, and so is very "unlikely" we'd observe the person in the state of falling down the elevator shaft, but it's not zero probability; we could open one of the other elevator doors on the way down and see the person falling. It's more likely we'd observe the person either just sitting somewhere at the top or then just lying t the bottom of the shaft, than it is to go and observe happen to open an elevator door in the middle and see the falling state, but obviously not impossible.

The classical probability blobs diffuse through space, but never disconnect entirely.

Likewise, someone in a house maybe more probable to be observed in one room or another and less likely we'd observe them right at the moment of going through a door, but obviously we might and people do need to walk through doors to be in different rooms.

We do not believe someone lost at sea somehow "really exists" in all the places we might find them, it is just a mathematical description of probabilities to help us find them. Likewise, we do not believe someone is in "all the rooms" they could be at once, it's just a mathematical description of where we might find them.

Critical to this view that someone lost at sea is a definite state or someone in a house is in a definite state, before we go and check where they actually are, is the probability regions never disconnect (there is a continuous connection of everywhere "they might be", just different probabilities for each place, and we might really find them anywhere in this region; we can run experiments to find that 1/10000 chance of randomly opening the elevator shaft over some time span at the moment someone, let's hope a dummy, is falling).

In quantum mechanics, regions of probability states can be entirely disconnected, and this completely breaks our normal intuition of probability diffusion of "little ball particle" at definite positions through space at each moment in time. How does the electron exist in a definite state but "move" between disconnected regions A and B without any possibility of us finding the electron in some connected bridge state between A and B (i.e. in the doorway)? Likewise, how does an electron interfere with itself so that it's probability of hitting certain regions of a detector is zero, and that even one at a time, electrons produce interference patterns?

The only way to make sense of this is to say the electron does not "move" in a classical sense between A and B and when we look we find where it "really is" but rather the electron somehow co-exists in some sense in both regions, but when we look to find the electron in region A, then somehow it's "existence" in region B disappears. This is what happens mathematically, and "collapsing the wave of probabilities" to the new reality, is a sensical way to describe the mathematical process of updating a model with new information (just as with updating a model of someone lost at sea with information about their probable shoe or then finding the person themselves).

What we cannot easily make sense of is what sort of "substance" the electron (or quantum fields if you prefer) really is to have these characteristics, nor can we easily make sense of how our observations affect the situation (to resolve such questions, we need to make observations, but obviously that is no longer the same question).

Again, address this: Consciousness evolved yes? In order for that to happen we needed to have collapsed, well defined molecules at least yes? And eventually after enough time a conscious thing evolved from these molecules yes?

Then how can consciousness be a requirement for wave function collapse? If it was, it would’ve never evolved. — khaled

The consciousness relation to wave collapse can solve this in different ways; such as simply stating first wave collapsing at some threshold of consciousness or something along those lines (evolution happens in every possibility, and then collapses to the first possibility of consciousness; explaining why there's more matter than antimatter, as only in these probability edge cases does matter outnumber anti-matter, and stars and evolution can happen etc.); but we have no experiment that even shows what is and isn't conscious so this is pseudoscience speculation; not anyway to go back and "observe" the universe before it collapsed to a definite state due to the first observation.

What we do know (or what I know) is that I'm conscious and observe a definite state of the universe around me (certainly more definite than observing "all possibilities" simultaneously). I can know what I observe; I cannot "know" what existence is "really like" prior to my observations. I can note that quantum mechanics basically prevents any intuitive visualizations of what "things are really like at all", but, as a Kantian, it's not really surprising that whatever we can say of the "noumena" always remains fundamentally speculative anyways (maybe new physical theories will lend themselves back to a more "Newtonian" view just to be overturned once again by something even more bizarre than quantum mechanics).

There is no experimental evidence that something just needs to be "big enough" to cause probability wave collapse.

"Big things" we assume are in definite states even if we don't look, only because we are big and perceive definite states. There is nothing in quantum mechanics that forces one to start "wave collapsing" once a certain amount of terms and time have been added to describe a system. There is nothing in the mathematics of quantum mechanics (as understood apart from the behaviour of apparatusses and having some independent existence from such apparent behaviour) that prevents adding as many states of things as one wants (as long as the it coheres with the previous states) and then simply propagating the resulting total state forward as far as one wants. The only reason we need to assume probability distributions collapse to "one world" is because we are conscious of only a single world; without this foundational assumption going into things, the mathematical structure of quantum mechanics would not lead us to invent it (i.e. conscious beings perceiving a single possibility) and without this constraint a mathematician that doesn't know "what it's about" I would expect would be perfectly happy with a bunch of parameters and variables, equations, ways to solve for one variable (or then the constraints on that variable) given other constraints on other variables etc.

In other words, if you took the math and removed all the meaningful labels like "time" and so forth, you could ask the mathematician to solve for something, for instance what to us is question about, given some initial state, the probability distribution of a particles position after some time t, but is just a "math problem" to the mathematician. The mathematician would provide whatever solutions exist for the question, which would be the constraints on variables in question (x,y,z coordinates and some additional value representing probability for each coordinate), likely in some equation form. What I contend the mathematician is unlikely to do is add the postulate that the probabilities "collapsed" in some sense on the way to the final answer, but rather would just plug in the provided parameters and constraints (i.e. the fundamental constants and whatever values for initial conditions we provide) into the equations and solve for the question. This would be the process no matter how much information we provide in terms of initial conditions or then constraints at, what is to us, future times which to us represents "measurements", but to the mathematician is just additional constraints to take into account to solve things without the need to imagine the solutions represent anything real at all.

Adding a lot of information about states would make the work the mathematician needs to do exceedingly long and difficult, but I contend at no point would the mathematician postulate wave collapse happening nor even postulate that when answers are given (constraints on variables provided constraints on other variables) that somehow a single range of one or more variables, what we would call possibility (i.e. the photon hitting a particular region of a sensor apparatus), is "special" in a sense of actually happening.

If this process (that for the mathematician is just math and doesn't represent reality in anyway) results (what is for us who understand how the variables are usually labeled) in the solution to a question about interference patterns in a double slit experiment, the mathematician will solve for the pattern and is happy to provide it, but there's nothing in the math that implies "one spot" in the pattern must logically "happen". The math doesn't logically lead to special spots where something actually happens, that is the core of the quantum mystery (why rejecting hidden variables, which is not the same as rejecting merely local hidden variables, is as problematic as accepting them; for if they do exist, where are they, and if they don't exist, then how do particles / quantum states "choose" where they end up, it seems then "pure uncaused spontaneity" ), there's no logic to where things actually happen, only the probability of happening, and so provided only the logic without context of an experienced reality we are talking about, a single reality does not jump out from the math as a logical necessity. It's mostly just a lot of integrals in abstract spaces which mathematicians solve for fun all the time without suddenly deciding certain values represent probabilities of something actually happening in some sense in the real world, and much less be led to add the postulate that "constraining events" (what we'd call wave collapse) randomly happen along the way to the final answer to a given question (these additional "constraining events" don't change the answer as it's unknown what will be constrained in such a hypothetical constraining event, and so adds no additional information to the initial conditions).

The reason quantum physics doesn't work like this mathematical exercise is because physicists add additional constraints by measuring things in the real world: the real world, not logic, provides this additional information that makes it reasonable to constrain a quantum model at some real time t to reflect what was actually measured. Logic does not even provide some necessary extrapolation from the equations of quantum mechanics that there must be "measurements"; hence, why all sorts of speculation is compatible with it. However, I'm sure you would agree that it is the equations of quantum mechanics that are extrapolated from the single world we see, not the other way around.

But, entropy makes everything quite a bit more deterministic. Whilst QM remains elusive for high variance in temperature gradients for atomic elements locally, and even non-locally, yea? — Shawn

Obviously, this whole conversation is in the context that there is no theory of quantum gravity, no real understanding of what dark matter or dark energy really "is", incompatible measurements of the Hubble constant that should be compatible, etc.

So, definitely some future new physics could re-frame all these questions totally differently. No reason in principle, if there are hidden variables in some other dimension, that we couldn't access them somehow.

The only point I'm trying to defend is my view on the idea we can "know" what reality is like before we look to see what it's like. Any such theory is speculative in my view. I don't have a problem with speculation though. Can be mind expanding and lot's of falsefiable scientific predictions originated in what may appear as speculation; so, I'm not here to judge for sure what's "really speculation" or "really totally not", but I will of course make the challenge to anyone claiming to know these things we have been discussing.

But in short, I haven't looked in detail about quantum entropy concepts other than combination of micro-states in an essentially classical sense.

However, splitting into different possibilities again involves the definition of measurement, which is precisely what is to be avoided in the MWI. If I have defined what exactly a measurement is, then I can simply choose the Copenhagen Interpretation. The MWI would then be superfluous. — SolarWind

I'm not sure I agree. MWI seems to me to still have the problem of when these worlds actually "split"; it's easy to say "when something is measured as is understood in the standard model", but if nothing is measuring anymore it doesn't seem to me clearly defined when universe splits are supposed to happen; whenever something "could have" been measured. I believe there's also the "continuous" split, at least in some sense, idea and interference patterns then need to be interpreted as these continuously splitting universes interfering with each other. Of course, you can (as with all these interpretations) just say "in a consistent with the standard model".

But to be clear, science does not have a measurement problem. I can take this clock and measure something taking 45 seconds to happen. I can take this ruler and I can measure this thing to be 18cm. I can take something and weigh it to read 40 grams. Likewise, I can make an apparatus in a precise way and read out measurements of the apparatus. I can predict how this precise apparatus will behave (what I will see in it's measurement output) using sophisticated mathematics and knowledge of how I built my apparatus and what state it will be in when I turn it on.

The "measurement problem" is not a problem scientists who measure things face, but rather a problem of people trying to take the person measuring out of the measuring and substituting some collection of particles or what-have-you, which of course can always be hypothesized to be in a superposition of all their possible outputs until someone bothers to check and report back that's not the case.

Only within a certain stochastic process governed by entropy, surely? — Shawn

Yes, this is the main problem with "entropy collapse" as I understand it. Entropy is (in it's classical sense) a macro statistical property resulting from fundamentally quantum process (as is temperature, a related macro property to entropy), so it doesn't really make sense in the usual way entropy is understood to say it can collapse wave functions.

So, some quantum version of entropy needs to be made for it to relate to quantum wave collapse. The one's I've seen are basically just some statistical probability of wave collapse based on number of particles or amount of information. Which can of course be postulated without any conflict with the standard model as it is, but the hope of such theorists is generally that there is some experimental difference that can be detected.

What exactly is a "quantum fork"? — SolarWind

Usually in these discussions what I am calling "a fork in the road" is called a branch in a graph of possible state changes.

What it means is simply that when a "wave collapses" and a value previously represented by a range of possibilities becomes one possibility (which is not really one possibility, it becomes just a more constrained range than it was before, as we don't observe particles at "points" but in a region, such as photons hitting a camera sensor we just know which region the photon hit, but not the exact location).

In multiple worlds interpretation there is no wave collapse of the possibilities into more constrained possibilities, but simply everything that can happen does happen in multiplying real and equally physical universes. Every time the universe splits to follow different possibilities new branches appear in the tree of real possibilities that constantly proliferate at a considerable rate, actualizing every possible state of the universe.

We've been recently debating the idea of wave collapse relating to consciousness, as opposed to multiple worlds where no "probability waves" ever collapse.

There are other possibilities, however. Earlier we were discussing hidden variables. Bell inequalities is about local hidden variables, but doesn't exclude non-local hidden variables. Everything could still be fully determined by non-local hidden variables, which, if we knew we could use to fully predict any quantum process. Based on quantum physics as it seems to be now, it's difficult to imagine, even in principle, being able to actually know these hidden variables. However, we can still nevertheless conceive of these hidden variables existing in some other hidden variable dimension that we could probe with the right apparatus to arbitrary precision. Such "hidden variable dimensions" being discovered and accessible to arbitrary precision to predict the exact results of quantum processes (not just the probability distribution of where each particle is likely to land, but exactly where each particle will land to arbitrary precision, constrained just by size of apparatus, for instance) would return physics to a Newtonian world view that everything seems to be in a definite state and larger asparagus gets us more precise results without limitation (in quantum physics as it is, there are fundamental limits to probing values: measure position precisely and you can't measure momentum precisely at the same time; measure too precisely and you create black holes and can no longer see what happens inside those black holes).

So, "likely" hidden variable dimensions, if they exist, we can't access them. However, there's nothing the matter in principle to suppose quantum processes follow some fully determined path without any randomness, due to smaller states we are unable to access.

Next to "consciousness based wave collapse", multiple worlds, full determinism, there are other ideas such as "entropy based wave collapse" as well as "wave collapse just happening spontaneously".

Sort of. But we weren’t talking about MWI. We were talking about collapse and what causes it. There is an inconsistency between “multiple world lines” and “collapse”. — khaled

There's no wave collapse in MWI, as the idea there is all possibilities really exist in some physical definite state and new universes pop into existence every time there is a quantum fork in the road.

"Wave collapse" is the idea there's only one universe that doesn't split at every quantum fork in the road, but the possibilities collapse into one path going forward.

In both MWI and "wave collapse" theories, if we "setup", or just imagine, a cosmic wave function at the beginning of the universe will have the same mathematical structure. It's just in one interpretation if we go "forward in time" with our equations we see a range of possibilities and "predict" one of those possibilities will "actually happen" for observers at that moment in time. Whereas in MWI we go forward in time with our equations and we see the same possibilities but assert every possibility corresponds to a real "universe" (which should really be called "subverse" to the real universe of all these possibilities actually existing).

No we don’t. We need to become conscious of the consequences of the result. Such as cookie or no cookie. Would you call that “becoming conscious of the result”? — khaled

Science works through consciousness. We formulate questions, we formulate answers to those questions, we try to "prove" an answer is right or wrong through experiments. If we imagine unconscious rocks sitting in a pond, they cannot "do science".

It simply makes no sense to say we will setup an experiment but neither of us will ever become conscious of the result, and that will settle, in a scientifically meaningful way, the issue at hand.

This is just what "science" means. If you setup your cookie experiment but never look at the results, but assure me the cookie is definitely either there or it isn't even if you don't look, I'll ask "how do you know". The only way for you to "know" is to go and check, but you're claiming to know even if you don't check.

We can definitely tell the state of the cat. Without observing the cat. — khaled

We cannot know the state of the cat without observing the cat. We can know it's possible states based on initial conditions when the lid of the box is closed, to know it's state afterwards we need to look in the box. We can do that by physically opening the box, we can do it by running an MRI of the box, we can do it by setting up a detector for cosmic rays debris that travel through the box, we can take the temperature of the box and conclude the cat is dead if the box is too cold or on fire if the box is too hot, but each way we might get information on the state of the box requires observations. If we want to have a sort of "pure" cat killing experiment, we would make our box a light year on each side and place the cat in a suitable smaller livable box in the middle with our experiment; this way we can be certain that no information is "leaking" out about the state of our cat.

Sigh. Read the whole comment please. I show why one of the interpretations (the one we happen to be discussing) is inconsistent with that. — khaled

There is no inconsistency with MWI. You just have the block universe of all the possible universes. You have mathematically exactly what I described as the "cosmic wave function" that contains all the possibilities. MWI and cosmic wave function are mathematically the same, only in cosmic wave function I am removing the postulate that there are any conscious beings in this mathematical structure that experience anything, so "all the quantum states" can just happily remain in one quantum block universe where time has no special meaning.

It's not really useful to try to visualize the quantum block universe since there's many more dimensions for field strengths and directions as well as more dimensions representing the probabilities (either mapped onto new dimensions or just left in complex value form; a mathematician investigating this structure won't care that values are complex).

As I say, it's off topic as my point is simply to bring in the analogy that the only "problem" for block universe interpretation of physics equations when we remove "time" as something special that is experienced ... is the fact that we do believe the universe has conscious observers that do in fact experience time.

Great. Now the question becomes, do we need a conscious observer for this to happen, or can it happen on its own. — khaled

This is what I am explaining; the only way for us to resolve this question scientifically, is to setup an experiment and then for us to both become conscious or the result. If we setup the experiment and then never look at the results (i.e. just keep the lid of Schrödinger's box closed) then we don't know if the wave has collapsed or not because we haven't looked.

That's just how science works, if we don't observe we cannot say what the "real state" of Schrödinger's box is; it is as consistent to say it is in some definite state as to say it remains in the quantum superposition of all it's possible states we might observe when we open the box. One is free to believe the quantum state had already collapsed multiple times since we closed the box ... one is free to believe the quantum state has not at all collapsed since we closed the box; both views will result in the same predictions (we both have the same information of the state of the box when it's closed, we both have the same equations, we will both arrive at the same possible states and probabilities for what we'll see when we open the box; what is "really in the box" when we aren't looking is a unfalsefiable claim, as to falsefy a claim about what's "really in the box" when it's closed, we need to open the box and look and so it's no longer closed).

Within the math of classical mechanics.

In Quantum mechanics it is very much inconsistent. Because there are 2 alternatives in quantum mechanics: — khaled

Having multiple interpretations of things does not create inconsistencies.

If you show a parabola equation to a mathematician, there's lot's of interpretations available such as an arch of a particle through space (approximately so), or a string suspended between two fixed points (approximately so), or a shape you have or intend to draw, quadratic growth of some value, or maybe we don't care about the parabolic shape but want to solve for it's roots which will tell us the information we want to know.

Multiple interpretations does not create mathematical inconsistencies.

If I tell you "6", it's not a mathematical inconsistency that I could be talking about 6 electrons or 6 bananas or just the number 6.

Likewise, even if we assumed quantum mechanics does not lend itself to a "block universe" interpretation (which it does), the block universe is not the only interpretation of classical mechanics. We can interpret classical mechanics as representing particles that really do move through time.

All this is getting off topic however, as the analogy that a block universe interpretation of physics is only problematic because we are conscious of the present and time clearly flows in one direction to us.

However, for those curious, the block universe interpretation is as easy in quantum mechanics as classical mechanics. There are just many more paths through the block associated with any particle. If we want to add "wave function collapse" (which the point of contemplating the "cosmic wave function" is that we don't need to ever add a wave function collapse, if we remove the hypothesis of conscious observers that see definite things) then the many potential world lines associated with a particle collapse in the block to the, if not one location, then "smaller region" anytime the wave function collapses in this block universe.

Again, the only reason to postulate "time" as some sort of changing singular experience in our quantum block universe is if we want to contemplate the idea that some of the "particle world lines" represent a conscious being that experiences "time" as some changing singular experience. However, if we had no observers in our quantum block universe there is nothing in the math that would tell us time is some special thing as we understand time to be in our experience.