Producing great works and remarkable changes needs many, not just a few – closed systems are single points of failure
https://x.com/RichardKCollin2/status/1846781612832207179
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1713236266168627
Comment: Producing great works and remarkable changes needs many, not just a few – closed systems are single points of failure
Reginaldo Orione Ferreira The sodium cooling is what I considered important. If you pulse or modulate the reactor, then you have modulated the flow of a good conductor. The conductor moves in strong magnetic fields possible today and generates electricity. That is the basis of a patent idea I wrote when working at Detroit Edison Fermi II project in 1975. But after another few years,after considering ways to modulate atomic and nuclear reactions at KeV and Mev average energy per particle, I realized it is more efficient to simply make reactions to suit the purpose and generate KeV and MeV charged ions and electrons.
Still later I found that magnetic forces can be used for most every “strong force” situation.
So to answer your comment, it is possible to greatly increase the number or the particles with smaller energy per particle to get a process that is more efficient in total energy. Think of 10 people, really smart, working in a closed group. Or 10,000 people working on a closed project. No matter how smart or how many computers they use they will not be smarter or have more survival skills than 8.2 Billion humans, of which 5.2 Billion use the Internet now. You probably have seen many times where a simple shared method that many understand is more effective in human society, where all can collaborate, not just a few special ones who then have to try to be superstars.
The accelerators groups try to produce GeV and TeV particles and higher as they strain to win the Nobel prize, dangling the cheap prize as a carrot in a race where only a few “win”. But for every one of those, there are millions who have to do their part to make the whole function. Any real exploration of the solar system and universe, and the issues and opportunities on earth, is not some special thing only for a few. But a common enterprise that 8.2 Billion humans and many related species undertake. Look at your own country, whereever you live, and see if it is providing an environment where every person is treated fairly and with care. The same is with molecules, particles and tiny bits of space.
The people who made that rocket engine in this video did NOT care about the room it is in. They did not look at the people, groups, purpose and whole lifetime of that rocket in human society. It takes that level of care to make things happen. If the enterprise is not possible, then individual excellence is useless. In a war, if the supply systems fail, the outstanding ones are useless. In an economy, if people do not know how to use the products produced, that is more inefficient than the old Russia’s central planned production quotas or the roads to nowhere.
If you are a religious person, then you have a sense of what a perfect God does. What God’s “job” is. If you try to emulate someone, even try to do your best in every situation, they you know that God as a concept urges everyone to care about the whole, to pray for and support everyone, not just the beautiful or rich or well dressed or smart or educated. The reason is that smart people who are not engaged with the world, and making sure that systems run and systems are beneficial, then many suffer continuously.
If you want the atoms and molecules coming out of that rocket to do their job well, you need to break the whole into very tiny voxels, use simple and fair rules that consider the strength, path, and fate of every part – and then optimize at system scale, at global scale, and at heliospheric scale – to be sure the enterprise and the whole succeeds. In the 1980s I was working at USAID and with the international agencies on a concept called “sustainable development”. That term also applies to “smaller” things like “solar system development” or “running cities so they are not the toy of a few” or “not allowing closed groups to create single points of failure”.
My point here is that by putting your attention and effort are specific task to they work optimally, only will work if the large processes and systems, the effort of all people in the country, the project, the effort, the task is also clear to all, and everyone can watch and correct things that need doing. Awareness, care, doing what is needed – these are positive skills because they assure countries survive, especially the ones who produce a few “winners” but survive, while the countries producing only a few special ones fail.
Physics and engineering are the jobs of a few now because it takes years to memorize things to the point of mastery for even simple problems and projects. The same is true of all professions, all human tasks, all human roles. Since there are computers now doing many tasks. They too, however machine or human like, have jobs and roles in the world, in the human enterprise. That is the fault of single points of failure human run “education” industry and those who benefit from controlling knowledge. It has changed now where the knowledge is global but has not been made accessible in all human languages, and for humans with any background.
Limiting access to knowledge to only those with “special access” is what killed the Catholic church. It is what corrupts. In large systems like “building a true starship” closed groups and special knowledge hoarded by a few can kill the whole effort. When one part does not talk to all other parts – because survival today requires that.
I am hoping that this translates. I tried to pick a few concepts that will translate to your human language, to terms and ideas that are part of your experience where you feel you have some degree of mastery and life purpose.
Now I was a teenager when Stranger in a Strange Land became popular, and “grok” became part of the human language. It is an old idea, and old familiar feeling and concept in every human language. Where survival depends on “total awareness and readiness”. Prey have to have “total awareness and readiness” and predators have to not miss anything. But the gatherers, the processors, the cooks and cleaners, the builders, the watchers, the ones writing down, the ones trying to learn – all humans in any society, or all humans in the solar system — they all have a part. And when the world is threatened, they all have to work together, not by caveat of a few, but by awareness and small actions of everyone.
Look at the “dumb” rocket engine. I very much doubt that pipes and belching flames and loud sounds and strong vibrations are needed to move whatever it is attached to. The rocket is not just the engine, but we design that way now. The engine designers must understand the whole system and its purposes and its tasks. And that leads to all things. One thing I learned to do with the Internet Foundation, was to look at the whole of human knowledge, the roles and tasks, lives and responsibilities of all humans and all devices and all related species – to “grok” or hold all of that knowledge in minds at once – attentive, caring, wary, ready, preparing, doing basic tasks – a whole and complete system. Of humans, related species, and things in the world. “Grokked” in the mind of God. Or in the hearts and experiences and purposes of each human in the human enterprise.
And now that includes any “devices with human goals and responsibilities. An “AI” is not “human” because it manipulates symbols and remembers. It is “human” when the people who make and maintain and teach it care about everyone, not just to enrich a few, over all others.
Richard Collins, The Internet Foundation
