Wouldnāt interstellar travel close to the speed of light require a huge amount of energy, and a level of technological transformation that again seems much higher than most people expect?
Well, harnessing ALL of the energy produced by the sun (or even half of it) sounds pretty far away in time.
Iāll make a disgression: The risk of X-risks seems to increase with the amount of energy at disposal (only a correlation, yes, but a lot of power (=energy) seems necessary to destroy the conditions of life on this planet, and the more power we have, the easier it becomes). As I pointed out, in the book Power, Richard Heinberg makes the case that we are overpowered: we have so much energy that we risk wiping out ourselves by accident. Worse yet, the goal of our current economic and political structures is to get even more powerāforever.
So Iād expect a society with this amount of power to face many other problems bafore getting to āharnessing the sunā. The Fermi paradox seems to point this way.
But even then, this doesnāt really adress the point I made above about animal suffering.
Not reallyāabout six hours of the energy produced by the sun.
Well, harnessing ALL of the energy produced by the sun (or even half of it) sounds pretty far away in time.
Iāll make a disgression: The risk of X-risks seems to increase with the amount of energy at disposal (only a correlation, yes, but a lot of power (=energy) seems necessary to destroy the conditions of life on this planet, and the more power we have, the easier it becomes). As I pointed out, in the book Power, Richard Heinberg makes the case that we are overpowered: we have so much energy that we risk wiping out ourselves by accident. Worse yet, the goal of our current economic and political structures is to get even more powerāforever.
So Iād expect a society with this amount of power to face many other problems bafore getting to āharnessing the sunā. The Fermi paradox seems to point this way.
But even then, this doesnāt really adress the point I made above about animal suffering.
OhāsorryāI meant to reply to AnonymousAccount insteadāit was their text that I was quoting. Iāve now put it thereāshould I delete this one?
Yeah, I though it was something like that ^^
But no, letās keep that here.