If you're open to requests, I would be interested in learning more about air defense systems. In particular, I'm curious about the physics of missile defense. Intuitively it makes sense to me that the interceptor needs to have more energy than whatever missile it's pursuing. I'd be interested to see the actual math.
How would you redistribute the gains of globalization?
Look, if you give some factory worker UBI, food stamps, and medicaid, he just ends up some fat bitter divorced guy on fentanyl.
I have no doubt that sharing the wealth might be part of a solution, but it's not a simple problem. It has to promote and reward pro-social actions, and that's more expensive politically and culturally then cutting checks.
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"The optimum population," said Mustapha Mond, "is modelled on the iceberg–eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above."
"And they're happy below the water line?"
"Happier than above it. Happier than your friend here, for example." He pointed.
"In spite of that awful work?"
"Awful? They don't find it so. On the contrary, they like it. It's light, it's childishly simple. No strain on the mind or the muscles. Seven and a half hours of mild, unexhausting labour, and then the soma ration and games and unrestricted copulation and the feelies. What more can they ask for? True," he added, "they might ask for shorter hours. And of course we could give them shorter hours. Technically, it would be perfectly simple to reduce all lower-caste working hours to three or four a day. But would they be any the happier for that? No, they wouldn't. The experiment was tried, more than a century and a half ago. The whole of Ireland was put on to the four-hour day. What was the result? Unrest and a large increase in the consumption of soma; that was all. Those three and a half hours of extra leisure were so far from being a source of happiness, that people felt constrained to take a holiday from them. The Inventions Office is stuffed with plans for labour-saving processes. Thousands of them." Mustapha Mond made a lavish gesture. "And why don't we put them into execution? For the sake of the labourers; it would be sheer cruelty to afflict them with excessive leisure. It's the same with agriculture. We could synthesize every morsel of food, if we wanted to. But we don't. We prefer to keep a third of the population on the land. For their own sakes–because it takes longer to get food out of the land than out of a factory. Besides, we have our stability to think of. We don't want to change. Every change is a menace to stability. That's another reason why we're so chary of applying new inventions. Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy. Yes, even science."
Can you talk about Chinese photonic chips in a future podcast? I think many people would appreciate.
Yes, and Chinese research on genetic enhancement.
If you're open to requests, I would be interested in learning more about air defense systems. In particular, I'm curious about the physics of missile defense. Intuitively it makes sense to me that the interceptor needs to have more energy than whatever missile it's pursuing. I'd be interested to see the actual math.
How would you redistribute the gains of globalization?
Look, if you give some factory worker UBI, food stamps, and medicaid, he just ends up some fat bitter divorced guy on fentanyl.
I have no doubt that sharing the wealth might be part of a solution, but it's not a simple problem. It has to promote and reward pro-social actions, and that's more expensive politically and culturally then cutting checks.
---
"The optimum population," said Mustapha Mond, "is modelled on the iceberg–eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above."
"And they're happy below the water line?"
"Happier than above it. Happier than your friend here, for example." He pointed.
"In spite of that awful work?"
"Awful? They don't find it so. On the contrary, they like it. It's light, it's childishly simple. No strain on the mind or the muscles. Seven and a half hours of mild, unexhausting labour, and then the soma ration and games and unrestricted copulation and the feelies. What more can they ask for? True," he added, "they might ask for shorter hours. And of course we could give them shorter hours. Technically, it would be perfectly simple to reduce all lower-caste working hours to three or four a day. But would they be any the happier for that? No, they wouldn't. The experiment was tried, more than a century and a half ago. The whole of Ireland was put on to the four-hour day. What was the result? Unrest and a large increase in the consumption of soma; that was all. Those three and a half hours of extra leisure were so far from being a source of happiness, that people felt constrained to take a holiday from them. The Inventions Office is stuffed with plans for labour-saving processes. Thousands of them." Mustapha Mond made a lavish gesture. "And why don't we put them into execution? For the sake of the labourers; it would be sheer cruelty to afflict them with excessive leisure. It's the same with agriculture. We could synthesize every morsel of food, if we wanted to. But we don't. We prefer to keep a third of the population on the land. For their own sakes–because it takes longer to get food out of the land than out of a factory. Besides, we have our stability to think of. We don't want to change. Every change is a menace to stability. That's another reason why we're so chary of applying new inventions. Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy. Yes, even science."